Why Give Our Kids a Backup Religion? & Why Judaism?

We explain the strategic reason we celebrate Jewish holidays and are exposing our kids to Judaism. It's so they have a productive, moral backup culture if they reject our unusual views, not the urban monoculture. We believe multiple conservative religions like Judaism and Mormonism have validity from our "Tesseract God" perspective. Other options lack community today but we aim to build our own.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] if we want to give our kids the best shot in life it, you know, you want to look at.

Yeah. Religious traditions that have favorable outcomes.

it's doing something quite cruel to a kid to be putting them and raising them in a new cultural group that you have created yourself and raise them feeling like you won't appreciate them if they do anything other than this really insane, weird thing you set up for them.

Malcolm Collins: And a lot of people, when we present our cultural group, they're like, why don't you just go to Our group, right? Like, this is what we constantly hear. They're like, our group is traditional, our group has done this a long time. And the answer is likely, and I don't mean to say this harshly, but it's probably because your group is failing.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. Today, we are going to talk about a fairly interesting and nuanced topic. Yeah. Which is this year, one of the things we did is we celebrated Hanukkah as a family for the first time. Yeah. And a lot of people are really [00:01:00] surprised by the fact that we raise our kids with the option to be Jewish.

And they're like, what, why would you do that? We're like, why would you think you'd be accepted? Like, this is a weird thing to do. Especially given all of your religious beliefs. So this requires much enumeration on our part. At the end of this video, I'll play the little, you know, menorah lighting with the kids and everything.

They were really into it this year. Yeah, I'm

Simone Collins: sure we did it extremely wrong, but I will say that our oldest son, Octavian, got super into it. And we don't know how, like we let them watch. Stuff on their iPads for like a little bit every night. Well, not an iPad. It's actually really cheap Android devices, but they don't know

Malcolm Collins: the difference.

We call them iPads. They don't know the difference.

Simone Collins: Well, no, Torsten calls them his hot puss. Thank you very much. Hot puss.

Malcolm Collins: Oh

Simone Collins: gosh. They're under a hundred dollars. Somehow, and we don't know how our son Octavian like found a bunch of, and he's, Four years old videos on YouTube about Hanukkah for kids.

And [00:02:00] he just was like watching them on repeat. And then each night he was like, Oh, like let's, let's do it. Let's learn. Let's light the menorah. And then like, after it was over. There were like at least three nights of great disappointment when there were no more candles to light.

Malcolm Collins: We didn't even do presents or anything.

We just did the readings. No, yeah. No, yeah. He'd always say after a reading, he'd go, Mom, what does that

Simone Collins: even mean? What does that even mean? Every time I would finish, I would finish part of like the recital. Like both the kids would be like, yeah. Like after each, you know, like. You know, so, you know, the Lord encourages us to like light the menorah and the Lord performed these miracles and they're like, yeah, but they have no idea, no idea what it actually meant.

But anyway, so like they were actually

Malcolm Collins: really into it. Why are we doing this? Right. Like, like one is. So there's there's sort of two large strategic reasons for doing this. We believe really heavily that one of the big problems with a lot of conservative [00:03:00] tradition families today is that they raise their kids believing.

That the, the alternative to following the culture that they are outlining for the kids is the urban monoculture. The only and default alternative. Whereas we are trying to raise our kids with a choice between two conservative extremes. where they feel that the alternative in the way that they are raised to be sort of intergenerational in the way they think about things is going to be the Jewish community.

So one is why do we think we'd be accepted by that community in terms of how we do this? Well, the answer is actually pretty Interesting and unique to us, and I've mentioned this on other things, is that we found out, I, well, maybe a bit before we first met each other, but I certainly didn't know it until after we were dating, is that Simone is matrilineally Jewish, and within conservative Jewish communities, that makes her And our [00:04:00] kids, so I would say technically Jewish, whereas to them it's just fully Jewish.

Simone Collins: Yeah, whenever we say to like at least some Jewish people that like, oh yeah, we're technically Jewish, they're like, what do you mean? And then we're like, well, yeah, our kids are matrilineally Jewish. And they're like, no, no, no. So they're Jewish. And we're like, I mean. Like

Malcolm Collins: we, I don't feel like cheating if you're from any other cultural group.

Yeah. It goes to

Simone Collins: also, we did not know until like maybe a couple of years ago and no, like two years ago. Yeah. A couple of years ago that, that literally like that was the requirement. We thought that there were, we heard, you know, about like, you know, people trying to convert your, your sister tried to convert, you know, turned away multiple times, like a ton of like studying and work.

And so we're like, well, okay. So, I mean, to be Jewish, then you have to put in. A ton of work and at least like even for like non hard to convert to religions, good religions that like if we, you know, in 30 seconds wanted to convert, we could be welcomed with open arms. You're still really not [00:05:00] considered that, like a part of that religion, unless you're like leaning into it, you identify with it, you signal, you go to church, you know, or at least you say certain things and we hadn't done any of that.

So it felt really weird and it's a very weird technicality. But

Malcolm Collins: it's also like an option to us. So when we are raising kids within our weird religion and cultural framework, if we are preventing, or if we are presenting one other backup for them to turn to, other than our weird version of Christianity, you know, what is that backup going to be?

And a lot of people, when we present our cultural group, they're like, why don't you just go to Our group, right? Like, this is what we constantly hear. They're like, our group is traditional, our group has done this a long time. And the answer is likely, and I don't mean to say this harshly, but it's probably because your group is failing.

If I could choose what cultural group my kids go in, and Jew is an option let's just [00:06:00] like, look at what the other alternatives are.

Now, before we go into this, it's important to remember that we are not arguing against the truth of these religious systems. We believe that every one of the religious systems, I mean, this is why we are considering them, is true from the perspective of a Tesseract God. But, and this is a concept we go into in another video, where we believe that trying to follow the conservative revelation of specific Judeo

Christian.

 religious traditions, which are direct revelations from God, is God's will for certain groups of people.

So when we're choosing between these traditions, what we are choosing is the one that most realistically, if we had as a backup for our kids, we think that kids would choose that over the urban monoculture, if they do not choose the tradition that we are raising them in, so that means that these are the traditions that we can , most logically convince somebody of our cultural group to join that said a lot of people will look at this and they're like Oh, well, this is too analytical a way to [00:07:00] approach religion You know, can't you just approach religion with faith When you are choosing between religious traditions saying just how faith doesn't work just how faith only works when you are choosing between , a religious tradition and no religious tradition or a religious tradition and a weaker, less conservative iteration of that religious tradition, because you can have faith in any individual religious tradition.

And then an individual might say, well, just pray to God and have him tell you which one is the correct answer. And then the problem is, yeah, but. People of all of these traditions have already done that, and clearly God has returned to them that their tradition is the correct. And if he didn't return that answer to them, then there's somebody like Joseph Smith or something, and then everyone will say, Oh, he started a cult, you know.

, which, you know, you could say that that's what we've done in our way. We prayed to God, said what's the correct answer, and he gave us this really weird answer. So, I, I don't think that, , that, that is effective to us either. So keep in mind there is a reason why we are approaching this logically. It is because we care for the fate of our [00:08:00] children's soul, and we need to choose a tradition that we think is one both true, but also is easy to logically argue to our kids that they should choose if they don't choose our own.

Malcolm Collins: I could go for a conservative Catholic group. The average fertility rate in a majority Catholic country in Europe right now is 1. 3. It is desperately low. And, and, and culturally it just is, is probably the biggest mismatch with us possible.

In terms of our extremely anti authority mindset.

And, and, and to keep in mind when we point out how like distant we are, if you look at like my, my family background, like. I'm a direct descendant of Oliver Cromwell, like very, very far from that cultural group.

Yeah.

Now, before I go further with this, I need to really clearly say that this is not me arguing against Catholicism as a true representation of God within this Tesseract God framework I am simply going over why I personally could [00:09:00] not get behind it.

And I do not think it would be a good system for me to raise as a backup system for my own children.

Also, logically, I have trouble with Catholicism versus other Christian traditions. Specifically, it differentiates itself by saying we have this system for choosing the one individual who is the key representative of God on Earth, the Pope. however, I brought up the Cadaver Synod flippantly earlier, and I really don't take it flippantly when I'm looking at Catholicism from a logical consistency standpoint. In this incident, one Pope dug up the body of another dead Pope, predecessor, put him on trial saying that he was both immoral and that the system had inaccurately put him in the papacy, and then threw his body in the river.

 Then after that Pope was assassinated by his own clergy, He then had his own actions repudiated by the next [00:10:00] Pope. So this is not like me as an outsider saying by whatever outside moral standards I have that the papacy has been a bad system at choosing God's core representative It is God's core representative on Earth as chosen by this system, saying it's a bad system for choosing God's core representative on Earth.

I just can't logically get around that.

Now, of course, the standard Catholic response to this is none of this situation happened ex cathedra. So ex cathedra is a special set of circumstances that's required for something a pope says or writes to be considered the direct word of God or directly inspired by God.

​The problem I have with this counter is that X Cathedral was not a concept when this trial was happening. .

was not fully delineated until almost a millennium after this trial. at the First Vatican Council. So, [00:11:00] when the Great Schism happened, in which the Patriarch of Rome claimed that his system for choosing a Patriarch was innately and categorically superior to the systems all of the other Patriarchs were using, , and he then excommunicated some of these other patriarchs, potentially damning their souls to hell.

He was doing that with all of the power invested in him that was invested in the popes during the cadaver syndrome, which was before , Ex Cathedra had been developed. And keep in mind, Ex Cathedra was developed with all of these events in mind. This would be like saying, Oh, me as an investor, my investment decisions are ordained by God. You can see by how good they've turned out and then somebody comes to me and they're like, look, you've objectively lost tons of money on the stock market.

And then I go, oh, no, no, no, no. You see, it turns out that all of the decisions I made on Tuesdays and Wednesdays don't count. Now I am making this carve out [00:12:00] after knowing that those days were my bad trading days. That is not a compelling argument for this being a good system or for me being a good trader.

However, this ex cathedra argument, which, again, we don't think is very compelling, did not even exist during the time of the Great Schism as a concept.

where it had to differentiate its system as being innately superior to the Orthodox system. And this then, Comes to another problem, which is all of the events of the cadaver Synod had actually happened fairly recently before the Great Schism. So when the patriarch of Rome is telling all of the other patriarchs, my system is innately superior to all of your systems recently, within their memory is the cadaver synod.

And I mean, look.

If God actually intended us to use this system to choose his representative on Earth, then he would not have allowed this to happen.

However, if he was trying to tell us don't [00:13:00] choose this system, choose another,

and God wanted to send a very loud signal to anyone who was investigating it, that it is not his voice on Earth, this seems like the way he would have signaled something like that.

In addition to that though, and as we've talked about before, Aesthetically, Catholicism does not seem to be a representation of true word of God as laid out in the Christian Bible as I understand it.

Which one is it? You must choose. But choose wisely. For as the true grail will bring you life, the false grail will take it from you.

I'm not a historian. I have no idea what it looks like. Which one is it? Let me choose.

It's more beautiful than I'd ever imagined.

This certainly is the cup of [00:14:00] the king of kings. Is happening to me? He chose poor.

Be made out of gold. That's the cup of a carpenter.

you have chosen wisely. So, when coming at this choice of what system would be a good backup system for my own kids, Causalicism is the one I can easily rule out. Like, it seems like the obviously wrong choice,

Hello Drew

[00:15:00]

um, but that doesn't mean that it is the wrong choice for other people. . So, for example, Catholicism might be a uniquely good and powerful system for any family

that is really moved by ritual, and really moved by grandeur, and really moved by authority, instead of repelled by things like ritual and grandeur.

Malcolm Collins: You could go with Orthodox, I, I think that Orthodox is the original Christianity. I think the Orthodox groups of Christians are the original Christianity, if you're like, I want to be original OG Christian. Like higher

Simone Collins: fidelity to the

Malcolm Collins: Higher fidelity to the original church, and we can do another video on this, because a lot of people think that's the Catholics, and it really isn't the Catholics, it's the Orthodox.

But, I mean, because, I mean, in the early days, if you look at the early church, if you look at the church writings, it was a group of heads of various cities who would meet with each other and were broadly equals. The idea of one person being above all the others really only came into play when Rome, [00:16:00] like, really began to dominate the, the, the political scene.

And then, you know, after Constantine made it the Roman Empire, they were like, okay, this one city is more important than the other cities, but that doesn't really flow as like the original intentionality of the church. So they, they have the most claim, but I have no cultural connection to them. Like not, it would be so weird to convert to Orthodox Christianity.

We have no genetic connection, no cultural connection and

Simone Collins: well, I mean, technically my Jewish ancestors converted to Orthodox Christianity because they were renting their upper apartment to the SS.

Malcolm Collins: So that's how they hit it.

Simone Collins: Yeah, so we do have a family connection, but yeah, not nothing realistic. Yeah.

Yeah.

We also run into the same aesthetic problem that we've run into with Catholicism when we're dealing with the Orthodox traditions

 For context here, Vladimir I of Kievan Rus, the guy who [00:17:00] basically sort of founded the Russian Orthodox Church, he chose Orthodoxism over other iterations of Christianity because he was so impressed with how beautiful the Hagia Sophia was, or at least that's the legend.

In the same vein, I also think I would have a hard time if I had to try to convince my kids. To believe that there was any sort of theological import to things like relics, which from my tradition was iconoclasm, , that's basically worshipping.

A corpse someone took a bedazzle or two.

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Be creative. Bedazzle your socks, mitts and gloves. Hats and scarves.

Malcolm Collins: So then the protestant groups, right? Like, I like the protestant groups. I see them as broadly right if you believe that the Bible is the only and total revelation.

But, you know, obviously we've talked about [00:18:00] on other podcasts, we don't believe that. We don't even believe that the Bible really states that. It, it notes there's going to be future revelations.

So the advantage of things like the Orthodox tradition and the Catholic tradition is they have systems in place that allow adherence to those traditions to easily identify how God's word is elucidated upon or added to with additional prophets because they have these central hierarchies which allow them to say this is an accurate prophet, this is an inaccurate prophet, and through that the traditions can evolve with God's continuing revelation.

And as to why we believe God has a continuing revelation, it's because that's what the Bible says. Jesus says there are going to be prophets after me. Whereas within Protestantism, you have no system for doing that, or within the traditional Protestant faith, which means you're sort of frozen in time at the point when the Bible was written.

, Which to me seems incongruous was what I [00:19:00] think God would want. Like I don't think God would have given his whole incomplete revelation to an obscure group 2, 000 years ago and that that message wouldn't reach a huge portion of the world's population for like a thousand years after it was delivered.

, so to me, I think God has always been trying to as holistically as he can, reveal himself in the way that every group is meant to understand him. , but, that being the case, it means that we have no system if we go as a traditional Protestant tra strand of determining these additional revelations.

And since our family's existing faith is essentially Protestant plus additional revelations, there is no advantage to having a traditional form of Protestantism as a backup to it. That stuff is already encompassed in what we teach our children.

Malcolm Collins: And like, so, so when we're looking at things and it offers us no advantage, like. If you look at the Protestant cultural groups in the world today, they are some of the most [00:20:00] underperforming of the Christian cultural groups.

Yeah, and like, what

Simone Collins: cultural amenities are they offering? Like, at least Mormons have like this amazing community and lifestyle and, you

Malcolm Collins: know. All that up.

And then people will say things like, well, then why don't you go back to your ancestral tradition? You know, the Calvinist tradition, and that's because the Calvinist group that exists within any population today in America is almost the antithesis of the historical Calvinist group. You know, they're evangelical hardliners like Ayla's dad, for example, which doesn't lead to good outcomes in today's society.

Whereas you look at the iteration of the Calvinist group, that is our actual. It's the one that, Scott Alexander slash star slate codex wrote about when he wrote the Puritan spotting checklist. And we would almost appear to be an offensive stereotype of this group. You know, for the things he gets points for

atheist DS free thinker, wrote a book about their heterodox religious views, invented a new [00:21:00] religion, invented a new Christian heresy, obsessed with religious tolerance, founded their own school, had really weird names, had a bunch of kids,

wrote a list of virtues, had a plan to em Ize. The estuan social reformer waged a crusade against an abstract concept. Ideals that were utopian, yet racist. And I don't think our views are racist, but we get accused of racism all the time. Abolitionists, my family famously very involved in the abolition movement and fighting for, uh, African-American rights, famously involved in philanthropy.

We were also involved in the prohibition movement. I love it. Rabidly, anti-war. Yet rabidly supports every specific war that happened. , so you can see that like, this is clearly the group we're from. We're not even acting out of line with this group's cultural traditions. And yet, they have no community for us to go back to.

And even what we're doing with the religion we're creating for our family is very much something somebody from this group would do. So we haven't left this group in terms of our [00:22:00] primary religious system.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so the core real choices for us to raise as an alternative for our kids are Jews and Mormons. That they both produce competent individuals.

They seem like they're going to be major players in the future of humanity and theologically I think they both have a claim to being total and complete revelations from God.

Jews, because, well, pretty much every group in the Judeo Christian tree says that Jewish texts have some real importance or weight to them, which is not something we can say for virtually any other religious system. In addition to that, it's a religion that seems to be able to continue evolving and continue updating itself.

And as you know, as we think, we don't think any religion that is ever frozen in time, or any theological structure that's ever frozen in time, can be theologically correct as It would be impossible for God to give a full revelation to people, you know, early, early, early in human history, and yet it would be capricious and evil for him to give those people no revelation at [00:23:00] all, so when we're looking for a true religion, we're looking for an evolving religious system, with Mormons, it's because they believe that they can continue to get revelations up to today, and, you They don't really take super hard stances on almost anything, , in terms of a metaphysical understanding of the universe because of this continued revelation framework, which really fits with our framework for how we think things likely actually work theologically.

Malcolm Collins: So when I'm looking at those two groups Jews just seem to have their act together a lot more right now.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I would say they are an appreciating asset showing signs of like, these guys are doing it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I think that's what

Simone Collins: people need to be asking themselves. And I, again, I want to emphasize how meaningful your observation is that like, The, the facto option that hardline conservative religious families are giving to their kids are either follow our specific religion or join the progressive urban [00:24:00] monoculture.

Yeah. Like, and like, if you really care about your children's mental wellbeing, thriving as humans, like both like economic, social and mental and spiritual wellbeing. Do you really want their other option to be completely like religiously, morally, like mentally bankrupt? Or do you want to like, at least give them a shot at thriving?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and so an interesting thing is a lot of people will see what we're doing and they'll be like, yeah, but even if you send them to like Chabad summer camps and stuff like that, even if you do the Jewish, They're never going to be full, like, ultra Orthodox Jews, right? And I'm like, yeah, that's the point.

The idea here is not that if they don't like what we're doing, they convert to ultra Orthodox Judaism. They convert to some form of, like, modern Orthodox Judaism. You know, they, they maybe follow the traditions, but they do not play in the ultra Orthodox status games, which are involved around, you know, having to study all the time.

Like, they really [00:25:00] require a level of investment that you need to be committed to 100 percent from birth. And not birth, but you know, young team

Simone Collins: would be really hard. Yeah. I would be very, very hard for

Malcolm Collins: joining the Olympics, but like starting to train for it when you're in late high school, like

Simone Collins: joining a group of like, you know, Russian Olympic gymnasts who've been like

Malcolm Collins: training since, you know, exposing them to that community.

So long as they like that community, then they go down the regular Orthodox pathway was in Judaism or, you know, we would call like secular Orthodox Judaism

 Particularly the one in the U S or Israel, which gives them a network of spouses, which gives them a network of business partners, you know, people that are willing to help them and everything like that.

Of course we're providing them with an advantage there. If, if they decide to take that path, but what we're also trying to do and, and, you know, we have our lifetimes to do this is to, for our own weird philosophical and religious framework that we're building up is to build [00:26:00] enough of a community of disparate groups that are vaguely connected.

Was this that they also, if they go that route, have a network where they can get spouses, business connections, everything like that. Like we basically have our lifetimes. To try to build a network that competes with Judaism for business connections, spousal attainment, and moral what's the word I'm looking for here?

Like a moral spine. And a lot of people can be like, that is a fool's errand to attempt that. That is the sign of grandiose fantasy to think that you could do that. And yet I think that we are well on our way.

Simone Collins: We're not cowards. Also, we strongly believe in, in. The power that competition has to enable you to achieve things you never thought you could achieve and the, the power of exposure to extremely accomplished peers.

If you raise a kid surrounded by very accomplished friends and peers, they're going to. Ultimately, I think, [00:27:00] end up, even if they, like, just are lower caliber in general, they're gonna end up higher than if they were with peers of their own level, you know? Like, we're still sharpening ourselves here.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, I mean, we've worked really hard to do this, to ensure that even at a young age, the families that they are socializing with are the you know, one was in our cultural network and two, like absolutely impressive in setting their expectations really, really high in terms of what's expected of them.

Simone Collins: And it's showing up already in what way I'm just like in the confidence that our kids show about their convictions and. their judgments.

Malcolm Collins: Well, this also comes from how we raise them in our parenting style, this idea of stroking their will rather than breaking their will. Everything about our parenting style is meant to increase the strength of their will.

Like that is the core thing that we can do. And I think that that's the core thing that we should focus on when they disagree with us or something like that. The last thing I want to do is to break them like a wild horse, [00:28:00] right? You want to make it. difficult for them. You want to strengthen them. You don't want them to just be able to do whatever they want, like a spoiled brat.

You want them to understand the moral responsibility of being somebody who lives by their own will while also strengthening and testing that will as much as possible to make it as strong as possible. And, and that's something that we, you know, are consistently focused on within our parenting techniques.

But I also want to be clear that we may fail. And the best backup network we see right now in the world is the Jewish community. Like I think pretty obviously, and I think for a lot of people, I if, if they were like, okay, if my kids weren't of my culture and I had to choose one other culture as a backup culture and I was accepted by that culture, who are you gonna choose?

Mormons are a close second, I'd say. Like, I really like the Mormon community. Yeah, same. But their fertility rates are falling. And they're the, the, the thing that most [00:29:00] distances me from the Mormon community is when they're overly nice. Like that just doesn't follow my, my No, see that's

Simone Collins: my bigger problem with it actually is that like most of the Mormon content that I get that even makes me love the church is from people who Have left the church and are very openly publicly salty about it.

Like it's, it's bad if your major, like online brand ambassadors are your detractors.

So, what we mean by this is, when we want to intellectually engage with a community, that means we want to see people from within that community, you know, nitpick every little nuance in terms of how different groups in that community are different, how different people in the community see things differently, and all of the theological debates within the community, what they don't like about the community, what they do like within the community.

Now, you can understand. This is something we get in spades within the Jewish community, but almost not at all within the Mormon community, which makes it [00:30:00] very dispositionally hard for us to engage with the community outside of people who have left the community and are willing to, like, drop the T.

Malcolm Collins: Well, the best brand ambassadors, because I think culturally when somebody is raised within the Mormon community, they're typically very good at social things. If you look at like the leaders of like the new ACS community, they're really disproportionately ex Mos.

Yeah. And

Simone Collins: one, I think, I think maybe the problem is that there are also many practicing Mormon influencers. But they don't, you don't realize they're not talking about their religion.

Malcolm Collins: No, I don't think that's it is that they don't engage with metaphysical debates as much as I would find like mentally stimulating to me.

Like to me, the, the Mormons have a sophisticated metaphysical system. Which is interesting to me. And we've talked about this in our Mormon video. But there is a denial within the Mormon community of the diversity of beliefs within the Mormon community. And that denial makes interesting debate within, within the community, at least from the perspective of an outsider.[00:31:00]

Much rarer than it is within the ultra Orthodox Jewish community where like metaphysical debate is the core of the community, like the absolute core of the community, which is going to engender me like, or the next iteration of me, probably more to that community if I'm trying to build an alternative to that.

And if you're here as an outsider thinking like, yeah, but you should be choosing which religion you want at the back of religion, just based on which one is most likely to be true. You've got to see our video on the Tesseract God concept. We believe Some, not all, but some of the Judeo Christian tree of revelations to be holy and complete revelations that are simultaneously 100 percent true.

And if you follow a conservative interpretation of those traditions, you are following God's will for you, and now, you know, people would be like, yeah, but aren't you worried that your kids might be studying like religious texts by studying [00:32:00] Jewish texts that are antithetical to your belief system.

And it's like, no, because of the way we view these different religious systems, one of our kids studying Jewish texts are studying like real non heretical information. In the same way, I think most Christian groups would feel the same way about Jewish texts.

Malcolm Collins: And the second is, is, is if Mormons. Had successfully created a deseret state or a, a strong desert isolated community. I would be much more like considering Mormonism as, as the alternative we raise our kids with. But they haven't done that. There is no Mormon Israel yet. Oh. And I think that's very, very important, having these sort of isolated communities, where the world's headed, where we're looking at this vast economic collapse and the primary asset in the future, being high fertility, high competence, high agency groups, you're just not seeing that Mormons have the potential to create something like that

Like, it's very obviously in the [00:33:00] DNA of Mormonism to attempt to do something like that, as that was very much how they were founded. They just need to move back in that direction, maybe create a settlement somewhere else, maybe somewhere outside the U. S.

Malcolm Collins: Catholics could as well but they'd have to create some sort of a new exclusive order that allowed priests to breed, and that's Unlikely.

I can see Catholics creating like isolated communities in the U. S. that do this. That could be very interesting. There

Simone Collins: may already be some

Malcolm Collins: that we just don't know about. Yeah, there already might be some that we just don't know about. That, that could be interesting to look at.

Would it not be fascinating if a Catholic group converted some of these, you know, you increasingly see these old monasteries getting abandoned or sold off by the church, converted one of these into a residential child focused community. That would be, that would be interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Same with, same with Orthodox communities.

Although Orthodox are just getting absolutely rammed right now.

Simone Collins: Yeah, you don't hear about them thriving. [00:34:00] I

Malcolm Collins: mean, they do well in the United States. But they don't have awesome fertility rates and they haven't done a good job of maintaining intergenerational fidelity. And by that, what I mean is they have a really high bleed rate.

Like they do not keep people in their religion at high rates. After Mormons, probably the next group I would choose for our kids, if I had to choose a group would be some form of Anabaptist.

Simone Collins: Interesting. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, yeah, yeah. Mennonites, Mennonites are super

Malcolm Collins: cool. They're great.

I like, like, like out of all of the groups, I feel some like cultural distance when I engage with the Orthodox Jewish community. I'm like, yeah, I can see that. Like we get along. I can see like why my ancestors did business because typically Calvinists traditionally did a lot of business with the Jewish community.

Even my grandfather, like he was a big advocate for the community and like it's something that just they're known for you know, well, your great, great, great uncle George Washington, you know, when he took over the [00:35:00] country, he, he did a lot of stuff with the community. So it's, it's a really well known thing that they engaged really heavily with the community.

But. They, they still feel different from me. And Mormons still feel different from me. They're, they're a little too kind hearted. Yeah, I'm all Mormon. In their world perspective, in a way that just doesn't fit with my world. And you'll see this in this big debate, not debate, but like conversation we have with like Carl Youngbud and the other transhumanist Mormons.

Is, is there. You know, they're unwilling to see, for example, God as an uncompassionate entity. Whereas, from our perspective, God is just so obviously not compassionate. Like, unless you define good as the thing that God does, God is a A moral entity from the perspective of our existing humanity. Oh yeah, man.

I'm

Simone Collins: going through the old Testament again and it's like, Oh, whoa. I mean like humans aren't great either, but like,

Malcolm Collins: Oh, but [00:36:00] that's just God made man in his own image judging him by these standards. But when you use words like compassion or love to describe God, my perspective, you are miss. You, you are manipulating people, intentionally manipulating people because you, you, you mean words differently than what humans mean when they say compassion

Simone Collins: or love.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I think

Malcolm Collins: when we were speaking, just saying, you know, like, an unknowable unknown thing that we can't even begin to comprehend it's morale, it's morality or it's moral core. But

Simone Collins: I think, I think Lincoln and Carl were. When we were discussing this with them, like their Mormon definition of compassion was, Oh, but God is giving humans the potential and the opportunity to achieve so much more.

And that was their definition of compassion rather than like, look at all the suffering that God is permitting.

Malcolm Collins: It was more like, yeah, yeah, yeah. God allows us to improve through suffering, compassion, but we don't read in tooth and claw, like death [00:37:00] and intergenerational improvement and, and, and. Horrifying, horrifying means, you know, I look at nature, I look at this idea of red and tooth and claw, and I think that that is the, the, the gift that God has given us that allows us to improve which is the ability to suffer and die and improve intergenerationally.

But that is not, like, from the perspective of the zebra that's being eaten alive by a lion or something, or eaten alive by a bear, it's a bear that's eaten alive more, lions don't eat alive a lot, but the deer that's being eaten alive by a bear, or the human. thE human child that's being eaten alive by a bear, because that has happened many times.

That does not seem like what I consider compassion from a human perspective. And I think this is where we differ most from them, because within the Calvinist framework, you're not going to be like, God is compassionate in the way that humans use the word compassion. Don't f**k with me. Right. Um. But Mennonites, when I talk with Mennonites, I really get them.

Like, they just seem culturally very, very, very close to me. I feel almost [00:38:00] no difference between myself and Mennonites, or even Amish. And, and they're, they're in our local communities and stuff like that. I, I remember, you know, I was watching a video, a great video of, of, of Amish people talking about it.

And they were b******g about the money they got from the government for having additional kids. And they were like, oh, there's these child subsidies. Disgusting that the government is giving us money for this. But I mean, of course we're going to take it if they're handing it to us. And I just felt such a I was like, yes, I really get you guys, you know,

 But you feel like a disconnect between what's going on here and what's going on out there? I would. I would too. I definitely would say so. Okay, so this last year I'm not troubled by it. No, it's, it's a way of life for us. So this last year, COVID, all the craziness that's gone on with the politics, you're not even The worst part of it for us was the annoyance of having to wear a mask everywhere.

She travels more than I would. I'm happy at home. My husband is very happy at home. He grew up on a farm. We live on a fruit farm. [00:39:00] And he just likes raising fruit, and that's what he does.

He has a really small world. Coming out here is about as hard as he's ever been. Trying to give him fruit, give him pie. Yeah, that's right. He's good to go.

So I call your attention to a few things in these conversations that I find really interesting. And I would suggest you go check out this guy's channel and his other stuff on Amish and Mennonite communities if you want to experience more of what those communities are like, because he does, I think, a very good job of portraying them.

The first is how insularly focused the community is, and how they status signal within the community. through their humility in terms of how they relate to each other. The way that they are flexing , is through humbleness, which is really in accord with the way that we often try to flex, you know, when we're talking about anime or the lower arts, we are doing that to flex how unpretentious we are in the things that we signal [00:40:00] liking. The second thing that you see within these communities, Is while men and women have different roles, , in systemically different roles based on, , biological gender differences, women are not treated as lesser than men at all. and this is really interesting.

I mean, like, conversationally, ideologically, like, women may not have a place in the church because of what the Bible says, but in terms of how they're treated in general conversations, there isn't. They talk over men, they share their ideas, and their ideas are respected, and this is something that I really notice when I'm around different groups is the way that they relate between the two genders, and I just find this aligns much more with it.

My cultural heritage, , and the way that I would want my kids to be treated, you know, a hundred years from now, they end up going down some different cultural pathway. Now, what we're going to go to next is a clip of them talking about technology use, because I think it also shows how [00:41:00] clear headed they are.

Well, we'll also give you an opportunity to look to see if you can notice some of the things I was just mentioning.

So, I have a smartphone. Yep. I do not have a browser on my smartphone. So I have a, I erased the browser and it's intentional. Okay. Um, I took the browser off. I have a smartphone so that I can call and text.

Yep. Otherwise, I don't have access. I've got maps. But I don't have access to the internet on my smartphone now, you know, see what he has to say I talked about it today. Tell us quickly. Okay, so I have a smartphone as well And I have a blocker on here that blocks all pornographic and all you know, all of that stuff Okay, but and I can customize it to what apps I can have Like, I would have YouTube.

Mm hmm. I would have that. But then, uh, it's just, it's up to the individual then, and then I have a blocker on here, and we have accountability groups in our [00:42:00] church. And I'm accountable to what I use on my phone too. Two other brother from the church. Okay. What about you ladies? My phone. I have the same. I have the same thing.

Josh has Okay, and you're my phone. I have a flip phone. I'm actually not sure why is that And mine doesn't have any data on it My husband shut off all the data and so what I can do with my phone is I can call And I can text but like I cannot receive any pictures or even group messages Because all the data is cut off.

He shut yours off, do you shut his off? He didn't, he shut his off too, yeah. We're on the same page. Do you guys like, regulate each other? No, we don't have any internet access on the phone. So, and we actually don't have any internet at all at our house, or anything. You're offline completely. We're offline.

By ourselves, we choose to live that way because We enjoy being simple and I don't know. We see a lot of dangers. We see a lot of dangers in having it.

Malcolm Collins: So I think that [00:43:00] that's, that's where I have the least cultural distance.

But the problem is, is that they're not economically productive and that's really, really important to me. And in being able to join in a high economic productivity group, if you're going to be one of the people who gets off planet, like our goal for our kids. Like if you're like, what are you really aiming for with your kids?

Yeah. Cultural fidelity is nice, but I want them to be part of that group, part of that movement in, in, in through we, how we improve them and through how we create this intergenerational improvement. Whether that means going to another cultural group or some improved iteration of our own that is taking to the stars that is conquering the universe.

It is creating the imperial of man. This, this vast human empire you know, future days coming up and we have these projectors on our ceilings of, of galaxies, right? And we talk about their place in the universe. And when we point to this, we're like You know, Simba and the at the beginning of the Lion King, everything you see is, is your domain.

Look, Simba. Everything the light touches [00:44:00] is our kingdom. Wow. A king's time as ruler rises and falls like the sun. One day, Simba, the sun will set on my time here. And will rise with you as the new king. And this will all be mine? Everything. Everything the light touches.

Malcolm Collins: That's what we're doing when we are engaging them with this galaxy. This galaxy that you see, you know, in, in some future days, we're going to take them, I was talking to Simone about this, to the woods, so they can see the, the stars. You know, they can see all the, the stars in the sky. This is. Fastness of the universe.

This is for you to conquer. This is your domain. This is your manifest destiny. This was given to you by God as something that, that is your duty and your responsibility to make humanities. And that, that is a, a deeply vast and, and should be humbling responsibility. And [00:45:00] you are starting so early, you know, we haven't even conquered one planet yet.

You know, we're starting so early in this cycle and I hope that they play a role in, in that vast future for humanity. And if we unfortunately use Mennonites as our backup culture very unlikely that that's going to happen.

Simone Collins: No. Well, I, I think we're like very, very clearly too technophilic to ever really

Malcolm Collins: pass.

Although there could be an interesting version of like, AI safety, Mennonitism. What do you mean? Well, they never develop, they basically freeze civilizational development at our current stage. Instead of at another stage, then they, they kill everyone else and they ensure that we never develop AI any further.

And they're just like, right now, this is when we need to stop. Like for them, it was buttons. For Eliezer Yukowsky, it's AI. It's, it's one of the things that famous Douglas Adams quote, you know, the guy, he wrote just like his guide to the galaxy that was so [00:46:00] prophetic that the moment when the average member of the EA community turned over 30, or it wouldn't even say the average leading member.

Like basically, as soon as Ellie Iser turned over 30 the EA movement became rabidly a Luddite cult and, what he said is anything invented after the age of 30 for you is, is wrong and must be destroyed. Right? Like that's how humans relate to technology. And I'll put the full quote on the screen here.

Cause it's brilliant that he had this insight.

He said anythin