Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 516: Conner Habib

Episode Date: July 8, 2022

Conner Habib, author, philosopher, adult film star, and friend, re-joins the DTFH! Check out Conner's really scary new book, Hawk Mountain, available everywhere you get your books! You can learn more about Hawk Mountain and see Conner's upcoming tour dates on ConnerHabib.com. You can also follow Conner on twitter, @ConnerHabib. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site. ExpressVPN - Visit expressVPN.com/duncan and get an extra 3 months FREE when you buy a 1 year package. Lumi Labs - Visit MicroDose.com and use code DUNCAN at checkout for 30% Off and FREE Shipping on your first order!

Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. Greetings to you, my darling children of the Southern Moon and Northern Moon and Western Moon and Eastern Moon and all those in between. It is I. D. Trussell.

This is the D. Trussell family. Our podcast coming to you from God's country, Austin, Texas. And I must say, it's incredible here. It reminds me the 80s, the time before the dark tentacles of the God of safety had wrapped their weaving six slimy tendrils around the planet and started to slowly squeeze the fun out of everything. Even the most wretched Lovecraftian Hell God has nothing on

the darkness of the God of safety. At least when you read the wrong words from the Necronomicon and the thing jumps out of a portal and rips you to bits, you know you're being ripped to bits. You might even have a few moments to think to yourself, holy shit, I'm being ripped apart by a demon. But the God of safety wants to keep you alive. And yeah, that might sound great, except the God of safety

doesn't want to keep you alive and happy. The God of safety doesn't want to keep you alive and excited. The God of safety doesn't want to keep you alive and inspired by your ability to survive on your own. The God of safety wants to keep you alive, bored and mildly scared of everything. The weird paranoid fog that can fall over a place where there's too many rules has not come to Austin.

Also, it's taught me something that I definitely needed to learn, which is the whole idea, the spiritual idea that your outsides are actually a glimpse of your insides. What you're seeing around you is just your own projection, meaning that if you're in a place you don't like, you don't like yourself, man. Learn to love yourself and you'll love wherever you may be. Now, we have a wonderful podcast for you today.

Connor Habib, author, philosopher, adult film star. And most importantly, my friend is here with us today. We're going to jump right into it. But first this, this episode of the DTFH has been supported by my friends over at Squarespace. I love Squarespace. It's the all-in-one platform for building your brand, growing your business online.

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all you have to do is head to Squarespace.com forward slash Duncan for 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. Thanks Squarespace. And we are back. Okay, you know what? I probably say this about a lot of podcasts,

but man, I mean it with this one. This one, I've been thinking about ever since we recorded it. Ooh, before I forget, if you're listening to this on the week of July 7th, I'm going to be at the Denver Comedy Works. It's coming right up and tickets are moving super fast. So you definitely should get your tickets in advance. I love the Denver Comedy Works.

It's one of the best clubs in the country. And I'm going to be there July 14th, 15th and 16th. Denver Comedy Works downtown. All the tickets are at DuncanTrussell.com. Come see me, please. Connor's written a really, really scary book. It's called Hawk Mountain. Please buy it.

Just trust me, it's so good and so creepy and he's such a good author. You can find it anywhere, Amazon, wherever the links are going to be at DuncanTrussell.com. Connor is on tour right now. You can find all his dates by going to his Twitter at Connor Abib. Those links will be at DuncanTrussell.com as well. And now, everybody, please welcome back to the DTFH.

My friend, now a critically acclaimed author, Connor Abib. Come on. Connor, welcome back. It's so nice to see you, man. How you doing? Are you in Ireland still? I'm still in Ireland. Yes, I am in Dublin.

I'm sorry I keep asking you. By now, it's your home. And I keep asking you. It's getting rude now, isn't it? It's like when you become a vegetarian and people keep asking you if you're still a vegetarian. Are you still a vegetarian? You still don't eat chicken, right?

So you love it there? I love it. I mean, this country is just really special and bizarre. And people treat each other much differently here. And I really love it. And it also has given me a complete weird perspective on the US and the rest of the world for sure. It's made you appreciate and love the United States,

realize how kind we are to each other here because people in Ireland are mean to each other. But here in the United States, we're so sweet. Well, it depends on where you land in the United States, doesn't it? You know, like some places are like filled with festering, angry, cunts in other places or, you know, people are sweet. It just depends on where you're at.

Yeah. I mean, I think it's also just made me realize how intensely felt like every small moment in the US is for people. I mean, it's just that I think it's been like mind blowing. It's like, I mean, of course, there have been big moments as well, but like everything feels so, seems to feel so immediate for everybody there, so urgent, so close to home.

And I think part of that too is just like, like when you're in the US, you're, that's it. You know, you go on vacation to other places in the US. It's not like you're here and you go to Portugal, you know, on like a couple hour flight for vacation or whatever. You're in a completely different country, different language, different set of problems, different, like said, you know, different art, all that kind of stuff.

So I think even though culturally from place to place in the US, it's very different. It just still feels like sort of everything feels claustrophobically urgent, which is so strange because I'm on tiny island and things feel so much less urgent here than in that massive, gigantic country, you know, looking from the outside. Why, why, what's the difference? What do you think is going on over there in Ireland

compared to here that would make people less urgent? I mean, for example, like I would say looking at, I mean, you and I talked a few times through like lockdowns and stuff like that, but I would say like, even though the regulations here were extremely like strict and some of the most harsh whatever you want to say regulations in the world for the longest period of time, I still was like, thank God, I'm here because I couldn't have taken the cultural

conversation about it in the US where everybody's each and everyone's personal actions seem to be, you know, elevated to the level of, you know, the fate of the world depended on it, you know, and I think, and so people are just nice to each other here, even if you even if you really weren't on the same, you know, wavelength as your neighbor, they were still your neighbor. And I think like that, you know, some of that is probably

born from the fact that, you know, the US's actions do hold such sway in the world, but that's like filtered down into people, you know, making dinner choices and, you know, what they do when they go out and like this the fate of the world might hang on this one, you know, that kind of thing. Oh my God, that is so interesting. I've never thought of that angle and it's true. It's like, as above so below, the conditioning is such that

everyone feels like any decision they make, they're launching a thermonuclear strike or it's like, it's like, calm down. Relax. We're just trying to figure out where to put the couch, you know, like it's okay. No, the, the. Yeah. It's a, and also especially, you know, especially with COVID,

you know, if you were, regardless of what side you represented, whether you were like hyper COVID safe or whether you were like middle finger to Fauci, depending on what tribe you stumble upon, they will look at you as though the entire fulcrum of the world was located in you and your decisions to not wear the mask or to wear the mask and because of you, this is why we have the problem. You know, you weren't just an individual.

You represent all the assholes that ever lived through all the pandemics. So everyone was scapegoated and scapegoating and that's what we do as a hobby. We scapegoated. I mean, yeah, I mean, like in one way it's really beautiful in a sense because that is true actually, like the entire world does depend on you.

I mean, you are like a fucking pulsating cosmos where everything happens within which everything happens and nothing escapes, right? But then like, so, I mean, on the one hand, like that's absolutely true, but on the other hand, the wrong approach to that is to it's because of materialism is because, you know, you're materializing the spiritual truth and like thinking that it depends on, you know, whether or not you washed your banana

before you ate it or whatever the fuck. So like, I think, you know, that's the that's the spiritual truth is lost in like a sort of cacophony of material, you know, minutiae. Not to divert, but do you wash your bananas? Is am I supposed to be washing my fucking bananas? Because I've never washed a banana. No, I never washed a banana.

I peel them. Thank God. I was about to be like, well, now I understand why I don't feel good sometimes. Okay, good. Okay, great. I'm glad. And that's okay.

Yeah, you didn't wash your fucking bananas. You pig. Okay. So the the I'm sure there's someone who washes their bananas. I'm sure there's someone listening who's like, you don't wash bananas. I wash well, there were people washing their like fruit and groceries during the whole pandemic for sure.

Like that was all I did that. Okay. When I when I was in my freak out phase, man, I was like out. I was like full on alcohol, swabbing everything. Oh, God knows what damage I did to myself just with a disinfectants. God knows my sperm count is probably in the negative at

this point from that shit. But okay, so if you get back to what we were talking about earlier, it's like, you know, the like some part of us infinite, eternal, everything is, but if you try to like push that into the world, the impermanent temporary material world, then it's it can only come across as what you're talking about this kind of urgent, I don't know, manic sort of seriousness or something.

Is that what you're saying? Yeah, well, I mean, I think most of our problems today, like probably all of them, maybe they come from a sort of mistranslation or misunderstanding of the spiritual realm and trying to, yeah, externalize it, pull it into the sort of heaviness of, you know, the material world. And when you do that, it's just like a fun house mirror, like it distorts and fucks up everything.

But you can nevertheless see what the spiritual truth is by looking at the material distortion. If you have the right sort of mirror to reflect back on it, you know, and that's why, you know, people who have a spiritual worldview or spiritual practice and I know you do this sometimes too, is like, you can just look at the horrible thing that's happening in the world. And instead of thinking into this horrible, you can ask

the question like, what is trying to work itself out here? What's being sought? What exactly are we looking for? How is this for us, you know, to learn the true version of it? And so I think then it makes you, you know, that things feel less urgent.

They feel more like, okay, we're working this one out. We're sorting, we're sorting through. Yeah. So like right now, the newest thing, the newest horrible thing, Roe V. Wade overturned by the Supreme Court. God knows there's like a, like a massive urgent, like people are losing their shit, panicking, freaking out, threatened, you know, people are getting like very, like

probably will, they're probably, there will be violence, I'm sure. So there already has been, yeah. There already has been. So from like, how does what you're saying apply to Roe V. Wade? Like what, getting overturned? What, what distortion?

What is getting represented? What is the thing that we're supposed to take from it? What transcendent message is coming from this thing getting overturned? Yeah. I mean, you know, this is a particularly sort of fraught one to discuss. I mean, one, because it's in the moment to because, you

know, in a lot of ways, this wouldn't urgently affect me as a gay man. Anyway, of course, in all the connections in the LGBT community and all that sort of stuff, of course, it does intersect with my life, but it's not going to present itself as an urgent in my face concern like it will for, for women and, you know, non-binary people have babies. But I think it's like, you have, you basically have a sort

of loss of understanding of the connection of the spirit and the body. So you have people who are, I mean, just to sort of take one side of it, you have people who are claiming to be Christian who have no idea what the spiritual connection between, you know, developing organism fetus incarnation coming through the levels of cosmos into being is and so then they just sort of stupidly vehemently say things like

you're murdering a baby. But of course, like, they don't feel that way when it comes to, I mean, the sort of quip is like, oh, you're not pro-life, you know, you don't care about life and all these other forms and that's true. Like, and it's because they, they have this complete misapprehension of what's happening, you know, and so I think one of the, I think a really sort of gentle way to bring this to light is

like, you know, there's a woman here, Lorna Byrne, she's, she lives in Ireland and she wrote a bunch of books about angels. Now, whatever we want to say about Lorna Byrne and do we believe that she sees angels, talks to angels, all that kind of stuff, that's up to, that's up to everyone. But one of the things she says and just imagine how intense this is in Ireland with the Catholic Church having so much power, she said, listen, the angels told me about abortion.

They told me what it is. Like the, the, the children that were meant to incarnate within a vessel have decided to not go through the process of incarnation in cooperation with the mother and they're actually thankful for that process. And so then they get to actually incarnate in the step that they want to. So they told me that a lot of times those beings are actually

thankful to the mother, right? Now, I'm not saying people have to believe in that, but I'm just expressing a different spiritual standpoint and a spiritual standpoint that doesn't immediately align itself with a kind of unthinking actually quite a spiritual or anti-spiritual version of Christianity that exists in the US that refuses to take the reality of the spiritual world seriously.

Well, sometimes it feels like the pro lifers have this idea of like when a woman gets an abortion, it's like going bowling or you know what I mean? Going to Vegas. You know what I mean? Like they have this idea that they're like skipping in there. Like it's the best day ever. Not understanding how, how, how the experience is, it's not

like they're in there like, oh, let's go. What do you say? We go get abortions. Then we'll have some margaritas or something. It's, you know what I mean? So it feels like they think that it's a little, people are taking it more lightly than they are. But then, so I like what you're saying.

And this is this very compassionate to the, to the mother so that the mother isn't burnt because some people who get abortions or they may never admit it, but they are burdened with guilt for their whole lives. They feel terrible. I think God, what's, who wrote that incredible poem about it? There's like a feminist. I think it was a Joan Didion wrote this.

You see how I find it. Let me see. I think life starts it when you come. Let me find this. John, hold on. Hold on. That would be amazing. Wouldn't it?

Hold on. I've got my damn speech thing on. Let me see. I'm fine. Is it June, June Jordan? Maybe I don't. Let's see. Maybe.

I'm going to look it up. Uh, I can't, I read this. It was just this beautiful poem about someone driving home after getting an abortion and like, I don't know. They just encapsulated the entirety of the thing, the necessity of it and the horror of it. The, you know what I mean? The like, the, the, the, the, the tragedy of it and like,

but this was, I couldn't have been a ma. I couldn't like what there is no way I would have, you know what I mean? Like that there's no way it could have worked and there's all these medical issues. Look, I'm not going to get in a, I don't want to, two dudes yapping about fucking abortion. No one wants to hear that right now, but I like what you

said because I think people deserve compassion. If they find themselves in that situation and there's something incredibly terrifying now. If you find yourself in that situation and you have to like fly somewhere, you know what I mean? They're making it a lot. Well, you could always fly to another state. Oh, that's going to be fun.

Fly to my abortion. Great. That's going to be great. Yeah. No, all that abortion tour, abortion tourism. I'm sure people don't really want to engage with that. Yeah. I mean, I, I think it's, I think it's pretty presumptuous that

that will just go smoothly for people, for women, you know, I think it's absolutely preposterous to just sort of rely on that and already, you know, today US pharmacies were saying, oh, well, we'll only give out certain amounts of, you know, of, you know, abortions, so-called abortion pills, you know, and that sort of thing to, to people. It's like three per customer or whatever because they're such a high demand.

I mean, you can already see the strain and then also just think about the people who worked in clinics and, you know, did sexual health awareness and everything in these states like, well, so what? Like their lives are completely destroyed as well. Yeah. So it's not just as simple as that. And I mean, I think it's, it's really something to admit with

those kinds of responses that we accept a certain kind of intra, like our, like intra US nationalisms that we already accept these absolute divisions between who gets what kinds of things, whether they want it or not, and that you have to essentially flee the country to another country within the same country to go and get, you know, certain things provided for. Oh, right.

Like, like, it's what this is doing is it's just starkly amplifying the division. It is now it's like, let's just put neon around how the, the, the cracking, fragmenting landscape of America with this law. Now it's just like, look at how we are truly splitting apart. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's, it's weird, you know, you and I

scheduled this episode to record a while ago. We didn't know this was going to happen. And of course, it's on the forefront of our minds. And then like, also, kind of the last people that should be talking about it. Right. Sorry, everybody. Obviously, we don't know.

It was podcasting. This is like, you're allowed, but you're allowed to talk about it. I mean, it's like, you are everyone. By the way, and let me also, I'm sorry to cut you off the way it does affect you. The way it does affect gay people is they're coming for gay marriage next.

That's next. Hold on one second. I'll be right back. This episode of the DTFH has been brought to you by Express VPN. Have you ever had that thing happen where you get your bag at the airport and the TSA is left like a note in there that they inspected your bag and you're looking at the contents of

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You can get an extra three months free. Express VPN dot com slash Duncan. Yeah, gay marriage is next. Yeah, that's on the bill. What's his face already said? Let's talk about it. States rights, states rights. And then, you know, and then the state's rights thing is weird

because though I do love it, on one level, I love all the stuff about let's restrict the power of the federal government. The more the better, if it's a democracy, let the states decide how they want to run the, quote, experiment of each particular state. But holy shit, man, like, you know, some, then if the population of a certain state, if the majority are voting Muslims, let's say, what do we do then?

What if the majority of people in a state are voting? Like, what do they call them fundamentalist Muslims and they want to start Sharia law? Or what do we, you know what I mean? How does it work then when it's not Christians who are voting, when it's not the fundamentalist Christians who are trying to vote Christian ethics into the legal system? This is why you need the federal government to have these like

things that aren't voted on by the states because otherwise you're going to end up with a freaking theocratic state. You're going to end up with a theocratic government in a state and that there's, that's not good news. Depending on what religion you are. I mean, just to say like the theocratic states already exist without a lot of people voting for them, right? So like, so we already have states that are run

by these religious fundamentalist assholes, none of whom are Muslim in the U.S., right? I know you were just making an example, but I think it's funny because it's like that, of course, like these, you know, Christian fundamentalists are always, you know, on everybody's shit for like, don't let Muslims don't let the Sharia law. That's why I, no, but that's why I said it. Yeah, that's why that's why I'm going, that's why I'm going

there with you because it's like to freak them out. It's like, hey, look, you might be going your way right now, but what 10 years, 20 years down the fucking line, what are you going to do? What are you doing when the Satanists are the majority? Right, right. And then, but then also it's like a concentration of oppressive power into the hands of this, you know, a state rather than

the federal government is not somehow, you know, like deluding power, you know, from the state is just actually, it can actually be worse for people, you know, in a lot of ways because of how that filters down. And like, we don't, I mean, the thing is, it's this whole idea that somehow these kinds of choices, which are deeply individual can be solved politically is always sort of, it always turns into this mess.

I understand that they all have political dimensions, but it's the same thing with gay marriage, like I, you know, the way gay marriage takes place in the US to me is pretty shit, honestly. Really? Oh, yeah. I don't, I mean, I was never for gay marriage in the US in the sense that it was just, it's an exclusionary project

that's like, well, the state says that this kind of relationship receives these kinds of benefits, which is the relationship of marriage, whereas, you know, like lots of people have different kinds of relationships. And so the state is just sort of like, here you go. Great. Now you can have straight rights for gay people, right, but actually gay relationships and gay forms of belonging and

all this kind of stuff. It's just very different than straight people in a lot of ways until there's sort of like coercive political pressure onto the cultural realm happens. In Ireland, it takes place very, very differently, which I think is really powerful. In Ireland, and that's why it's still an issue in the US. In Ireland, people went door to door, knocked on, because it

was a vote. They knocked on their neighbor's doors and they're like, this is what I desire. These are the kinds of people I love. Meet me. Right? That conversation is completely radical because it's not a political conversation solved by courts in the US.

It's actually a neighbor cultural conversation that then ends up organically making a political decision. And so it becomes so much more solid. It becomes so much more radical and profound and the kinds of attitudes. I'm not saying that there's no violence or homophobia in Ireland. Of course there is.

The kinds of solidity and bonds that it forms are really profound, whereas in the US when you have courts solving or applying pressure on cultural issues, it always ends up being a disaster because the political realm really shouldn't be trying to dominate the cultural realm. And I think that that's what people are trying to get to when they're like, oh, the federal government doesn't have any power anymore.

Great. It's the states. But of course the states exert just as much political power over our culture as states. So that also is like a huge problem. And I do think that the cultural, sorry, I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but the political realm is two or more people trying to sort out how they relate to each other.

The economic realm is everybody. It's all the resources, all the breaks and flows of how money works, all that kind of stuff. But the cultural realm, which includes relationship to your own body, to your health, to all that kind of stuff, that's individual. That's one. And so when you sort of go up the level and try to make

cultural decisions through political or economic wrangling, it often has disastrous effects. We should really honor that this is individual and this is up to each and every person who's capable of giving birth to make these kinds of decisions. Yeah. You know, and that's, I mean, I understand why that you can sort of get then a glimpse of pro-life people being like,

no, actually this is two people and one person's making a decision for two people, but they're wrong. They're not correct. They're just not correct about that because they have a misapprehension about, again, incarnation and all that sort of stuff. Oh, and also the critique of many pro-life people is you're not pro-life, you're pro-birth.

Big difference. If, you know, you can't, if you're going to, if you're going to make somebody give birth to their, their rapists child and then raise that child and theoretically what share custody with the rapist or how does that work? Does the rapist have to pay child support? Are you eternally connected to your rapist legally where you have to get money from them?

When you're doing that, you know, at that point, you're really like, you're not really pro-life. You're, you're, you're, this kid is going to be born into a God knows what kind of life that, you know, so to me, those, those, those like glaring arguments, they make the extreme arguments that make, make a lot of sense to me. But again, man, I am, I don't, I don't, I don't know. Like the partial birth abortions, the late term, those

things, man, they, those, that seems pretty fucked up to me. Like that stuff is like, I don't get that. I can't wrap my head around it. So look, and let me truly, you all have to wrap your head around really is do you want to create a law that tells women that they have to not do that? Like that's its own, that's the question, right? And not for me is the answer is always no, I don't want to,

I don't want to empower any government to tell somebody that they can't do that, you know, because one, because who the fuck am I at the end of the last person that that will ever affect, but two, like, that's what like, you know, as a sort of cultural understanding, and as a, you know, even as a political understanding amongst women, they're saying, no, like we want to be able to make that determination for ourselves. So that's where the, that's where the freedom should lie.

I think I don't think men should be allowed to come. Like, I think they should be, I think we should make only certain days where men can come in another day, other days. It's like, no, but, you know, it is interesting thinking about all the other body, body things that, you know, laws that we could create in every single one. It's like, what? That's fucked up.

I mean, it would be sexy. It's kind of fucking hot. It's like you're forbidden to come except on certain days and you're like, oh, it's coming. My comment is not part of the problem. It's part of the solution. So I just want to say. Hey, I want to bring it back to something you said earlier

real quick. If you don't mind. I never considered what you just said about gay marriage being. It's like, it's like, uh, if you, it's marriages, a man and a woman and, uh, or two people in this case. So like, oh, so like the fundamentals of like marriages, man and woman, that's it. But gay marriage is no, it's two people.

It's two people who can be the same gender, but, but what about all the other intimate ways people get together? Like all the other essentially you are still saying this is natural, but you know, throuples or all the other like even like deep platonic friendships. What about that? Why, why, why isn't that? Why can't deep platonic friends like cohabitate and get the

same protections or get to adopt kids? It is interesting, but I never thought of that. How weirdly limiting and yet celebrated by people like me. I'm always just like, but it's gay marriage. It's great. But yeah, I never thought it's like, oh, weirdly restrictive. Yeah. And I mean, I think it's, you know, you can see that it's, uh,

the political realm and the economic realm sort of working in tandem to achieve their aims by coercing culture. In a certain way. It's like what, like, like the economy functions through monogamy essentially in the US and it functions through marriage in a lot of ways, like the ways that taxes funnel in the ways that like how people have certain kinds of personalities and therefore can be in politics, have certain kinds of

relationships and therefore can be in politics. The way insurance works, all those kinds of things are founded on a certain economic version of love relationships, which is fucking insane. And so you don't, so you have these two things and then, and then they start coercing like people into thinking, oh, well, look, wouldn't it be radical and amazing if gay people could enter into the way the economy works and the way that

capitalism works and the way that this political realm works and then people buy it and then it starts eroding what happens for gay people. It starts eroding the history. It starts eroding. And so I think it's like there's just so and that affects obviously that affects straight people as well and asexual people and anybody, whatever way you want to identify.

And so because of that, you know, you have this sort of monolithic thing. Now, I don't necessarily have a problem with people wanting to be monogamous or married or whatever, but the way the state determines who gets what kind of economic benefit and political benefit is based on a certain kind of relationship. And that is insane. I mean, that's that's fucked.

I don't exactly know how to like, I haven't really sat down and solve the problem, but like, you know, gay marriage is like, it's a great hustle, you know, for like staying, you know, for like being able to see someone in the hospitals for being able to inherit things to be able to, you know, have certain kinds of kids, you know, like certain like have adoption and all that kind of stuff to, you know, get tax breaks, all that. But like, that's pretty much in the U.S.

At least that's what it is. I'm not saying people don't love each other because they're married. Of course, people actually love each other in these forms of relationship as well. So I'm not denying that, but like, can we think bigger than that, you know? No, no, what you're saying is so fascinating is that like the

if, you know, what do they call it, heterodoxy? If like, if a male female marriage and its duplicate is like a binary two people marrying, if it has its roots in any kind of religious ethical system, which is obviously it does, it's like the marriage is like wrapped up and especially marriage between men and women and it's wrapped up in all the world religions. Then what you're saying is the separation of church and state

isn't really has, that's not happening because church and state have been fused together in the most insane way through taxes and economy. So it's like deep in the code. It's hard baked into the code. Whoa, that is so trippy, man. That is so trippy. I mean, so imagine now like that was, you know, when like

property in California and like all the stuff with gay marriage is like whipping up into a frenzy and I was like trying to convince people that this was bad, you know, like in the gay community, I'm like, no guys like we don't want to do this. And there were obviously there are a lot of other sort of radical thinkers who were doing similar things, but it was like, I mean, you were just hated because like you were

somehow fucking with the tactic there, but like the truth is like we've gotten a bad result from using those tactics and we should have included that in the conversation the whole time, which could have been like, listen, yes, this is a great stopgap. It's the same thing I feel about UBI to some extent universal basic income. It's like, it's a great stopgap.

But as soon as we get it, we have to fight against it like as soon as we get it, we have to be like, okay, that's done now next thing. But like we always tend to sort of go through this, you know, process of getting some sort of political gain and then we rest there and we think that the thing is done, but actually we need to treat these things as one stage in developments. Otherwise, they just become completely, you know, retro, you

know, retrograde, whatever retrograde baby retrograde wow deep man deep controversy. I mean, surely. Yeah. It's like, so it's like you're not saying like gay marriage is obviously for dealing if we're in a society where people who are like completely in love and it can't like go to see each other in the fucking hospital, then gay marriage is obviously

a step forward, even if they're not in love, whatever the fucking thing they're in, but it shouldn't be the final step. Like we have to keep reconsidering. What is this thing? We're calling marriage and what is the relationship between married people in the state and why is there still restrictions for other? I get it.

It's brilliant. It's brilliant. I'm voting for you. I love it. I don't know where you're running from. Yeah. And like I like what you said before about like, oh, you know, the church part isn't gone.

Like it is gone. Like I like what you said because it just it was showing me like, well, actually, again, this is one of those cases where the spiritual value of marriage is actually completely lost because like Mammon, you know, like has fucking come to be the stand-in for whatever alchemical spiritual truth happens when two people have ceremony to merge their, you know, spiritual field and now it's like, you know, it used to

be like tie the fucking tie the ribbon around each other's arms and profess your love and like have someone play in a flute and like then your spirits will merge and you'll continue to have karma into the next life and interact with each other and the life between this one and that one. And now it's like put the ring on and get some money off when you buy a house, you know, it's like, yeah, yeah. No, before when we got married, we were in Hawaii.

We had to get like, uh, we had to do all this weird certification before Ram Daska Marry. So we had to go to this shitty fucking dead, like, you know, Hawaii is beautiful, but somehow the place where you go to get married certification is just like they found the one part of Hawaii that's like a strip mall that's like you go down some dark hallway and then like as the lady's giving us the certificate, she just burnt like a lava.

Here you go. It was just like, ah, the least like if the opposite of romantic. Yeah. And it's the same when people are, you know, when people are dying and suddenly you're not just being with them as they die. You're like, all right, do I have the password to your bank accounts? We got to turn your internet off.

Like, you know, that so I, yeah, that's called Mammon. That's Mammon. Well, Mammon's Mammon's like that God of like, you know, bad finance, essentially like Mammon's the, the, the being that sort of eclipses, uh, you've seen the spiritual value and replaces it with quantitative financial monetary value. That's Mammon. I thought that was the Demiurge.

Well, I mean, just look up Mammon. You know, you'll, you'll find doing it right now. Hold on. You are giving me an intense education today. Hold on. Holy shit. Mammon in the New Testament of the Bible is commonly thought to mean money, material wealth, or any entity that promises wealth.

Oh my God. Oh my God. There's a name for it. I thought it was the Demiurge. I've been wrong all this time. There's a picture of Mammon here. He's like a terrible looking, like evil looking leprechaun. He's one of the seven princes of hell, I think.

Yeah. So. Oh my God. Mammon. That's the God of the West. Yeah. There's a, there's a book about capitalism as a capitalism as like a black magic theology or whatever.

I just called the enchantments of Mammon. Mammon. Money. Mammon. It's almost like. Yeah. Wow. Okay.

Wait, hold out real quick. During the middle ages, Mammon was commonly personified as the demon of wealth and greed. Thus, Peter Lombard says riches are called by the name of a devil, namely Mammon. For Mammon is the name of the devil by which name riches are called. According to the Syrian tongue. Piers Plowman also regards Mammon as a deity. Nicholas Delira, commenting on the passage in Luke says, Mammon estenomen de monis. Mammon is the name of the, of a demon.

Whoa. Mammon. Whoa. So then now that you've said it, you know, we've said his name so many times people will listen to the show and be like, I'm going to pray to that being so I can get some money. They're like, don't do that because all that's all that will happen is you'll get paid for the obliteration of your soul. That's it.

So don't do that. You know what? I don't even think you'll get fucking paid. I think you'll just have to fill out a bunch of stupid forms. I think. Yeah, you're getting paid. It'll get like an NFT. Yeah.

Yeah, just you're, but you're going to have to go to Bank of America for some reason. You're going to get an email and go to Bank of America and fill out a bunch of forms and so you can access your account. You know, like, because that, you know, that, that's so fascinating. When we were making the Midnight Gospel, it was like, you know, the insane amount of like paperwork and forms and licensure that has to happen for any music you wanted to use or anything like that. The, there was a, for sure, a terrible barrier of forms and money that gluck just

completely clogged up the creative process that just glomped it up and glued it up and slowed it down and sometimes made it really stressful. That's Mammon. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, some of it is, you know, like the opportunity to overcome Mammon in your own life. I mean, you, you know, well, I'm sure that like until you can actually contend with

that stuff in some sort of reasonable way, you can actually be successful, which is such a horrible thought. Like, I mean, there are some people who have had just sort of been rescued from a kind of, you know, absolute poverty just based on their skill alone. That is very rare. And even then those people have a whole team of people who are managing Mammon. Right. So like one of the aspects of actually being successful is developing the

inner capacity to overcome this demon and redeem him because he wants to be, he wants to be redeemed, but he's so huge is that it takes a lot of people, you know, to do it. So like no single person can probably do it. Yeah. Connor, you're so brilliant, man. I like this is, I think it's just having that word now and like, yeah, you're right.

You, you know, one of the trappings is if you're lucky, you, it's like you hire people to pray to Mammon for you. So you don't have to do the forms. Right. Right. And it's so interesting that like the, like the people who can do the forms and all that kind of stuff, they do it. I mean, they have stress in their lives, but like, you know, that feeling of like

you get the bill and you don't want to open the fucking envelope, you know, it's a bill, right? And that so just sits forever and then you get another one and then you get another one. And so your debt just keeps increasing. But the people that do those jobs, which we think are boring. If we're not in that job, like they actually have this profound skill for just encountering a demon with no fear.

And they're like, no, look, actually know how to get rid of you just by filling out this little game, uh, spreadsheet. Goodbye. You know, and then I'm going to do it again. And like that skill is really profound and it seems a spiritual to us. But in fact, it's a deeply spiritual act. Wow. Bravery even so brave.

They're dragon slayers. They're slash exorcists slash. And you know, those people are always really good at calming you down because they're used to people being so like shivering and fear of Mammon scratching at the door. Don't worry. I can slay this beast. I've slain it many times before.

Oh, cool. So how, what would a redeemed Mammon look like? Yeah. I mean, I think, I think we're actually getting there, aren't we? Like we're getting to a place where our relationship to money is changing and economy is changing. So that is, uh, making us confront this being and other sort of related beings and to move on from the kinds of sway that they had over us.

So whenever people talk about capitalism, um, as sort of a bad thing or whatever, what they really mean is if you like, so can I, can I lead up to this? It's going to be a little like weird. If I just, yeah, can I just like lead up? Wait, hold on. Before you lead up, I'm so sorry. I got to, I got to be.

Yeah. Me too. Do you mind? Mary? Oh, no, I'll be right back. All right, cool. All right. Great.

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But again, that's microdose.com code Duncan. Go. Let's go. Let's hear what you were saying. Let's hear the leader capitalism. Yeah. So I think, you know, we are in the, in the stages of overcoming them and at least in a certain way. So like when we talk about when capitalism appears, a lot of people

have commented on how capitalism has sort of arisen around the time when witches were being persecuted, right? When, when witchcraft was going away. And I find this like really interesting because when people don't. So, so the, one of the people who talks about this is this writer, Sylvia Federici, I don't particularly like her. I think she gets a lot of things wrong, but I do think it, you know, she's popularized at least this observation that capitalism and

witchcraft were in total like antagonism to each other. And so I was really thinking about why that was and her answer is that witchcraft is somehow nonproductive. It can't enter into the capitalist economy and in a certain way. I think maybe a better way to think about this is to think about what our experience of money under capitalism is and money under capitalism and economy under capitalism is a constant sense of temporal anxiety and it's a limited form of anxiety.

What's coming next? What's coming next? What's coming next? Like how much do I owe? When's the next bill coming? When am I going to run out? All that kind of stuff. And, you know, this, there's another writer who I do quite like

and he's been on my show a few times, Todd McGowan. He wrote a book called capitalism and desire and he basically said, look, any idea of progress or getting the thing you want, which is how most humans experience desire is actually completely wed to capitalism. And that's why capitalism is so intense and so hard for us to get out of because it mirrors the way we desire things. Now, he bases all this on psychoanalysis and I think he makes

some fundamentalists in some way statements about it that I don't totally agree with. But I like this again, sort of reinforcing this idea that we have a time sense around money. And I do think that our time sense is changing and because our sense of time is beginning to change that our relationship to money and economy and capitalism is about to be eroded and changed.

So it's always just sort of going back to the phenomenon, the experience, like what is actually happening to me when I spend money, when I have credit, when I have a bill, when I have the envelope come in the mail, even when I save money, you know? And so there are lots of ways out of this predicament. Wait, before you go with the ways out of the predicament, can you go into a little bit of detail of what do you mean time is changing?

What do you mean time is changing? I mean, look, we know space is changing. Like we can say that because you and I are doing this right now, right? So like the sense of space is completely different. Also, I mean, I think pandemic space was very weird. Like you were confined to a room constantly attenuated to the fate of the entire world.

So it was like you're thinking about everybody while you could see no one every single day. You know, I mean, that's pretty profound. Yeah. And obviously time, you know, people talked about like COVID time and all that kind of stuff. So we've been dealt a kind of inner blow collectively to how we used to see time in space.

But that's been going on for a long time. I mean, when people went to the moon and saw the entire planet, right, if you believe if you believe they went to the moon when they saw the whole planet, you know, I mean, that's, you know, that's something I like to say jokingly. I can't remember if I said this on the show before, like, you know, one of the astronauts put his thumb up and like occluded the entire planet with his thumb and he's like, everything

I know is behind my thumb. And now think about people using their cell phones. I mean, everything they do is like right underneath their thumb. It was like a pre-echo of what we do with our fucking phones. Right? So if space changes, then time definitely changes because time is just made up of space.

So like time is all the space put together. So if you have time, if you have the new relationship to space, you have the new relationship to time. And I think what's happening there is a kind of, um, is a sort of long view of how time works, of how things process and happen. Like, look, if, if you understand reincarnation is real, which I experienced that as true, and I think you do as well, time becomes a completely different issue, doesn't it?

I mean, so as that idea of reincarnation enters, we have something as the popular, the repopulization of astrology enters into the cultural sphere. We have something different as the unpredictability of money and markets like starts happening. We have something completely different. So I think a lot of those things are changing. I'm sure people could just add a huge long list right there.

And I think that we're beginning to understand that things are not sort of like, uh, cumulative in the way that we thought they were that progress. Shit, man, good Lord. So like the economy is interwoven into the time space continuum. And so, and you know, again, this is like, it's not just you go to the moon, you look at earth, you're like, holy shit, you do the sake and pale blue dot thing.

It's time is moving differently. The further you get out of the gravity well of earth, the movement of time changes. So if, if money, if capitalism is woven into that experience of I desire a thing, when will I get it? Or Oh God, I don't know how long I'm going to hold on to this thing before it's gone. And something happened to the time, to time space.

If something started, who knows what? Should we, we, you know, obviously this is the creepiest thing about living in a universe this big. You don't know what happens. You don't know what happens every 20,000 years, 15,000 years. There could just be a time burp. You know what I mean? There could be a thing where suddenly time slows down to a

fraction of the rate or speeds up. And if we were approaching something like that, then yeah, the world economies, they would begin to reflect the shifting nature of time. That's fucking nuts, man. Like if a time machine gets invented, it's going to destroy. It will destroy the economy, right? Like if it would, it would fuck everything up.

Yeah, that's brilliant. And I think like, I mean, look, anybody, anybody who's ever been like scolded on Twitter knows that time is different, right? So you're like moment to moment to moment. Who's saying what? Who's saying what? Who's saying what?

Who's saying what? The day lasts fucking forever. You go to bed exhausted just because you've been paying attention to moments. Or if you meditate, right? Like that's the sort of other version you meditate and like, I mean, how like anybody, if you and I, we won't do this, but if you and I were just to decide on this podcast to just

sit and meditate for three minutes, three fucking minutes in silence with people listening, like they would think that it lasted fucking hundred years. They were listening to science. And, and for us, we would have so much going on or nothing depending on how you wanted to meditate. So you can instantly see that like time is like, yeah. So again, as meditation enters, as people's responses to media,

you know, everything gets sort of thrown up and shocked in a certain way. And yeah, of course, economy is made up of space and time. It's the all. So as that relationship of all of us to all of us changes, then yeah, like the economy is going to completely change. Is that like that? Is that Bitcoin?

Is that like crypto is like that? Is that I'm not getting in a crypto conversation because I don't still don't understand it now. I'm proud that I don't, but it's like, is it like. This is so interesting. We're, we're, you know, Terrence, okay. Terrence McKenna, he, he would, he said, well, technology is making it so the amount of time between what you want, what

you can imagine and it coming into the world or you achieving it is getting shorter and shorter and shorter. So capitalism is dependent on that amount of time between what you want or what you can imagine and you getting it like maintained some stable rate, you know, and also or, or, and it also depends on for some people that rate of time between what you want and what you get being infinity, right? Like not everybody can get everything because there's not

enough for everybody, you know, the whole thing falls apart. So, so like, so that amount of time between the desire and the manifestation of the desire via some currency is supposed to, it can't be the same for everyone for wealthy people. God, you're so smart, man. I'm just breaking apart what you're saying for wealthy people. Time, time is different in the sense that a wealthy person wants a thing.

There's no saving up. It's how long does it take for Amazon to get it to your house or how long does the take to get the adrenochrome helicopter to parachute it over your head? Whatever the fuck you're doing. You know what I mean? But it's like, but, but, but for, for like people in the non-privileged classes, it's like, it can take a year just to go on a vacation

or something like that. So the experience of time is different among the classes, I guess. Damn. Yeah. That's so weird. Yeah. No, it's a classic class is in a lot of ways a function of

the experience of time, right? So like turning around the other way, like rather than placing it in the material world, creating the experience, actually, the experience is creating the material, the materiality of it, right? And so like imagine what would happen to the sense of time for people who had money if, and I do think that this is a real possibility, money lost value over time and like we're therefore

incentivized to circulate it rather than gain value in a savings account, right? I love that. Yeah. So that, that would be, that would be great. I mean, I think also like if we think about when you're talking about cryptocurrency, this is another example of like the distortion of the spiritual understanding, like the spiritual

understanding really in cryptocurrency is like, oh, we all are relating to each other. I mean, that was the thing with Bitcoin was like, as far as I understand, it was like every transaction relates to every user in a very explicit way. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, you know, that starts, that obviously like that kind

of shit is crumbling and precarious because we're not able to live up to the spiritual promise of, you know, what we're, what we're really seeking. But then, you know, another thing about like, I want it, I have it. That's actually how the realm of the dead works, right? So this is another way of understanding like it when you're dead and you don't have a body when you think something, and

I put this in quotes because you don't think anything when you're dead exactly, but when the process of thinking happens immediately, you're in the results of the thinking process. When you feel something, you're immediately connected to the weather of feeling that you're within. Yeah. So that's why when we think of the dead immediately, they're present for us, right?

Like we feel their presence. If we're close to somebody that are dead, like you think that they're there because actually they've thought us and they're present with us and we think that it was us calling them in. God, what are you doing to me today? What are you doing, Carter? I'm going to stumble out of here.

I'm going to be like Rhonda off into Texas raving. That's so cool, man. You're going to do that anyway. The dead are thinking of me. Well, okay. So, okay, this is so cool, man. So what is, so in, in, from this perspective, Mammon is weirdly like a function of time, right?

Like man, like Mammon is a time God or a time, a creature of. Wow. Yeah, man. Okay. Okay. So the redemption of capitalism involves what? Uh, changing of the relationship with time. Yeah, definitely.

Because one of the main functions of capitalism is the idea which is completely false, that you can pay someone for their labor. No one should be paid for their labor and no one can be paid for their labor. You can't buy time. I mean, that's preposterous, right? So like the whole idea time is money, right?

But I mean, of course, it's like Benjamin Franklin thing. It's really quite astute when you start looking into it spiritually. Um, and he was obviously a mystic, but like when you have this idea that you can pay people for their labor, well, no, actually what if money becomes in capitalism if we redeem it? And I know like Marxist, you will not like that. I'm saying you can redeem capitalism at all. But I also think Marxism has its own sort of place in the

equation, but like when you detach payment from labor and you instead say, I give you money out of a spirit of brotherhood because I like what you do. This is why Patreon is so amazing. I'm not that this is an ad for Patreon. I mean, it would be great if they didn't take a percentage of it. But like, like models like that are amazing because people are saying, I give you, I give you money because I trust you to create

in the world. I don't give you money for your time. I don't give you money for your labor. You do the works that you do and we offer in a spirit of brotherhood. You know? Well, yeah, this is the, this is, uh, what is the story? The story in the Bible, the workers, it's one of my favorite stories. You know, the, like some workers were there in the morning.

Some workers came in the evening, but they all got paid the exact same thing. They were the people, workers who came in the evening were paid what the workers in the morning were promised and the workers in the morning were like, what the fuck? They only work for 20 minutes. But like, like, but it was like this from what, from the conversation that we're having now, I mean, that, that parable has within it

time and also an assessment of time from the transcendent perspective being really isn't about the hours that you put in. And actually that the hours are, that's just what you're saying. Well, you can't buy time. It's more about the intent, I guess, or the, uh, the, um, once you, once you're there, you're there. It doesn't matter how much time it took you to get there. I mean, this is, this also, by the way, you know, ties in a lot with the,

I don't know how to put, I mean, this, this is something I think about when it comes to impending neurological, technological, merging the ability to download the ability to the, if you, if when we are finally able to like in at two minutes, now you know how to speak another language. Now you know how to play piano. All the people who struggled for years and went to conservatory and try to learn to play piano, all that, that time, all that, whatever there, how much their ego got attached to the struggle.

It's now like, well, yeah. So you spent years to learn to play piano, but this kid, you know, that all that gets fucked up. All that gets like that, those sorts of hierarchies. Yeah. I'm sorry, but like just how pissed off people are like, you're going to dissolve student loan debt. I worked so hard to pay off my student loans.

We're going to be like, Oh my gosh, you can fucking play dance of the goblins on the violin. Like I had to learn that, you know, like over decades. I couldn't just download it, you little shit. I couldn't download dance of the goblins. Look at my gnarled hands. But you should. I mean, but it should, it should be like, it should be that whatever

version of that happens. We should be preparing people to live out their karma like as best they can to experience their own being to the heights of what they want it to be, whether it's artistic or not. You know, like being Beethoven or Einstein or these people that we hold up as the greatest of the great, that should be normal. Right. Like that should not be an extraordinary person.

That should be normal and it doesn't have to look like that. It doesn't have to look like someone, you know, composing or making movies or, you know, coming up with scientific stuff. It can look however it looks. I mean, maybe someone's just like a really, really great fucking parent or gardener or whatever it is, but that achievement should be absolutely normal. And the fact that we don't want it to be is, and I'm not seeing

there being a quality of ideas or creation. I think that lots of things would be better than others because people would still be trying out things that they're not good at. Yeah. And like, you know, doing the fucking James Franco thing where it's like, Oh, I wrote like a novel just because I felt like it and I made a movie because I felt like it. And I'm like, it's not all going to be equal, but it will be like this

kind of, you know, openness for people to really deepen the gifts of their individuation and also to encounter their karma and to overcome the challenges of their karma. Right. Yeah. You're still going to, your karma is still going to appear regardless like if you make yourself like an incredible violin player, but you're also a race car driver, but you also speak 90 languages.

But you also know how to tap dance and you also memorized the Bible downloaded in your brain along with you still, no matter what that, I think that actually is will be one of the benefits of this currently theoretical possibility is that you know what I mean? It'll show you different angles on your karma. Like, Oh, you thought you were suffering because you were lacking in this department. Well, look, now you have that lack has been fulfilled and yet the

suffering is still there. So, right, you know, from, from that perspective, it might help people get more of a handle on what's really going on with them when they're suffering and, and like vanquish the illusion of like, Oh, if I could only accomplish this or have that. Yeah. Yeah. No, right.

Yeah. Different things will end. Different things will enter then into the laws of karma, like what sort of people experience karmically want to be great. If like, we actually, you know, like my karmic debt to pay off was that I like yelled at a tree once instead of like, you know, like murdered 7000 people in my last life or something. Like, yeah, everything starts getting like better and better.

But what, what actually will happen is that like, then like our, see, we're so, we're really wed to this view that extraordinary achievement only happens with, you know, certain people and that they are, you know, so we hold on to that so tightly and what happens then as a result of that is that we're all aspiring to be that, you know, and we're not actually working on the conditions of our own karma and our own culture that could lead to us being that, you know.

Right. It's like for every idol, for every, you know, whatever, top of the top of the food chain and whatever industry thing there is, there's countless people who at least temporarily, temporarily have had their promise extinguished not because they're not working or because the way they're working is to try to become somebody else. And so that's the, isn't this why in the Bible and idolatry is so frowned upon and is, if you really want to piss off God,

what do you do? Worship a golden calf bow down to something that isn't the moment. Isn't, right, that, that pit, I mean, obviously we're talking about, I'm not saying God actually gets mad at this, but I think that's what you're talking about. Like when we have a hierarchy in this, in the world and culture, where it's completely normal to worship someone who's achieved some thing and, and, and, and, and like place them on various

pedestals and, and, and just imagine all I could never, I'll never do that. I'll never be like that. That's not possible. And you're saying, no, every single one of us, every single one of us has the capacity to be that. And I love that. So why would that's another destabilizer that fucks capitalism

up to doesn't capitalism as we understand it kind of depend on worshiping achievers. Yeah, like in the way it exists right now, it's definitely about, you know, like there's, you know, there's a meritocracy, the idea of meritocracy. There's the idea that, you know, certain people achieve because they work really hard, all that kind of stuff. But like, obviously, you know, that's, that's not so for so

many reasons. And one of them, you know, often overlooked is that people who have a lot of money are often deeply in a deep state of suffering, you know, right? Or doing or exacting their deep state of suffering on others, which is also, you know, truly terrible. I don't think I'm sorry. Don't you think meritocracy is good though?

Don't we want a meritocracy? Don't you want the best surgeon operating on you? Not, you know what I mean? Isn't it in some cases, isn't meritocracy sort of important in the sense that we need to differentiate like just from an evolutionary perspective, it's like, look, that person is really good at something and this person is not. So let's imitate the person who's really good at something

and instead of the person who's not because that that's like a, that would be horrible. So isn't meritocracy important in certain cases? Yeah, I mean, I think, I think like just sort of bringing it back to the way I was talking about things before where there's a cultural realm, a political rights realm and an economic realm. Yeah, you definitely want there to be a kind of merit-based

system in the cultural realm, right? Like you want, you want success, you want ideas that are strong and real and skills that are strong and real to win out. It's just that we don't want those people treated differently politically or economically. Like that's, that's the, that's the issue, I think. And it's not, and, and not because we want everybody to be

poor, but because we want everybody to be wealthy, you know, that's the, that's the reason. Yeah. Right. Well, but like incentivizing using like the current systems of wealth, it like, it's going to, you know, it's going to create some mutated like fucked up hybrid beings, right? It's like, you're not going to get, you're going to get like,

you're going to get like greedy Beethoven. You're going to get like, you don't even, you're going to get like, you're going to get like Shakespeare, but who like is wants bling like Shakespeare. So like, you know, like, so, so in the, the more Mammon and the, the, uh, whoever it may be, the artistic achiever become fused from this perspective, the more it's going to dilute whatever the thing that we're calling merit or achievement

just in the sense that, yeah. Yeah. I mean, just because it's going to like, occlude that person's ability to see the true value of what they're doing, which is not economic or political, but like spiritual off-rame, not just for others, but for themselves, you know, their own connection to God. And so when you say like, oh, God doesn't get angry at certain

things, it's like, well, no, it's like God's not going to get angry for you at you for like taking a ton of money to perform a good surgery, but you're actually creating something that's very much like anger, which is a distance between you and spirit, you know, when you do that. So that's, that's not the anger of God. That's actually like our own frustration at no longer being able to see God.

Wow. Yeah, it's like you, you, you're like, it's like the most beautiful thing in the universe, hands you a stack of money and you're just staring at the money. You're not even looking at like the clothing hand or anything. You're just looking at the dead green paper and ignoring who's handing it to you. No wonder you're miserable.

You're like getting these in credit. Like the gift isn't the fucking paper. It's the thing that's bringing it to you along with all the other wonderful stuff. Wow. Cool. Man. Whoo.

Mammon. Fuck. This is so good. This is a masterclass in mammon. Just, you know, like, I mean, I think that these are the things that people are going to have to think about more and more. And I mean, you know, it's like the world, especially I'm sure today as we record this for a lot of people, it just feels

such shit and like people are talking about how terrible it is all the time and a coming civil war and, you know, like climate change and this and that and this and that. And like, obviously, like all those are wedded toward to capitalism and the economy, like the anticipation of a certain kind of future, you know, and that, that, you know, there's a book about, gosh, I forget the exact title, but it's by someone who's on my show, Joshua Ramey about divination like neoliberal

economy and economics as a system of divination, right? I think it's called the politics of divination actually. But it's like shit like this, this idea that like, oh, you know, things are getting worse and worse and worse and worse, but actually that is divination. Like that's us trying to interpret what's happening with the gods when we all know that things don't go like that. We all know that actually what if this whole thing that's

happening, you know, right now with that sort of splitting up intention between states leads to smaller countries, which, you know, actually ends up redeeming allowing for more freedom in those states where people have restricted, you know, abortion, you know, rights and all that. Now, look, all that is not to say that people aren't facing on the ground shit and suffering right now, but we were anyway in other forms and in other pockets and in other places.

So like, we don't know where these things lead to and we forget that we actually also direct them. Like we direct them, we direct them and there are lots of different ways to direct. It's not just protest. It's not just direct action. There are lots of ways to direct the field of action in the world and it is really up to us in so many ways.

So like the moment we're like, it's all terrible. It's all blah, blah, blah, blah. It's going to a horrible place. That's actually the moment we fall back into the capitalist time current and time form. You know, and that's what and people claim to not be doing that when they think it's so bad. It's like capitalism is bad enough without you imagining

obliteration. Like it's doing horribly well on its own. Now, like get to a different place, have a different experience and then start redirecting how this all works. Oh my God. Yeah. Don't sing hymns to Mammon. If you're saying things, you know what I mean?

Those are the hymns, spontaneous hymns to the one of the Lords of Hell and you don't even know you're singing them. Right. That's what's even that's what's so insidious. At least if you go to like a typical like dark satanic or go to the fucking Bohemian Grove, you know you're doing some crazy shit in front of the owl with a chance or whatever. But in this case when you're just kind of mildly like spreading

your fear among others, you are actually just participating in this secret hidden religion, which is the worship of Mammon and Mammon loves your fear. Mammon loves your anxiety. Your anxiety actually underlines, crystallizes, right? That's the idea. It brings into it. It makes the most important thing in the world, the paper.

It makes the most important thing in the world, the literal least important thing and it depends. Wow. Yeah, you're not you're not you're not saying don't be you're not saying don't be afraid of there's not work to do. There's not activism to do. It's just saying look, don't do it for Mammon because if you write if you're if you're doing your activism for one of the

princes of hell, even if the activism seemingly is to make the world a better place, it's not going to work out. Whereas if it's coming from a heart that is not in the as you said capitalist time current fuck, then you know that you're going to you're going to it's going to be more effective. It's going to be real. Totally. And that's why drawing your sense of time into your heart is

actually really important right now like experiencing time as a heart sense rather than a thought sense, you know, like think about time in your heart, you know, and like suddenly something shifts and like all kinds of new thoughts become available. All kinds of new actions become available. I mean, we've got to do that with everything. I mean, the the the coming change of the heart and the

cosmos God that the coming change of the heart and the cosmos is actually that's where we're all going. Those are the things that we're going to have to learn and that's going to take place in so many ways that not just the time sensor, the economic sense, but that's where the mysteries and the and the real spiritual work are all going to need to be done. And you can just tell like if you just sit for a moment and

it hold the experience of time within your heart, you know, not in its beats, not your not your physical heart because that could just screw you up probably and trancing yourself and slowing your heart down. But like if you just do it in a sort of that sense of your spiritual heart that that heart that feels love that feels affection that feels care and warmth for others and you'll hold time there.

You can just feel I mean that just feels different than thinking about the fucking bill that's due, right? And that I mean that is that's pretty pretty indicative of the direction that we need to go in when we're dealing with economy and when we're dealing with time and when we're dealing with anything really because that's our that's our task right now that sort of almost holy grail initiative. You know, it expands when I'm doing it now.

It's like suddenly I'm like I'm not just stuck in this day or month. I'm like, I'm in like the dress. I'm like in the, you know, like you're suddenly you become part of this ancient being you become like part of something so old and beautiful instead of being just sucked in to like the next 10 or 20 minutes or it's so cool, man. I've never heard of that.

I've heard a lot of heart meditations because of these hippies I hang out with but I've never heard of that. That's so cool. Well, I mean, you can feel it. You've done everybody's done it on festival days, right? Like on Christmas, it's like, I think about Christmas. You're actually what you're doing then is connecting yourself

to 2000 years of history, right? Like and that's part of the warmth you're feeling is like if you feel it, you know, you can also experience the 2000 years of, you know, oppression if you want, but you're feeling you're you're you're hooking into a rhythm of, you know, the presence of the dead, you know, around a festival time. So you can start to feel it around Easter, around Christmas, around whatever festival you're, you know, religion or whatever.

It's like fucking crazy, right? Like you stand on that day and you're acknowledging the presence of 2000 people across 2000 years. So like you can start to see like, oh, this is actually happening in different instances in my life anyway. Maybe if I just do this intentionally or engage with it, you know, with a little more attentiveness, I can start to experience something, you know.

Connor, tell me we're going to have to we got to jump into it. We do you, I don't like tell me about your new book. I haven't had a chance to read it. I got it. I'm excited to read it. Hot, hot mountain. That's it. Yeah.

I'm I'm actually I'm really excited for you to read it. And you can also listen to the auto book, which I read. So the sweet soothing sound of my voice will read. Is it I love your voice. Is it on audible? Yeah, it's on audible. Yeah. Wow.

You have to I think by the time this episode comes out, the book will be out because in the U.S. It comes out on July 5th. So then, you know, and in Ireland, the U.K. comes out on the 21st of July, but it's, yeah, there's a lot of time in the book. In fact, it's one of the main concerns of this novel, which is a sort of literary horror novel.

It's a horror novel about emotional suffering. So it's, you know, it's about these two guys, Jack and Todd, and they went to school together, high school together, and Jack relentlessly, relentlessly bullied Todd in high school, but the book takes place 15 years later. They haven't seen each other since then and Todd is sitting on a beach in New England and is like six, almost seven year old son, Anthony is playing in the water and Todd sees someone

walking up the beach and, you know, because it's a novel, of course, you know that that's bad news. And so he gets closer and closer. It, he sees that it's Jack and Jack, Jack says, Hey, can I, can I stay with you for a night? You know, for very complicated reasons, for very complicated reasons, Todd's like, yeah, okay. And Jack stays and stays and starts developing this really

intense relationship with Todd's son. And Todd's just like, you have to fucking leave out a third of the way in something fucking horrible happens. And from there, it just gets darker and darker. Oh my God, that's so fucking nuts. You know, as a dad, that's like, you, that is just what you just described is the worst. It's the worst.

The worst. Your son is friends with your bully. Yeah. It's, yeah, that's. That's a pretty terrible part of the book. Um, and, you know, a lot of, you know, a lot of people, if I can talk about what people have said about it, because, you know, one of the big moments for me was I got an email saying,

can I call you? And it was from Clive Barker, who I've never, you know, what? Yeah. And I need, I need just called me and he was like, this book is incredible. I want you to know you've done something really. Amazing. And like, this is really special.

And he like blurb the book and, you know, it's been getting like these great reviews and all the magazines and stuff. I'm just very, very excited about. I mean, that relations. Thanks, man. That moment was huge for me because I've been reading, you know, Clive Barker, Hellbound Heart, Night Breed, all, well, it's called Cabal's a book, you know, Weave World, the Magica,

all that shit. Like I've been reading Candy Man, you know, which is has a different name as a short story as well, but like all that, like I've been reading since I was a little kid, you know, and like that was just like, fuck. And it's so crazy because I used to admit when I was writing when I was a kid, I was like, like eight or nine years old when I started writing and I make these fake book covers and

I put blurbs by authors like Stephen King or whatever on the back and one of them was Clive Barker and now this book has come out and Conrad Beve's debut novel is a bleak dark adrenaline rush. That's like an excerpt from a much longer blurb that he gave it. But it's like that's what Clive Barker says. And I actually have this.

So mind blowing. I'm getting goosebumps. I'm getting fucking goosebumps, man. Clive Barker would like that. Well, you know, yeah, sure. What you like Stephen King. Fuck you. Read Clive Barker.

That was like that was like the horror of horror and I love Stephen King, but you know, the kids were reading Clive Barker. You'd be like, oh, shit, you're going to mess with that. What is that? What is it? Short stories like the books of blood or something. Yeah, dude. Yeah.

Like he has really like had a profound impact on like our culture. I don't think people realize how many movies I don't think people understand how much of popular culture is shaped by Clive Barker and you like what the fuck, man? Did you have any idea that he'd been like a copy got sent to him or you were like, yeah, yeah, I knew, I knew that because I requested a copy be sent to him and we had emailed.

He emailed me like a year before that and like we communicated a tiny bit, but there was no like, I've never met him. You know, I just, I was just a huge fan and I was like, holy shit, like I'm in contact with this person and then sent the book out. I didn't hear anything for a while and you know, you send the book out to a lot of people, you know, when it when it's coming out. And you just like, I mean, I said, I had it sent to this guy who, you know, won the Nobel Prize for literature is one of my

favorite writers jam. Yeah. See, I couldn't hear back from him. I'm just like, whatever, you know, you send it to your dumb friends like me too. We're real slow readers. You got to forgive us. I'm not like Clive Barker.

He's probably he rips through books probably. Yeah, but I mean, it's just like Caitlin, Caitlin blurb the book as well. Our mutual friend, Caitlin Doty and some other people, Brian Evanson and Paul Tremblay. And, you know, I mean, it's just like, so, and yeah, I'm going on a book tour. I'm not coming to Texas, unfortunately, but like I'm doing,

you know, right around probably when this comes out, I'm doing the East Coast and the, and the, and the West Coast book tour. So like, it's just like mind blowing like all this, you know, I've wanted to be a writer since I was like, this is what I've wanted to do. I mean, the podcast is fucking awesome. And I'm so happy to do the podcast, but like being a novelist is what I've wanted to do since I was a little kid.

And so like that, well, I wanted to do porn too, but I did that for 10 years. So now the end of novelist is this thing. And so now it's like this is happening and this is all, you know, coming together and it's just fucking, it's, it's incredible, man. I mean, I mean, I'm sorry. How many other porn stars are you aware of that are novelists?

Well, see, this is a really interesting thing that you're asking me because it's something that I, I just, my friend pointed out to me the other day, my friend, Heather Berg, she wrote a book called porn work, which is like a communist look at porn. It's a fucking incredible book actually, but she was like, I was talking about how hard it was to move from doing porn to other stuff. And she's like, yeah, you're the only one.

And I was like, what do you mean? She's like, yeah, you're the only one that's done it. Now, what she meant was not that there weren't other porn performers who had written books. There are lots of porn performers who have written amazing books or porn performers have podcasts, great podcasts, whatever other things. However, I, as far as I know, I'm the only one who's done this

stuff that's not rooted in or related to expressing sex work. Right. That and so I'm not trying to brag about that. I'm actually trying to say like how fucking incredibly difficult that passageway was and I'm so, so hopeful that this makes it easier for all of her sex workers. Like I like the idea that like I've been able, I'm sure there have been other people like there's, there must be someone

that I'm missing people from non-English speaking countries or something like that, but as far as I know, like and being able to break that ground or break that wall or barrier to allow people to come through and probably do a much better like job of it than me. Why was it difficult? Aside from like how hard it is to write a novel, what do you mean specifically as a sex worker moving to writing as, you

know, to working on something non-related to sex work? What was the difficulty there? Well, that's what everybody wants you for, right? So that's the first thing. Like to even get in the fucking room, like people are like talk about sex work because everybody's so mystified by sex work because of all the fucking stigma and regulation and all that and talk about something that relates to Roe versus Wade.

Like, I mean, all the like bodily autonomy laws on the internet, all this just kind of shit. That's just insane. So like to even get in the room, you have to sort of self mystify and be like, yes, I have this secret knowledge that I can bring to you. Well, at the same time, you desperately want to be like, this should be normal and understood as normal and part

of human culture and as it has been for like thousands and thousands of years. So like this should be okay. But then you have to sort of as the hustle, mystify yourself to get yourself in the room and then that's what they want you write about. And so even when this came out, like, well, it's not not out at the time that we're talking about when this comes out.

Yeah, yeah, right. So so even as Hawk Mountain comes out like every like my my marketing team for Norton in the US and then Doubleday in Ireland, UK, fucking great people. But they're like, oh, let's get you on this thing and they'll ask you about sex work and porn and all this. And I'm like, that's fine. I'm not ashamed of that by any means at all.

I'm quite proud of it. However, like, fuck off. Like this book stands on its own. You can ask me those questions, but the book has to be in the foreground. And so when I I think that that's it really, it's like you never are allowed to do anything but that, you know, and everything you do has to touch it.

Not because of any sort of a central thing, except the fact that people in in culture are so fucked up about sex and sex work and pornography that they can't stop. You know, they can't help themselves. And so I had to be really like consciously taking a stand against that. And I know it's going to come up and that's fine. I'm I'm happy to talk with people about it.

But like, can we talk also about the book and and the fact that the book has gone already this far before it's even come out without it being like porn centered. Not because porn is bad or lesser than porn is its own art form that is I think just as fucking momentous and amazing as novels, but it it's just because it gets to be, you know, have this life. I think it's pretty amazing.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally, man. I get it. Yeah, you so much. I mean, it's you're so much more than just that. That's what's, you know, God, who is it? Buckminster Fuller. Somebody was, I haven't read the essay, but it's always

telling me how anti-specialization he was. How are you like, you know, was talking about how that's just the worst thing that ever happened is this concept of this uniform, singular or whatever. And then of course, yeah, add to it that you won one of your specializations is porn sex work. Yeah. And that we're all like weird sex deprive freak.

So everyone's like, okay, okay, book, whatever. Tell me about talk about sex, please. You know, that's frustrating, right? That's got to be frustrating. You've like spent all this time writing a really good book. And then you're going to have to deal with it right on tour. There's you're going to have to deal with it because inevitably it's going to it's going to come up every single

way. Well, the good stuff will come up too, right? Like the like the sex workers and the people who like my porn that like the novel, like that all happened as well. It's just going to be the journalist who's like, so like they'll just start with like, so what's better writing books or making porn, you know, and it's just like, I don't know, like, have you like, have you read a book?

You know, it's just going to be like, it's just going to be fucking that kind of stuff. But I don't, I don't care. I mean, I've managed much worse than that. Obviously, like over time, I just, you know, and see, it's so tricky to even talk about it with you, Duncan, because like even as we it's like, like even the language that we use, like, well, I do more than that.

Like what I don't mean more like, I don't mean more like better than, you know, but that's what people that no, and I know you don't either, but that's what people will hear as we say it, or it's like, you know, oh, he actually did something that wasn't porn related that it's like, they're these little because the way that people think they're these little cues for them to find their way to condemn, you know, this other thing.

And it's like, the fact of the matter, I mean, there's there's sex in the book, but the fact of the matter is like, my interests are all over the place. Obviously, as anybody who's heard me on this show, I'm just fucking bonkers. So, but like, you know, I think it's just it's so it's so sad, but I'm so happy to have played a part in in, you know, confronting that that fucking wall.

And I mean, you know, I can't wait for you to read this and are you are you kidding? Man, I know that's my next stop. I'm going to the bookshelf pulling it down. I can't wait, man. You're just I and I'm sorry. I didn't get to it before this conversation. We just moved up and slammed.

I haven't read a damn thing. I've listened to a few auto. Yeah, no, I don't but you know, there's a lot of stuff about time in it because like parts of the book are told like in the flashback of, you know, like them being in high school together, but those are written in present tense, whereas the present time ones are written in past tense and there's a reason why I do that time sort of stumbles and those two things get

sort of fucked up and shifted around and there's stuff about child's consciousness in there and everything. But it's also just very like page ternary. That's the that's been the greatest compliment. It's like people have read it. They're like, I just read this in one sitting like I just like couldn't stop. It was like compulsive and it was horrible.

Like it made me feel like shit, but I couldn't stop. Oh, my favorite thing. That's my favorite. That's Cormac McCarthy does that to you. That's Cormac McCarthy. They're just like, what the fuck am I reading? But you're just go. Oh, my God.

I can't wait and congratulations. I'm so excited to hear that it is being well received and who knows, maybe like what I'll be doing shows around where you're doing a book signing or something. That'd be a dream come true. I'm fucking great. I would love that. Well, I love you.

Thank you for being coming back on the show. I love you too, Duncan. You know, we haven't spoken since my show when I was in the fucking pit of heartbreak and now we're here. I'm with that guy that we talked about. I know I've got the book coming out. I'm gonna, I mean, just it's that that's, you know, time. It's like, I remember the last you seem like you're you're

doing great though, man. You're firing on all cylinders right now and I'm makes me real happy to see it. Thanks, buddy. Hawk Mountain everybody. This is coming out July 5th in the United States. Also, Connor has a glorious podcast. Would you like to plug all the stuff please in the novel?

Yeah. Yeah, three things. One is Hawk Mountain. Buy it. You can buy it. You can buy it anywhere. Against everyone with Connor Habib is my podcast, which is almost at 200 episodes now, which is fucking crazy, inspired

by inspired by Duncan, truly deeply inspired by Duncan. Podcast Clive Barker for me. And yeah, patreon.com forward slash Connor Habib is the that's the sort of regular gig really, you know. Connor Habib everybody. Thank you so much, man. Howdy Krishna. Thank you.

That was Connor Habib everybody. Don't forget to order his book. Hawk Mountain. The links will be at Duncan Trussell.com. Go see one of his book signings. Thank you to our wonderful and esteemed sponsors. And most importantly, thank you for listening. I'll see you in about two days with a mind blowing podcast with

the mystical teacher. Maybe Saint. Am I allowed to say that? Ravi Ravi Shankar. That's in about two days until then. Hope you have a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful series of moments attached to other moments. I love you.

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