Julian Dorey Podcast - The Disturbing Story Tedx SILENCED | Harry Miller

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

SPONSORS: 1) UNDRDOG HEMP: Our listeners get up to 30% off their entire order at https://Undrdog.com. 2) MONARCH: Use code JULIAN at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. JOIN PATREON FOR EARLY UNCENSORED EPISODE RELEASES: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey CLIPPERS DISCORD: https://discord.gg/8QmWEKJ3BT NEWSLETTER: https://juliandoreypodcast.beehiiv.com/get-julians-top-10-books (***TIMESTAMPS in Description Below) ~ Harry Miller is a former high-profile college football offensive lineman for The Ohio State University who transitioned into a nationally recognized mental health advocate. After stepping away from the sport in 2022 to protect his life, his raw honesty and public vulnerability sparked a vital national conversation about the intense psychological pressures faced by student-athletes HARRY'S LINKS: - IG: https://www.instagram.com/h_miller76/ - X: https://x.com/h_miller76 - Substack: https://shorturl.at/Ytm1N FOLLOW JULIAN DOREY IG: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey/ X: https://x.com/juliandorey JULIAN YT CHANNELS - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Clips YT: https://www.youtube.com/@juliandoreyclips - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Daily YT: https://www.youtube.com/@JulianDoreyDaily - SUBSCRIBE to Best of JDP: https://www.youtube.com/@bestofJDP ****TIMESTAMPS**** 0:00 - Harry Miller, Ohio State & Urban Meyer 2:16 - "College Football Is Like a Cult" 12:26 - Shoulder Injury in the National Championship 23:33 - First Suicidal Thought at Age Seven 34:10 - "Only a God Would Choose to Suffer" 48:49 - Coach Day, Psychiatry & Wanting to Write 58:35 - Tearing His PCL & "The Famous Letter" 1:08:39 - "I Am Not the Only One" 1:16:30 - Why He's GLAD He Missed Oxford 1:27:24 - Broke in New York, Jack Kerouac Mode 1:37:37 - The Loneliness Epidemic in Young Men 1:48:39 - Nietzsche, The Backrooms & Why Art Should Scare 2:08:31 - End Times, Singularity & Happiness 2:29:22 - Stripping the Ego, Fearing Death 2:39:32 - How an Old Lion Dies 2:45:18 - Harry's Work CREDITS: - Host, Editor & Producer: Julian Dorey - COO, Producer & Editor: Alessi Allaman - https://www.youtube.com/@UCyLKzv5fKxGmVQg3cMJJzyQ - In-Studio Producer: Joey Deef Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 473 - Harry Miller Music by Artlist.io Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yeah, I feel like I could talk to you about a lot of esoteric topics today for sure. Let's do it. I'm here. But, dude, your story is really, really fucking cool. So when Deef sent me this, I went and took a look at your Instagram. And it's kind of funny in the sense that I used to be so on it with college football and everything. I was such a huge fan. And then when I started doing, when I got out and got a job, and then especially when I started doing this, like full time, there's some things like, would it be college football?

even like other sports like basketball. I used to watch all the time in the NBA. Like, I never have time to watch this stuff. So in some ways, like the last six, seven years is a bit of a blur to where it's like I can't remember who the best players were, who won the Heisman, who was winning the national titles. But this is when you were a major heralded recruit and playing at the Ohio State University,

which is extremely impressive. Was it Urban Meyer who recruited you at the time? He recruited me, yeah, he recruited me. And then switched the head coach position. position switched to Coach Day as I was being my senior year. So I was actually one of the first, I signed in December of 2018, and that was like Coach Day's first, I guess, early recruiting period, early recruiting class. But Coach Day was my, he was my first call from Ohio State. And he called me after I think, yeah, he called me. He was the OC at the time. And then that just

began sort of my recruiting process. But yeah, I played from Beaufort, Georgia, played at Beaufort, which I think they're running to number one now nationally in terms of just like high school ball but ended up being the number one rank center highly recruited, offered by a lot of places and decided on Ohio State and then went there and then yeah so I guess and so years of yeah

yeah we'll get in the story but real quick before we do that was football something that you were great at and loved or just great at and didn't love What was your relationship? I think for a period it was the same time. I think like fascination followed the form and like from a young age.

I was just, I was bigger than the rest of the kids. And so football made absolute sense and I had a lot of talent and I was able to express myself very well in football from second grade I started playing and then...

Express yourself? Yeah, I was just, I was bigger. I was physical and I played well and so it made sense to keep playing. I played other sports. I played like lacrosse and baseball growing up, but football was what I, you know,

was able to like be semi-professional, to play well. And ended up, yeah, getting to high school and getting recruited by, so like my top five were Ohio State, Stanford, Clemson, Notre Dame, Georgia, among others. Like, you know, everybody was sort of like vying for that.

Some real shit programs right there. Right? Jesus Christ. And then, yeah, so got recruited. And so, like, yeah, out of Ohio State, I was, you know, I was the number one right center of the country, but also I was like, I was the valedictorian at Beaufort High School. And so... You're the valedictorian over there?

Class of 2019, Buford Wolves. No shit. Yep. Yeah, I knew you were a genius, but damn. No, that's like... I feel strange even right now to talking about high school. Makes me feel very... Why? Hey, guys. If you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star

review. They're both a huge huge help. Thank you. I just feel, well, especially, well, now it's like I feel very far removed. Well, I think in totality, up until 18, I was my adolescent self. And then college especially, especially in a different state, is a step. It's a departure. And honestly, and I've written, I've actually, a lot of the stuff I'd be like saying today about this, I wrote in a memoir like last winter, I wrote like this like 200,000 word memoir in about two months. Two months.

Yeah, so I was like I was just jotting out words and just lots of coffee and lots of just like I was just writing in my room while it was cold out, which really helped me process some stuff. But, you know, the formula that any successful college football program emulates is really of sort of, is, it. is a cult in which you remove, you take children, it's the same thing as the Manson Children, you take children from a different state, bring them to an exotic location, you know, mantras, team colors, bonding through suffering, lots of things that just help you sort of fulfill,

fill yourself into this new identity, this new role. And yeah, I was all in and went to Ohio State and like really, really, really blood, sweat and tears literally, into the program and had success there. And then, yeah, I guess I just sort of, I'll explain just sort of like how all that shook out, but highly recruited football player,

went to Ohio State, was a backup my freshman year behind. So that was 2019. We won the Big Ten championship and then lost in the Fiesta Bowl to Clemson that year. And I was the backup. Then COVID hit. And that, season and then ultimately that COVID season I was playing I was the starting I was the starting

left guard um as a sophomore and that was sort of COVID paired with starting college football was a real it was like it was very sort of MKi ultra it was very there was no external human contact to sort of like ground yourself or like neutralize the what we were in which was like high stakes high stress college football it was like it was like it was very Truman in which case, like football is a production. Like football's a huge cameras, interviews. There's this, it's reality television with these like outlets on the weekend. And it was just very strange for months where, you know, really the only human contact I was getting was physical human violence in context of the game,

being yelled at in meetings and coached, in which case, like the meetings, meetings being a euphemism for like sort of staring at a projector screen of your, of your, of your, fuck ups and like replaying them and then it's just so it becomes really heady it becomes very repetitive um and so over the course of that COVID season you know I really my my mental health diminished um yeah just because it was such a strange time yes you were still like you said a part of this whole production right's going on all the rules they had to have for you guys that first year had to be nuts right like you couldn't even you'd go to a meeting you got to be masked up the whole time yeah that was bizarre just walk me in there what What did everything look like?

So that was 2020. So I mean, so at first, I was in Nicaragua when the school was closed. So I've got family friends in Nicaragua who, who I'll leave their name out of it just for like for their safety. But they run programs down there and fantastic people. And I've been going there since a young age. And so I was in Nicaragua with a friend of mine doing just doing some like fixing up the school, doing some stuff. doing some stuff like that. School got canceled.

We got a notification that school was being closed because of COVID. So this would have been maybe like last week of March, sometime in March. And so rather than flying back to Ohio, flew back to Georgia,

and we spent about probably a month, two months, remote at home, essentially doing nothing, just sort of treading water as we like wait to hear what's happening. Start of June, we're able to report back to campus. And campus is essentially dead.

So for that whole sort of 2020, season. Classes are remote and classes are remote, but football is doing football. And so it was very, it was a ghost town in terms of, in terms of campus. Really, it was only student athletes. It was a really big, like, essentially just college was just athletics as we were moving through that, very limited in-person capacity. And yeah, I mean, it was sort of like, and as you remember just sort of the hysterics, the confusion, there was a point where we were trying to like play football with gators across our face and like guys are essentially like waterboarding themselves with sweat and perspiration and like so that what across your graders so like gators so like gators are like

just like those you could word around your neck and then pull it up um shys yes yeah like shy stees yeah like shys we got a few in the back they were trying to put like glass glass over the mask they were trying to like plexi like not like just like yeah they were trying they were just throwing everything at the wall um were you guys just talking like this is so fucking retarded Yeah, we all, I mean, yeah, we all knew that it was pretty stupid. I think the Big Ten was probably the strictest because I don't think the SEC ever got close to canceling their season. For a time, we did cancel their season. And then I guess everybody at the Big Ten saw that the SEC was still going and playing games and making their money and doing everything they had to do.

And so then it's like, well, of course, well, now we can play ball now. And so we played ball. But then now we're playing in stadiums empty, but with cardboard cutouts of faith. of fans to look full. Weird. So now you can hear like, you can hear the opposite sideline talking while you're talking. And then you're having to like simulate artificial crowd noise.

Oh, they were doing that too. Yeah. So it was like, so like we had an away game in Penn State and Beaver Stadium. And what would have been a whiteout was just cardboard cutouts and then and then fake static coming from the, from the PA system. And so it was just very bizarre world upside down. And yeah, I was playing ball and I was starting my sophomore year. And it was, and that's an extremely, I mean, that's why it's called the sophomore slump. Like it's very hard to go from a freshman backup who comes in during trash time.

Like I played with the, I played with a transfer from West Virginia named Chris Chugganov, who was like very, he was very, he was. very like Blue Mountain State, like just super lovable and like a real like an elder for me as a young guy. And he was, so he was a fifth year from West Virginia. I was a freshman, you know, do good from Beaufort Center. He was the quarterback. And so we would do CQ Exchange. He was the backup quarterback. And we would call it the graveyard shift because like everybody would leave the stadium and we were just like closing out the fourth quarter running zone left, zone right, ground game just like trying to burn the clock out as we were up 40 points or whatever

and then so to go sophomore season there's like no fans I didn't really have a spring season because the spring ball had been canceled because of um COVID and I felt very behind in terms of like I just felt very unconfident as a player and I really I really I played that entire sophomore season and I really didn't feel um I really didn't feel like I was playing football I think that's it, and I think play is a very important verb because, you know, in high school, um, it's very easy, you know, being more gifted as a football player to just like beat up on kids and you feel like, you feel like just cock of the walk. It's just, you feel so powerful. You feel like a demigod. And of course, the talent equates when you get to college football.

And, um, you know, that's when like savvy and skill and game IQ and all these things really start to like matter. And I was still, I was still so young. I still had so many things to learn. And I was always as a perfectionist, as a valedictorian, as a kid who took these things very seriously, too seriously, I would say really. I just really got in my head about it. And that whole season, I just felt very dejected that whole time. And that's when it really, the cracks started to form in my relationship with football, in my relationship with myself. And it really wasn't until we played the 2020 Big Ten Championship against Northwestern. and we ended up just having to run the ball a bunch.

And our running back, Trace Sermon, I think, had a record-breaking, like, ground game in terms of rushing yards. And that was just, that really felt like just football again to me for the first time. It's no secret the studies are finding microplastics in blood, brain, heart, lungs, and in men's reproductive organs. I've started to make some big changes over the past couple years in reducing the plastics I use. Whether that's in the cups I drink, you see, I don't have any plastic red solo cups anymore. or in my daily water bottle, which I got rid of any plastic I was using there as well. But there's one place even I haven't thought to look. My clothes.

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our listeners are going to get up to 30% off at underdog.com. That link is in my description below. That's U.N.D-R-D-O-G.com. Link in my description below. Up to 30% off. After you purchase, they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them I sent you. That was 2020. Were you able to make, like, get a lot of friends outside of playing football? And the reason I ask that is because what I think a lot of people don't understand is you guys in D1 football have a, depending on the program, a 60 to 80 hour a week job. Yeah, no, I mean, I did, I don't think, and I think in the case of most college football players, I'm probably not the rule. I studied engineering at Ohio State. And so I had a pretty rigorous academic schedule outside of football, which made me, if you, especially in engineering, if you don't develop a competent friend group,

who you can float homework back and forth and compare answers and work together. Like, you'll get just absolutely just creamed if you're not ready. So I had a really close friend group just because my academics were so rigorous. But you feel like you're being pulled away from things, though, too.

Well, I described it, it's really sort of like, it's any sort of like heroic double personality where it's like if Peter Parker and Spider-Man, if Peter Parker doesn't show up to the spelling bee because Spider-Man had to save orphans from a burning building or vice versa, Peter Parker's got debate, and so Spider-Man misses like an old lady getting crushed by the subway. Like, either way, he's, he is receiving the brunt of some sort of responsibility that he can't control.

There's just not enough of him to go around. It was a very demanding schedule. But for me, like, I was able to, I kept a 4.0 in engineering, and I was a Rhodes finalist while I played Ohio State football. You had a 4.0 in fucking engineering while you're playing at Ohio State University football full time. Yeah. There's a bit of a complex story. Well, now we'll get this complex story. Okay.

Well, I've been wanting to talk about this for a long time. It's funny now in retrospect, but when I was like an anal nerd, it was really important to me. But so 2020 wraps up. I end up getting COVID. Now, you want to talk about sort of like the asinine innateness of the policies. We were eventually getting, so we were probably PCR testing twice a day near the end of the season. So we're getting like these swabs up the nose. I remember those very frequently. And it was, you know, I don't know if this was ever confirmed or not. But the talk in the college

football world was that some programs in the SEC had intentionally like, um, inoculated themselves to COVID. They'd all gotten COVID early in the season because you would have immunity shortly after. And so the rumor, the, the logic that was that, yeah, the logic was. I got it. like fucking 11 times. Well, I think if you got, the policy was if you got it, you wouldn't be tested again for however long,

however period of time. And so the theory, the theory was that some programs were like getting kids sick early to miss non-essential games. We ended up getting hit right before the national championship. I got it over New Year's and Christmas.

And we ended up just getting sort of like picked at near the end of the year. And what was crazy was we were, eventually you could get a rhyme and reason for this COVID stuff and you would realize that like a guy would get it and his roommate or his friend would test positive like four days later. So there's this weird lag through proximity where you knew if a guy

got it that the next guy if he hadn't gotten it yet would be getting it in four days. And so it was so funny was before the Big Ten championship, um one of my best friends tested positive for COVID. And I knew by the logic I had COVID, but I wouldn't test it. But I wouldn't test it. positive. So when they test me, I tested negative, played in the Big Ten Championship. The next day, it would have been a Saturday. The next day on a Sunday, we're doing our meetings and we're doing our recovery lifts and all that stuff, I test positive and get set home. And so, like, even in that, sort of like lowered trust and the sort of like infrastructure we had going on, but we were playing catch-up that whole year. And so I ended up testing positive, COVID over Christmas, and I guess

part of New Year's, yeah. So I watched the Fiesta Bowl from my home that we won. And then we played in the national championship against Alabama. I was a backup in that case because I was coming off of COVID. I don't think I had any full pad practices before the national championship. But because of injuries, I ended up going in in the fourth quarter. Also, maybe 10,000 capacity, mostly cardboard cutouts. And I ended up dislocating my shoulder against Alabama. Which one?

Left shoulder, tore my labrum, got that repaired. And... Me both, pal. Yeah, so you got like a letter J. Is that a letter J? Yeah. Two, three, six. 60s over there. For why'd you get yours?

For the labrums and then they got, the labrum was completely torn 360 both times. What were you doing? So I tore it when I was like a kid and didn't know it. Okay. It would always bother me when I played basketball. Someone hit me like that would bother me. So I finally got it checked when I was like 20 and they're like, well, you know, you can get a fix. I'm like, ah, we'll let it ride.

And then I dislocated it down here. Right. And then it just starts like dropping out, right? Oh, yeah. I dislocated 15 times before I got the first surgery. Yeah. It's nasty. Mine was just fortunately on the posterior side.

So I think like my arm got sort of pulled across body on a block and it hurt bad, got a repair. And then hence, now that we're talking about the 4.0, I was like, this is a bit like this is going to sound like incoherent. I took my grades very seriously. I read my syllabus thoroughly. And like in the physics class before, there was a thing about like siding work or whatever. Long story short, I'm coming off this lab room surgery. I'm still on like, however many oxies of like coming out of the surgery. But I wasn't like, I wasn't missing school.

I was still taking my quizzes. And on oxy. Yeah. And this was, and so I was now in Static. So this was like Static's 2010. And so this was just like intro stuff. And long story short, because I cited a piece of work in a way that was like I wasn't supposed to on a quiz, this led to a whole sort of like co-em academic misconduct thing

where they essentially, I finished with like a 100 in the class or like a 90, whatever, 98, 99, whatever. But they gave me, like, they demarited me and sort of killed my, so my, it's not a 4.0, it's a 3.997 GPA. I'm so sorry. Which rounds up. I know. Which rounds up when you just do two digits, two significant figures.

But that's, that, now, this then. They really hit you for the oxy's citation. That's kind of fucked up. Well, that's what I'm saying. Well, I never even got a day in court, which sort of this set me on the path of like, I felt like John Rambo. I felt like, I felt like, I felt like, I felt like, I had. had just received a surgery.

I was, I said blood sweat and tears. Blood, sweat, tears. They drew first blood. That's what I'm saying. And I was like, that's what really sort of like broke my illusion of the sort of like, what's going on here. That broke your illusion. That broke my illusion.

A little salutation. You know, and so yeah, so then, so that's sophomore, I recover. So now I've started my sophomore year. I ended up being a third team. all big 10. So I got like an accolade. But I really at that point like sort of hated myself. I hated. You hated yourself. I hated. I just, I didn't think I was a good player. You were third team all big 10 as a sophomore at Ohio State University playing in the national title. Yeah. And you didn't feel like you were a good player. No. At that place and like this is not,

this is not, none of this is a condemnation. None of this, this is just the way that it is. Like there's no, it makes no sense to try to make some like moral claim. If anything, I say this, because I still have, like, friends who are professional players now, he reached out to me for advice on, like, how to, like, contextualize things. And for me, this eventually, foreshadowing, got so bad that I was, like, willing to kill myself to not have to deal with this. But especially, like, that COVID was a perfect microcosm of the sort of containment and the mentality that goes into a thing like that where, and it's so funny now

because, like, now I don't even consume college football. So I haven't watched college football since I stopped playing. I know. And no, because for a moment, I couldn't watch it because it hurts so bad. And then now it's just I just, it's, it's just in the past. And it's like I can't. It just makes no sense to me anymore. Do you think you described, it was really interesting how you described it earlier,

plucking kids, the way you put it from around the country to go to one place where it's one team, you join each other through suffering and you described it as cult-like. Is there a part of the country? that that you kind of the facade's been removed so when you're watching you know a 12 o'clock game on a Saturday where all of us are drinking a beer and having fun you know what I think if you ask any former college football player um and there's there's a very interesting overlap also with i would say the veteran community where it's like there is the hollywood production that is american sniper that is any given Sunday where and even me like i want to indulge in the dream that it's like man if

I work hard. I can become something and make a name for myself and my body will stay together, my mind will stay together, and I'll make a million dollars in the meantime and become a demigod. And you know, I mean, even just recently, like a few weeks ago, there was an offensive lineman who committed suicide and they donated his brain to CTE research. Did he have it? I don't know. I think it's too early to say. I haven't tested you. But I think if you ask any, and this is the sort of, I open my memoir, the preface opens with like me and a bar watching the national championship of Ohio State the year or two after I retired where I'm fully a civilian and like someone didn't recognize me.

And you know, especially as a big guy, you get to like, oh, you're big. Like, did you play football? And it's like, it's like. And it's just sort of funny, especially there's the popular question. of like, oh, you didn't want to go pro, as if like, as if it's behind the verb want, as if I didn't want to, as if, but there's just so much between wanting and having. Wanting and having. Yeah, and for me, ultimately, I even think I got to the place where even, you know, having

would have been easy, but I didn't want it anymore. And so the summer of my junior year, I had always been, and just to talk about like disillusion, I had had my first suicidal thought when I was like seven or eight. What sparked that? I remember being in the bathtub and I was talking with my mom. And this might have been before that, but when I was a kid, I was talking with my mom. And I said, you know, oh, 100 years from now, mom, like, we're going to be best friends. And I didn't know what death was yet.

And then she explains me what death was. And from the moment I knew what death was, I had like a really macabre fascination with what death was. And I remember even after that, like we went to like public. We went to like the supermarket. and I got a pack of chrome hot wheels. And I asked mom, like, mom, can I have this? And she said, of course, honey. And then, like, death just flashed my mind.

And I was like, I don't even want it anymore. And so, like, from a very young age, the topic of death, like, really gripped my mind. It receded. And so, yeah, so I saw a psychiatrist at a young age come high school. Life was good. So when there's no stressors, there was no, like, the foundation was never being tested. and, you know, the downside of having a faulty foundation or a cracked foundation is that it only becomes worse the more you build on it. And so I had this huge edifice of like, I'm Harry Miller,

Ohio State football player, potentially going to be a Rhodes finalist, going to be yada, yada, yada. And I got to the summer of my junior year. That's when agents start reaching out to you. And that's when they start telling you about how much money you're going to make and like all these things you can be. The plan was play junior year, start, be a center. Declare. declare all-American, millionaire, yada, yada, yada. And, you know, I was just sort of, I was having all of these conversations, and it was just this thing where, again, you just can't want what you want.

You can't decide your want, like the will, the want. Like, that's a very, like, Schopenhauerian idea of, like, the will. Like, I couldn't will myself further anymore because I didn't believe in it. And especially... You didn't believe in it. I just didn't believe in any... Yeah. So like, you know, it's one thing, it's one thing to be hated for what you are.

It's one thing to be hated for what you aren't. But it's an entirely different thing to be loved for what you aren't. And I couldn't, it just wasn't me. And I was like going down this path and I could feel just like I couldn't maintain appearances the way that I was. And, you know, so that, so that junior year I'm getting, I was the strongest I ever was. I was the fastest I ever was. You know, we voted for team captains. There were six captains voted.

I had the seventh most boats. I had a really great offseason looking to be a big contributor to the program. And then, but I was like lying to myself so hard. And it's crazy how easy it is to deceive yourself because I would just get home and I would ignore it. But then like when it was a week away from the first game of the year and I just thought about like being in the stadium. And like I just sometimes the stadiums would get so loud that it would make my ear

crackle and I just like hated I didn't want to be in the crowd I didn't want all that sound in my head and like I would rather would have died than to have to go in there before before we dig into that because I think it's going to be really important to get to where that got to and like how it how it manifests from a thought to getting all the way there but like I've always had a belief that there's a price paid for genius, right? So you look at great people who do great things, even if we can't always see it, there's some sort of price they pay for that. I'm not just talking about like years of hard work. I'm talking about like something in life to, not to be a pun with your tattoo, but to balance the scales a little bit.

And I know you scoffed at me calling you genius earlier, but it's very clear when I watched your speech of you talking about this and then read your writing and listening to you it's crystal clear to people out there. Like you have an innate genius about you. You think about things in a, what's the word I'm looking for in an almost very existential way? I don't mean that as a pun. And I kind of wonder sometimes if because you are seeing things and considering so many things around you that wouldn't even occur to the average person, if you wonder if sometimes it's like going down those rabbit holes of thought takes your mind.

away from the presence of what you're doing? Absolutely. At a very young age, at a very young age, that's all it was. It was pure contemplation. And contemplation without action is just like terror, it's slavery. Like, if you, you're being subjected to the forces and you have no power yourself to stand up against it. So you just feel, you feel small. And you feel powerless. When you're presented with the ideas and they're like just staring at you And they're laughing at you. Laughing at you. I think that's like the language of like, I do believe, you know, in thought, like,

and I've made a video about this about like thought forms and egregors. And agrigors are like collective psychic beings. And, you know, what you, isn't it? It's so interesting that you could spend, you could do nothing all day, but think really hard about something or be really anxious about something and devote all of your psychic energy to something. And you eat food. you consume calories and the energy goes somewhere but it hasn't gone anywhere in the material plane

there's something when you think about something so hard you endow it with this sort of this psychic this mental body and so an egagor is when a bunch of people get together and think of something and if you endowed with too much power it can run away from you and I think similarly like so like Plato talks about like genius is a gift of madness

and actually genius is the Latin word for the Greek demon And demon isn't like the most recent Christianized demon. It can be an Agatha demon, a good demon. And demon is just a lesser God. Like it's not material, but it's not God. It's just this sort of spirit. And like a mantis and maniac come from that same root of like a man of mind. So genius, a praying mantis, a maniac.

All of that mania, mania is madness is a genius. 40 trillion in debt and most of us below the boomer generation don't own a home and don't have a lot of money in the bank account. But for the few pennies we do have, it's nice to have a tool that can show you exactly how the monies all being spread around. And that's where my friends and Monarch come in. Monarch is the personal finance app that tracks everything. Accounts, investments, saving goals, and spending. I can get a nice full picture of exactly what I'm saving up for. A little down payment on our house eventually.

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you know, I think, I imagine that there's a lot of people who feel this way where, you know, the passions, um, whether it's from your, from your chest or from your head, like, Plato would like divide that up, but the thoughts and the passions come upon you and they feel like animals sort of like gnawing at you or pulling at you. And when you're young and when you, when you have no personal spiritual muscle, it will pull you onto your face. Like the leash, like it'll dislocate your shoulder. It'll dislocate your mental limbs from your, from your body. And so you're just sort of like reeling in pain. And so at a young age, you know, I had these like really

big ideas and I was confronted with these things, but I had none of the spiritual I had none of the vigor to defend myself. And so I was very beholden to these things. And I was also a sucker. Like I'm just such a sucker for, um, I, I love freedom. I love liberty. I love sovereignty. I love being what I am.

Um, and, you know, there was just, I couldn't tolerate, I don't want to be yelled at anymore. I didn't want people interviewing me anymore. I don't want people asking me questions anymore. I don't want to wear a number anymore. I didn't want agents. agents thinking that I was theirs anymore. And so for me...

Like a product? Absolutely. I felt... I just felt... I'd spent 20 years being created into this thing that I was. And again, you asked, and it's very interesting, you asked at the beginning, like, why did I get into football? Or, like, did... And I said, you know, like, the fantasy followed the form.

Like, I remember the first time when I was in high school, and for a long time, I thought, I'm going to get a college scholarship to get an education. But then there was a coach from Texas A&M who talked about the NFL. And I didn't even know that was an option. And then so for me, being so young, I didn't have the discernment to know what I wanted. So I wanted what people showed me. And that's a real brief. I think this is somebody I've been reading a lot recently.

René Girard, he has this idea of like the triangle of desire where there is the subject and the object, you being the subject, the object, what you desire. And then there's a third, there's a model. And it is the other who if they want it, it'll make you want it. And if they prohibit you from having it, it'll make you want it more. And that's how you find so many times you want something, you want something that you don't even want. But it's because other people want it.

And I think that's how people end up, like you were talking about, whether it's like studios, or whether it's like the people on your arms, the fancy cards or the money, you just want it because other people have it. Money, power, fame and sex. Yeah, sex fame, money fame, sex power. Like, it's like, it's almost like I stole that from you. Right. And I got to this point where I was, like, looking at it.

And I've always been a real drama queen. I was joking with Cooper how, like, I would, for a lot, for like two years, I'd cry, like, in every podcast interview. Because it was also so fresh and so raw that the tears would come out. Well, I think people are going to understand why. Right. Yeah, right. And that's just the way it was. I thought that was, like I said, I saw that.

I haven't seen podcast interviews, but I saw that one speech you gave and like. That was the TED Talk. Yeah. They chose not to publish that. They chose not to publish that. That's why, yeah, so I actually... Why did they choose not to publish that? Because of the...

And like, I understand, like, it's sensitive material. It's like it talks about suicide. It talks about self-harm. That's what I said. You know, they ended up... You know, they sold their tickets. They got their money. I spoke of their thing and it was a big rah-rah.

Ted, what the fuck? This is incredible. That's what I said. I appreciate it. Yeah, everyone... You have it on your Twitter, right? It's on, yeah. It's on my Twitter.

it's in my Instagram bio. Yeah, dude, that's amazing. I complained, and then they sent me, they sent me like a pamphlet about, like, how to talk about, like, mental health and stuff. Oh, Jesus Christ. Oh, Jesus Christ. But, yeah.

God. But, like, I get, you know, well, and, you know, they were putting a hard position. I get it. But. No, you're being nice. I'll say, fuck, God. I'm fine.

I appreciate it. It was great. But the reason I bring it up is because, like, it is so raw. And that couldn't have been, how long after was it? We're going to get to what the context is. That was,

I don't know, like 12 to 18 months. Yeah, dude. It was raw. And again, the point was, I was always a very honest, like talking about, like, talking about freedom, liberty, sovereignty,

the, to be what you are, which I think is good. Like, goodness is like, is to pursue your nature and to fulfill your nature and to not be prohibited. And I knew what I was,

wanted to be. I feel like I couldn't be it. And there's a reason, there's a reason why every law is written in the negative tense, like whether it's the Ten Commandments or the Bill of Rights, Congress shall make no law, thou shalt not kill. Freedom only exists when you can say no. If you, the freedom to say yes is just, is permission. And whoever's giving you permission is your sovereign. That's who rules you. And the only way I felt I got to a point where I could assert myself and assert my freedom, especially, you know, when I viewed myself, when I, when I viewed myself as property of the television, of the institution of media and managers and all these things, when I viewed myself as property, suicide became the destruction of property,

became vandalism. And I wanted to show my contempt so much that it's like I'd rather die than do this. And so that became a really dangerous headspace where, and of course, thank God now, I've learned that I have a voice. And that was actually for a long time. In my dreams, I had no voice. In my dreams, I would be yelled at by people and I would have this frog in my throat and I couldn't speak. Just like in real life. Just like in real life.

So until I wrote the book, I didn't speak in my dreams for like years. I couldn't speak. And I was always being talked to in my dreams and taunted. And then when I wrote it and like reclaimed my voice and that story, I developed. Yeah. I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, I just, I developed the ability to speak.

and again that's why I think you know thank God because now I mean all of this I started sharing stuff online a year ago essentially to the date almost and um you know it'd be a shame it's just like I think about how talking about brain fully forming at 25 I didn't know anything at such a young age and I was so and I also the reason I was so wrong my TED talk was because there is nothing I hate more than sort of the infantilization or the coddling of talk about suicide because talking about madness, talking about genius, like it made sense to me. I wouldn't do something that doesn't make sense. And so that was the point of the TED talk was like, why did this make sense to me? And as you can see, when looking at it through the lens of destruction of property, of retaining sovereignty, and then of course it starts to

make sense in the context of like sepacu and like ritual suicide and like and choosing to go out on your own terms. Sepulco. That was like the Japanese disembalment of like this like samurai like Bashido. Yeah. Yeah. And you know there's actually a there's a I think it's Walt Whitman Song of Joy's he says like along the lines like along the lines of to struggle against great odds to face enemies undaunted to be entirely alone with them and to find how much one man can stand to face prison torture strife and popular odium face to face to mount the scaffold to charge the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance to be indeed a God. There's this idea that, and yes, there's this idea that, um, if you, if you, you doubted it, he nailed it. If you charge,

I knew he had it bar for bar, word for word. If you charge the muscles of guns with perfect nonchalance, that's how you become, that's how you become a God to be indeed a God. Godship, it's so, that's why I think it's so beautiful where, Lots of animals get killed, but only a God would choose to suffer. Bacteria run away from high temperatures. Cattle will run away from wolves, but there's something that only a mannequin, there's something divine. Or even I guess you'll see a scared animal defending its child where when you charge the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance, that is godship. There's divinity in that.

And so I say all of this, not to romanticize or to justify, because I do think life is more romantic. I do think life is more justified. But that's where my headspace was at, was, you know, when you feel powerless, that becomes this huge wellspring of power. And I think anybody listening to this right now who is negotiating with those things, that's probably the great temptation. And, you know, there's, I say all of that to, to, to, confess that it's a very good argument like it's very damning and that's why you know as you've seen my

as my TED talk like um you know for me i ended up dragging a box cutter across my throat because like i i just wanted to be done with it um and you know evidently like wasn't able to do the damage necessary to to not be her anymore what do you think that was that you didn't you didn't i mean obviously like if you wanted if i wanted to i think like they say there's that like there's that like I don't know if it's like a, you know, the folk tale of like, it only takes, it's like eating a baby carrot to bite off your pinky, but like your brain won't do it. Right. Because it's like self-harm so like the neurology can't overcome itself to destroy itself. Um, I think there was an element of that to it.

I mean, I was, of course, like very scared. And again, it's like it's not like I wanted to. It's not like I was going out of my way to do it. It was, I wasn't really. I was reluctant. I was scared. And so I wasn't eager by any means. And I didn't have the date circled and scheduled with a birthday cake waiting for me.

I was reluctant. And so, of course, I didn't create the force necessary to produce the damage that would have done it, thank God. Well, let's go back to the timeline, too, because we got off that and skipped forward for a second. So it was after the... championship game you were third team all American which was supposed to mean something but you didn't feel like you third team all big 10 I'm sorry you didn't feel like you were a good player and you kind of internalize this whole thing and I guess you're headed into your junior year at this point is that right and this I believe what you said 20 minutes ago was that that that was when it's not like

it was the first time in your life you had that ideation but that was when it started to creep in that like you know what I'd rather not be here Yeah. No, because I mean, I mean, to speak very plainly. And again, I'd prefer to speak as plainly as possible because I think it removes any like room for deception or dishonesty. But like, I mean, I felt kind of like just bitch made layer. It's like I don't like you've, you've spent 21 years. Your parents have spent this money getting you. You're the agents, the agents, the coaches. Like, everybody had invested in me. Did you have a good relationship with your parents? Fantastic relationship. Like, I love my parents. So there was no, yeah, there was no like, um, I mean, I felt bad. But of course, then again, that's like the sort of like the persuasive demon of suicide is that a huge obstacle is people love me. The, the rebuttal to that. And I describe, you know, suicides like sort of like fighting like a mortal combat bot that like learns your moves and starts to like react to you like a noob cybot mortal combat. Like it's a ghost

that just learns your best techniques. And it makes mockeries of them. It just lapsed to. You thought that breathing technique was going to save your life. You thought that mantra was going to save your life. Like this thing has been here longer than you know, this power, this force, this like call of the void. And, you know, you really don't know until you...

And like, Kierkegaard says that, like, to learn sort of the grace of God, you have to wrestle in the infinite. And... To learn the grace of God. That's a paraphrase. Yeah, but he talks... It's a good paraphrase. Yeah, he talks about you, until you exhaust yourself of your own powers, you will rely on your own powers.

And that's why, you know, one of my favorite images is the story of Jacob going up on Penael, going up on the mountains. So Jacob in the Bible, this is in Genesis, Jacob is the second born twin to Abraham. No, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jacob and Esau. Esau's the red one, the firstborn twin. Jacob comes out second, snatching his ankle, grabbing his ankle as he comes out of the womb. So he's called the ankle snatcher or the righteous deceiver. He's the one who makes others stumble. And so he spends his whole life sort of as the second son. And so he has no birthright. He has no claim to the house, to the lineage. But he ends up tricking Esau. out of his birthright, Esau, tired after a hunt, he trades Esau a bowl of soup for his birthright, and then Isaac, who's now going blind, Esau's very hairy. So Jacob covers himself in animal furs to resemble his brother's hairy skin, covers himself in his scent, goes to his blind father and steals Esau's blessing. And so because he's sort of, he's the righteous deceiver, he deceives his family to earn this blessing.

And when they find out he's banished and spends years away from his family. and when he comes back, years past, he comes back and he goes up on this mountain and there waiting for him is the Elohim and so like a god angel. And I like to imagine just this sort of like, this aura, this celestial being, just sort of like sitting there, waiting there, smoking a cigarette. And Jacob gets up there and they start to wrestle. And it says they wrestle all night. and then Jacob and then the angel dislocates Jacob's hip and the angel tries to leave but Jacob says like I will not let you go. The angel says let me go. Jacob says I will not let you go until you bless me.

And so you've got this guy fighting on one leg telling God to blood. I'm not I'm not giving up. They've wrestled all night. The angel says what is your name? And here I think is a really beautiful image because Jacob, his name means the deceiver, the snatcher, the stumbler, the ankle snatcher. And he's had the pride to fight all night. But when confronted, and when the angel looks at him in the face and says, what are you? He confesses what he is. He says, I am Jacob. And then the angel, Elohim says, from now on, you will no longer be known as Jacob, but as Israel, he who fights with God. And so he redeems him. That's what the word redeem, redeem. He renames him. And so his name of the deceiver gets changed to he who fights with God. So his combat with the infinite becomes an affectionate

name. It becomes a kudos. And there's an interest and there's also another verse where he says, and Jacob says, then what's your name? And then the angel says, why do you ask my name and just leaves? And so there's this, it feels very sort of like older brothery where it's like, you know who I am, and then the angel leaves. And then Jacob goes, reconciles. And that becomes the 12 houses of Israel is his lineage. And so just I say all of that to reference. Yeah, so I think that's Gustav Dorei, one of his etchings. I love this guy.

He's got all the references. It's great. No, it's great. That guy, Gustav Dore, it's beautiful, right? Yeah. And just look like you see the struggle in him, and then the angels just plain-faced, in power, the higher ground. The art is so good that you can pick that up in a split second.

And so Jacob walks the rest of his days at the limp. And for me, I had a very similar story. So like to return to the junior season. And so, yeah, I resolved that like I'd rather die. Did you resent your coaches and the trainers and the people who were part of this program who were yelling at you so much and telling you what to do? No, no, no. And for the most part, it was just pure love. I mean, there's cases where, and honestly, like, you have to operate from forgiveness because, no, I don't.

You believe the intentions were good. For the most part, absolutely. And, like, even especially Coach Day. Coach Day, his father committed suicide. And so he was actually very initiative on, he was very initiated on treating this. I really do think, you know, talking about aggregors and, like, psychic entities, the, every Saturday, there is going to be a game with 100,000 people in the stadium. You're not stopping that. It's too big. It's too powerful. You could scream into the midnight sky or like go to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. You are not stopping ESPN College Game Day from coming to your town and fireworks going off, right? And so you can't play, like, what are you going to be mad about?

And I think maybe I realize this sort of like the futility of what I and that's what's crazy is like this this whole saga of me There's always gonna be somebody else wearing 76 there's always gonna be somebody else wearing the number and whatever And I think you know for a lot of times like so like so I told coach day You know I wanted to kill myself and so I said you know we're about a week away from opening against Minnesota and I tell them I I for your junior year Before my junior, yep. And again, this is, the plan is with swift harms, the gods cut short the follies of men. Remember that. I heard that one before, yeah. That's, I think it's like, fuck, Sophocles or something.

If it's not, you're fired. I'm fired. Yeah, and I think, I think that's Antigone. And so, with swift harms, yeah, so everybody has plans. my plan was junior year play all-American make money cool professional football player that was the plan and so that's that's the plan so I go and talk with coach day and um he's I say can we meet tomorrow he says he's probably thinking like how are we going to pick up Moscow or how are we going to pick up chop what you're like blitzes or whatever and I sit down and he's got his game he's whatever he's

busy and honestly like I kind of probably like ruin his day and I'm like I think about killing every time I go home I think about killing myself um And he didn't flinch. He sort of, you know, we quickly, he had, again, him being familiar with it. We put the things in place. What were those things? I started working with sports psychiatry and psychology. And we started having, we had a, you know, probably like every other day we were meeting.

My mom came up for a period. And I tried. So, like, we had that. Did you tell her? Yeah. My mom was actually, I left that out. I thought about killing myself. My first thing was, what do I do?

call my mom. I called my mom and I told her. And again, before you met with Coach Day. And I asked her what to do and she said, yeah, meet with Coach Day. And he handled it right away. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, he said, you know, if you feel this way, you should probably sit out today. And I said, like, coach, I felt this way for a long time. Um, the only difference is now you know about it. And so I tried to play, I think I practiced for like two more days or maybe it was just that day. Like, I just, I kept going. But again, it's so weird. Like, you want to talk about disillusionment once you

sort of like prepare to kill yourself it's just like now it's like someone screams at you and it's just like it's just noise it's just like this means nothing bro and so I was out of it and he knew that

so I ended up taking I ended up sitting out and I think at that time in my heart of hearts I knew I was done playing football but he still that's interesting so he got you help right away

but he still let you practice. Yes, but I insisted. That's what I'm saying. You insist. Either way, though. That's a little strange. No, I think, well, I think, well, to talk about care, and again, this was a huge point with my mom for a long time,

people still thought that, like, football was my outlet, as it had been my entire childhood. So they think that there's some other symptom. I'm depressed. So you didn't tell them that. You didn't tell them that. No, I didn't say why. I didn't say why.

It was just I want to kill myself. And I think, you know, it's stressed. It's stressed. It's the same way where it's like, it's stressful. Like, I mean, yeah, it's a stressful job. But it's not the job itself. It's the things that surround it. And I think, and that was why with, you know, from my mom for a long time, even afterwards, it took a lot of it. And I didn't, and I didn't realize this until we had this sort of like breaking. This is also fast forwarding, but there came a point where that was a long fall. And my mom and I kept arguing near the end of it where I was like, there was this failure to communicate

and there came a point where I said like I'm not going to come home for Christmas. I was so fed up because we were operating under two entirely different assumptions where I had made it my mind like I can't do this anymore. And she kept saying when you feel better, we'll get back to playing football. And so she, so I was trying to like escape from the madhouse. And she kept saying like you're going to get better and things are going to continue. And ultimately, you know, when I communicated, we eventually had the realization. that, you know, perhaps this is irrecoverable.

And that wasn't until after the fact. So I think everybody sort of was operating under that assumption. How were you doing in school at that time? 4.0. So the day after I, the day after I, like, cut my throat, like, I went to class. That's the gaiters, when we talk about the gaiters, that, like, go over your face. I would just, like, I just put that over my throat and just, like, I went to, I just continued, took my exams. Was that in the fall when you did that?

the fall. Yeah, so that was... So after the conversation with Coach Day? Yeah, so I took some time off. Um, and then again, we, there was the, after like four weeks, there was the talk of like returning to play. And, but again, like, I was just so out of it. I was like, it was just like in dream world that entire time where it's like, nothing felt real. What did you talk about with the psychiatrist? Um, how helpful was that? It was very helpful. I mean, I had world class, um, Candice and Joshua were my two, were my two people. Um, And again, a lot of that, and again, this is the function I serve to a lot of athletes who reached out to me is you just need, and this is why I love Nicaragua. Like, you want to talk to somebody who doesn't even know what the shape of a football is.

Because you get to the point where it's like everybody, again, Saturday. Everything goes down to Saturday. How do you feel it's about Saturday? Are you okay? Can you walk on this? that, Saturday. Everything is Saturday. This Saturday, are you good or not? Saturday. Saturday. And to just talk to people who it doesn't matter, that's when you can really start unpacking stuff. Because otherwise, everything is in preparation. It's very adrenal and sympathetic nervous system, and it's just action, and it's just survival. And you can't really, like, slow down to process things. And so if a thing is broken, it's just pure epinephrine. It's just, just it's just it's just it's beyond you you know um and so yeah it was extremely helpful and then

you know four weeks pass and i'm like sort of back and ironically i was i was like i was like i returned in the position of being like a backup guard um i was like in the second strings and i was honestly having so fun just practicing because then i was back to being a kid just playing football without any consequences because there's not the pressure of you having to perform on the right i was just like i was just playing ball on a beautiful like that was so that would have been October I was just playing I was playing football in October um leaves are changing it's 6 p.m. I get to try to downblock on my on my teammate what gave out his mic is he it's still out all right back we'll be we'll be right back we're gonna fix it

all right we're back we got the might fix now okay you had been saying like the leaves are changing you were having fun yeah you're playing ball like you're a kid and like you're a kid and like like, it's just now there's like there's no fans, there's no critics, there's no production. It's just, it's just football. And that I loved. But again, the problem had not been solved. Because I still, you know, I had more, I had more courage to harm myself and to kill myself than to say what was wrong, which is like a terrible irony. Did it feel like you almost had a band-aid on a bullet wound and you just couldn't see the wound? Yeah, I mean, that was, it was like the primordial crack like I had never addressed, you know, and I, and for me, I had always planned on like playing football, making a lot of money and then becoming a writer. Like, I always wanted the end game was to create things and art.

You wanted to be a writer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're in engineering school, but you want to be a writer. Yeah, I figured I would, like, do a degree that, like, I could get a job if I needed to, was the plan. So you didn't love, I was going to answer about that earlier, but I don't want to get you off the thought. You didn't love engineering. You were just really smart. I did. I did. love engineering. I love a lot of things. I did love it. I did love it. And I think engineering really informs my style as well in terms of, you know, it gave me the procedure. It gave me a way of looking at the world in terms of mathematical and theoretical, but also very practical. And I think, again, I think, again, it's all about what is practical because these theories, and I think that's where a lot of people get, like, messed up. It's like, in theory, ultimately, my philosophy now is about action. It's about what empowers me, what helps me move and progress and

self-actualize and self-overcome. And so, yeah, so I loved engineering. And it's sort of shaped how I, and I'm very proud to be to be able to say like mechanical engineering. Yeah, it's a nice flex. Yeah, a nice feather in the cap from the Ohio State University. While you're playing football, that's amazing. my best friends in college. It wasn't D1A. It was D1A. But, you know, same thing. Six and five hours. I would argue it's almost even harder for the smaller places because they have less support. Like we had lots of food, lots of medical, lots of like all that stuff. You've got guys who are like really, it's like a cigarette and a dream. And like it's like you just make it work. And like I have a huge amount of respect for the dudes who are playing with like half the funding that I got. You know, I was really like pampered and blessed. Well, I was just, it's a great point because like Ohio State has all these amazing resources.

But no matter how you crack it, I was always so impressed at how those guys were able to somehow balance their time and like go to class, do well in school at the same time and like even have fun a little bit too. Because it's like, you know, it teaches you a lot about life. It definitely prepares you for a lot of things. Even though you have your whole schedule made for you and all that and you're on. kind of the robotic like, okay, this time I do that. The ability, especially doing a degree like mechanical engineering while you're doing this to like put your brain in multiple places and be able to lock in, that definitely serves you very well in the real world. It was actually, it was also a blessing as like also. Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of

your life? You know the same way you can skip an ad. I get it. I'm Siaia and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem. And that's why I think it's great to have diverse buckets at any stage in life because it also provided a great amount of cope where if something was going wrong in one bucket, I could just compartmentalize and say like, at least I have this. And at least I have this. So at least if you have two of those, I think that's, I think that's

I mean, that's why you have like two feet. Like, if you can just put your weight on one thing until another thing gets back together, then you can keep, like, moving the unit forward. So, but yeah, so engineering, and then we were saying, what were we talking about? Fall leaves changing. Well, we were talking about, so you went to Coach Day,

you told him this, you were, then you got hooked up right away with the psychiatrist. But still, there were things, I hadn't made the confession yet, which I think was still. You hadn't made the confession yet, right, where I had to admit to myself that I can't do this anymore.

And so thank God because it got to the point where everybody's operating under the assumption that everything is okay. Because that's what it looked like. And I'd gotten very good at hiding that. And, you know... They're operating under the assumption that everything's okay even after you walk into the office and say, I'm thinking about doing this. Well, I mean that. I don't mean that to say that dismissively. I think one to also say that at a high achieving place, everybody's kind of like heady.

Everybody's like, everybody's kind of like anxious and anal and everybody's like on edge. And again, that's one very sympathetic because it's like, if I don't play well, people get fired. If somebody doesn't coach well, money's a lot. Like there's always this like bottom line. A friend of mine who I'll keep names in this. So you're there when you got recruited by Meyer, you're there for Coach Day. But obviously like very similar as far as what I've heard like on it kind of style. a friend of mine worked on the staff for a year, I believe it was 2017.

And when he got back, he said it was unbelievable, like how organized and what a machine Ohio State is. He said, Urban's got one year left. He said that at what year? He said that after 2017. Oh, yeah. And after the next season, he stepped down. And I was like, why do you say he has one?

Now, he had stepped down to Florida before, obviously, with that heart problem. So why did you say it was one year left? He's like, no human being can keep up that intensity. You can't, dude. And again, that's why I say, I keep bringing up the topic of, like, the agregor where it's like, that's when they say, like, on terms of, like, vampurism and, like, things like corrupting your body. And, like, you want to talk about, like, the, it's just not sustainable. And it will consume your, it will consume your life.

And, like, for me, it almost did, like, consume my life. Like, I almost became a sacrifice to it. And, but, yeah, so, like, I'm still. playing, we're still, we're still, we're still, I haven't confessed to myself that I can't keep doing this anymore and thank God because that's when I sort of started to self-harm and do things to myself. And I, and for me, self-harm was sort of like the equivalent of like, me taking my, again, like in terms of destruction, destruction of property. It's the equivalent self-harm is the equivalent of like sending a ransom note with a pinky to where it's like,

I've got this person, I'm willing to harm this person if my demands aren't met. But of course, I still haven't really voiced my demands yet. So I'm just miserable, depressed, harming myself, not playing football well. I'm still freaking out about school because I'm thinking if this works out, I still want to be a Rhodes Scholar. That'll be a funny story. And thank God on the topic of Jacob having his hip to pop out of place. My second week back, we're playing Maryland. And I get thrown in.

and the best thing that ever happened to me was I tore my PCL in half. And this physically incapacitated me to where I could not, I couldn't, I physically couldn't play anymore, which then, because of that being immobilized, I now had the freedom to just fully self-assess and perform the diagnostics and figure out what's going on. And because of that, you know, I, through spring ball, so the season ends and there's just this recurring through the media like where is Harry Miller what's wrong with Harry Miller and it was thank God you know coach day was was fantastic and kept it quiet and like you know didn't spill any tea or whatever um and we're asking that and even though you tore your PCL in half like I would well because

I was well I was missing before then I came back so I was supposed to be the starter yeah went missing for four weeks without any explanation came back two weeks as a backup and then was missing again and so and even in class I would show up and like people would ask me like what's wrong with me So there's just all of this era of mystery as I was trying to like get my head together. That's not helpful. It's not helpful. And then spring ball starts to occur. So now we're doing offseason training.

And for me, offseason training was my favorite time of year because again, it's it's underground. And there's no, there's no expectation. There's no eyes. It's just hard, lifting hard weights, running and training with your team. And like, those are the guys I loved. And guys had voted me like as a as an offseat. season leader. And so I had like a unit of guys I was responsible for. And long story short, you know, I ended up realizing like when spring ball was starting to come back around and they

were putting out the helmets and the shoulder pads, like holding those items like burned my skin. I just and I couldn't bring. I'm like, I can't do this again. I can never do this again. And that's when I knew I had to quit. But I wanted to see, I wanted to see the off season through. and so I kept, even though I knew I was going to stop playing, I finished the offseason, but didn't want to stick around because I didn't want to give any of my teammates the false impression that I could fulfill a role that I knew I couldn't. Is this 2022 now? This would have been 2020 now, yeah.

And so 2022, I make the decision to retire. Did you go to Coach Day and tell him? Yeah, we had that whole talk and like... What do you say? He was supportive. He was supportive. I mean, I don't, I remember like my parents being there, Candice and Josh being there. And, you know, it was sort of, I mean, I was sort of beyond again.

Like, I had been through the critical point where it's like, this doesn't really matter. It's more. I'm like, I'm done. But of course, now people, spring balls come around and people are still asking like, where am I? What's wrong with me? People were speculating, you know, it's so funny. And this just goes to show like how silly the world is.

But like, as I was missing in spring, you know, there was this one guy in particular who was like, right, I remember he wrote an article where he said, you know, does Harry Miller still have a spot on the team? He was like, Spatling, you know, there's young guys coming in. Like, does he even have a role on the offensive line anymore? And then, because there's still chatter, I end up releasing a letter just explaining I wanted to kill myself. I'm not playing football anymore. And that was like the retirement letter. And, and that was like, that went on my Twitter. And then like shortly after that, you know, I was. like supposed to give a speech and like that same person who's like questioning if I have a role in the team is now writing an article that says like Harry Miller said to give a brave presentation. And it's just it would have been a shame to, I always think of like the song Dirty Laundry by Don Henley.

People just love dirty laundry and they love things that bleed and they love to get their teeth and things. And, you know, it would have been a shame to have succumb to that. And thankfully I didn't. But yeah, that was sort of, that's sort of the football saga. And I, and in my memoir, I emphasize this phrase a lot in the final sort of like epilogue, I am not the only one. People give a shit because I was good at football. But there are so many guys who have been, like, I mean, I know guys who, you know, they come in with the same prophecies and they leave with, like, nerve damage in a joint. One guy is like sticking up people and like getting arrested two years down.

There's just like there's just a slew of there's just like this messiness and there's just this you know, you don't see the triage and you don't see the shoot, the garbage shoot on the way out of this industry. And if anything, I say this to a lot of like young aspiring athletes or musicians. I think, you know, in any entertainment industry, you are, you are. product. You are you are ground beef and saran wrap. Like you are a thing that people want to eat. And if you don't develop

the resilience and the awareness of yourself, you can fall for just dumb shit. And, you know, that's a lesson I had to learn the hard way. And that's, you know, that's when I tried to impress upon a lot of, like, you know, I've spoken since then at a lot of high schools or other colleges. And to be fair, I think a lot of especially, as far as I know in college sports, I think there's a huge effort to create environments that's very healthy and that cares for its athletes. I think there's an incentive.

Like, if you have healthy players, you're going to have good product. You're going to have good play. But yeah, it's just, that's sort of my story. And then... Can I actually read this letter you wrote? Oh, God, I haven't seen this in a minute. Yeah, this is... I think there's a typo in it near the end.

Who cares? It was really good. I'm all about typos, apparently. All right, so this is from March 10th, 2022. I am medically retiring. I would not usually share such information. However, because I've played football, I'm no longer afforded the privilege of privacy,

so I'll share my story briefly before any articles continued to ask what is wrong with Harry Miller. That is a good question. It is good enough question for me to not know the answer, though I have asked it often. Prior to the season last year, I told Coach Day of my intention,

to kill myself. He immediately had me in touch with Dr. Candace and Dr. Norman, and I received the support I needed. After a few weeks, I tried my luck at football once again with scars on my wrist and throat. Maybe the scars were hard to see with the wrist tape up. The scars were hard to hear through the talk, shows, and interviews. They are hard to see, and they are easy to hide, but they sure do hurt. There was a dead man on the television set, but nobody knew it. At the time, I would rather be dead than a coward. I'd rather be nothing at all than have to explain everything that was wrong. I was planning on being reduced to my initials on a sticker on the back of a helmet. I'd seen people seek help before. I had seen the age-old adage of how our generation was softening by the second, but I can tell

you my skin was tough. It had to be. But it was not tougher than the sharp metal of my box cutter. And I saw how easy it was for people to dismiss others by talking about how they were just a dumb college kid who didn't know anything. But luckily, I am a student in the College of Engineering and I have a 4-0 and whatever accolades you might require. So maybe if somebody's hurt can be taken seriously for once, it can be mine. And maybe I can watch and vouch for all the other people who hurt but are not taken seriously because for some reason pain must have free requisites. A person like me who supposedly has the entire world in front of them can be fully prepared to give up the world entire. This is not an issue reserved for, this is not an issue reserved for the

far and away. It is in our homes. It is in our conversations. It is in the people we love. I am not angry. I had to lose anger because I did not know if God would forgive me if I went to him in anger. I did not know how the host of hosts would respond to my untimely arrival and I did not want to tempt him. So in my sadness, I lost my anger and learned many things. I learned what color blood is through the tears in my eyes. I learned that the human ear can distinguish between the two when their drops hit a tiled floor. But above all, I learned love, the type of love that can only be placed together by the mechanism of brutal softness. Sadness. And so I will love more than I can be hated or laughed at, for I know the people who are sneering need most the love that I was looking for.

The cost of apathy is life, but the price of life is as small as an act of kindness. I am a life preserved by the kindness that was offered to me by others when I could not produce kindness for myself. We ask, how could this have happened? But that single question cannot absolve us of all the questions that we might have asked while it was happening. I am grateful for the infrastructure Coach Day has put in place at Ohio State. and I am grateful that he is letting me find a new way to help others in the program. I hope athletic departments around the country do the same. If not for him and the staff, my words would not be a reflection.

There would be evidence in a post-mortem. God bless those who love, God bless those who weep, and God bless those who hurt and only know how to share their hurt by anger, for they are learning to love with me. I am okay. There is help always. Dumb Spiro's Spiro Sparrow, When I breathe, I hope.

Do you remember writing that? No, I mean, that's from my notes app. It's from your notes app. That's from my notes app. Man, you got a hard note sap, bro. I got a crazy note sap. Wow. I do got a crazy note set.

Yeah. Kind of dramatic. I mean, in retrospect, like I said, I'm a very dramatic guy. Do Spiro Sparrow while I breathe, I hope. That's like, while I breathe, I hope, that's one of my, like, just a motto that I love. But yeah, that was like in a note sap. that I drew up one morning before going to Nicaragua

I posted, I think, on a Thursday and then flew to Nicaragua the next day. And yeah, I just had to put out a presser of why I wasn't playing and that was it. And yeah. Obviously, it takes time to heal and that's not an overnight thing.

It's certainly not something that when you press post on something it all goes away at all. but when you did put that out there was there some sort of weight that you felt everything got like a little bit lighter? Absolutely, yeah. I was, oh dude, I remember I was playing college

duty world at war when I posted it. And I posted it, and then I remember I got the first, I think, notification I got from it was a text from an old high school teammate. And he just said, I love you. And it was a lot of, It was a lot of that. Somebody posted something that was really funny.

They put the meme that was like, um, that's too long. I ain't reading that. Congrats or sorry though. Oh, that's hilarious. Um,

but no, and I, it felt good. I meant it. Um, and, uh, yeah,

I posted that and then left the country for a week. And, um, yeah, and then I got like somebody, they invited me to be on the today show as I was out of the country, came back, today's show.

That was a lot of crying on camera. on camera. And yeah, and so it was a privilege. And again, I am lucky. I have spent so much time. Like, it's all like, ha, ha, cool now. But it's heartbreaking. So I've interacted with so many parents whose children ended what I didn't.

And so it's like, you know, I can get my flowers. And it's, it's a blessing. to be here and to talk about it. But I'm very fortunate. I'm very lucky. And yeah, after that, that's when I could really just become something different. And how did you, how did you, first of all, would you say you're in a really good headspace today?

I am now. When I first moved to New York, I wasn't. I spent, so I graduated. So all this. I graduated. in 2023. I spent that last year putting together my applications for the Rhodes and Marshall Scholarship, so this would be to go to Oxford. And so, like, anybody who doesn't know, like, anybody who doesn't know, the Rhodes Scholarship is this big deal, scholarship to Oxford, very limited, you know,

presidents get it, like, smart people get it. And from, ever since high school, teachers were telling me, like, oh, you should try for the Road Scholars. Like, that's what smart people do. Again, other people wanted it, so I wanted it. And I was like, that's what I'm going to do. And I ended up being a finalist for it. And Chicago, I interview for it, and it's just so surreal, man. I spent 10 years stressing and bitching about every single grade, perfect grades. Then, and it ends, you do a 25-minute interview. There's 16 people in your, there's, I think it's like 16 sections and 16 people each section in the country.

This was in Chicago, 15 other people were there. You've got all of the Ivy League people, like everybody's very impressive and God like that. like, no offense. Insufferable coffee hour because everybody's so smart. So it's like, it's like everybody's trying to like share facts. It's like everybody already knows the facts.

And so it's just like, okay, whatever. And you have that weird thing where it's like, oh, I hope it really works well for you. Not as well for me though. But so we have a coffee hour, talk to other students. And then you get a 25 minute interview with the Rhodes panel,

which is like, I think previous Rhodes finalists. And then the next day, they wrap up some more interviews, and then they sort of just spend the day waiting, they deliberate, and then they come out and they line you up like it's a, like it's a, you're picking a kickball team or like it's a firing squad. They line you up against the wall. They say two names, and then those are the two people, and then you go home. So the 10 years of dreaming and fretting and doing all this stuff just ends with two names

that aren't yours. And I remember being relieved afterwards, though, and I was like, I remember I had made, friends there with a guy who was from West Point. And, um, you know, I remember I said something about the poem if by Rudyard Kipling about, you know, seeing like, you know, if you can, if you can, and that's like a beautiful long poem, but essentially about if you can like risk drawn a chance and like lose all your earnings and just continue on. And then he brought up, you know, a dream deferred, but by Langston Hughes, I guess. Um, and it's just sort of one of those things where it's like, left, got a deep dish pizza, and then went back home the next day, right? And then life continues. And so

very strange, you know, that scholarship, and honestly, like, thank God I didn't go there. Well, I think, I think, I think what I wanted to do was too big, even for like Oxford. Like, the vision I had, it was incoherent. And I know even at times when I speak now, I can be, I can be incoherent and I had these adults and I was still just a kid I had these adults ask me what I wanted to do and I'm like talking fast and I'm rambling and I'm like looking schizophrenic and there's just sometimes like you with the way people look at you you know that you know they're not picking up what you're putting down and they can't see the world the way you do they can't see the way that I do and again like I think especially academia becomes this like MLM of just like I'll agree with what you say

then you'll agree with what I say and we'll make a bunch of money getting grants and getting donations and it'll become this just huge like circle jerk and we'll all just like tell each other how smart we are and I told them I remember they asked me like I think I was proposing to study political theory um because I wanted to do like policy or political theory to sort of do policy around like tech and like social media at the time as it pertains to mental health and all this other stuff and to be fair like I think my ideas weren't fleshed out yet because they were so young and like sprawling um but uh you know they asked, I wanted this pretty political theory and they asked, you know, they asked essentially

what I wanted to do if I would want to, want to especially get into policy or like, do what? And I said, you know, I want to be a writer. I want to comment on it because I think I can do more from like outside of the system if I can just critique and write. And so doing, right. Oh, for sure. And then that's exactly what I'm doing right now. And, you know, there's a song by Third Eye Blind called Graduate. And it's, you know, essentially, you know can I look at strangers that I meet can I get my punk ass off the street cross your fingers I'm going to knock it all down to the bastards looking down on me your whipping boy calamity cross your fingers I'm going to knock it all down so there's he they wrote that song in retaliation

to like a music industry that was kind of like blueballing them and not letting them enter the industry and I think that's become a huge like I love I love that song it's from their like debut album can I graduate? Like, am I allowed to graduate? And with that roads, with that thing, I realized whatever I really wanted could not be given to me. It had to be taken. If it was going to be real. Because again, freedom is a no. Freedom is like, I'm going to do this. Like, if you want me to not do it, you'll have to stop me. And so I think about, like, whether it's, like, Napoleon, like, taking the crown, like, putting it on his own head or even, like, I don't know if you know this story. Alexander the Great before his conquest goes to the...

Have you heard this? He goes to, I guess Delph, he goes to the Temple of Apollo to speak to the Oracle and get his prophecy, and they say it's closed today for a holiday or whatever. And so he goes inside and he grabs the Oracle by her hair and pulls her out. And he says, tell me my prophecy. And she's like in this fear, she says, like, you are invincible. And so he grabs just the image of like grabbing the Oracle by the hair or like later he slices the gaudy and not, there's this action is the only solution. And it wasn't going to be found

in a scholarship. It wasn't going to be found in like asking politely. It had to, it had to come from within myself. And so it was a, it was a blessing. You strike me as a guy who, if I told you a rule to something, and it made sense to you, it made logical sense. You'd be like, sounds good. Yeah. All right. You tell me not. to walk down the street and kill a random, dude, yeah, that sounds good to me. But if I give you a rule that's just been for some reason accepted, that doesn't make any sense, even if it's a bunch of smart people that have accepted, your brain, short-sad-i, this is a compliment, short-circuits and goes, no, no, no, no, hold on, that's all bullshit. I can't do that. You want her story?

Please. High school, high school, senior year, spring semester, or like my last, my last few months at high school. We were, I was a football player. We were friends with the lacrosse guys and sorry to hear that. Right. No, they were they were they well okay this will be good. We ended up. We ended up He does look like Joe Burrow. It's kind of freaking me out. Complement. I told him to did you do it? I told him you I want to grow him to grow up mutton chops. Yeah I just uh a guy just told me that I look like a guy who played carnage from Venom too, which is just... Woody Harrelson, yeah.

That's less of a compliment. Yeah, I know. Shout out Woody, just, you know. I'm sorry. You were telling this story about hanging out with the lax pros. The lax pros, yeah. That's right. And so my football buddies and I, we wanted to make,

I think if there's a word to describe us, or maybe even me, it's like, belligerent. We wanted to start a student section and get a rowdy. And so we did, and I've got like a shofar, which is a kudu horn, it's an animal horn that is like you can like blow into it. Oh, like a viking shit. Yeah. So like I had a horn that I brought to the games that I would blow, like a vuvuzuela, pretty much. And so we're just heckling and we're talking shit and we're like the other parents are getting pissed at us and we're chaining like daddy's money at the private schools and like we're doing all this stuff. And just being like

real assholes. And then our own admin at B. Euford comes up to me. And they say, Harry, you can't bring that horn in here anymore. And we were having a great season. We have like a record season thus far. And that just didn't sit right with me. So I printed out the GHSA bylaws. I don't know if this is still right. 2019, it would have been the 2019 bylaws. I'm pretty sure it was 2.76. It said no artificial. Sorry, that's just in between the cords right there. That's why I have it there. It said no artificial noise makers are allowed in GHSA games. And I argued that a horn is not an artificial noise maker.

It's an organic noise maker. It's an amplifier of my voice, of my lips, of my ambissure. So actually, of my ambissure. I was in a medical band. So that's like, umbissure is the mouth position when you're playing like a musical instrument. I played euphonium baritone. Learn something new every day. So it wasn't an air horn.

It wasn't an artificial noise maker. It was an organic noise maker. It was an amplifier of what was my voiceover. voice. And so actually, I highlighted it, laminated it, brought it in, and we rocked it for the rest of the year. And I think we, like, lost in the final four, and then we won state championship the next year. So that was sort of like paving the way for, yeah, so I, yeah, tyranny. Not a fan. Yeah. Not a fan. Yeah, I got it that. But you, so you don't get this Rhodes scholarship and you describe it as relief. Yeah. And so you go home a couple days later and you kind of get on with life.

but was there a point where that kind of set in where you did look at the gravity of like, damn, I really was actually trying for that thing for like 10 years and now it's over. Absolutely. Well, yeah, because it sort of fills me with like, it's very strange. And this is also being like a former college athlete where you go from thinking, and like this is a meme

when a guy has a bad game where it's like, send the resumes, bro, like become an accountant, bro. Just put the fries in the bag, bro. You're thinking like, I've got to get a J-O-B or I'm going to starve to death. And so I go from probably the two cushiest professions in the world, professional athlete and professional academic, to no prospects. Is that how you looked at at no prospects? Brain like that, resume like that? You thought no problem?

Well, unfortunately, I'm very bad at application processes because, again, being widespread, people, people viewed as incoherent. So I ended up deciding to move to New York City. So my buddy Cooper lives here. I figure I'm very sort of like Jack Kerouac on the road or like Herman Melville, Moby Dick, like, right? I still believe like in America and I'm like, I'm just going to, I'll go to New York City.

If I need a job, I'll go to the docks. If I need, I'll go to the firehouse. I'll get a job. I'll do something. I'll be like, you know, like Ishmael goes down and gets a spot on the pick quad. And so I believed in it and I go there. And I spend a year.

year jobless. In New York City. And the only thing I got was like a minimum wage opening a crunch fitness at 4 a.m. Which like even that fell through. So I was like sending LinkedIn applications which might as well, you might as well just like burn. You might as well just like shove it up your ass at that point, you know? And dude, like that was that was because even there was sort of a victory lap after like Oh, Harry tried to kill himself.

Now he's a nice guy. And he's like lost weight and he's... Whatever. He's a nice guy. But like stuff like that. It's crazy. But no, I could have easily... It's sort of like...

Listen, dude. Oh, that delivery was impeccable. When somebody... There is an industry in trying to kill yourself. There's an industry in it. Yes. You can make money off of like... You can like...

I could have become a gumball machine where you give me a quarter, I'll come to your pep rally, and I'll tell kids not to kill themselves. Do you think there's a value in people who do that with the right intentions, though? Absolutely. But I think for me, like, I wanted more. And I think, and those people end up, like, expanding that to become more holistic. Sure. But essentially, it was basically like, it was basically like somebody trying to, like, pull my plushy string. Right.

be like, say the line. Say the like, I wanted to kill myself. Well, it's back to your original issue was that you felt like a product of one thing. And now it's like, so now there's like, so now there be a product of the thing that got me out of the thing. And that's why I left, that's why I had to leave just Columbus because it's like, it's a pretty small town. Like it's like, it's Ohio State. It's Scarlet and Gray. And so even then, like, there was, there was schematics there that could have kept me in sort of like the nice residential area, suburbs of Ohio, show up to fundraisers. be a cardboard cutout, tell people why killing yourself is bad. And that could have been, that could have been my, but I wanted more than that. And I knew I was more than that,

which is why I moved to New York City, so I could just sort of like anonymize myself again. And so I did that. And yeah, first year jobless. And that was, that was a real moment because I remember a year passes. And this was before NIL. So I didn't, I don't have like millions of I didn't leave with pre-NIL. Pre-N-I-L. So if I had stayed another year, I could have Buku De Nero, but I just, I couldn't do it. And so I left with, there was a stipend. So you get like, you know, I think pre-N-I-L, you were probably getting maybe like $1,500 a month to, like, cover rent and stuff like that.

Maybe like a little bit more than that if you were like, if you had to like pay rent or something. Sure. Which is perfect for if you're a football player, but like, So I had saved up some stuff, and I essentially lost it all in that first year of, like, believing in New York City, and I couldn't find a job. And like, I'm losing money. Surprise you didn't lose that in one month. Dude, it was close. Like, it was like, I mean, it was just so bad. And like, a year passes.

And this was crazy. So I have a moment where, you know, I'm like lying in bed in an afternoon. And there's nothing, like an unemployed summer afternoon in New York City where you're air conditioning. conditioning sucks and your roof is leaky and there's fucking bugs coming out of your sink and the world's falling apart and like I just I laid there thinking to myself like if I if I lay here starve and die nobody's gonna check on my buddy on my body until it starts to smell or the rent is due and I was like I then I better fucking do something and like that when I realized that because again even like that was beautiful because all the veneer was stripped away even with like

like football. Like football is sort of like a pretend world. Um, academia is sort of a pretend world. Rent in New York City, real world. And that was like a really, I'd never worked a summer job, you know, I had like, because I always played football, which is, it's simulation. And, um, yeah, so I was like running out of money, um, rents do. I got to up the lease and the lease is getting up 60 bucks a month. So it's like, are you in or you out? I, my mom is saying like, and she's, she's lovely. And she's like, you can, you know, you can come home if you need to regroup, but I knew I couldn't. I knew I didn't want to. I didn't believe in that. Why didn't you believe in that? Just because I knew I was supposed to be in New York City, like, I still believed in the

dream and I was so delusional, and especially like on the backside of like suicide, it's like, what do I have to lose? And especially when you're laying in bed and it's like rents due, if I don't get it, I'm fucked. What is there to lose? Like, let's, let's figure something out. And I still believed. And I, and again, that's, Ohio's, state have everything, didn't believe in it, couldn't do it. New York City didn't have anything, believed. That's the belief was the difference. And like for me, like I loved it. I was terrified and I would like, I couldn't sleep at night. And so new leases coming up and then I meet a crazy poet and Union Square named Jim. And he gives me, he gives me an E Ching like fortune reading.

and it essentially says like, it just says endure. And it says like, wait. And like I have like the pictures of the page. But like he picks out these coins and it just like endure, wait, the season is coming. Right? And that was like the May when lease changed. Like lease is changing at the end of the month. Are you in or are you out?

And I said endure and I was like, okay, I'm in. And then June, there's a bodybuilder in my neighborhood named Moses who's just like Jacked Brolic Black dude. It's me who says, hey, I've got a buddy opening a gym in the Upper East Side. You want a job. And like that's it. And now it's like, now I survived, right? And it's like LinkedIn wasn't shit.

All you can do is just go out in the street. Ooh. Dief just pulled this up from Henry Miller. It is now the fall of my second year in Paris. I was sent here for a reason I have not yet been able to fathom. I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I'm the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, I thought I was an artist.

I no longer think about it. I am. There are no more books to be written. Thank God. Banger. Yeah, which one is that? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got a crazy style.

Yeah. There's something in that, though. Like, you know, relating it to, like, what I've done over the last six years, I haven't had a second, really, to breathe about it. Like, it's just been six and a half. years of the grind and that's a that's a decision I made and I don't regret that at all and I love what I get to do. I'm trying to get rid of some of the other stuff I have to do around it, but you know, that'll come with time. At the same time, I've never had a lot or anything like that by any,

by any respect. I mean, my whole adult life before I did this, I lived paycheck to paycheck. And then, you know, I came and did this and I didn't have any money for three years and now it's like the money just goes into the business. But sometimes when I get really stressed about the amount of money we have to spend on this just to be able to fucking get this thing growing. I'll think about the fact that there's going to be a moment where when I've accomplished the things I want to accomplish whenever that is, hopefully like I have a great life and a great family and I'm very happy. But I'm going to look back on the times when the struggle was there or when you were really

worried about how much money you had to spend on this thing. And if it was going to work out or something like that and be like, damn, I'd give anything just to go back and fucking feel that. Yeah, well, that's what's crazy. And, like, I always think, like, Walt Whitman says, these are the days that must happen to you. And I think about, you know,

Ohio, there were times that Ohio State were, it was, like, the most, it was the scariest and hardest days of my life. But all I remember is, there's just the nostalgia, the nostalgia, the pain of home. There's just this, like, yearning and this, just this beautiful memory.

And I think about even here, like, and that's a big, and the Aeneid, like Virgil, Virgil says that when he, he's ship, or not, Aeneas says that when he's shipwrecked in Carthage, um, I think it's like, Fersan Ettaic, Oli, Memonesse, Yuvavit, like, perhaps one day you will look back even on these times and you will laugh. And to think that these will be, and I think I said in the TED talk, um, these will be laughable times. And, um, I think all you, all you

can do is just endure and wait and like, kind of Monte Cristo, Edmund, uh, Alexander Dumas, um, he just says it comes down to wait and hope. Esperar, like, those are the same word, doomspirro, spiro, while I breathe, I hope. All you can do is just wait and just stay in the pocket. And, you know, every, and that's why I think, like, that's why exhaustion is such a blessing. Like, when you wrestle with it all night and you leave exhausted, the bright side of exhaustion is that you can't move anymore. And it's like this Chinese finger trap. And when you stop moving on a Chinese finger trap, it just becomes like this blanket. And you're just there and you're just waiting it out. And, yeah, I just think all of it, you know, I just think all.

all you can do with the only the it's only endurance and it's just waiting and um something's got to give eventually and uh yeah you just sort of have to pit your will against against against against the will against just the circumstance and yeah for me yeah did you have a moment where you crossed the rubicon where you realized oh shit i want i want to be here i don't you know in terms of life in general I think a lot of that has occurred over the past year of just speaking more. Because again, for me, I thought the only reason people would care about what I said is if it would be involved with my death. I thought they'd only care about a suicide note or if I talked about my suicide. But now, like in the past year, all I do is talk about life and vitality and strength and beauty and overcoming.

And with that, you know, like, Hades can be conquered. Death is conquered. It's just life is so beautiful. And I think that's when I realized, like, I want to be here. And like, but, you know, it's very funny. Like, I remember, like, during one of the worst times or something, you know, my mom was just having trouble with what was happening with me. And I think she saw, like, a psychic or something. and the psychic told my mom,

and this could have been just like a gas station psychic, this could have been whatever, but told my mom that I wasn't going to commit suicide in my life. And I remember being just so enamored with the thought that something else was going to kill me except for myself. And I just thought that was like a treat that I wouldn't be my enemy

and that I would have something. And I really like, that's a huge, like, this, just this philosophical idea of, you define yourself and what denies you. And so for me, I'm just trying to impose myself against the life I want and to just expand myself and to feel the friction. And I think about like life from the first like prokaryotic cell creating a membrane. And again, the membrane is a no. It says, this is what I am. I am not my environment. And then it develops and it develops. There's the nucleus. Then you have like animals. And it's just like from the dawn of time. Like life is.

saying like, no, fuck you. I want to live. Fines away. You can't eat me. It finds a way. Like, I'm going to have my way. And I just think that's really beautiful. And for a long time, I felt very subject to circumstance and to other things. And I think, and that's what's really dangerous because when you feel powerless, and I've written about this elsewhere, you know, it's really easy. You want to, and I reaffirm this, you want to, you want to excuse yourself, excuse like excous or remove cause from yourself but when you remove cause from yourself you become a doorstop you become this inanimate object um so you have to accuse yourself you have to fill yourself with causation and action and vigor and it's very hard like that's the first step of like me

becoming something that wanted to live was um was accusing myself when i looked at my bed and I realized like if I die like nobody's going to save me and I think especially for young dudes like that's a huge, like, that's sort of like, that's the Rubicon moment when you realize like nobody's coming, there is no cavalry. Like, you better figure out a way to do this. Um, because nothing's changing. I think that's when the chemistry really starts to change in your brain. And, uh, at least that's when it changed for me. Why do you think, you know, your story's obviously been very well outlined today and you're going through all the steps that kind of got you there and like your personal experience. But why do you think we have,

you know, just a kind of heavy word to use, but such like a widespread epidemic in the younger generations of like a lot of young men, especially who are struggling and who have these thoughts more commonly than they have in the past. Well, I think a lot of, I think a lot of, a lot of the veneer and social trust that our parents and their parents had has eroded. I think there's very low confidence in the fabric of like what we have. Yes. I think about I was talking with, it's crazy, you know, when you think about just the way things are, so are you familiar with the, are you familiar with like the Thomas Jefferson quote about like the blood of tyranny must be? So who do you think he's talking about when he says that, like King George in the war for independence?

Well, the quote was the price of freedom is like the blood of tyrants or the tree of liberty must be wet with the blood of tyrants. it's it's mulch or like it's like it's right i don't think he was necessarily just talking about them no i think i was he said it in a reference to and i was just talking with a friend about this in reference to shay's rebellion which occurs 1796 1786 like yeah 1786 like yeah 1786 like right before the constitution is written and so as the constitution is being written you have Americans going to war against essentially Washington and the young like not even formed federal government. And Thomas Jefferson is speaking about his own,

like the tree of liberty is there. The blood of tyrants is there. So it's like even there's something just so deeply, beautifully pessimistic about the Jeffersonian philosophy right there. Shea's rebellion being like, you know, a veteran comes back and like he's been fighting a war and he can't pay on debts, right? And so even at the birth, there's this pessimism and this perpetual struggle.

There's this fight. So that's never, that never goes. away. And I think, again, for me, I grew up in a post-9-11 world. And I think over the past 25 years, you see the American hegemony, you see dissolve, you see stories not add up over time. And I think a lot of young people, and that's how I felt, you know, whether it was American Pine College Football or Oxford University, just this, I kept a asking like, can I graduate and the adults are like, we'll get back to you. And for me, and I think, you know, there is this, there is, you know, so again, there's this atomization. And atomization,

and this occurs both like when you have, there's the extreme American individualism of like capital and money and just making money, which when everybody acts as individuals, that's also atomizing. And on the other hand, you have like extreme, the notion of like collectivism and identitylessness, both result in a sort of atomized person. I think that's, I think that's a pressure that weighs on people feeling individualized. Um, but you know, there's, I was reading recently, when it talks about like sort of like, in the elite theory, and talking about just sort of like the state of like, say like, where we are in like in our country with like young people, um, there's, revolutions typically occur. So in elite theory, like mass movements, mass populist movements

don't create change. It's typically elites use massive groups to dispossess other elites and like steal the elites place. And, um, you know, there's this from... Say that again. Elites use massive groups to displace other elites. So it's not, so every, every mob, like whether it's the French Revolution or 1917, like whatever, the people are mass, they're matter. They, they, it's inertia that moves and displaces other things. But the, cooking now. Right. Okay, here we go. So the other elites displaced the other elite. and so I'll try to combine a couple of I there's there's two YouTubers I really like Nima Parvini and Carlos Perona I think who goes by like your Robos on YouTube

Nima Parvini I just read something recently of his about elite theory which is like where I'm getting a lot of these ideas but in elite theory so there's essentially two groups there's the ruler and the ruled so he references like Mosca Paredo and and juvenile are the big, at least people that I remember from his book. And so there's the theory of like the ruler and the ruled and like the law of oligarchy where a organized minority will always control an unorganized majority. And so democracy proves a great smokescreen to just move. It's just mass.

And you can, especially through media, if you can control media and opinion-forming mechanisms, that mass will largely contour to what, elite want. And so the ruler and the ruled, within the ruler there's the governing elites and the non-governing elites which create this huge, yeah. This is the guy. Yeah, so I really like, I've been reading a lot of his stuff recently and I found it really interesting. And because he talks a lot about elite theory, which is essentially that it's pessimistic. It's that largely change doesn't occur from like large groups but from elites and elites use large groups. I think he's on to something.

Right. And so, yeah, and this is largely, I guess, from the start of the 20th century, Wilfred Pareto, Mosca, Juvenile. And so the ruling class, and especially now, you develop what was called, I forget who said this, Aaron Reich maybe. There's this, I think it's a couple. They termed it by the professional managerial class PMCs. The bureaucracy, so like power, the goal of power is to consolidate itself and centralize itself.

And so among the rulers, you have the rulers and the ruled, and so Pareto has this theory of the circulation of elites and so the elites as any like living organ they have to circulate talent and so typically is this the same Pareto's principle I have no idea I don't know what is that isn't that 80-20 theory I just make that up Pareto's principle is that 80-20 is this the same I've no idea this would be Wilfredo Pareto it is that's named after that's the same guy all right yeah I keep cooking. Look at that. Oh, sick. Okay. Yeah, this is a genius theory. It's basically saying that like 20% of results happen from 80% of it. I definitely fuck that up. But like, look it up. It's good stuff. Yeah, 20%. So yeah, so that's the elite theory. That's the elite theory. That's the elite theory. That's the small minority. It's like hitting his head against the table over here. Like, God damn it. The organized minority creates the effects that we see. And so he has the theory of this or the circulation of elites. And so the greatest threat to the elites are.

the best of the ruled class. So that would be the the top elites within the ruled class. So that would be, you know, you want to talk about, and especially like within, dude, like our system of like, is like a gerontocracy. Like, it's just old people. Like, it's just, it's very geriatric. And so there's this, and that's an old mythological structure of like generational war of Uranus, Saturn, the Olympians. Like, that is, there's a war between generations. And And so they circulate the elites, and the benefit is with the elites is that you skim the talent from the ruled class who would organize the ruled class to revolt against the elite. So you're able to sort of poach the talent from your ruled class by making them conform to your

standards. And similarly, when you combine that with juvenile, he has the high-low middle theory. So within that hierarchy of ruler and ruled, there's the central subsidiary and periphery. And the central power is the power. And in order to, again, the greatest threat is that middle, typically that, just that native block, that you're just your general, whatever, your general massive group. By appealing to a peripheral group, you can sort of squeeze, if you combine like the sort of the circulation of the elites and then high, low, low middle theory, you're just sort of squeezing this middle. group, which is just the pretty standard run-of-the-mill person or whatever within a society. Make 95% of people fight over 5% of the problems.

Right. And so what's, right. And so what's interesting is like, yeah, you're fighting nonsense. Your elites are being skimmed. And so, and I think Parvini asserts this, like in some of his essays, but, and it's probably stated elsewhere, like with an elite theory thinkers. But revolts occur when those top elite. elites within the ruled class are prohibited from entering the elite circle. And so... George Washington. Right.

And so you are... So you want to talk about like this sort of angstiness. I mean, that is the most dangerous feeling to like an incumbent power structure. And the way they resolve that is to empower a peripheral force to distract. Can you explain that to people with an example? Empower a peripheral force? Well, I think like, and then this is this is... from Carlos Peron, I think his name is,

Eropos on YouTube, and he has some video essays. He talks about Tiberius Gracchus, who, that was a huge, very sort of Shea's rebellion. So, like, he's got very rich oligarchs are eating up all of the land and dispossessing Native, like Romans who were veterans of the wars. And they would, so oligarchs,

taking up the land and they are leveraging them out with like really cheap slave labor. And so Gracus comes. And so that's your, so that's your subsidiary, the Romans. And then you've got the oligarchs, the central, and then the peripheral there through unethical slave labor, they're essentially entirely dispossessing your, your subsidiary, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, effort to give capital, to give land among the Romans, the veterans, because that gives them something to fight for. That gives them possession within their body.

And they assassinate him. The Senate assassinations him. And so that's the example he provides historically. But I think, you know, that's just like a lot of the squeeze. It's just a lot of, I think people don't realize, again, it's elite. theory is like very pessimistic. It's almost like hopeless. But I think people, and I guess that's the title there, like they need you angry.

Exactly. They need you angry. Because then you can't. And I think, and I think especially with a lot of dialogue, I view it, I don't know if you ever seen like a rugby match. Have you ever seen rugby? I mean, I've seen it like in passing. So like, if you, I played sevens when I first came here at Old Blue, shot out of old

Blue, I think they were national champions last year. Old Blue was like the club I played sevens four. So you went right into rugby in New York. Yes, but it didn't last long because it ended up being much of the same as football. I just couldn't keep doing it. But it was I had to like try it and I made good friends. But in rugby, if you advance the ball too fast and you don't have any help and you leave your help behind, then you have to give up possession of the ball.

And because you've left your help and nobody can like pick up the ball and so there's a turnover. And so I think similarly, like anger and being an articulate, it advances the ball without help. Like, you need to, and that's why, and that's just why I like writing and talking, because you can sort of, if you can articulate and make people aware of things, there is your help. And then you can slowly, like, you can sort of calmly educate groups of people. And, but yeah, if you just get angry, that's you being a freelancer. You advance the ball too fast. Congrats, like you moved the ball.

But now you got tackled. the ball is turned over. I think you have to do something with it. And that's the problem. This is the curse of humanity. The anger takes over when people don't step back. I think to get attention on something, you have to express, especially when something evil's happening or something that's very clearly wrong and people are getting hurt.

You have to express something emotionally such that people go, oh, maybe I should pay attention to this. The problem is our nature then lets us attract other people who are just going to do nothing but that and then we're incentivized to just keep doing that, keep on crashing out just over and over and over again, that then eventually it kind of drowns out in the noise where people are too much for me. But again, that's why that's like the whole like that's the whole like Prater principle where like it just sort of it's unorganized. And without unorganization, like that's why some metals aren't magnetic is because when it's magnetic, all of those dipoles are facing the same way. And so

the force is coherent and can move a body. Whereas an unmagnetized piece of metal, they've all got their dipoles. They've all got their atoms or whatever, but it's unorganized. And so it's just, it's inert. And so yeah, I think it's very important just that's, and that's why I think, I don't know, I think articulation. And I always think, like, I'm always amazed, that's why I love writing, because I think about, you know, just the kind of, and that's what, And I was talking with somebody recently just about, especially with social media, you want to talk about like money, careers, selling out, saying things and being paid to say things or whatever. You know, I guess there's like sort of two schools of public personality or writer where it's like you can, you can cash out and that would be lovely. But then you think about like, if you are really writing something that matters, it typically ends up like an.

execution, imprisonment, or exile. And, like, I wonder to myself, like, very often... Salman Rushdie. Do you have the... What happened to him? You got excommunicate... Didn't he have to leave Iran and then they'd have fought while against him? Oh, right.

For what he wrote? They still try to kill him. I think... Is he still teaching in New York City? You might be right about that. I'm not sure. But, yeah, and then that becomes, like, a gut check where it's like, do you have, like, the balls to do that, you know?

That means you're really over the tar. get hit them where it hurts right right right i don't think there's you know i i don't say this to be like dramatic about it but i don't think there's much in this world more inspiring than art that evokes a that hits a nerve that hits a spot to what people go a lot of people go they just get it and they're like what he said right there yeah you know that's why i i um i think like gustav laberra said like good art should scare people um and i really do think like something that is and that's also why again that's why i think social media is great because it is so um it's it's not gate kept it's not hierarchical, it's lateral, and it's the barrier to entry is very low.

And, you know, it makes the, I remember, oh, there was just, there was a point I was going to say. Yes, it's good. Oh, yeah, the point of like in terms of art where through the typical avenues, like I've written things or I've applied for things. and I think there would be nothing more terrifying as an artist than to go to a studio or to go to a bona fide source of media give them something that you've made and they go, yes, this is exactly what we were looking for. Because I think if you make something that is exactly what people were looking for,

you're already 10 years too late. Like you're responding to a trend. I think if you're actually making something that is real, it should confuse people. It should bewilder people at first. people should like hiss at it and you know it should it should cause some disorder it should cause a ruckus there's one place i'd push back on that uh-huh i agree with your point but not necessarily the end result i think there's a time and a place where you're absolutely right something can literally

evoke it so much that it's ahead of its time i think there's also something where you create a piece of art that is so good people didn't know they needed it until the second they looked at it and Oh, fuck yeah. Right. You know what I mean? Right. Well, that's why I think, like, I think that is a genius, is when you produce something so clearly, it's just so obvious.

It's just, it fills you with hindsight, and it's just, it's so pure. And, uh, no, I agree. And I think a lot of the, a lot of the, yeah, I'm very excited. And I've, and I've, and I've, like, written about this and I've made videos about this. Like, I'm very excited for, um, the next like aesthetic steps that are to be taken. The next aesthetic steps. Just in terms of like I think about like I really like every epoch of styles.

Like I just recently made a video about in Nietzsche's birth of tragedy. He ends it by talking about musical dissonance and praising musical dissonance. And so this is at the time this is maybe like 1870. All right. So bring that into English for people. Musical dissonance. So like just. a chord that sounds harsh.

And he references Richard Wagner who is playing with chromaticism, which is essentially just like lots of half-step, small intervals that make it sort of like tense and it's sort of like shakes. And he ends praising musical dissonance and saying that... So tragedy began tragedy,

which we now probably just view as like plays or movies, but tragedy began as a pure... like a Dionysian chorus, it was music. It began as music. Tragedy began as music. Yeah, so it began as the chorus. It began only as the chorus in the orchestra. And then with Thespis, where we get the term Thespian, he becomes the first actor to interact with the chorus. And then Eschalus, Sophocles, they introduced the second actor, the third actor, and that's now, now we have plays. We have tragedy, Attic Tragedy,

tragedy. But before it's just music. And so he says all art forms are sort of appealing to like music to dissonance. And so like in tragedy, like the dissonance of a movie is like, rocky, like everything has hit the fan. Like there's the moment of dissonance and then the chord resolves at the end where he's a champion. And so like it's all so musical. And I was just sort of like writing about just how like I really love like the new genres of like New Wave or shoegaze like genres that really play with musical dissonance. And, um, You know, there's these underlying truths within, like, aesthetics or, like, within art. But, like, each generation finds its new technology to communicate itself.

And, no, I'm just really interested in how technology, like, okay, here's, like, on the topic of technology. I don't even know how to explain this. I can, like, see the wave, like, the physical wavelengths that happen in his brain while he's going. And then suddenly he's like, right there. It's great. It's beautiful. Keep it gone. There are some thinkers.

Did you see the backrooms? No. Okay. So the backrooms are essentially like a modern telling of the labyrinth, of like the labyrinth and the minotaur. Okay? Yeah. And I really liked the backrooms.

And so what's interesting, I make a point. Is this a book, movie? Movie, and then it was like... I saw the OG ones on YouTube. Yeah, right? But it's the new A-24 film, Young Kid Me? It was good. I liked it. I got to check it out.

It was good. Dave's very based with culture. Nice. I do like, I love watching like, again, and that's what I think, so talking about like aesthetics communicating a timeless phenomenon within the current. Yes, there's the backrooms. And so the backrooms, can you look up like pirate mascot backrooms? Okay.

So this is the pirate. Interesting. Okay. So he is the sort of, he is the mob that lurks in the backrooms and is chasing our protagonist. And so this is on the topic of techno capital, technology and capital. So capital, capital is, it's money and technology. And it's, and it's seeking to self-replicate. And so I'm going to try to tie a lot of things together here.

Capital comes from the root cap, meaning head. It referred to heads of cattle. And so capital was originally stock. live stock. It was animals. It was cattle. And so with the domestication of agriculture, the animal was the first machine. So the animals, you hook a bowl up to a plow and the bull drags. And the bull drags the plow. And I do believe Eropos, who I have, the YouTuber who I have referenced, he talks about sort of what I'm about to talk about. And I think he really influenced me. But when you understand the cow, the bull, as a,

of technology as a machine, the minotaur is a cyborg. The minotaur is a mix between man and machine. And so before there were corporate office spaces, for a man to communicate his fear of being conformed to capital, of being technologically possessed and losing his identity, that would be the Minotaur, that would be the bullman who lurks in the labyrinth, which is there are no straight lines and right angles in nature. And so the labyrinth is this artificial man-made maze that the bullman, the cyborg, roams around. And so the modern manifestation of this occurs as the mascot. So the mascot is the protagonist. His profession, he has to emasculate himself and embarrass himself by wearing his job's uniform. And so he sells furniture as a pirate. And so

he strips his identity. And his minotaur is him in a costume, him in a corporate costume. That is techno capital stealing his identity and that's the monster that lurks in the modern labyrinth. forcing you to be something you don't want to be for the benefit of the audience that they create. Right. And like into the world where it's like he is the bull on the plow. He is the machine man. And then of course the end game of this would be like Terminator or Matrix where in Terminator, the robots take the form of man. So now you go from bull man to corporate man to robot man. So that's technology at its final set of stealing the human form. And then you have in the Matrix, like they're not even human.

They're just using humans for batteries. And this is like a really fun. This is like a fun. I was reading. So I guess this sort of like goes, this is like Nick. So Nick Land wrote a, like a manifesto, I guess, called Meltdown and talks about accelerationism. And this is also, I think, also an interesting kind of.

comment on like sort of like the difference between left and right where a lot of like rightism is it's called a reaction because it looks towards an idealized history whereas a lot of progressivism looks towards an idealized utopia of future so it's like they're pointed in different directions of where their ideality is i don't think i've ever heard someone put it that way and that is yeah yes right so like spangler talks about that where and it's even in the language like conservative you're conserving a past progress or progressing in the future it's literal but it's fundamentally like a conflict of time. And so, wow.

And so what's interesting is that with technology, there is this idea, and again, a lot of this is from Europa's, there's this idea among like Silicon Valley Bros and of this idea of like a future techno singularity where man, human form becomes obsolete and it becomes entirely replaced with with techno with the with the machine and no it's just really interesting like I think it's important to realize like we are not in you could say we're like in a secular world but we are not in a world without like we are not in a world without gods or supernatural powers or compulsions and so really even like the modern the the the future you totally The progressive utopia is the Christian like apocalypse.

The Christian apocalypse. The Eschaton, the end of days, right? So they both view a future singularity at the end of time. For the Christians, they say, you know, we will be, it will be the resurrection of the flesh. Right. Which is a sort of a liberation from the body. Whereas for like the techno singularity for the progressive, there is this sort of the freedom through technology. It is the breaking down of like even like sexual differences where like the

human form is now negotiable. Reality is negotiable. And what's in so but those share the same identity where um you know this is like a lot of ideas to break down but especially if we're going to keep it just specifically to capital you know in Genesis there is the idea of you know God produces the world and like man is in the image of God and he is told to to multiply and to subdue nature. And this idea of like subduing nature creates the basis of like of ownership and of capital and and a man at the center of things, which is which is a unique idea. And by the time you get to, especially the Protestant Reformation, there is the Lutheran idea of work and of holiness. And and the Protestant work ethic.

And so now you have, it's sort of broken, so the establishment between work and labor and capital and religiosity has been created. And then especially in America, where you have like the wasps come over to America and that's a mercantile, those are mercantile colonies. Over the course of time, you know, the religiosity

of the Protestant work ethic, which is that first very spiritual over time degrades. And of course, this coincides with the Enlightenment in which the I am that I am of like the Old Testament sort of gives way, Ed DeCard would have been, I guess, 17th century, gives way to, I think, therefore I am. And so now the locus of progress and of control in the alignment moves towards man creating his own values. and so capital, the work ethic and the capital is becoming more and more powerful. The godliness is sort of disappearing, the power of man's intellect, the enlightenment, which is rather sort of like, that is in the genesis, the serpent says like, Eretus, secuddeus, gentes, bono metam, and you will be like God, conscious of both good and evil.

The awareness of man is increasing. It's called the Enlightenment, the Luciferian realization, the awareness, the waking up. And, you know, a lot of these, a lot of writers, like I think about Spangler and Manatechatics, like Heidegger talks about technology. Techno capital, the machine almost breaks containment. And so now technology, and I guess Kaczynski talks about this, technology starts to progress at a rate. Ted Kaczynski, yeah. The Unabomber?

And he is in his manifesto industrial society in its future, he talks about scientists. So scientists become sort of techno-priest where they serve. technology and now technology like you think about people joke about this like waking up one day it's like how we had all of this and we invented excel spreadsheets and now the man had domesticated bull to till his land and now man wakes up to serve the computer and so they move you farther and farther away from earth figuratively right but then it becomes literal and it began so now essentially like the neo as a battery in the matrix is not far removed from a man who spends this entire waking life in front of the computer serving the machine.

And so, yeah, so essentially what was formerly the clerical priesthood that the church might have fulfilled, and all of that godliness gets replaced with the state. And so you see like at the top of the dollar bill is the all-seeing eye. So like the state, the collective group replaces what was previously the function of God. Technology continues to improve and sort of escape our powers. Yet what's strange is even as our ideas change in some cases very much for the worse here if people start to think of the human race as just a bootloader for something else. I would argue that's obviously not how I see the world.

You know, the elements of human nature don't change. That's what's so strange to me. The things we do just are in a different medium or in a different context from what guys in drunk with power say we're doing. we're doing 2,000 years ago, 4,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, it's just manifested in a new way because of the environment we have. Well, that's why, and then, so that becomes the central argument of the Enlightenment between, like, Rousseau and the idea of, like, this wasn't Rousseau, I guess it was Locke, like Tabula Rossa, blank slate.

Man says, you know, Russo says, man is born free, but everywhere he's in chains. The idea that man is programmable, man is a programmable machine versus, you know, he can he's often like compared to like the marquis de sade who where we get the term sadist or some of the other like some of the other people who believe in sort of like inherent sin or who believe in like marquis de sade wouldn't believe in that because he wasn't a Christian but this idea of the natural infallibility of man and his natural his ability to do awful things and dostoievsky says you know something along the lines of in beginning with total freedom i end with total slavery or like total tyranny. The pretext for Rousseau, like Rousseau by saying that man is

naturally good now creates the pretext by saying if man is not good, then we as society must program him to be good, which then sets the stage for collectivism and for Marx steps in and talks about now we're changing the environment, or really we're changing man to fit an ideal environment. Yeah. And Bastiott, Frederick Bastiott, in the 1850s writes the law, and again, I was talking earlier about sort of the negative capacity of the law, thou shalt not, in believing that what's very dangerous is a law that says thou shalt. Because now the law is force. And if the force acts in a negative sense where if a man commits a crime, he is punished, that's just. But for the law to go out of its way to compel a man to do it.

a thing, that's just pure force. And so like ultimately I think what gets in the way of my agreement, because like Marx makes a good point about capital de-territorializing the earth and sort of Thomas Carlyle calls it the cash nexus or the gospel of Mammon where- Can you, yeah, explain. Yeah, so the only things that connect man, which previously would have been social bonds, is money. And so money just flattens everything into, it's the, it's the, it's the machine, it's, everything becomes flat. So they, and their theory, then with socialism is flattened the money and it'll solve the problems. Well, for Marx, so he says, you know, it turns, capital turns everything solid into error.

And again, like, I'm very open to rebuff on this and like, I'm just thinking out loud and trying to like recall what I've read. You know, Marx views the issue as the, um, the centralizing of capital force is much like Grakis did, right? Where it's like, in the oligarchs, it's achieved, um, it's reached these sort of like points of attraction where now the middle class can't even access it, right? And everybody's just a proletariat. And which is like, okay, fair points. But of course, then the consequences, which Bastiat refutes is that now you're having to use the law in a prescriptive sense to say this person

against this, this person against that. And that's why he says if the law was perfect, elections wouldn't matter because nobody would care, because it would only act in negative sense when a crime was done. But because the law is imperfect, that's why elections matter so much because now we can get into the legislative powers and say, tax this group, give this. So that's why elections are so contentious. And he actually has a really beautiful sort of section in the law on what he calls philanthropic tyranny, which he sit in 1850, he calls it philanthropic tyranny. We're like, even for the good of man, the pretext is like we're trying to equalize man. like serve man, you are able to forcefully compel man to do things you normally wouldn't do.

He normally wouldn't do. But it's really hard. And then on the inverse, so you have like total, total collective subjection, subjugation. But then on the other hand, like Nick Land points out about Adam Smith, right? It's the wealth of nations. And he references each man acting individually in service of the invisible hand, right? And so what's ironic is the invisible hand ends up sounding incredibly like a God. And so like Thomas, so Carlisle calls it the gospel of man.

And so like when the spirit of God leaves the Protestant work ethic, it's just pure techno capital growth. And progressivism towards the utopia, towards paradise. And so then there's this sort of like collision course where like the end time, the escuton, is this sort of singularity where the, where man is freed from the body. Some people... Freed from the body. Right, where it's like he's been, the body's been become, the body has been made obsolete. That's dressing up.

That's dressing up something evil with angelic. Right, right, right. And so that's, and so that's like, that is the, those are sort of like the undercurrents of like, you know, when identifying the ideas that head towards this point, and I just, all of this to say, that even among the most ardent atheists, there's still a, the fervor is still very religious. There's still, there is still this, this point that we're racing to. And that's why. They have to not believe in something by believing in something. There's always, you're always going to have something. There's always, and that's the thing about priorities. Like, there always has to be some kind of priority in your protocol of, like, belief in action.

Do you believe in God? Absolutely. Yeah, I would say, I'm a Christian. So, like, I believe, you know, just in the miracles I've experienced, in the life I've experienced. The miracles you've experienced. Yeah, just I've experienced healing. I mean, this is a whole other crazy thing, all in the memoir, which hasn't been released yet. It's going to say. I want to link it down below, but we need it. No, one day maybe, I'm hoping.

Just dumbed it. Right? We need it. No, and I do believe, I do believe, no, I believe in Christ. And so that's why for me, you know, again, I'm sort of, pessimistic where it's like the the I forget maybe it's Lewis where it's like all of like the whole Christian timeline is pretty much just like a perpetual retreat it's just losing ground it's just losing ground I don't know who said that I think it was Lewis it might have been GK Chesterton you're

fired if you got it right you're out of here um but no it is ironic Bill Cooper talks about this where it's like everybody's sort of playing by the same playbook where even with different intentions the finish line is the same thing, and that becomes sort of Nick Land's accelerant towards the singularity is that, and this is what's trippy, is, you have a lot of like these Silicon Valley Bros talking about encountering demons

on these, like, psychedelic trips. Nick Land makes an interesting, and I guess, like, Deleuze and Guitari also talk about this. We were briefly talking about, like, Edipus earlier, this whole idea of, like, the war between generations, Edipus killing his father. The Terminators of Skynet killing John Carter, not John Carter, but...

Yeah, be careful. Right. Right. Oh, yeah, yeah. People are going to start thinking about that the wrong way. But there is this sort of like, and that's like Nick Lanroy says, the children moved back in time to kill their parents. And so whereas the Christian would have viewed sort of a second coming and Eschaton,

the end of times, and the resurrection of the body. you know isn't it curious how how did how did the first spellbook for conjuring demons get produced if if not a being that was to be produced was able to travel back in time and give instructions to produce it so there's this element of time leaking backwards to create itself and that's why I think it's Deleu talks about desire being a this mechanism which creates the future and so that actually that like the past doesn't move towards the future, but that the future creates itself out of the past, um, between these sort of two singularities. And then again, that's what's, that's just, that's just what becomes so trippy is this sort of just this weird black hole at the

end of time that like, and I sort of, I made a video about this comparing it to Solitaire where, you know, that it feels like there's this freedom of choice we're playing this game. But as you approach the end of a Solitaire game, same thing in a chess game. Like there's a midgame complex. where you can make the most possible moves, but once you pass the mid-game complexity, the number of moves decreases. And eventually, for example, every game of Solitaire always ends with a king being put away.

I can 100% predict how the last move of Solitaire ends in every single game you play. So in certain games, which obey the law of conservation of energy and matter, there's a script that has to be followed at the extreme beginning and end, which I just think is really interesting. I have no thesis out of this, but I just think all of that, I think, is a very interesting.

This has all been a schizzeramble for the past like 30 minutes. Oh, it's great. You have a beautiful mind. I love it. But yeah, so that's, so I think that's really interesting. All of the, I say all of this, really all of this to say that we should be more curious. Things are so much bigger than like what you see on the television. Like, if it's on the television, it's probably already garbage because it's like if it's gone through all of those avenues of approval,

it's trying to manufacture consent and create an opinion out of you and I forget who said it but it's like Homer will always be fresher than the newspaper like the modern state of like as a rule I just try not to consume things that are coming out right now unless it's your podcast but yeah I just think everything is just so

everything is beautiful everything is awesome like how can you not get amped up about it like the story is this is the great this is the only story that's ever told Every other story is derivative of this main plot line. Dude, I haven't even talked about Nephilim and, like, giants and stuff. Do you know about that? That'll be another time.

No, we can do that today. Can we just put a pin on that for one second? Yeah. Because I don't want to lose this thought. Like, what is happiness look like to you? And I'm going to bring this back to something you talked about a half hour ago, but I really want you to define that first. I think happiness is ultimately service.

Service. Yeah. I think will, the will, and this is as like Chopinauer puts it, the will precedes the intellect. The will, and I think in the Lord's prayer it says, in the Lord's prayer, it references the will, the universal will, and it conforms the personal will to the infinite will. And it says, Our Father who art in heaven, how would be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. The prayer opens by saying, not my will but yours. And Jesus says that in Gistemone, he says, like, if this cup is not for me, let it pass, but not my will but yours. I think ultimately happiness is in renouncing your personal ego to the universal will.

And ironically, in anybody who, like, this will be the result that anybody else finds. but like hedonism and selfishness and greed, anti-service towards the universal will will only leave one feeling completely dissatisfied. Easier said than done. But I think ultimately it is renunciation of the, of just all your personal shit and just being of service. That's a great answer. Well, the reason I was asking is because when you were going to, going on that pretty biblical rant there.

That was really good. I like that a lot. Did that stick? That makes sense? It did stick. It was not a schizo rant. You have a beautiful mind. It's great.

But like you were talking about, and I'm going to fuck up how you phrased it, but like the story we're in right now is being written by the past and all that. And it's actually like a great moment. And like it's a positive outlook at a moment where you opened up that arc by saying I'm a post 9-11 baby, right? Yeah. And so I've lived in this world where I've seen 9-11. endless wars, financial crash, wealth gap, fucking forming at a level that's never been seen before,

political unrest, social unrest, and the worst of humanity attacking itself from within with the pandemic and all that. Like, you've seen all this stuff that the fourth turning lays out as like the crisis generations. Yeah, yeah. So, of course you've read that. I haven't read that. It's on my list, but I'm familiar. Yeah, good. All right. Yeah. I'm almost, with your bibliography, I'm almost shocked you haven't read that. Yeah, it's on my head. shelf. Okay. Unbelievable.

But like, you're a part of the artist generation, the Gen Z generation. Yeah, right, right, that grows up, that grows up effectively in the crisis and is very, very molded by that. And it's not to say like it's a negative generation,

but things you point to are all things that are falling apart. And yet you're able to see some light at the end of the tunnel here by seeing the good of what we have around us. And you've even lived that arc yourself by still being here as well and being excited about. the stuff that's there. So do you see this as like a moment of, a very long moment, but a moment of like major civilizational strife around the world that we can overcome to build and come, you know, almost like cut off a piece of ourselves to come back stronger?

Well, if you want to be a hero, the one time you'd be prayed to be born in is that like the end of the world. Like what else, what are you looking for? Like I sort of probably like, like, and again, it's like very, like Spangler says, like, optimism is cowardice. Like, it'll probably, it like, it'll probably get worse. Things probably get worse. But there's something about like, and again, I view it like in a forest. Like there's these beautiful old growth forests. There's a fire and it burns down and now it's being decomposed and eaten by mycelium and being repurposed into these new forms. And like for me, you know, growing up, whether it's whatever institution, you knock on the door and they say, and I wrote this,

I wrote this like in an essay one time where I was like just talking about trying to find a job in New York City. And, you know, I said, you know, I asked somebody who had a job like, you know, how did you get it? And he said, you know, somebody gave me a chance. And then I said, well, can I have one? And the guy said, no, we're all out. And like there's this just, this is the chance. Like chaos is an opportunity. It's just pure flux.

It's pure raw material to build it however you want. It's terrifying. It's very scary. And like, that's what my only advice is really just to guard your soul. Like, that's all you can do. You will lose your soul. Like, and that's the whole, the whole idea of the palatier, the orb and like Lord of the Rings is that you lose your soul looking at far off things, worrying about far off things that drive you crazy. So all you can do. And Martin Luther says, you know, like if, if I was told the world was going to end today, I would still, if I was told the world was going to end tomorrow, I would still plant my apple tree today. Like, all you can do is just do the daily work. And I'm just do the daily work. And I was, you know, like, if I was told the world was going to end today. That's right. Cultivate your soul. And I think ultimately, like in the book of Josea, also on the topic of like, Josea says ultimately, like, my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. And there's just this huge. And sometimes I feel sort of like I feel very, it's easy to be.

There's just so many grifters and like that's a huge fear of mine as to like to succumb to cheap parlor tricks and wordplay. There is in. I don't think you're in danger of that. I try hard. In Trojan women by Euripides, it says, you know, eloquence allied with wickedness. It is a terrible thing. And I realize, you know, I have a gift for talking. Like, I just talk to, I talk.

And I love to hear myself talk selfishly. And like, like, God help me. God guard me against, you know, if I would ever advocate for something wicked. Like, I really don't want to. I really don't want to. The fact that you think about that, though, as a guard. I think that's a big thing. Yeah.

It's really the most important step because you're constantly self-evaluating. Right. Yes. But yeah, I think you can't help but get excited. And yeah, you just like there's just something so beautiful. There is in like Horace's ode, I think three two or three three three three. I think it's three two. He talks about a man, the virtuous man, even if everybody's yelling at him,

even if like the winds from the uh adrian c are like blowing against him even if everything crumbles around him he just stands there unflinching at the debris and i think all you can do is just not flinch at the debris you can just you can just you can only just be yourself and and not um like i detest fear and i used to be so scared all the time and um how'd you get rid of it uh i became desperate enough. Like I think about, again, when I started up my bed and realized if I died, there would only be the smell. And it's like, okay, like that's the game we're playing. Those are the stakes. I have nothing to lose. I had to become more desperate. And there's just so many, like, beautiful, like, mantras I keep to myself, like, D.H. Lawrence says, I've never seen a wild thing feel sorry for itself. A bird will fall

frozen that of a tree without ever feeling sorry for itself. There's a beautiful, um, It also doesn't have the wear-worth-all to do it, though. Doesn't even know, because again, that's also, the bird has no fear because it has no ego. It's just pure will. It's just pure fulfilling its function. Like, every problem I've ever had was because I was thinking too much and being too personal. Yeah, we're way down tortured by our own abilities. And that's what Zen is.

And like, Zen is just sort of like stripping that ego from yourself. I love, if I have advice, I always get like reading recommendations. I think the Bhagavad Gita is a beautiful book because that whole book is about, have you ever read it? I never read it. Really good. Essentially, Arjuna's this prince with an invincible, like an indestructible bow that he's just like, he's a badass. And he has to go to war, but he doesn't want to go to war and fight his family.

And then Krishna comes. And long story short, Krishna says to lay up all your fears in me and just perform your duty, perform your Dharma, you're the righteous act, perform what your role is in this world. and essentially there's this idea of nishkama karma so karma you're probably familiar with is like action like that's what you do it's action and your fate what you do is what you receive nishkama means without desire

and so jesus similarly says like let not you know let don't let your left hand know what your right hand does like when you give nishkama karma is you perform things without any desire for fruits you just do it because it's your dharma that's right and so especially when you read like a symbolic interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita, it's Krishna and Arjuna are in the chariot of war. Arjuna is the personal ego.

Krishna is the soul. It's the will. It's the impersonal, the universal. And the ego serves the universal. And it fulfills its Dharma. And he says, you know, better one's own Dharma, no matter how imperfect than another's Dharma, no matter how perfect. All you can do is be yourself.

All you can do is fulfill your will and your nature. And, you know, it could mean, it could be death. You're going to die anyway, which is actually a pretty great thing, because it would suck if there was a way not to die, because then he would actually be afraid. Then you would be thinking like... Because you don't want to die. Because you don't want to die.

Then if there was a way out, that would be fear, because then you would just be fucking clammed up and bitching all the time. Do you fear death? I want to be a hard-o and say like, hell no. I think death, like in, I think it's an Egyptian, it's called Mott, which is also like the word for mother. I think death is a change of, when a sperm cell meets an ovum, when a sperm meets an egg, the sperm loses its identity. And so does the egg, but life is born out of it, a new being. And I think similarly when my body is lost, whether it's like cremated or whatever, buried or like if it was trampled under a tank tread, that's the sperm meeting the egg. And like that's, it's a release. It's a change. It's an ontological change of being. You could say that the sperm is dead. It doesn't exist anymore. But there's something bigger. There's life that came out of that. And so I want to say, I want to say no, I'm not afraid. It's always.

when you say hard-o shit like that that you get your bell rung and so I don't want to be hot and I don't want to be proud and be like no man I don't give a shit about death yeah you're not a braggard in the face of it as if you're a honcho but you're just answering it honestly I also think it's braver to stare it down when you are scared like that

that's what the courage is you know there's a quote about that like isn't that from Gladiator like all you can do a smile back yeah yeah um gladiator's got some bangers um it does it's going behind you're too good right And so yeah, I think, no, but I think it'll be beautiful.

I think it'll probably feel like sex. I think it'll be, I think it's, I think it's, I think it's, you'll feel it when it happens. I mean, I guess how fast it happens. I think, I mean, there's been times where I've stood up too fast and gotten lightheaded and I thought I was like, I've had like my life flash before my eyes. I had, okay, actually on the topic of death, when I harmed myself very badly one night, This also helps alleviate my fear of death. I let the blood dry, and then I went to bed.

And when I went to bed, I had a dream. And in this dream, I was on a sort of like, I was on this couch that was covered in plastic wrap that you would see at some like grandma's house or something, right? Yeah. And I was laying on it. So it's pure black. There's only a couch with like this floral pattern

and there's plastic on top of it. I'm laying on it. My heads on the left side. My feet are kicked up. And I'm watching it from the third person like a stage play almost. And then this guy comes up to me and covers my mouth and slits my throat. And it cuts. And then I wake back up.

And I'm now in this entirely white place with all light and no shadows. And the floor is like quicksilver or mercury. It's like this just liquid reflection on the ground that sort of like ripples out from my feet. And there's this long table prepared in front of me, left or right as far as the eye can see in both directions. And it's covered in food. And there's a feast prepared. And everybody I've ever loved is at this table, all of my friends and family. And then people who had never interacted with each other were like laughing with each other and sharing drinks.

And so like my grandmother who had never met one of my teammates was talking to him like they had known each other for forever. It was purely familiar. And I look around and this table is full. And then I look, I see my chair, and then I look at the chair next to me, and it's empty. And at that moment, I feel a tap on my shoulder and I look and there's a line of all the people who had hurt me in my life. And one by one, they hugged me. And we apologized, quote, for all the things that we did not know in this life. And they were my first guests at the table. And then I woke up. Who was the first person that hugged you? That's a secret for now. I'm going to keep that a secret for now because it's kind of compromising.

But soon, one day. And that's, and for me, that's what heaven is. It's a place so beautiful you want even your worst enemies to be there. And a place with no partitions. And I think that's a beautiful place. And so I think that's, you know, somebody can shock that up to pure affect. of the neurons in my lizard brain. But for me, it was beautiful. And I think that helps alleviate and remove a lot of the fear I have for it. And again, I also think, I think there's something so exciting about if you live beautifully and if you live as magnanimously as possible, as big as possible, death only enhances the myth.

If you live so well that even like your enemies feel bad for you missing. I think would be a beautiful thing. So there's really no downsides if you protect your soul. Easier said than done. Everything is conspiring to distract you from it. And again, I think that's the biggest thing where it's like, it's very easy. All that's necessary is that you're distracted forever.

And you'll never even ask the question. You'll never even. And I also think I wrote about this one time where it's like, I also think there's this really sort of angsty, of like when you die and this idea of like heaven and a hell and eternal punishment, um, you know, and people feel sort of like they,

they view this all as like a gotcha test with a really douchey vice principal who like didn't give you a studying packet and said, oh, you got, I didn't, you, you fucked that up and now you're going to get detention for the rest of your life and you're going to get a ruler across your knuckles. Um,

but I view it much more in like a sort of, um, if you view, every time you deny the impulse to perform the kill, to perform the vice that would harm another, or like, you know, every time you deny that, you're denying the flesh and you are developing the sovereignty and the discipline of the soul of your noose. You are renewing your mind. You are developing your mind and your soul. And if you don't do that and you conforms the flesh, your soul and your flesh are like, you're, you know, you're just so in.

meshed in the carnality and the desire. And what happens is, if you spend, so now you just have an entire lifetime where you've been fighting the good fight. And that's what's, it's a fight. It's not called a good victory. It's a, it's a perpetual fight that you never win. So you're always going to be fighting. Right? You're always wrestling with it. And then when you die, or you're not wrestling with it. And you just give up and you're sort of yoked with this thing. And it's in charge of you. When you die, the body dies. If you've spent your entire lifetime, listening to your body and its impulses, and the body dies and the impulses disappear,

that thing is gonna hang around your ankles like a shackle, like like, like, like, like wet pants. And versus if you've developed, again, and talking about like the muscle of the spirit and sort of defining yourself, the body disappears, but you're used to saying no to the body and denying the body. And so then you've got the beckoning where it says like,

the one says like, come to me, come to paradise. you can because you've developed the muscles to climb the stairs, whereas if not, you don't even, you're on your hands and knees. And I describe it like your soul as like an Apache helicopter where it's like, if you've never flown an Apache helicopter and you get thrown in the cockpit, you've got everything you need to get there, but you have none of the, you can't, you don't know what to do. And so I think similarly, like, if you don't at least fight the good fight and like try to grapple with the material, like that's why it's a wrestling match. like Jacob wrestles with Elohim. It's not about the technique. It's about the fight. If you fight and if you develop the muscle,

then you learn the techniques that will get you there. But if not, then it's just a really slippery slope. And like Virgil says that, I think it's Virgil and the Aeneid. Like, you know, easy as the way into hell, but like long and hard is the ascent up out of it. Again, it goes back to the thing we were saying maybe 20 minutes ago, which is that we're aware of it. Yeah.

Like, have you ever watched a video of an old lion dying? Dude. I don't ever get a story. Okay. Oh, we, we, like, we made something with somebody and the topic was suicide. And one of my cues for the actor was this video of an old lion dying and it just sort of like slowly, like, lowers its head and it with such dignity and grace. That's crazy. You say that.

That's like, yeah. Well, I'm bringing it up because the lion existed for one reason. It came out of the womb. it learned how to hunt and kill and, you know, lead the pride so that they could survive on whatever food they could find every day. And it didn't have to be, and I hate to say it this way, but it didn't have to be bogged down by the self-awareness that the only reason for its being in some ways was to find the next meal. Yeah. Until you can't. Yeah.

Right. With humans, that's how we originally were put onto this earth. Cave, man in cave, go out, find food. if you run from the lion that's trying to kill you, by the way, all your cortisol gets fucking jacked all over your body and then hopefully you get away from it and you kill something that you can eat that night and then you got to figure out how to do it again the next day. The difference is there was the mental capacity there once evolution happened enough for them to be aware that maybe there needs to be something more to it.

And so now when we don't have to necessarily run from the lion every day and our food gets brought to us at a fucking heroin or wherever the hell it is, you know, that awareness, that thing that keeps us going to find the next meal and find our purpose, all the emotions that normally would naturally go into that now have to be placed somewhere else and somewhere unnatural in a sense that it makes us more acutely aware of our meaning in ways that can kind of torture our mind sometimes. Yeah. No, I agree. Like the, I think ultimately, and that's what's so interesting is like pride is one of the most, and I think like traditionally if you look at the authors, they identify pride as the most dangerous and the most virulent of the vices,

because it is the one associated with intellect. And that's why, you know, pride is also very closely yoked with pride is ultimately a self-concern, as is self-consciousness and as is embarrassment. So like pride and embarrassment and shame. So like pride and embarrassment and shame and guilt, all of these things in which the object and the subject are one, navel gazing, and this sort of like narcissism of like everybody's worried about me. And so that's like, some of the most embarrassed people you know actually have this sort of like, um, closeted sense of pride. And like there was, I think it's, I forget who says it, but some people deny a compliment just to be complimented twice. Some people utilize humility as this way to be covertly proud.

And that's why I think For me, the best thing you can just be to just plan and just to be honest And again, because again, it's hard because pride is the one Pride is the one advice that even like a philosopher can't get rid of himself

Because again, it's a productive intellect. Of course, you know, like... It's a degree. Everyone has some of it. It's easy, a philosopher can brag about not being a glutton or not liking money, but every philosopher still wants credit for the great philosophy he came up with, right? So there's still this element of pride

And that's why I think it's very important. You know, G.K. Chesterton says, like, angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. There's nothing more self-serious than the devil than the most miserable person, you know, who just, they're the end all and be-all of everything. And that's also the basis of the hero is he can't take himself seriously, because if you took, if you take yourself too seriously, you would never sacrifice yourself. And so there is this element of like aloofness, even to yourself where you can laugh at yourself. which precedes destroying yourself and sacrificing yourself and giving yourself up to a cause and dying for something you believe in. And so, yeah, there's just, and I think that is the antidote to general anxiety. And again, that's what they say, like, I think even in AA, they say be of service is like one of the first steps to sort of improving yourself.

Like stop being worried about yourself because all of that is sort of just like this. Your life becomes a test in everything. everything you do. Right. And that's sort of, that's the sodment. Like that's the daily task and I think that's why I said, you know, happiness is service. All you can do is just go outside of yourself and that'll sort of free you from yourself. And that's, that is the freedom from the body, is just moving outside of yourself and being magnanimous, having a large spirit.

Yeah. Well, Harry, you got a beautiful mind, man. I appreciate it. You got a beautiful and a brilliant mind. I'm really glad that, you know, first of all, thank you for sharing yourself. story as well and being so open about that. I'm sure many people have told you this and they should. You know, every time you do that and take people there, it can help even just one person out there. It is more than worth it, man. And it's great to see you seemingly doing so well and doing your

thing. And I hope you just continue your very unique way of thinking. There's nothing better than that. and like the way your brain works is truly a beautiful thing. So keep sharing it with everyone and thanks so much for coming here to do it. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure to to ramble and to be allowed to and to be prompted. That's why I have this thing, man. That's fantastic.

That's what we do here. That's fantastic. So thanks again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Absolutely. All right, everybody else, you know what it is?

Give it a thought. Get back to me and you can follow Harry on the links in the description below. Peace. Hey, guys. If you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five our review they're both a huge huge help thank you