How to Actually Win The Political Game

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 consciously choosing to resist this thing in their environment, right? Which is.

Simone: Well, so I'm going to push back and I think what, what we may be looking at is an overlap of some, what we call dominant cultures and then conservative cultures, which are often harder cultures, right?

Simone: Dominating cultures is the word. Yeah, dominating cultures. So in the pragmatist guide to crafting religion, Malcolm, you describe. Different types of cultures in terms of how they relate to broader society with dominating cultures, generally having the view that [00:04:00] basically everyone should, in an ideal scenario, follow this religion, because if they don't, they're all going to go to hell or experience some other really bad outcome.

Simone: This is in contrast to cultures that we, we call in the book, symbiotic cultures, a symbiotic culture is more like the Jewish faith. Calvinists, people who are not like, okay, everyone should join us. Everyone should be one of us. It's more oh, not everyone can be. So these cultures don't have a mandate to force everyone to adhere to their rules, and they don't have a mandate to try to proselytize or convert or save everyone.

Simone: So I think what you're talking about here is that there are many hard cultures that are also dominating cultures that feel it is imperative for them to save people from damnation. By imposing their rules on them. So, I think you're taking a symbiotic view. Why

Malcolm: imposing the rules doesn't actually have that effect if you do it at the state level.

Malcolm: So first let's elaborate a bit more on this dominating versus symbiotic cultural view. Symbiotic cultures, ironically, typically have a somewhat elitist attitude as [00:05:00] many would argue Calvinist and Jewish groups do which is to say they typically divide the world into a chosen population or an elect population and a non elect population or a non chosen population.

Malcolm: And because of that, they don't think that everyone is meant to be saved. And so they don't have a cultural they, they, they culturally work much better with other cultures because they can interact with someone. Of a completely different world perspective and have no interest in converting that person.

Malcolm: Whereas if you believe that everyone can be saved, you know, if you believe everyone can join your cultural group you always have a moral mandate to attempt to convert that person. And this is something I really feel when I am you know, when, when somebody like feels bad for trying to convert me to, to their religion.

Malcolm: And I'm like, there's no need to feel bad. I actually am a little bit more insulted when somebody doesn't, because I'm like, I'm literally going to be tortured for all eternity if I don't

Simone: convert. And they're apparently super cool with that.

Malcolm: Yeah. I also [00:06:00] don't even understand how interfaith marriages within these cultures, like what you think your spouse is going to be tortured for all eternity.

Malcolm: I think,

Simone: I think for many of them, they, they're just playing the long game, like the, the, the interfaith. Marriage that I know from childhood was one in which like up until the very end this man held out But then he converted to the like LDS church, which is great because then they can have you know, eternity together But you know, I do think that people hold out Yeah, so, so these

Malcolm: two cultures will act very differently in different societal contexts.

Malcolm: Dominating cultures typically have a behavior pattern where they will pretend to be victims when they're in the minority status. And as they get more a