Join us as we explore the 'pod person' reaction, a curious mix of unease and uncanny valley effects, and its intriguing link to specific behavioral patterns and religious communities, prominently Mormonism. Delve into the reasons behind individuals shifting towards extreme wokeism, and the ripple effects on fertility collapse, US culture wars, and political alliances. Additionally, discover the transformation of Mormon influencers redefining traditional values on social media, and the significant impact of Mormon culture on the atheist and skeptic communities online. Concluding with a heartwarming glimpse into the creator's family life, this episode is a fascinating blend of cultural analysis and personal storytelling.
Microphone (3- ATR2100x-USB Microphone) & EMEET SmartCam Nova 4K-5: [00:00:00] We are going to be exploring the pod person reaction. This is the emotional response of unease combined with an uncanny valley, feeling that some people experience when they encounter individuals who exhibit a specific set of behavioral patterns. This reaction has been used to build an entire sub genre of horror.
Speaker 26: I don't remember him being that friendly. He's obviously one of them. How
Microphone (3- ATR2100x-USB Microphone) & EMEET SmartCam Nova 4K-5: We are going to explore why people who elicit this reaction have historically been drawn to specific religious communities with a focus on Mormonism
Speaker 20: Hello, ma'am. My goodness, you have such an attractive little garden here.
Speaker 7: It is so much better. There's no fear or pain. It's beautiful We want you.
Microphone (3- ATR2100x-USB Microphone) & EMEET SmartCam Nova 4K-5: And why most of the individuals within those religious communities who elicited this reaction have left over the past decade or so and become extremely woke
Um, uh,
Speaker 47: [00:01:00] Screams Hello, Simone. I am so excited to be here with you today. I am genuinely so excited for this episode because I have had a realization that has changed my life. So many things about how I see fertility collapse, about how I see the U.
Malcolm Collins: S. culture wars, about how I see shifting political alliances in this country, and about how I see cultures can protect themselves from fertility collapse. And it came from a very unexpected place, and it is a topic we have been building up to for these past two days on this lecture. And the unexpected place is pod people.
Simone Collins: What as in that, that trope of sci-fi, scary creatures that make you conform?
Malcolm Collins: Yes. We will get into the trope more in just a second. But what actually had me realize it was this moment where I was talking with one of our Mormon [00:02:00] fans and he was asking a question about a part of history that Mormons, some Mormons are aware of.
But most Americans wouldn't be aware of because generally, if it didn't take place on the coast or within black or Native American culture, nobody recorded it happening. And he's like, why did the backwoods people, my cultural ancestors, usually end up killing Mormons whenever they tried to migrate to their territory?
It's a good question because
Simone Collins: Mormons didn't have a fun time.
Malcolm Collins: And, to me, it just seems so blindingly obvious. Just so outlandishly and loudly obvious he came back and he's like, what do you mean the, the pod person instinct?
And I was like, you know, that thing that makes you think like certain groups look culty when they approach you? And I realized he And maybe many other Mormons don't have the pod person instinct. And of course they [00:03:00] wouldn't like, why did I assume , they would like, you wouldn't give off that vibe.
If you were aware that this was a vibe that you could give off.
Simone Collins: I don't, I don't even know if I'm aware of it. Maybe this is like gay dar where some people have it and others don't. Do you, when do you get this feeling when you go to Japan? They have a very conformist culture,
Malcolm Collins: but it's too different from mine.
Simone Collins: Okay. So it has to be close to your own culture, but it has to be
Malcolm Collins: uniform in a way. . So I'll give you examples of people who trigger pod person instinct in me. Okay. Okay. Great examples would be. Mitt Romney, big pod person energy, most Scientologists I've interacted with as big pod person energy.
One who's not in any of these groups who gets big pod person energy is Chris Williamson. Very big pod person energy.
Catholic preachers is another group that triggers this instinct.
Not all Catholic preachers, but some Catholic preachers, like the good boy Catholic preachers. They trigger it really [00:04:00] hard. And I should know that this instinct isn't unique to me. There's like a whole genre of horror around this instinct.
Simone Collins: There totally is, and it's even I will
Malcolm Collins: post on screen here a scare tactics episode that I think does a very good job eliciting it. So before you see this, for people who aren't familiar with the premise of scare tactics, they take like a real person and then they built a sci fi or horror set around that person.
them out. And they ar to elicit this person's p
Speaker 3: Hi, how are you? Alright.
Speaker 4: . Hello, we're the official welcoming committee.
Speaker 3: We brought you a little bit of pie.
Cheer. I heard there's warm pie .
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh
Speaker 6: my goodness. Good to see you. Hi. It's all good.
Speaker 4: Can we run back there and take a
Speaker 3: quick tour? Sure go right ahead. And remember, the individual must suffer for what?
Speaker 5: Community. I knew that
Speaker 6: quote.
Speaker 5: Sacrifice to the individual is good for the community. It's like a I'll tell you later.
Speaker 6: We like to say that once you've tried our [00:05:00] pie, , life becomes a piece of cake. Really?
Let's
Speaker 3: go. So what happened? Good news, someone enjoyed some pie.
That is delightful, I'm very happy.
Speaker: You have to try the pie. Oh, please, try the pie. You know, I just had
Speaker 3: a lot, um
Speaker 5: I really think you should have more pie. Have more pie. Try some
Speaker: pie.
Speaker 2: Try the pie. Try the pie.
Speaker 4: Try the pie. Try the pie.
Speaker 2: You can be on Scare Tactics. Oh my God! Holy s Oh my God!
Malcolm Collins: But you know, if you're t genre around it, it's the more perfect than human. of the body snatchers, st all of these would be very pod person shows the faculty is also a pretty good example of one of these.
Simone Collins: Well, and isn't it even parodied and Rick and Morty with unity?
Malcolm Collins: Yes, it's period with purity with unity and Rick and [00:06:00] Morty. Good example here. And the sort of thing that typically delineates a pod person. entity in horror is once you join it, most of your conflicts go away, you become much more calm, you become much more polite, you become much better to interact with but you also become much more conformist.
Speaker 26: I don't remember him being that friendly. He's obviously one of them. How can he be? He remembered me. WelL, maybe they have selective memories. Yeah, like, what's his name? Me! Maybe it's one of the others, like the Reverend.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-4: So to address the claim earlier of why Warman's would have faced disproportionate violence when proselytizing to these Backwood areas that may have had a much stronger.
Instance of this pod person instinct, I will play two clips, which will contrast the way Mormons thought they were coming off to these people to the way they were actually coming off to these people.
Speaker 19: Oh. Hello, ma'am. My [00:07:00] goodness, you have such an attractive little garden here. Oh, thank you, young man. I just planted those flowers last week. My, how they grow. Yes, ma'am. We're from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. Oh, the Mormons. That's right. I'm, I'm Elder Young, and this is Elder White.
Speaker 7: Stan, take the drug, man, prove it to us. Okay.
Open the door. It is so much better. There's no fear or pain. It's beautiful. And you We'll be beautiful. No problems or worries. We want you. No pain, Stan? We're gonna come in here and I'll show you some fucking pain!
Speaker 43: Well, you two boys can just buck right off.
Speaker 44: Ma'am. You heard me. Take that Book of Mormon and shove it so far Up your righteous asses, that, and choke, you soul soliciting pigfuckers.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-22: This [00:08:00] instinctual reaction is why the Mormon cultural group. And you can see it very clearly on this population map. Never crossed either into the greater Appalachian cultural region or the Midlands cultural region, which probably have a similar. Instinctual reaction. , and, and you can see it like night and day on this map.
It's like there was a wall that prevented Mormon culture from moving in that direction.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-11: And here, it would note something if you're coming into this episode without seeing the last one, , there was a weird phenomenon over the past. , I'd say maybe eight years or so, where almost all of the Mormons who coded as pod person left the church and became woke. , so I haven't met a Mormon personally who coded pod person. And maybe. Eight years. , but
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-23: This doesn't change that historically Mormons were the group that most commonly coated pod person.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-13: Nope within Mormon culture, the words. They're used for somebody who triggers the pod person, instinct are Zubie, Peter [00:09:00] priesthood or Molly Mormon. If you happen to be a Mormon and you're like, what'd you wore men's are triggering this instinct, the ones that Mormons use those words for derogatorily, those are the ones that are triggering the instinct.
Speaker 3: I heard there's warm pie
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-12: It turns out that. Ultra woke ism was just a much stronger lure for people with this pod person mental framework. Then, well, really any religion. , and. I think Mormonism is probably better off for it.
Malcolm Collins: And so even Mormons are like, Why would we be triggering whatever, like, unity from Rick and Morty is supposed to be parroting, like, in other people, like, whatever the deep, like, shiver up the spine that this is meant to trigger as, like, a horror trope. I think as soon as you see that these are the signs that are most associated with the trope, you're like, oh yeah, that's why we're triggering it.
Speaker 8: Where I was better able to focus on my passion for unification. You mean stealing people's bodies? Summer, rude. , this [00:10:00] world will be invited into the Galactic Federation. . From there I'll have access to countless planets and species. One by one, I will unify them.
And I will be what the single minded once called a god. Oh, that's pretty sexy. Where can we get a drink around here? Recreational substances were phased out here. There's no need for escape from the self when your world is one. Unity, unity, who am I talking to?
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-5: I'd also note here, something you saw in both of these clips that is really common in pod person, tropes. Is it pod people neither drink alcohol nor do drugs.
, also just as a quick side note here. If somebody who's from a culture that doesn't drink, alcohol wants to understand why cultures that drink alcohol value at so much. The core value of alcohol is it allows me when I am getting to know an individual to see the parts of their personality, that they might be suppressing, , you know, through their inhibitory pathways in their prefrontal cortex, because it lowers their ability to inhibit certain behavior patterns. , which is the saying [00:11:00] drunk words or sober thoughts comes from.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-6: This is why individuals from drinking cultures often don't trust or have an intrinsic distrust of individuals from non-drinking cultures. And I think individuals from non-drinking cultures may sometimes be confused by this distrust. If it's not explicitly spelled out to them.
Speaker 24: Gary thinks we should keep up with the crawl, because they know what we're doing, but they don't know that we know what they're doing. And basically, no one else has a better idea. So fuck it.
Simone Collins: Um Well, I think what the weird thing is When I, there, there are two different parts of it. One is, is, is this concern that literally your entire self and identity are basically being killed and you're being worn like a mask or a costume. But then there's the version of it where like the steppard wives version where you're just kind of.
Corrected there. There are versions where you're corrected or, or, or sort of, given the equivalent of a lobotomy, but a little bit more refined. Yeah, and then there's the versions where you're [00:12:00] essentially killed and the lobotomy versions I'm watching and I'm thinking, God, that looks great. You know, and I think that's, that's great.
That's why some people see pod cultures and they're like, where do I sign up for this? And maybe this is why, maybe it's a more feminine reaction to this. Maybe it's, it's a more like female, like Mormon
Malcolm Collins: church does keep more women than men.
Simone Collins: Well, and that's the thing. And we know women who've converted into it because they see the lifestyle and they say, I want that.
And maybe that is there. This pod person reaction is on average more male.
Malcolm Collins: And I noticed that you're delineating a separate sub genre of the pod person movie which is what I call the medicated pod person, which is like, they try to give you some medication that makes you like this other group of people that is all really like, doesn't have a lot of emotions, you know, is otherwise really like, clean, conformed, doesn't break rules and this is another sub genre um, Of the, [00:13:00] the, the pod person trope
Speaker 11: On the next all new episode of Sliders, imagine a world where the government regulates drugs. What did you give her? Treadpoles. Standard mood elevator.
Speaker 13: Everybody's on something? Everybody but us. DrOp in,
Speaker 14: people!
A brand new season of adventure. Sliders,
Malcolm Collins: a video game that recently did, it was, it took place in the UK.
I'll add it in post.
Speaker 9: You. When I'm not with you.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-7: I'd also note here, if you're a little confused, you're like, wait, I thought the pod person trope was associated was abstinence from alcohol and drugs. And yet here, you're saying there's a sub genre of it that is focused on using. A specific type of drug. And I would note here that these specific type of drug that's used is always coded to be the type of drug you would get from a psychiatrist. , not coding to be a recreational [00:14:00] drug. , so when the pod person trip is coded as pod people don't do drugs, the type of drugs that they don't do is always something like, , alcohol .
.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-7: Or very light narcotics.
It's never like hard drugs.
Malcolm Collins: But so what is triggering it? Okay. What are all these things associated with? They are so associated with individuals who try to normalize to some sort of communalist value set.
I. e. They are trying to be like. Well, everyone else around them, right? Like, they, they, they, they see the group norm and they say, that's what I should aspire to.
And it creates this sort of pod person reaction. You could say, well, then why do groups like the Japanese not trigger it? Right. Right. And the answer is, is because I was acculturated outside of their cultural norms. So to me, when I'm interacting with a Japanese person, right, they appear just as.
[00:15:00] different as any weirdo on a U. S. Street corner, right? I will say that after a while of living in Korea, Koreans began to trigger my pod person instinct, but it took a long time of normalizing to that culture before I saw what they were doing as normal. And I think, you know, you say that you don't have this instinct that much, but you seem to act very much like somebody who does.
When I met you, you wore like A foot tall bows in your hair every day. You wore dirndls that were brightly colored. You did not, and this is the thing, people can be like, Oh, this is standard urban monoculture, but it really isn't. There are standard scene and urban monocultural outfits that are Built to fit a trope people with a strong pod person reaction Or are from one of these cultures like this when they're going through their teen rebellion phase They typically dress in a way that doesn't fit Any of the mainstream [00:16:00] tropes like they they become hypersensitive to not fitting any of the mainstream tropes I can post pictures of myself from when I was a kid one of the examples is you know When I go to other countries, I pick up a lot of like native like rice picker hats or whatever like other weird things Just so I couldn't be accused of trying to fit in with any specific trope.
And so I, I find that really interesting as well that, that it seems to lead to these specific subcultural patterns. But I, I don't want to spoil the lead here. So I want to to keep going down, you know, when he's like, okay, I'm why would they react so strongly to my ancestors like this? Like your ancestors react so strongly to my ancestors.
And I know the, the, the sort of sub emotional class that I am repressing when I'm interacting with certain groups, it very much to me felt a bit like, you know, when a non passing trans person is like, why do these people, you know, not just treat me like I'm a woman and I, you know, I'm not going to say to them, [00:17:00] You do not understand how much I am repressing like an evolved instinctual part of me That is screaming run in the back of my head When I am interacting with you or when you're interacting not just like like to remove common politics today like a leper Like if you are talking with somebody who has very serious deformities, there's a part in the back of your head It's like you could catch a disease run run run You know kill it with fire
Speaker 54: Help!
Take my hand. Ah! Come on! No, give me your other hand. Oh, my other hand isn't strong enough.
Speaker 55: Get it away from me! Break it!
Malcolm Collins: And you silence that part of your head because we have a cultural framework and a moral framework that operates above sort of our pre evolved, this thing could be diseased or this thing could be a cultural threat.
And. I think that if you don't realize, and I suspect some people much transition without knowing that a lot of [00:18:00] people have this really, really strong and visceral emotional reaction to trans people who aren't passing, because I don't know if anyone who felt that would transition.
Simone Collins: Well, I don't, you have to ask though, how do they react?
I'm sure most people who have transitioned have encountered someone else who is in the act of transitioning who is not passing. How could they not
Malcolm Collins: know? But the point being, Simone, and this is a, this is the key point of this is you're assuming that all humans experience all of the emotional subsets of all other humans.
So what you're saying
Simone Collins: is, is that people who transition are among those who wouldn't have that reaction to people who are poorly transitioning.
Malcolm Collins: Yes, so they just don't see what the problem would be, or they have it at a lower volume than other people. They may not fully recognize how loudly. Some people have this reaction.
And that it's not a socialized reaction. It's an evolved reaction, [00:19:00]
Simone Collins: you
Malcolm Collins: know, used to keep us away from well, somebody that could be diseased
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-14: As a quick side note here, the last episode we did on this subject did draw out one person in the comments who was clearly of this pod person mentality. , demanding that we go along with the church name, change from Mormon or LDS church to. , the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints. Or the church of Jesus Christ, which of course, no one's going to do that.
Like pretends, like it's the only Christian Church, , because it's quote unquote offensive to say Mormon. And of course here I am like, well, I bet you say Quaker. Like, do you even know what Quakers they're really supposed to be called? It's friends by the way, that's the correct term. But of course you're not gonna call them friends because it's. Ridiculous. , and so you call them Quakers. , but as a side here, this to me really reminded me of the whole trans thing.
It's like, You know, when I'm talking to a trans person. If they just want to be called. , he, him or she, her. [00:20:00] I'm going to go along with it. That's a reasonable request. I may, while I'm talking to them, have to constantly be thinking, remember, remember, remember to use the right pronouns. And
I don't really believe this person is a sheet herb. But. I try my best to be polite. However, when they come to me with something absolutely ridiculous. I like some, a made up pronouns that I need to remember just for them. There's a line where I'm like, no, I'm not going to do that.
If the Mormon church had said something like, okay, you can't call us Mormon anymore, but you can call us LDS.
I would have been like, okay, every time I said LDS, I would've been thinking Mormon, but I would have gone along with it. But when they come with the absolutely in fame, The church of Jesus Christ or the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints. I'm like, no, I'm not doing that. And that's basically the way everyone was reacting to that.
And the reason I say that this is a good sign of a pod person is expecting people to go along with this name, change shows a complete [00:21:00] inability to model other humans.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-15: And carries very strong energy of that kid who bought one of those land titles in Scotland, off of YouTube. And now goes around demanding everybody. Call him Barron. , so not all of the pod people have left the Mormon church, but the vast majority have.
Malcolm Collins: or the, the I think a lot of these reactions that, that sort of target the uncanny valley for people aren't familiar with that. That's something that looks like a little too close to human, but isn't fully human.
And that is the emotional subset that's being triggered here. It's the uncanny valley, emotional subset. It's not, I don't
Simone Collins: even know if it's just that, for example, both you and your brother. So this is why I think maybe it's genetic are extremely squeamish around blemishes, like unpopped pimples. And you cannot hear yourselves think over one on your face or that face of anyone around you.
Well,
Malcolm Collins: that's a loud, for example, this is, this is the thing. Everybody is squeamish [00:22:00] to an extent. And no one wants
Simone Collins: to look at them, but you guys can't unsee them. You know, you're like
Malcolm Collins: volumes of this. Okay. Our volume on this is super high, but I would say that the emotion I'm experiencing, right? Like in the same way that like.
If you don't experience this emotional subset, it's useful that somebody's like, no, the emotion doesn't feel like a disgust. It feels more like a fear. The emotion that I feel around blemishes is a disgust emotional subset. This is an uncanny valley emotional subset, which is very different from the disgust.
It's like, Is this similar
Simone Collins: to the fear you feel when you are sitting next to a woman in like full contour makeup where you're like, she's creeping me out where it's like that. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. So an uncanny valley, emotional subset, not discussed, emotional subset. Now I, I, I then had a second realization that was really, really big for me is we started going [00:23:00] through because I was going through.
Pictures of Mormons. We were looking at like the thing that we mentioned the last one, that actually middling religion Mormons are the Mormons that fertility is increasing as time goes on, whereas extreme religiosity Mormons are the Mormons who fertility is decreasing as time goes on. So I've been trying, you know, what's going on here?
Are there specific subgroups of extreme religiosity Mormons that are not having their fertility decrease? And what, you I basically found when going through pictures and talking more with this guy is that there are the ones who don't activate the pod person instinct in me are not having their fertility decline.
And then that got me really interesting. I'm like, okay, so what's the core difference between these 2 groups? Right? And previously, I believe I had missed that. I thought the core difference was deontological versus consequentialist ethics and that religious systems that pushed for behavioral patterns through [00:24:00] deontological frameworks were doing poorly.
And once it pushed through patterns for consequentialist ethics, we're doing well. And then I realized I might be thinking about this all wrong. It might be moral systems based around conformity. Moral systems that are based around conformity to the group of the whole, conformist moral systems, are doing really poorly, and clan based moral systems are doing really well.
And then so, so to word this differently, it turns out is if the, the thing that was causing your ancestors to have lots of babies was that they were given a set of very strict rules that they had to follow. Like a deontological, also a deontological framework. In the past that was good at motivating fertility rates.
In modern times it's not. If the thing that was causing your ancestors to have babies in the past was that they had a degree of pride in who they were and a degree of cultural pride in their [00:25:00] family, that or, or some small group to which they're part of, not some large, giant religious organization.
That seems to be very, very good at resisting fertility collapse. And so then I took this hypothesis and I started asking people I knew in different religious enclaves. I asked a Catholic I knew, the Catholics, you know, who are like really strict about all the deontological rules. Are they the ones having the most kids or is it the ones who take a lot of pride in a family and and and then likely national like I am an ocean and I am an Irishman and I am a Catholic right like is it a I am a Catholic.
I am an Irishman. I am an ocean or is it a I am an ocean. I am an Irishman. I am a Catholic and it turned out that the the clan based one where their primary identity with the smaller group. was doing really well across every single religious tradition. And then I began to look at this more on a global scale, right?
So it's not just the [00:26:00] regions of the United States,
because I'll put a map here in the greater Appalachian region had the most clan based culture which was the Beckwins, and you'll see it overlaps highly with fertility rates. But then if you look globally, which are the cultures that are suffering the most?
It is the collectivist cultures, the Koreans and the Japanese and the Chinese.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-8: And I make a note here. If people are like, oh, the Asian cultures are very clan base. They have things like shrines to their ancestors and stuff. And it's like superficially. Yes. But if you look at the cultural norms, , even in a historic context, when a Japanese person or a Chinese person or a Korean was attempting to determine what should be the social norms that their family acted within, they did not look primarily to other family members.
What was happening at the court or at the higher levels of the social hierarchy, mattered a lot more to determining what their family culture should be like and what their own moral should be like then their parents specifically, or their siblings specifically.
Malcolm Collins: And then if you look regionally, Which [00:27:00] sub regional areas if I put a map of Asia on here are doing really well.
The Mongols, the Mongols have a clan based cultural identity system. And note here that this is not talking about individualism.
The problem was individualist systems as many people used to see. Identity as being either collectivist or individualist. The problem is, is that wokeism in the urban monoculture basically found out how to co opt individualist moral systems into a collectivist framework. A great way that one of the people I was talking to put it is the horror of it is the reaction against hyper NPC ism and the Kosciuszko like state of existence.
It's these people look like us but are not us. Whites also experience this to some level interacting with Russians, but clearly there's obvious differences. It's the uncanny valley but with real people. Two groups of people oppose the wokes. One's in the religious communities which sort of feel that these people are [00:28:00] other or different from my religion and my cultural framing.
But then the others just hate me. Anyone who's telling other people to conform. And that was really interesting to me when I was like, that makes perfect sense. And it also explains the political realignment in the country. Which is a that the right used to be made up of a collection of religious communities that wanted everyone to conform to their values.
And so they sort of cross reference to all of the religious communities. And they're like, okay, what values can we agree on? Now we're going to call these the Judeo Christian set of values and we're going to try to get everyone to conform to them. And then the wokes rose and all of the clan based people were like, Oh my gosh, I hate you, you know, kill it with fire.
Malcolm Collins: And then they moved over to the the right coalition. And this is why. The core of Trump's [00:29:00] base. So if you look at a voter map that divides the different American, like sub national groups, I'm gonna put it on the screen here. We'll think the Republican party's key is the deep South, but it's not, that's only mildly red.
It's actually rural Appalachia, like the greater Appalachia region, which is the key of Trump's base and by far the hardest Trump voters. He comes from it's where a lot of his new support comes from as well from the clan based peoples. Now, hold on, I'm just going to check to see if I can,
Oh, and I would note here for Mormons who may have trouble telling like what Mormons are triggering this instinct. So I went through with a Mormon and was like, this person triggers it. This person doesn't.
Simone Collins: Wow.
Malcolm Collins: This person does it. And he goes, even
Simone Collins: from pictures, you're able to get this feeling. That's awesome.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, very, very quickly. He said what Mormons would call the type of Mormon who triggers it a zoobie. And coming from Utah so I looked it up and zoobies coming from the Ute mouse, however, the term means wimpy goody two shoes says [00:30:00] Mark Christensen, a fan, a BYU student. A usage might connote the epitome of an Orthodox letter of the law, quote unquote, Peter priesthood.
And I actually think Peter priesthood works well for the Catholics who, who listen to me, would you call a, a Catholic priest? Do you met preter priesthood in a derogatory fashion? Then they're probably eliciting this instant. And so there's a lot of things to talk about here. One is the new political realities of this and understanding it and how to cater to it.
And the other is why is this so protective of fertility rates? And the third is, is what is it actually like to be raised in a clan based family? You have thoughts.
Simone Collins: I'm no, no, I, this is, this is fascinating to me, especially because I don't feel this like. strong, aversive response to unified seeming cultures, even though I apparently, I think I'm just incapable of being a part of them.
You know, it's very much a
Malcolm Collins: little mermaid part of your [00:31:00] world. What drove you to wear a two foot tall bow on your head when you were speaking at your graduation? What drove you? Well, I'm, I'm, I'm a weird freak
Simone Collins: that is incapable of interacting with them, but they, they seem to be.
Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no, Simone. I'm asking you genuine something.
These are things that you did that didn't align with any social community. Okay. Any mainstream social community. What in? Yeah, I'm, I'm allergic. I'm allergic
Simone Collins: to other people's rules and standards, but that doesn't mean that I can't find the concept of a cohesive community to be attractive.
Malcolm Collins: Then why did you resist it your entire life?
You were around Mormons.
Simone Collins: The idea seems nice. I just don't. I just don't want to dress, look, behave, or be like them, or be held to their standards.
Malcolm Collins: Oh! I think I'm understanding this well now. Okay, so I know why you don't feel it strongly. Okay. And it comes from [00:32:00] something else that's happened between the two of us.
There have been multiple instances when, like, someone at a table has been crying, and afterwards I go to Simone, and I was like, Oh my god, could you believe, like, what was wrong with her then? I didn't see anything. You, due to your autism, are very, very, very bad at modeling other people. It might be some degree of modeling other people when you're in a culture that has this ultra desire to not conform that triggers this instinct.
Because you don't model people, you aren't sitting there being like, There's something very wrong about the model I'm building of this person.
Simone Collins: That would make a lot of sense.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): I think this is exactly it. I've been thinking about this line more as I was editing this. And that's what creates a feeling of unease. It's okay. When you mentally model somebody, you're essentially creating an emulation of that person in your head to attempt to predict how they will react to whatever you say, mental model, do something that people create every day.
Like when you have an argument with somebody and [00:33:00] then later you go and you mentally, are you with them in your head, you have created a mental model of them, a. A sort of sub a process in your brain. That's essentially an emulation of their mind. Different people build these emulations with different amounts , of clarity. And, , some people are just sort of always building emulation.
Some people almost never build emulations, , people with some forms of autism, like the type that Simone has seemed to be completely incapable of building these emulations at all.
When I create emulations of people who have this pod person mindset, the emulations. Create this. Intrinsic feeling of. An ease within me because , they feel.
Shell. Like, they're so easy to predict. It's almost like there isn't a full human operating underneath them.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-9: In Warhammer lore, this would be like trying to read the mind of a psychic blink. You would just get a reverberation [00:34:00] feedback that would cause you great mental pain and feel very sort of hollow and desolate.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: And. Worse than that. They are extremely interchangeable. With other individuals. From their sort of pod to tribe. When you try to model them. So. , if I'm trying to model two people from the same group and they fall into this, , they will, for all intensive purposes, be operating under the same model. Which feels very inhuman.
If you're not used to being around these groups, it feels very much like, well, I guess that's why it triggers that pod person. That's why in the pod people, movies, they.
Create these. Pleasant simplistic. Entities to trigger this.
Simone Collins: And I'm curious if the listeners slash watchers. That are on the spectrum feel the same way where they're like very confused about this whole pod person thing but then the higher modeling ability more schizoid people watching are really like [00:35:00] getting what you're saying i would be so curious to see if it comes down to that that that it's more The fear that emanates from being able to kind of model very conformist people on a societal basis, and not so much the fact that they're behaving cohesively.
And I think that would also explain why this doesn't trigger when you're traveling in a foreign land that's very conformist, because you're not really able to model them, but then after you get a little bit more time around them and you're, you're modeling, Like, algorithm comes online for that new group.
Then they freak you out.
Malcolm Collins: Well, that would make a lot of sense. Like an infiltrating group. I mean, one of the things that's common in all of the horror around this is a new family comes to town where everyone is pleasant and everyone is cheery and they don't seem to have any problems. And then over time, more families start acting like this and more families start acting like this.
It, it, it's, it's also a degree of, like they're taking over and [00:36:00] you can also see why a feeling of
Simone Collins: invasion.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. People who have this fear or this background sort of instinct probably have such an intense reaction to the urban monoculture and it's why the greater Appalachian region has moved to be such an cohesive base for Trump.
Right.
Simone Collins: Cause the urban monoculture really. is a strong pod person.
Um, uh, Um, uh, Uh, uh, uh
Speaker 47: Screams
Simone Collins: And
Malcolm Collins: it gives off strong. It's
Simone Collins: more blatant than Stepford wives because Stepford wives are just really put together. Women were that are very, you know, polite and, and gregarious, but [00:37:00] then woke people are like, my pronouns are they, them, and you know, they, they look different and yeah, that's, yeah.
And,
Malcolm Collins: and and the. Well, so one thing that's important to note about this, because it was something I noted when I was thinking more about it. There's a weird sort of tradition among the clan cultures that is essentially used as like a pod person test. So in the movie, the faculty, there is a scene where they have a dehydrator that they're using to see if one of the people has become one of the pod people.
And they're like, you have to do the dehydrator. So I know if you're really one of the pod people or not.
Speaker 16: How do we know you're not one of those fucking things?
Speaker 15: I'm not putting that, that hack drug up my nose. So, 80s.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-2: A
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-3: and the medic virus is.
Speaker 16: Are taking over the earth. Weigh it. [00:38:00]
Malcolm Collins: And the thing, That is the dehydratic of, of, of like this real life pod person instinct is vulgarity. It is used as a, as a sign of authenticity within an individual. And it is, I think, Yeah. So everyone on
Simone Collins: 4chan being so, vulgar and mean to each other is really an inoculation or a weeding effect, getting rid of anyone who is vulgar.
Would be an outsider.
Malcolm Collins: That's part of it. Yeah, I mean, you would have a very hard time as a pod person spending a lot of time on 4chan. It would be like constantly having the dehydratic thrown in your face. You're not going to be able to be there for long. But I actually think that 4chan is a different thing that causes that behavior pattern.
People can check out one of our earliest episodes, which is on 4chan. And why different online platforms have different cultures. [00:39:00] But This is why Mitt Romney struggled so hard to connect with sort of this new Republican base, but Donald Trump, not despite being vulgar, has done such a good job, but because he's vulgar.
And keep in mind, vulgar doesn't mean Cussing. It means grab them by the, it means saying stuff. It means
Simone Collins: culture. It means hamburgers. It means saying things that are inappropriate, etc. Yes.
Malcolm Collins: And keep in mind, inappropriate can shift. So people can be like, why do so many people in the new right, you know, talk about cat girls?
Like saying cat girls are hot, right?
Speaker 17: I mean, I did promise the internet that I'd make cat girls. We could make a robot cat girl. I mean, how much of a buddy do you like? Do you, do you have, how many applications do you thought is there? You know, can you have a romantic partner, a sex partner, a lot of money?
Malcolm Collins: Like, it's because it's a very good example of this form of vulgarity. It is something that if you were a pod person, you wouldn't be able to do because you're so concerned about what the conformity of society [00:40:00] thinks about you, but that. Most normal people
are most men think are hot.
And if you didn't like the natural reaction of a clan person to one person in a friend group being cat girls are hot is not. If they don't think cat girls are hot to say, I don't think that in only a weirdo and think that it's to find something that is equally taboo to admit about themselves, this folder, something they find hot that might break some taboo, because then it becomes sort of a competition around.
saying a taboo thing to prove you're not, you're not actually a pod person. And then the other person responds with something slightly more taboo. And it's a, it's a little ritual that's done and you will see it in these groups all the time. And it's how you gain entrance often into their communities.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-16: In the last episode you may remember. I mentioned that at a couple of the late night VC parties that were focused around this clan based culture, that there were fights where A couple of the women who were, , the [00:41:00] high powered VCs themselves or otherwise prominent figures would fight for the men. And,
You wouldn't want a pod person at one of these events
because they would immediately go. Quote, unquote tell on you say, oh, they did something naughty and vulgar at their event. So you check them before they come. ,
Malcolm Collins: and I think that I'm realizing now that some people just never gain interest. Like if you are lacking this. knowledge that like this is the game that's being played. I would be turning you out of a community that I was a part of politely, but without you realizing it, like there, there's like a whole section of society that these people don't realize that they're just being denied access to.
Simone Collins: They're being shadow banned from entire sections of society.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but, but I will say that the clan based people who can't code switch well, they get shadowbanned from another section of society, so, you know, keep that in mind. The, the thing to keep in mind though [00:42:00] is it actually really matters now that you're getting shadowbanned from this section of society if you don't know how to code switch.
Because as I've mentioned, the venture capital world is increasingly being taken over by these clan based cultures.
And so vulgarity is used as a shit test basically was in a lot of these Silicon Valley type cultures to make sure you're not a, a narc, like not a narc, narc, but you know what I mean?
Like if you go to a party, are you going to be a problem later? Are you going to be, you know, horrified?
Speaker 46: Sports themed paintings I've seen. It's very good. Nice. Are
Speaker 45: you a knock? Sorry?
Speaker 46: A knock.
Speaker 45: I'm gonna sound it out for you. Ah, you or are you not a knock like Johnny Depp in 21. Jump Streak. Ah,
Speaker 46: I see, I see. Okay. A, a narc a no.
Speaker 45: What are you doing? First time? I'm a
Speaker 46: federal agent. I'm a special agent. Are you a boy or a girl? It's a fair question. Uh, I'm I'm female. No kidding. [00:43:00] All woman.
Speaker 45: From the get go? No operation?
Speaker 46: Um, from birth, yes.
Malcolm Collins: Why
Simone Collins: would one of these people be seen? As a threat, aside from the fact that there is an instinctual distrust of them.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, because they genuinely, so there's a lot of reasons you would see them. The, the threat.
So, I, I, I'd say, you know, si ala for example, one of our friends gets invited to a lot of high level Silicon Valley parties. And there's, there's social reasons for that, but you could also see it as sort of appendant. on those parties that keeps away pod people. So, you can't pass the door because it's got an Ayla on it.
Ayla
Simone Collins: as protective talisman.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. And you can say, why would the Ayla protective talisman be so important? Well, because twofold. One is if these people come in and they are of the woke variety of pod person, or they are of the some form of, you know, conformist religious group if they disapprove of the actions that happened at that party, [00:44:00] then they can go back and narc to their community in a way that could lower the statuses of everyone who was at the event.
Like, they are a genuine threat. And that's one of the ways that conformist. used to attack nonconformist groups is they look for nonconformist things they do, then they try to publicly air those things in order to hurt those people's status. And it's why this has been so ineffective in the Republican circles for a very long time.
Like since the Republicans basically like I'm a predominantly clan based organization because it used to If you go back to the, you know, the 80s when Republicans use disgust based morality you could signal that something somebody had done, you know, violated some social norm and then they'd be like persona non grata in Republican circles.
And some people have been like, oh, you guys talk about furries. Oh, you guys talk about, you know, orgies. Oh, you guys talk about like this must, you know, mean that you're never going to be able to run at the mainstream Republican politician. And I'm just like, you are clearly don't have your finger to the wind with where things are [00:45:00] going, the next generation, or even the current voter base.
Donald Trump was the Howard Stern candidate. Like he had been on Howard Stern for years. Howard Stern was. Now, you might think that by today's standards, Howard Stern is tame. Howard Stern was as extreme of a show as you could have for its time, and stay on air. It was so extreme, there's no way it could have been on network television.
It was just constantly signaling, we are vulgar, we are vulgar, we are vulgar, honesty signals, every five seconds.
Speaker 37: Like Howard, I was on Howard Stern show as much as anybody. And yeah, he, he was great at that time. And then he, , went woke and
Speaker 35: since he's
Speaker 37: gone woke, his ratings have gone down in the tubes.
And , he has a best of did you ever see the best of best of Howard Stern? I don't want to promote it necessarily, but And I was there for just about all of them the best of we had good shows It was good, but he's changed and you know, he doesn't do the ratings anymore
Speaker 36: No, he doesn't.
Malcolm Collins: And every time they, you know what I'm [00:46:00] talking about, Simone. Like, you remember how genuinely vulgar Howard Stern used to be seen as. Yes. But I want to talk first., I'll start by talking about what it's like to be raised within one of these cultures and how morality is taught to you because I think once we understand this, we can understand why these cultures fertility rates have been so protected.
Okay. So when you are being taught morality, like when I was being taught morality. Okay. My parents would say you should do this or you should do that because you're a college. It was never taught to me as a universalized morality. It was taught to me as a morality that applied specifically to me because of the, the clan I was a part of.
And I think that, and I think that when religion is taught to a lot of people in a clan based structure, it's. Oh, you're Catholic because you're an O'Hare. Not like you're Catholic because [00:47:00] you're Catholic and then the O'Hare thing is some ancillary side thing. And it's also taught when you are educated in this way.
It's, it's not like, Oh, everyone else is evil or something like that. It's more like everyone else holds themselves to a lower standard and more is expected of you than is expected of other people.
Simone Collins: Yeah, now this is I'm starting to relate to this. It's it's making sense because I'm on the flip side of it too.
My parents raised me to do certain things, but if I didn't see other people do those things, I wouldn't be even remotely surprised. In fact, I would kind of expect that people wouldn't do those things, but that I need to do them anyway. Like you always have to leave wherever you've been, a campsite or whatever, better than it was when you first got there.
And you know, we do this and we do that and we have all these knives and I would be surprised if other people did too. Like just genuinely surprised. And if, for example, I saw that I arrived at a campsite and it was a mess, [00:48:00] I wouldn't be like, well, I can't believe they haven't left the campsite better than when they arrived.
Like, I just be like, yeah, people are, you know, shits and well, we're certainly going to clean up the campsite. So I think the other flip side of it that I don't see in other people, and maybe this is only a pod person thing. Is this the Karen reaction of like, you have to do this. Why didn't you do this?
You like this, this insistence or outrage when other people do not behave. In accordance with their culture or values or expectations. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: absolutely. Only, only really pod people do that. Like, yeah. Or even, even
Simone Collins: service expectations, like not being happy with the service you received. I think a non pod based person kind of just expects everyone else to be kind of disappointing from a service perspective.
And of course, it's not great
Malcolm Collins: to be disappointed by everyone else. Like they are, yeah and, and people can be like, well, that's [00:49:00] elitist and it's like, yeah, it might be elitist, but having pride in who you are appears to be one of the key things that's required to have a high fertility rate. You know, you have to like who you are to want to keep existing.
And so, you know, and this is something that the urban monoculture tries everything it can to erase. When you go to the school system, it tries to get you to hate Western civilization. It tries to get you to hate your own ancestors. It tries to get you to hate. Everything. And if it can effectively do that, like, why would anybody try to get you to hate?
Your own your own culture, right? Well, because they have an alternative they want to offer you and so if they can break you from your birth culture, then they can pick you up and take you in and so that's why they need to constantly denigrate Your own culture and constantly hide your own cultural history from you
Simone Collins: in the pragmatist guide to crafting religion.
You describe domineering versus symbiotic cultures with domineering cultures being those which Kind of have [00:50:00] ultimately a mandate to save everyone and for everyone to be of that one culture or religion. And then symbiotic cultures are those which don't believe everyone can be saved and therefore are more supportive of pluralism, but at the same time are kind of assholes because they just expect that a bunch of people are going to go to hell.
Malcolm Collins: Are different than this dichotomy. Like it's related to the dichotomy, but you can be from a domineering culture and come from a clan based subclave or like. Ethno phenotype of that culture. Right. Because
Simone Collins: technically Catholicism is a domineering culture and you want to save everyone, but at the same time, there are very clan based subsets of Catholicism.
Where there isn't
Malcolm Collins: really well fertility or the rise logically understand that their goal is one day to convert everyone, but that doesn't mean that that's how they frame Catholicism in their heads.
Simone Collins: Interesting. Okay. I just wanted to clarify that because I was curious if you considered them synonymous or not.
Malcolm Collins: And another thing to note about clan based cultures is a lot [00:51:00] of people assume, and I mentioned this when I was talking about clan based cultures before, is one of the key features of clan based cultures is you are judging yourself off of your clan system. So, like, I don't judge myself. I was never taught, and I never have really judged myself off of wider society.
It's what is my brother doing? What is my sister doing? What are my cousins doing? What did my parents generation do? And, and my aunts and uncles do. You know, like that's where cultural norms air set. And if I'm breaking cultural norms, I am specifically thinking, okay, this is the cultural norm of my family, and I am consciously choosing to break that cultural norm or or setting cultural expectations.
This is the cultural expectation that my family sets, and I think it's it's poorly chosen, but that's where I grabbed all of my cultural norms and expectations was from my family network.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-10: And I have chosen to significantly deviate from some of the cultural norms of my family. , the biggest one being, , an error of respectability is supposed to be expected of all. Collins's like we are supposed to be respectable and high class [00:52:00] acting and very. Squeaky clean and never controversial.
And obviously. I have gone in a very different direction. And I have talked in link on episodes, like the episode media baiting about why we have chosen to go in this controversial direction, because I think it's the only way to have relevance in the current political discussion. And so I understand why my family set respectability as a standards when they were running for office. A generation ago or the generation before that.
But I don't think that if we are to stay with the same consequential goal, which is public service and having an impact on the direction society is going, that, , they do, they good hypothesis to try to strive for this air of respectability. Even though everyone else in my family still works really hard to strive for it.
Malcolm Collins: And I should note that within clan based family networks, people fall out of that. Like if somebody doesn't do something right, they fall out of it.
Well, so why is this so protective? Well, if I am a Mormon or a Catholic, and [00:53:00] I am normalizing to cultural norms. Not based on what is the temple saying or for Catholics right now? Why it's so protective. What is the Pope saying? Because the Pope's gone, you know, woke, woke, woke right now, right? I don't look to the Pope or the centralized organization for what is.
You know, my norms as a Catholic. I'm looking for my, either my clan or my chosen subgroup of the Catholic community to set those norms. When I, when I am a Mormon and I'm looking for this, I am looking for that subgroup or that family. And yeah, one family member may have like de subgroup. But now I just no longer consider them among the people I am comparing myself to.
And then this explained why it was the Mormons who were considered themselves a middling religion that were going up in fertility, and the Mormons who considered themselves extremely Mormon who were going down in fertility. It's because if you are a clan based individual, you're going to have certain Rules that are rules for normal [00:54:00] Mormons, just not rules for your family, because your family had like collectively decided we're not going to follow those rules, but we have these other extra rules that you might have to follow.
And so, they would normally not consider themselves at the extreme end, but they would take a lot of pride. In their family identity and Mormonism and Mormonism is actually very good at facilitating that. So while the backwoods people were typically very hostile to the mormons when the mormons went into their territory When the backwards people moved into mormon territory a huge number of them converted to mormonism and a lot of people can be like why were there a huge number of backwards converts to mormonism?
The answer is is because and i've mentioned this before mormons offer the best Heaven for somebody from a clan based culture.
Getting to spend all eternity with your family, with your clan, is a very easy sell to one of these people. And it's not a sell you get with most heaven systems. So, and then Mormonism also, it's all into jihad.
Genealogy, it's all into family history. Like, of course, it's going to appeal to these people, [00:55:00] right? But they're just going to relate to Mormonism very differently than other people relate to Mormonism. And when we were going through pictures, if you're like, what's the difference between these two Mormon churches?
If you're looking at the non clan based Mormons, they're the ones who look very sort of, I guess I'd say preppy. Very similar, all sort of in similar outfits. If you are looking at the Klan based ones, they typically dress more like you'd think a typical Trump supporter would dress. With a pickup truck and, you know, a lot of American flags everywhere, and a lot of that sort of stuff.
Not all the, the, the quiche, but more like Western. Or more Southern, somebody might say. Even though they're not really talking about Southern culture, they're talking about greater Appalachian culture. A lot of people confuse the two. Southern culture is very, I'd say sort of dandy based. It's not the, the, the mud wrestling and stuff like that.
But anyway now I wanted to get to, Oh, yes, the two types of these systems because this is another thing I noted. So, the Mormon guy one of the Mormons I was talking to, this is actually a separate Mormon, and they were [00:56:00] very disappointed that their parents were more involved with their local church than coming and helping with their grandkids, right?
And this is when we were talking about this topic of, of, you know, do you care more about the family or do you care more about the church? And I was, you know, obviously I felt sympathy for them, but then I had this realization, my parents don't help me, but like, I never had any feeling like they ever might come and help me as an adult.
And if anything, I see it as a relief that they don't help me as an adult. And so then I started focusing on this feeling more. And Simone, when I brought this up with you, you're like, yeah, I feel the same way. Or do you want to elaborate? Yeah. There was,
Simone Collins: there was zero expectation that there would be ongoing support or close involvement from my parents growing up.
And the hope was that I would just succeed and be out of the nest. And definitely, I think what always surprised me was hearing from people who fully expected on, like ongoing [00:57:00] childcare from their parents or continued support. Because to me, that would feel like meddling and stress and obligation. And it feels nice to not have that.
And it feels nice to have the freedom. And I also think that my parents enjoyed the freedom that they have not having to care for children. So it's just everyone saying like, fuck off. I love you. Bye. And it's nice.
Malcolm Collins: Well, it is something that I looked at to see if this is something that had been historic because I have a lot of biographies of my ancestral family members.
So I was able to think through those, think through tons of interviews I've done with my dad and my grandfather because I like recording family history. Again, that's a normal thing for some people in clan based culture. They're going to record their family history a lot. And a lot of people, when they look at like my family, they're like, Oh, you guys have intergenerational wealth.
And I'm like, Well, insofar as each generation is wealthy, not insofar as each generation has passed on their wealth. I didn't inherit anything from my dad, and my dad not [00:58:00] only didn't inherit anything from his family, but his grandfather took out a million dollars in debt against him. The one area where my family has a tradition of helping the family is always finding a way to pay for education when they can.
But even that where I looked at where the family was helping and like my great, great, great grandfather's time and his father the parents didn't help. It was the siblings that helped. The siblings would help pay for things. And then you talked about thomas jefferson's biography, how it was a similar.
No,
Simone Collins: This brought to mind Benjamin Franklin's biography for me, where, yes, his father contributed to his education and encouraged him to think about careers, but at age 12, he was on his own. And what did he do? He worked for his brother's printing shop, one of the colonial America's earliest newspapers, where he then contributed anonymously as A letter to the editor writer under the name silence do good until his brother discovered him [00:59:00] and there was such a huge conflict over it that it got to the point where it was, it became violent.
Just hilarious. But then again, you have this, this rough and tumble, a competition between other
Malcolm Collins: brother gave him money to invest, right?
Simone Collins: Yeah, that's what I remember from the biography. I was asking about it today just for the. Yeah. Specifics of that happened to reread the biography, and it couldn't remember that.
But I recall after he had relocated to Philadelphia, a brother or a cousin, giving him money to deploy as investment and there being an issue actually, because a friend with whom he was working on that was spending the money poorly. Wasting it instead of investing it. So yeah, I was under the impression.
And I think that basically Benjamin Franklin relied on a broader network of siblings, but not so much as parents understanding that his parents had a lot of kids and just didn't really have resources for him, which is fine. Right.
Malcolm Collins: 16. [01:00:00]
Simone Collins: I think, yeah, I think there were 16 kids total and he was the youngest son.
And then of course this brother's brawling in an early startup environment immediately made me think of Elon Musk and his brother. Who also seemed to have succeeded in men and. Thrive despite their parents Benjamin
Malcolm Collins: franklin what remember i've always said that the the the puritans ended up merging with the backwoods backcountry people and this is why their cultures were very similar in many ways Or at least a subsection of them were and this was a subsection that ben franklin represented He would always do deals with the when the backcountry people, when the pit What, what group with it?
The something boys sieged Philadelphia and almost took the city. He was the one who had to do a deal with them because the Puritans kept treating the back country people really unfairly and not giving them votes. And so they basically said, okay, well, then we'll take over your city. And they, they came with weapons and they almost did.
It's one of the only times that the American population has sieged and almost conquered an [01:01:00] American city just out of frustration. And he was the one who had to handle that. But anyway, that's back at hand here. So what I'm saying is as many people when they hear clan, what they may think of is the cliche like hillbilly family where you have some old matriarch or patriarch that is ruling everything.
And then you know, beneath them is like a family network. But actually you, you may get that occasionally. But because clan based people are so anti hierarchical it's actually usually a lot more flat than that. And the parents role is often seen as more of a trial than a like we're giving you stuff or we're making it easier for you.
Like every time I've been around my parents, my sort of understanding of our relationship is their role was to make my life artificially difficult so that. When they weren't around, my life would be easier. Cue broccoli dropping the weights here. And so when I was thinking about this idea of like, do I want my parents around helping with my kids?
I was like, I can think [01:02:00] of no instance ancestrally, like remember in the, in the, the family diaries, the first one, this is at the great great grandfathers. He left home as soon as he was like 12 or 13 and moved from like Mississippi to Texas and then only went back to bring his wife back. And then his son.
Got mad when he was like 15 or 16 because the dad took his hog and killed it at the wrong season. And he's like, I'm never working with him again.
Simone Collins: Untimely hog killing. That's the end of the relationship for him.
Malcolm Collins: He needed it wrong. Time to sell his Bitcoin. Okay. He sold his Bitcoin in the wrong market and he was very upset about this.
And he said, I will never work with him again in business. And so again, there was no intergenerational help there. It was in intragenerational help. And people can be like, Well, that seems really hard, right? Like, I guess it is hard, but it puts like additional, I guess you could say pressure whether it's, it's evolutionary pressure or additional ability to survive and in a hard environments and motivation to [01:03:00] push outwards, which explains why these people were so common on the frontier.
Because you know, they would often leave their family environment when they came of age simply because there was, because there's no nepotism, there's no benefit to staying there. And, and worst case scenario, you might be accused of achieving something nepotistically. So you look at me, like I started my career basically in Korea about as far away from my family as you could get.
And my dad started it his first job was in Central and South America driving around doing business deals in that area. But anyway. So we're going to get to the final point here which is About, well, I mean, I sort of already talked about why it's so protective of fertility rates. It's so protective of fertility rates because pride is a very good motivator of fertility rates and a much better motivator for why you do certain things than, than, than a strict set of rules.
Believing that that pride is tied to a certain degree of elitism. Like I do X because I'm better than other people. It turns out in humans is. A very good way of convincing them to do something. [01:04:00] And it's much less sensitive to dominant societal pressures. So, if we see the dominant social group doing X in our area, we're gonna say, well, let's stay away from that.
I actually think that this is, in part, why The Catholic subculture has been so impacted by the urban monoculture. You know why 60% of Catholics vote Democrat? Why so much of the Catholic church and so many Catholic schools have just become like urban monocultural centers is because a lot of cultural groups, subcultural groups under the wider Catholic umbrella were communicate what's the word I'm looking for?
Communitarian influencer collectivist.
Simone Collins: Oh.
Malcolm Collins: And they that worked when the Catholics were the majority in the areas that they were, which Catholics often were, but it also also meant that they got crushed the moment the urban monoculture came to town, but that doesn't mean that all of the subcultural groups within Catholicism were collectivist and those groups have done well, and then the wider collectivist societies like [01:05:00] China, Japan, Korea are just getting absolutely brutalized by fertility class.
And so. I guess my, and when I was talking to people, there's actually a lot of immediate to do items from this realization, which is to focus a lot on building pride in family identity and how your family is different from other groups. And what your family does and what it means to be a member of your family.
And so this is something that you can carry out whether you're a Catholic or a Mormon or a Jew or a anything and to not succumb to the risk of primarily affiliating was a cultural identity. The second takeaway I would have if I was somebody watching this who didn't have the pod person instinct is to recognize that other people do have this instinct and to be very.
wary of when you might be triggering it, especially if you might be triggering [01:06:00] other things that could offend those groups. So as I've mentioned the backwoods people generally don't attack people unless they think those people are patronizing them, like putting them down, seeing them as less than, et cetera.
Unfortunately the pod person instinct almost intrinsically can feel like being put down by somebody if they're dressed nicer than you and everything like that. And, and yeah. So it's, it's very wary to, to, to be aware. Or am I broadcasting this in the way I'm acting in the way I'm dressing or do I appear and also to know sort of the vulgar keywords to understand that you're being shit test when something like that happens.
And there is actually a purpose behind that shit test. It's not like doing it for shits and giggles. It has utility even in a modern context. It is being used essentially to determine authenticity, like
Simone Collins: you may think it's degeneracy when it's really a search [01:07:00] for authenticity or virtue by different standards.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, virtue by different standards by willing to stand to your own beliefs about the world and moral systems in how or your families or your clan systems in so far as those differentiate from the dominant culture systems. Thanks. So any final thoughts, Simone?
Simone Collins: Oh, I like this. It, it seems intuitively to be very protective from cultural technologies and memes that are inherently dangerous because when your internal measuring stick is all about your internal family, you just aren't going to be as susceptible to those outside.
Contagions, which is cool.
Malcolm Collins: And I would note one final thing, which is interesting, is that clan cultures don't rely on churches as much as other cultures, which is something to note. Some do, but most [01:08:00] just don't need them to maintain cultural cohesion. Whereas communalist cultures often need something like a meeting place with non members to feel like they're part of it.
I think people overthink that clan based cultures are like constantly having family meetings, instead of like having family meetings once every couple years. They don't need as much check in. They're much more atomized in that respect. And, and a different video can be on. How did the urban monoculture basically erase individualist cultures?
Because they basically got completely wiped out.
Simone Collins: Well, and by individualist cultures, do you mean clan based cultures?
Malcolm Collins: No, there were three cultural types. There's collectivist, there's clan based, and there's individualist. Individualists believe in totally atomized individual autonomy. I am Malcolm. I am not a Collins.
I am not a Catholic. I am Malcolm first.
And individualist culture was the first one to fall. [01:09:00] It was incredibly susceptible to the urban monoculture. Almost nobody who has an individualist mindset still exists.
Simone Collins: I don't know. I have this feeling like individualistic culture is what the urban monoculture is all about. It's about isolating people into something where They don't have anything larger to adhere to. It's only them and it's only their immediate feelings.
Malcolm Collins: So, so what you're noticing is first, the, the urban monoculture has to turn somebody into an individualist before it can erase them, or it has to conquer their bureaucracy, which is, means it can conquer collectivists really easily as well.
But it, once somebody is an individualist, then the urban monoculture, which is your anti individualist, the urban monoculture doesn't say, be whatever you want to be. It says you have to think this, you have to do this, you have to have this value set. But basically it's a divide and conquer [01:10:00] strategy.
Individualists, because they have to fight. Alone, basically end up getting wiped out really quickly
Simone Collins: by it. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense.
Malcolm Collins: And they can think, oh, well, we'll all fight together. But it turns out that because the urban monoculture is like, well, But we're just about enabling new types of individualism and new ways of being affirmed.
It's very easy to sort of get in that back door and split off the factions of the individualist culture. So that there is no fighting back against it.
Simone Collins: Okay. I like
Malcolm Collins: that. Love you, Simone. I love you too, Malcolm.
Simone Collins: You too.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-17: I wanted to do some final thoughts here on the future of Mormonism, because these sort of had a three episode arc. That talked a lot about Mormonism and was inspired by statistics of what's going on within the Mormon church. , one is. The, like, what's the future of Mormonism [01:11:00] going to be. And I think that right now we are at an inflection point for the Mormon identity that is as big. And the. Types of people who are Mormons we'll change as much. As the changeover from, , the original Joseph Smith days to. , this settlement of Utah days or the polygenist days to the post polygynous days.
And I think that it's driven by two things first was when the Mormon church decided to
Microphone (3- ATR2100x-USB Microphone) & Integrated Camera: Promote
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-17: the COVID vaccine. And a lot of Mormons where Mo. And this is what we were talking about. The Mormons, you seem to have more kids or the Mormons who. , take pride in Mormonism and, and utilize Mormonism. But when the church tells them to do something that goes against their own identity or conscience or clan morals, they're like no F off, I'm not taking the vaccine. , and so a lot of these individuals ended up, , Temporarily sort of splitting from [01:12:00] the church, not going into bad standing, but rechanging how would they think about an interact with the hierarchical system of the church? And I think that this was actually very healthy for the church, because , I often hear my Mormon friends be like, well, what's going to happen to the church if. The essential bureaucracy goes, woke or gets captured by woke ism.
, and here I would point them. I'm like, well, you, you have people like beachy, Keenan who, you know, we interviewed recently, he was a Catholic. And her community of Catholics feels like the Pope compared to their value set is a far woke extremist. , and yet they are still staying within the church. , and I suspect that Mormonism might have a similar thing.
They just change how they relate to the central hierarchy. And I think that you sort of had this prototyped. With the COVID mandates. , which is to say
the church did something that was woke and people didn't leave. They didn't split off and start some new church. They're like, okay, we'll tolerate this until we can recapture the central bureaucracy. , so I think that the Mormons can learn a lot from the Catholics in that [01:13:00] respect, in terms of how they related to that. Event. now would I handle it that way?
No, but I'm not a Mormon or a Catholic, like I have a different set of like genetic pre coding. That's gonna cause me to splinter. And if you look at the,
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-19: Interview we did with.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-17: redeemed. Zoomer. You, you get a sense of this were the Protestants. Whenever one of their churches goes even a little woke. Everyone. Who's not woke, even if it turns out that it's the majority who's not woke, just ends up splitting off and starting a new organization. , and this is what I'm talking about, where it's sort of. , as a slight level of, , , Culture and maybe genetics leads to the Protestants to always split off.
But I suspect the Mormons are going to act more like the Catholics. Now here, I would also note like what's the future of the Mormon religion. , was a question that was posed to me recently. And I started thinking, you know, I know a lot of Mormons don't watch the Mormon influencers. However. I think the Mormon influencers [01:14:00] may be the Vanguard of a new direction.
The church could take.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-18: So essentially the image of what a Mormon is. If you look at people who grew up in my generation, it was of this nerdy sort of pod person. Eve, you look at people who are growing up in this next generation, , you know, young kids today. It's the ultra trad wife. Who's baking pie. And. , you know, may.
It may come off as unrealistically.
Perfect. But is essentially a form of jock. You can almost think of like, they sort of transitioned from a nerd image to a jock image. And this isn't just a transition in image. There genuinely used to be a lot of nerdy pod people, Mormons, and most of them left the church and went woke recently. And. Even the ones who are staying in the church, if you go around. , and one of my friends was showing me pictures around Utah.
Recently, if you look at the ones who are breeding, they are of this jock [01:15:00] variety. Now they're not the nerdy pod people anymore. They're just not having many kids.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-17: Where this next generation, like, remember how I said, like, Where the Mormon church is going, could be as different from where it was historically as the,
Post polygamous Mormons, where from the pre polygamist Mormons, culturally speaking. Mormons for a long time have been a weird religion. However. The Mormons on the cultural Vanguard. Now the Mormon wife influencers. Or trad they're like, Mormonism historically was antithetical to try that, at least in the eyes of the American public. And now they are seen as the Vanguard of trad.
They are seen as the trad foot soldiers in the culture war, and this sort of completely transforms. Part of the Mormon self identity as being, not just mainstream and normal, but the Vanguard of mainstream and normal, but also what it may mean to be a good [01:16:00] Mormon for some individuals where these Mormon influencers often break. The deontological rules of the Mormon tradition.
I E they won't wear their garments correctly. They might hike up their legs a little bit, but.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-20: They are breaking rules, not to appear more urban monoculture, but to appear more perfectly athletically trad.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-17: They're having a lot of kids. And they are presenting an aspirational figure that makes people want to join the church. And it may change Mormonism from a religion of overwhelmingly deontological rules. Into a religion of athletic rules and by athletic rules, I mean, there is an authentic image of what it means to be a Mormon.
And that is what one can aspire to most. And in a way that would be an iteration of the religion. Because Mormonism, unlike other religions. It has a iterative revelation. Meaning to say [01:17:00] Mormonism is going to change. That's not, it might say. Catholicism is going to change. Catholics are like, I would never change.
How could it, you say warm it doesn't, it's going to change to a Mormon and they're like, yeah, that's the point? Like, that's the point of iterative revelation? Of course, it's going to change. , the Warman is, it might actually be evolving into almost sort of the perfect social media religion. , which is really interesting to me because I was noting when I was talking to someone recently that there are not, You know, trad a Jewish influencers or trad Catholic influencers. That are seen as aspirationally trad to people outside their religion. But there are lots of tread Mormon influencers who are seen as aspirationally Tradd to people outside their religion. And that's really fascinating.
And then some Mormons are like, no, this is like the cultural outsiders, this isn't the mainstream Mormons. And I'm like, okay, who the F are you kidding? Ballerina farms is probably the most famous. This is an a, and I know this family that I've mentioned, I know the, , jet blue guy. I know that that line of [01:18:00] the family. They are like king Mormons.
This is like a king normie . Mitt Romney status, almost Mormons, the jet blue family. She's married into that family. They aren't like some cultural outsider or some deviant. This is the core of the church culture that's being advertised here.
Microphone (3- ATR2100x-USB Microphone): And then in spite of all this.
In spite of these influencers who was in a generation transformed the public perception of Mormonism to a group of. Weasely nerds whose primary controversies were that they used to be polygynous and racist. To a group of beautiful trad wives whose primary controversy is that they're too traditionalist they'll say, oh, but they're not. Mormon enough in the way that I identify as Mormon. And so they want to. Turn on this group that is put up this Herculean effort. And to me, this just feels so [01:19:00] order 66,
Speaker 51: Now, let's get a move on. We've got a battle to win here.
Speaker 52: Sir!
Speaker 53: Execute Order 66.
Blast them!
Microphone (3- ATR2100x-USB Microphone): like, what are you guys thinking?
Microphone (3- ATR2100x-USB Microphone)-1: As a final note here, I mentioned at the beginning that it was the Mormons who were of this overly deontological perfectionist variety who ended up deconverted.
Generally ended up going Wolk. This actually created a very favorable phenomenon to Mormonism, which saved them from something that could have been a major problem for the religion. Which is to say that early in the days of the online atheist movement. A huge chunk of the leadership of the movement was Xmas.
I think this was due to cultural reasons and is likely due to the same reason that Mormons out compete other [01:20:00] people within social media platforms. They're just uniquely, culturally good at social media. Well, If you look at the current online skeptic and atheist community, there are almost no eczema is in the leadership groups.
And the question can be what happened here. Well, what happened was, and you can go watch our video on how the. Atheist movement bore. With the birthplace of the modern online, right. , is it the atheist movement ended up having a split with the individuals who were more interested in just dunking on conservatives.
I either woke. He's going in one direction and the genuine skeptics going in another direction. , and most of the genuine skeptics coming back around and being like, Hey, maybe religion. Wasn't that bad? An idea after all? Well, all of the Xmas are the vast majority of them ended up getting pulled off by the walkies. , and so the woke side of the skeptic community ended up integrating with the general woke movement and lost a lot of its cultural relevance.
Octavian: Oops, professor's right in, oh, it got [01:21:00] away. The
Simone Collins: professor's inside? Saying hi to you? Do
Octavian: you, do I have lips? You
Simone Collins: do have lips, yes. Do you not see them in the camera?
And you have teeth? What's your favorite part of your face?
Yeah, I think we've confirmed that you have a mouth, which is good.
Octavian: Oh, my hair is like yellow, right?
Simone Collins: Yeah, your hair is, we call it blonde, um, but yes, it's yellow. And what color is Titan's hair?
Octavian: I really don't know, but describe it to me.
Simone Collins: It's brown. And what color is Torsten's hair?
Octavian: Yellow!
Simone Collins: No, it's not yellow like yours, it's orange.
Orange.
Octavian: Uh, uh, he's blue. That's
Simone Collins: so funny. [01:22:00] Why did
Octavian: the chicken
Simone Collins: cross a road?
Octavian: To get
Simone Collins: food that was
Octavian: electronic that pooped him.
Yeah.
Simone Collins: Okay, let's try this again. Tell me a joke.
Okay. Why did the chicken cross the road?
Octavian: To get some food on cars. To get some
Simone Collins: food on cars.
Octavian: Yeah, and poop on a pumpkin.
Simone Collins: And poop on a pumpkin.
Octavian: I
Simone Collins: love you too, buddy.
Octavian: I
Malcolm Collins: love you, Simone.
Simone Collins: Octavian's attempts at humor were, um, not good. He's really [01:23:00] trying. You know, one of these days he's going to get it.
Malcolm Collins: I love you so much, Simone.
I hear him approaching. Oh, you're Come on, Toasty. You want to talk to the fans? The audience? Come
on. You get to walk by yourself?
Simone Collins: Hi, buddy.
Malcolm Collins: You get to be all by yourself.
Simone Collins: Can you hear me? Yeah, they can hear you, but you won't be able to hear them. Hi,
Octavian: Dad!
Simone Collins: Hi, Titan. Hi, Toasty.
Octavian: Titan,
Simone Collins: what are you wearing?
Octavian: Uh,
Malcolm Collins: I can't hear you guys.
So he wanted to walk by himself. So Stacey let him for the first time. Uh huh. And he ended up just walking away and going to the neighbor's house. Oh! And he knew that he
Octavian: couldn't
Malcolm Collins: do
Octavian: that.
Malcolm Collins: Daddy,
Octavian: you're
Malcolm Collins: just
Octavian: a joke! Come on! Get out of here! [01:24:00] What? Am I at the audience? Are you at
Simone Collins: the audience?
Octavian: Yeah! I'm kidding.
I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. Dad! I, I said you! I'm all, I'm all here! on the computer!
Simone Collins: Indy's staring at him like what is even happening? Like she's like, what?
Malcolm Collins: Oh, we got to get him out of the mommy room?
Octavian: Yeah!
Malcolm Collins: What do you think I should do to get him out of the mommy room?
Octavian: What
should I do to get him out of the
[01:25:00] mommy room? Should he be punished?
Malcolm Collins: How much should
Octavian: he be punished for, then? Well, I'm going
Simone Collins: to come down and make dinner.
Octavian: Stitches get stitches. That's right, Toastie.
Malcolm Collins: You don't get to ask her to be punished.
Octavian: Do you want to talk to Octavian? Why
do you want to talk to Octavian?
Malcolm Collins: Oh, I love you, buddy.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-21: Quick aside here, but I noted earlier in the video that one of the reasons why people, , from certain cultures drink is so that they can see what you are like [01:26:00] with lower inhibitions. , and kids also present that to an extent a person's kids shows. The way that they are sort of genetically pre-coded to act if they had lower inhibitions and frequently, when people see me in media, they're like Malcolm. You seem like you are. Incredibly high energy.
You must be on drugs or something like that, or it must be an affectation you put on for the camera. And here I would just direct your attention to Octavian for the past five minutes.
That is what I is going on in my brain all day 24 7. That's being suppressed.
Malcolm Collins: You want dinner?
Okay, come on. Do you want to say anything to the subscribers?
Simone Collins: Do you want to, do you want to say goodbye to the
Octavian: subscribers, buddy?
Come on down. [01:27:00] Okay.
How Wokes Stole Pod People from Conformist Religions: Mormon Case Study