Navigating Nihilism: Responsibility and Relationships

In this episode, we delve into the philosophical and psychological aspects of pessimism, nihilism, and antinatalism. The discussion begins with the exploration of Emil Cioran's ideas and the allure of pessimism and nihilism. We then touch on how adopting such mindsets can act as psychological protection and social dominance hacks. Throughout the episode, we contrast these perspectives with more optimistic and proactive approaches to life, personal responsibility, and earnest enthusiasm. Includes a critique of C. S. Lewis's argument from desire and the importance of avoiding nihilistic tendencies in personal relationships.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. Today is going to be an interesting and philosophical episode, but also focused on psychology and sort of best mental health practices for living. I was listening. to a podcast diving into the philosophy of Emil Kairon, who wrote Better Not to Have Been Bored.

He, the Romanian philosopher. And he exhibited many traits that I think that all of us are susceptible to, which is the protective shell of dumerism, pessimism. And this feeling of suffering. And I think that if we investigate this, we can understand why it feels so comfy to go to this place

Speaker 9: That's cool. I guess you can join up with us

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): Antinatalists.

Speaker 9: if you want.

Speaker 10: Yeah, we're gonna go to the graveyard [00:01:00] and write poems about death and how pointless life is.

Speaker 9: Thanks for offering to let me in your clit, guys. But to be honest, I'd rather be a crying little pussy than a

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: Antinatalist.

Speaker 9: kid. We'll see you, Stan.

Speaker 10: He's right. I don't even know who I am anymore. I like liking life a lot more than hating it. Screw you guys. I'm going home. Go ahead and go back

Speaker 9: to your sunshine, fairytale.

Malcolm Collins: And, and, and, and just as a, a bit of a preview here, I think there's a few things that play I think one is, it removes some degree of responsibility for one's own failures or states, so there is less need for self judgment or self motivation two is I believe that it looks chic, like it, it, it looks sophisticated.

Yes. Sophisticated. Three is it makes you much more difficult for other people to attack. It's a very lazy position to hold intellectually speaking, because [00:02:00] when people attempt to attack you. You know, you're just like, yeah, you know, life is terrible. Yeah, et cetera. And like, you can't hurt me. Like I'm, I'm at rock bottom.

Where are you going to push me? Exactly.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-2: I found a video of some real Americans running across a far left voluntary human extinction rally.

Speaker 7: Are these the Nazis?

Speaker 6: No, Donnie, these men are nihilists. There's nothing to be afraid of.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-3: My first world life has involved some degree of suffering and I didn't consent to being born.

Speaker 7: It's not fair!

Speaker 6: Fair? Who's the f*****g nihilist around here, you bunch of f*****g crybabies? This guy's gonna hurt us, Walter. No, Donnie. These men are cowards. I f**k you!

Speaker 7: F**k

Speaker 6: you!

Speaker 7: I f**k you! I f**k you! Ball, man. Hey, dick. Oh.

Hey, dick.

Speaker 6: I

Malcolm Collins: so let's go over all of these through the framing of this individual. All right. So this individual is really important to antinatalist philosophy where I [00:03:00] study, you know, if our opponents have a philosophy, I make a point of studying their intellectual arguments as much as I could.

He, did not have any particularly sophisticated or interesting intellectual arguments. But he had a very interesting, buddhism

Simone Collins: because I feel like one, this is a very, very, very old meme. The life is suffering meme is like extremely old. So what is, what are his novel? Are

Malcolm Collins: I don't remember it. No, it was something like just not interesting. The other person I was studying today was C. S. Lewis who had, it was dumb for like way more interesting ways than this guy was dumb. But we'll, we will do C. S. with our audience.

Simone Collins: If you're calling C. S. Lewis dumb, boy, oh boy. I'm sorry, Simone.

I'm sorry.

Malcolm Collins: He wasn't dumb.

Simone Collins: Emails we're going to get.

Malcolm Collins: He was straight up retarded. Like, I was shocked at the stupidity of some of his arguments.

this, this yes, Lewis rant was moved to the end of the episode. If you want to see it, you can go there.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-4: That said, I'm probably wrong to call him dumb.

It's more that [00:04:00] he's very Malcolm Gladwell y. He mostly just aggregates other people's ideas and tells them in a way that is more accessible to the average person. And when he has independent or new ideas, like the argument from desire, they're typically very, very bad. He doesn't really interject any interesting new ideas to the conversation.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So this guy did basically he was maxing this particular perspective in a way that I think that we can all learn from because we're all are drawn to this perspective.

One of the things he did is even though his book was famous, even though he was famous. He tried to never allow his book to win any awards, so he'd withdraw from any awards that he could win. He would put himself in environments that made him less likely to become more famous, specifically trying to hang out with other failures and be more of a failure, and specifically liked associating disproportionately with failures.

The line that he used is [00:05:00] that he didn't hate misfortune. He hated being surprised by it. And I think that this is something that we all know to some extent. In many ways, it feels safer to not even expose yourself to the potentiality of success because having some goal and not achieving it can hurt more than never having had the goal in the first place.

However, You are never going to achieve any life of genuine satisfaction if you don't build goals for yourself and occasionally fail. Or even predominantly fail. I would say that a lot of successful people early in their careers predominantly failed before they reached that level of success.

Thoughts, Simone?

Simone Collins: I think that's absolutely true. I, I, when you, when you describe that behavior, it just made me think that we're listening to [00:06:00] the description of someone who's suffering from some fairly severe emotional problems.

Malcolm Collins: I don't think so because I think that that's an easy thing to say, Oh, this person's suffering from depression.

Oh, this person is without really, it just seems

Simone Collins: like like super avoidant behavior, maybe that he's very anxious about recognition.

Malcolm Collins: It's not this is I think the mistake here, right? And I think that this is one of the things that we need to look out for was in our modern culture Is the medicalization? And the depersonalization of things that are very much individual choices and this was an individual choice that he made and the reason i'm saying that this is not a medical choice or something Like that is because it's a choice That I feel calling to me that you can feel calling to that.

I think any mentally healthy person feels sometimes it would be better if I never even tried. It is easier to develop [00:07:00] comfort. With failure than it is to aspire to success, the mere fact that it is easier and maybe leads to less suffering was in your life does not mean that you should pursue it. The next thing here is I'd note to the, the chic ness of pessimism.

And nihilism. And I think part of the question is, is why is pessimism and nihilism chic? You know, when I think of the classic nihilist, what I'm thinking of is the, you know, French beatnik in their, in their outfit, like being like, Oh, nothing really matters. Oh, you know, and it's even chic cause it's, Oh, you know, the sexy philosopher man troubled with his, Oh, nothing matters because, and I think that this is why it is sexy, right?

Speaker: Shallow life, drowning alone I gasp for air, coldness creeps over pale skin, there is sadness so deep it pulls me down, [00:08:00] happiness dies in a deep dark sea.

Speaker 2: Yeah,

Speaker 3: happiness dies. Yeah.

Speaker 5: Henrietta! Hi, sweetie! Go away, Mom. Leave me alone.

Speaker: Daddy and I just got your birthday present! But you can't see what it is till tomorrow! You'd like to wait till I was dead, wouldn't you? You'd like to see the magazine in my face.

Speaker 3: You are so creative, honey!

Speaker: Conformist b***h.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Why it is alluring and, and, and high class, because if I'm looking at two people and one person is like, hey I genuinely believe that this stuff does matter and I'm really excited about it. And the other person is, oh, nothing matters. The person who wants things who wants or is excited about something has put themselves in any sort of interaction with this other person on the lower foot.

Speaker 12: To what do I owe the pleasure?

Speaker 11: Jack, [00:09:00] pleasure is the name of a pony I hate. This is business. So, I just happened to bump into Jenna Maroney

Speaker 12: what did you do to her, Hooper?

Speaker 11: Oh, her brain's like silly putty. A toy I am too old for. Kaylee

Speaker 13: Hooper! OMG! It's Jenna!

You're wearing that belt as a joke, right? Of course I am!

Speaker 14: Where did you get your belt? You're so cool!

Speaker 15: Kayleigh, you look so gorgeous today. I'm wearing a headband because you are. Pathetic.

What?

Simone Collins: Well, in general enthusiasm, approbation, excitement are, they open one up to vulnerability. And to criticize those things implies you have knowledge the other person doesn't. And that they are excited or optimistic or hopeful or trying out of ignorance and that the person who is pessimistic or who knows better or who, who understands that that brand is actually s**t [00:10:00] is just more informed and therefore better in, in the hierarchy of that social interaction.

Malcolm Collins: There's such a great way. So if you're in a group of people and one person in the group of people comes up and they're like, I just found this really exciting new product or philosophy or idea. And then another person in the group goes, oh, I know about that. It's terrible. And here is why, like that person has asserted dominance over the person who just came up all excited about the idea.

And I can see why you would have a fear, like if you're building a profile, like a psychological profile to interact with the public, you are going to get a lot of dumb, easy hacks by taking this pessimistic approach in the same way that Simone mentioned when she was younger, she used to dress in these ridiculous, kind of slutty, like, Neon taffeta dresses, very punky hipster because the [00:11:00] people around her socially rewarded her for this as a, as a, you know, a young fertile girl.

That's the way people are. But is a long term maxing for that. Would have really hurt her. And it's the same with this particular tactic in individual conversations, especially when you're young, you can socially cheese those situations by taking the nihilistic perspective and nihilism more than just general skepticism.

Well, and even if

Simone Collins: you like, I think it can happen very subtly. We're just. Every time you take a more pessimistic or nihilistic or antinatalist perspective, you win the conversation, or you're seen as the more respectable person in the conversation, or more people kind of nod and agree with you, looking thoughtful.

So, you might, you might, one, be subtly emotional and reinforced to do it, but also, you will be subtly, Signal that it's correct, even if it isn't correct.

Malcolm Collins: So with this [00:12:00] particular philosophy, this may help you understand just some of the quotes from him here. I only write this kind of stuff because explaining it bores me terribly.

That's why I say when I've written aphorisms, it's that I've sunk back into fatigue. Why bother? And so the aphorism is scorned by Quote unquote, serious people, the professors look down upon it when they read a book of aphorisms. They say, Oh, look what this fellow said 10 pages back. Now he's saying something to the contrary.

He's not serious. Me, I can put two aphorisms that are contradictory right next to each other. Aphorisms are also momentary truths. They are not decrees. And I could tell you nearly every case why I wrote this or that phrase and when it's always set in motion by an encounter, an incident, a fit of temper, but they all have a cause.

It's not all gratuitous. [00:13:00] Every bit of it. Gratuitous? Gratuitous, gratuitous. But every bit of this is about avoiding responsibility for his decisions and attempting to essentially cheese a social fight. You know, starting with the, oh, why do I do this? Well, it bores me terribly is what he starts with.

Oh, I have fatigue. Why bother? You know, very much the,

the,

the, the, the, the, the, the nihilist was the cigarette, right? And then. He talks about, oh, how it's scorned by quote unquote serious people, right? And they'll say that these two things contradict each other. An actual problem if you're writing, like, ideas or philosophy.

He's like, but that doesn't matter. I don't need to address that. And then you see him attacking their, their character for pointing out that his work is internally inconsistent. Or if you want to see other types of things that I think we all feel this way internally and drawn to this because it's such an easy way to frame ideas in our heads.

I invented [00:14:00] nothing., I invented nothing. I've been the one and only secretary of my own sensations. And these are just random quotes I'm pulling for his Wikipedia, but like you get the gist of like this guy thing, right?

And I think that we, I bring this up because I think that this is a huge part. of antinatalist philosophy, is it's a psychologically protective mechanism. This, oh, life is suffering. Suffering is everything. Suffering is the only thing that matters. Where I come to them and I don't even go, you know, oh, well focus on all the good things.

I'm like, yeah, suffering exists. It's what pushes us to improve. Like, It doesn't matter is like an intrinsic thing. It's just like what your ancestors sort of were coded based on an environment that has nothing to do with your modern environment to feel when facing specific stimuli in order to have the maximum number of surviving offspring.

It means nothing. It is literally the most trivial thing you could base your life around. And yet. It is so [00:15:00] easy when you don't have to think beyond it to coat yourself in this, if life is suffering, then your responsibility, your, your failures are not your responsibility, which is an incredibly safe, emotional place to be.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Speaker 9: Look

Speaker 10: at that, another

Speaker 9: tortured

Speaker 10: soul. Another life of

Speaker 9: pain. What's the matter with you? Well, my girlfriend broke up with me. Sure does hurt.

That's cool. I guess you can join us if you want.

Speaker 10: Yeah, we're gonna go write poems about death and how pointless life is.

Speaker 9: No thanks, I love life. Huh? But you just got dumped. Well yeah, and I'm sad. But at the same time I'm really happy that something can make me feel that sad.

It makes me feel human. So I have to take the bad with the good. So I guess what I'm feeling is like a beautiful sadness.

Well, thanks for offering to let me in your clit, guys. But to be honest, I'd rather be a crying little pussy than a faggy goth kid. We'll [00:16:00] see you, Stan.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-5: Note, we don't go into a lot about arguments against the philosophy of antinatalism in this episode or negative utilitarianism because we have a whole nother very long episode where we do that called These People Want You All Dead and have, and are weirdly reasonable about it, see the thumbnail here.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It also, though, strikes me as one of the lower effort interpretations of this that I've heard because the, the Buddhist conclusion of the life is suffering. doesn't just mean give up on everything. It means so learn how to not be attached to anything and then break the cycle, like commit permanent suicide.

And, and let yourself really

Malcolm Collins: want to do, right. But yeah, make this decision on behalf of other people.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But I mean, this just seems like uniquely low agency it's therefore, I will not try. For anything. I mean, there's some of that behaviors in there, like this choice to not submit for any book awards or even be eligible for any is, is, I guess, [00:17:00] akin to trying to avoid like suffering resulting from attachment, but it just doesn't seem very proactive.

And. I, I wonder,

Malcolm Collins: well, I think that the, the, the point I'm making here

Simone Collins: is

Malcolm Collins: that we can very easily confuse psychologically protective mechanisms with a philosophy that is internally coherent and then build philosophy Actions, identity off of the psychological protective mechanisms, these tools for hacking conversations, these tools for not pressing yourself to engage with reality, these tools for excusing your own failures, and then attempting to use this as a foundation upon which you build an identity, a house in a worldview.

And this is really, really dangerous because any identity built on top of [00:18:00] this is going to be. An intrinsically toxic identity. It's going to hurt the people around you. And I think that this is really important to remember when you adapt this pessimistic and nihilistic mindset, it might help you in social situations.

But everyone who hears you dress down that other person feels worse. Everyone who had the person walk into the group excited to share their excitement with other people and those other people could have gotten excited about that thing, whether it's life or whatever and you came in and desired to kill that excitement.

You have made things worse for everyone. You have hurt everyone. Everyone around you. Think about this was in our like marriage or was my kids, right? Like if one of us is feeling down that day, we believe we have a philosophical and theological duty to not push that on to our kids to not push that on to each other.

Because, like, as I [00:19:00] said, like, when the episode about my mom dying, I was like. Yeah, I might feel bad, but like if I go and I cry about this, like, who does that help? That just hurts my kids. That hurts my wife. You know, I get to choose how I respond to this and I'm not going to choose that response to this.

And yet these individuals choose that response to everything because it's the Trump card. And this is what gets me about the effortless and the antinatalists is they'll say things like, Oh, I won't on a live. Et cetera. Because it could cause suffering to others. It would, it would cause suffering to all my friends and family.

Right. And it's like, but your entire philosophical framework, your entire way of acting, the way that you communicate with these people is likely putting them in a state of constant suffering that is higher than any degree that could be caused by you not being

Simone Collins: here. You're, you're doing them a net positive, probably.

What are you waiting for, [00:20:00] huh? What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? What am I waiting for? What am I waiting for? What are you waiting for? F**k you!

Oh my god!

Simone Collins: Being around, you know, having, being friends with fat people more likely to make you fat, being around depressed people. I imagine your risk of being depressed is yourself higher.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, but it's not just that their entire philosophy when they share it, if you go to their subreddit, it's like the efilism subreddit.

It's just like pictures of like mutilated animals and like starving children. Because they're trying to show everyone, like, look at how bad the world is to maintain this constant state of, Despair when, if you are actually being realistic and looking at the numbers, you know, we have the capacity to improve the world.

You know, we have the capacity to improve technology and we are seeing this in all of the data. Like we can make the world a better [00:21:00] place. And yes, because of fertility collapse, there is going to be a period where things get harder, but we know from the technology that we've already built, that we can achieve something better on the other side of that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. There's, there's this other element of the attitude. That I kind of have a, a, a wondering about and I'm wondering what your thoughts are. You'll probably say it's dumb, but it seems to me like nihilism and in general, this pessimistic attitude toward the world. Or so what also manifests is like down with capitalism.

They're all out to get us is a form of like a meta version of displaced aggression. Where, when you yourself are stressed out this has especially been seen with rats experimentally because I think review boards aren't letting this experiment be run on humans, but they found that if you stress out a rat or a mouse and then put another mouse in its cage, it will lash out at the other [00:22:00] mouse and then actually feel better.

And that's displaced aggression, taking it out. And I feel like, yeah, they're taking it out on the world and it, I think it does. And I think that in an age of increased social isolation where people just actually aren't hanging out with other people, there aren't that many other people to take it out on.

And so they just take it out on all of humanity on all of the world on capitalism on the government on, you

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I think that you can see this. Here's a quote. I'm just reading like any quote I can find from this guy's Wikipedia. This is him trying to compliment Bach, okay? So he says, the, the, the Oh, the composer.

Yes. Without Bach, God would be a complete second rate figure. Bach's music is the only argument proving the creation of the universe cannot be regarded as a complete failure. But I mean, you talk about displaced aggression and it's just dripping with that. And I think that if [00:23:00] you go to the efilism subreddit or the antinatalism subreddit, you see that displaced aggression, but I think that it's important that like, the reason I bring all this up is All of us are susceptible to this.

All of us shouldn't just be looking at the outsider and say, where are they terrible? Where are they doing these things? Ha ha. Look at their community. So toxic. We need to be able to catch this as it bubbles up within ourselves. So that and this is something that people always notice was in me.

They're like Malcolm. Why are you always so excited? Why are you always so high energy? And I'm like, because I choose to be not just because it helps me and achieve a greater state in the end. And it makes my life better to live this way. And it makes me look in a way foolish to other people. So keep in mind, I experience vulnerability because of my upbeat, peppy nature.

Oh, 100%. People dunk

Simone Collins: on you all the time about it. You just heard [00:24:00] Taylor Lorenz and Julia Black dunk on you

Malcolm Collins: for this. Oh yeah, they just did this thing, this episode on us, and they're like, Oh, you're so nerdy, so like weird, so Well,

Simone Collins: no, she said you were foaming at the mouth about this subject, which is, I think that's a really great example.

of taking someone's enthusiasm and using that to assert dominance by talking about, by framing their subject of enthusiasm as not that important or dumb for some reason.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And, but I still choose to do this. Like I act. And, and, and experience the world this way in large part, because I choose to, I do it through framing devices.

Like, Hey, how are you doing? I start every conversation the same way. Anyone who's seen me, they know I give them a handshake. I'm like, Hey, it's so great to meet you or see you. Because if I can start a conversation high energy and positively, it's more likely to carry throughout the [00:25:00] conversation. And that positive energy doesn't just.

Allow me to be more efficient, more effective and more mentally healthy, but it rubs off on everyone around me, including my family. And this becomes astronomically more important when you do have a family. And I'd actually say that this in terms of who you might marry is one of the most important things to filter for anyone who attempts these sorts of things should be considered.

not a marriageable candidate or somebody you need to talk through. Do you understand what you're doing and that I cannot have a longterm relationship? Like you can work with them on it, but like if they approach social competition in this dismissive way you and your kids will pay for that. Your kid will come home one day so excited about some new thing they learned and their mom or dad.

is going to be like, well, it's really not that impressive. Is it? That's not that [00:26:00] interesting. Is it? And that's just going to destroy their excitement for reality because excitement for reality is something. that can be destroyed. Now, some people allow themselves to destroy it to remove personal responsibility as we pointed out.

But another person can destroy this apparent etcetera, right? And it's hard to build back up after that. Unless you have role models, like potentially we could act as an individual for like, this is what it looks like to be foaming at the mouth about how much you love being alive. You know, like That's really what they're saying in their little progressive hoity toity world.

Like, how is he, how is he so excited to, to, to care about this topic?

Simone Collins: Yeah in such a put down y way, it's, but yeah, no, it's, it's, Low energy. I actually

Malcolm Collins: note here to people who watch this podcast, you'll note that Simone never [00:27:00] undermines me in this way.

Simone Collins: Do I not? I'm sure I make every mistake out there, I'm sure

Malcolm Collins: it's something different.

No, you, you have some mistakes that you make that I try to work with you on like you will underplay yourself, especially when I do. I guess,

Simone Collins: yeah, I mean, I, I love your enthusiasm so much that I guess I would be unlikely for me to. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Whereas I had other people who almost, and I'd say that there's a certain profile of person, be very careful about creating a relationship with this type of person who will automatically, if you are excited about something or bringing something to them with excitement, feel compelled to, Like s**t on it.

Simone Collins: Yeah, we know people like that. I'm sure you know people like that Anyone listening to this for sure?

Malcolm Collins: And you're just like

Simone Collins: because it's such an easy hack

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it's such an easy hack to always being socially dominant. And and so people can say like, well, then how do you [00:28:00] continue to like get by in life?

When you act like this and other people are acting like that. Well, one is that I think it's very hard in the urban monoculture. Nihilism is always the winning hand. Because the urban monoculture is built on this sort of negative utilitarian mindset and social bureaucratic dominance hacks. Which is, I think, part of why it's so, like, mentally negative.

So I think, one, you're going to have trouble playing it in those communities, but when you are outside of the urban monoculture so long as you continue to line in to optimism and excitement you will grow. A community of the types of people who are interacting with you and around you who also do that.

And in addition to that you will move up in the world faster because you will be able to set goals for yourself because you will take responsibility. And that's, that's the ultimate thing here is how much can you sit with? Like these individuals act like they sit with so much [00:29:00] pain and they objectively do sit with so much pain because they're unwilling to hold any of it.

Like if you just pick up that responsibility, the pain of responsibility of saying where I am in life right now is my responsibility. No one else is going to get me out of here. I need to move to the next stage instead of just saying life is terrible. .

Simone Collins: Working with thoughts. Suddenly brain shorted. Another really big issue is that when you define pain and suffering as a major problem, then every time you experience pain and suffering, which is all the time because it's a signal that our body uses to get us to move in certain directions, you're going to make it worse than it is.

Right? Like, the perception of pain is highly subjective, and typically pain only hurts. When you have decided it's a bad thing, right? Some people love being whipped, right? It's kind of their thing. The best pleasure they can imagine. Whipping in other [00:30:00] contexts, probably the worst, most painful and humiliating thing you will ever experience in your life, right?

And it all comes down to context. And I think that a big problem with seeing pain and suffering as a problem. And especially thinking about it a lot is now you're making it painful for sure. There's no way you can just kind of muddle through it, which is what most people have done throughout history.

I mean, it's signals are important. You need to hear them. You need to be aware of them and you need to try to address them. But you also shouldn't this, the signal's not the feature. People don't like worship red lights because they tell you to stop. Okay. So the, when you recognize it, it's a problem.

And now it's like, oh, it's a big deal. And then because you think about it constantly, you're, you're, you're heightening it. You're turning up the volume. And this I've, I've experienced this in, in some small ways where I've had medical conditions that are very uncomfortable. And then I realized what it is.

And then I, [00:31:00] I, I get even more uncomfortable because I know what it is and how bad it is because I actually have a really high pain tolerance. Right. But like the mental acknowledgement of a, a, a sensation as a problem and a serious problem, that contextualization is able to dial up pain levels from like a seven to a nine easily.

And certainly more than that.

Malcolm Collins: And yeah, I guess what I'll end with is, we all know these types of people, and because of that, rather than looking at them as a signal of derision, we should search for this in ourselves, I will give another quote by him and we've got to put the scene of the goth kids from South Park in here doing their poetry.

Speaker: Shallow life, drowning alone I gasp for air, coldness creeps over pale skin,

Malcolm Collins: I am simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously? Which is such a removal. Everything about this Philosophy is about removing personal [00:32:00] responsibility. It is the lowest effort philosophy and world perspective conceivably possible. You know

Simone Collins: what though what actually got me away from this attitude?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, did you ever have a phase like this? I had, like, 100 percent

Simone Collins: had a phase like this.

Malcolm Collins: Huge. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Was that people fully observed, acknowledged, and described that phase to me. Like, they saw it in me. They acknowledged me. And they were like, Yeah, basic. This is very embarrassing for you. Like, please let me help you.

This is a bad look. You don't look sophisticated. You don't look smart. No one's gonna like this. You are being so boring right now, take a try again, try a different approach. Yeah, no, but like that is 100 percent what happened. And it was actually in relation to this really stupid middle school project where you had to like write this whole report on your life and who you were.

And that's, that's why. I got the critique and basically I turned in my rough draft and [00:33:00] was like, life is suffering. I don't even know it. I'm not very important. I'm just a, it sounded like this guy, like you're reading that to me. And I'm like, it's taking me back. They read my draft and they were like, b***h, you need to rewrite this.

I can't, I'm not accepting this. You're not going to pass. If you submit this, this is s**t. This is basic. This is boring. It's depressing. You try again. And I'm like, it's my identity. And they're like,

Malcolm Collins: get

Simone Collins: a better

Malcolm Collins: identity. And I actually think that that is the light that fights this. Yeah. You have enthusiasm for life and individuals who lack.

I think that even just showing

Simone Collins: to the people who do this, that in the end, it actually makes them look super dumb and not sophisticated and basic. Cause that's what worked on me. Okay, this was the vulnerable trying to fit in teenage me who was driven to this in the first place and the argument that worked for me was, no, this isn't the sophisticated thing that you think it is.

This makes you look really [00:34:00] bad. So. I think that that I'm just pointing out that you kind of have to use, you have to argue on their own terms at least subconsciously and if subconsciously they're doing this to look sophisticated you need to explain the lack of ultimately the lack of sophistication it demonstrates.

Malcolm Collins: I agree 100%. Well, I love you to death, Simone. Now we'll add a little bit where I'm ranting about C. S. Lewis. We'll have a whole other episode because a lot of his philosophy and this is the thing. C. S. Lewis is a very interesting counter to this guy because he has none of the problems this guy has, but.

Where he looks for meaning is to essentially outsource it and in a way that is very I'd say almost equally philosophically lazy. And remember

Simone Collins: how you did that episode on how Christmas was not. Actually Pagan, and you were defenestrated for it. So many people got mad at me because they didn't Yeah, this is more than that.

You don't understand how much people love C. S. Lewis. This is, this is [00:35:00] Pagan Christmas all over again. I'm already developing hives. I'm not ready for the You're not ready for me to do.

Malcolm Collins: I might not do a full episode on why I, I actually what I'm thinking about doing is, is building a character into the game, which is pro.

So the way that I do things in, in the game is the game is philosophical battle after philosophical battle. And one of the things that gets me about CS Lewis's work, which really contracts in the way that I try to do art is if you play the game. Our philosophical perspective is always intentionally represented in the most monstrous way conceivable.

Whereas the more antithetical to us a philosophical perspective is, the more generous to that perspective we are. Because that's how I think through things, right? Like, I don't want to create a straw man that I can just bash. I want To make my side the straw man in the, in the in the fictional universe and their side be the strong side so that I get something that's more [00:36:00] interesting to engage with the the, the, so I think it'd be fun for me to build out his perspective and build it into sort of a wider.

Philosophical framing within the, the Catholic faction. I'd find that to be pretty interesting because that's what it really gels well with. But yeah, I that's another thing I don't like about his work. His work, like really straw man's the other side. Of his arguments and we'll get to that if we do a video

Simone Collins: on it.

Like you're above that?

Malcolm Collins: No, I, I do, okay, I will admit, I do straw man occasionally, but I at least, like, internally, when I'm trying to think through things, I do try to steel man them. I don't always straw man. But yeah.

Simone Collins: Okay. Well.

Malcolm Collins: Hey, even, even when I was looking at his thing, I was like, you're like, is that really what he argued?

And I go, okay, I'm going to pull up. No, you,

Simone Collins: you yeah. You don't strawman behind closed doors because you actually want to [00:37:00] win the argument and you know that if you don't If you don't steal me on the other side, you're gonna lose the argument. So your your focus on winning Actually does prevent it's it's really more just publicly you like to strawman because I think you make you think that it makes For better entertainment.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I do it when I'm doing like entertainment content rather than actual philosophy content, which is part of our content

Simone Collins: Yeah, 100%. So yeah,

you'll have plenty more terrifying things to say about him.

Malcolm Collins: What are we doing it for? Oh, I know the way that you make CS Lewis work and we'll get to this in the episode we do on him is you need to not think about his arguments logically. And think about them athletically, and then it all works.

You need to approach his morality by saying, does this have an athletic truth to it rather than a logical truth to it? And as soon as you abandon causal logic his entire philosophy is quite beautiful. It just doesn't really gel with [00:38:00] causal logic.

Simone Collins: Okay. That makes sense. The people that I know who really likes CS Lewis are very.

In a contemporary term, vibes based, they're very,

Malcolm Collins: yes, vibes based arguments and they're very good and beautiful vibes based arguments, but you cannot leave the vibe zone.

Simone Collins: It's about the aesthetic feelings and general sentiment and impressions that you're left with. Yeah. Okay. I was going to make you go to John chicken with

Malcolm Collins: steamed rice scratch or reheat some

Simone Collins: reheat.

We don't have any. Fresh chicken. No, I

Malcolm Collins: was hoping you'd reheat some. I'm very excited and I'll have that with some rice.

Simone Collins: I love you. I'm glad you're home.

Malcolm Collins: I'm glad to be home.

Speaker 10: He's right. I don't even know who I am anymore. I like liking life a lot more than hating it. Screw you guys. I'm going home. Go ahead and go back

Speaker 9: to your sunshine, [00:39:00] fairytale.

Speaker 10: Aren't you still wallowing in pain? I just realized that there's gonna be a lot of painful times in life, so I better learn to deal with it the right way. Hey, Wendy! You're a b***h. Token, right here, buddy.

Oh,

Malcolm Collins: Sorry, okay, if we're gonna go on a tangent here, if we're gonna go on a tangent here, C. S. Lewis, literally, his argument for God, and he, like, thought this was, like, a good argument, and other people have repeated it.

I am saying this as somebody who believes in God, okay? Is that Humans have this desire for something beyond our world, something greater than this world. And that desire is proof. That thing exists.

Simone Collins: Oh my god, it's like your mom when she wanted you to make more money and she's like, go to your [00:40:00] boss and see, I want more money.

Does it just manifest

Malcolm Collins: it? Yeah. No, this is literally like, I'm like, well, a lot of guys want cat Girl girlfriends. Okay. You got your Elan's and you're all that. That means they must exist somewhere. Maybe they exist in heaven and C. S. Lewis says heaven.

Or consider something like a Tolkien esque fantasy world with elves, and orcs, and knights, and magic. So many people all over the world independently yearn for a life in a very, you could almost say, eerily similar type of alternate universe. Is that at all evidence that that alternate universe exists?

Or is it evidence that popular books propose that it exists and many people are familiar with those books?

The mere fact that a lot of people can imagine and want something and seem to come to this position separated from each other means that that thing exists somewhere.

I'm sorry, but like people can understand how astronomically stupid [00:41:00] that point is, right? Sorry, I'm just flabbergasted by it. Like, sometimes I come across an argument and I'm like, what?

Simone Collins: Why? That's pretty bad. If that is actually his argument, that is really maybe we're missing something. Hold on, I'm going to ask an AI this, okay?

So, let me move

Malcolm Collins: you to the end of the episode so that you can This, okay, so I'm going to go to Claude, okay?

Simone Collins: Tell me if

Malcolm Collins: you think this is a fair phrasing given what I've said here. Did C. S. Lewis argue that proof that heaven exists was that people wanted something beyond this world, and that they would only want that if something beyond this world existed?

What world and bigger existed. That's basically what I said, right? So I'm putting this in the quad.

Yes, it says, C. S. Lewis made this argument in several works. Most notably in Mere Christianity and his essay, The Weight of Glory. However, you're slightly paraphrasing the actual argument, which is known as the argument from desire or argument from joy.

He reasoned that, . One, humans have natural desires that correspond to real life satisfactions. Hunger for food, thirst for water, sexual desire for [00:42:00] sex. Two, humans also experience a longing for something that nothing in this world can satisfy, what he calls joy or a sin shot.

Three, if this desire exists, Lewis argued, it likely points to something real that can satisfy it, just as our natural desires point to real satisfaction. Wow, so like,

Simone Collins: hunger Indicates the existence of food. Thirst indicates the existence of water, and therefore, desire for meaning indicates the existence of, of God?

Y yes.

Now, I note here, for those who are confused as to why you feel hunger or arousal or things like that, it's because your ancestors who had these, desires or emotions in response to specific environmental stimuli had more surviving offspring, either because they had more sex or they got more food or anything like that.

Hunger isn't unique to humans. I mean, I, I don't even, C. S. Lewis would argue that, like, dogs don't feel hunger. Worms feel hunger. Everything that has a degree of a nervous system in the same evolutionary pathway as us feels hunger. Like, [00:43:00] cows obviously feel hunger. What, what,

Even if a desire for more than what we have in this world or something like heaven, was evidence that something like heaven existed, the evidence for something like heaven existing would not be the same mechanism of action for the evidence of hunger to food or arousal to sex, , because those things were driven by evolutionary pressures, and the In all animals, in all insects even, , whereas the desire for like heaven would have been driven by some completely different pathway, like God implanting it in us.

Malcolm Collins: lewis wrote, quote, If I find myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world, end quote. Of course, here I'd say, quote, If I find myself a desire for catgirl girlfriends and anime waifus, that must insinuate that those worlds are real.

It's, it's just absurd at face value.

Simone Collins: It's on a scale of [00:44:00] one to aggressively Hopeful? I would put it on the aggressively hopeful end.

Malcolm Collins: Is it logical to you? Is it an argument that would be persuasive to anyone? This would not persuade me.

Okay, but anyone like you can model other humans, right? You are aware how like the human brain works with this persuade. I would not use this argument and if attempting to convince someone else, okay point now back to the main story here.

Simone Collins: Good

Malcolm Collins: for you.

Dow is down 800 points today. The S& P always seems a bit more resistant. Okay,

Simone Collins: anyway. Do you remember when on the radio people used to just say that the S& P 500 is up this and the Dow is down blah blah blah and like they It was like a

Malcolm Collins: thing. Why did we need to know that? Who was day trading?

We needed to know that because we couldn't like No, but this is back when like you couldn't like Google it. I [00:45:00] think. The newspapers

Simone Collins: would say it. Yes. I mean, we, when we first heard this on the radio as really young kids, it was before internet was available on the young people today.

Malcolm Collins: Don't know that they would like start radio shows with this information.

Like, yeah, of course you need to know.