Episode Details

Malcolm and Simone dive deep on the difference between aesthetic conservatism (trappings without core values) and substantive conservatism focused on cultural reproduction. They analyze how to convert people, the role of government restrictions, dominating vs symbiotic cultures, and more keys to building an enduring worldview.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] Once you begin to normalize the psychological practices that people are supposed to learn how to undertake on their own. And are supposed to require mental fortitude to enact, you lose the advantage of those practices. This is what I mean by aesthetic conservatism.

Malcolm: if you have somebody and you impose restrictions, at the government level, You, make them less likely to convert to your cultural group because the people in your cultural group will have less of a differential societal advantage,

Malcolm: if you want to convert the maximum number of people, what you should actually do is impose the minimum number of cultural restrictions on the outside population while putting the maximum effort into controlling the education system. And interestingly, this is to some extent what the progressive urban monoculture has done.

Simone: in, An environment that's devoid of a really strong religious base I feel like [00:01:00] these political parties are more strong for people than, than values. People are literally living by the aesthetics of conservatism because there, there is nothing else.

Simone: It's just like these sort of hollow philosophical shells that are just following the trappings of a party.

Would you like to know more?

Simone: Hello, Malcolm Collins.

Malcolm: Hello, Simone. I am excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to touch on a topic that's been bugging me recently. Because I think it shows the extent to which our society has fallen that even within conservative circles there has been a clear confusion around the sort of point of conservatism like actually advancing conservative values and the aesthetic of conservatism.

Malcolm: Acting in a way that you identify as like aesthetically conservative. And it's not to say that you will not [00:02:00] intrinsically appear aesthetically conservative if you are aligning with conservative values. Actually, here, I'll give a really great example of this that came from one of our recent videos.

Malcolm: Where we're talking about porn , and I'm like, , conservative cultural groups evolved to have porn restrictions because it led to people potentially better mental health, but also , having sex more frequently, leading to more kids, leading to more people within that cultural group.

Malcolm: And people were like, well, you know, aesthetically, like they still want the government to enact porn restrictions. And I think that this is almost a perfect example. Because who are you helping if you do that? If you have the government enact porn restrictions? Well, it's not the people who naturally would have been able to resist porn due to the cultural group they're a part of, right?

Malcolm: So if I'm a Catholic intercalist and I'm trying to get the government to restrict porn, it's not the other conservative Catholics at my church who are benefiting from this. It is... Specifically the people who disagree with me. It is [00:03:00] specifically the people who are most culturally distant from me. And, and worse, I am making whatever positive things my church is offering through this differential cultural value set less because now everyone is practicing this porn restriction thing.

Malcolm: And in addition to that, people within my cultural institution, they are now no longer getting any sort of psychological benefit. From