The Dangers of "Pop" Religion (Girl Defined Case Study)

Malcolm and Simone discuss the downfall of the Girl Defined sisters, who preached conservative Christian values but ended up disillusioned and unhappy. They argue this shows the risks of "pop religion" - churches promising secular pleasures rather than meaning. They say this led the sisters to see their unmet expectations as a betrayal. Simone and Malcolm advise religious communities to explain the emptiness of secular values rather than try to "out-compete" progressive culture. They believe this outrage marketing approach backfires by making congregants obsessed with what they're denying themselves.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm: When they're protecting their kids, you're not just protecting your kids from you know, if you're in a conservative religious family, you're not just protecting your kids from these, these secular influences. Right. You also need to watch out for pop Christianity.

The people who come in, it was their live, laugh, love signs. And Well, you know what I'm talking about, right? They, they are just, and they can be just as negatively seductive of your kid's expectations as any other group, which then leads them to turn against the family.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm: Hell, hello, Simone. So I walked in on my wife, Steve, when she's working, she likes to listen to stuff in the background. And one of the things that she loves to listen to is drama. She loves to listen to progressive like far progressive YouTubers comment. On conservative YouTubers or conservative personalities in [00:01:00] negative ways because she, I guess, fantasizes about one day they pick up us and the part

Simone: of me, I want to preemptively understand how people will critically view our.

Lifestyle and choices and stances. I think it's helpful to

Malcolm: understand that. And I saw one that really interested me because it was on people who even I used to be aware of. As girl defined. Yeah, I was like, oh, I remember these guys. These were the hot young people who were all about, you know, chastity and waiting till marriage for a guy and everything like that.

And and, and, you know, the sexualization of young women and how to fight against that. And. A lot of those are messages that, you know, actually resonated with me a lot. Yeah. I mean, they were, they were Fundy Christians and, and I identify with Fundy Christianness, you know, fighting back against the man in society today because they're definitely not the group in power right now.

But you know, when I was younger, as a lot, I was consuming their, their video as well from like early secular atheist YouTube, because that was like the big thing on YouTube, the atheist[00:02:00] whatever debate, and they were always ragging on Girl Defined, so I also got their perspective from that end back then, and people didn't really seem to have anything on them, not, not that, that I thought was super bad.

Back

Simone: in the day, you mean. Yeah. Back in the day, back in the day. It was just, how very dare they. Yeah. How

Malcolm: very dare you say women should live by conservative values. So anyway this documentary we'll, we'll post it here cause they go into like enormous depths. Their lives got sad, like really sad when I, when I follow, when you follow what happened to them afterwards and they got sad in a way that I wouldn't have.

predicted, but in hindsight makes perfect sense. And it really highlights a problem. You know, a lot of people, when they look at what we're doing and they're like, well, you can just go back to the old ways of doing things, right. And that will protect you because that used to work. But unfortunately we are dealing with memetic viruses that are even specialized at spreading within churches now.

And the [00:03:00] secular world can twist norms that you don't realize in a, in a way where you don't realize your norms have been twisted. And so you think you're following a traditional conservative way of doing things, but really. Your view of the world and what you should be aiming for has become so twisted that when you apply this old way to this new world, everything begins to fall apart.

And this is what we saw happen with them, and it was Desperately sad to watch.

We could have the crumbs, just the bare crumbs of, of love and intimacy Um, for both of us and then just be like pretending like that that, that that's That's great.

Malcolm: So the first thing I would say is, is the one who's still really on, on media and stuff like that. Her marriage just seems to be both

Simone: terrible. See, let's, let's be clear. So the girl to find started out is basically two sisters who then subsequently got married and then [00:04:00] subsequently adopted slash had kids.

The, the, the sister that he is referring to is Bethany Thiel.

Malcolm: Well, and so they in one scene they were talking about With her husband. They were joking that they get in five fights a day, but like they don't fight that much, you know.

We only have, like, a couple fights a day, right? Right.

Malcolm: That's just for people who are like trying to like metric how many fights you should be getting in with your partner How many a year do you think we get in Simone?

Simone: We don't get in fights. I Any I I try to shirk out of doing something that we all collectively need to do for the greater good and then get mad at myself. And then you, you know, obviously are like the angel on my shoulder.

Malcolm: And then, you know, I might scold you'd be like, Simone, you know, you need to do this.

Simone: Yeah. And I guess people could say that looks like a fight. But it's more just like me being a coward.

Malcolm: Yeah, I, I mean, that does happen. But I'd say that we don't really have like fight fights at all. [00:05:00] And they would be having five a day and they both look like. Like they have on animosity at each other there's some

Simone: tension where they

Malcolm: talk about each other They seem to have genuine animosity towards their

Simone: partner But I think this is one of the reason why people love to hate watch girl defined Associated videos in the beginning like at first people would hate watch because it seemed like the two sisters really hated each other And and now you hate watch because you seem it seems like Bethany and her husband

Malcolm: just the question is if she's following conservative values How did she end up, because these values existed for a long time to build strong relationships.

How did she end up in such a brittle and weak relationship? How did she end up with all of this animosity if she was following the rulebook? You know, and she made sacrifices to follow the rulebook. The other thing you see is she went from this, you know, women shouldn't have to work things, to now everything's a side hustle.

You know, because she felt unfulfilled. This was another area where she began to like, go back. And I actually don't think that this... This is due to a different problem, so we'll get to it. And then the [00:06:00] final thing that you keep noticing throughout all of this is she, and this actually does great at highlighting what the real problem and where she really failed was.

She spent her entire youth preaching to people that if you wait for marriage until having sex, like this whole chastity thing, if you don't sexualize women, you can achieve better sexual satisfaction. Then even you can, if you go live life like a secular person, if you go into secular society and you do all the secular things, you actually aren't enjoying sex that much.

Um, I'll just speak personally. I got to a point basically four years into our marriage where I just kind of hit a big wall of Disappointment, and, um, went to get counselling. Mostly, mostly thinking you should get counselling. I was mostly thinking, really, Bethany should get counselling.

Even if I were to ask, you would [00:07:00] say you were happy. Yeah. I was miserable. We both went and got counselling last year separately. We didn't do marriage counselling. I went, I, so I found, um... Which, which we should. Yeah, that would be really fun. We would both really enjoy that. So the exposure via Bethany's talking about and herself and our relationship, uh, is very exposing in that sense.

We're like not connecting even though we're like going through the motions and we need help with that. And so I Never claimed to be a sex expert. I am very open that we're learning and growing and that's why I'm constantly Recommending resources and pointing you to people that I trust that I've learned from that He's learned from

Simone: Yeah. In other words, like the, the true amazing sex experience is through like the sacrament of marital sex after complete chastity leading up to

Malcolm: it. Yes. And this is the core of where I think you can notice something which I'll call pop Christianity. But there's pop [00:08:00] Islam, there's pop Judaism, there's pop everything.

What they will do is they will tell you that they can out deliver the things that progressive society is entirely optimized around instead of telling you that you should not be optimizing around those things. So it's very clear to her is that she thought she was going to be rewarded when she got married was this amazing sexual experience that was just going to be as good as she had built up.

And you're like, well, we have like physically more struggles. We're like not connecting, even though we're like going through the motions. And we need help with that.

Malcolm: Over this entire period of self denial and then she's talking in some videos now where like well You know It's totally normal to imagine another guy's face on your husband while you're sleeping with him and a lot of women don't talk about this

when it comes to actual intimacy fantasizing about other men to be able to

On

Malcolm: So [00:09:00] is that something that

Simone: Oh, no, no, just the other day was like trying to imagine okay, if I did fantasize around, it's like someone who wasn't my husband who would it be?

And I was like, Oh, gross. I can't, I like literally can't, but I mean, yeah, for, for context. Yeah, she like seemed to be under the impression first that waiting for marriage would make this really amazing. The, what basically backfired with this culture is by, by selling this message that actually made this, she could otherwise be much more religiously aligned with religious values, person obsessed with progressive values, obsessed with hedonistic sex.

And this is demonstrated through we understand that this is an obsession of hers and this was a big deal for her because now she sells courses on intimacy, on sexuality. Both to post marriage and pre marriage women. All about

Malcolm: discovering... Pre marriage women now, by the way. But she's always, in the early days, was talking about how unsexually satisfied she was.

And that, that they didn't have good sexual relationship with her and her partner. [00:10:00] Yeah. And that, that shouldn't... From our perspective, even from our weird Christian, secular Christian culture we know that sex doesn't matter in a marriage. It, it, it, it doesn't. Not if you're living by a traditional value system.

There's more important things in life than sex. But because she bought into this, and you see this across with, with these pop religions. They will tell whatever secular society says it can offer you, it will say that my religion can actually offer it to you better. You see, this was Muslims that are like, actually, Islam is super feminist.

And if you join Islam, you can be even more empowered than you can be in secular society. And it's oh, sister, you are not doing Islam right. That is, that is very pop Islam. Or, you know, Christianity is actually all about sexual hedonism. And if you do Christianity right. You can be the most hedonistic, sexy

Simone: freak in the world.

Or just, or just fun. Yeah. All sorts of stuff that like, great. Okay. So now you've just oriented people. You've made them obsessed with something that isn't related to the [00:11:00] religious values at all. And they're not going to be happy. Well, and you

Malcolm: see this with and this is a problem I've definitely seen within the funding community is.

Feminist mindsets begun creeping in and normalizing themselves where they begin to see it not as men and women are different and we have different roles in the church, but they begin to see it as everyone's role is just sort of glorify the, the woman. Women in power is intrinsically good. And this can be really toxic for these communities when they then try to structure their relationships.

Now you can have cultural groups where women and men. are treated as if they aren't different at all and have exactly equal roles in a marriage. Right. But you can't do that and then follow the old rules of a cultural group where men and women were meant to be treated systemically differently, whether that's Islam or Christianity.

And [00:12:00] when you do that, you begin to get all sorts of conflicts in the relationship because The reason why this traditional model of relationship, now it's not the model we use for a relationship, but it is a traditional model of relationship, worked, is because the woman saw her role as unquestionably trying to make the man happy as possible.

But when you go to a relationship where you have fundamental relationship structures, and now the woman sees her role as trying to make her own life, As happy as possible and fulfilling as possible. And then the guy independently is trying to make his own life as happy, as independent as possible.

Yeah. And you're going to get inevitable conflict between those two individuals. Yeah. Because it is impossible that their goals are 100 percent aligned.

Simone: Meanwhile, they're completely ignoring serving God. Well, no, I think they're

Malcolm: trying to serve God in their own way. And I think one of the most toxic things that you will ever see, we've repeatedly seen this in modern.

relationships is a girl goes, Oh, actually I do serve the guy in every aspect of my relationship, except when God tells me [00:13:00] not to. That's convenient. So whenever you don't feel like it, basically you know, that's, that's a very easy

Simone: sort of that's, that's people, no, that's people living hedonistic lives where they try to tell themselves that they're serving God when clearly God is a front for their personal desires.

That's, I don't think that counts.

Malcolm: Well, well, it's very common in the, yeah,

Simone: that's common, but that's, that's, yeah, it's, it's also a

Malcolm: lie. The traditional structure would be the, the, the, within this extreme conservative version of Christianity is the woman spends her life every day asking, how can I make the man happier?

And the man spends his life every day asking, how can I make God happier? Yeah. More successful. She's saying, how can I help my man improve, be more successful, be better, better fulfill his role within God's plan. The man is asking how can I better fulfill my role within God's plan, but this fell apart.

They just thought I follow these traditional rules, like no sex until marriage. And then I get rewarded with all of these progressive goodies, all of these secular goodies [00:14:00] that the secular world is out there eating when you should have known that those goodies didn't matter. And this, this causes enormous pain long term in these communities.

And the question is, well, what do you do when you see this? It's you have to tell yourself one of two things. Either we're actually going to stick with the old ways of doing things, or when we reform one thing, we have to reform other things. You know, if we're now saying we're optimizing around sexual pleasure, well, then maybe you don't wait until marriage to have sex anymore, because that's not what you're offering anymore.

And there's religious communities that do all sorts of weird sex stuff. So you can go join them and they can still be, you know, Weird and conservative in other ways, the little sex cults, you know, this is a classic thing that actually in the United States throughout the US history, many Christian groups have done which is, there's one famous one.

I'm trying to remember a guy who tried to assassinate the president got kicked out of it because he joined thinking he'd get all this sex and then nobody wanted to have sex with him and then he got angry [00:15:00] at them. And so they kicked him out. Okay. Even if you join a sex cult, if you're a difficult person, you'll still be kicked out of here.

But anyway, this is you know, something that's existed for a long time. So you could go that route or you could say, well, sex doesn't matter. And then say, okay, so we're not re optimizing around that. If you do decide that it's important that men and women are exactly equal in a relationship and that each, well, I don't think any relationship can be happy where each individual is optimizing for their own hedonism.

Any relationship where both individuals are optimizing for their own hedonism. We'll almost always come to a head because we're optimizing for fundamentally different things from each other. Well,

Simone: and I think that the more importantly to when, when you feel like your culture is being threatened, because maybe what's going on here, right.

Is that like these fundamentalist Christian groups and cultures and subcultures are seeing. their youth really be attracted to mainstream culture, to sexual activity and, you know, before marriage, all this stuff that like, they're really worried about so that, you know, their temptation and what many of them done is just said, Oh, we will do it better.

We'll do it [00:16:00] better. But I think what they should instead be doing is saying, here's why this is empty. Here's where this is going to leave you. You know, here's what you should really be carrying about caring about, because I think when you look at other communities that have done it really bright, you know, you look at Amish people and they're not like selling to their kids, yeah, we're going to, you know, give you even more instant gratification and entertainment than social media can give you. Like that's, that's obviously not what they're doing. You know,

Malcolm: like when they're doing Grum Springa, they're not like, Hey, I go back to being an Amish because the sex is going to be better.

Yeah, exactly. Why? They'd be like, that's the most ridiculous reason to join our community. Yeah.

Simone: Yeah. So I think that's, that's the important thing is don't, don't try to play in the terms of your enemy show why your enemies terms are, are, are suboptimal in some way

Malcolm: will lead to point out how trivial these things that they're offering are comes to something where a lot of people.

You know, I think Calvinist culture did a lot of things wrong that led to its downfall. But one thing that I do not think that it did wrong, and it's something that people likely notice [00:17:00] with our podcasts and see as very non traditional conservative from their mindset, but it's traditional Calvinist, is its obsession with sex and, and sexuality.

So if you look historically, so you could read about this in I'll be in seed. Great book. That up until the 20th century, many traditional like early Pilgrim texts had to be censored because they talked about sex so vividly so much. And so frequently, they, they talked about this all the time.

Now it was within their rules. If you look at our guests on the show, like Other people who are secular Calvinists are from Calvinist culture that you might know. Ayla is a famous one, grew up in a Calvinist family. Calvinist being obsessed with sex is just like a historic thing that was really common in Calvinist culture.

But the question is But it wasn't the point. It was never the point. Why do you get obsessed with sexuality? It was obsessed with sexuality because through Through data izing it, through researching it like it's a thing, it loses what makes it magical. It loses what makes it special and different. It's just another [00:18:00] in a set of human emotions, which are all tugging at you in negative ways.

You know, as we say, a core aspect of both artful or secular Calvinism and traditional Calvinism. Calvinist culture is not this weird, you know, theatrical cosplay as Calvinist today. Is that positive and negative emotional subsets. are both of around equal value and are both a negative value. You can be just as misled to do bad things with your lives with positive emotions as you can be led to do negative things with your life through negative emotions.

And through studying like looking at these things so up close, they can become demystified. Now, of course yeah, I, I, it's, it, it, and it has for us, you know, within our relationship. And I think a lot of people can see this. We might talk about sex a lot. But we also don't really care about sex at all.

In terms of sex of the act, we find it more of a fascinating curiosity than something that is desirable to [00:19:00] us. And a lot of people, oh, they said sex isn't like a big focus of their marriage. That must mean. They're having marriage problems or something. And it's no, you shouldn't care about these things.

Like

Simone: we're trying to say, I'll give you a typical, like a sexy scenario. Like we, we each look at each other and we're like, Oh my God. And then we're like, Hmm, we have so many more important things to do. And we like quickly walk into the other room.

Malcolm: But what else can we get done in 30 minutes?

Yeah, because

Simone: that's, we have, we have things we care about more. But we also, you know, yeah, you, you can care about things and still.

Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I mean, I, I'd actually say if you can throw away 30 minutes in a week that easily, like you could probably be doing a lot more with your life. How do you have time? Don't you have like intellectual stuff to be working on? No,

Simone: because like genuinely people don't, people mostly. I would say at our level of education and income are like cultural subset are [00:20:00] nihilists and they don't actually care about doing much with their lives.

They may pretend that they do because it makes them look good, but in practice, you know, the, it's just aesthetic, you know, they're like, they're nonprofit worker or something, you know, or they're, you know, whatever it's, it's just part of the narrative that helps them look good and feel good, whatever.

Malcolm: Rather than believing that society is literally crumbling around them and they are desperately trying to do everything they can to save as many people as possible.

Simone: Yeah, well, I think many people don't believe they can do anything. So why would they try?

Malcolm: We'll talk about an external locus of control. And that's another thing that's useful from a cultural perspective, is believing that you can save all of this.

Yeah. And, and what I was just providing there when I was talking about the Calvinist relationship to sexuality, is that is one way that you can defang sexuality. Unfortunately it led to Calvinists having very few kids after a period. So, so you might not want to defang it too much you know, but that's, that's, that's one way that you can relate to it.

So [00:21:00] the point being is that when you are going to chase like the way you're keeping kids in your churches by saying we can do a secular culture can do better. You've already lost that you need to find techniques and mechanisms that can show them. And I think, you know, the Amish do this so well, that what secular culture claims to offer is actually quite hollow.

Simone: Yeah. I don't think it's, it's hard to point that out either. I mean, you can, you can point to rates of mental health of physical health, you know, in secular cultures and be like, well, this is really not working for them. Like they may act as though they're living happy lives. And yet the vast majority of them have severe anxiety problems are seeing therapists are on medication.

No, they're actually not. Happy, this is performative and it's very easy to see that very quickly.

Malcolm: But we do, I mean, how could we do like a Rumspringa for our kids? Because as we say, like one of the highest bleed rate cultures in the world right now are the Mormons. One of the lowest is the Amish.

The way that they handle sort of useful rebellion are almost polar opposites of each [00:22:00] other. Well,

Simone: and I think that the key thing about Rumspringa is that it's there. So what's happening in the fundamentalist religion in, in which the, the girl defined family was raised. Was one in which you, you never get to try.

There was no experience of kissing anyone before marriage. You don't get to do these things. There is no exposure. There's no option. And I think allowing people to have some exposure to the hollowness of other cultures while also constantly like. Dismissing it throughout, you know, like shaming it and dismissing it, like contextualizing it negatively within your, within your culture, you know, to be like, we don't respect that, but then allowing people to try it at the same time, I think is a really perfect one to punch.

And I think that's kind of what Warm Spring does. I mean, the Amish, I don't think grow up. Glorifying the English, I think that they grow up being like, Oh, you know, whatever, like they're off doing what they do. And that, but you still, it's not forbidden. You know, I think forbidding things is also you know, it's not going to go well, especially for adolescents.

[00:23:00] But am I missing something here? I think it's that simple.

Malcolm: No, I yeah, I think contextualizing why you don't do these things and the why needs to be within your cultural value set. Not that through not doing these things, you can actually achieve what they achieve, but more of it. Yeah, which is really important.

Yeah, it's to have some goal that is more important. Then the goals that secular society has, so you say secular society is doing all of this to feel good, but your goal is more important than that. It is to please God. It is to do what is right by the highest power in the universe. You know, if you're a funding, if you're us, it's to save society and create a flourishing future for humanity.

Your life doesn't matter. You know, our book, like one of our closest thing we have other than the practice of Skype to crafting religion to a house Bible is the martyrdom of man. And it's a book that we'll do a episode on eventually, but the core message of the book is man exists as a martyr for future man.

Every generation [00:24:00] before us lived a life that was. It's unconscionably difficult compared to the life that we get to live and they martyred themselves for our generation as it is our duty to martyr ourselves for the next generation that humanity is a cycle of intergenerationally improving martyrdom and that that is our duty in life.

To create something better and that, that we sacrifice ourselves to do that. And that is what uplifts us. Whereas when we don't sacrifice ourselves, when we take advantage of the pile of martyr corpses out there the. Fate has a way of punishing us. One of the things that we point out, which is so interesting, is if you look at the antinatalist movement, specifically the negative utilitarian antinatalists, who are just like, life is suffering, et cetera these are almost always [00:25:00] people who have gone through very Yeah.

Little genuine suffering And they'll say, Oh, I'm depressed or whatever, but it's the type of suffering that's brought upon themselves by mother only. Yeah. Yeah. And they interestingly, they try to live the most hedonistic lives possible because they think that suffering and matters and that happiness matters.

And so they're completely focused on this. And then you look at us who are like, ah, the things that cause suffering and happiness. That's just the random s**t that if our ancestors felt them, they would have more surviving offspring. It doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. And yet you look across the prenatalist movement and there's some of the happiest intellectuals you'll know.

Which is so weird that this group of intellectuals that like genuinely doesn't care about this s**t. If they get rewarded with it, but it's important that they not do it, martyr themselves. They don't focus on sacrificing themselves to improve things for the future for the happiness that gives you.

That's just a nice side effect. The [00:26:00] moment you start chasing it, the moment you start saying. This happiness matters rather than just a weird reward that we're being given in this moment. Is the moment everything begins to fall off the rails. And I think that's probably true , about sexuality was in these chaste relationships as well.

You can go into these relationships focused on trying to be as sexy and kinky and engaged in sexuality as possible. Your cup will never be full, but if you go into it saying every time I sexually engage with my partner, I am doing it in service of the Lord and in service of having kids and in service of fulfilling my purpose or, or, or making them happy then you will be rewarded with sexual satisfaction, but you can't go into it for the satisfaction.

You can't say that this was part of the point all along. I mean, it's weird that our biology works that way, but it does. And I think this is true for across humanity and it's a, it's a great little positive thing. But I'd also encourage people to look at the other pronatalists. You've seen the other pronatalists.

They're like weirdly happy people. And I, [00:27:00] and it is, it is odd or go on the antinatalist subreddit or the efilism subreddit if you want to see some world depressed people. Yeah, I

Simone: haven't really seen any cheerful, even just generally, I haven't seen any cheerful negative utilitarians to be honest with you.

Malcolm: Well, I don't think they exist. I think negative utilitarianism intrinsically is living for hedonism. It might be negative hedonism, but it's still hedonism. And hedonism never pays off. Ever. It is always going to be a drain on the individual soul.

I think this is one of those cruel twists of human biology. Which is so long as you seek happiness and hedonism, you will never have it. But when you are not seeking it, it becomes remarkably easy to find and your life can become inundated with it. The problem is, is that people who are living lifestyles like us, or conservative Christian lifestyles, they will tell other people about that. And other people will see that in their lives. [00:28:00] But then these other people wanting happiness. Try to mimic their lives in order to achieve the happiness. , instead of understanding that happiness is a by-product. Of efficaciously living your value system and achieving things that you think have real meaning in the world.

Malcolm: It's well,

Simone: I also think like a big, a big element of like genuine happiness, weirdly, is like faking it until you make it.

Like acting happy and then find out that you're happy. And I think if you like are a purist about happiness, you're like, no, I have to actually feel happy. And so you'll never, you'll never fake it.

Malcolm: Maybe. I don't know. That's really true. Yeah. I mean, we really take culturally the perspective of. Even if we're not feeling happy, we should be acting happy because acting unhappy or looking unhappy can hurt the efficaciousness of other individuals around us by making them unhappy.

You know, why would we do that? Why would I be looking unhappy when I know that hurts my wife and kids? Why would I? And interestingly, when you're approaching every day of course I have to be happy because it's not a choice.[00:29:00] Like it's, it's part of being efficacious, which is what really matters.

You end up feeling that way after a while just throw up all the time or a lot of the time. Which is weird. Yeah.

Simone: But I mean, I genuinely do think that both of us feel really happy. I think a lot of it starts with being committed to looking happy.

Malcolm: Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah. Starts was looking happy, but we're not looking happy because of some external validation that gets us, we're looking

Simone: happy in pursuit of our, our goals, most

Malcolm: efficacious way to pursue a conversation.

People start conversations so high energy and it's well, that way I can ensure that I'm coming off like pleasant to be around. They're like, why don't you be your authentic self? Why would I be my authentic self of it's inefficient or it doesn't help me in my goals.

We're literally. Running from velociraptors right now. What I mean by that is... Society is crumbling right now. We don't have long. You don't get to f**k around, not this generation. And, and I don't think any generation really gets to f**k around. That's the point of the martyrdom of man is this [00:30:00] intergenerational cycle of improvement, which we all get rewarded for in the end.

And I love you so much, Simone. This is a very fun topic for me because it was so interesting to see somebody that, you know, I had sort of grown up tangentially knowing. Who was doing a lot of the things that I think many conservatives today think that, okay, I just do these things. I've got to get rewarded.

And they're missing the point and they need to, when they're protecting their kids, you're not just protecting your kids from you know, if you're in a conservative religious family, you're not just protecting your kids from these, these secular influences. Right. You also need to watch out for pop Christianity.

The people who come in, it was their live, laugh, love signs. And Well, you know what I'm talking about, right? They, they are just, and they can be just as negatively seductive of your kid's expectations as any other group, which then leads them to turn against the family. And one of the really [00:31:00] crazy things, if you do end up watching this, this video about the Girl Defying Girls is in one point you see their, their brother talking.

Yeah, this was from

Simone: the, I think they had. That this is a family of nine kids. It's a lot. They had a

Malcolm: big family. Yeah. Just for people who don't know everything that he's saying is really clearly an implanted memory. Yeah.

Simone: But anyway, yeah. Her, her brother,

Malcolm: memory I've ever seen, he believes that his family like abused him and raped him and stuff.

And I asked him, I was like, what did you think of that scene? She's implanted memory. I was like, yeah, implanted memory. If you look, you don't remember this stuff.

Simone: At age 35, when you're washing the dishes and your wife asks you if you were ever abused

Malcolm: at some point. Yeah, yeah, that's like classic.

You might have forgetting before remembering as a phenomenon where you've mentioned this in a different context and then you think you've forgotten it. But this sort of memory suppression doesn't really happen that way. It doesn't randomly come up when you're in a context where all of a sudden you'll be validated for feeling it.

And, and it will gain you emotional points. And then he's like clearly using it to [00:32:00] justify being abusive to his wife. He's well, I used to have these enormous bouncing. I think the two girl to find girls are trying their best given the cars. He seemed like a pretty toxic human being.

Simone: I, you know, I like to think everyone's acting in good faith and doing the best they can with the information they have.

No,

Malcolm: no, no. I, yeah, I do think so. But sometimes you can be implanted with like pretty toxic. Your family abused you when they didn't, you know, stuff is pretty messed up, you know, when that happens to an individual. So I would encourage people, we might do another video on implanted memories because it is. A really common debt thing in today's society.

And it's most people knowing the warning signs. The biggest one is somebody remembers something that gets them validation, usually between 31 and like 42. And usually was in a caring context, usually either with a spouse, a good friend, or a therapist. And they've never spoken about anything like it before.

No one else remembers it.[00:33:00]

Simone: Anyway. Scary stuff. But, yeah. Well, anyway, I'm glad we does anyone think we hate each other? I don't think so. They're always like, why are, if you're married, why are you in separate rooms?

Malcolm: I like to wake up at 2 or 1 a. m. Why would I wake my wife up with that? I gotta work.

Simone: Oh, and if you're married, why don't you record in the same room?

I can't, I can't think when I'm in a room with another human. period. So, yeah, I don't think anyone thinks we hate each other. If they think we're the same person, which I guess is a sign that maybe we clearly love each other just the same way that someone narcissistically loves himself. So cool.

Malcolm: Well, I love you Simone and I hope that other people can avoid the mistakes that they made because. They, they made a lot of sacrifices in their views that turned out to not play out the way that they had hoped they did and being honest with young people about what they really get from following these traditional cultures will do a better job of making sure they stay within them instead of burning

Simone: out.

So I'll make, I'll make one [00:34:00] final plug though. Waiting to do stuff isn't necessarily a terrible thing. Like I didn't have sex until I met you. It was awesome. You know, like it's, it's okay to, I didn't drink until I met you. It was awesome. Like drinking for the first time after college, like it's cool to have some things to still look forward to, to like still experiment with.

So I'm also not against waiting for a lot of stuff. I waited for a long time for a lot of stuff. Not. Because I really wanted that stuff and was denying myself, I guess, mostly out of disinterest, but still it's so nice to discover things later. So, you know, we're not saying that that's a bad thing.

Malcolm: well, most of this stuff just isn't that good. That's the core problem. Like sex is not that good. It's Oh, there's people who say, well, that means you're not doing it. No, I did a lot of sex. You did all this. It is not that good. It is. It is a sign. It is only good in so far as it is a game that is fun to win.

And it gives you status in our society.

Simone: Well, I also like we have come to view physical [00:35:00] pleasure differently. Like we were having this conversation the other day where we're like. Can you remember what you actually felt the last time you felt something pleasurable, like either tasting really yummy food or felt like when I think back to those memories, I'm always thinking about this is good or I want more of it, but I'm never like.

Experiencing the

Malcolm: flavor, the physical, that emotion, like when people are like, Oh, what was the best moments of your life? They described narrative moments. Oh, like the birth of my kid, but you're actually in those moments, usually pretty

Simone: Yeah, you're in like a poorly lit room. That's gross looking.

If you're the woman, you're probably in active pain or at least deeply uncomfortable. Yeah.

Malcolm: Yeah. I think that we cannot. Easily capture memories of emotional states.

Simone: Yeah. Yeah. So anyway fun stuff. Love you. Bye.

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