Cultural Influences on Fertility Rates

In this episode, we discuss the unique phenomenon of high Jewish fertility rates amid urban settings, contrasting it with the global trend of prosperity-induced demographic collapse. We explore historical and cultural reasons behind Jewish resistance to declining birth rates, and investigate the future implications of Jewish population dynamics on global geopolitics. The conversation dives into the role of Jewish culture and how urban monocultural values impact other groups. We also touch on ethical considerations, cultural evolution, and differing societal norms across various populations. The discussion delves into historical contexts, the importance of cultural adaptability, and the future of urban and rural specialization.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be talking about. The Jews replacing everyone else. And by this what I mean is Jewish populations seem to be the only population that is persistently resistant to prosperity induced demographic collapse. Yeah. EEG. Everywhere else in the world you go when you begin to get wealth fertility rates fall and these populations end up disappearing.

And a lot of people. They'll look at groups like the Amish and they'll be like, oh, look at this Amish group. Like they are super high fertility, so certainly they'll inherit the future. And I'm like, not if there is a, a militarized group nearby them that wants their land. I mean, even my fa like, and I think that a lot of people forget this is so much of the lack of violence we have within Western society today is not downstream of man being more evolved.

It's the p de Romana of the urban monoculture. And as the systems and governments begin to [00:01:00] collapse like a government made up of all Amish wouldn't be able to police itself. Even this basically happened with the Quakers in Pennsylvania where you would get like pirate raids and they, they'd meet and they'd be like somebody, we should probably do something about this.

And, and the Quakers were like, no, no, no. We can't risk violence against the people pillaging and gring.

Simone Collins: Well, and we, we know this has happened to Mennonite groups. First they were tempted over to Canada. From largely Russia, Canada saying, oh, we'll grant you religious freedom. You can educate your kids however you want.

And then around the 1920s, they were like, okay, you need to go to Canadian schools now. So then a lot of them went to Northern Mexico, which in turn was like, come here, we'll give you productions and freedoms, and then. Suddenly all this, these gangs started attacking them. And then so a bunch of them have gone to other countries in, in Central and South America, and some have stayed, but like, yeah, they, you, they're not really able to build a strong base and they're not really able to protect themselves and therefore they're kind of stuck escaping from unstable places.

Well,

Malcolm Collins: it's, it's [00:02:00] not just that it, it, it is also, you know, people, you know, a lot of right wingers, they're like, oh my God, aren't you so afraid of like Muslim birth rates, for example? And it's like, Muslim birth rates are only high in regions that are incredibly poor. Actually at higher rates of wealth, Muslim fertility drops faster than Christian f fertility.

And so really what you're seeing is just poverty and people in poverty, if that is what is motivating their fertility rate, they don't have the ability for e economic or power projection geopolitically speaking. And, and so they don't, particularly in terms of like the future of humanity, they're not major players.

This is the same with any region that has high fertility because of low income. Like Africa for example. Africa's fertility seems to be mostly high just because of low income. But, but if that's how they're doing it, then that's not relevant for future power projection in terms of who matters in the future.

And, and this, this matters like the, the Jews will replace [00:03:00] everyone. We'll, we'll get to why this is the case in a second. Matters more than I think a lot of people think, even in terms of short term geopolitics. So a friend of mine from Europe was asking me because he knows I support Donald Trump and he goes.

You know, don't you care that he's breaking these strong alliances United States has with European powers? And I'm like, not particularly because you guys have super, like the new fertility stats for Germany just came in and they're at 1.38. Italy's, oh my gosh, like 1.18 now like these countries.

Their social security systems are going to crack within our lifetimes. And when those crack their welfare state collapses their, their other systems start to to crack. And in addition to that, they're not even, they've passed these dictatorial laws that prevent their data from being used in AI training data sets.

So they're not even really relevant in terms of AI influence. Europe right now is, is like a, a, a big [00:04:00] ball is being rolled off of a ship and a bunch of people are chained to it. And I have cut the chain and the guy next to me is like, Hey, why are you cutting that chain buddy? It's like, I don't wanna, you know, and when I said this, he's like, well then geopolitically, who should the US be investing in, you know, in terms of future world power players?

And I'm like, obviously Israel obviously and so, because Gwen high fertility rates, but also high technology and also, a, a level of, of sort of, ancientness was in the world stage that I don't think any other country shows. Which e except for the United States of course. Which is really much more than something like China.

Like people are like, oh, you know, you should focus on, on China. And it's like one, China was in a, a sort of a, a as the world becomes more polar. One it's got the problem with, its its whole economic house of cards thing around real estate. It's got a problem with its demographic situation. It doesn't really have a solution for its water situation.

You can [00:05:00] look at our, what happens to the future of East Asia, but it's got a lot of problems coming up. But even if those problems don't end up. Sort of cracking its back as Europe fades as a relevant world power. It leaves the world in more of a unipolar power structure between the United States and China, which unfortunately makes a key alliance with China much harder when you're the only two major powers in the room.

That just doesn't happen. So, again, that means better to invest as the Trump administration is in, in Israel in terms of power plays. Now in terms of. Actually, how much better is their fertility rates? Just so we can get an idea here? Yeah. Because a lot of people are like, oh, it's only the Hasidic people who are keeping this up.

It's only in Israel that this is the case. These things are, are, are not true. You know, while the US has A-A-T-F-R, you know, child per woman up around 1.6, and in Ger Germany it's like 1.38 now, and in Italy it's like 1.18. And, and you think of the uk it's like 1.4 something. For [00:06:00] us Jews, it's 1.9.

And this was by Pew to two. So they're almost at replacement E even outside of Israel. A US non-Orthodox Jews. Okay. How bad is that because you're like, okay, they're, they're non-Orthodox. The Orthodox Jews in the US are just keeping the number high. It's 1.4 to 1.7, so still above the average. Us and, and keep in mind that that's including reformed Jews as well who, who are basically we wouldn't consider Facebook guess internally what.

Simone Collins: We wouldn't count as Jews.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, basically US Ultra-Orthodox Hawaii Jews 6.6 fertility rates. Nice. Israeli Jews overall have a fertility rate of around three which is insane for a, a wealthy technologically advanced country. Israeli secular Jews have a fertility rate of 2.1 to 2.2, so at repopulation rate, which is wild for secular population.

Yeah. Israeli traditional Jews have a fertility rate of around three is, is Israeli [00:07:00] religious D Jews have a fertility rate of 4.3. Israeli Ultra-Orthodox Jews, but fertility rate of 6.9 only slightly higher than their US brothers. And Israeli Arabs and Muslims have a fertility rate of only 2.2 to three.

So. There have been many proposed reasons why Jews have a high fertility rate, and I'm going to throw another in the ring, which is that they are better at not caring as much for their kids as other cultures. And this is gonna really surprise people, but I have found a number of sources of evidence of this recently, and I think that this is actually a very important cultural trait to adapt if you are going to survive the fertility crucible.

Would you mind reading that post that,

Simone Collins: yeah, I have it right here. So big thanks to Diana Fleischman who sent this to me knowing that we would find it really interesting. This is just like a one off post, like not a full out substack

Malcolm Collins: essay. This, this person's name was written in Jewish characters, so like, yeah.

Simone Collins: But it's a, he's a substack author called Cul Bina, who [00:08:00] has a substack called Non Zionism, and it covers Israel, Britain and broader themes around politics, Jewish identity, and ideological critique. So he actually is really interested in this kind of stuff. Yeah. And you know, that, that kind of puts us into context.

But he wrote in a sort of one-off Substack post, sorry. The nine year-old brought Oh. And he's, he's a parent of quite a few kids and, and he's in Israel I think. So for context, he wrote the nine year-old, brought a friend around the other day. This is one from a good family? Yes. A racial dog whistle, but not exclusively such.

Said he was hungry. Wife says he can have some old spaghetti we have in the fridge. Kid proceeds to eat the spaghetti with his hands. He is aware of the fork provided, but he uses it to scoop the spaghetti from the bowl into his hands. Most oddly, somehow there is now spaghetti all over the floor. It's not even just under his chair, but maybe a 50 centimeter radius kid just gets up, apparently oblivious to what has happened.[00:09:00]

People from low fertility societies sometimes wonder how Israelis managed to raise so many children while having jobs and stuff. In particular. It is extremely rare for an Israeli mother to be a stay at home. The typical answers are either they rely on extended family or that Israel has prenatal social norms and institutions.

That's true, but a big part of the answer is simply that they don't. Most children go to an institution from about three months old where they blare tra music at them to put them in a stunned silence or failing that just drown them out. Children arrive with poop in their nappy. Some of these places are better, but some are actually worse with kids being taped to the wall or overstressed staff attacking them, the education system continues like that constant chaos, acceptance of absolute rock bottom discipline standards.

8-year-old children organizing mob swarm attacks at break or trashing the classroom is considered regrettable, but normal rather than indicative of some kind of crisis, [00:10:00] et cetera, et cetera. Now, it's important to say that this isn't ultimately, as bad as it sounds, most traits are majority genetic, and even if the nurture part isn't mostly a result of technical nurture by adults, but all sorts of environmental effects, people go to the army, which sorts them out a bit, or they sort themselves out because eventually you have to get a job.

However, some things are a result of nurture, and the truth is that in a high pressure, high fertility society, you just have to learn to do without them. And each generation gets worse as ambient social standards progressively fall away. Assuming this whole thing doesn't unravel over the next few decades, it'll be grimly interesting to see just how far the process will go.

I'm just gonna add, because there were comments on this that he followed up on. On daycare in his own family. He writes, quote, we personally don't use it, but it involves a lot of sacrifice and compromise on our other values. End quote. So he, I think this is why [00:11:00] he, he's, he's casting shade on a kid who's throwing spaghetti on the ground.

Yeah.

He also writes in, in response to someone else's speculation. Quote, faithful replication of elevated social norms requires a high level of parental investment, and there's no time for it. No doubt. There are many other factors too. Zionist ideology always favored casualness. Informality. And that's, that's important to your point, Melva.

Malcolm Collins: So I, I'm gonna note that the, the person is saying something here that I think that a lot of people get wrong mm-hmm. About parenting and extremely wrong. Yeah. That the replication of social norms requires a high amount of parental investment. Yeah. This is factually and I, and I mean, very factually wrong.

Yeah. I picked up on my family norms even though my parents were basically never around, and I was almost entirely raised by nannies or, or staff. I, I, in some cases don't even remember their names, even though they were, were my primary care providers for years of my life. Yeah. And, and I never thought, oh, I'm [00:12:00] queuing to their social norms.

Yes. And so I think that yes, there's danger in stuff like public school and things like that but. It's not just Jews who are able to replicate social norms intergenerationally with high fidelity without a high degree of parental investment. Mm-hmm. And this parenting style that he's talking about here, decided to go and read some Jewish parenting guides.

Oh, interesting. Okay. In a Jewish like way, I mean, it is downstream of direct advice that is being given by Jewish figures in terms of how you parent. Okay. So Mus,

Simone Collins: Gina's experience here is, is is fairly representative per your view. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: In this one I went to, that was rules for, for being a good Jewish parent, and number seven was take risks.

Letcha, letcha, Genesis 12, one, go Forth. God told Abraham when it was time for him to leave his father's land and venture out into the unknown. This phrase, which literally means go to yourself, teach us that the capabilities to [00:13:00] go are precisely within ourselves. In order for our children to learn confidence in their abilities to triumph over life's challenges, we must allow them to venture out into the world and work things out on their own.

In the process, we must be mindful to praise and encourage their efforts and talents, man was created to toil. Job five, seven, toil not produce. As Rabbi Tron says, you are not required to complete the task, yet you are not free to withdraw from it. Ethics of our Fathers. 2, 2, 1. When we encourage effort, we foster what Stanford University psychologist Carol Deckers refers to as gross mindset, which results in more patience and willingness to take risks and experiment with different tasks.

When our children are being rambunctious, we wish them to be angels. Yet angels are standing stagnant. Beings Ahmadan who don't grow or move. Zechariah three, seven humans, AKA, our rambunctious active kids [00:14:00] are haum movers, unlike angels. They climb and can reach higher. They can fall and get up again. Let them move, let them swim, let them grow.

And so this is like active, like this is how you be. This isn't like this guy being like, Hey, we're cutting corners. It's don't expect your kids to be like angels. And I'll note this isn't true is in every culture in some of the evangelical cultures, is that I am more familiar with the idea of kids acting like angels is actually very strict.

Like kids must obey all the rules at all the time. Yeah. And that is, this is, this is not my own cultural background, which is the backwoods greater Appalachian cultural background like hillbilly, redneck type. But. This is a cultural background that was nearby where I lived in Texas. And you would see this pretty frequently.

I'd also note that the hillbilly redneck cultural background seems to be also like the Jews particularly resistant to fertility collapse. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Also the spaghetti thing so resonated with me [00:15:00] because. I'm, I mean, you, you see me, you, you witness me. I give forks to our children when we serve them spaghetti.

I show them how to spin the noodles. I make sure that they repeat it to show that they know what I'm talking about and they can do it. And then I turn my back for 30 seconds and then I turn back around and it's worse than with this Israeli kid. It, it like, not only does the child have a fist full of spaghetti that they're eating out of their hand, and there's spaghetti all over the floor, but they still have the fork in the other hand, and they're using it to stab holes into the table always.

I have seen this, I have seen this, and

Malcolm Collins: yeah,

Simone Collins: I'm

Malcolm Collins: like, wow,

Simone Collins: that's

Malcolm Collins: relatable. So, yeah. No, but, but, my point here is that if you are going to survive fertility collapse you and you're not Jewish Jews seem to have a path through this. You're going to need to adapt your culture in some specific ways. Yeah. And learning from cultures that do seem to be able to get through this without [00:16:00] sacrificing engagement with technology is really important.

And one of the most important traits is to either learn how to make high control of children work with, with higher fertility rates or adopt to be lower oversight. Yeah. Diana Fleischman, she filmed an episode with us that I've actually never ended up airing that one. I just didn't think it would do well in the algorithm.

We, we can send it to the Patreon or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Run it on

Simone Collins: Patreon. I wanna see it.

Malcolm Collins: Low effort parent. Because she was like, sure, you guys, so low effort. Like, she's seen us as parents and she's like, you guys just do not like care that much. And, and we, like, I'm very much like I, I watch my kid constantly and I make sure that I'm out there with them, but they're mostly doing their own thing.

And playing together and playing in ways that I mean I remember we were punishing one kid. And we told him to stop, you know, running away and going to this other playground. Right. And so, you know, I, I tasked his brother, I go, go get him his older brother. And so his [00:17:00] older brother just goes and drags him back screaming and everything like that, and sits him in a chair and then is like, Hey, toasty, you can't go back out there.

And Torsten hops up to try to run again, and Octavian slaps him and sits him back down in the chair. And the other people, this is at a 4th of July party gasped at the event. Like, he had just done something horrible. And I was like, what? Toasty broke the rule. Like, yeah, what do you, I can't have him running away.

I need my kids to, so I, I realized then that I actually let my kids be significantly more aggressive with each other. Oh, we do.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like I was telling you last night Torsten and Titan were brawling in the kitchen during dinner for like a good five minutes until. And I didn't do anything to stop them until toasty finally clocked Titan with a toy.

And then he, then they got in trouble because I'm like, you could have broken that toy a toy. Like, so they get in, they do get in trouble, but only for like a damaging property. Yeah. Never for fighting. Never for fighting.

Malcolm Collins: No, not for [00:18:00] fighting. No. And they love fighting.

And I will note here that the backwoods tradition, this positive aspect of Jewish culture, which I think is protective of fertility rates, which is not being overly concerned about kids being, you know, , looked after and imperfect, is, even higher, at least within some context. Within my own cultural tradition.

I remember we had some, , of our Jewish friends' kids over to play, , and they came off as incredibly, , sort of. , Timid or docile when contrasted with our children. Like they were scared of dogs and insects and, , other like, gross things in the environment. And it felt very much like that scene from Wolf Children.

Wolf Children: Your's just so cute. Yours is cute too. Keno. I found a four leaf clover. Neat. Huh? How did I, Hey Yuki. Find anything cool yet? Mm-hmm. Lucky. Ah, other girls didn't think that snakes were a particularly [00:19:00] lucky find. In fact, they were terrified of them.

Malcolm Collins: Now here I note that I think a lot of this is downstream , of my kids,

, Coming from a rural based culture. And so even if you are adopting this lower, . Hovering strategy. , It, if you're doing it within an urban environment, in an urban specialized culture, kids just aren't gonna have the exposure to these sorts of, , natural phenomenon and therefore be more timid around them, which may cause this sort of illusion.

Like if I put my kids in the middle of a city, perhaps they would act, , much more timid as well.

Wolf Children: My it, my mom gave me her old jewelry. I got this one from my parents on my last birthday.

I love it. So whatcha keeping in your treasure box ready? Yes. Ta.

Other girls also didn't collect mummified lizards in the bones of small animals, and that I was very much [00:20:00] alone.

Malcolm Collins: To be honest, in the nature of both sides and things, I think I might be underselling things here. I remember myself growing up, , that I, my parents told me that they'd been told that other parents', kids were told they weren't allowed to play with me anymore after they learned that. After I found out that there was this magazine that you could get that was like a science magazine for ordering scientific equipment.

You could order animals to dissect. And I thought that was the coolest thing ever. So, , I would regularly have dissections prepped in my room. To learn about the natural world, because I thought that that was normal. And apparently to many other kids, this looked very scary., And so th this was just a natural part of, not just my own kids growing up.

And, and again, keep in mind I didn't like teach my kids to like this stuff. This is just who they are. I think a big part of this. Is, , not just cultural in terms of [00:21:00] transmission of values, but there's a biological element to this.

A Jewish kid wants to learn about the world. He picks up a book, a backwoods culture. Kid wants to learn about the world. He starts cutting open animals. , It the only difference being, and I'm, I'm not saying one of these is good and the other one is bad, is that one is condoned by the urban culture and the other is not.

Wolf Children: Don't laugh at me, I'm in the middle of the crisis. But why do you wanna act like someone you're not, honey? Because when I act like me, they all run away screaming

Malcolm Collins: I should note here for people who are new to this, , podcast, the backwoods cultural tradition I'm referring to is the greater Appalachian cultural tradition in the Americas, which you might think of as truck nuts, conservatism, or redneck or hillbilly culture, , is the culture that I'm from. I.

But the point I'm making here is you, you can learn to adopt this, but I think it is notable that Jewish groups and, and there are other reasons, they're high [00:22:00] fertility among them, did adopt this.

Mm-hmm. And if you're looking for the key truth or reason why Jews are less affected by fertility collapse than anyone else. Mm-hmm. It is evolutionary in boast a cultural and likely biological sense. So I'll explain what I mean by that. That's really

Simone Collins: interesting because, and, and we can, I, we can talk about this.

If you, if you. Masina actually has, he wrote a whole Substack article on why Israel has higher fertility and it's, he actually says it's not genetic. He thinks that that's a red herring. So go on and I can present you his, his argument if you wanna.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Well present me his argument first. 'cause I'm actually kind of surprised that somebody would make that argument,

Simone Collins: I'll summarize for you with some quotes, summarize

Malcolm Collins: his argument. Come on, let's go. Come on.

Simone Collins: And you recognize it because it went kind of viral in like the fertility nerd space this time last year. It's, it's from a Substack essay he wrote under Non Zionism July 20, 24.

So last year called Why is [00:23:00] Israel Fertile? And , he writes lucky

Malcolm Collins: one that says It's all because of thees, this piece. Okay. It is a bad argument, but go ahead.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I liked his arguments against other reasons why people thought. Fertility, he would, you would actually appreciate a lot of the other things that he pointed out.

One of the arguments you'll often find, and I think it was in this piece, but I don't remember a hundred percent, , against, , our claim that this is mostly a cultural phenomenon. , Which despite all the evolutionary stuff we're talking about in this one, I do think that this is mostly a cultural phenomenon and I think that it's Jewish culture that protects him the most.

, But , they'll say something like, oh. Well look at people living in rural Guatemala, like their fertility rates are dropping. They haven't been exposed to, , the urban monoculture, western cultural exports. And I'm like, what? What are you talking about? Like, I've lived in rural Guatemala. Yes, they have.

In fact, I'd argue that the rate that they're exposed to it isn't particularly, , you know, when you take their local cultural colorings into [00:24:00] account, , different from people living in rural America.

And a huge afterthought, and I dunno where to put this, but some people will say, oh, well, Jewish fertility rates are high because they had an attempted genocide on them recently and they're trying to get their numbers back up. And it's like, yes, that's probably a factor. But there are other groups that have recently had attempted genocides against them that actually have uniquely lower fertility rates than neighboring populations.

In fact, I'd argue that most groups that have had attempted genocides on them recently have uniquely low fertility rates.

Like he points out how a lot of people point to housing policy and that's a big bugaboo of yours. And , he points out that a lot of, well-meaning American writers, Fred, about affordable family formation, which is basically about how easy it is for young people to couple up find stable well-paying jobs and buy or rent child appropriate housing in safe neighborhoods.

Affordable family foundation is a good thing, but Israel is an extremely crowded country and the Bank of Israel has deliberately stoked house price inflation since 2008. The average young couple lives in a badly [00:25:00] furnished flat on the fifth floor of a modernist monstrosity in a new build neighborhood drawn up by town planners whose modus operandi appears to be watching YouTube videos on good urbanism, and then just doing the exact opposite and the photo that he shares of like.

A representative Jewish young family neighborhood is amazing because it would make, I think it would give more birth to an aneurysm. Yeah. Let me show you like, this is, this is what he would say is like, the antithesis so ugly. I know. It, it's horrible. And, and that, I think actually it looks pretty spacey.

They've got a view. They have a view, but he's against high rises. I think he's very much for like, suburban houses with yards.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. But my point here being is what is his argument against the evolutionary argument? I'll read it.

Simone Collins: Okay. And, and I'll just, I'll get to the, the basic.

Basically he argues yes, that like the, the most pious high fertility Jews in Israel do have a trickle down effect. [00:26:00] But what matters is. Like you, you also have the Amish in the United States that are high fertility, but they don't trickle down because they're not admired by the rest of, no.

Malcolm Collins: This isn't an argument against evolution. What is his argument against evolution? Oh,

Simone Collins: okay. I'll get that. Yeah, sure. '

Malcolm Collins: Cause it, it, it, I, I remember correctly the argument against evolution he gave in this piece was that Jews in the US don't have a higher fertility rate, which is factually wrong.

Simone Collins: He says finally right-wing futurism.

And some others contend that once contraception is widespread and women achieve some basic level of legal and practical equality, TFR is a function principally of genetic predisposition to want to marry and have kids and its culture. And institutions are inva. Apparently not because Jewish TFR in America is below replacement, even with the Orthodox bumping up the numbers.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so he's just wrong about this. I just read the numbers. The, the Jewish fertility rate in the United States is incredibly high. And it's not, it's, it's lower than it is in Israel, but you'd expect [00:27:00] that I still

Simone Collins: think that he is onto something with the most admired. Culture or like the most pious, most like optimal role model culture being one of high fertility and that having a trickle down effect.

Malcolm Collins: Right? I don't care about that. The point being, why don't you think that's compelling? I still think that matters because it's not, it's just not true. Like, the, the the secular Jews in Israel do not admire the ultra Orthodox Jews in the way that he is framing them as. Mm-hmm. Maybe some of the general conservative gurus are Jews are on like, friendly terms with them.

But I, I think that he is creating a framing that is trying to be convenient for his preexisting worldview. Well, he also

Simone Collins: talks about how people generally just look around and see what other people have in terms of kids and lifestyle and generally copy that so it normalizes.

Malcolm Collins: I agree.

And here I would point out that the secular Jews' [00:28:00] admiration of the Ultra Orthodox Jew is not. Higher in, at least in my experience, than the mostly secular Muslims, admiration of the very conservative Muslim. , Nor could you claim that there isn't a pipeline of very conservative Muslim to slightly less conservative Muslim to slightly less conservative Muslim to secular Muslim that could drive the very high fertility rate of conservative Muslims down through Muslim culture.

And yet we don't see a convergent phenomenon within Muslim cultures.

But when people look around in the modern world, what they're actually generally seeing isn't the people who live around them.

It's what's on movies and tv. And that's not affected by ultra Orthodox. It's what's in the ads, it's what's in the art, right? I don't know if

Simone Collins: you're going grocery shopping or you're going out to eat, or you're going to the doctor and you just to see all these huge families, would that not,

Malcolm Collins: I could see it having some effect, but I don't think it's gonna have a dominant effect in terms of what you think to [00:29:00] strive for.

Mm-hmm. Normalization is created through culture and media and stuff like that. And your family network. Not, and, and the thing about the ultra orthodox and variety community is they are a distinctly separate community in terms of their cultural values and norms. It would be like saying that you know, today we saw a large Hispanic family at Walmart.

That doesn't make me want to have more kids. Right. Like, I'm like, oh, they're different. They're Hispanic. Right. Like they're different cultural. Yeah. And

Simone Collins: he is arguing that because they're all roughly. Jewish, and he does seem to think that there's at least some level of respect or admiration that, that the, the less religious Jews in Israel still want to kind of be

Malcolm Collins: like his argument's not wrong, that there is some degree of directionality there.

Thank you. I don't think at all. It's the secret to why secular Jews in the United States have unusually high fertility rates. Secular Jews in the United States do not love Hasidic Jews. They don't look up to [00:30:00] Hasidic Jews, and they're not influenced heavily by Hasidic Jews. So why is their frac fertility rates so much higher than you would expect from a normal secular population?

Why is the general Jewish population's fertility rate in the United States so much higher than you'd expect? So his answer I just think is baloney. I think that the actual reason is again, is what he

Simone Collins: touched on in his daycare post, just like neglectful parents.

Malcolm Collins: So don't look. Jewish populations in the world today.

Mm-hmm. I think when I ran the numbers on this last, it was something like 98% of them live in an urban center which for a cultural group is absolutely effing insane. That is huge.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It's, it's basically unheard of mo almost all of the high fertility populations are super rural.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And in addition to that, this is, and it's also really weird in Israel, and I've noted this before, that when you go to all Jewish rural settlements, they cluster into like micro urban centers.

Mm-hmm.

That look really weird from the perspective of somebody who grew up in American rural settings. Yeah. [00:31:00] Unless you

Simone Collins: grew up in Korea and they do the same thing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like in America, if you're out in the countryside, it'll be like a, a 10 minute walk to the next house, you know, or a 20 minute walk to the next house in, in areas like where our family's ranch was.

Right. Like, but if you go to a Jewish settlements just aren't structured that way and people can be like, well, there's a partially religious reason why they're not structured this way because you need the, whatever, the community of 12 guys who meets regularly. Fine. Except we have early Jewish settlers who settled in regions without other Jews in the United States.

So we know that Jews are capable of living outside of these. It's just a, a high preference for not. So the question, so first just framing here, Jews are urban specialists, even within a modern context. Mm-hmm. In, in an ultra modern context. Now, what's interesting is that they were also historically urban specialists.

If you look to the cases of the pogroms and stuff like that, a lot of these were Jewish quarters of cities where Jews were rounded up and everything like that. In in, [00:32:00] in this context, this is really important because if you look historically at the birth rates of cities they were really, really low.

This is not a modern thing. You can go to the Roman Empire and see incredibly low fertility rates was in cities themselves. Yeah. You see this in the medieval period as well. Yeah. Cities have

Simone Collins: always been fertility shredders except

Malcolm Collins: for with the Jews. Well, so basically people like the reason why London had more people is because the Brits who were culturally British who were having kids in the countryside sent their kids to go live in the city.

The Jews were never like this. They weren't leaning on maintaining their urban population by getting immigrants from external rural populations. They had to find a way to continue to exist, to exist within a totally urban setting. And I'll note here as well and we argue this extensively in the private society crafting religion is this is not.

Something innate about Judaism's historical [00:33:00] ancestor. If you look at Judaism of the time of, of, you know, the Bible and stuff like that it was more like other cultures. Actually I argue it was a lot like modern day Islam where it had a set of rules around how the government worked. And it had carve outs for non-Jews living within Jewish territory and how to do business with them.

And it was very similar to, to Islam in that sense. And we also pointed out that it was actively proselytizing religion back then. Hmm. You can look at our video on the question that breaks Judaism for a lot of evidence on this particular thing, if you're willing to go into like a four hour ran.

But what happened was, is when the Jews became stateless they set up in a bunch of different regions. And when those regions decided to have pogroms against them, there were multiple Jewish cultural groups that we know of from this period. There were some rural groups. There were some that functioned almost entirely like mercenary bands.

And then there was the descendants of the surviving group, which was entirely city Jews. Mm-hmm. So if the government [00:34:00] decides we're gonna kill every one of this category unless they get out if you're a rural population, you're living on land that is likely farmland. If you get out, you need to go.

Kill and take somebody else's land to continue to survive, basically. If, if you live in a city you you, you know, suppose you're a jeweler, suppose you're a a, a banker, suppose you have one of these skills, right? You could just gather your supplies, go to another city and rent there, right? Maybe, maybe buy a place, but that's the, the most that you're losing.

Mm-hmm. And so the ones who became the city specialist group survived at much higher rates because you're saying there's

Simone Collins: basically lower locational switching costs.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The ones who lived in rural areas they were only able to survive by hiding their Jewish identity. Mm-hmm. And this is where the crypto Jews come from.

This is, they, they're a Jewish group that moved to Latin America mostly. And they really want

Simone Collins: there to be new, like new version of crypto Jews. It's just. Crypto

Malcolm Collins: bros lived in rural Spain and stuff like that. Anyway, they're mostly died out at this point of like a distinct cultural [00:35:00] identity. But the, the point here being is the non-urban based Jewish factions died.

And so Jews through living in urban centers for very long periods of time became specialist at these types of environments. And and, and, and keep in mind when I say became specialists, what I mean is the cultural traditions that Jews in these communities had that led to higher fertility rates and led to higher cultural fidelity ended up replicating at a higher rate than the Jews who had traditions that didn't do this.

And you likely had a degree of biological specialization as well.

Mm-hmm.

And so what this created was sort of a, a, a pressure that no one else in the world really had to deal with. And. When you had the industrial revolution, which is when fertility race began crashing for everyone, what you have during that century is the urbanization of the world.

[00:36:00] The entire western world in a non-Western world was turned into something closer to what life was like in an urban center in the medieval period than what life was like outside of urban centers in the medieval period.

Hmm.

Even a small town like where we live, like Phoenixville or something like that is closer in lifestyle to you know, ancient London than an ancient medieval hamlet.

Hmm.

And it's the same with the media we get because the media is created within urban centers almost necessarily. It normalizes urban cultural norms. And so, and, and in many ways this is in part. Sort of like we are getting the media that the Jews were resistant to and made resistant to because they had much earlier and longer exposure to these sorts of cultural norms than anyone else.

And so when people talk about when somebody's like, okay, what, what, what sort of norms are you talking about here? Where this [00:37:00] might be against another group's biology or ability to act? An example here that you're gonna get in most city populations and you get uniquely within Jewish populations, you can go to our episode for more evidence on this called Why did Jews Have Friends, is the normalization of the concept of friendship and friend networks which is not actually universal.

It, it, for example, is not a part of my cultural tradition. In the backwoods cultural tradition you, you have friend networks, but the first network that matters and really the predominant network you focus on is your clan and your family. And this was, I remember, really made, clear to me when we had a, an orthodox Jewish friend over to our house and he was talking to our kid and he goes, who are your friends?

And my kid's like, well, my brother and my sister. Yeah. I mean, who are your friends other than your family and I friend. Why would he want friends that aren't his family? And I was like, but what do you mean? Like brother and sister aren't the friends that those are the only friends. I hadn't even thought about my kid making friends that weren't family.

Simone Collins: Yeah. We've made zero effort on [00:38:00] this front.

Which isn't to say we go to kids' birthdays when they get invited and we bring presents and we, we participate. We're good. Well, I mean by my

Malcolm Collins: cultural norms, which, which again likely evolved alongside my culture's biology. Friendship is not that normal a thing.

Yeah. Outside of, outside of clan networks, it's your family and your clan.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that. If you look at media, like if a kid who goes to like the power of friendship and all the shows about what we all came together as friends and made this work, you know, you see this beaten, this is the way you should live.

This is the way, when I'm perfectly normal, being a mostly hooky, kaori, I talk to people other than my wife. Like, like about something other than business maybe four people a year. You know, outside of like direct networking events or something like that where I'm just like, ugh, I have to group all the networking.

Okay, let's go to a city and like do all this talking. And this is shamed by society right now. Right? And so I can do one of two things. I can [00:39:00] attempt to adopt this behavioral style, right? But if I grew up in a culture that wasn't designed to be commensurate with the concept of friends, and I have a biology that's not designed to run that, maybe one I won't get satisfaction and I'll end up neurotic and I'll end up looking for validation in places where I'm not gonna receive meaningful validation.

And I can just from a, either a biological or the rest of my culture isn't built around this concept. So I add this concept to my culture and it begins to break a lot of other things. And I didn't, and, and that might be true of you, for example, and you don't even realize it. The reason why you don't feel like you don't have time for another kid is because you're investing in maintaining this friend network that none of your ancestors natural maintained.

Yeah. And it's not culturally normative for you. Whereas Jews have, you know, 500 years of cultural evolutionary pressure around maintaining friend networks that it's going to make it easier for them to juggle a wide friend network and a large family. And, and note here, like this is not like, [00:40:00] this is all I, I'm saying like, it's important to stay friends with the Jews because they're.

Powerful now, and they're likely going to grow in their power going forwards, given their high technology and, and, and, and high fertility. But it is also saying that when people say that Jewish cultural values are being exported by Hollywood and media and the advertising agencies they are one right, that Jews disproportionately work within these industries.

So it would be a little insane to say that they're not gonna have disproportionate Jewish cultural values. But I think part of what they're wrong is it's not Jewish cultural values that they're seeing it's urban cultural values that they're seeing.

Simone Collins: Huh. And,

Malcolm Collins: and Jews are just adapted much more for urban environments.

Simone Collins: Hmm. It's still just so notable that there is a high fertility urban

Malcolm Collins: culture. Well, I mean, I think that this is going to, in many ways, like when I look at what does the future of human civilization look like, [00:41:00] I think it is somewhat obvious that Jews will end up and, and if things are functioning correctly, given their high fertility rates and everything like that dominating these urban settings.

And, and something I wanted to note here is if you look at Jews and you look at like the Orthodox Jews who follow their traditions with more fidelity, the, these evolved traditions with more fidelity, they have the highest fertility rates, right? Mm-hmm. So the people who are, who are following these traditions with higher fidelity, often the more conservative Jews have more.

Kids. Of course you see this without throughout traditions, but it seems to be even higher in Jewish communities. And you actually see an antithesis of this. We've noted that in one of our users did a big study on this In Mormon communities, the very most devout Mormons actually have less kids than middling devoutness Mormons.

Hmm.

So, so the actual highest fidelity cultural conservatism doesn't always lead to a higher fertility rate. But anyway, what I was saying about the future is we might end up with a future in which the urban centers are Jewish dominated and the people who migrate to them, which is in kind [00:42:00] of what we may have had historically speaking.

Don't really expect to continue surviving. They don't really expect to continue high fertility rates. And, and people can be like, what a horrible thing to say. And I'm like, but it's kind of already true. Everyone I know who lives in a city who is above replacement rate is Jewish fair outta all of our friends.

Yeah. Everyone who lives in a city who's above repopulation rate is Jewish. And the Jewish ones are often quite above repopulation rate. So when these other people move to the city, because I, I asked 'em, I go, why are you going to another city? Why are you moving to a city? Their goals never include a big family.

When I ask my Jewish friends who move to cities, why are you going? Their goals always include a big family. And often in part. It is because of a preexisting Jewish community within that city. There, so it's also about cultural fidelity there. And so, you know, I can say, well, the, the people who move to cities are basically like, well, they may achieve equal status.

The cities are forward, the Jews, right. This is already [00:43:00] becomes sort of the norm. And then I think it can lead to good cultural partnerships for the cultural groups that are more urban special, I mean, rural specialists. And I'd also note here that the urban versus rural specialist cultural optimization function mm-hmm.

May lead to less of an intrinsic power imbalance going forwards than it led to historically. Well, how so, so, so his historically urban centers became the centers of economic and political and, and artistic output. Right. Which often gave Jews an advantage within these fields because they were already in the cities.

Right. But that was because the ways that cities helped speed up human interaction and communication. You needed the cities to be. Right. And companies to be at one of the big studios to be at. One of the, when we look at the ways the internet has changed, this changed the way people make friends. They build interpersonal relationships with people outside of their networks the [00:44:00] ways that they build wealth.

I don't think cities are as big an advantage today as they were historically to power or wealth accumulation. Mm-hmm. You can accumulate that perfectly fine outside a city even today. Also interesting thing I'd note about rural specialist cultures, we've mentioned this before in other videos, is that it's very normal for rural specialist cultures when they live in a city to often have, as my family did growing up, a separate rural property that they commute to regularly like a ranch or a lake house or a and I've seen even fairly families of fairly modest means.

Have these sorts of things.

Hmm.

If they don't have that, they often have a camper or RV that is meant for regularly taking the family out into a rural environment. Yeah. That is quite

Simone Collins: a thing, isn't it? Hmm.

It

Malcolm Collins: is absolutely a thing, and I don't see it very frequently among my Jewish friends.

Yeah. Having the, the camper or having [00:45:00] the, the ranch or having the

Simone Collins: well, I think so much of that's because like the, the, like if, if you are employed, you are spending your weekends in the Sabbath with your community and your communities in your local area, in the city. Yeah. Well, so you don't have these free weekends where you go off to your lake house or your ranch house or a campsite or a cabin.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I think that this is a very inefficient cultural practice you know, as, as, as sort of a holdover, but what I, I know, it gets

Simone Collins: you to dig into your local community and help each other more. No,

Malcolm Collins: no, I'm saying having a ranch is a very inefficient culture. Oh,

Simone Collins: okay. Yes. Yeah. Yes. That, that, that I'm with.

Yeah. Having

Malcolm Collins: this piece of external land and, and what I'm seeing

Simone Collins: specifically non-productive external land that just takes you away from productive work. 'cause it's for, it's purely for and by design, it, it, it forces non productiveness unless you're going away and writing for your job. I

Malcolm Collins: mean, no, I mean, the reason the, the land is often bought is [00:46:00] for child rearing.

It's, oh, well, my kids need to grow up in, in these sorts of environments. Right. And if they don't grow up, and I've noticed here if you hear this and you hear, oh, my kid needs to grow up around nature, it's very different than the way the urbanite means when they say, my kid needs to grow up around nature.

Mm-hmm.

Because I, I, I, I hear there is some like urbanites who think, oh, nature is good. I like. You know, going on walks in the park and stuff like that. When people in rural environment or, or rural specialized cultures say, my kid needs to grow up around nature, what they mean is they need to hunt and they need to fish.

And they need to know the basics of growing food and they need to which, which historically did serve a lot of value for these cultures. 'cause that was how they survived.

Simone Collins: Absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: And I think we're seeing within our generation, many people from these rural specialist cultures go back to rural settings.

And yeah. As cities begin to collapse due to their, their in long-term incompatible tax [00:47:00] structure. You know, as I pointed out, like if New York drops to half its population, it doesn't cost half to manage its water supply or sewer system, or its electrical grid or its street maintenance. And it's not even just that these cities are leveraged to high hell you know, they're paying for previous populations as we've mentioned.

They don't even

Simone Collins: need to lose half their population. They need to lose. A significant number of their top taxpayers, which may very well happen if Mom Donny is elected. Yeah. It was

Malcolm Collins: something like I think around half of New York taxes are paid by around 4% of their population. Yeah. Which is

Simone Collins: about, I mean, the, the proposition seems to be to tax them to high heaven.

Um, so, oh no, sorry.

Malcolm Collins: No, it's not four, it was 0.4. Yeah, it was, I think four or 5% of their population makes up something like 80% of their tax base or something. It's some

Simone Collins: insane amount. Um, And already I'm hearing people who are New York residents declaring that they're absolutely moving out if Mom Donnie selected.

So it could be even faster is all I'm saying.

Malcolm Collins: Could be [00:48:00] soon. So even these cities and I, and I mean, I know when I'm in New York and I look around and I see all the empty buildings, because you can see it from the high rises. All the commercial space in Midtown is like emptied out now. They, they. It might not be the enviable thing to not want to live within existing urban environments within this next generation.

You know? Yeah. This might actually be a bit of an albatross around the Jewish population's neck as they have to personally repopulate these cities. But I can definitely see that in the future. And I think it's something that we as a society need to get better at accepting that we are different and we do have different specialties.

Mm-hmm.

And that through those differences, we actually become better at living symbiotically then by attempting to enforce everyone to have everyone else's cultural standards. Um, Absolutely. Yeah. It, it's better to allow the, you know, clan, rural groups like us to live on a farm and be productive in our, in, in [00:49:00] our own way while still engaging with technology.

And the Jews, even Jews or our friend live in the city. Like what, why is that, why is that a bad thing to just be like, Hey, maybe we shouldn't be normalizing urban cultural values for groups that for the past 500 years have, have barely lived in an urban environment at all. Yeah. And don't have norms around large friend networks and you know, many other things.

Malcolm Collins: A big one here that gets forced down other group throats is the omni power of love as an emotion and as like a guiding force or as a reason to live or as a reason to get married. We're within most rural traditions. , Love just has not been a particularly important emotion in terms of guiding major life decisions.

And yet when I say, yeah, love's just not that important to life, , people will freak out because they're like, no, you're supposed to. The man on the TV said it's love and friendship are the two most important things. And I'm like, no, I don't think [00:50:00] so., My ancestors didn't think so.

Sorry, I should clarify here. This isn't just a rural culture thing. In fact, most cultures throughout human history have not placed a particularly high value on love. Like, for example, you can look at historic Indian culture is, , one example I remember here. , It, this is just an urban monocultural thing that I don't even think is downstream of like Jewish culture.

, I just think that it's, , one of these weird things that the urban monoculture adopted from somewhere.

, I've noted one cultural norm that we share with Jews but that other groups don't share is loving debate, right? Like, this is something that Jewish cultural groups have that would give you an advantage within urban environments. That would help with the development of like verbal intelligence.

Which we actually see an outsize was in the Jewish population. Look at our Jewish IQ is not actually higher. It's weirder. Or we point out it's, it, it is actually weirder than that. That, that like why should we force this like debate sort of, normalization on, for example, Asians. You can look at our Asians or Snow People video or whatever we call it, like ICE Asians where we [00:51:00] point out that that actually this form of debate is, is less comfortable for people with those types of cultural traditions.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Which is a different type of urban specialization. But unfortunately it doesn't seem conducive with modern environments. As to why Asians are low fertility you can look at our video on Asian low fertility. Is it genetic? Again, we think that there might actually be a big genetic component to that.

Specifically the, the lack of forced marriages and their commonality in historic Asian populations because they were incredibly common in Asian populations historically. And, and so if you have co-evolved with a culture where, you know, the way people bred was the wife is put in the house one day and then you tell the guys okay, now you need to go out and find a wife.

And you tell the women, okay, now you need to be horny enough to, you know, find a guy and accidentally sleep with them and stuff like that. They're gonna be like, no, what? Why would I do that? I'm not, I'm not particularly driven to, because they didn't need that drive for the past [00:52:00] 10 generations. You know, so of course that's gonna hit their fertility rate, you know, uniquely badly.

So here what I'm saying, and, and this is why the fertility. Fixing it for you needs to be such a personal thing.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

This is why when people can say, well, if the urban monoculture, if this sort of attempt to culturally unify all of humanity is the core thing that is upstream of declining birth rates, why do some areas of the world that appear to be have have less of this urban monoculture appear to have a more of an impact on declining fertility rates?

So here I could point to something like. South Korea, somebody could say South Korea is affected less by the urban monoculture, , than the United States. , So why do they have a higher crashing fertility rate? , And I would say, , it's because the Native Korean culture. , That they evolved alongside is less adapted to urban monocultural norms than [00:53:00] the cultures in the United States.

This is actually widely why cultures. Remember how I said like the Jews have lived alongside the urban monoculture for a long time and it's helped them adapt to it, so have the backwoods tradition, but they've stayed in , the outskirts. , So have. A lot of northern Europeans, which is why they've been more resistant to fertility collapse in other groups.

, Whereas, you know, groups like Koreans and Japanese and Chinese haven't, and they're being hit much faster by fertility collapse, , which is important to remember,. While the threat, this urban monoculture is the same all over on earth, , the way that you adapt to it and patch your culture for it is going to be completely unique to your cultural and biological history.

So this explains the mystery of. Oh, why is it that you know, people in rural Guatemala, , that their fertility rate is falling so much faster when they have so much less exposure to the urban monoculture? [00:54:00] And my response to them is, yes, but what is their ancestral rate of exposure? To urban culture versus, or the urban monoculture, , versus what they're being exposed to right now.

Oh, it's incredibly low and they just haven't had to deal with this at all. Okay, well then that explains their falling fertility rates.

It is a bit like saying, oh, well, explain to me why when there's so much less smallpox disease in the Americas than in Europe. Are Americans dying at such a higher rate? It's like, well, because they have no resistance to it. I.

Also here, when I note, when I say, oh, you know, it needs to be unique, the solution, even though the threat is the same, if it turns out that our hypothesis that one of the reasons for uniquely falling fertility rates within Asia is the norm of, , arranged marriages within that region, , historically speaking, if erasing that norm.

, Through the urban monoculture is what's causing their fertility collapse. [00:55:00] And then you could say within, you know, sort of the backwoods fertility collapse, if that's caused by being forced to have these large friend networks. . Well, the solution is technically the same in that it's adopt your ancestral culture to work within the modern context rather than homogenizing yourself.

, The, the particularities of the fix go back to arrange marriages or find some other solution that pairs people better. , Find some other solution. To not have to maintain big friend networks or find a way to make big friend networks cohesive with your cultural tradition, , is really divergent.

Malcolm Collins: and be done within the context of who are you really like? , And a person can be like, I don't know that much about my ancestors. You don't need to know that much about your ancestors.

Sit down and think about yourself without the context of the society being the, the, the waves of society crashing upon you think. Do I actually want friends, for example? You know, does [00:56:00] love need to be part of my relationship? Does do I need to, you know, one of the things that people always crash out for is sleeping in different rooms.

But why, what's the utility in sleeping in the same room? You know, there's actually a ton of utility from rural cultures in history to sleep in different rooms when people are rising at different times and you have kids in different rooms. So it's totally normal within any mini cultures throughout history.

But today it's just like, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're gonna have one culture and one way of doing things

And the reason why Jews have been resistant to this is twofold. One, their culture was already more like this one culture that's being enforced on everyone now. And two, their culture had a long time to adapt and evolve, strategies to maintain its fidelity, uniqueness, and high fertility rates in spite of that one culture because they have been adjacent to it for so many generations.

sucks. Simone,

Simone Collins: I totally agree with you. And I mean, I think people can, they don't seem to be able to wrap their [00:57:00] heads around this as easily, and yet anyone can understand that if you move from a very hot climate to a climate that gets to.

Below 20 in the winters, you're probably going to die if you don't change your outfit and make sure that you live in an insulated home, like you can't sleep out under the stars at night. And this is just how it is with modern culture and society. People are walking into cities which are the equivalent of like super hot weather climates, you could say wearing stuff for the winter tundra, like all these layers of furs.

And they're just expiring and wondering, why am I expiring? Why is this not working for me? Well, obviously you're not wearing the right clothing. Yeah. So you have to adapt.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I'd also note that one of the, the cultural trends here that I think can be pretty toxic for individual decision making.

Is the ization of humanity [00:58:00] that happens fe in urban centers. Mm-hmm. So, by this what I mean is this elevation of humanity is this like ultra special thing. You know, people get offended in our videos where we say LLMs function very similar to the way the human brain functions. Mm. Architecturally speaking, you can look up our video on this, that, that the, you know, and I was thinking today LLMs are thinking machines and humans are thinking animals.

And was in a rural cultural group, or at least the one that I'm from the, the sort of clan based backwards group. This is a very normal sort of a thought. Like, yes, we are. But a degree from the world of tooth and claw. You know, the, the hu humanity is just a thinking animal. And this really frames the way I see things like LLMs quite differently than the way I see things like humanity.

And note here, if you're gonna be like, oh, well LLMs are just token predictors. You can go to our episode on this. And we argue with extensive neuroscience evidence that the human brain works on a token predictor model as well. [00:59:00] Yeah. Um, But. For some cultures they really struggle with this. Like, Catholics hate the idea of saying like, humans are, are just thinking animals, right? Like they're, they, they, they believe that there's this big difference from, from the external world and other individuals.

And if you're like, well, Catholics only think that because the Bible says that, and I'd point out, I'd be like, well, no. It's one interpretation of the Bible that says that I would argue that Ecclesiastes three 18 to 21 pretty clearly says the exact opposite, that we are, , tested by God , to make sure that we do not think of ourselves as, , different from animals.

, Even if we are above animals.

You know, when they look to me and they're like, oh like also a clan based focus. They're like, don't you care about people? Recently I was talking with somebody and they were saying, Hey, don't you care about like, the people in Africa who are gonna get AIDS and die because they don't have this, this, these programs that US AIDS was providing.

Simone Collins: Pepfar.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, pepfar. And I'm like. [01:00:00] No. Like, why would I care about that? Like, they're, they're, they're not relevant to me or my descendants. They're, you know, they, they're like, well then why do you care about, like, Israel, for example? Like, what happens there? And I'm like, because they are relevant to me and my descendants, right?

Like, this is a, an incredibly high technology society that is going to continue to be impactful going forwards. That, that we are in active economic engagement with. I'm not like engaged with these cultures in an economic sense. I'm not engaged with them in a cultural sense. I'm not like there.

Why would I be sending my money to them? And they're like, well, we, you know, everybody matters. I love the people who are like, everybody matters. I'm like, okay. So when this program was shut down you started donating to them, right? It's like, no, no. Who did though?

Simone Collins: A lot, a lot of effective altruists actually did, which is great.

Malcolm Collins: That's great, but for a lot of people they didn't, they were just okay with somebody else's money being sent to these people. Yeah. And that's,

Simone Collins: they have no right to talk about it

Malcolm Collins: because a [01:01:00] lot of their moral architecture is a fae moral architecture, right? Mm-hmm. It's not a, a realistic moral architecture.

It's you could actually live by in any sort of meaningful sense. Yeah. And I think it's important, you know, when you're building a moral architecture, you expect to be intergenerational and stuff like that. To. Consider it within the context of you know, what can be actually intergenerationally durable in, in terms of actionability and internal consistency.

Mm-hmm.

And this I've realized was in like the nature of the way my family acts and thinks about things is very cogent with the way that we act and think about things. Did you know, like all of our moral decisions are, well, what moral decision would future humanity have wanted me to make? You know, and, and is the marginal dollar going to this location going to do more than the marginal dollar that's spent on like technological advancement to people in the future?

And the answer to me is almost always, oh, technological advancement matters [01:02:00] more than you know, saving people in a random part of the world because there's, there's, there's horrible things happening all around us. You know, there's a, a. A coyote eating a a, an animal alive right now, you know, probably miles from our house, right?

Like, thi this is something that happens in the world every day. Our jobs is humans is not like the suffering police. Our job is continued advancement and looking at how we build the alliances that are necessary for that continued advancement is, you know, what I see as my daily. Ethical goal.

A note here, I'm laying out the way that my ethics,, which are in part inherited from my cultural tradition, differ from the ethics that the urban monoculture attempts to impose on me and then gaws and wants to treat me like a monster when I have any differing ethical beliefs from their general utilitarian ethical beliefs that they come to me and they go, don't you care that these people are [01:03:00] suffering?

And I'm like, not particularly. It has nothing to do with me. It has nothing to do with my descendants. It has nothing to do with shaping the future of humanity. So, no, I don't, , and I'm, and I'd point out here that I don't really believe that you do either. But if you wanna go out there and make yourself the, , world police of suffering and just wipe out all suffering in nature and in other humans, you, you go do that.

You go have your fun little urban monoculture quest. But I don't really believe that the urban monoculture cares about these things. I think that they just like to signal that they care about them, , which is why. They care so little about so many of the, for example, big genocide that right now is happening in Central Africa.

, They just don't care. They just don't care because it doesn't fit any of their existing agendas right now. , And so when they come to me and they go, well, why don't you care about these people? I go, don't you care about the big genocide that's happening? They're like, there's a genocide happening. I'm like, yeah, you should probably, you know, be doing something about that.

Or [01:04:00] they'll make this big stink about slavery. And I'm like, well, there's more slaves right now than there have been at any point in human history. What are you doing about it? Oh, nothing. So you would've been somebody who did nothing about it during the time of slavery, I know my ancestors literally put their lives on the line to go to war against the government, to try to, to end slavery.

As we've pointed out of the free state of Jones, , 15 of the 50 founding members were either, , ancestors of mine are brothers of ancestors of mine, or , children of siblings of ancestors of mine. , And so like.

I, I understand that from the position of this moral hierarchy that the urban monoculture tries to pick, where anyone who had the non utilitarian value set is deemed as evil. , You know, you would prefer to look down on me, but I'm pointing out that this broad suffering police, moral authority that, that you believe to be a superior one is also a sterilizing one.

Because it is fundamentally incompatible with human thriving and ultimately leads to negative utilitarian , values, which you can look up our videos [01:05:00] on that.

Two good little side notes here. One is, it's funny to me that because the free state of Jones today is framed to an urban monocultural lens, it's framed as like a group of do-gooders who wanted to stand up to this, who randomly came together based on shared values review. Look at like, somebody's like, how could so many of your ancestors have been involved in this?

And it's like, well, because it wasn't a random group of do-gooders, it was a backwoods family clan that was mad at the government. , And. Today we don't think of things in terms of clan networks. We think of things in terms of ideological alliances.

And I don't hear when people are like, well, , I like the, the perception of the urban monocultural value better. And as I've, as I've worded here, I don't think the urban monoculture actually believes its value system. It has one value system that it signals to people where it's actual value system is see yourself is as good a person as possible, whatever the cost.

To others, you don't actually need to [01:06:00] go out and fix problems. , Whereas my signaled value system, while it may seem less moral to you, is at least my real value system. I.

And that is why when people say, why do you, why are you so pro Zionist? Right? Because it's this, the guy is apparently an anti-Zionist. Because I think that,

Simone Collins: I don't, I don't think he's an anti-Zionist,

Malcolm Collins: but like non Zionist Judaism. Well, I mean, like, I think because if I look at the future, it's going to be a future where Jews have even more disproportionate influence than they have today.

And building systems for working with them is critical. If you are a group that plans to survive. Mm-hmm. I, I believe, you know, and not just that, but even today, they're outcompeting within an existing context. They outcompete with business, they outcompete with wealth, they outcompete with. Within the arts.

And you could say this because it's nepotism. I'm like, well, everyone else is allowed to be nepotistic. Like what? Like, Mormons are nepotistic. Catholics are nepotistic. Like, why, why if, if this group is doing well, I should [01:07:00] try to learn from them. It's, it very much as I've said, reminds me of, of this progressive sensibility where it's like, oh whites in America are earning more than blacks.

It must be because they're doing something unfair. Yeah. It

Simone Collins: is so bizarre to me that a lot of people who otherwise identify as conservative have this butt hurt about this particular group doing well. Well, because they like, copy them do better. Like, that's, that's the, the normal conservative response.

Yeah. Learn what they're doing and do better. Right. You know? Yeah. Take what you like, take what makes them succeed and do it yourself, but better, your own flavor.

Malcolm Collins: But as to the, the, the, the Zionist point, it's because historically Jews did not have their own state and people kept killing them. And like it wasn't just the Holocaust, it was a lot of times.

Yeah. And then if you look you know, even, even now, people are like, oh, people wouldn't do that today. I'm like, I'm pretty sure I see people marching through London and New York chanting from the river for the sea, or death, death to the IIDF at like these giant, like I can understand why a Jewish person and many of my Jewish friends no longer [01:08:00] feel safe in the United States.

Simone Collins: Like, oh my gosh. Yeah.

And you could be like, well, they're only saying it about the IDF, but it's like, yeah, but then they're chasing Jewish kids around schools to like attack them. So clearly they have animosity towards just like Jews as well.

I think some, , conservatives because they notice the similarities that Jewish culture has to the urban monoculture simply from living alongside it for so long, that they think that the Jewish culture is the urban monoculture, when in reality the Jewish culture is as much victimized by and has a genocide mandate against it from the urban monoculture as our own, , as I point out, because.

The urban monoculture says that all differences between groups. If there's any difference between two groups, it must be because of systematic unfairness. And because Jews outcompete in many categories, it will always turn against Jewish populations in the end. , And so we should not confuse them as anything other than allies in our struggle against this force, even if they have [01:09:00] aesthetic similarities to our enemy, because our enemy does want them dead.

And I find it uniquely ironic that the very progressives who say, oh, Jews don't need their own state to be safe, will also chant, you know, we need to ch kill all the Jews, you know, from the river to the sea, or death, death to the IDF, , you know, at their major events or chase them through schools proving, , the need for such a thing.

I was just watching YouTuber with non-trivial following, have butt hurt about where bread tube has gone on YouTube and how it's all gone downhill and contra points isn't doing enough work, and how instead we should be looking to the people at places like Glastonbury who are saying what needs to be said.

And that's the place where they were like. Chanting again. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Killed the Jews. Yeah. Yeah. Like what? But the point I'm making here is, is the threat that Jews face from being in a non-Jewish state still exists within the world today and is likely going to get [01:10:00] worse in the future. I think it is very hard to consider yourself a real cultural ally of the Jewish people and want a destruction of the Jewish state.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that this also, like the way I think about groups as I've defined in here, you know, I think about, oh, how likely are they to be allies of my descendants and how likely are they to continue to technologically develop and economically develop you know, in, in terms of like what it means to be human and continue to advance that.

When I look at the groups that Israel is in conflict with, and I have to be like, which group is more likely to do this? You know, I'm like, oh, it is this group. Therefore it makes more sense for me to lean culturally in their direction,

Than in the direction of the other groups. And I'm not saying anything here about like the ethnicity of these groups or the religion of these groups.

I'm just saying I can look at the economic data of these regions. I can look at the startups coming out of these regions. I can look at what's being built in these regions. And I can make an educated guess.

Simone Collins: [01:11:00] Yeah.

Nothing to add on my end

Malcolm Collins: and I love, well then people are like, oh, well no, come on. These regions are only poor because of Israel.

And I'm like, oh, they're only poor because of Israel. Then how come people with similar cultures are also desperately poor when they live in other regions that aren't right next to Israel? Like, like why? Why is it that this culture where it is practiced without extreme levels of oil wealth or, or just like, an easily capturable wealth source lead to extreme poverty so frequently?

Like can't you just say, oh, it might have something to do with the cultural system. And, and that doesn't mean that we have a right to go in and change that cultural system. I don't think we do. I think they have a right to, as we've said in our video, on is, is it Islamophobic to ban child marriage, which was argued by Pakistani religious court.

You know, I was like, look, they have a right to do things their way. Right. And, and I would fight to protect that, right? But when there is a conflict between two groups, I'm going to side with the group that is more likely to, to do the [01:12:00] things that I want for the future of humanity.

Simone Collins: Absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I don't know. I probably went way too offensive on this episode because everybody wants us to be antisemitic. They, they saw our episode on, finally somebody created Mecca Hitler, and they were like, what? They're not antisemites.

Simone Collins: No. Just a lot of people in the comments were trying to warn the anti-Semites in the comments that we were actually pro-Israel.

Just, you gotta warn the people. So, yeah. Yeah. I think

Malcolm Collins: our positions on, on Jewish stuff really surprised a lot of Jewish people. 'cause like in our, the question that breaks Judaism, we have a lot of questions about Jewish theology and a lot of problems was like the nitpickiness of it. But in terms of like the Jewish culture overall in the Jewish state, like we're very like strong Zionists and stuff like that, which I think surprises a lot of people.

Simone Collins: It shouldn't be surprising. I mean, we're a different flavor of this, but there are so many Christian Americans who are like, I mean in, in an almost insensitive and mean to Jews kind of way. They're like, they, they wanna use the Jewish [01:13:00] people as a cudgel too, what do they call it to make the second coming happen?

All that nonsense there. So yeah. But

Malcolm Collins: that's not why we like them.

Simone Collins: I know, but I'm just saying like, it should be normalized for Jews to be used to Americans who like Jews, but don't like Jews, if that makes sense. Not that we don't like Jews. We have. Philosophical quips, or not quips quibbles. ​

But yeah, it just, it's normalized.

I love you too.

.

Malcolm Collins: How are people commenting on our episode today?

Simone Collins: They like it. I think if there's any particular theme, there's not really like a unifying theme among the comments, which is, I think a good thing. Yeah, I

Malcolm Collins: mean, it shows we didn't mess up in any way that they can like easily call us out on

Simone Collins: No, no.

Like there, there wasn't anything. Yeah. I, I, I think people agree that networks are really important. I, [01:14:00] yeah, no, it, I don't know. I enjoyed the episode. Some people were like, we could do our own episode just on. Different social classes. Oh, is did you get the new helmet? It, it arrived. It's outside. Oh

Malcolm Collins: yeah, it did, but I haven't gone out and gotten it yet.

Okay, so we'll show it tomorrow. Tomorrow, yeah. So second Father's Day present, that helmet back there was the first one, but she also got me a Roman one as well. So just all of the historic helmets for that's necessary, man reasons I need them.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, because men aren't constantly thinking of Sparta, they're thinking of Rome.

So

Malcolm Collins: I disagree. I think I actually, I'd be interested to know this, they asked how often do men think about ancient Rome? And this went around, but I wonder, is there an equivalent, how, how often do men think about ancient Greece? I think about ancient Greece more than I think about ancient Rome.

Simone Collins: Same actually, the more interesting people like the mystic, they

Malcolm Collins: had a, and it had [01:15:00] bigger like.

There's no ro I mean, there's some Roman characters, Rome wishes were Alexander Greece.

Simone Collins: That's the thing. It's like you, you kind of can't think about ancient Rome without also thinking about ancient Greece. 'cause Rome just wishes. Just wishes.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The Romans only thought about ancient Greece. This is the question ancient many times Did Roman on

Simone Collins: Twitter at, at the forum hanging out?

What's he thinking about? You're like,

Malcolm Collins: how, how many times a day does the average Roman citizen think about ancient Greece? Yes.

Simone Collins: That's it.

Malcolm Collins: That's it. The, the average Roman male five times a day. And the Roman women are shocked at this. Oh my goodness.

Simone Collins: Yes. Exactly. Exactly.

Malcolm Collins: I, I love you death, Simone. But, but all, all true, all true.

You know, you know the way to a guy's heart. .

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. And what's that? And a drink. Don't pick up the alcohol. And what's that? This, it's a compass. A compass. This, ah, this is a duck call. Wow. This, you're a duck.[01:16:00]

Why is not doing on blow into it. You blow it, buddy. Blow. Blow it with your mouth.

I put it in here. Are you load the gun titan all the way?

I like yelling like the duck? Yeah, that's to get the ducks to come so you can shoot 'em. Right. Toasty. Another one. Yeah, another one too.

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