Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 426: Daniele Bolelli

Episode Date: March 6, 2021

Daniele Bolelli, he's like an Italian Bruce Lee-Indiana Jones-Socrates, author, philosopher, martial artist, and history teacher, re-joins the DTFH! Daniele has written a lot of wonderful books, please check those out. He also hosts two podcasts! Listen to The Drunken Taoist and History on Fire. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: TRU Niagen - Visit truniagen.com/duncan and use promo code DUNCAN at checkout for $20 off your first order! Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site. Purple - Visit Purple.com/Duncan10 and use promo code DUNCAN10 for $200 Off any mattress order of $1500 or more!

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The beast in me will loudly shake his keys when you cut in line, and put the wheels of the shopping cart on the curve instead of taking it to the shopping cart to turn it in. God help the beast in me. That's a cover of Nicola's famous song, The Beast in Me. Being covered by Grindel Peterson, praise the sweet angels in heaven. I finally got my vaccine. I went down to a church that I'd heard had extra doses and was able to get the jab, and it was mystical.

The experience was mystical. Even if you're the most cynical, hardened, annoyed, sarcastic, pandemic denier, and you're looking down your nose at all of us who are waiting to get this jab, you have to admit that the possibility that this way of existing in the world is going to end, that we're going to be able to rub shoulders with strangers at amusement parks and clubs and bars and restaurants and the glory holes of the world, because what's worse than having to wear a mask and a glory hole? Is it okay to pull it down?

The idea that that's all going to end is just a joyful dream, and a lot of us were afraid because we don't want to get our hopes up, because our hopes have been dashed so many times over and over again during this insane, turbulent, crazy year plus a few months. But I think the sun is beginning to rise. I think we're going to get to the other side of this, and it's coinciding with the seasons. You know, I'm a sap. Let's face it. I have every Les Miserables song memorized.

I play it for my kid when we're driving in the car, and he likes it. I'm a sap, and therefore I love when spring starts happening, especially now that I've experienced a winter. You know, if you're living in LA, you're going to get a wet, sloppy kind of winter, but you're not going to get the kind of winter you get up in the mountains of North Carolina. You're not going to get a legitimate winter. It's probably why you don't live on the East Coast is because your poor, frail, little quivering West Coast body can't handle the pain of winter.

But God, I understand because my body certainly doesn't like it. I don't like it when it hurts when the wind blows. But part of the glory of spring is that it just slowly starts melting away. All of it. Suddenly, it's getting warmer. It's not raining as much anymore. Flowers are starting to show up in the ground, and it doesn't matter. If you're the most despicable, totally cynical, angry bundle of defense mechanisms bundled

inside of defense mechanisms, some little part of you is going to get affected by the spring because even though the grand total walking callous that you have intentionally become because your sweet, sensitive baby heart decided it was better to be completely numb than to experience contact with reality, that little hummingbird heart that's still in you. It talks to the spring, and the spring says, don't worry, I know you think you're going to be existing inside a cynical, jaded, sarcastic, angry human callous for the rest of your existence on this planet, but it's not going to be that way.

You're going to get to grow out of all that thick, hardened, angry, cynical meat. And eventually, that being that has completely lost track of its heart is going to feel you again. Don't worry. And that's what I love about the spring because it's like, this is what this is the idea. It doesn't last. Whatever the thing is, whatever the particular, at least I can only speak from experience. There might be someone listening to this right now who's hanging upside down in a Bavarian

dungeon, getting hot wax dripped on their taint. Maybe they paid for the experience initially, but then when they asked to be released, they realized that they weren't getting out of the Bavarian castle. So I don't know. Like, but your captors are letting you listen to this podcast as I can only assume an extra form of torture. So for you, I don't know if you're going to get out of there, but my own personal experience is that no matter how seemingly crystallized the horror of some particular phase of my

life seems to be, no matter how much it seems like this shit is never going to end. And sometimes that experience could be like can happen over the course of a few years or a few seconds, depending on what's happening. It always gets better. It always gets better and sometimes it gets better in ways that I didn't expect. Sometimes it gets better than I hoped. It's not as better as I would have liked, but it always gets better. And that's what I like about the very beginning of Spring.

You know, I passed somebody and I, I don't know. I was like happy, too happy probably, or well, and you know, I passed someone, I said Springs here and they smiled and said the whispers of Spring, which is a really poetic thing to say to someone you don't know on the street. But that's Asheville. Asheville is pretty cool. Point is, that's what I like, the whispers of Spring, because you know, soon it's going to be full bore Spring, nature's going to be showing off, green, super green everywhere

and the flowers exploding out everything and it's like we get it, it's Spring, relax. But the, it's that very beginning of Spring that I really love that because like the part of you don't even want, even though you know, this is how the seasons work. Part of you doesn't, can't believe that if finally this win, it's over, the winner's going to end soon. I'm not going to have to bundle my kids up to take them on bike rides, so it's going to be hot and green and all the dead trees are going to be alive, even though they weren't really dead, they just were naked really.

I mean, it's not a dead tree, it's a naked tree, the leaves are the clothes. And I like trees wearing clothes, naked trees are creepy to quote Voltaire, the point is I think that's what we're seeing right now with this pandemic. And I could be wrong, and maybe someone's going to play this for me in a few months and be like, oh, were you ever wrong? Now we're all, now we have boils all over our body from a mutated straight of the thing and not only that, but the earthquake that you didn't know was coming happened and the earth opened up and out of the earth, the sulfuric transformational health fumes rose

into the sky and turned the birds into bullets that shot all of the children. So you were wrong, you sap. So fine, go ahead and send it to me. But that's what I think is happening with this pandemic, I think we can all kind of feel it. And I'm a fool enough to say it out loud. I don't care, so what, I'm wrong. I was also wrong about the meteor that I thought was going to impact at the beginning of this

fucking pandemic. I thought the whole thing was a scam, they just wanted us to go indoors because they knew a meteor was going to impact the planet. And I wish I could have filmed my wife the many times she let me tell her that I think this is what it is in the many times in various ways. She said, what are you talking about? That is not what's happening. As it turns out, she was right.

A meteor didn't impact. I was wrong. So I could be wrong about this, but I think we're at the end of this thing. I think maybe even by the summer, this thing's going to start melting away. And that is really exciting. A little dreadful too, by the way, because right now I've got the ultimate excuse to not go out. It's like, are you fucking crazy?

There's a pandemic. You think I'm going to go out? I can't do stand up right now. I care. I care too much to do stand up. You know, it's a perfect excuse, but soon we're not going to have it anymore. And so we're going to have to come to terms with it, and we're all going to be like for a little bit.

We're all going to have to be really sweet to each other. I tweeted some snarky thing the other day and deleted it, just because I realized, like, no, don't do that right now. We're going to have to be really extra kind to each other coming up here. We're going to have to like join in with the spring a little bit, because I mean, I don't all of us, especially the callous baby hearts out there, man, we're rattled. Folks are freaked and excited, but freaked out. So we got to be, we got to be extra sweet, mimic the spring, you know, like in those

moments where you're about to like, you know, symbolically give someone the linguistic back hand because you feel like they're whatever wrong and you're right, you know, turn that, turn that back hand, whatever it was you were going to do, whether it was some passive aggressive, shitty symbolic back turning or legitimate assault verbally or hopefully not physically turn that into just turn into flowers. This is the best time to do it because the earth does it right. It turns all the dead shit into flowers and it does it right at the perfect time in the spring and all those flowers appear and all the leaves appear and you have to be no matter

what it's like, no matter what, it's going to get you, it's going to sink past all your defense mechanisms and it's going to remind you of the reason that I like being an existing sentient being in this particular material universe and the swath of the multiverse that we find ourselves, which is that it, the flowers always end up growing somehow or another. They're always there. No matter how grim you assign personality to the winner, you know, no matter how grim, no matter how dedicated to being cold, naked and deadly, the winter personified may be whether it likes it or not, flowers start growing out of it.

Whether it likes it or not, it's just as the way it goes. Is that a permanent situation? No. And probably the winter is it looks on and shock is the spindly dead skeletal branches of its infinite trees begin to grow leaves again. Maybe it knows like, yeah, go ahead, do your fucking spring rant podcasting sap, but give it some time and I'm going to get these fucking leaves off of me and freeze up again. It's true.

You can't, you know, accept you have to, you have to accept both realities. We need one for the other. That's the whole unfortunate point. You know, somebody tweeted some weird thing at me about this, the midnight gospel on Netflix saying, how can you say gospel, which means good news and midnight, which means darkness. It's like saying happy evil, some terrible misinterpretation of what I think we were attempting in the name of that show, what I thought it could mean, you know, which is like a more of like a, you know, the two things can exist together, not that midnight's bad.

I mean, if it was eternally daytime, we would all go crazy within a week, hate it. So I get it. There's a place, obviously for shitty, cold, creepy, lonely pandemics, I guess they happen. So there must be some place for them, but if you're going to have a pandemic, unless it's the end of the world, you're going to also get an after the pandemic. That's the, that's what you get for getting to the other side of a pandemic and after the pandemic, a time where like we are going to be hanging out with each other and we're not going to take it for granted for at least a few weeks, a time where we're going to be

gathering together and be like, holy shit, we get to be together and not worry that one of us is going to kill the other one. I think that's right around the corner and I'm very excited about it. And that's my spring sappy rant. Got a great show for you today, Fred's, Danielli Bollelli is here with us. We're going to jump right into it. But first, this, a big thank you to Chromadex, TrueNiogen for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH.

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These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Do not go quietly and do that, dark night. My dear loves, I just have to say it, Patreon, the Patreon community that has grown up around the DTFH and our weekly gatherings has become some of the favorite moments of my week. And I would love to invite you to head over to Patreon.com forward slash DTFH and join your true family. I want to help you not get savaged by the animals of spring. This is not a threat.

My attorneys have told me exactly how to say this, so it isn't a threat. I am not saying that if you don't sign up and subscribe to Patreon.com forward slash DTFH, there's a 95% chance that a small to mid-sized animal will attack you. It's not going to kill you and I'm not saying anything like it would kill you, but it's going to leave potentially some gaping, painful wounds. You'll probably have to get some shots because the animal could have been infected with some. I'm not saying the animal was infected with some special bio weapon that my team of scientists has developed.

Not saying anything. In fact, I'm not, I don't even know what I'm saying. Is that what you want me to say? To reiterate, I am not saying that I've done anything to the animal kingdom or to any creature. I'm not saying that I do or do not have a biologist working for me to develop bio weapons that create aggressive animals at all. And I'm not saying that if you subscribe to my Patreon, there will be a less of a risk of you being attacked this spring by a creature.

All I'm saying is head over to patreon.com forward slash DTFH and subscribe, you'll get instant access to commercial free episodes of the DTFH along with tons of extra content. It's all there for you at patreon.com forward slash DTFH. Now friends, without further ado, let's start this podcast with one of the most requested guests on the DTFH. He's an author, he's a philosopher, he's a martial artist, he teaches history. He's like an Italian Bruce Lee Indiana Jones Socrates. He's written a lot of great books and he's got some wonderful podcasts.

I've been on the drunken Taoist, but he also has history on fire. And if this is your first time meeting, Danielli, I'm sure after you listen to this, you're going to want to subscribe to his podcast where he gives brilliant renditions of various exciting oftentimes violent periods in human history. I feel lucky to call him my friend. So now everybody, please welcome to the DTFH, Danielli Bolelli. Danielli Bolelli, welcome back to the DTFH. Holy shit, man.

Look where you're at. Beautiful. Oh, hi. Not a bad gig. Not a bad gig at all. It's one of the escape zones, isn't it? It's like one of the LA escape zones. Yeah, it feels awesome because the problem with small places, you know, most small places

can be beautiful settings. They are amazing, but you're usually surrounded by four toothless red necks who are doing horrible things to each other's siblings. But that's not the case in Hawaii. Hawaii is small, so it has all the advantages of the small place, but it's also has a pretty vibrant cultural life. It's close enough to LA that if you need to go in, you can. I dig it.

It's a perfect medium. Um, well, I'm glad that you got out of LA. I read this hilarious article yesterday about how the, what do they call them? They don't call them influencers anymore, but just basically like Jake Paul, like all of those people have now started leaving LA, which is that's great. I mean, that's the, that's crazy to think that even those people that have started bailing on the city. Well, I mean, right now it just, who knows what is going to be in a year or two, but

right now we're doing pandemic time where so many things are closed down, where all the advantages of living in the cities are really not there. And all the things you have earned at these advantages, it kind of makes sense that, you know, unless you absolutely have to be in LA because you do have a job that require your physical presence, most stuff is not like that at this moment. So why be in a place where you're, you know, two years from now, maybe since, you know, when things are open, everything, who knows, maybe it's a whole different story. But right now it doesn't make sense.

For me, it doesn't make sense for good. Like I don't want to go back to living in a city, but, um, but I understand for most people, I don't different story. You, but like, as you, as you start like unwrapping why live in a city, you know, but in looking at it, uh, and then you just play around with the math of that. Like, okay, what happens if we remove all the people who are in a city because of work, how many people are left in this city? Can the city sustain itself?

No, it's because of work. That's it. It really boils down to work. Yeah. That's, that's the idea is like you go to a city because there's people in the city and because there's people in the city, there's work in the city to, for all the various things, variety of things that need to be there for a city to function. So we need engineers.

We need maintenance people. We need politicians. We need teachers, but then you can't work. Now all the, then the city starts sort of unraveling and then, then the people who are in the city that are left, it's, they're in this strange predicament because the, the life of the city isn't there anymore. Like that magical spark is gone. And, and so yeah, that's a really curious, is there, as a historian, can you think

of other times in history where there was like people fleeing the cities and, and what happened after a city depopulates? Like what, what does happen? Yeah, totally. I mean, if you look at like some, even if you look at like Rome, you know, was the center of the ancient world in the Mediterranean for a long time, Rome, at some point did not recover its population at its site for Santuris and Santuris. Afterwards, Rome, after a while, for, and not for a while, like for a few years for

Santuris was like some backwater place. It was surreal because you would have all these monumental architecture, all these fantastic things falling in, falling in ruins, essentially, because nobody knew how to take care of it anymore. Even the technology, the knowledge of how to do certain things, you know, this phenomenal aqueduct, the water system is great, except no one knows how to fix it anymore. So it's kind of as that planet of the apes field where you're there and you see

this remnants of this amazing thing that just gone and decayed and turning into something else. That's like the heavy one. That's like the long term stuff. Most, most of the time was short term stuff, you know, it's like, there's a plague and so everybody flees to the countryside and they are away from the city. And then three years later, they are back and they rebuild and six years later, it looks like nobody ever left kind of thing.

Yeah, but those, every, the difference between those times and this time is that those people didn't have technology. They didn't have the ability to do what we're doing right now. And so they had to go back to the city because that's where the work was. To me, that's the part that's, if you look at like the Silicon Valley, uh, the shift out of San Francisco, if you look at all the big companies that are letting their employees work remotely, would you say that we might like witness a reconfiguration of, uh, of the kind of city-centered city life versus agrarian

life that there could be a kind of a weird homogenization of those two former polarities? Sure. And I think that's the, that's the hope that one can have out of this fairly obnoxious scenario that has been, that we have been wrapped up in the past year or some, that it leads to a transformation where there's a lot more freedom for people to work remotely and not be stuck having to be glued to this one place, uh, where they don't really want to live there, but they have to, because that's where the job is.

And so they have to pay crazy overpriced, inflated values to live in an overcrowded place. Um, the double-edged sword there is this, is that the one, one of the big diseases of modern life is loneliness, you know, people are already not enough part of a community, not enough part of anything. And so physical work, and I don't mean physical work as in using your hands, but I mean physical work as in a work that require your physical presence is one of the very few ways that people have had to actually interact with other human beings in this kind of society.

So the question becomes, if you remove that component, will these free up people to have more time and energy to actually build meaningful relationship outside of work, because they live in a smaller community, they become invested in a smaller community, maybe they create a little village with their friends where they all live close to one another. That's the idea, that would be the best of both worlds. You get the old tribal style of close-knit community with the novelty of communication where you can interact with the whole world.

The downside is if people instead are like locking their little cabin in a bomber style in the middle of nowhere, they don't talk to anybody. They don't see anybody other than online. And then that's a nightmare. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That, that is scary.

That possibility, because in that possibility, what's really odd about that is that, you know, looking at like the, like, you know, dystopian, like Wally style projections of some futuristic society where you are in the bubble, things just get delivered to you, you don't have to leave. The, it creates a really strange thing that can happen to someone, which is that you're, the people that you're communicating with could be replaced by deep fakes possessed by an AI and you would never even know it. Pretty much, right?

You're in the matrix at that point. Yeah. You're in, like you could, you could fool, you could put someone in a house. It's like some technological, like Plato's cave, except it's not like shadows on the wall. It's fucking AI infused deep fakes of the people that were their friends. Yeah. They don't even know they're not even talking to them.

And you could do the same thing to their phone. So when they're calling, the number is just going to a deep fake and that could happen to every single one of these bubble dwellers. And they would never know there's a possibility that they would never know. That is one of the creepy out, like weird things that could, that could happen. You know, you could be, you could theoretically a country that it become hyper insulated and it reduced where the, each person is, as you're saying, it become like some kind of techno reclusive worker.

Theoretically, if you had to, some kind of amazing technological weapon, you could attack the country by just making people, like by sending in like AI clones to people's zoom meetings and confusing the fuck out of everybody. Suddenly you're like, imagine if like you, so you and I are talking on zoom and suddenly I'm like, fuck you, fuck you. Well, you piece of fucking shit. I'm flying there to kick your fucking ass. You'd be like, Duncan, what's, are you okay?

You know what I mean? I mean, while the same thing's happening to me from you or some other version of it, that is one of the creepy things. But I don't think that, I mean, do you really think that version of reality is possible to atrophied, like hibernating techno human completely lonely? It's kind of weird because on one end, no, because you figure and you hope that people are smart enough to see the potential in it. On the other end, I mean, I don't know if it ever happened to you.

Like sometime does it ever happen where maybe you have people around you or cool, nice people and, you know, they are trying to interact with you. And you're like, yeah, yeah, that's great. But let me go back to reply to Joe Blu on Twitter about what's going on. And suddenly you're like treating that interaction as more real than the people who are physically right in front of you. And you're like, what the fuck am I doing? Why?

Yes. Yeah, that's it. You have identified a real fucking problem, some shadowy. You don't know what that you've been talking to. Yeah. Comes into your mind a few hours later, you're thinking about Zornag nine, eight, one, seven, sixes critique of something you said. Yes.

Yes. Instead of like your kids. Yes. And that's when like, oh, something is wrong in this picture. Yeah. Yeah. That's like a fungus. That's like a form of futuristic technological athlete's foot.

You know, like some, some techno mold is like crept into you. And now you're like thinking of, of that shit. You know, I, I try, I can't, I can't get her to not do that. I try to get my wife to not look at, I'm like, don't look at the comments. Right. Right. You know, because it, like you have to learn that over time. Yeah.

You'll get infected. Yeah. So that's one of the problems is that suddenly you're prioritizing relationships with beings that you don't even know are human. Yep. Could be a lab monkey that has learned how to telepathically communicate with Twitter. Right. Could be an AI bot.

Could be something you don't even know what the fuck it is. Could be a, could be like a group of humans floating in some gel. All interacting is one super being via Twitter. You know, you just, that's the thing. You don't know what you're talking to on that motherfucker or whatever your particular social media thing is. Thank you. Squarespace for sponsoring yet again, an episode of the DTFH.

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domain. Again, that's squarespace.com forward slash Duncan, you get a free trial and when you're ready to launch use offer code Duncan to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain. Thank you, Squarespace. Yeah, so yeah, that is one of the possibilities, but then I think of this superstition and hype. I think of PR campaigns or in other words, like the brand of the city and its necessity to keep itself alive, not just via some industry, but by some sentimentality connected to the

city. You know what I mean? You run into the person who's like, I'm an Angelino, oh God, just a, oh, riding down sunset Boulevard on a Friday when the sun is setting and you are going to the house of blues, I got out of the pinks. You get that kind of thing that shows up, which is a weird allegiance with what is nothing more than a kind of convergence of workers. So I think that part of the negative appraisals of what I am hoping is a kind of new way of

living. It's more related to the branding of cities and this kind of existential threat. If all of a sudden we're all like, I can be a fucking Angelino and live in North Carolina. No, and I think that's actually can work out great for everybody. Because if you take away, doesn't have to be the mass access, I mean it is a mass access, but it's not like a night and day thing. If you take away 20% of a population from a city, man, does that place become a lot more livable?

There's less traffic, you got to play. So people who are actually are in the cities, aren't going to enjoy their city a lot more. And people who are not in the city are going to enjoy it a lot more because they get to create their own close knit community in a small place. So potentially it can be awesome for everybody, theoretically speaking. Of course it depends on how you play those cards. From that point of view, you're looking at cities do what's it called viral shedding, which is like, you know what I mean?

Because at some point they have depopulated, and because of that depopulation, it's like, holy shit, this is amazing. I love it here. It starts slowly filling up, filling up. It's like a cyst that starts filling with more and more people. It gets more and more expensive, and then because it's so crowded, suddenly it becomes like a nexus for disease, or some other destabilizing contagion, and then all of these assholes like me are like, I'm out of here.

That's like probably what a sneeze comes from. It's just a certain number of dissatisfied, bitchy, cold viruses being like, ah, this dude, he's driving here, he sucks, everything's always sucked out of these lungs. He used to be nice, but he's not anymore, and they're not to blow them all out of your nose. They go and infect somebody else. I know, I'm in a new place, it's great. You know, that's probably what it is.

Cities are just pustules that fill with people until they begin to fuck up, then they spray those people all over the country, suddenly people in Texas are like, God, damn it. LA, shit, it's fucking, didn't know the shit. Right. That's the reality, right? You can only add so many people to a small place, or not even small, but take any size. If you add a certain number of people past the point, it becomes overcrowded, conditions of life begin to go down the drain.

Think about a place like LA, or think about any city. What happens to that infrastructure when you double the population? When you triple it? When you quadruple it? Yeah. Because to shit, inevitably, quality of life takes a nosedive. So there is that process of like, grow, grow, grow, okay, you hit a limit, now it's not that good anymore, and shrink a little.

Okay, now it's back to decent size. Now, before you could have, because the city was the place, there was no other option if you wanted certain jobs. Now, maybe, maybe, because just until the other day, there was this superstition that you have to be physical in the office, and everybody, the boss needs to look at you kind of thing. Right. Now, that's hopefully changing.

So that could give some serious opportunities to redesign in what life entails, and work, and community, and everything else. Right. Well, we haven't really, I'm sure that we haven't had a chance, they're really sort of sift through all the data. So we don't know for sure, regarding like productivity, because how are you really going to measure that? You need a few years to see what effect it has, but I think the early reports coming in

is that people are either weirdly more productive, or the same level of productive. I mean, you know, from the perspective, I'm sure of someone who's been spending, God knows how much on commercial real estate to house their workers, it's the best thing ever for the workers to work remotely. But it's not fair, because you're kind of saddled now, you're like telling your workers, you need to pay for your office. But you know, your office is probably a corner of your bedroom or something. So you're there anyway.

Great. You know, if the trade office, I don't have to drive an hour and a half each time or something in life. I'll pay for my office 10 times, I'll have my office by the swimming pool, I'll do, you know, whatever. But there should be an, don't you think there should be an acknowledgement, like we're still fighting over whether or not we should pay people minimum wage. This is never going to fucking happen.

But it feels like there should be an acknowledgement. There should be an acknowledgement of like, okay, because we no longer have an office, we're not paying, you know, depending on how large the company was, we're not paying 10, we just saved, you know, 10, 50, 100, I don't know, millions of dollars a year. So I feel like that money, a little bit of that should be put, given back to the workers. Yeah, you know, if the person in charge is a decent human being, that could be an option. But of course, you know, you're relying on the goodwill and good attitude of the person in charge, which is always a sketchy game, since usually the name of the game when you

run a company is maximize profit at all costs. But again, some people are cool. Some people are, they realize that they can make a lot of money and be cool to their workers at the same time. That is not an either or, and that's the, again, that's the ideal scenario, right? You make life better for everybody. And on top of it, it's good for you. Win-win, you know, that's to me, it's the...

Win-win. Yeah, it's the ultimate strategies. Like to me, I'm very interested in strategies that don't rely on me fucking over you in order to get my own, but in working out something that works for me, and guess what, also works for you. That to me is the ultimate win-win, because when it's not like that, then you are planting the seeds of conflict, you're planting the seeds of people coming to shoot you at your house, you're planting the seeds of you on a war, but really you're just taking a break

and taking the next war because the defeated side is pissed off and want revenge. It never works. You know, it just doesn't work well. So you need to, it's important to figure out ways that everybody can be happy enough with that they are like, you know, that works for me, cool. Get your own, I'm glad for you, because I'm also getting something. So we're good. I want to thank Purple for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH.

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Cool. Get your own. I'm glad for you because I'm also getting something. So we're good. Right. Yeah, that's sort of the dreamy. That's like the dreamy. That's the dreamy idea.

You know, some people, a lot of us, we're just not happy. You know, it's like the general confusion is that if I achieve this particular level of comfort or security, I'm going to have some happiness, but what if that's not the case? Oh man. Yeah. You're hitting the door that I've been going through a lot lately because I'm about to release an episode on Bruce Lee.

I went into a very deep dive on Bruce Lee's life and one thing I never picked up on when I was reading on Bruce Lee earlier, when I researched Bruce Lee in the past, I never picked up his relationship with success and in this last time, it really hit me big because the thing with him is that he achieves things that are unreal, right? Like the success that Bruce Lee has in the span of a couple of years is the equivalent of winning the lottery five times in a row. The odds are next to impossible and he pulls it off, you know, he's a Chinese dude with a heavy accent who managed to become the biggest actor in the world in that moment.

World one. It's unreal. And then you see his interviews, you see what he says and there's the sense that, you know, he was looking for success because that was going to deliver all his dreams, was going to increase his opportunity to choose the life he wants and instead it actually shrinks his range of choice because suddenly for one, he doesn't know whether the money train is going to end anytime soon or not. So he has to keep the food, the food on the gas pedal the whole time.

He can no longer go anywhere. He feels every interaction he has, he doesn't know if somebody's really been a friend or they want something from him and on top of it, he just drives himself nuts, he's working all day long because he feels like the opportunities are here now. I don't know if they will be here tomorrow. I need to take them. And in the process of doing that, he just lacks his body and his physical state, which then made it a lot easier to have an allergic reaction to medication that they demand.

But it's a crazy tale. Wow. You know, you see a guy who's a god. I mean, the stuff he pulls off is so amazing that you have to just bow down the genius of it all. And yet he's less happy than he ever was. And it was weird for me when I was researching because I started researching it about a couple of years ago when for me, I was, you know, I never had much money or things, but a couple

of years ago, things were turning for me in a good way where I was like, oh, shit, I'm actually doing better than I ever have. This is interesting. And I remember my lady Savannah one day was looking at me and she's like, that's not what success looks like to me. And I'm like, what do you mean? And I'm like, waking up and like three seconds after I open my eyes, I'm checking emails and replying, I'm working till 1am.

I'm like, how should I have been really successful here? And I'm just like, no, motherfucker, yeah, your bank account is in healthier shape than it has been. But no, your quality of life has gone down and not up. Unless you make some serious adjustments, it's so easy to just get that dopamine heat from life. I made more money. Okay, I feel a little better.

And it's just like, yeah, dangerous, dangerous game. Wow. Yeah, like you were told what success is via media and it's it looks good. I mean, especially like on TV, it looks amazing because you don't see these people in between the movies they're acting in or the tiny little frame of time that you're that they're captured in some interview and interview. They're like these beautiful, witty people, but then you don't see the in between. Yeah.

And most importantly, you don't feel their consciousness because if you could, maybe you would realize like, oh, Jesus, God, these people who do have more access, these people who are like, you know, living in multiple beautiful fucking homes and never will ever worry about not being able to pay a bill are just as freaked out when they wake up in the morning as I am. But I thought the reason I was freaked out was because I didn't have that stuff. Yeah. Oh, God.

What the fuck? This is awful because then you start getting the sense that you've had a pretty, a pretty massive trick played on you. It's a trick like somebody tricked me into believing this shit. And it's not like that. I mean, it's cereal box philosophy that you stuff says it going to make you happy. You hear that like on those Yoda dolls where you pull the string or whatever. It's not like we're talking about some kind of high level shit here.

And yet there's a reason that floats in the air around your ambition. Is it just like, because to me, it's like the, you know, like the dopamine hits for making money. Oh, how sweet they are. But they can't match the dopamine hits when you just ran two more miles and you thought you were going to run on a day when it's like cold and raining. You know what I mean? Nothing can match.

Nothing can match that. Like that's the real, that's the real juice, you know, it's like, and that's, I love that because I don't care how fucking rich you are. You can't, nobody can run for you. Nobody can do pushups for you, you know, no one can like write a book for you and no one can learn piano for you and no one can like learn a new language for you. You have to do that. It doesn't matter how much money you have.

It's an equal playing field and not in the level of like achieving like some kind of, you know, in transforming yourself, refining yourself. You know what I mean? Like money isn't going to do anything. Abundance in that way isn't going to do anything. Yeah, it's a weird thing because clearly money makes dealing with a bunch of problems that deal, people deal with every day a hundred times easier. Fuck yes.

You know, if you can just say, don't worry about that, the car is broken, fine, taken care of, no problem. Yeah. So that does take away a hell of a lot of real stress. So that part is real and that's why it's not that people are stupid, it's like there's a very good reason why people feel many if I only had more money life would be easier. Yeah, it would be easier, but no, it would be easier. It would not be by any stretch of the imagination, suddenly everything clicks.

No, that's a whole separate thing. It's like you just have, you start a game with better cards. That's all there is. It doesn't mean you won the game. It's just you start the game with better cards. That's great. But then in no way shape or form ensures the fact that, you know, it, it give you great chances that you're going to have good cards at the end, but it doesn't ensure that happiness

factor, which is the one that ultimately winning the game is all about. And that's where, you know, where we mistake the, the process that we think is going to deliver it for the actual experience and the actual experience. Unfortunately, you know, unless you, unless you know how to, unless you have it at every step of the way in one form or another, you're not going to get there. You know, you're not going to have that moment where you get there and you're like, oh, now I get to have the experience is like, no, that's not how it works. No.

No. That's so infuriating, but you, but it's also exciting, isn't it? It's like, to me, that's like as I spin through, you know, as you, if you, like, if you're, if you're like an old school conspiracy person as I am, you grew up taking acid, you know, looking at dollar bills, thinking about like all the things that like, well, if they've made this like massively illegal and it just makes me feel amazing and seems to improve my quality of life, then what other shit if they completely fucked up? Yeah.

And so it's, it creates this like, this sort of at first, your whole world can like fall apart as you're looking out at it and thinking like, my God, how much of what I do is even my own freedom and how much of it has been implanted in me by people who just like have we've all gone into some hypnotic resonant field that seems to be centered on consuming or more importantly, an addiction to new stuff. You know, we want new shirts, new clothes, new car, new house, new this, new that, novelty addiction specifically. But then over time, I want to like refine and refine the conspiracy theories,

bringing them all together into one sort of profound, you know, they want like the, the, what's in physics, they want the unified field theory. I want the unified conspiracy theory of theories, right. And to me, it centers around this very conversation we're having, which is you can control your states of consciousness to induce identical levels of joy and bliss that you would have if you did achieve all the, if you did like accrue all the globlets of matter or whatever, you don't need any of that. If you are in control of your nervous system enough, theoretically, you could induce those

states minus procuring them, minus the transaction, minus the hoarding of the one style of energy to get the other style of energy. And you know what I mean? You could do it minus any of that. And that, that, if we all started figuring out how to do that, would completely put a bullet right in the fucking dark oozing heart of society as we know it. Yeah. Because no one's going to do it.

Now everyone's going to be like, I don't really, I'm not going to go for that. You know, I don't need, no, I really don't need a job that pays me that much because in my reasonably priced whatever, I feel like I'm in heaven just because I've gained control of my consciousness enough. Totally man. Like one of the key, one of the Cardinal Dawes concepts is the idea of knowing when to stop. And they say that if you don't know when to stop, that's when all sort of calamities will follow. Because there is a sweet spot where you know where you hit everything you can get from that

and pushing forward is not going to deliver more of the good stuff. It's not going to make life any easier. It's just going to make you addicted to running on this wheel like a hamster kind of thing. And so the idea of knowing, and again, knowing when to stop, meaning you have to get there, is not necessarily, again, if you are homeless on the street, we can talk about how, you know, you can find a happiness in this moment. It's like, yeah, fucking easy for you to say you're not dealing with my mechanic guy, Joe, who's next to me stealing my sleeping bag as soon as I turn around.

So I get it, you know, there is a place where- I can't afford insulin, motherfucker. Exactly, exactly. 100%. So we're not saying this thing like, everybody, just find your bliss now while in the middle of the Rwandan genocide, or while you have no money to eat, you know, no, those are real problems. Got it. But once you get to a certain point where you have food on the table, you have a reasonably

assured roof over your head, you have, you know, the basics of life to keep you going, then a lot of that is where it becomes a game of diminishing return, you know, working like a dog to make more money. How much more of your life is it going to deliver in terms of potentials for happiness? Not a whole lot, if anything, it can actually get to a point where it's counterproductive. So in knowing where it's like, no, I'm good, this is good, this is what I need. I don't need to work 10 times as hard to make more. This is the good spot.

Yeah. I just bought a fucking house, man. So I'm the biggest hypocrite on the fucking earth right now. I bought into the thing by a fucking house. I didn't want to rent anymore. I want to know what it's like to buy a house. That's the problem with consumerism is because it's like, I can theoretically imagine what it's like to own a yacht, but I can never really know what it's like to own a yacht until I

own a yacht. Yeah. And you know what I mean? So this is the terrible like carat they dangle in front of the greedy little rabbit in our hearts is it's like, oh yeah, fuck your philosophical shit. I want to know what it's like to have this or that or that. And then when you get the thing, it's always the identical result, which is not much. Didn't really seem to ripple the waters much at all.

There is this cool, I mean, it's cool like in a video game or something, but it's like, it's not like, you know, there wasn't the, you know, after the grand initiation of being vetted by a zillion different people to buy a fucking house, which is the, you know, Western initiation ritual of adulthood or of like, you know, it's clearly an initial, it's clearly an occult initiation ceremony. Yeah. The signing ritual, you got to go into a room and like do a completely pointless like signing of like a trillion sheets of paper in front of a like special person, the notary,

who's been authorized by some other thing to like be there to watch the signings. And it's the whole thing is like, to me, it seems even more ridiculous than some of the like initiate initiation rituals I've seen in documentaries, you know, where people are like, you know, putting praying manises on their nipples or like, you know what I mean? Like, it's like, that makes more sense than like, all right, yeah, okay, I'll sign this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this. And now the signing is done. And then you get this key and then now this like shell that another thing used to live in,

you go and inhabit and the difference is this is my shell versus I'm leasing a shell from someone else who's a shell collector who leases shells to these weird fucking, you know, creatures that we are that like to like curl up in shells and pretend that this is our home. You know, I think the level you're talking about though, despite the fact that I'm done with the whole praying mantis on the people's metaphor, it's just any day I bow to such divine creation. But, but, you know, if you're talking about one house, you're talking about where you live, you're talking, that's very real. Okay, so I get it.

You know, you want to have your place where you have a say so where you don't have it. Sorry, where you don't have a hustle landlord who's yelling at you, telling you what you can do, checking out the rent, all of that. The problem is not that the problem is when it's like, okay, I got a house. Now what? Now I need the bigger car. Okay, now I got it. Now I want the boats.

No, now I want two boats. Now I want three houses. Now I was because that's the beach house. It's like when you have something that is like, no, you got the good stuff, you have a house, you have food, you have the, oh, there's a medical issue you need to take care of, you can, at that point, you're good. If you make more money because you happen to do stuff you love and actually pays off, great, that's a win.

But, you know, to still think with the mentality that got you there, you know, it's a weird contradiction because in order to be great at something or even not to be great, but just to plain and simple make money. But let's take it even in the better sense, even if you want to be great at something, you need to be kind of obsessive because you need to be disciplined, you need to push yourself, you want to fuck off for the day and relax, and instead you're going to be driven and you're going to make it happen, you know, the whole rhetoric of the grind will get you to be able to achieve the results.

But then it becomes also a drug because it's like, well, okay, you got the results. And why are you still grinding? Why are you still there beating yourself up about, I need to go harder. I need to keep pushing. I'm like, why? He was a means to an end. It's not a, and so that's where it becomes a problem. And that's why, in fact, it's not that it's good or bad.

It is like the whole grind, the porn that people seem to deliver forever in terms of motivational speaking is good to some degree, the hustle, but then past that point is actually poison. And so knowing how much to use, where it helps you, you know, having a little obsessiveness that helps you be driven and makes stuff happen. But also knowing that it's like, I did it. Now I can turn it down by 80% and play with my kids more. And that's the good life.

Unfortunately, those are two opposite sides of the brain, you know, the stuff that make you obsessive and driven clashes with the side that actually teaches to relax and enjoy the moment. And those are almost two different sets of personalities that most people cannot bring together. Yeah, like one is the like war general and the other is the like monk or the, you know, poorest person. And there, yeah.

Yeah. And I think, you know, I just think it's the difficult, like, I think it's difficult for people just to admit, like, look, you need to understand that you're having a hard time being alone with yourself. Like, you know, like that, like, you got to look at that because you can't, you're, you're, anytime you find yourself alone, you're getting on your phone and trying to do more shit or your, you know what I mean? That's, that seems to be the condition.

That's the, that's the, that's the unified conspiracy is it's like, look, you can't be alone with, by your, you're having a really hard time not doing anything. And if enough of us just stopped doing 2% of what we do, I think you'd see a profound change in society itself. God, imagine if everyone just stopped working 10%. If they, if they took, if they worked 10% less, there would be a dramatic shift. But then to me, the conspiracy part of it is exactly what you're talking about, the grind

porn. It's like there, there is an invisible, you know, like there's an invisible person beating the drum. Yes. That is creating the rhythm that society is rowing at, you know, and if you don't walk out, you know, you'll think you're the one who's deciding to row at that rhythm. And until suddenly you realize like, wait a minute, what, why am I doing this? Why am I fucking doing this shit?

Yep. Yep. What am I doing? And usually by the time you like that happens, you've had like a heart attack. You know what I mean? You've been diagnosed and you're like, oh, shit. 100% man. And that's the hard thing.

It's figuring is really being honest with oneself and figure out what do I need to be happy? What do I need? The, what are the things that truly I need to work hard to make it happen? And at what point will I know when to stop and be and enjoy life more and relax? Like one thing I loved about growing up in Italy was the fact that didn't even matter how poor you were, almost anyone was not on the street by August time would take off pretty much everything was closed in August.

There was hardly any work and people would just go to the sea. You know, if you had money, you go to the fancy place by the sea. If you don't have money, you go to some crappy, whatever, cheaper place. But at the end of the day, everybody just spent a month laying down on the beach, sitting there, going swimming, sunbathing, reading books, doing whatever. Beautiful. And that's how you spend the whole month. And that does phenomenal things to your psyche, because for a month, you're not grinding,

you're not pushing forward, you're not going with this, I need to hustle. You're just kicking back. And it's not a week or two where really there's not even time to adjust to that. Like usually in a week or two, people almost get depressed because they don't know what to do with themselves. No, you have a month, a month start becoming a serious stretch of time. You do have that moment where you go like, whoa, I don't know what to do when I'm not working all the time.

But then you're like, you know what, sitting here on the beach, sunbathing, going for a swim and reading a book feels pretty damn good. And you have a chance to really reevaluate your life, to think like, huh, this is me not doing anything. This is me not just being an extension of my job title. This is me how I want to spend my time. Oh, and now I actually want to do this other thing. I want to go visit that place or hang out with my friend and give you a chance to reconnect

with what it means to be human, which I think as a society is monstrously important. It's the equivalent of taking a meditation break during the day at a social level to have like the one month off where you just go do nothing or go do something. But it's something you choose to do, you know? I think that's one of the reasons why people in America, when they go to somewhere in Europe or India and they realize that like, and they see an older civilization and they look at the way that life is conducted in some of these. I remember in Sri Lanka looking, oh, it's the sun is setting.

We're on the train and it's just people are just out. But they're not doing anything. They're watching the sun. I remember once seeing people watching like just, you know, boy husbands and wives and boyfriends and girlfriends with these beautiful blankets laid out that they put out to it. And this isn't like any special day. It's just any day. That's how it is.

And they've got blankets out and the sun is setting. And I remember what, like there's a video game called Katamari Damacy, which shows this funny, flowery, beautiful world. But it was that beautiful in the sense that a goat, I was watching a goat as the train goes by going up the hill, getting on his back, sliding down the hill and going back up. Even the goats were fucking off. Yeah, of course. You know, like they had tuned into this chilled out vibe that was possible.

You know, yeah, I love it. I, you know, I think it's a very inspiring thing that you're saying. And it seems to be one of the great paradoxes of technology is like, how is it that with all this accelerated ability to conduct business, we still are working the same, if not more? Yes. Yes. Absolutely. And that's where the addiction kicks in, because that's all you know how to do.

You don't know what it means to sit in the garden and relax. I get scared. Yeah, you feel that your self-worth is tied to this. You know, you don't get self-worth from sitting in the garden. I get self-worth because I'll do this hard work and people will pay me for it. You have it. Nobody else showed you any different, you know, that kind of stuff. I mean, to me, really, when I was doing this, I wasn't even realizing it.

And like when Savannah was looking at me and going like, this does not look like success. She said like, what, five words or something? And I was like, whoa, that's 100% right. He's like, what am I doing? What the hell is this? You know. And so it's the way you see it is a very Taoist game, right? It is these opposite things that you both need because you do need that ability to be

disciplined, get stuff done, work hard. That's an important part of life. But you also need the good stuff is also that allows that other side, the stuff that enjoy the moment, the stuff that can relax, that plays with kids, that is more carefree. That gives, they need, they need to find that healthy balance. And that's kind of like what you were referring to earlier. Now, actually the way you said it made me think of something I wrote in my very first book. I used the image that was almost identical to what you said.

You are talking about this war general and the monk. I use the hippie samurai. To me, the hippie samurai is exactly that. You know, you need that samurai side that's disciplined, that makes it happen, that say that he's going to do something and he does and all of that. And at the same time, this happy EP drop acid, look at the sky and enjoy the texture of the tree in front of you. That's what makes life worth it.

Because otherwise you're just an asshole who's effective. Who cares? He's like, yeah, you're disciplined and effective. Good job. Hitler was disciplined and effective too. That doesn't mean he's a good thing, you know, in itself. It's only, what does discipline and effectiveness mean? The two, does it create something beautiful?

Otherwise, you know. It's a good question to ask yourself from time to time is, how much am I like Hitler? And don't do that. Yes. Don't be like Hitler. Yes, yes. Like, don't invade. Are you about to invade France?

I think Poland and France are safe from me for now. Not, I don't make no promises about tomorrow, but for today, they're both safe. Yeah, man. I think like what you're talking about is such a, I need the reminder, you know, now that I've just gone through like what essentially could only be described as some kind of capitalist seizure, you know, like a weird convulsive middle age episode of acquiring matter. Right. And now looking at like, I got kids who I'm not hanging out with as much as I'd like to.

Yeah. Because I'm working to try to pay for the house. It's there's something in that it's dreadful and I don't want to be that person. I never wanted to be that person. It's so hard because, you know, you, you watch every single movie about that topic, 10,000 times, kind of what you were saying. It's almost the Yoda cookie cutter kind of wisdom and still hits you. You know, it's like, how many times have you learned a lesson, 10,000?

And it's still easy to fall into it. So it's a, oh man, it's a complicated game. And yet it's the only game that is right. Yeah. That's what it's all about. Yeah. And I think that's the problem why people sometimes are, whether you look at politics or religion or anything, people, they discover something that works for them at one time.

And then they want it to be the answer to all of life. And so they become addicted to these ideologies. Like it's all about hustling and being tough. It's all about being a free market capitalist. No, it's all about being a socialist. It's all about, and they, you know, they discover one tool that work one time and they want to apply to all situations in life. When in reality it's like a hammer is great to drive nails into the wall.

It's not great when I want to use it as a spoon to eat soup. You know, it's like you need the balance of the game is that there's a shit lot of tools out there and you need to figure out what's the appropriate one at what time. And that requires you to be really aware, really be thinking on your feet, really be in touch with who you are and the conditions around you. And so it's no wonder that people love dogmas because dogmas are reassuring. It's like you discover one good thing and now you apply it to everything. Even though you're applying to shit where it doesn't work at all.

It's like, can't you see that that problem can be solved in another way? That's way more effective. It's like, no, it's my flag. It's my identity. It's my ideology. It's my whatever. That is like, ah, fuck. To me, that's one of the big new viruses.

You've just become a skipping record. Yeah, completely. It's a virus. It is. Yeah, I know what you're talking about and it robs you of novelty. It's like, if you're using the same tool or some way of interacting with the world over and over and over again, then it means that you've fallen prey to the idea that everything's the same, right?

Each moment is just like the moment before meaning, yeah, you can use the same methodology. It's you lose track of the terrifying reality, which is that every single moment, the universe blips out of existence and blips. It's a new fucking universe. It might look the same to you, but at the quantum level, this shit is like constantly parts of it are not there for flickering flashes of impossibly tiny increments of time. And then they're back. So it's like, this is not the same place that it was a millisecond ago.

So why are you using the identical habitual methodology for the variety of phenomena that are appearing in front of you at any given moment? Yeah, and I think it's just reassuring. It's like, it feels safe because it's like, I figured it out once. Do I really have to figure it out again and again and again? And it's like, yes, because it's not the same as the ones you figured out the last time. Good job last time. That worked.

But now it's a whole different context. And so you're trying to apply the same answer to this new context doesn't work. That's how I'm distressed. Yeah, you're good. Go ahead, please. I'm distressed full of political slogans. I'm distressed full of identity, ultimately. I think that identity is a trap because it forces you to be this one thing where life requires

you to be more than one thing. And so the more we insist on embracing the and other people do it too. I mean, think how life works. You know, if you are an actor and you do a really good job at playing a part, now you're going to get typecast and they are always going to call you where it's like, oh, he's the tragic character. Let's play him or he's the funny guy or perhaps jokes. Or, you know, I mean, even in anything, right?

People will want to, they want to have that recognizable label that is like, I want the discipline guy. I'm going to listen to Jocko Willink every time. And maybe Jocko Willink that day wants to braid flowers in his hair, but he's like, no, I'm the discipline guy. That's what people expect from me. So I have to deliver that every single day. And he's like, we trap each other in the game.

You know, we trap ourselves because identity is a seductive bitch. And we trap each other by forcing this idea on one another with expectations and everything else. And it's a dead show. Yeah, that's what Ramdas says. Sometimes we're like, sometimes you'll be like, hey, why aren't you wearing that fucking mask? You always wear. I want the mask you used to wear back on. I don't know this mask you're wearing.

It's a totally different mask. I don't like that mask. Yep. But on the other mask, that's the mask I'm comfortable with. Exactly. Yeah, that's why, you know, I do think that there's this, what you're saying reminds me of this concept. I remember hearing this teacher, Roshi Joan Halifax talk about regarding Zen and insecurity.

And the, you know, the way Zen koans have this sort of, they're supposed to make you feel insecure. They're supposed to like that they're pointing to the human situation is insecure. It's naturally an insecure situation. Like you don't know when you're going to die. You don't know really what's coming down the line next. And so you try to battle that insecurity with ignorance by ignoring that reality to produce a false sense of stability.

And that's the projection of the identity into the world. It's like, this is a complex variety of behavior patterns that I have perfected that limit chaos in my life. That's what you think. That's exactly, I think you nailed why people are addicted to identity. Because there's this feeling that it's familiar, it's reassuring. It limits the chaotic energy that's around you. And you can fall back on it, all of that.

And to some degree, it's true, but it also become a prison. You know, it also becomes this, oh, it's safe. So let me lock all the doors and stay behind the bars. And it's like, yes, it's safe to some degree. But no, it's not safe because you just put yourself in this box that ultimately life is happening around you. Things are changing and you're desperately holding on to this thing. And I mean, if you think about like, especially these days,

when you hear people, you can say the sun is outside and somebody will say, I hate your politics. That's a horrible thing you said out there. You unfold, no cancel. I hate you, right? And the thing is like, why are people so hard core on some of this stuff? Because again, it's about their identities, about their sense of self in the world,

about what they believe to be holy and true. When the reality is that nothing is as simple as they play it in their heads in terms of, I mean, think about like the big government, more socialistic model versus the free market capitalism. There's not a single system in the world that has 100% free market capitalism or a 100% state controlled ultra communist thing. Everything is a mix of the two. So the argument is not between two systems.

The argument is, where do we draw the line? Do we do 66, 34? Do we do 52, 48? That's an argument that's so much easier to have because it's like, okay, we don't disagree about some cosmic significance of life. We're disagreeing on where exactly we tune in the dial. That's a lot. That's about strategy.

We can figure out the strategy. We can try. Oh, you know what? You're right. We went a little too far away. Let's tweak it a little down now. That's a discussion that would be easy to have. You don't have to get mad about it.

But instead, it's an identity thing. It's like the evil socialists are out to God, does or no, it's those bastard capitalist gods. It's like, oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and we're not nimble enough to just, that's the problem. Government is not nimble. We have the ability to be so much more nimble than we are. I mean, just look, the amount of time it took to get relief checks to people

and the amount of time, it's just not nimble. So it's not represented. Democracy has to be a representation of the will of the people, not just by voting, but literally a representation of where we're at as a people. And it's like the systems they're using to process what the people want are old, musty, hackable, fucked up, corrupt systems. So the whole thing's all gummed up. And it's like, so we can't even get to the point of like, how much do we want?

40, 60? What do we want? 30, 20? Or how about tomorrow we try 80% free market capitalism? Then the next day, let's see what happens. 100% communism. How do we like that? Okay, let's shift it a little bit.

It doesn't work like that. And so this is produced this awful, you're with us or you're against us. And that's horrible, because it's like implying that there's some totalitarian mentality that a person is just one way of being, one way of thinking of things instead of this constant fucking slot machine spinning of ideas and possible experiments. It's just, we're not advanced enough yet to encapsulate, our government isn't advanced enough yet to encapsulate how advanced we've become. So it's almost as though we have to take on the personality of like Neanderthals

to communicate with our government. We have to, but we're all communicating with each other with it, with I think some nuance and especially with a technology that's unprecedented. But the way, but we're having to talk to our government and ones and zeros and like, you know what I'm saying? It's like, we're like having to be like, me wonders, this is me, you, I need this one. It's like, we're way past that, but that's all they hear is these grunts. And, you know, so it's a grunt where we have this grunt language happening

with the thing that's supposed to be representing how wildly advanced we've become, at least from my perspective. No, and I think you're a hundred percent right on the structural issue that like, yeah, the way society is set up, the way our political system is set up, it's like horrendously ineffective. And there's that problem. And then I think there's the other one of it, which is starts, I mean, even before we get to that level, which is a whole other kind of worms, even at a more basic level,

it's inside people said, you know, people do this to themselves before it's even about how do I actually get these ideas to be implemented into practice is like, people marry into this ideological prison and they are so committed to. And so that, that's even before the practicality aspect, that's like a virus of the mind. Then if you were suddenly more enlightened and more willing, now there's the problem of, okay, now how do we actually do it? Because it's still, you know, we got the theoretical part solved, but how do you make it happen in real change in real life through governments, through governments through,

that's a whole other kind of worms. But we're not even at the level of addressing that kind of war. Because before that, there's even the level of just individual inside people's brain. People are addicted to identity, to ideology, to dogma, to all that stuff. And that's kind of a problem. Well, kind of a problem. We'll figure it out though, I think. I mean, it's just the, I mean, I think we've, the nervous system has formed.

We've got the framework, I think, for the dispersal of the next Daoist iteration, or the next Buddhist teaching, or the next Christianity, or the next whatever. Like we have this, it's like all of the systems are go. And right now they're just being filled with confusion, because we're all a little naturally, especially the last couple of years, confused. So we're just seeing this confused static. But that, that what exciting thing is, the thing is set to, to like, for, for something to come along, or a group of people, or God knows what, to like.

I know what it is. What? Duncan Trussells, my trainer, savior of the world. He has awakened. He has arrived. Don't much, don't much frame me. Hell no. Hell no.

I'll tell you this man. Hell no. I don't care if like a thousand robed beings appeared in front of me in the forest and said, you're going to convey some hell no. I'm not falling for that shit. You know, that's a big, like any of that, any of the avatars that come to earth, you got to be a little suspicious, because they were the ones who were like, I'll do it. When you know there was like, whatever the Christ energy was that descended here,

you know, there was like thousands of other beings. They're like, no, you know, I can't that. I can't do that Jesus thing. I'm busy that you take one for the team. In fact, by the way, that I didn't say me. I said, you do it. Duncan clearly is the guy to go for. Sadly, even if they're even if they're even if like, though I do know you're joking,

obviously, even if there were some possible, like I would never do. I like that. Fuck that. It's all about decentralization. Now, like I would, I'll tell you this. If I could be like a hair follicle on the head of a Messiah, I might take that job or just like an eyelash or something, you know, a belly button. That's probably asking too much.

I wouldn't mind being like some, some, some D a bit of DNA in the thing itself, but God fuck being the whole thing. We got to get past this centralization problem. It's the problem. It's like once we get, once we communally integrate to form a Voltron style Messiah, that's where you, that's where I would be interested. And I think that's where it's tricky because ultimately the way also human beings are wired is that we are, I mean, it's the equivalent of like, think of like some brilliant meditate

or trying to teach a bunch of monkeys to meditate. You know, you have to take this monkey who's like taking flee of his thing. The other one who's going fuck up with the other and you're like doing all this work and suddenly you get them all and you're getting all calm and it's like we're getting there. And one just flicks the thing on the other side and the other one goes like fuck you and I have to kill you. Now all the monkeys are screaming and going at it and you're like, fuck not this again. And it's like, it's because we respond to fear and outrage so much faster than we respond to

kind of like some of the things that help us make life better so that it takes nothing. It takes any idiot with a megaphone can go like outrage, fear, look at that. And everybody's going to lose their mind on this. Whereas the work of creating something beautiful is so much more delicate and so much more subtle and stuff that is like, you know, it's the old adage, right? It's so much easier to destroy than to create. And I think that supplies at the psychological level where it's so much easier to get hungry and yell at somebody on Facebook or either than just really sit down and create something beautiful.

I just deleted an angry tweet. I mean, I tried not to send it and I looked at it, but don't send that. That's just more shitty energy in the world. Why are you going to do that? And then I'm like, I'm going to do it. Do it. Fire the fucking missile in vain, France. Yes.

We've got it, you know, because it's like it's just easier to do that than to like you don't see any megaphone people going around being like, patience. We should all be more patient. Yeah, I should really put like, based on your insight, we should all put like little little picture next to the computer so that as you're about to hit that tweet, you're like, that's the Hitler energy. That's the Hitler tweets. Don't do it.

Of course, that may be slightly embarrassing when people can visit you when you have like little little pictures next to your computer. Maybe slightly misunderstood. You try to explain. No, it's because I don't want to tweet. Hey, thank you, Danielli. As always, a joy to talk with you folks. Don't tweet like Hitler.

Yes. I'm sorry if I've tweeted angry shit. Don't tweet like Hitler. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time, man. A perfect place to end. Tell people about your podcast though, before we go. Yes.

So I host a couple of podcasts. There's Drunken Towers. That's a chatty, philosophical, somewhat kind of podcast. It's free everywhere. And then there's History on Fire. There's a bunch of free episodes of History on Fire. There's about 50 of them. So there's a long way in the archives to go.

And then the newer ones are behind the paywall, but it's like three maximums or something. But even if you don't get to that, there's a long list of free episodes to go through beforehand. So that's the gig. Thank you, sir. Check them out, folks. You already know them though. God bless you. And hopefully I'll see you in person eventually.

But I think it's going to be a little while. But thank you very much. Howdy, Krista. Thanks for being on the show. A big thank you to Danielli Volelli for appearing yet again on the DTFH. And much thanks to Chromadex Nyogen, Squarespace, and Purple for sponsoring this episode. If any of those products struck your fancy, the links in the offer codes are all at dunkintrussell.com. Thank you all so much for listening.

And I will see you next week. Until then, have a wonderful weekend and enjoy the Whispers of Spring. With one of the best savings rates in America, banking with Capital One is the easiest decision in the history of decisions. Even easier than choosing slash to be in your band. Next up for lead guitar. You're in. Cool.

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