Modern Wisdom - #491 - Chase Reeves - The Spirituality Of White Feral Girl Privilege

Episode Date: June 25, 2022

Chase Reeves is the founder of Matterful and Fizzle, a YouTuber and a brand strategy consultant. White Gay Privilege is now a thing. Feral girl summer is upon us. And Chase nearly got on the wrong side of a rhinoceros in South Africa. It's time to work out what's going on in the world. Expect to learn how to stop relying on your thinking so much, why intersectionality is creating hierarchies of dominance that no one can climb, how gay people are the straight people of queer people, why doing anything for a summer is only important when you're a teenager, why the only authenticity is authenticity about your inauthenticity and much more... Sponsors: Join the Modern Wisdom Community to connect with me & other listeners - https://modernwisdom.locals.com/ Test Don't Guess... Find Out What Supplements your body actually needs right now. Leverage the Best Science for your Best Life. Get a 15% discount on the Upgraded Formulas Test Kit at http://upgradedformulas.com (use code: MW15) Get 20% discount on the highest quality CBD Products from Pure Sport at https://bit.ly/cbdwisdom (use code: MW20) Extra Stuff: Check out Chase's website - https://www.youtube.com/c/chasereeves  Subscribe to Chase's YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/chasereeves  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest today is Chase Reeves. He's a founder of Matterful and Fizzle, a YouTuber and a brand strategy consultant. White gay privilege is now a thing. Farrell Girl's Summer is upon us, and Chase nearly got on the wrong side of a rhinoceros in South Africa. It's time to work out what's going on in the world. I expect to learn how to stop relying on your thinking so much. Why intersectionality is creating hierarchies of dominance that no one can climb. How gay people are the straight people of queer people. Why doing anything for a summer is only important when you're a teenager. Why the only authenticity is authenticity about your inauthenticity and much more. Don't forget that if you are listening, you should also have got a copy of the modern wisdom reading list for free. Go and pick up your copy right now at chriswillx.com slash books.

100 books that you should read before you die with descriptions about why I like them and get yours for free. But now ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Chase Reeves, welcome to the show. What a leg. How are you doing? Good man, how are you? Very well. I saw a quote the other day from Jason Pargan, who said, accept all of your heroes a full of shit.

Your heroes aren't gods. They're just regular people who probably got good at one thing by neglecting literally everything else. What do you think of that? Yes, I think yes. I think it puts me in mind of... There's a singer songwriter named Ryan Adams, who I love for a long time and I had several opportunities to go see him. But now, always choosing not to to for exactly that reason. Like I didn't want, I wanted to continue enjoying

his music the way that I had and I just felt like it was gonna change it. Why? Because I've had that experience a lot where you realize the humanity of your heroes. And it's an important, it's an important thing to learn if you're in the world like making stuff. I fancy myself someone's future hero, I think, at least my sons, my daughters maybe.

But experiencing the humanity of people that you have idolized in some way, it's just happened a lot. It's happened a lot. It's been a big part of like modern wisdom. It's been a part, big part of like coming to terms with how life ends up really working. That point about them neglecting all the other parts of their life. It's like Alan Watts, huge fan of Alan Watts, right? Well, if you've learned more about how his days ended, it's like, oh, wow, that contextualizes Alan Watts, a huge fan of Alan Watts, right? Well, if you've learned more about how his days ended, it's like, oh, wow, that contextualizes Alan Watts a little.

How did his day end? He kind of, he basically died of alcohol consumption. And it's not fully, there's still some, you can find online some writings from some of his friends going like, I mean, here's the deal, guys. Alan Watts, you can hear I'm in several times going like, I just like drinking, you know? I just like it. And that was kind of a part of his spirituality in some ways, not the drinking, but just like the being into what you're into. But he had some speaking gigs booked. There was stuff that he was looking forward to doing in life, but expired, right?

And my buddy, Jay, always brings that up to me about, because he knows I like Alan Watts or something. And it's that I'm a follower of spiritual teachers, often tell you like a Ramdass is meant a lot to me and stuff. And I love that Ramdass will say something like my brother calls me a rammed ass. You know, I love the humanity there. And you also get to hear stories of Romm Das is a very sexually active guy through his life. You know, we put people on pedestals, we project

onto them what I kind of, I'm projecting onto them based on where I feel like my inequity is or something like that where my detriments are. They fill in all of the fallibilities that you have. Yeah, they just provide the screen for me to constantly criticize myself in order to get better. You would be more like Alamoats, you would be more like Ronda, why can't you present it in a least state in the way? Humanizing to realize the shadow side or the humanity of the black.

I think the shadow side has a degree of sort of buting to it, but when you realize that Christopher Hitchens died because he smoked cigarettes, probably, or the fact that really Alan, as one of the most popular spiritual teachers of the 1900s, you're going to be defeated by alcohol. It just seems like it's such a banal, unceremonial way to go. And yet, I would interpret it through the lens of his own perspective around life is here for you to explore what you want about it. He's like, I like it. Orbri said the same thing. The first that I had him on the show, he said, life is for doing the things. He says you're supposed to make love and travel and take drugs.

Not all the drugs, but some of the drugs live and be where your feet are. And Navale also says that it's far easier to achieve your material desires than to renounce them. And I think that the same can be true for adventures and just doing stuff in life. I have a friend that's used to be in a pick-up artistry in his 20s. He once told me, I was like, dude, you're really passionate about pick-up artistries. What, pick a artistry? Pick up artistry. So he was a professional shaggo, basically. And I was pretty impressed, dude, you really committed to this thing. It's like, yeah, my future wife better thank me. Oh, you're gonna have to run it.

I wanna check the other way. You're gonna have to explain to me about how your future wife would better. And so, well, you know, in 15 years' time when I'm walking down the street with my wife and my two kids and my dog, I don't want to look at a Brazilian girl and think, I wonder what it's like to sleep

with the Brazilian girl. I want to have ticked off all of the different sort of sexual open loops that I've got to close those. And although that was absolutely a cope on his part to just... Or it's like dude math, you know. It's like dude math's not really coming to terms with that. Maybe you're awakening an appetite that finds itself very hard to settle.

Mary Harrington's got this thing she calls the Law of FAP Entropy, which is whatever you start out whanking to, is going to progressively get more intense over time. I feel like I'm watching that. I've watched that in my own life, like worried about that. Like I'm constantly worried about that. If pornography comes up, I'm like scared. You know what you want?

You want to just have a couple of favorite porn videos and just stick to those, some classics. I mean, I think what I want is none of that, right? What I want is a really rich and vibrant connection with my spouse, you know, who I've been with for 17-something years, right? But even on the way here, I was thinking about this, like this dream of like, of life, like,

I was just with a Native American teacher and he's like telling some story of an old Native American character who's like, he story of an old Native American character who's like, he said, one prayer to God, five words, I want a good life. And that's it. He's like, you prayed it once and it was great. He's like, he did the medicine once and then that was like, that's it. I've had enough.

It was whole entire life and I had that great life. But driving here, I'm not one who, like I have often times in, maybe not often, but I have no stranger to that moment where you're like, I will almost rather be dead than to keep going. And to have all of this overwhelming endless amount of stuff to do and comparing myself to those heroes.

And what could I do? And not being able to connect to the richness of right now because it's like it's like I don't know if it's the life that I want like with the kids and the wife and the whole life feels intact. You feel you can feel really painted into a corner unless you do some of that sort of spiritual jujitsu or Ikeido as you were telling me it's going out of fashion. Apparently so yeah we're next door to an Ikeido studio at the moment. What does a good Jiu Jitsu, or Iki Do, as you were telling me, it's going out of fashion. A bit. Currently so, yeah.

We're next door to an Iki Do studio at the moment. What does a good life look like to you? I am one who is really connected to creative, creative work. So, there's something about being able to make stuff that people can enjoy. There's like, as a person who has done a lot of creative sort of things, there's stuff that I make that I enjoy the making of and I enjoy it for me. There's also the experience of other people enjoying your thing and then there's also the experience of making something that you know is good but other people, like maybe it's not popular, other people don't enjoy it, but some small group out there you know

does, but you have zero interaction with them, you know? So what makes a good life, one of those things is creativity for me. And not just, I get to be creative today, like it's also the impact, like I had this theory that an artist is not just committed to the work, it's committed, there's a commitment to how the work is received. Not that I can change someone's preference about it, but like knowing that there's people out there that can have this experience with that work or an experience with that work. So creativity is a part of it. I think richness in relationship, like the, I'm like a YouTuber who like talks about every day carry in bags and travel and all this stuff. And it's like the stuff that we carry with us.

Well, the relationships are really a big part of what we carry with us. How I feel about specifically my spouse and my kids, my parents, the quality and the intimacy I have with my friend group, right? Where my friends are, how their lives are going too. It's like we kind of carry each other. So that's definitely a big part of it. I think of, for me, I'm kind of a sheltered kid,

you know, sort of a evangelical for a long time. And I just, there's a lot of, there's a lot of the sexual experiences I've held it on my shoulder that I haven't had a lot of those. And I'm trying to put away the like kind of the, there's like a child likeness in that that's like totally relatable and beautiful. There's also a child ishness that can like a juvenile side to be really juvenile And I can see that in plenty of my 30 plus single friends who are out just Getting into it and enjoying it because the like you're like your pickup artist friend like there is such a thrill in the hunt of it My name is literally Chase, you know

There's a chasing in things and then you have it and then now what's it like, right? And I constantly tell you my dude, let me, let me provide a little bit of a red pill for you as somebody who's spent a lot of time around people that are going out to sleep with new people on a weekly basis in club nights, right? You've been with your wife, choose the first person you have slapped with. Yeah. Yeah. And you've been with her for 17 years. Yeah. The vast majority of people that are in their 30s or 40s that look at the current world of insta-tinder dating and sort of free and easy sex, it's become decoupled from making

babies or relationships, would get eaten a fucking live if they entered the modern dating market. Not that they wouldn't be able to pull, not that they wouldn't be able to go home with people, but that what you're used to, that's sort of connection that you're used to, it is so much more vapid and hollow. When, like, the most exciting part of going back with somebody is, if it's after a night out,

or you've been out for dinner, or you've been out on a date, or you're driving over to their house for the first time or whatever, it's the drive, it's the anticipation, it's the anticipation, it's getting there and not knowing what to expect, it's a degree of uncertainty and excitement and stuff. But a lot of the time, if it's casual sex,

the post-nut clarity will hit you in the face harder than you can possibly imagine. And you're late there thinking, like, not why have I done this or like, what am I doing? But there's some existential crises. I can't, I think it's Nietzsche who said, after copulation, the devil's laughter can be heard.

Right. And in that moment, guys, there are, post-nut clarity's a hell of a drug man. It really will take your face off. Yeah. That is, for the most part, the experience that you have. You know, the sex bit, you know, even if you're an absolute stud,

is what, 30, 40 minutes long. And then you've got all of the lying in bed and pillow talk and realizing that you're incompatible and the drive home and the Uber can't get here. And how do I get, what's the code to get out of the gate at the back of the house? None of that's romantic. None of that's exciting. Right. Right.

Real life has so much of that like just regular partnership stuff in it and like I'm constantly in that sort of frequency with some of my my friends who No, they're there wise to that and if they still get all hopped up on just the energy of the chase and hunt and the and and I also hold them through the feelings of rejection, you know, on their side. I had a buddy who was in a relationship and recently sort of got back into the dating market having I think, despite the fact he was very experienced in it, romanticized what the dating market was like, and then was reminded of ghosting and chasing, and girls that want to just talk about themselves.

And it's absolutely got to be the same awful experience for girls as well. And then on top of that, for women, you've got the physical vulnerability that they have where they've got this entire new, separate type of fear or concern around their physical safety that they need to consider. And, dude, it's, I mean, it really doesn't surprise me. I did this meetup last night with Rob Henderson at Cosmic Coffee in Austin. It was so cool. And to the people that are listening that came down, thank you, because it was way more people than we should have had there. It was an entire corner of this huge outdoor place that was there. And I was talking to this girl who was born in Idaho, a very religious upbringing. She driven from Dallas to come to this meetup.

And I was saying, so what do you do? I'm an ICU nurse. What are your plans moving forward? What is it that you want to do? She says, I'm just waiting for my husband. I was like, okay, that's the first time that I've heard a woman say that. It's a real vibe. You get that in a lot of places. My wife's still, all of the 10 kids,

a lot of her sisters. That's really, she was like the middle of nine. Yeah, yeah. And so that religious upbringing makes sense in that world, which is not like, it's not necessarily an unwise position. It's certainly not popular in what women are told they're supposed to want and be in modern culture or whatever. I think of this quote from Joni Mitchell, who said, if you want to have sex with the same person again and again and again, sleep with lots of different people. What's that mean to you? I think to her point there is like you do the same fucking moves.

You experience the same moves in these, because there's such an energy to that honeymoon sort of beginning of a relationship. I love that feeling, right? And you find yourself in that same energy again and again, and it's easy and it's curious. And there's, it's a chemical romance. And then what happens down the line, like her, then it's used to that if you wanna have sex with a lot of different people,

like sleep with one person, because you're gonna go through all of these stages of life with them. And I'm like, I kind of, I sent some of the wisdom in that. I certainly sent the intimacy and the depth of connection that can happen over a long period of time with someone. And I also certainly can relate to the challenge of commitment to someone when you are someone

who's used to options, optionality, and we call that freedom, you know, that that can be a kind of a curse around being able to go deep. Well, how much freedom is there in going on a night out and feeling like you are not worthy or you're somehow less if you go home alone? That doesn't sound like pressure. That doesn't sound like pressure. That sounds like pressure. And that for a lot of guys, a lot of guys, young dudes is how they feel. They feel like there's an expectation around being a young guy in a single,

sexually liberated society that they're supposed to go out and what the people on TV and the people in movies and the friends that they hear about do, is they go home with girls. So if you don't pull... The whole culture, man, the whole culture is set up for that. I was raised on MTV, and you're just absorbing messages around that

through everything, it seems like. And I've done pretty good, not like, not living that way. So coming to it. I mean, I, but mentally inside, there's always. What are the archetypes that you're being told about? And I think that no matter where, like I'm interested in your question,

you asked her by the way, like where are you going? What I'm curious to you, how important do you think it is to have a clear objective sort of goal? And if you could, like speak a little bit to how you see where you're going. I'm not very good at doing long-term plans, man. I've always sucked at them.

The whole, what do you want written on your gravestone thing in terms of, especially actual outcomes? I've never been good at it. It's always made me feel a bit, I don't know, insufficient or deficient in some way. And I've got these friends like Ali Abdahl, you know, famous productivity YouTuber. He'll blew up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's looking at him online. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I'm like, well, I got a lot of that. I'm like, what am I doing in my life? But he'll have on his wall some unbelievable framework written by the best timeline guide writer of the 1900s and he'll have mapped everything out that's simply not the way that I work and it never has been and I always felt a little bit deficient because I felt like being in this space. anyone in knowledge works flirted with productivity, it felt like I should have that stuff on lock. And I've never had it sorted, and it's never worked for me. The things that I've found that have worked for me are find a thing that I'm good at. Go very narrow and deep on that one thing, develop skills and then broaden out from there. And that seems to be the best way, you know, so principles scale very well, principles and values scale very well and they're very flexible. So the way that you have principles and values around

your relationship with your wife will inform the way that you run your business, inform the way that you show up with your friends and it'll inform the way that you negotiate with the waitress that brought you the wrong dinner at a restaurant. Those are things that for me, if you struggle to plan and make plans, sort of, what do you want to be in five years? It's always felt like, I don't know. It's the same as people asking you, what's your type? What they mean by what's your type is, what's the very narrowly defined physical attractive

traits that you want from your partner? It's like kind of like, what have you seen in the past that you want to keep seeing? And it doesn't really speak to the, you know, Alan Watts,, to this point, are on bad at long-term plans. He's like, you actually want to be surprised. You're trying to act, you want it to be a surprise too. Yes, I'd like to have the financial means that I'd like to have. And I wanna feel like I'm gonna dance with,

with really with the universe, but I see that through the people, through the businesses, through like the opportunities, through whatever. I want to feel like there's a co-creation in a dance partner, like I step into the space and it's stepping back and then vice versa. Well, that's excitement, right? Yeah. It's intrigue, that's play. And it's connection. It's like an intimacy, it's like I'm not alone, you know, which I think is for people who are like, for people who are able to play the field a lot and maybe be with a lot of sexual partners or like there is a kind of a sense of aloneness that I

that I feel from a lot of them, not not all of them at all, but like, and I can feel like that too, by the way, in a 20-year marriage. What's one of those, what's that quote, about this person so poor all he has is money. It's kind of the same as that. This person so lonely all they have is different partners every night. Almost, almost all of the stuff that people are trying

to recreate now, a sense of connection and belonging, a variety and novelty through whatever it is different partners, different substances. It's filling a hole that you know that this isn't sustainable. And don't get me wrong dude, I've done the party boy thing. That was me. I'm speaking this to my 22 year old self. But and that also is something that I've been thinking about a lot recently. The lessons that we arrive at later in life are ones that we wish that we'd given ourselves

when we were younger. But the only way that we've arrived at those lessons is by living them. It's not the case that you could go back in time and tell Chase, do this thing, or I could go back and say, do this thing, because I wasn't ready to receive that lesson at that time. That wasn't the right place for me to have it. If I'd gone back and tried to tell myself a bunch of the stuff that I really value right now, even if I'd believed me that it was a true realization, it probably wouldn't work. It probably wouldn't be right.

Which I think is why I relate to you in having a hard time doing the longer term planning stuff because I did not know what I was gonna learn and what I learned was essential. And I wouldn't have had that on my fucking five year plan. And I do like back to that, what is a good life? Like some, I love learning. Like that sounds super silly and cheesy for me to say,

but it, I mean, to myself, but there's something to, I really do have an inner drive to understand. Like, what are we doing here? And again and again, I'm experienced that we still, we really don't have a great idea of what we're doing here. Like, you'll listen to John Verveiki or learn about some Jungian ways of looking at things

and you go like, actually this feels like it helps me make more sense of what's going on, but it is, it sounds hokey to a lot of people. You really have to kind of make some, you have to be converted to a few things to even just be in the idea of a collective unconscious or archetypical energies or things like this, right? But they do like, what is the psyche? Is such a big interesting question to me. Like, I don't know if I would say like, what is a soul or any of this stuff because I just like feels like semantics. I don't really know what we're talking about half the time, but I'm trying to live very soulfully. And that feels like it would be rad to,

and not just it would be rad. It's like it feels great when you're in that kind of rich, soulful connection with people, and you feel that kind of rich soulful connection with life in general, with like your own karma or whatever. You've got a quote that you like to talk about, which is the only authenticity is authenticity about your inauthenticity. What does that mean to you? Well, I guess it kind of plays to that, to that kind of the viscera of our humanity or like be where you are.

That's the most compelling thing, not who you're trying to be. And I'm just someone who's tried to be a lot of my life. I've tried to be, tried to be, tried to be. And I can be charming enough in some situations to make you believe that about me. You know, now I'm playing a persona. Yeah, or, and oftentimes like, I think what's really motivating is just,

please don't reject me. You know, I'm just trying to get people to, to want me or like me or something like that. To that sort of avoidant, anxious attachment, it's so fucking basic. It's so lizard brain. Well, I think it fundamentally comes from a fear of the fact that we're not worthy. This is one of the most common patterns that I see amongst high achievers,

especially male high achievers, that are solar ranges, is that they hope that if they're successful and useful, that people will need them, not that people want them, because they don't think that people want them. They think that if they make themselves sufficiently indisposable, that people will have to want them because they don't think that people want them. They think that if they make themselves sufficiently indisposable,

that people will have to want them. Yeah. And that's a pattern that can propel people to really, really good things. You know, you can be incredibly successful driven by fears of insufficiency. Oh, man, is there any other way? Right.

I think there is. I mean, so Peterson's got this experiment he talks about where they put starving rats in a tube, and they waft a smell of cheese in from the front. There's a little spring attached to the rats tail that judges the force of how fast they run away And you think what these rats are starving and that's the smell of food They'd be pulling as hard as they could and they do another iteration and they waft the smell of cheese in from the front And the smell of a cat in from behind and the rats pull even harder. Yeah, okay. What's the lesson from that?

It's like you need to run towards something that you want but also away from something that you fear and I'm not convinced that I'm not convinced that everybody that goes on to achieve great things is doing it driven from place of insufficiency I think that most people are I think if you were to look at most high performers in the world most successful people I think that on average high performers are less happy than people who aren't high performers, which is very bizarre. Why would we call the outcomes that high performers get success when there's a good argument to be made that that correlates more with a more miserable existence? What definition of success are we using? Is this a useful definition of success? And it goes back to your heroes, you don't know the price that they pay to be them.

Tiger Woods, unbelievable example. You know, like one of the greatest golfers of all time, but who wants to be him? The only reason that you know that you don't want to be him is because his failures have happened to be really public. His wife chasing him down the driveway with a golf club and then falling asleep at the wheel or taking half a decade out of the sport with injuries of overworking himself on stories. But his father had a safe word when he was a kid. His father would racially abuse him on the golf course. So these white people are never going to let somebody like you play here and they had a safe word like you were during rough sex. It was the

e-word and tiger never said it. The e-word was enough. We never said it. In retrospect, that looks a lot like child abuse. But that's the price that you pay. That's the price that you have to pay to be tiger. But I also feel so shaped into that mold by the movies I was watching as a kid. Like that idea of you always push harder. Keep going. What were those movies? Fucking predator. I don't know why, how to tie it to that, but predator, I watch predator a bunch. There's this movie called Only the Strong, Best of the Best.

A lot of karate movies made me laugh. You know, but there's action movies. There's just like those... There's always a go-on-more mindset. Yeah, and there's a toughness that's required for life. If you want to be one of the greatest, you're going to have to sacrifice everything. And I still have, I still want to be one of the greatest. I still do.

And I do want a really rich home and family life. I want my kids to feel connected to me. I want, you know, this is the perennial challenge. I think that people that desire to perform well have to deal with, that it's a lot harder to perform well when you feel whole, than when your performance is filling a hole inside of you. Like, if there's a void that the next accomplishment might fill, you're going to be very driven to go and do that. If you now no longer have that void and you need to recreate that same degree of drive without this existential compulsion to go

after it, that's a big challenge. That's a really big challenge. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to that, it makes me think again of like how you say you're bad at planning for the future, you know? And I wonder how much young men and women should be setting those goals. I remember a, there's a sold video, it's probably still online of Tim Ferris and Leo Bebauta talking about goals. And Tim was like, you got to have goals and Leo was like, no, you should dissolve your goals. And Tim was like, you got to have goals. And Leo was like, no, you should dissolve your goals. You should let life happen as it comes and continue to pursue your key

realities and let it surprise you. And I fall more on that line, but maybe because it's a little bit easier, I do feel some pressure nowadays. I feel like I could be a little lazy about not defining what I'm really going to do. It's definitely an inner citadel that you can retreat to, right? That you can say, look, I find planning hard, therefore planning is pointless. That's a cope. That's a cope from everybody. But in the same way as if you're Ali Abdullah Timferis, perhaps it's fantastic for you to

have the plan laid out, but if you're you, maybe it doesn't align quite so much, is exactly the same as there are people out there, friends with a bunch of them that are really, really successful and not driven by some fear of insufficiency. They're perfectly securing their attachment. And it's not horses for courses. You just have to think about what is the price that people pay to do the things that you admire from them and Yeah, I wonder I wonder as well about the lessons that it teaches young people about what success means and what they should be chasing after in life and things like that Yeah, and you don't have that grand narrative anymore that you know you and your

Fellows from your 20s would have deployed to people. You don't have a single unifying mythos that's bringing everybody together. So everyone's now trying to reinvent it. So what do you take, if there was a single unifying narrative right now, if there was a, what would your take on that? Oh God.

Why I mean, if you had to swing. The God, the alter that a lot of people are praying at at the moment is meritocracy. To merit, right? Your success is a yours to bear. Your failure is a yours to bear. A land of botans got this great example where he talks about the change in language over what we used to refer to people that didn't achieve in life as.

And in ancient Greece, they'd be called unfortunates because Lady Fortuna hadn't blessed them. And I'm pretty sure Lady Fortuna is the statue that's got the two scales. And the reason for the scales was that you give and you take that people understood that sometimes you would be given and sometimes you wouldn't, I think it's maybe epic teetus or one of the other famous Stoics had lived his life in sort of grand luxury, maybe the assistant to one of the emperors,

and then he got thrown in jail at the end of his life. Someone said, you know, how can you deal with this? So well, look at how much of a luxurious life I lived up until now. You know, Lady Fortuna just got around to me recently. And the language changed, and it was no longer the unfortunate, it wasn't that this person had been dealt a bad hand. They're now called losers. No, no, no, if your success is if the people at the top are worthy of their successes.

What does that mean the people that are at the bottom are they're also worthy of their failures and that for me seems to be it's a very unempathetic way to drive society forward, but it's really good at motivating people to go after it and put more hours in and more. But it has built into it that some are not going to. Absolutely. It's a zero-sum game.

Not everybody can be the CEO of Tesla, but the whole point of being a top one percent earner or a top 10 percent earner is that if you get in, you inevitably knock the person that was that space back down one. That's the way that it works. It's so interesting when you look at even the way that schools are done now, the way that the grading's done at least in the UK, it's done on a distribution. Every single year you take the total number of grades and the person that is the best in the entire country is the highest and the person that's the worst is there. And then everybody else just gets smeared across this.

And they fill in a predefined distribution. There are this many A stars and this many A's and this many B's and C's. And that's how it's going to fit. So it's literally baked in from childhood that a zero-sum game is how society works. Yeah. That doesn't seem like a particularly wholesome spiritual way to fulfill. Can you toe-pouchy coming up? I can.

Yeah. Also need to give a shout out to toe-pouchy go as a man that was certain that he didn't like sparkling water. Sam Pelagrino just never gave me the hit that I wanted. Yeah, those Italian bubbles just don't compare to these. Mexican bubbles, man. That's what we want.

It's just, it's an elite level of water. But most people in the UK, even the people that are in the sparkling water, they're not aware of this. Have you also noticed, there is a degree of, like, there's a certain net worth that people get to, after which they're no longer prepared to have still water. It's like when you reach whatever 250 grand a year in income, you've got to drink sparkling water and then tell all of your friends about it.

Well, where did Spark, I mean, like there's constantly sparkling water in my house now. That's like three years old as a market almost, it seems like, you know, I know you could always go out to do your and be like, would you like Stello sparkling? But like here in the house, it's great. I live for it, right? Just at least a few, those first three sips when it's still ice cold.

It's not hydrating. Bad for our teeth. You like, you literally doesn't make you less thirsty, right? Like it is a hit. It was like as bad as a hit of anything in terms of sensation, super sensory experience, but it's kind of nice to like have something cold and bubbly. It is a good taste, man, but Tupacicou, if people think that they're not a sparkling water person, they need to try out Tupacicou. So I wanted to talk about Ferrell Girl Summer,

which I saw in the independent a little while ago. Ferrell Girl Summer is the latest dating trend to make single women feel inadequate. And you TikTok trend is encouraging women to embrace their authentic selves, but what does it say about the pressure society places on women without partners? So as you might be aware, Hot Girl Summer was a thing

that was promoted, was it by who did it? Megan, this Megan D Stallion to capture the post pandemic spirit of last year, trended on TikTok and Instagram Hot Girl Summer. And Ferrell Girl Summer is about not shaving your legs. It's about thinking, think Fleabag with a sprinkle of someone who has been at Glastonbury for three weeks. Essentially, the feral girl summer is not about dating, but as with Hotgirl summer, its definition is dependent on it, according to the dating app. But do 87% of female users felt pressured to have a Hotgirl summer in 2021, with 71% saying that this impacted their dating life. So, feral girl summer is whatever the opposite is of Hotgirl summer.

It's talking about female autonomy. It's not giving a fuck. The attitude is similar to that perpetuated by the Cool Girl trope. Problematic yet seductive depiction of subdued femininity created for the male gaze. So this is a trend created by women for women, but has somehow been screwed back around to it being a product of the patriarchy and its oppressive cis heteronormative. Is that what they're saying? It is a product of the patriarchy and it's oppressive, cis, heteronormative. Is that what they're saying? That it's a product of the patriarchy?

Oh, everything is. Similar, another TikTok trend, goblin mode. You see? No, no. No, I like that though. Goblin mode, the Ferrell Girls Summer encourages women to forego beauty rituals in favor of more radicalized and chemtosthetics.

You have to be your authentic self in order to qualify, and that apparently means throwing away your razor. Why? Because conforming to beauty standards makes us bad feminists, is having hairy legs supposed to make us feel empowered when we have sex. And if it doesn't, does that make us a failure? So basically, it's a very unfalseifiable idea

that womanhood is archaic ideologies around womanhood, and this is something that's put forward by men. And you go, well, look at where most of the criticism about women's appearances come from. It's not men, it's mostly other women. Men criticize men and women criticize women. That doesn't mean that there isn't crossover, but beauty standards for women aren't created by men.

We don't give a fuck about your new fast fashion and whether pastoral shades are rain and whether you remember a thigh gap, when a thigh gap was a thing, and now it's whether you've got like a big bum, all of that came from women to women. It wasn't us, but the Ferrell Girls Summer thing, I just think it's very, very interesting

because it's always, it's showing very quickly this sort of vacillation from one extreme to another. Hot Girl Summer was supposed to be, the pandemic's locked everybody down, summer's here, you're supposed to be your best self and go out and be glamorous with your friends and go to festivals and wear white boots and stuff like that. Within one year, it's now whatever the exact opposite is. Well, it makes sense. They're really the same energy.

How do you mean? It's the same. It's like they're actually, not only, yeah, they're two sides of the same coin, right? So it's really the same, I totally relate to the idea of trying to trying to look a certain way, right? I mean, my whole life have been so aesthetically minded, but like not like with necessarily good aesthetics, right? I was like a hardcore kid in the Bay Area, all black. And, you know, I had like a neck full of handmade beaded necklaces

that showed you how straight edge I was or something like that. Yeah, the black cross on the back of the hand. When we went to shows, sure. Let's go. So, but like, the aesthetics aesthetics, like my brother says, I took myself out of the game before I'd even started, right?

Like, they're the same energy because back to the bit about authenticity. Like you're, you have to kind of know yourself a little bit to try to be honest about your inauthenticity. And I think it's actually quite hard to be honest about your inauthenticity, to even grok it in any sort of way, right? It's like it's actually kind of running in the background a bit and it's hard to get

back. Then it's harder to get back there than it is to like try something like this, which is very clear, be hot, this, which is very clear, be hot. This, which is very clear, be not hot. It's like, oh, this feels like the same thing. Be, maybe she's born with it, maybe it's Maybelline. It's like, be. Maybe it's Harry likes, maybe it's Under armpits.

There's a really cool thing that I learned about mnemetic theory. So you know Memeces, right? Renegirard's thing. People copy people that are of high status, right? Megan, the stallion, high enough status to cause millions probably of girls to think about having a hot girl summer last year. Now there's two types of mimesis. I didn't know this. One is positive mimesis, which is when you model off somebody that's high status. The other is negative mimesis, which is when you don't model off somebody that's low status. So the problem with trying to be a contrarian

or a heterodox or a cynic or a skeptic, a lot of the time that's no more nuanced or depth thinking than the other person. Or if all that you do is reflexively be contrarian to whatever the mainstream narrative is, that's no smarter than the people that just follow it. You've just inverted whatever the algorithm is. If it's the same with, you know,

what happened with the vaccines and stuff like that, that caused a lot of people to be so distrusting of mainstream media because they'd seen them sort of flip-flop between different narratives a lot, that they became reflexive contrarians. And you go, well, hang on, do you really think that the opposite, unthinkingly, the opposite of whatever the mainstream says is somehow a more nuanced position than simply following it.

It's literally the exact position inverted. Yeah, and I've heard you speak of that before that sort of reflexive contrarianness, and it's something I really relate to. I've experienced that a lot. Like my head sounds like that often. Or when I look back over life and see full seasons or phases of my life that were lived in some thing. Sarah, Chase, Summer. That were just inspired by not being like that. Yeah, right. Well, I mean, that's what this is.

In fact, I think that's a really good explanation for what it is. It's two sides of the same coin. You had Hot Girls Summer, Last Year, Farrell Girls Summer this year, and it's the reflexive contrarian thing. Last year, we were playing up to what men standards were in terms of an oppressive,

it was created by Megan D. Stallion, not a man. Therefore, this year we're going to disregard a typical feminine beauty standards, and you go, well, hang in a second, when you don't feel nice, when you do that, that's also not coming from some fucking pure acratic organization telling you about how you're supposed to be.

It's just naturally what's in the culture at the moment about what is femininity. And for the most part, that's created by women. And this reflexive heterodoxy, reflexive cynicism, skepticism thing, it really isn't a smart solution. It's no deeper, but it gives people a little bit more of a sense that they've done some work. Right.

But it's like, I don't even believe this, I don't even believe in this world anymore. This world of bloggers talking to each other about who's responsible for this, that and the other. First of all, I bet there's like, in terms of meaningful numbers of people who are and they were like, thinking that this hot girl or a feral girl summer is important, it's like very minimal in terms of its significance, I imagine.

I think you'd be surprised. Maybe. What I get down to the girls level, like that people want a archetype to latch onto. You know this. You know this, the stories throughout the ages, they want an archetype. Yeah, but I guess it's sometimes it's just like when it's 20 year olds,

like, like, oh my God. It's screaming about, it's screaming about, like, I'm like, call me in like eight years. Like, we're gonna, we're gonna get through some real shit. You've got to leave what's the, like, life keeps going. It just keeps going. Yeah. Like, you're having feral girl for a summer. You're having a hot girl for a summer.

You know what I mean? I mean, that's a good point. keeps going. You're having feral girl for a summer. You're having a hot girl for a summer. You know what I mean? That's a good point. The fact that what you do for the summer is a really important thing. Only somebody that's been around on the planet for less than 20 years can think that that's a big deal. Possibly. I mean, I love the idea that you can try on different shit. We can try on all of this stuff. Cool. Go. Explore. Try a bunch of stuff on right and realize how maybe not closer to who you how you want to feel you still are. It's like that Jim Kerry quote about

I hope you get everything that you want and then realize like you still don't have it. You know like you're still missing some essential bit which is which is armpit hat. Which is armpit hat. I mean, I'm around a lot of women who are consciously not, have you ever shaved your legs, by the way? No, have you? Yeah. I haven't seen a dude. So you had a hot girl summer? I had a very hot girl summer.

Back in the day, these legs, these legs are like tree trunk. By the way, I would only go up halfway through my thigh because it's a nightmare going higher. I literally had hair shorts. I mean, just getting, there's just more thick hair up there. Hilarious, but I just loved getting into bed with a clean shave. Like, you never felt anything like it.

And then you get one chill and all these little pricks start showing up and it's done. It's over. Turkey that's been plucked. I relate to the like, to like, I don't wanna be shaving my legs anymore, right? I relate to that so much, even though I like, that was, you know, I had my hot,

it was just a summer I was doing that, but it was, I highly recommend anybody. I have a buddy who does that for, that jujitsu, because he's adamant that it helps him with leg lock escapes. There you go. Certainly it makes him more slippery. Yeah, exactly.

Right, okay. So we've also got white gay privilege. So there's an article that came out today for LGBTQ plus people of color, racism also impacts how they are perceived. It is a sad reality that being part of a marginalized societal group exposes you to hate discrimination and unequal treatment. It's a fact well known by people in the LGBT community who experience this kind of hostility based on their gender and sexuality. However, for people whose identities intersect multiple marginalized groups,

there are more things to consider. For people of color, racism also impacts how they are perceived and treated by wider society. So people from the LGBTQ plus community who do not have to worry about racism as well, possess white gay privilege. I think I knew white gay privilege was a thing before we had a name for it. Lady Phil, one of the founders of UK Black Pride, tells Metro.co.uk, and this is just the beginning of intersectionality eating its own. I think the fact that as soon as you have intersecting hierarchies of grievance and privilege, it's no longer enough to just be gay. You know, I took this Murray was sat in that very seat

where you're sat and he said that because he's gay and conservative, he's basically straight now. He's an honorary straight and this, I mean, if no one can see that this is the beginning of a circular firing squad, where the purity spiral just continues to shave off people on the outside that are no longer sufficiently oppressed. So I'm like, oh, you're white and gay. I'm afraid that that kind of means you're not that gay anymore friend.

You don't get to have the same oppression Olympics that we do. I'm afraid that that kind of means you're not that gay anymore, friend. You don't get to have the same oppression Olympics that we do. No, I've heard a few gay men, white gay men before speak of things in this direction that didn't have a term yet. But, and to the point of like the, again, it's like the world of the world of bloggers, blogging and other bloggers about what they should blog about. And it's like a roberos snake eating its own tail kind of thing where I'm so disconnected

from that world. It's not the world of like how to say like I feel we've got so much, it's interesting. Existential fear is so high in terms of like it's so hard to make money or to get to a love. We're comparing ourselves to people who are further and further and further away from where we are now. Right? We've got all of this chatter, this noise that we've got to deal with. And yet we're so not everybody, but we're so safe. I think of, I got to go on safari in Africa, for example. And with my friend

who guided us literally on the ground, on foot, lions and tigers and bears, oh my, like you're on the ground, there's a riot, We were tracking a rhino for a long time and then we got to this place where it was like oh shit It's right on the other side of that bush. We could hear it breathing And it smelled us and it could tell something was up and you can hear it getting a little like irritated like what's going on And when a rhino is just start running and it could easily just run in this direction Just you know, it literally just has a horn. They call it a group of rhinos, a crash of rhinos. Because they can run like 60 miles an hour and see eight feet in front of them.

Right? They're like a group. The group of rhinos is called a crash of rhinos. I love the names of like a flamboyance of flamingos. You know, but in that space, first of all, your nervous system goes, oh, I remember this shit, because we're talking millions and millions of years. That's what we're shaped by. Oh, I remember this. That was clarifying and felt grounding in a strange way. Teeth and horns and claws, nature red and tooth and claw.

We're so far from that. Not saying that like, Louis C.K. has this amazing bit. It's like, we should let one lie and loose in New York. Just one. Just one. So anytime you're walking anywhere, it's like a little bit more exciting.

Just a little bit more exciting. Just like, yeah, I made it this time. But the distance that we have from what it takes to make civilization work is I think one reason why we're able to circle jerk as intensely as we can around who is living in injustice and who... Which type of gay person is the one that's got the most oppression?

Yeah, well said. But I mean, the problem that you have is that only in a world that's this convenient, would you be able to lap with so many different games that you're playing? I heard this quote the other day, which is so perfect and it said, the demand for racism outstrips

the supply at the moment. That's a fascinating idea. Yeah. And what you think about is that the Ibra Max-Kendys of the world and the anti-racism trainers of the world and the people who take their social status from it, not even the people that make money, you know, just the people that are able to tweet about it, the people who rely on racism to give them their sense of self and position and power in the world need racism to continue. So what do they do? They continue to expand the definition of racism to encompass more and more and more things.

I just spent some good time with a Native American teacher, he's a Comanche, and he's a descendent of Quantaparker, who is the last chief of the Comanches. And I, like, in experiences with him, like I get to learn so much about, like, a land literally taken from people. And I connect, I just, I love learning more about that. Even though it's actually really visceral, like,

to learn about the fact that we're really on. We really are privy or accomplice in some way to this. These people live with this. They're still here. They keep living. Kwanoh was actually a really interesting bridge between those worlds, between his world and the world that he was coaching as people, like, hey man, this is coming.

We have to do something about this. And he's like, you can take our land, but you can't take our medicine, you can't take our way of life. I definitely connect to that story. I connect to the, I mean, I had this coffee book when I was young of Martin Luther King. And I remember in high school just learning

about the civil rights and just going like, like just what the hell? This is, and it just defined me, the struggle, this like that people, and that people, hey, that people were treated that way. And then it just kept getting more intense, the layers of it, just the realization of how pervasive this activity of owning people, putting them to work,

the differing levels of who gets treated in what way, different classifications of people, different. I still feel very strongly that we live in like a cast system. in what way, different classifications of people, different, I still feel very strongly that we live in like a caste system. There are different sort of castes. How so? Just, it just feels like I'm in the stage that I'm in. We all have, I think, I believe in the opportunities

for upward mobility. And I believe in, and this might sound like a shitty fucking bearded white thing to say, but there's a kind of a value in accepting where I am. As like, this is my level, this is where I'm at in life. Because then I can like, I can feed my family. I can, I can do these things. I can feel the richness of it and not continually strife.

Well, I mean, that's, that's, yeah, that's an interesting way to look at it. That that's an innocent adult that you can retreat to as well, right? Or a cop. I've got to come to look at it, that that's an inner citadel that you can retreat to as well, right, or a cope. I've got to come to terms with it, right? Well, the reason that it's so satisfying and so reassuring and comforting to get to is that it stops the drive. It stops at least a little bit of the drive for more.

Yeah, I mean, I'm looking for excuses to feel satisfied. Yeah, precisely. But again, ancient Greek word for work used to be not at leisure. It shouldn't be the case that you feel like your primary source of value to the world. As a father of like lots of children and a husband and a creator and all of this stuff, the upper-armory source of value to the world is whether or not you can double your income over the next five years. Yeah. That's not supposed to be the way that was supposed to value each of them. years. That's not supposed to be the way that was supposed to value each of them. But in a world that which is bereft of community and connection and sense of belonging to the

wider mythos of the nation that you're in, what have you got? Yo, I've got my bank account, I've got my social media followers, I've got my watch time on YouTube. And endless possibility. Yeah, and I've got my ability to accuse other people in my group of not being as oppressed as me. Yeah, and it's just different. All of that is just like I lived in Portland for 15 years and I was really sort of kind of by default in a world somewhat like that. And I've since just gotten so far away from it, it just does not feel like the real world at all. It's no longer a part of any conversations that I'm a part of, not because my friend group

is super homogeneous or anything like that, just because the people that I'm with, this is not what defines our interests and our curiosities day by day. Like we're not, we're not personally motivated by it like that. And so it's just like, it's just lost so much of its teeth. The whole culture-war thing, like you were saying about the vaccination stuff where it's like,

all right, I kind of don't care a lot about what the CDC's recommendations are, like maybe forever. It's like the boy who cried wolf, isn't it? Yeah. If everything's racism, then nothing's racism. If everything is a health risk, then nothing's a health risk. Yeah.

And after a while, people only get so many chances at singing and dancing and shouting about stuff before you just start to switch off. And I want stuff that's going to be useful for art, like I literally have to make the future. I literally have to put food on the table for my kids and my family. And I literally have people around me

who I care if there's things going really bad for them. Like, I want them to go better. So I'm looking for meaningful information and insights about where the world is going, about what opportunity is worth investing in so that 13 years from now, you didn't just double down on something that's totally fucking evaporated. Not intellectual, lopping horse shit about privilege and intersectionality. This is really cool thing I learned about the other day called firehousing. With so many competing narratives in the digital age, disinformation agents can't convince you of any single narrative. So instead they overwhelm you with many contradictory narratives until you start to doubt everything and become confused,

demoralized, and passive. So this idea that like just like so how valuable is it for you to be off kilter and have a walk like it's like now I can do something with you if you're if you're unsure and insecure now I can can like direct you in a certain way a little bit easier. It's harder to have a sense of place and direction and stick with it, right? That's what one of the things is valuable having a career. It's like this is the industry that I'm in and this is you said in the car like becoming the best podcast or you can be that's such a thing that you get to, I don't know that you get to, you're hiring that direction in a way that keeps you as like a rudder or a fan on a surfboard. It keeps you from going off and off. Or it's like, okay, you're not being a good enough

socially conscious justice warrior. You don't understand enough about the hardships here, they're in everywhere. People use, people can supplant that with a lot of different things though. People can decide that the thing that they're going to pursue is going to be the most equitable, campaigning, intersectional LGBTQ plus person that they can be. And that becomes their status game. And is it possible to say that objectively, some status games are more virtuous than others?

I don't know, I'd need a philosopher front here to work that one out. But in terms of adding value, like real world, give me, tell me what is happening. Maybe I'm totally wrong, right? Maybe there is a huge problem in the Black gay and lesbian community, whether they're being ostracized by the whites in the lesbian and gay community.

I'm not sure. It seems to me like time could be better spent on other things. Right. For having a partner to get fucking delicious sex with. Right. I mean, it's not that hard. Especially if you're one of the Gs. If you're one of the Gs.

If you're one of the Ls, it's a bit more difficult, because you've got two Gs. I don't know. It's just not where I live. It's not where I'm from. I just really don't know what the weather's like. A lot of action going on with the Gs. A lot of action.

But I do think there's like a spiritual practice and a recommendation I'm making to people, let's be what you're in. And if what you're in is who is seeing the most injustice, then let's bring your goal. Bring more justice. And if that's not what your gig is, I certainly do believe that there are two things. One, like we talked about before, there are certain constructs like you were talking about meritocracy

and losers, like that word is just such a fucking psh. Like I have that in my inner critic, so hard like this smell of the cat wafting from behind me, pushing me forward. And I want that to lose some of its power, because I want that to actually be turned in on itself until it dissolves. It doesn't exist anymore.

Loser is not a real thing, but it's hard for my psyche to believe that. So there are some constructs that actually make losers and winners. There are others that do a better job of rising tide floats all boats, of less of a zero to some game, more of an infinite game, right? We know that we need our Schmacken burgers and our big thinkers to help us evaluate these structures. That's one thing. A second thing is I really do believe that how it's always actually been is we come, we're actually building the society from the bottom up.

We're actually, we actually build it. These individuals actually build it. That's scary. Think about the fact that each individual does actually get to contribute to the way that society's built. There are a lot of fucking idiots out there. Yeah, there are a lot of people who have got...

But as Texas says, there's a well-armed populace as a peaceful populace, right? Like the idea that we're not gonna get away from that scaryness. Yeah, there's gonna be some proud boys and some alt-right and some really far, far left. And there's gonna be that distribution like you talk about the grades in the UK.

There is, That's the fucking state of nature, right? And we're going, we're on the spaceship, we're on planet earth as our spaceship. I love the idea of being in other places. I love the, at least the narrative it gives us, right? And in the solar system, but the nearest fucking star beyond our solar system is so far away. Like we can only lean on the idea of a fusion and bending space and time and stuff that is like, feels like we're really close, but it's still like, I believe it when I see it, right? It's a way a lot of people feel about it.

But that's the state of nature. There's going to be buffoons and idiots. There's going to be brilliant people. People, you know, we're all on the spectrums, so to speak, right? And I do think civilization grows from the bottom up and we need those structures and those systems placed on top and we want there's some that are better than others. And I do, I do lean on my, my bro Daniel smackenberg to help me figure out which ones are which. However, I'm I have to own my part of this and a lot of that is is is like the raising of my kids the being all the other kids.

I am for the other kids like the families at my at my kids school like the the clients that I work with like all this stuff, the people who watch my videos, keep going. I feel like the scary, like the mental health concerns are massive. Like the way that I struggle with it, I'm a man of immense privilege is like, I wouldn't, I don't know, maybe some of these buffoons are better at being happier, and we have stuff to learn from them in some ways.

However, there are consequences to our actions, and, you know, I don't know, I've talked myself into a fucking pit here around. Well, think about this way, that you've seen the midwit meme, right? Which one is that? So it looks like a bell curve, and at one side you have this dude

that looks like in the underthroll, and then in the middle you have sort of this angry, specky sort of liberal person, and then on the right-hand side you have this dude that looks like in the underthrow and then in the middle you have sort of this angry specky sort of liberal person and then on the right hand side you have this sort of sage guy with his hood up And the meme is all about the fact that the guy that's really stupid and the guy that's really smart arrives at the same conclusion It's the person in the middle the midwit in the middle which is most people midwit. That's hilarious Yeah, I haven't heard this before Michael Malice popularized the term. It wasn't his to create, but he popularized it. So midwits, right? And midwit appeal theorem says that by definition,

most content has to appeal to midwits because most people are midwits. And the content that propagates the most is the one that appeals to people. That's the scariest thing on the planet to me, this idea that I'm a YouTuber. One of the things I do is make YouTube videos. As any content creator who's been doing it for a long enough can tell you,

it's like there's a draw to doing things that will become more popular. Content-cops you. And in the same way that our Roman magistrate putting Jesus to death is like putting it to the people. It's like the people make bad calls oftentimes and those midwits aren't the buffoons. They're not the ones who are the crazy ones on the outskirts of society, right? They're the all of us.

They're the sort of we the people is the feeling of it. Going back to what you said earlier on about cognitively being able to convince yourself of a lot of different things, you know, cerebral you can get in with your mind and convince yourself of something that your intuition is screaming at you to do or not to do. That's the danger, right? It takes an awful lot of smart to actually be able to convince yourself of something that you know inherently in your being and in your fibers is something that should or shouldn't

happen. And that's the danger of the midway. It's the Dunning Kruger effect. It's this sort of valley of incompetence that you go through before you actually come out the other side. But for instance, if you were to look at how to get in shape, like lift weights, eat protein. Then in the middle, I must optimize my fasting, window timing to ensure that the pre-digested enzymes from my morning coffee of grass-fed butter is blah, blah, blah,

down to the other side, like, lift weights, eat protein. Like that's what you end up arriving at, that the idiot and the sage are both the same sort of outcome, and it's the person in the middle which is most people that end up over complicating things. And this is where the status games come from. It's like the stupid person and the really smart person. It's like find job that you care about, live in place that fulfills you,

have family that makes you happy. In the middle, I must ensure that all of the oppression in the world is being completely ameliorated because I need to compensate for all of the issues that my ancestors have done. Like, yeah. Place that you wanna live with a family that you care about doing a job that you love.

Like that's it. And, you know, over complicating things, one of the problems you have is that it's really difficult. Once you start on that path, like through midwitry, you can no longer regress back. You don't get to slow the car down. The only way out is through. I have, I have, oh, maybe, maybe, right.

You kind of have to go over the hill and to, and to somewhat of a sage territory or something, but there, you know, in Buddhism, there's this idea of chop wood and carry water. Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water, right? And there's this one, my favorite coffee shops often, or bakery shops in Portland had this great thing on the the wall. I was like, chop wood, carry water, listen to Neil Young. That's the that's the addition. I like I find when I'm like I find myself less interested in listening to

Neil Young after the Spotify. Think about the fact that so many people that we know that are in Austin here are deciding to do home studying or they're building ranches and stuff. And one of my buddies was saying, hey man, I've got this ranch. I've just bought this spot. It needs some work doing. I'm going out there most weekends. And immediately I thought to myself, I'm so down. If you want me to hammer a fence in for six hours on a Saturday afternoon in 110 degree heat. I'm there. Tobacco Chico would never taste better. That would taste good. But hang in a second. Why is everybody going to university and trying to gain money and status if you end up getting

to that stage and then all that you want to do is fucking hammer offense. And you go, that's supposed to be, you know, low complexity, indigent laborer work and stuff. And yet it's the thing that compels you to go forward. Again, it's like, you know, the sage and the idiot arrive at the same place. There's another thing that this quote that I really want to show you from Naval. And he says, um, karma is just you repeating your patterns, virtues and flaws until you finally get what you deserve. And it just made me think about the fact that a lot of the time in life you see people that are repeatedly successful or repeatedly unsuccessful.

And you're the common denominator between all of these experiences. Is it that every one of your X's has happened to be a possessive controlling crazy person? Or do you cause something that comes out of them? Or are you able to choose that type of person? Or are you attracted to that type of person? I think there's this really big insight that is so simple,

but it can change so much of the landscape of your life and it's just around taking responsibility for where you are. I find people are a lot of successful people I hear and I'm one of these like don't want to take ownership of their own success first of all. So like it's actually surprisingly easy not to take ownership of the success that you that you've like I'm Terab, I don't feel successful at all right and I tend to take responsibility over like the Poor things a minute the things that are bad that I'm doing badly in my life for sure That seems to be a little bit easier. However, like there's this mentor I worked with for a long time named Dan Tikini,

who's for 40 years, he's been just doing these workshops. He's four day workshops. Right now he calls them the Revenant. They've been called a lot of other things. Four days, no substance, no psychedelic or anything. This guy is super shamanic in just a windowless hotel room, and you just get to encounter yourself amidst all these other people encountering themselves. And then he's basically saying, keep your fucking promises. What promises have you made? Take responsibility. Own your life. Take ownership over your life. These very basic things, but it's structured in this exercises that you're like, it

comes through in these insights, these revelations, sometimes you pop, everybody pops. I broke in the middle of it. It's like, that's what happens in these things. The pressure just builds. But that idea of taking responsibility, going like, all right, what happens to me is going to be on me. And that says nothing about, like, that doesn't mean that the universe isn't here as a co-partner

with you, dancing alongside of you. It just means like, what you're in control of, you're going to be in control of, you know, and what's the alternative? That's so, it's so, exactly, what's the alternative? What is the alternative? Well, the alternative is, it's their fucking problem, or it's their fucking fault, or it's that it's because of this, or it's because of that, or it's mom, or it's dad, it's everything that actually,

we all get a lot out of these narratives, right? I never have, I never have, and this is the other side, I guess, of whatever the solo, prerner, only child syndrome thing. It's great because it means that you never have a victim mentality, but what you find is you take responsibility for things that you're not responsible for.

And that's penicious in a different way. I think it's probably less destructive socially, but it's more destructive personally. So you know, something goes wrong and you find a way to make it your fault, even if it wasn't. Yeah. That's taking too much responsibility. I tried to ask Jordan Peterson this and I was like, hey, you like people taking responsibility for their actions?

Is there such a thing as taking too much responsibility? I'm going to ask Jocka Willink the same question. You know, X-ray monotips is his thing. Like, if you consider about whether or not there's such a thing as too much ownership, what about if you start to scale your problems, you start to insert yourself into the problems that aren't yours? Well, how long can you do that before you're no longer able

to show up for anybody, even the people that need you? Even the people that you should own, that you should be responsible for. And I do feel that there's a danger to that. It's all forms and constructs, right? And you pin yourself to any of them, it's just like pinning yourself to that hero of the quote in the very beginning.

Like it's really, it continues, life keeps going. It continues to go. You get converted to an idea. And then you might see more nuance and perspective and find that to be like the Tantra would say, it's this spectrum or suspended between two poles of this thing. So taking too much responsibility is like one direction, taking responsibility can go. Taking not enough is another direction. It's probably some, you know, Niels Bohr has this quote is like, oh good, we found a paradox.

Now we might be able to make some progress. Nails Bore was this like physicist, amazing radical. What's that mean to you? What's that quote mean to you? This idea that like, first of all, to your point about first principles and principles being things that can actually scale and you can stick with over time, principles tend to operate on like things that last a long time operate on paradoxes, right? It's like it's it's your you're, what's a good example? I, for some reason, all I'm thinking of is like, you're alive and yet you're going to die.

Like, that's not a great example of a paradox. My friend group, we just did a, like a ceremonial weekend and we're an inclusive group, but we're also exclusive. That's a paradoxical, right? And it's in the play of that, that the meaning is made, but also that decisions are made, and that people who weren't there a week ago

are there today and end up shaping the space in a meaningful way, right? And people aren't there who could have been there that would have shifted it in the way we may not have been beneficial. Because that's, it's like paradox is like I'm an alive sexual being who has the freedom of the world and I'm tethered to one woman on purpose, right? That's a, there's actually a lot of life when you pull that apart.

Stuff that we can pull apart ends up feeling like so taking too much responsibility, taking not enough responsibility, probably too simplified of a construct. Life does tend to have this like more like, ooh, let's pull it apart and it's less of a getting to the answers of things and more feeling the quality of the question and may not even come into an answer, but still having to take steps and directions and letting it come together over time. Chase Reeves ladies and gentlemen if people want to check out the stuff that you do online why should they go. You should go to chasereves.com I've got all the links to everything there if you're interested in me that's where you can find me on twitter and instagram youtube and i'm making videos about. Backpacks for the most part on I don't know how that happened.

Good backpacks though. Great backpacks. I appreciate you, man. I appreciate you, thanks dude. you