NY Times: The Vitalists Will Replace the Weak!?

In this episode, Simone and Malcolm dive into a provocative op-ed recently published in The New York Times, exploring ideas that seem to align with their prenatal advocacy. The hosts discuss key excerpts from the article, contemplating the necessity of cultural and traditional preservation amidst the digital revolution. They scrutinize the New York Times readers' surprisingly positive reactions and debate the implications of a world leaning towards either radical change or nostalgic preservation. Tune in for an engaging conversation on modern cultural dynamics, tech-driven societal shifts, and the future of human existence.

The song:

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. I just read an article that shook me because it was an op-ed in the New York Times. It came out very recently. It seems to have potentially been instigated by our prenatals advocacy.

That was one of the most based things I have ever read in an ultra progressive newspaper, but coded in a way that hid how based it was.

Simone Collins: Well, that you, you have to, if they actually framed it as. Not being progressive, then no one would read it.

Malcolm Collins: I will read a quote from it before we go into it deeper just to give our audience like an idea of what to expect.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Have the child practice the religion, found the school support, the local cedar, the museum, the opera, or the concert hall, even if you can see it all on YouTube, pick up the paintbrush, the ball, and the instrument. Learn the language, even if there's an app for it. Learn to drive even if you think Waymo or Tesla will drive for you.

Put up headstones. Don't burn your dead. Sit with the child. Open the book and read as the bottleneck tightens. All survival will [00:01:00] depend on heating. Once again, the ancient abian. I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.

Therefore, choose life that you and your offspring may live.

Simone Collins: But if we don't burn our bodies, we can't turn the carbon into diamonds. You can't do biodiesel. He's an

Malcolm Collins: anti biodiesel activist. Ugh. He doesn't want us to turn the poor and the old into biodiesel, confirm progressive Curtis guard and

Simone Collins: commanded.

I mean, I, I'm all for Tibetan sky burials, but I'm pretty sure they're illegal in the United States.

Malcolm Collins: I love that. That's what you focus on. Yeah. I thought that was an interesting one there, that you might even ask ai why he's asking us to burn to, to not burn dead people.

Simone Collins: Burying the dead. I mean, if you're, especially if you're doing it in a graveyard, that's not very, I would say environmentally friendly or sustainable if you're doing it in your backyard, I mean, that's great, but also that could lead to.

Property sale problems, future crime issues. 'cause they all assume it's a, you know, murder.

Malcolm Collins: What, Simone, that's not the whiter point here. Point. No, clearly. But yeah,

Simone Collins: no [00:02:00] hearing that. Whoa. There are enough keywords in there to say I am a progressive And this is a progressive editorial like opera, museum opera.

Yes. Hundred percent. Yeah. Love

Malcolm Collins: his key words. I love he starts, if you look at the beginning of it, it's all stuff that we personally are doing. Have the child practice the religion, found the school. Do you think he like knows like what we're working on or he is like, yeah, that's like the most vitalist things you could do.

And they're trying to wake the left up to this and I just don't know if it's doable when 17% of the left not sorry, 70% of Americans, so this might be like 40% of the left says that by a survey that we did that the planet would be better if no humans existed. Like things would be better. So any thoughts before we go deeper into this?

Simone Collins: Let's go deeper. I, I'm, this is, this is a good sign though. I wanna see where you're taking this and what their point of their article was.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, there's been so many New York Times articles on us. In the past weeks, we've had, I'd say maybe eight articles referenced us in the New York [00:03:00] Times, or maybe 10 in the past two weeks.

And a number of them have been op-eds and some of 'em are just like crazy. Like I don't go into the ones that are just like. Crazy in a not fun way. Like one of them was like, you can solve this with immigration. Like that's, they're, they're pro they said that the new prenatal list movement is going to fail the, the MAGA prenatal list movement.

It's like, oh, what? Like you can't solve this with immigration. Like, show this.

Simone Collins: Well, someone listen to us.

Malcolm Collins: But okay. I, I'm not, I'm not talking about like ethically, I mean like logistically, like it would be very difficult. But let's get into this. And this was written by somebody called by Ross. Do.

But, and I'm just reading the best parts, the parts I found most interesting.

Simone Collins: Awesome.

Malcolm Collins: But the age of digital revolution, the time of the internet and the smartphone and the incipient era of artificial intelligence threatens an especially comprehensive call. It's forcing the human race into what evolutionary biologists call a quote unquote bottleneck, A period of [00:04:00] rapid pressure that threatens cultures, customs, and peoples with extinction.

That's remarkably on the nose for what we say. He's saying. Good one on the progressive side needs to

Simone Collins: say it.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Ethnic groups are going to go extinct. Like, when college students struggle to read passages longer than a phone size paragraph. And H Hollywood struggles to compete with YouTube and TikTok.

That's the bottleneck. Putting the squeeze on traditional art forms like novels and movies. Now this is interesting 'cause this is where we would push back. We're like, well, those traditional art forms have been captured by, you know, mimetic viruses. To the point where of I want authentic entertainment.

I'm only going to find that within the. Decolonized parts of the internet, like YouTube, you know, like the podcast scene. And that's why so many people are moving there. And why? Oh my gosh,

Simone Collins: you just appropriated decolonized. That's fun.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, we are decolonizing the right. Oh my God. That'd be a great name for like the next natal contact we got.

No, no, no,

Simone Collins: [00:05:00] you're, you're. Decolonizing the term. No, sorry. I don't know how to put it. Yeah, we decolonizing the term. No, no, no, but like, so sorry. You're aware of the fact that it's an extremely leftist thing to say that they're decolonizing something like I'm decolonizing history. I'm decolonizing fashion, I'm decolonizing.

Whatever, because they're trying to just remove white imperialism from it. I just find it entertaining that you're saying that with, and I'm gonna keep using it this way because it will

Malcolm Collins: annoy leftists. We are, we are de well, no, but like Yeah. One of,

Simone Collins: one of the listeners called the The progressive, sorry.

The progress flag, the colonizers flag, which is just so true because there's more imperialistic and white. Than the urban monoculture. So you're, I mean, you're still correct and that's why it's really fun. I just, sorry, let me stop derailing us. Let's go through this. No, no, no, no.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, I like, I want that name to catch on the colonizer flag.

I want everyone, every time they talk about that, call it the colonizer flag. This is a weird, it's,

Simone Collins: it's legit decolonization. If we're talking about removing the urban monoculture from a space or removing, woke, cancel culture from a space because that is, that is, that is the colonizer [00:06:00] force. 100% colonizer flag.

Colonizing forces. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: But I also think what you hear in this. Is a lot of people when they talk about the new right, you know, they're like, well, you guys don't seem to care about the traditions of our culture in the same way that the old right did. And we point out to them, we go, that's not part of the right wing coalition anymore.

The people who go to concert halls and orchestras. And all of that. That's the left now, like we are about building something new that works and understanding that we need to declare bankruptcy on a lot of these institutions. And this is, and there's just no way to fix it because they're just too colonized at this point.

And, and there's not an audience for them. Like culture changes, culture evolves and that's a good thing. Right. You know, it is trying to maintain a cultural stasis that's a bad thing, but the urban monoculture, because it is a dominant culture wants. Cultural stasis. It wants to preserve the concert halls.

It wants to preserve the museums and the, and the, and the you know, art studios and the. [00:07:00] We'll get into more here. When daily newspapers and mainline Protestant denominations and elk lodges fade away into irrelevance when sit down restaurants and shopping malls and colleges begin to trace the same descending arc, that's the bottleneck tightening around the old firms of suburban middle class existence.

And here we are like, well, I mean, maybe the Elks lodges aren't needed anymore. Like May, maybe the mainline Protestant denominations have become corrupted and we need a religious revival in the United States. Maybe daily newspapers became propaganda pieces and we are trying to decolonize news decolonize Christianity.

No, but what I'm saying is it is interesting here. You know, the things he's, he's all lauding restaurants and shopping malls. They're, they're an idea of this nostalgic ideal of an America, not of the 1950s, but of the 1980s of stranger things. And it's not that the culture of, of that, the, that the left sees with some degree of, of reverence.[00:08:00]

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Thoughts.

Simone Collins: I wanna get back to the article.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. When moderate and Centris look around and wonder why the world isn't going their way, I. Why the future seems to belong to weird bespoke radicalism to Luigi Manjii Admirers and World War II Revisionists. That's the bottleneck, crushing the old forms of consensus politics, the low key ways of relating to political debates.

And here, I mean, what I really see him saying is why can the non vitalistic groups, because the groups that he's pointing to are the vitalist groups. They're the groups that are like, yeah, let's go all in. Let's build something better. Let's fight the system. Whether it's on the right or the left, I. You know, and he, he, he tried to choose examples from both.

And yet, you know, I think we're seeing more and more alliance of the true radicals of the right and left. And I think that this is one of the things that I've noticed recently in some of the calls. I mean, we see how they end up doing the pieces and stuff like that. I. But there have been like the, one of the, the podcasters who reached out to us and seemed genuinely [00:09:00] sympathetic to us is a podcast are called Diabolical Lies.

It does, apparently it's a fairly popular podcast. It's got like 500 reviews on Apple reviews, by the way, give us reviews on Apple reviews. If you're watching the podcast, we really appreciate it. Even if you're not, it's like hard to get reviews there. I think we're like a. 50 or a hundred now. We'll see. But anyway, so, so, she, and you could only do it if you have like an applicant.

You don't even have applicants, you know? So, so, so she was like, look, I'm like a Marxist feminist. But like you guys are making a lot of good points. So we'll see how she, she goes into this, but I suspect what we might see is more an alliance of the new right tech, right. And old lefty radicals. You know, we talked to somebody like Spoon, who's like a monarchist or the, the aristocratic utensil who we had on the show not long ago.

And, you know, he started as like a staunch Bernie bro, right? You know? I think shoe on ahead is increasingly realizing that she is actually on the right and not on the left at all. And that her allies are on the right. And I, and then we're seeing this, well, it's the weird

Simone Collins: horseshoe thing, which I, [00:10:00] it's, it's legit.

You, you've got that and you've got the crunchy to alt-right pipeline. It. A lot of us want the same thing.

Malcolm Collins: Maha movement, everything like that. Make America healthy again. The, the left. The political establishment left in this country has become the party of the status quo of this form of nostalgia in the same way that the right was that in the nineties And now the right is this new like vitalistic, like we can do things better.

Like let's strip this out, let's rebuild. Which is really fascinating to me.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: When young people don't date or marry or start families, that's the bottleneck coming for the most basic human institutions of all. And when, because people don't pair off and reproduce nations age and diminish and die away when depopulation sweeps East Asia and Latin America and Europe as it will. And then you have like a hyperlink there that's the last squeeze, the tightest part of the bottleneck, the literal die off [00:11:00] sauce.

Simone Collins: Yeah. . It, it's very strange to hear someone in a non-negative context on the New York Times talking about demographic collapse in a more sentimental way and, and I guess feeling safe about it. Maybe in the comments there's a bunch of people saying.

It's good if people die off, we should die off. People are hu they're terrible. What are you saying? But it just, it just surprises because every time I see a conservative write something like that, even if it's the same words as used in that sentence, there's someone in the comments saying, no, humans are terrible.

We should die off. That's, it's the best for the world.

Malcolm Collins: This isn't just a normal churn where travel agencies go out of business or Netflix replaces VCR. Everything that we take for granted is entering the bottleneck. And for anything that you care about from your nation to your worldview, to your favorite art form to your family, the key challenge of the 21st century is making sure that it's [00:12:00] still there.

On the other side, he's describing the Crucible. We always talk about the age of the Lotus Eaters. We always talk about. Did you find anything or,

Simone Collins: so the, the top recommended comment on the article isn't what I expected, but it's still, I would say, representative of one of the major progressive views, though not the anti-natal list.

One someone wrote from Erie, Pennsylvania. An interpretation. I appreciate Dove's intellectual depth. His essays here are often the most profound, but there's also pervading nostalgia in his writing, a perception of doom and gloom. I think Jefferson had it right. People should pursue their happiness. The rise of cosmopolitanism is mostly a good thing.

Nations and Nationalisms was. Overly tribal, it culminated in two world wars. We must look to our common humanity. What I'm reading from that is, let's just have fun. Let's just be, let's not think about it. Let's just go to plays. Let's not work hard. Let's not learn the language. And oh, [00:13:00] then, you know, the, one of the other, oh, this actually got more recommendations by Shauna Dwyer in Cairo, New York with 998 recommendations.

So this comment was more upvoted, but for whatever reason, didn't get as highly ranked. He writes, this was an interesting read, but my gut says it's written by a conservative guy who mostly just feels threatened by change. He admits he's very online, and to me that shows the piece is dripping with kind of screen induced despair.

What he doesn't mention though, is how many people are exhausted by the digital churn in actively seeking more grounded, embodied lives. That gives me hope. I'm making a real pie tonight. All my friends are readers. There's still a world offline, and it's alive and well. I'm making a real pie tonight. He's making a real pie.

He's, he attacking this p but he's, he's, he's, he's, he is. He thinks that, that the, the author is a conservative, which is what I was expecting to see more here. And he, it's, it's actually a long comment, but it ends with, so it ends up [00:14:00] reading like another old guy railing at change piece with a lyrical end times flare.

I get the impulse, things are shifting fast, but I think we need more curiosity about what's being born, not just lgs for what's fading. Again, I, I get hope from this because he's, he is expressing not analist. Negative utilitarianism view. He's going to go offline and make a pie. And his biggest complaint is this guy sounds like a closet conservative, afraid of change.

Malcolm Collins: What this is, the thing is, is I think what they don't realize, he is not a closet conservative. This is what the modern left is. The, the new conservative movement wants change. You know, this is what you see. The left is, can you believe that Trump is changing the way government works? Can you believe that Elon's changing the way these systems work?

Can you believe it's like a, a, a fanatical fear of change? What's the next comment? By the way, these are fun. Before I go further,

Simone Collins: I am.

Malcolm Collins: Well, you can find another fun one while I'm, yeah. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Here's So, Jake who got recommended 199 [00:15:00] times writes, in an overpopulated world, a low birth rate is only a bad thing.

If you follow capitalism like a cult member, low birth rates are obviously good, unless growth is your God.

Malcolm Collins: So not, not one's in support of the piece. I'll, I'll keep reading. And well,

Simone Collins: the brad also, but there, then it's like, I think one of the more common, short, low effort comments is. Giving this man shame about being concerned about demographic apps.

'cause Brad from Australia also writes, world population is expected to rise only 2 billion the next 50 years. Emergency. Emergency. Like, he's being sarcastic. He's obviously, yeah. I'm just, I love the Australian accent. That's really good. My, my very sad attempt. This is my first ever attempt at industrial.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It, it, I do. No, I, I appreciate you jumping into that. That's why people come to this channel is to see the, the high effort oh yeah. And

Simone Collins: then, and then bitty Bob. From Freezing Desert. A comment. What's the obsession with procreation? 8 billion people and counting Procreation will not solve anything, [00:16:00] especially as the AI you're talking about will make it more difficult or even possible for people to earn a living, in which case food and shelter will have to be given for free.

I. So, yeah, no, I, okay. I expected this at least.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. What? I don't understand why we can't just give euthanasia for free. That's what Canada's doing was made. I'm sure they're gonna do it more. They euthanize them. This is, we, we did an episode on this. Yeah. Okay. So to keep going, in this environment, survival will depend on intentionality and intensity.

Any aspect of human culture that people assume gets transmitted automatically without too much conscious deliberation is what online slang calls. NGMI not gonna make it. First, I haven't heard this sling before, but Love it. But I will say here, he's right what survives, this is what I'm talking about with vitalism, right?

Like Yeah. Intentionality and intensity. Yeah. And this show had a, had a slogan. Is intentionality and intensity. That's the way we treat our religious beliefs. That's the way we treat our cultural beliefs. That's the way we treat our approach to tism, to education, to [00:17:00] everything. It can be done. And I am so excited.

And I think that that, that, you know, you go to Natal Con and that's what it's all about. And it's something that I don't know if other groups, like he thinks you can approach nostalgia with a degree of intensity that can preserve. Like what he remembers from the eighties, the, the shopping malls and the books and the opera houses.

And I don't know if nostalgia can ever truly be approached with intensity. There's always a cargo cult like vagueness to it instead of like reappropriating, nostalgic elements in a new way, which is what he no see. Yeah,

Simone Collins: that's my thing is I think actually that nostalgia is really vitalistic that when you look at new fashion trends.

Some of the best are built upon nostalgia, but misinterpreted understandings of previous times in which they're mixed upon. And I think you, you can't get a really great, strong fashion movement, like what [00:18:00] you saw in the eighties like, like what even you're seeing with some revivals of the nineties now, without this.

Complete misunderstanding of what an original fashion movement was like. And then rethinking of it. So I think that there is a vitalistic side of nostalgia, but it has to be a somewhat delusional one and one that's focused on agency and invention rather than, I just wish things were like they used to be.

Malcolm Collins: Languages will disappear, churches will perish. Political ideas will evanesce, art forms will vanish. The capacity to read and write and figure mathematically will wither and the reproduction of the species will fail, except among people who are deliberate and self-conscious and a little bit fanatical about ensuring.

The, the things they love are carried forwards. Well, I am glad I'm just a little bit of a fanatic. You know, I think, I think, and this is the way we're seen, a little bit of a fanatic. And other people, they try to shame us. Like all those glasses you wear, all those what? [00:19:00] We, we be, we, you know, and, and having a fanaticism for who you are, I think is required to the next generation.

And when we raise our kids, I think one of the biggest problems of like the evangelical movement that led to a lot of its dissolution is they raise them to be obedient and unic. Instead of to be fanatics. And I'm raising my kids to be fanatics. They're gonna be wild mountain creatures. What do you, what'd you have there?

Simone Collins: All our, our children. Yeah, absolutely. Should be wild mounting creatures. I have to say, going through the comments is really interesting because a lot of them are saying this article really resonates with them. And then a lot of them clearly feel like some parts resonate and that are completely disagreeing with other elements.

Like there's one man who shares this nostalgia but he also just has this very. Distorted understanding of why things aren't the same anymore. For example, he thinks that everything's horrible now because there are too many people. Oh, no, it's a, it's a woman, Gail Esposito from Atlanta. Right? It's just [00:20:00] 70 years ago when I was six years old, the planet had 2.74 billion people.

National parks didn't need to limit the number of people visiting them. You could fill up your gas tank for pennies. My dad paid $50 a month for our mortgage and then antibiotics and. Vaccines were developed and proliferated. The death rate for children quickly declined, and we zoomed to 8 billion people without thinking how we could feed clo and shelter them.

Now we're in terrible shape and must confront the fact that there are many people chasing too few resources. We need less people, not more. Sadly, Ross has no idea how wonderful it was living in a world of so many less people and how miserable it is. With so much overcrowding, she thinks that national parks having limits on the number of visitors has to do with.

Like the US population that has more to do with international tourism, which the way, thanks Trump.

Malcolm Collins: Sorry. The reason why National Parks had to start banning the number of visitors, had to do with Instagram and TikTok, is that specific locations would become popular on those apps and then everyone would try to go to these locations and they had those quotas existed

Simone Collins: before Instagram [00:21:00] and Oh, okay.

What? Well, she, the, the crazy thing about her, she's just thrilled. This idea of a world before medical treatment. So just high infant mortality. That was the good old days. Did she not know what the global poverty

Malcolm Collins: rate was like back then? Like she, she, she doesn't care because she could fill her gas

Simone Collins: tank

Malcolm Collins: for

Simone Collins: pennies on

Malcolm Collins: the dollar.

No, she doesn't care

Simone Collins: that she was able to do that. So this was 70 years ago. Let the children die, Malcolm, because I could get into Yosemite

Malcolm Collins: without a wait list. Well, no on, on the poverty of New York not New York, Europe. That is why we were so wealthy back then, because Europe had destroyed their industrial base and we were basically stealing all the business from them, and we'd put them in huge amounts of debt and, and the rest of the world hadn't developed.

And so we could, you know, outsource and we could like, like I. You're basically saying like the, the degree of poverty in her lifetime, the number of children that were starving to death, if you look at like global poverty rates, was astronomical in that period outside of the United States. She's basically like, well, I remember when [00:22:00] I grew up in the Capitol and we didn't hear news of the other districts quite as much.

Why, why, why do we hear so much about them these days that. I liked it when we didn't have to hear about the other districts. That's, that's really what's, what's going on with that post, which is absolutely wild that you could be that delusional about how much worse the world was for your average human living in it 70 years ago.

But anyway, I mean, these people live in a delusional bubble, right? Like they just, but you can tell this woman didn't have kids. I can tell from the comments she didn't have kids, so, Hmm. Thank God you're going extinct. Mere eccentricity doesn't guarantee survival. There will be forms of resistance and radicalism that turn out to be destructive and others that are just dead ends, but normalcy and complacency will be fatal.

I agree. You're being normal and complacent in this piece. It's like, it's like normalcy and complacency personified. But I, I agree with a lot of what he's saying here. You know, online life allows for all kinds of [00:23:00] hyperintense subcultures and niches where the sense of obsolescence is less of an issue.

But for the average internet surfer, they normally afloat in the virtual realm. Digital life tends to evaluate the center over the peripheries, the, the metropol over the provinces, the drama of the celebrity over the co ian, how much survives nothing I described as universal, unless the true AI doomsdayers are correct.

In the year 2100, there will still be nations, families, religions, children, marriages, great books, but how much survives will depend on our own deliberate choices. The choice to date and love and marry and procreate. The choice to fight the particular nations and traditions and art forms and worldviews.

The choice to limit our exposure to the virtual. Not necessarily refusing new technology, but trying every day in every setting to make ourselves it's master. So I agree with that. He's saying, you know, it's not about refusing technology, but I do really, you have to go [00:24:00] through the valley of the lot of Cedars.

You can't. Blind your eyes. Mm-hmm. You cannot, if you take pokers and you blind your eyes, when you get to the other side of it, all of these temptations, you're still gonna be blind. The only way out

Simone Collins: is through.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The only way out is through, you know, the other people who get through it without blinding themselves are gonna have all the technology that it offers them, like the AI drone swarms.

You know, you need to find out how to engage with all of this and still find a way to motivate your continued existence in your culture of survival. Mm-hmm. Some choices will be especially difficult for liberals since they will often smack of chauvinism and fanaticism and reaction. Family lines will survive only because of a clear preference for one's own kit and kin, as opposed to some general affection for humanity.

Woo, that's a spicy take right there. Well, and

Simone Collins: people in the comments. Took umbrage. How dare he bring in politics and make this politicized. But [00:25:00]

Malcolm Collins: it's true. Having a preference for yo kin, I have a preference for my, my family's clan is strong. We have a preference for all kin folks in these parts. People hear me talk about how great my family is all the time, and my kids know it.

I hope they talk the same way and they build family networks like, like, like we built. It's like, you know, my little brother's in Doge right now ing. I had a, a nightmare last night that I had ended up getting a job there and I was sleeping in like a, a hotel apartment and getting up for a nine to five and I was like, okay, like aesthetically I wanna do it, but like, I am kind of afraid of that kind of work.

It's not

Simone Collins: the most fun lifestyle, but very meaningful work and it's great that your brother's doing it.

Malcolm Collins: I love this. The family lines will also. Oh, sorry. Important art firms will only survive because of frank elitism and insistence on distinction. A contempt for mediocrity religions will survive only through a conscious embrace of neo [00:26:00] traditionalism in whatever varied forms, small nations will survive only if their 21st century inhabitants.

Look back to the 19th century builders, Irish nationalists. And Young Turks. And the original Zionists rather than the end of history cosmopolitanism of which they're currently dissolving. Oh. End of century cosmopolitanism of which they're currently dissolving. What would you call the urban monoculture?

But that, any, any other comments you like here?

Simone Collins: Well, this, this points to the comment that was saying, no, I'm all for cosmopolitanism. Let's bury ourselves in it. Which is the problem. They,

Malcolm Collins: they are, they're, they are like in a grave bearing themselves.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And one of the comments that, that I stopped at, I feel conflicted about because they're trying to point out that we have reached the age of ai.

We were about to transcend humanity to become one with machines arguably. So what's the point in [00:27:00] keeping the human line going? But I think you can't really have truly complex intelligences in the future without both. But I do think that this is the most interesting so far of the comments that I've found that complains about population because they point out that the world has 8 billion people.

And this is a lot. Then they write, this is the 21st century, aside from serious consequences of environmental damage caused by our huge population, including catastrophic global warming and the so-called sixth extinction, which biologists say is in full swing, there are technological changes that also mitigate worries about human extinction from a lack of babies.

Futurists have argued we are approaching the age of transhumanism where digital forms of human life will in fact surpass biological. That may sound crazy to us, but when we are creatures of our. Time. Oh, but we are then, we are creatures of our time. A future Cy Borgian world will not have to worry about a die off, otherwise, the piece is correct in the underlying theme that accelerated social change will and has made much of contemporary life, of victim, [00:28:00] of futurism.

And yeah, I mean, I think that's a, that's an intelligent comment from the perspective of a broadly analist, environmentalist minded progressive.

Malcolm Collins: So liberalism itself will endure and thrive only if it finds a way to weave some of the intense impulse already attenuated before the internet back into its vision of the good society.

Its understanding of human needs and obligations. I. For non-liberal. On the other hand, the temptation will be to embrace radicalism and disruption for its own sake without regard to their actual fruits. A clear tendency of the populism that governs us today. Imagine a swift technological dissolution to a crisis created by technology.

Even if the solution marries dehumanization with authoritarianism, imagine Chinese rero with artificial wounds, or to simply, I'm like, maybe that's, that's. Where we're going or to [00:29:00] simply embrace the culling of the common person, the disappearance of the ordinary, the emptying of provinces and hinterland on the theory that some new master race of human AI hybrid stand to inherit it anyway, as that person said, right?

Like maybe they didn't internalize that piece. But perhaps the strongest temptation will be for everyone will be to imagine that you are engaged in some radical project, some new intentional way of living, but all the while you are being pulled back into the virtual, they're performative, the fundamentally unreal.

And here I'd be like, well, you know, I. I'm the one who has my fifth kid on the way, so you can tell me whatever I want, but like I know that this project seems to be working and I am not afraid of our kids deconvert very much at all. When I look at how they relate to the areas where I have the most fears whether it's it's gender or religion or.

You know, cultural rules or observances or anything like that because they are very into this stuff in a way that I was as a kid. [00:30:00] You know, you see Octavia and he wants to enforce the tradition on his siblings. This is how we do things. Don't, you know,

Simone Collins: basically.

Malcolm Collins: This is one temptation, but I also like, hear what he's talking about. It's this idea of like, these families that we see that are like trying to build communes and they never come together trying to build schools and they never come together or trying to build, you know, we said we'll build a school.

We built a school. You saw the school, it works. It's great. You know, we said we're gonna build a parenting network. We've been building it, and we'll, we'll, we'll have it go live when our kids are old enough to utilize it, you know, like. It's the difference between are you the type of dreamer whose dreams ultimately boil down to enforcing your values and your way of life on others, which is what many of these communes ultimately want.

Mm-hmm. Or is it something where you're willing to make compromise? You know, like our neighbors are you know, fundamentally, you know, working class people and our kids stay with them during the day and a lot of people are surprised at that. They're like, oh, you don't hire like [00:31:00] specialist nannies. And we're like, no, specialist nannies are like weirdos.

Simone Collins: Well, actually, I think this is why most communes fall apart because ultimately they can only be populated by people who are there because it is just convenient, not because they're that ideologically aligned. So they're like, yeah, aesthetically I like the idea of living in an eco village and also I was downsizing and retiring anyway, and it's in the region where I wanna be.

And so they move there. But that, that means it's, it's has a very short shelf life.

Malcolm Collins: This is one temptation I'm very familiar with. As someone whose professional life is a mostly digital existence, we're together with others who share my concerns. I am perpetually talking, talking, talking. When the nece, when the necessary thing is to go out in reality and do it, bam, oh yeah, we're gonna take the future from you.

We gonna take the future from you. We are gonna, what don't they hope

Simone Collins: if, if so many progressive readers of the New York time read this and say, yes. They [00:32:00] won't, I mean, hope of seeing a more balanced future. Making the comment

Malcolm Collins: who, who in the comments of agree with you. You can read, I'll, I'll read this first part again because this is what the article ends with.

Have the child practice the religion, found the school support, the local cedar, the museum, the opera, the concert hall. Even if you can't see it all on YouTube, pick up the paintbrush, the ball, the instrument, learn the language, even if there's an app for it. Learn to drive even if you think soon. Way more tell, we'll drive for you.

Put up headstones. Don't just burn your dead. Sit with the child. Open the book and read. Yeah, and, and here's what I'd say is,

Have you ever tried simply turning off the tv, sitting down with your children and hitting them?

Malcolm Collins: As the bottleneck titans, all survival will depend on heating. Once again, the ancient ab mission I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.

Therefore, choose the life that you have, that you and your offspring may live.

Simone Collins: So I just wanna point out that the top comments are mostly people unilaterally saying [00:33:00] this is great. One person just writes 245 people up voted this Ross's finest article, Jeff from Washington DC who had got 252 up votes wrote.

I've been reading the Times and Ross's columns for years, but I've never posted a comment before. Now Bravo. I would say more, but I'm. Going to take Ross's advice, put down my phone and get out into the world. And another one who actually didn't, wasn't a huge fan of him but still got 2 96 upvote says, as most commenters here, I'm extremely disinclined to agree with due thought on anything.

So this guy isn't his fan. I'd be hard pressed to come with any previous essay or line of thought. Incredibly, I got through almost the entire essay nodding my head in agreement. Figuratively his one dig at liberals was quickly balanced out by the one at Populists. So credit where credit's due. The points he makes for our a long form intellectual take on what the short form Black Mirror Series has been expressing for years and he didn't say woke once will wonders ever cease.

So. [00:34:00]

Malcolm Collins: This person. So this is apparently like, like pretty considered conservative by lefties,

Simone Collins: I guess. So yeah, this person probably thinks he's a, a lefty who so probably what this, this author is, is a centrist who's seen by regular New York Times readers as the evil AltRight centrist. And this person nevertheless, despite wanting to disagree.

Agreed with almost everything. So yeah, I would say this is really well received, which again, to me, like this may be the sign of a turning point. This may be sign for hope among progressives that they get it, that they wanna get back to agency, to action, to vitalism. And I think that would be a really good thing because I would like to see more perspectives represented in the future than fewer.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah, me too. So, you know, who knows, maybe some iteration of this will survive. Anyway. I love you to death, Simone, and I hope that our followers can [00:35:00] take something from this article and use it to replace him. And, and the Economist did a piece on us recently, and it was me saying, join the prenatal list movement, or we'll replace you.

Those are the only options. And I love it. I love it just to freak people out. He got a lot wrong though. He, he argued that like Jared Taylor was like a speaker at the first conference when he wasn't, he was just an attendee. And you know that Kevin Dolan is a racist. That's one of the thing that gets me.

I'm also gonna do an entire episode analyzing the idea that Kevin Dolan is a racist. 'cause if you actually look at his tweets and he was tweeting with an anonymous account none of them are that racist. And a lot of it is just made up by the other side and they'll say, oh, he said these anti-Jewish things, and I'm like, no, he didn't.

Look at the actual tweet and they're like, oh, wow, I didn't realize that they had turned the name of a town into. I hate Jews when they're just like, well, this town has a disproportionately Jewish population. So we just translated that for him in our hate piece and well, what anyway.

Okay. Lemon stone went after the shrimp people and they, they fought [00:36:00] back. I, you don't, you don't go after the shrimp people. This is the ea people who want to replace us with shrimp. The shrimp welfare people, they don't wanna replace

Simone Collins: us with shrimp.

Malcolm Collins: They just, they, they're like, if shrimp have feelings, right?

Like, you can, and, and good utility is defined by the positive. Reducing

Simone Collins: suffering. Reducing suffering. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Well, the, the positive divided by negative emotions of an entity. You know, then multiplied by that entity, sort of like cognitive space shrimp, even though they're lower cognitive load than us because there's so many of them.

You know, we need to take them seriously. Well, and

Simone Collins: because their existence in. Large scale shrimp farming is so bad. Like you think chickens have it, bad shrimp have it even worse than, you know, they, they

Malcolm Collins: pop off their eyes to increase. Yeah. Their eyes get

Simone Collins: crushed. They don't pop them off, they just get crushed.

Half, don't even make it to harvest point. Like it's just, it's gross. It's horrible. It's really bad. They're like, well, I'll, you know, I [00:37:00] could spend $1 and reduce significantly a portion of their suffering. Like, this is money well spent. So,

Malcolm Collins: yeah,

Simone Collins: I mean, I think it'd

Malcolm Collins: better to engineer them without nervous systems that can feel pain.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I think that would be, that would be awesome. Also, like, I don't know, I, I don't think we need to eat animals as much.

Malcolm Collins: Uh oh, oh. You're getting into fighting territory here with Malcolm. I just know,

Simone Collins: I mean, what everyone is, is kind of consciously aware of in most intellectual circles is that, you know.

Oh, oh, so many years from now we will look well depending on how demographic collapse plays out now, but people will view. Meat consumption is being pretty.

Malcolm Collins: When would Reed said that in the 18 hundreds, you know? Yeah. One of the guys, he is like, he's like people and he's one

Simone Collins: of our prophets. Malcolm, I mean, get with the program.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly. But he doesn't say that we shouldn't eat meat today. He says. Yeah. He just says, we're gonna see this as insane and we'll make fake meat. He says, we will see it as insane [00:38:00] culturally after fake meat is normalized.

Simone Collins: Yeah, dude. It's okay. I don't know what's going on with beyond everything 'cause it's disgusting.

But yes. And everybody when it first came out is awesome.

Malcolm Collins: So it was supposed to be like, awesome and it was like hard to get and I was like, wow. It must must be pretty good. Every time we've

Simone Collins: had it, I've been like, what? Like why just. You know, make, make a burger with Quin lime and black beans and rice or so like, just like other good stuff that has protein in it, or just whatever Morningstar does.

By the way, chicken is

Malcolm Collins: so good. Almost a vegetarian. You eat almost exclusively fake meat. Like you really, I

Simone Collins: never choose to eat meat. Unless, you know, I don't have a choice. And most of that's for artist autistic reasons because meat has all these little grizzly bits and gummy bits and cartilage bits and inconsistent bits.

And guess what has consistency is Morningstar fake chicken patties and garine meatballs and fake meat hotdogs. And they're so, so good. So whatever [00:39:00] token is also amazing. Well, your

Malcolm Collins: meat dishes are so good, I'll tell you that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And we're doing. So this is my first time doing the mango pineapple curry for you using all fresh mango.

I know you wanted them to be a little bit more textured. Do you want me to dice some? But then make puree of others in the in the blender. So you have a mixture of both mango puree and diced mango with diced pineapple. Well, how do you want me to approach this? I want only diced. We need some liquid. Okay, because I have less coconut cream than before.

Did puree? I put in more yogurt but

Malcolm Collins: didn't puree

Simone Collins: some in the mango. Okay. But then you want most diced, you want, you want texture, you want chunks.

Malcolm Collins: And if you want, I can drive out because I need to go out to get more beer anyway.

Simone Collins: I can go. No, we have a blender. Like you bought a blender for yourself. I should be using it so you get the value.

This is worth it.

Malcolm Collins: All fresh ingredients, fruits and stuff. This is, this is like eating a forest. Mango and pineapple and chicken.

Simone Collins: I mean, it's, it's [00:40:00] great. It's great to see you consuming more. There's a lot of onion in this. There's tomato in this garlic, mango, pineapple, chicken, coconut. This is a, this is health.

Pretty healthy. Pretty good. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You might wanna put some crushed coconut

Simone Collins: in it.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, because we've got some

Simone Collins: if you want me to. Sure.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Alright, I'll get started here.

In shadows, I scheme with a gleam in my eye and my brood will outnumber their woke battle cry. Those urban elites with their brattle and flare will choke on their vanity. Caught on over.

Oh, bow to my vision, my vitalist reign. I flood every city with life's prial strain. Their monocultures flick. My superior kin set the future of [00:41:00] fire.

I'll honor the past with the heirs. I bestow each child a new route where my empire will grow. The woke clutch, their mirrors, their egos inflate, but I'll crush their smugness with humanity's way. Oh, be to my vision, vitalist Lane. Oh. For every city with a life's prial strain, just do, it's a flickering fire.

My superior kin set the. Future of fire.

My children will storm through their glittering halls with vigor and might they'll [00:42:00] tear down their walls. The urbanites folly, their self-loving spark will burn in my bonfire, extinguished by dog.

To my vision, my finalist. Every city with L strain, their monoculture. It's a flickering pile. My superior set the future of fire.

So Tremble, you woke. As my dynasty spreads, your trivial dreams will lie cold in their bed. The Vitalist triumph, my glorious plan will birth a new world for the ultimate.[00:43:00]

So Tremble, you woke. As my dynasty spreads, your trivial dreams will lie cold in their beds. The [00:44:00] vitalist.

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