Cultural Blindspots: Bugs Bunny and Moral Frames

In this thought-provoking episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into the complexities of multiculturalism, high-trust societies, and the challenges that arise when diverse cultures interact within a single system. Malcolm shares his updated views on multiculturalism, exploring historical and modern examples—from the Victorian Empire to contemporary South Africa and the United States. The conversation covers topics like in-group preferences, the evolution of cultural trust, the impact of immigration, and the unintended consequences of social safety nets.

The hosts discuss how cultural backgrounds shape our moral frameworks, using analogies from classic cartoons like Bugs Bunny to illustrate differences in ethical perspectives. They also examine the pitfalls of trying to recreate homogenous societies in today’s interconnected world, and why some strategies that worked in the past may no longer be effective.

Whether you’re interested in sociology, politics, or just enjoy a candid, nuanced discussion about the forces shaping our world, this episode offers fresh insights and challenges conventional wisdom. Join Malcolm and Simone as they unpack the real rules of the game and what it means to adapt in a rapidly changing society.

Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more episodes of Based Camp!Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today’s conversation is going to be interesting because I have massively updated my own views on multiculturalism and whether or not it is a strictly good thing and how it transforms society. In addition to that, we will be talking about I was going to make a full episode on this topic before, but after the, the channel got in some trouble.

I can’t. But the the, the fashionistas actually have a point which is to say what is the core difference?

See, some people will be like, oh, well, you know,, fashionistas are different from typical leftists and that they are far right. And I’m like, far right. How though, like, well, they, they killed gay people. I’m like, almost every communist state has killed gay people except for like. I think like three in one short period in the Soviet Union.

Mm-hmm. But generally speaking, they have been much more likely to kill gay people than capitalist governments have been. And, and, and this is, this is just true story history. It’s like a very easy thing to check. So Okay. That’s not what really made [00:01:00] them, what really made them significantly different from a, a modern day socialist, right?

Mm-hmm. Is that they believed in. Ethno and cultural separation. Mm-hmm. So they attempted to separate different eth like for example, the, the, the, the you know, the Italians and the Germans and the Japanese all clearly worked together, right? Like they, they, it wasn’t just like one of their groups.

They all had their own weird ideology and they were working together to see an endstate. Not, not, not so dissimilar to the way that, you know. An Islamist today might work together with somebody who’s an LGBT advocate or something like that, right? Like, their, their end goals may be different, but they’re willing to have a, a multicultural movement.

Right? What made them distinct from, from something like the, the Islamists working alongside the L-G-B-T-Q population is these two groups would say, well, we need to find a way to live together in the same communities. In the same neighborhoods. Whereas these other groups, you know, the [00:02:00] traditional fashionistas from history they said, well, you know, we might work with the Japanese, but we’re not gonna like import Japanese people into our cities and stuff like that, right?

Mm-hmm.

Speaker: , what if we took species from all different planets in the universe and put them together on the same planet. Great tv, right? Asians, Jews, and Hispanics, all trying to live side by side on one planet. It’s great. We put them all together on Earth, and the whole universe tunes in to watch the fun!

Malcolm Collins: And I’m gonna argue, and this has helped me really understand these ideologies and why some modern people have them today. And I will argue that they’re fundamentally very flawed in the way that they have them today. But it is still a major update for me. Okay. So if you have a, and this is a quote I’ve said a hundred times, it’s like one of my core rules of politics.

Mm-hmm. You, you cannot act. And I got it from my grandfather who had a, a congressman. So yeah, I took it from him. I loved it. ‘cause I wanna keep him alive. You know, family tradition of intellectualism here. You cannot have. Porous borders and [00:03:00] generous social services at the same time.

Mm-hmm.

Because, like osmosis, the people who want those social services the most, eg the people least likely to pay into the system, most likely to take outta the system will differentially migrate into your SY country eventually breaking the system.

Yeah.

Okay. So this is, this is sort of where we’re starting here.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Well,

Simone Collins: no

Malcolm Collins: one

Simone Collins: has pushed back on that.

Malcolm Collins: Right, right. But we’re gonna get to some more controversial things. Yes. We’re gonna get some more controversial things.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and I think that’s because people haven’t thought this through to its logical conclusion which has been laid bare by comments we received on a video about disability maxing this phenomenon whereby a bunch of people who aren’t really disabled are claiming disabled status at universities, especially elite universities.

Mm-hmm. To get more time on tests and a bunch of other privileges like solo dorms and housing, which a lot of people think is unfair because. They’re not actually disabled. But this is the similar dynamic. Just thought through more to its conclusion.

Malcolm Collins: It’s it is a Well, no, because you will get instances in [00:04:00] which, because you have a common culture and a common group, you can have opportunities to exploit a system like this.

Mm-hmm. But people won’t use it. Right. This is what you have within. Culturally uniform or I’d call it. Culturally homeostatic societies. Mm-hmm. So you don’t necessarily need them to be cultural uniform.

They can have a few cultural units, but you, you, you need to broadly have like, you know, maybe like four or three cultural units in a society max. And it becomes harder than more s you have in a society. Mm-hmm. ‘cause you can think of each culture like an individual. I’ve talked about this in other recent videos, but I’m basically stitching together a bunch of individual thoughts I’ve had into a bigger thought, which is a say.

If you look at why a country like South Africa is falling apart, and I’m using South Africa as an example here to point out that this is not a problem that is necessarily caused by immigration. It is simply caused by having too many cultures under one governing body. So you look at a [00:05:00] country like South Africa where you have strong cultural unity to different tribal groups, or the BOS or the English or the, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?

Like a bunch of groups, right? And, often one group will attempt to control specific branches of governments or the wider government more broadly. And various groups attempt to take money from the the, the tax system for their own sorts of corruption. Now, if you go historically to, let’s, let’s go to a more monocultural society historically, like mm-hmm.

The Victorian Empire, right? Mm-hmm. Within the Victorian Empire in the early days, ‘cause we’re gonna talk about how it changed and how you can accept multiple cultures into a society. In the early days if you were embezzling money from the Victorian government or if you were acting in a way that benefited yourself, but hurt other people in society you were fundamentally.

Hurting your own culture and moral constructs values, right? Mm. Because your culture would be less likely to hold more [00:06:00] sway on a, in a world stage. And this matters because the more sway your cultural group holds on a moral SI world stage, the more morality that looks like yours is held on the moral stage.

Also, I

Simone Collins: think you, because you identify more with that culture, you care more about what they think of you. Exactly. And you’ll feel more shame. For, for exploiting it. Like when they, when they, when they shame you for exploiting it, you will be cast out from a society that you care about that you wanna participate in.

And that will make you sad as opposed to other instances where they’re like, I don’t care what you think about, I don’t respect you at all.

Malcolm Collins: Right. So now let’s, let’s, let’s look at the situation in South Africa right now. Okay. In South Africa it’s very different if you can embezzle money from the government to benefit your own group, your own tribal group, or not only tribal groups.

‘cause obviously you have the BOS and English and all the other, you know, basically your own. Cultural group, right? If you can embezzle money from the government, if you can cheat on a contract, if [00:07:00] you can act nepotistic to benefit your own subgroup mm-hmm. That is just strictly a good, because if, when you even

Simone Collins: see this, and I think people forget with South Africa, this isn’t just about like apartheid.

It’s, it’s one of the bigger issues. Was that after, after all the reforms, allegedly you had different tribes? Just trying to screw each other over because it was their group versus the other. There wasn’t some like monolith. It was like, okay, well now like we the non-white people who aren’t like the white colonizers.

Well, I mean we saw this

Malcolm Collins: recently with Somalian immigrants literally voting a Jewish candidate to win over a Somalian candidate. ‘cause he was from a rival. Tribal group and the Jewish came in and went around and got them all to organize against this individual being like, yeah, but he’s from a, the other, so the point being a group you

Simone Collins: identify with and like the level on which you identify with your society is very predictive of how this is gonna play out.

Right,

Malcolm Collins: right, right. And, and this is a problem for your Europeans when they [00:08:00] try to like restructure Africa in their image or it’s like South Africa. And so they were like, oh look, you all, you know, hate. The white man, right? You all hate the, the a and so you should all be able to work together. But if you like, actually go and talk to them, they’re like, we hate each other just as much.

Simone Collins: If not even more, if not even more. People’s friend of Judea again.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, okay. You get, you get that problem there. Mm-hmm. So how do you get then sort of homeostatic multicultural societies, right? Mm-hmm. Well, I think that British Empire at its height exemplified homeostatic multicultural society.

Okay. How so? Which is to say that you integrate. Other cultures, but you integrate them with specific roles, so everyone in that culture still suffers if they do not perform their role. You know, with, with, with, with fidelity. Okay. And with integrity. So the British Empire did this very well with groups like [00:09:00] Indians where they would put Indians into high position sort of bureaucratic roles especially when they were ruling over other ethnic groups within a region or something like that.

And it’s a, it’s a very effective way to, to roll things out because if those Indians acted in a way that was counter to the larger British Empire’s interests, then they knew that the empire itself would trust all Indians less and work with all Indians less. Right, right. Yeah. So they are ultimately hurting their own group which within our own society is interesting that it’s seen as like a bad thing.

If you’re like, well, you know, I am judging. Ex cultural group based on my historic interactions with members of ex cultural group, right? Like I have built a pattern of predictive behavior off of those interactions. And because of that pattern of predictive behavior, I expect X and y from that group well.

That actually allowed for multiculturalism to work, ironically, that that form of what we today [00:10:00] would call prejudice what it allowed for was for there to be actual in-group consequences to breaking with a cultural, multicultural system. Okay, great. So, so we’re there. Now we’re gonna go to a, a. To where we are right now in history.

So if you look across a number of extremely high trust countries across Europe, for example Canada would be another good example of a very high trust society that it’s led in, in extremely high amounts of immigrants and was following fertility rates. They sort of need to, to maintain any sort of irrelevance.

So I can understand why politicians. Feel the need to, but it’s not really gonna work out for them if the immigrants are taking more money than they’re putting into the system. But that’s a whole other thing. But I can see why they’re thinking, oh, like we have to, right? But you’ve also got the mandate of the urban monoculture, you know, more diversity.

More diversity, more diversity, always better. So you’re like, if they were a chef, the more ingredients they put on your meal, the better that meal is. Anyway, so they bring in a lot of people into their [00:11:00] extremely high trust societies that had evolved alongside much more cultural homogeneity. Mm.

Historically speaking. And not a lot of out groups living among them. Right. And when out groups lived among them. Well, we’ll get to that in a second. ‘cause that was actually a very interesting side point that this helped me better understand. Specifically, it helped me better understand why pogroms happened in the first place eg the mass exploration of e ex removal of, of, of Jewish people from midi medieval kingdoms, because it, it seemed weird to me that that would so frequently happen,

Simone Collins: expulsion.

Malcolm Collins: Expulsion. Yeah. So we’ll get to that in a second. And it, it also opened up a blind spot for me why I couldn’t see why so many groups were so hostile to groups that specialized in being minority populations historically. But we’ll get to that in just a second too. Okay. So, to keep going here, you had these extremely high trust societies and they begin to let in.

Large amounts [00:12:00] of people who had sort of the two things that are the most caustic to a high-trust society. One is extreme in-group preferences. If your society evolved to not have to deal with outside group, that have in-group preferences you’re going to really struggle competing against those groups once they’re in your country.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. And this is what you could say we’re having with like Indian immigrants in the United States right now. Right. Is you do see an like verifiable ingroup preference within Indians within hiring in tech jobs.

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So one you have, if, if you are not acting with ingroup preference and another group is acting with ingroup preference.

Yeah. Eventually the group that is acting with ingroup preference is gonna take over. Yeah. Dominating. The decision making positions of capacity and ends up being able to like, okay, so suppose you have a, a, a pool where you’ve got 35, let’s say 33 pre. So a third of the population has, has this in-group preference.

Two thirds of the population don’t. And you [00:13:00] are randomly hiring. And people with the in-group preference have a. 50% higher probability of hiring somebody was in their in-group, while people without the in-group preference have a 50 50 chance of hiring somebody. Mm-hmm. Eventually, all of the senior positions just statistically end up being controlled by the population with the in-group preference.

Okay, so great in group preferences here. So, so this explains where, where you get one problem, but then the other problem is, is if you’re a high trust society and you’re inviting in a lot of people who are from low trust societies because these people simply. Will not care about your rules or your ways of doing things.

And they might even be operating off of a completely different cultural perspective. A great example of this could be there was a survey done that showed 46% of Muslims in the UK think that you know, religious Muslim law should come before British law, and I think it was 36% thought that the country should be run under Sharia law if they, they had.

Like if they had a controlling phone. Mm-hmm. And you have a multiple Muslim [00:14:00] in peace. It’s just their entire job is pushing a Muslim cultural objective, right? Mm-hmm. I was, I was saying you know, I, we went to, to some, some neighborhoods we used to visit in London recently. And, you know, I felt like I had to, you know, go incognito to fit in.

Speaker 3: Jihad. Hu Haka. Shepa Shepa. Aala. Oh de de.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway, anyway, hold on. I’m, I’m getting there. This, this actually isn’t going to go entirely in the direction that most people think. Now, the thing that made me blind to a lot of this, okay, yeah. Because I think a lot of other people saw this, but struggled to articulate.

What was happening outside of, I just don’t want this other population here. It, it, it has nothing to do exactly with the [00:15:00] nature of the quote unquote other population. It would be just as much of a problem if a, a large number of you know. White Protestants moved to Korea and had a strong in-group preference in terms of hiring, right?

You assuming the country itself didn’t have its own biases, but they do have biases when you’re there, but that’s a whole different thing. The point being is, is it is they focused when they were looking at the things that were annoying them about. Say immigrant populations and stuff like this they focused on the ways that those populations were different from themselves instead of just pointing out, we built a society because it has large social safety nets that assumed high trust and no in-group preferences, and now we’re being.

Out competed or sort of screwed over because we are still raised with these viewpoints. Hmm. And we struggle to break for them. And then this is where it comes to like the whole thing where I realized I had a giant blind spot. So my giant blind spot [00:16:00] came from this. I as I’ve often mentioned before as range did like a mix of the, the Puritan tradition and the greater Appalachian backwards tradition cultures that were descended from that.

And again, I keep saying it really matters. It really matters what group you were raised in, because for me being raised in this tradition, and as I pointed out, you have things like, like Jack Tails that basically show the morality that was taught to me as a kid, right? In the Jack Tails a, a good example.

Rather than just go over jack tails that like Jack in the Beanstalk is one derivation of, but there’s many is it’s a person with low power using cunning to, often without provocation screw over Rob, murder somebody with more power than them who is a intruding on their territory or otherwise thinks they’re better than them.

And a great example of a, a cartoon that everyone is familiar with is Bugs Bunny. So this was done by Tex Avery, who grew up right next to where I grew up. You know, same cultural tradition. This is what I [00:17:00] was taught and grew up aspiring to be when it comes to like, my hero archetypes.

Simone Collins: I never thought about it, but Bugs Bunny released an extension of the Jack Tails.

That’s crazy. Never put that together before.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. If you, and, and this is why I think it’s useful to look at something like Bugs Bunny, because if you grew up inundated in the culture of Bugs Bunny. I I, if you didn’t grow up in that culture, if you have no reference to that from your childhood, you would watch a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Especially if you grew up in a culture with deontological high deontological, ethics and high trust, and you’d be like, that bunny is evil.

That that bunny is like an actual demon, like. He, he, he often unprovoked just likes to ruin other people’s lives. He loves playing tricks on people every way that he wins. It’s always some, you know, cunning.

Simone Collins: Well, to be fair, it’s typically about Bugs Bunny Outsmarting. Elmer Fudd, who is [00:18:00] a hunter who wants to kill him.

Malcolm Collins: Well, Elmer Fud. Is there anything wrong with hunting rabbits? Like Elmer is not rabbits. He hunts rabbits. Elmer Fudd is doing what Elmer Fudd does, and that’s actually a really important thing about the morality that bugs money into. My gosh, it’s also

Simone Collins: a very ableist cartoon, isn’t it?

Malcolm Collins: What? In what way? He has

Simone Collins: a speech impediment.

Malcolm Collins: Elmer fud true. No, but the the point of Elmer Fudd is Elmer Fudd is not an evil because Elmer Fudd is a bad person. Elmer Fudd is a human hunter hunting bunnies and ducks. Very few people who grew up within the back, especially if you’re growing up, he’s not even hunting

Simone Collins: big game.

Malcolm Collins: No, he’s not even hunting.

Big game. He’s like hunting. Species he’s hunting. Literally like the two things you would care about. Hunting the absolute least. Yeah. The

Simone Collins: only step down from that is squirrels,

Malcolm Collins: especially if you’re from a like rural Texas tradition, [00:19:00] right? Yeah. Like, Elmer Fudd. He is not evil. He is just a person with a different moral framework than Bug’s Bunny that has had the misfortune of having his world and his world framework conflict with Bug’s Bunny’s world in Bugs Bunny’s world

And so when people see me do something morally speaking, like using the system to my advantage, and they’re like, where as a kid were you inundated with this moral perspective that you should attempt to use the bureaucracy’s pointless rules to your advantage if you can.

Speaker 4: Got you. Weit Stew. You

look, doc, are you looking for trouble? I’m not a stew in Webit. I’m a flicker in Webit. WY in Webit. Have you got a WY in Webit license? Well, no.

Malcolm Collins: , so the thing about. [00:20:00] Elmer fud and, and, and this, that makes it, I think so clear in terms of a cultural message is when people see me you know, like, I like playing these games and I have liked, it’s been the way I have associated with what it means to be a hero my entire life.

People will be like, oh, don’t you hate, like, constantly playing these games with the press. Where, you know, you invite them over and you, oh, trick them into making themselves look foolish. Oh gosh, it this kind of bugs funny. It’s like, no, that’s exactly the, the game I want to be playing. Right? Like, that’s the bug funny game you take, Ellen, this person who thinks that they’re more sophisticated and more educated and and better than you and know the right way of doing things compared to you.

And they come in and you nothing but a club like was Bug’s Bunny. Always acts perfectly nice while he’s effing the person over.

Speaker 5: Just look at your fingernails. My, I’ll bet you monsters lead interesting lives. I [00:21:00] said to my girlfriend just the other day, gee, I’ll bet monsters are interesting. I said, the places you must go and the things you must see my stars and I’ll bet you meet. A lot of interesting people do. I’m always interested in meeting interesting people.

Now let’s dip our patties in the water. Wow.

And I should note here, this is part of why it hits me so lightly when people are like, oh, Malcolm, you know, you look feminine or you look queer in videos and stuff like that. The cultural heroes of masculinity that my culture teaches. Adopt that all the time when they’re effing people over, if it can be useful in their larger goal.

Uh, in addition to that, and you’ll notice at the end of both this and the Elmer Fuds video is both of the victims are portrayed sympathetically. Like these are not people, um, who are, you know, mean or cruel.

Malcolm Collins: He [00:22:00] doesn’t actually have any particular malice, and people can see this when I talk about groups that I have competition with, which makes me sound very different from I think the, the mini groups that are, take the deontological high trust view, right?

You in, in their worldview when someone’s an enemy, you know, you hate them. You know, when you’re, when you’re antagonistic to somebody. You hate them. Right. But from this cultural perspective, you never really hate anyone. You’re never really, they’re just doing their thing because that’s who they are. Yeah.

The reporters are acting in the way that they are. For the same reason Elmer Fudd hunts rabbits, it’s what he does. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. So I, I don’t even need to like question what I’m doing with him. It’s part of the game that is life, and that is sort of the civilizational struggle. Yeah. Don’t

Simone Collins: hate the players, hate the game.

And if you hate the game and you really hate it that much, then change the game. Yes. Like don’t, you cannot change the, the players like in, in a system that incentivizes people to behave a certain way. [00:23:00] You cannot blame the people for being thusly incentivized.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly.

And the reason why. Well, and so there’s two core points here.

The reason why the Greater Abolition region adapted this cultural perspective. Was because they never really ruled any of their own regions. They, there was always some other group that usually had more money than them, more political control and was always pushing ‘em around. Right? Sure. And so they would sometimes like with the God, what was that movement called?

The,

Simone Collins: what description group?

Malcolm Collins: No, it was a, it was a counter government movement in the United States where they basically created an alternate law system and police system that, that they ran in the greater Appalachian region. Oh, really? Because they just didn’t trust the other governments. To the regulators the other people.

Huh? What operate for them? Maybe we,

Simone Collins: I’ve not heard of them. So maybe an episode on that is warranted.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So when, when they, when they do [00:24:00] trust systems, it’s like, okay, well, we’ll build it ourselves, you know? But they, they were the type of people who historically would use alcohol instead of currency.

It’s like their main currency and stuff like that, that was well known in this region. But the, the point being is they had a big reason to be distrustful and to have these sorts of stories. Because if a tax man was coming into town, he was coming in to screw you over, right? Mm-hmm. If the government was coming into town, they were coming in to screw you over.

Some big MTY muck. Richie Rich was coming into town. They were coming in to screw you over, right? And so there was a reason for that, but because of this cultural perspective that I was raised with, it has made me uniquely blind. To the toil and, and, and strife of people who were raised in high trusts cultural traditions.

Mm-hmm. Especially high trust because you can have a deontological moral framework in a high trust cultural tradition. You really cannot have a deontological framework in a low trusts cultural tradition. They just never go together. Yeah. And so in the same way, it didn’t occur to me ever in [00:25:00] my childhood to ask why is Bugs Bunny evil?

Right? Like. When people point out X group has come into our country and now they’re screwing us over. And my response was, well, but you let them in and you created the rule system in a way that incentivized them, screwing you over. Mm-hmm. Right. Like that to me, I was like, that’s always allowed. Like nepotism is always allowed.

Of course. You know, you, you, you act in that way towards people who, you know, you have more values in language. Right, right. Like, yeah. And, and of course it’s, it’s because if you come from a clan based culture, it’s a gradient to nepotism. You know, the highest degree of nepotism may be to people within my clan, but then other clans that are like mines.

We may, you know, ally for short periods of time or whatever, right? Like, that’s, that’s the way I would see it, right? Like, okay, our interests align. Well, this gets to me with, with other groups where people will say, can you believe that the joos are doing x? Or y. Mm-hmm. And coming [00:26:00] from this perspective, I was just like, I mean, of course like they’re playing.

Of course. Yeah. Like when, when, how can this stop you? Something? Can you believe that XJOO supports Israel over the United States? And I was like. It’s their religion, it’s their culture. Like of course, see, I, I support my own culture over the United States. More broadly, I support the United States. But yeah, of course I support my own cultural subgroup over the, the interest of like, the idea that I would sublimate that to the United States is just.

Frankly baffling idea, right? Like, it, it, it, it

Simone Collins: recalls well, basically, nobody does that, which I think is interesting on the, on the progressive side. As, as we’ve covered in that episode on sort of how different political alignments tend to identify. Especially white progressives tend to elevate. Anyone who’s not them, [00:27:00] basically like, the, the higher priorities are the furthest away groups, whereas with the conservative group political alignments, there’s more, the highest focus is put on your most inner circle, like your family, and then sort of outward from there.

But like the, the heat map goes inward, whereas there’s more. Internalized hatred of your own ingroup among, especially white progressives. So yeah, I, I, I don’t think there’s like a middle ground where it’s like, well, I don’t prioritize my family, I prioritize America. Like, it’s never like a middle ring.

It’s either like the outermost ring like. People in Gaza who would otherwise throw me off a roof. Or it’s, you know, my family first, then my community, then, you know, outward from there, you know? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, but I, Simone, I, I think you’re blind to the point I’m making here.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: There are. Cultural groups that genuinely think that it’s like the country [00:28:00] first, right?

And they think this because, and I’m gonna explain to you why, because you, if you understand, you know, our people’s history, it makes sense to you why that would seem so absurd to us on face value.

Also consider a group that is used to being a minority because very few groups specialize in being a minority. Two of the groups that do are the Ramani or gypsies and Jews. , Obviously they feel very different niches as minorities. , But if you are used to being a minority population within a region and your culture.

Like had evolutionary pressure because the evolutionary pressure doesn’t just act on our biology, it acts on our culture. , The cultures that, , reproduce themselves or resist the, , you know, threats around them more are gonna, , proliferate at higher rates. So if you are a culture, , that is, , used to being a minority historically speaking, , you’re not going to trust random government rules or laws or anything like that.

You’re going to follow them where it’s [00:29:00] convenient, but no, you may need to bugger out if need be. , And this boast explains the, you know, Romani because they, they take a perspective like this, but. To an extent, it helps explain to me something I hadn’t understood at all before, which is why you would have something like pogroms regularly.

Historically, speaking of Jewish people who generally help a country economically, , and that is just that if you are going for this. Extremely uniform, high-trust, cultural position. A population like this is going to become a problem for you.

Also, this helps explaining to me cultures I’ve always had a unique connection with. Like why would I. Disproportionately, I’ve mentioned this in other videos historically, I have disproportionately dated Jewish and Romani girls, , with specifically Romani girls. Finding me like intensely attractive in a way that I’ve always found very surprising.

But it makes [00:30:00] sense when you consider, I was thinking of the Stephen Mullany debate, right? And if you look at him, he looks like this big tough guy. But he goes on to the debate about how he’s never once gotten in a real fight. And I remember I was baffled by this. I used to get in fights all the time and I realize, oh, you know, you’re an antagonistic to the government cultural group.

Somebody who gets in fights all the time. That might be the type of thing that appeals to this cultural subset of, of girl. They might be like, oh, that’s, that’s what’s hot to me. And rather than the performative yet. Unrealized, I guess I’d call it form of masculinity that Steven Mullan presents.

Malcolm Collins: Now suppose you’re another group. Suppose you’re a very high trust group and you have been living in a region.

Where really only people like you have lived historically, people with your same high-trust values. You, you see this in like Sweden or Norway or something like this. And anybody who acted outside of this high-trust ecosystem or in any way [00:31:00] tried to undermine it would be severely punished by everyone else who was a member of this high-trust ecosystem.

Mm-hmm. And your family has lived in an environment like this. For hundreds of years. Right. So you, so this, this cultural tradition has a long time to sort of en mesh with your family’s culture.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And, the the reason this tradition worked and, and, and then for you as somebody who grew up like this, when somebody was like, live for the state, like live for King and Country or whatever, right?

Like it actually made sense to you for King and Country was for other people like you, you didn’t have this tragedy of the commons issue, right? Where. I don’t take, I’ve used this analogy before, but it’s important to, to explain if you have a bunch of different cultures in a region like say South Africa and all of the cultures are sort of guarding a big pile of money, you could say.

And so you have that in one, one room where it’s a bunch of different people from different families that all hate each other with their backs to each other, [00:32:00] guarding a pile of money. Right.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And then in another room, it’s a one family, right. Where they all have their backs to a pile of money and they’re guarding that money.

Right. Yeah. Well. They’re not gonna, the family, you would expect them not to steal from that pile of money because this pile of money is functionally for like them and their descendants. In the room where it’s a bunch of people who hate each other with all their backs to each other, they functionally lose out for every dollar.

They don’t grift because somebody. Else is going to grift that money. Yeah. Okay. So you for centuries have benefited from and, and the reason why high-trust environments benefit from more deontological, moral framings is because you, you basically, what, what a deontological moral framing is.

More largely is it’s a set of rules and laws that you follow. Not really because you think it’s moral, but because you think if everybody follows a set of rule and laws like this, society more broadly will act more morally.

Simone Collins: [00:33:00] Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Like if, if we can get a society where everybody follows these rules then overall society acts more morally, right?

Simone Collins: Mm. Okay. So it’s. Oh this, this very much reminds me of really annoying university classes where they make you play the prisoner’s dilemma. And it’s like, well, but if we all just agreed to, you know, not snitch, then we’ll all you know, have the best possible outcome. But then always someone snitches.

Malcolm Collins: No, but Simone, the problem is, is you can all agree to not snitch if you’re from a high trusts environment.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Except that, that at least university, the problem is high trust. The problem

Malcolm Collins: is, is that as soon as you introduce multiculturalism into a system

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And that multiculturalism comes with people from low trust environments. Mm-hmm. Or people who might have their own group’s interests at heart over the interest of the collective.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Now all of a sudden this deontological framing is actively destructive.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Or I guess worded differently if people [00:34:00] have interests that are not aligned with the interest of the collective. Like if, if I do not benefit from, from the benefit of anyone else, it definitely makes sense to exploit the prisoners trauma.

Malcolm Collins: So we’re gonna get into a few scenarios here. So one is, I would say even within deontological systems. Mm-hmm. It is always expected. Deontological morality is always slave morality. It is always the morality of the follower, never the ruler. Not only

Simone Collins: fair,

Malcolm Collins: so I’ll explain why I say this. There’s no

Simone Collins: king who has become king.

Right by, by playing by the rules. And following. Yeah. No, no, no. So I’ll explain

Malcolm Collins: you one, are less likely to achieve power if you act deontological. Yeah. If you’re basically hampering yourself with a bunch of rules that are gonna make you less likely to end up with a position of power. Yeah. But more than that, you cannot.

Act as a leader morally, if you follow deontological rules. Because deontological rules are ultimately when they’re [00:35:00] approached from an individualist level, like why you actually follow them. And so you can maintain a certain self framing. I’ll explain what I mean by this Suppose. A king is a deontologist, okay?

And he is at war with another country. Okay? And he now needs to explain to his troops why they’re not setting up traps for the enemy. Why they’re not doing ambushes for the enemy while they’re dying twice. A rate. Why X person’s son had to die. Why X person’s husband had to die. Mm-hmm. Why X person’s father had to die.

And he is like, well, I did it so I could maintain my moral position. Right? By never ordering them to set up an ambush by never ordering them to make a a, a faint by never ordering them. Right? And eventually people are just gonna be like, you are not acting morally and fact, you’re acting in a way that is fundamentally morally selfish because you’re putting the cost [00:36:00] of your own moral high ground on your subordinates.

And that’s why leaders can never, if they’re acting morally, be deontological in their perspective. And this is understood by deontological people more broadly. They expect, they, they, this is, we have an episode, an early episode on this where we describe like Knight Logic and King Logic, right? Oh yeah. And Knight are deontological.

Knights follow the orders. They do what they’re told, right? Mm-hmm. You know, and you can be a just knight, right? But you don’t want the king. Who’s gonna give you an order that’s gonna lead you to die for nothing? Right? Like the deontological framing works because you’re working under a machine that’s still it.

Basically, deontological moral frameworks turn you into a component, a cog in a wider system.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And you’ll be okay as long as the machine protects you

Malcolm Collins: well, as long as the person running the machine. Isn’t deontological because then they’re just to cog themselves and they’re not actually thinking, [00:37:00] okay, how do I actually make this ecosystem work?

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: But more broadly, you come from an environment where you don’t have this, right. And you look at this and you’re like, that seems really stupid. And it was so obvious to me from the beginning that all of this was really stupid and not gonna work. You know, like, oh, you, you can’t do that. You can’t do that from where we are today.

That’s like a weird utopian idea, like the Nick Fuentes plan or whatever, right? I’m like, that’s. It. How do you get to where you want to be from? Where it makes like genuinely no sense to me. You know, and as well as his own personal life decisions, you know, not having a partner, not having kids, et cetera.

I’m like, why? Why? If your goal is a group was, was, was an ideology like yours winning, why? Do you tell your followers to not get wise because then they leave the group and it’s like, oh, you’re trying to change the Overton window within your lifetime, which you’re having some success doing, but it’s not your own group that’s benefiting from this because your own group has an exceptionally low fertility rate.

And I don’t just mean the groupers. I mean, American Catholics who, who aren’t Latin immigrants more broadly, they have one of the [00:38:00] lowest fertility rates of any cultural religious system in the United States. But you can see our other videos on that. The point being. It is not for him, right? Like from his perspective, if I follow all the rules of morality, my group is somehow going to win, right?

The problem is, is you can understand why he thinks that if his ancestors generation after generation, after generation grew up in an ecosystem where that was true. Whereas our ancestors did not. Right. So like, it, it just comes as obvious to us that this doesn’t work. Now this is where the multiculturalism failing gets really interesting to me because I accept that you might be able to build a better society if you had cultural homogeneity or cultural homeostasis was in that society, and you could build more social systems and you wouldn’t have to deal with all these externalities.

Sure. The problem being. Is that society is impossible to recreate. Mm. With the existing world [00:39:00] framework and, well, it’s not impossible to create, you could do it at the micro level, but it’s impossible to create from the nation states that we have today.

Simone Collins: Right. Like you could create it within a charter city and certainly you can create it on the family level and possibly within like a Catholic community.

Yes. Or gated community of any sort. And, and there are many like. Absolutely. There are many Orthodox Jewish communities that works this way. Probably of like certainly Catholic communities that exist in geographically constrained areas, Mormon communities, et cetera.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Like within any of these communities you can do that.

Yeah. You can say, yeah, we’re going to oh, Amish

Simone Collins: communities for short Mennonite communities. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah. You, you can make this work, right? Mm-hmm. But you’re, you’re typically working as a sub faction within a wider government’s ecosystem. Yeah. However, if you attempt to and the reason I say it doesn’t work, there’s so suppose you achieved everything.

The, the furthest, most, like w nationalists wanted to [00:40:00] achieve, right? Mm-hmm. And they got everybody who didn’t look like them out of the country and they’re like, okay, we have achieved a country. That is only white people.

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. Like only white people or only Catholics. Or Only Protestants.

Yeah. Okay. No, no. You

Malcolm Collins: could probably do it if it was only like one subgroup of Catholics. The, the broader point being is that even if you were like, okay, now we’re only white people in the United States and we’ve gotten everyone else outta the country, which to do. I, I’m not even talking about like the ethics of doing this, the logistics of doing this are nonsensical.

It would be difficult, it would be one of the greatest financial undertakings in human history. But even if you accomplished doing this. Mm-hmm. Right. Which, which? I would also say it’s a stupid thing to fight for because you’re never gonna win on this issue politically. Mm-hmm. Like it’s just not gonna happen.

Right. Like Trump winning is basically as close as you can get to this. And, and, and he’s, he’s really [00:41:00] trying pretty hard to just get out illegal immigrants. And even then it’s, it’s. You know, merely stemming the tide of immigration, right? Like it’s, it’s not functionally doing what, what you would hope.

So, one, I think it’s the stupid thing to try for, because it’s not gonna happen. It’s like a, a fantasy dream, right? But even if it did happen, the point I’m making is that among the white Americans who have been in this country since the nation’s found. Unlike groups like Nick Fuentes groups, the Catholic groups, which I point out were not really that president in America at the founding of the country.

Mm-hmm. I, I pointed this out a lot recently. They made up around 2% of the population only around 10% of the Catholic state, Maryland. They could vote in only two of the colonies, which is less than half the number of colonies that the Jews could vote in. So, the point being is like, he’s not even like an ancestral group to the United States, and he wants to turn the United States into his group.

But the point being is I’m an ancestral group to the United States. Yeah. And this ancestral group to the United States. Never [00:42:00] was going to be able to work at scale mixed in because they, they were a low trust group mixed in with other communities, right? Mm-hmm. And yet white Christians, right?

Like, this, this, this stuff was just intuitive to us to begin with. So of course you try your best to, to win whatever. And, and I point out that this isn’t, like my group isn’t some like weird. Deviant grew. I mean, okay. They were seen as weird and deviant by many Americans in history, but they’re also core to Americana tradition.

Yeah. Very few things are more core to Americana tradition than bugs. A bunny as an archetypal hero.

Simone Collins: Fair,

Malcolm Collins: right? Like this is baked in to the soul of what America is, which initially was. A multicultural system where the cultures self-segregated. The backwards people lived in their region. The Puritans lived in their region.

The Quakers lived in their region. The Cavaliers lived in their region, the western [00:43:00] states lived in their region. You know, you, you would have each region that would largely, and if you wanted to, if you’re like, I want to be more like. Live the lifestyle or I personally feel more like a Puritan, or I personally feel more like a, you would go, go, go, go move to that region, marry to that culture, and live that lifestyle, right?

Like, but the problem is, is that the way that jobs work with, in. A place like the United States today and the way travel works, whether it’s the international highway system, much less planes means we’re all basically too jumbled up for the high-trust deontological system to ever be reinstated in any meaningful context.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: If it. Looked, and I, and I will tell you this, if it looked like somebody was reinstating a system like this, what they were actually probably doing is creating a system that benefits their in-group and subjugates everyone else by getting them to like idiots. Follow the rules. Yeah. Fair. I, a great example of this could be the, the and this is again why like.

When I [00:44:00] see the Jewish candidate running for office against a Somalian candidate and he goes to all the other Somalian groups and gets them to hate that Somalian candidate because of like tribal fights that they had had with that group that he was from. I’m like, yay. Like what? What a cool, like Bugs Bunny move.

Like that’s so subversive and neat and like you really played that system to your advantage, right? Whereas another person might see that and be like. Hey, that’s not fair. You can’t do that. You know? And, and but he’s, when he’s out there talking to them, he’s not saying, you know, helped me the Jew, like, run everything.

He’s saying, don’t you remember how much you hate these other guys? In many ways, this is what, so when, when you, when you have the, the thinkers and stuff like that come out to you. And give you that whole, don’t, you don’t look at these other guys. You should be scared [00:45:00] of them. The, these, these groups can, they’re, they’re often playing to a real fear.

Like these Somalian groups really did hate each other. Like they did have a reason to fear each other. They did screw each other over intergenerationally. Certain immigrant populations may be an actual threat, but keep in mind that people can use this to manipulate you. And, and they often do because the people who are using it while, while being strictly morally adherent are going to have a harder time rising through the ranks because they have to be more nuanced in how they put things because they have to be less, you know.

So you got all that. But then the second thing is, is like where do we go from here? Right? Like where, where do I go from this? And I guess at the point that I’m making more broadly is I have moved to accept that multiculturalism genuinely did screw over a lot of high trust societies that had sort of culturally evolved, you know, vis-a-vis their neighbors.

To, to be deontological often and to be you know, like, oh, we’re, we’re gonna treat [00:46:00] everyone fairly. We’re gonna treat everyone equally. We’re going to accept everyone, which was easy to do because they all have the same value system. And you see this. And, and, and, and so I accept that that really did break things in a number of places.

Like I, I, I think that things were like, pretty great example is like Britain and Germany, like those are two places, the right things, things were really sort of broken by this. And they’re not really functioning right now. And people aren’t really sure what to do next, right? Like, it’s, it’s, it’s a very like touch and go thing.

We’ll get to this in other episodes, but the. I, I can say all of this and then still say to the person who walks out there and says, well, we need to go back into you know, a homogenous environment and we need to you know, go back to these, these rules and these deontological ethics and everything like that.

I would just like be like. But that’s stupid on so many fronts at this point. One, you don’t have the political support to succeed with an objective like that, as I’ve already said, like [00:47:00] even if it would work, even if you achieve this miraculous societal shift, it probably won’t achieve the outcome that you think it’s going to achieve.

And finally, and most importantly, therefore it makes no sense to pursue that in the moment with your own actions.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: This has been where people have said stuff to me like there were a science scrollers, or somebody got mad to me. ‘cause I was like, oh yeah, like. If Disney makes a game or something that I don’t like, I’m gonna pirate it.

Right? Like, and, and they’re like, well, that’s stealing. And I go, well, if I don’t do that, then I’m giving my money to Disney. And I know the things that Disney does with that money are evil from my perspective, right? Like, this is the difference between being a Deontologist and Consequentialist. And so I say.

No, I won’t give Disney my money because that’s a, that’s an evil thing to do, right? Like that leads to evil things was in society, right? Like, whereas the Deontologist is like, no, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll just play by the rules. And in a society where everyone is being a fair and good actor, everyone playing by the rules works.[00:48:00]

But in a society where a company like Disney is captured by bad actors, that’s a really bad thing to do. Right? Mm-hmm. So this is what I’m talking about. Well, where in terms of like every day individual decisions that you are making as an individual can cause like horrific things to happen. If you look at the things that Disney has done as a company recently like they, they, they seem to believe that their goal is to sort of.

I almost wanna say plow western civilization, like aerated a bit. Tear it up at the root. I was reading an article recently I thought was really good where it said Disney stories have moved from being around young people discovering romance to young people discovering trauma. Well, and,

Simone Collins: and, and like specifically dealing with like the trauma of, of their parents and being raised by their parents.

Yeah. Like the shame of their families.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so, what I’ve come to realize more is in the same way that I struggled to [00:49:00] understand why I should be complaining about some group having in-group preferences or some group doing what they need to, to outcompete other groups, you know, other people.

Like, like I saw that happening historically and I was like, of course, like player knows game. Like, you guys, you did a great job. I could learn something from you. Mm-hmm. Other groups in the same way that I had trouble seeing things from their perspective, probably equally have trouble seeing it from this perspective.

Simone Collins: Mm. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And it’s just because how they were raised and the heroes they were told about as a kid and everything like that. Yeah. But the problem is from my perspective is people can say, well then why don’t you have more compassion for those groups and what they’re going through? Mm-hmm. And I guess it’s like the frog and the scorpion, right?

Like, yeah, it is my nature. I’m still who I am. I, I can look at your groups and be like, objectively, it’s sad. And I’ve tried to like do videos to help groups like that, like to try to help Catholic groups where I’m like, okay, your fertility rates are really low. Here’s what you could do here, here’s what you could do [00:50:00] here.

But, but at the end of the day the, the, the, the, the, any group that can’t adapt to the new multicultural environment that we’re in is going to die out. Mm-hmm. Any group that continues to try to be high trust to outsiders or in an environment in which outsiders are competing, like say a school system where you can get extra time or not get extra time which is what we were talking about in the episode that, that made me realize this.

Is eventually going to die out. You’re not just gonna die out. It is die out from a million pricks. It’s not just the exam, it’s Disney bleeding you. Mm-hmm. It’s other groups bleeding you. It’s everyone. Well, it’s,

Simone Collins: it’s, it’s, yeah. You, you can’t, you need to take responsibility for your own protection and to like shake your fist at the world and scream because other people are quote unquote cheating.

When in reality you are just not recognizing the real rules of the real game and [00:51:00] pretending that the game is some idealized lie that everyone knows isn’t true. That’s just you honestly coping in the No, it is,

Malcolm Collins: it is honestly co it’s, it’s playing. Pokemon was no luck.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. It’s, it’s,

Simone Collins: it’s, it’s, it’s a version. It’s real weaponized incompetence, I would say. And it’s not working. Like in the end, you’re, you’re gonna end up screwed. So just stop. Stop. It’s embarrassing.

Malcolm Collins: It’s not just you, it’s you and your family and your tradition are going to end up white from the page of the few. Yeah. And

Simone Collins: that’s not fair to them.

It’s not fair to you. It’s not fair to your legacy. Like stop and start winning the game please. From of God, like we care about you too much for that

Malcolm Collins: is. You had a cultural strategy that worked in the old ecosystem

Simone Collins: and it doesn’t work anymore, so stop.

Malcolm Collins: And it doesn’t work anymore. And there are invasive species and invasive species are going to, like right now, they are actively outcompeting you and I and I go and I talk.

To you, the dodo bird. And I’m like, you’re, you’re getting demolished here. You need the word yes. So, so the choice [00:52:00] is,

Simone Collins: I’m just gonna put it more succinctly so we can wrap up. Okay. You can either become competitive or you can get wiped up. That’s it. I love you very much, Malcolm. Love you too. Thank you for sharing this with us.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. I’ve been looking forward to this one, Simone. So, you read the comments, obviously a lot of people probably pissed at me being like, yeah, just cheat the system. Like, why wouldn’t you?

Speaker 4: are you looking for trouble? I’m not a stew in Webit. I’m a flicker in Webit.

Simone Collins: Absolutely furious not happy at all, even remotely. You’re, you’re breaking the system. You can’t have, you know.

Mad, mad, angry, mad. You’re, yeah, this ruins everything. You’re ruining good systems like, but here’s the thing is I think they just fail to understand that the systems that they’re talking about are already broken. Meaning that the rules are inherently different. They’re playing by the rules of a [00:53:00] theoretical system.

That, you know, tho those rules would work if the system worked, but the system doesn’t work and you were, and the other cheaters are playing by the rules of the system as it is. Do you know what I mean? Like, it’s really stupid to play a game the way that like it would work in a C if it were designed differently.

When that’s still how it’s designed. Yeah, and I, I, that’s, that’s what I find annoying. It’s like they’re playing a version of, of like by, by certain poker rules when we’re, we’re playing by other poker rules and then they’re getting mad because they’re losing. And you understand that. That’s not how it is.

Malcolm Collins: The, the, these are like the actual rules. They’re like, yeah, they’re playing by a rule set that’s different by the rule set that everyone agreed upon at the beginning of the game. I,

Simone Collins: I agree that it’s unfair because what it’s, it’s kind of like it, it’s a game where, [00:54:00] oh, it’s, it’s like, they think we’re playing hide and seek and we’re really playing tag.

So someone’s standing there with their eyes wide open going, 1, 2, 3. And they’re like, wait, why aren’t you closing your eyes? You’re supposed to close your eyes. I can’t hide if you don’t close your eyes. And they’re like, yeah, we’re playing. Hide and seek. And the problem is that the system keeps saying, yes, we’re playing hide and seek.

Go hide. And then

Malcolm Collins: they see other people from other groups not running and hiding, and their parents are telling them it’s hide and seek uhhuh. And they’re like, but mom and dad told me it was hide and seek. And they said that if I won while playing by hide and seek rules, I’m gonna get an extra reward at the end of all this.

Exactly. And the reality is, is that no, there is no extra reward for playing by hide and seek rules.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because it’s, it is tag.

Malcolm Collins: I love your analogies here, but I will get started.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: good. Or actually, I’ll pour myself a cup first. Any other things you learned today or thought about today?

Simone Collins: I, I actually chose to [00:55:00] do my episode out learning on the new national security strategy, and I was just thinking about. How I wish that when I was in school that in my classes we talked about like, oh, you know, the government released a new national security strategy. Let’s talk about it. Instead of like, let’s discuss the basics of civics and

Malcolm Collins: like, is that what we’re gonna do with our kids?

We can do that with Octavian today. You know?

Simone Collins: Exactly. I was thinking like, this is why I’m excited about homeschooling our kids, assuming we don’t crash and burn because I, I would, I would have. Remembered so much more of what I was taught, if it were couched in things that mattered. For example, I would better remember the, the various like branches of government and how they function and how they work differently.

Like the judicial versus legislative branches versus executive branches, if they were couched in current events which. At least my school didn’t do it that way. Whereas right now, for example as, as we’re seeing play out in, in current news events, we’re seeing a [00:56:00] really great way to explain the system.

Like, well, the Trump administration’s trying to do this, and the courts are trying to block it. And, and that lays bare the way that the system is meant to function and how it may be poorly designed, which is a way more interesting way to learn about it. So anyway, it made me excited about it, and that’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot today.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: All

Simone Collins: right.

Malcolm Collins: I will get started here. Hmm.

Speaker 6: From the chives. You want me to put on the, so we’re doing chives here and then we’ve got Smoky Delicious Burmese. And did you eat some plastic steak? No. Gotta get those microplastics. I made it out. Good. Are you sure you didn’t eat the plastic? You’re gonna turn into a microplastic if you eat too many plastic.

I’m gonna slide this one on.[00:57:00]

Come on. That looks pretty good. Well, I mean, we’ll see, right? Maybe some of that honey sauce. I don’t know. We’ll see. Ooh, I like that crusty sound. What are you working on?

Hey, Octavian. Yeah. Did you do okay in school today? Yeah, I was good. I lost the tooth. You lost your tooth, did you? Did you get to keep it? I didn’t see ate it. Oh yeah. I So that’s fine by the way.

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