Shaun Newman Podcast - #392 - Benjamin Anderson

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

College dropout turned entrepreneur creating ideas like selling air & WAND the Uber for house cleaning– He’s the executive producer of the Vance Crowe Podcast. SNP Presents: Legacy Media featuring: Kid Carson, Wayne Peters, Byron Christopher & Kris Sims March 18th in Edmonton Tickets here: https://www.showpass.com/snp/ Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500

This is Brian Gitt. This is Ed Latimore. This is Danielle Smith. This is Kristen Nagel. This is Aaron Gunn. This is Vance Crow. This is Quick Dick McDick, and you are listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks.

Happy Wednesday. Hope everybody's week is moving along. Just a reminder, in the show notes, March 18th, SMP presents Legacy Media. We're going to be talking all things, censorship, and bills coming down the pipeline, and we'll see what the folks got to. What the folks got to say. That's Kid Carson, Wayne Peters, Byron, Christopher, and Chris Sims, all going to be in Eminton. Like I say, tickets in the show notes.

Give it a click. And I hope to see you all there. Today's episode brought to you by Blaine and Joey Stephan, Guardian Plumbing and Heating. They need, you know, they need employees. Well, employees. They need workers. They need employees. I don't know.

Hey, welcome to Wednesday. If you're wanting to get a feel for who they are, go back to episode. 337. They got a list here of what makes them different if you're an employee, and I'll read that off shortly, but I think what sticks out to me is how they handled themselves, how Guardian handled itself through the dark days of COVID. Never, you know, well, go take a list in to episode 337 if you're interested. I'm telling you, there's, they're very few and far between companies like that that I've heard of, work for, et cetera. So what they say makes them different is their service team. They work seven on, seven off schedule, 12 hour shifts, no night shift, no on

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They've been used for custom cutting and wrapping for the local hunters around the area. Of course, I've been talking a lot about getting in there and seeing exactly what they do. You can get in there and actually help butcher your animal, which has been, you know, It was super cool for me. I plan on doing it again here in 2020. And I think if that's something that interests you, give them a call. 780870-8700.

Yeah, eye-opening to say the least. And if you got an animal, give them a call. They can get you hooked up. Erickson Agro Inc. in Irma, Alberta. Who boy. New sponsor, alert. Kent and Tasha Erickson, family farm, raising four kids,

growing food for their community, and this great country. they're just happy to support this guy. Hey, they support things freedom. Shout out to Irma, Alberta, the Erickson family. Excited to have you on board. And thanks for supporting the podcast. I think that's super cool.

I threw it up a post last week saying, or I continue to say, and I'll say it again, if you're a business from wanting to team up with the podcast, we've got open spots, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, some different options. Hit me up via the phone number and the show notes. Shoot me a text. and we'll see what we can do.

And either way, Erickson Agro, on board with the SMP. Look forward to having you here in 2023. And Kent and Tasha, thanks for supporting what I do. That's super cool. Gartner Management, their Lloyd Minster-based company specialize in all types of rental properties to help meet your needs, whether you're looking for a small office

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in bulk fuels, lubricants, methanol, and chemicals delivering to your farm, commercial, or oilfield location. For more information, visit them at Hancock Petroleum, and dat C.A. He's a call's dropout turned to entrepreneur creating ideas like selling air and wand, the Uber for house cleaning. He's the executive producer of the Vance Crow podcast. I'm talking about Benjamin Anderson. So buckle up. Here we go. This is Benjamin Anderson, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast.

Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by Ben Anderson. I've been calling, you got Benjamin. Is it Benjamin? Is it Ben? I usually tell people Benjamin, but people make the executive decision to short-handed to Ben, kind of without my permission. So do you like Benjamin then? I do prefer Benjamin. Yeah, it's, you know, it's my full name. Fair enough. I'm a guy for nicknames. I always try and, you know, shorten everybody's name. That's what I do. But you're a guy that, you know, I guess Benjamin, that I'll, I'll try and be, I'll try and honor that. Well, I appreciate it. What nicknames did you have growing up, Sean?

Oh, always, always last names. Always my last name. I loved it. I love my last name better than my first name. Everybody called me Newman and your nooms or, you know, it just kind of get shortened and twisted. And in a hockey culture, that's what happens. Did you not have nicknames growing up? None come to mind immediately.

No, it was like most of my friends called me Ben. I guess that was my nickname. right there you go fair enough well for the audience uh uh benjamin um how about you talk a little bit about

wherever you want to go i it don't matter to me you can go as long as short um but for a lot of people hey i'll even me case and point uh we've met uh now um and handshake and everything else and it took me until like day three to really start to understand some of your depth and go like oh oh okay so i'm going to assume the audience has no idea who you are. So let's just start there and we'll see where we get to.

I, well, you and I know each other through Vance Crow, right? And I was actually pretty honored by some of the comments you had and you guys' last conversation about some of that depth. But in regards to my background, so him and I work together on something called legacy interviews, and that this is sort of the immediate context of what we're working. on right now and the way that we got into doing this is through the Fants's podcast starting this together and kind of walking back in the time steps we started working on the podcast together because we both found ourselves in very similar situations at the time that coronavirus had started whenever coronavirus started I was running a software platform called WAND that was

like Uber but for booking housekeepers not for like booking a car on demand so I had like an on-demand mobile app for booking housekeepers and so we were live in St. Louis, Denver, and Seattle, and we had built most of our businesses' revenue off of Airbnb turnovers, right? Because someone like you or I, Sean, we might use an app like that to get our place cleaned up once or twice a month, but Airbnb hosts, I built good relationships with these guys, and they'd be using the app to three, however many times, maybe even a week, to get it turned over between guests so that they didn't have to.

And so I say all of that to say is that what happens? to travel at the start of March 2020. Yeah, she's gone. Yeah, she's gone. So there's gone, you know, X percentage of our revenue as well. And here I just recently met Vance January of that year as well. And what does Vance predominantly do? He goes around the country and gives keynote speeches at conferences, big groups where people

from all over the country sort of congregate in an enclosed space. But around that time, people didn't like that very much anymore. And so they were like, we're going to pause these or cancel these for this year. And so that's really how we started working together. And, yeah, we did the podcast together for a long time. And we, at some point, over the last 18 months, fell into doing what we call these legacy interviews right now. And that was we had someone on the podcast that had a really good experience. He was like, Ben and Vance, I've really enjoyed this conversation.

I've really been trying to be intentional while capturing my family stories, sort of similar to what we just did here on the podcast, talking about my experience, growing from a pig farmer to the owner of a multi-billion dollar business that he had just sold before we had him on. What I'd love for you guys to do is put me together a proposal to interview, you know, my parents, my wife's parents, myself and my wife, my two kids. And so we did that, and it looked pretty good for us. And so we kept doing that.

We started talking about it on the podcast. We said, hey, you know, if you're in the St. Louis region, we'd be happy to have you in our studio or if you're remote, we can do this over Zoom, like we do our remote podcasts, come out and have one of these conversations with us. We thought we'd get a handful of them sort of leading up to the holidays because I think we started doing these around the fall of last year and, you know, because of Vance's sort of brand and speaking and these sorts of things, like we had people driving in from all over the country to do these things. And our studio was in Vance's basement at the time, right? And so we've got people traveling in from all over the world and

we were sort of walking them down through like a private home and these sorts of things and we're like, hey, I think we've really got something here. If we get the studio that we're in now and new equipment and some of these sorts of things and so that's what we've spent the last year doing together is making this into a business. Yeah, the legacy interview idea is

I think is really important. I mean, certainly what a podcaster is doing is encapsulating ideas and different thought processes as, you know, the world plays out, essentially. You know, it's really interesting to go back and listen to not only your conversation, but, you know, me and Vance have talked about this lots. You go back in Vance's podcast or my podcast and hear different perspectives at different times. It's really, like, it's really interesting.

But as far as legacy goes, I literally just interviewed 91-year-old woman for, like, a crazy amount of time. I sat with her for five hours, you know, and just, like, you know, like when you have a mind that's that old that can remember life in the 30s, 40s, 50s, you know, that you can read about, certainly. That's a really, really important thing. And I think people are start, I think people understand that. It's just giving them an avenue and an experience that really pulls the most out of that.

I mean, I know Vance by now, everybody knows, has seen Vance now, even if. in Lloyd, right? He was here, well, geez, what was that? A few weeks ago. And, like, got to experience him firsthand, which was super cool. The legacy interview idea, I encourage, you know, I got to do a whole bunch of them for Lloyd with the archives. And those experiences, like, the wisdom that comes out of them is almost insane, right? Like, it's super cool. I assume you two are experiencing something similar. Yeah, the thing, the thing that has given me, you know, everybody wants to work on something that they find meaningful. You know, whenever you had Vance up in Canada,

he referenced a book and a talk by David Graber called Bullshit Jobs and his sort of thesis that he was getting out there, right, was, you know, we've evolved towards a state where a lot of people are working in positions where they don't find a whole lot of meaning. And to what you're saying, like, I feel sort of fortunate in the sense that, like, the meaning that I feel from doing these is sort of what you're talking about.

Like, I see this transformation take place in people when they sort of come in versus like when they're walking out. And the transformation, the best language I had for it, before last week, actually, we had someone in the studio and we were having a conversation. Until last week, my best language for this was they seem more peaceful once they get out the door. And I was like, I love that we do something that seems to bring somebody that sense of peace. But last week we were having a conversation with somebody and we were like, hey, so-and-so, like, tell us about the value that you see and what we do here because you seem to really understand what we do.

and sometimes we have to sort of talk to people in such a way to get them to understand, but you seem to just get it. What do you see that, what do you see here? And he's like, the thing that I see that you guys do is that you have a service that sort of retroactively ties past action to sort of the present state of where someone is at in their lives. And so everybody has a story, right? Like you've talked to hundreds of people here on your podcast, right? You can unravel someone as deep as you want to go.

like you're talking with that 91 year old woman, like my sense would be is that like the feeling that she had when you were done with that conversation with her, right? Is like, I had this great conversation with Sean and everything, right? But then like the experience after that, the experience after that of like that piece of she's like, I just had this opportunity to unravel and tie all of these nebulous stories of my past together into sort of one cohesive narrative, whether it's with Sean on this podcast or the people that you interviewed whenever you were doing this for the Cial Lloyd or like what we're we do with these interviews. That's what I see happening there that sort of brings so much

meaning for it. When you say peaceful, what do you mean by that word? Content with being at rest. I was talking about this. I've got two young guys. You know one of them actually, Jack Milken. We were out to lunch yesterday. And we're talking about the question that he had asked actually to get on this direction of peace. He was like asking me about what I find in my current relationship that I hadn't found in ones in the past that weren't successful, right? He was like, you know, there's a, like, my answer was like, I have a sense of peace that I had never found in any others. And so, like, to me, peace is being content with being at rest. Like, I don't, I don't need to be jumping behind the computer and email. I don't need to be

writing something up for work. I don't need to be doing anything else. I'm just like, yeah, I'm content being at rest. I was going to say, you know, one of the things, you know, over the course of, I don't know how many interviews I've done in person, I've done a lot via this, you know, this ability to do it, you know, distance. So it's different. It is, this is always different. Like, as much as fun as this is, it'd be way better if we were sitting across from each other, right? In person is a thousand times better. And saying that, this is about as close as a substitute as you're going to get.

one of the things about all the archives for me, legacies for you that I noticed, I never thought of it as peaceful. That's why I was curious what you meant by the word. I never had a person leave without a smile on their face. There was something very gratifying about having somebody listen intently and ask follow-up questions

to what they were talking about. You don't want to pull-up questions. podcast, um, on a podcast, if you get the opportunity to be the guest, there's something really gratifying about having your words heard and then somebody actually following it up with a question to try and like clarify things. And when you leave, you're like, that was, that was a fun experience. That was a, like, I really enjoyed that. That, that's what I saw walk out of the room from these 60 to 90, you know, I think the oldest I've done is 98 folks. And like the ability to see them walk out of the room with almost a little bit of bounce in their step. Like they're leaving a little lighter is a

really, really cool thing to see. You know, that makes me think of, are you familiar with like the practice of mirroring and conflict resolution? Yes. Right. And so that's sort of like what you're doing there. And this is something as I say this, like I'll probably be calling to Vance a lot. Like I learned this from Vance as sort of like a... We don't want to give Vance too much. Too much credit. That's right. You know, I'm always curious. about I see it I normally talk about it

as like the tea leaves the universe is like a little bit of music behind the scenes I don't know what you call it but when I I listen to you in Vance talk about how you guys meet up

and how you end up riding in a car with him for essentially 14 hours I think roughly is about as chance an encounter as one can get certainly if you want to share with the audience

like the sequence of events to get you to that point. But when you look back on that and how it's, I'm going to say transformed. I don't know if that's the word you would choose. But when I watch it, I'm like, wow, what a, what a chance encounter. What a way to have a day go and then completely take your trajectory over here to like, I don't know where you're headed now,

but it's somewhere that you probably hadn't predicted before. it uh it it it makes perfect sense in hindsight and the reason that i say that is because you know i don't know have you ever read a book called the alchemist shot yes yes i have right and so then you'd be very i would put this right in here if you haven't download the audio book because it's jeremy irons who reads it oh man and it is electric it is an electric audio book anyways i apologize no you're fine and so in any case there's like the quote from that book right of like if you state your intentions intentions with enough clarity the universe will sort of conspire with you to get them done and that that sounds like a little hokey pokey right but like

until it happens until it happens right it happens again yeah and it keeps happening and then it keeps happening like i just finished another book uh called prometheus rising the author's Robert Anton Wilson but he phrases it a different way of that like sort of like everything will work out better than you could have possibly planned. But again, you have to have that statement of intention for like the end state, right? And so in saying that like my intended end state was like I was in school for biomedical engineering, I dropped out to do the software company that I was just talking a little bit about. And so I was doing that at the time of having met Vance.

And yeah, we met at this. I was there because I was affiliated with a bank that he was a part of was co-hosting an event with this group that teaches people in my community software development. My community is predominantly low-income, you know, North St. Louis, but they're teaching people this high-income skill set so that they can kind of lever themselves up sort of the socioeconomic ladder. And so I was affiliated with them. I meet Vance there two days later.

You know, I get an email from him. He's like, my back sort of I'm having some problems and I want to get work done behind the wheel. So I'd like to pay you to drive me out to this event if you'd be willing to. two days. It's women on the farm. It'll be entirely a female audience in two weeks. Would you be open to something like that? I was like, sure, right? So we start

building a relationship. Can I just pause that for a second? Yeah. At some point I'm going to ask Vance about this, because I don't think I have. But like, isn't that an odd thing? Like, weren't you kind of like, that's an odd email? Like, normally I think

I, or maybe a lot of people, would send it to maybe a family member. or to a good friend or somebody you hadn't just met. Have you ever asked him about that or maybe even your thought process and staring at the email? I'm up for adventure all the time. It's not like you get the vibe from Vance that he's a serial killer and he's going to haul you out to the bush and that's going to be the end of it. But at the same time, it's not like you had this long relationship where you're like, okay, I'm going to get in a vehicle with a guy. I even think Ben, I'm apologizing already.

I'm going to call you Ben for the rest of the interview. I apologize. That's fine. You yell at me. No. Is, like... We're on a nickname basis here. It's all right.

Is even like when you first start dating a girl, you know, do you go for a long weekend somewhere? Because like, now you're trapped with them. What happens if in the first hour you're like, oh, shit, this is going to be a long... Yeah, I'm going to learn some things about myself now because, like, now I'm going to have to be patient. I'm going to have to be all these things. Like, did any of that run through your mind? or were you just like, no, like, let's do this. I'm excited and away we go.

I remember I woke up to the email. I had stayed the night at somebody else's place and I like woke up to the email and I was like, hey, I remember meeting this person. I like got his business card and this was someone I wanted to reach out to. We had a, you know, 10 to 15 minute exchange where he's like, I don't know he's a podcast. I don't know anything about fans, right? He's like asking me questions. He's doing his thing.

he's like, what do you listen to? I'm like, Jordan Peterson. He doesn't give me any of the context of like, you know, his background with Jordan or anything like this. He's just kind of getting this information out. He's like, huh, nice meeting you should be in touch. Here's my card, right? And like, we exchanged.

And so, like, I read the email and I was like excited. I was like, whoa, what did this person see that made them want to, you know, trust me to drive them out to this thing? And to your point about, like, getting in the car and it's just awkward sort of thing. Like, that was not the initial intention either. The initial intention was like, at least for him, I presume, I'll have this young whippersnapper be able to just drive and I'll be able to get work done in the passenger seat for seven hours.

And so like what's seven hours advances time worth getting work done, both there and back, well, it's worth X amount of dollars to pay Ben to drive. Easy to justify decision. So we get in the car and we're playing the getting to know you game a little bit, and I don't think any of that worked got done, I suppose. Long story short, we really hit it off. And that's what sort of prompted us to, build a friendship and then when coronavirus came around a few months later we were like how can we

leverage our different skill sets to um sort of find a way to build a business together but it's i even go it's it's more than that it's not even just like the the silence that could be there we've all been in a room where it's silent and it's awkward or ben has really weird musical taste and doesn't clue into social cues and it's just like fresh like from a ban anyways it's something that I find very fascinating because I'm like, I hear it. I'm like, man, that is, that is, that is something, you know. And then for it to become what it's become for you to, it's like, well, it's obviously one of those times in history where if you look at the tea leaves, you go, man, that was a very, very important email, unbeknownst maybe to both of you, because,

I mean, he had to send it, you had to accept. And then out of all of it, it just, you know, it blossoms and it moves. And now you're doing these legacy interviews. And I, I mean, certainly the book club and everything else that Vance has been building. And I don't know, you know all the ins and oh, it's all that. I just like, I'm like, this is, you know, it's almost like you would think that you guys were childhood friends and had grown up kind of alongside each other. Instead, it's like this really weird chance encounter. And I say weird because it's just like, it's very chance. It's like, you could have easily just been like, no, I'm busy or, you know, like, I don't want to drive seven hours one way with a guy I just met.

you know like it's it's a level of open to adventure that uh is unusual maybe yeah i was just going to say like if you so like there's there's step one in what we were talking about and like the alchemist sort of terminology right of like if you state your intentions to the universe clearly enough it will conspire with you to get them done like that's step one is like the statement of intention like step two is being open to alternative routes than the one that you might have envisioned for yourself at the present moment, right? Whereby, like, when I had met Vance, right, like, I have statement of intention for where Ben wants to be.

And, like, my presumed path is, like, oh, I'm going to do this software startup, but I don't actually want to be running a cleaning app for a long time. I want to, like, sell this at some point so that I can, like, do this other thing, right? And get back into this sort of space that I had dropped out of school to be paying attention to initially. And so I had that path. I'm like, this is a means to an end, right? but there were a lot of challenges on that path

but I hadn't figured out how I was going to overcome. I was like, okay, there's a financial hurdle to sort of figure out but there's also a credibility in like relationship building hurdle in regards to like getting in touch with a handful of different types of people that like I hadn't hadn't thought very deeply about. And so then going back to like what you're saying is the tea leaves and thinking in hindsight, what did we sort of have the opportunity to do doing the podcast together for three years now? Like we had a platform to talk to anybody in the United States about like, hey, we started off just, you know, boom, boom, boom, multiple weeks.

What's going on in COVID right now, all different areas of supply chain and what people are experiencing that's like separate from the noise that we were getting on sort of the news at the time. But then we sort of started to transition from that into just talking to people that we both found interesting. because obviously the podcast, when Vance started it before I got involved, he predominantly spoke with people in the St. Louis region. And so, like, again, what you and I are doing right now, the door was open for us to talk to anybody in the world. We started talking to, you know, like cutting-edge scientists or economists that were thinking about how money moves in unique ways

or people who are building things that other people haven't thought to build before. And so I say all of this today going back, or to say, like going back to my tea leaves, What that has like, the purpose that that has served in retrospect has been like, you know, we've had certain people on the podcast doing work in like my world of interest, which again is like biotechnology. And I've been able to like maintain relationships with these people that's now light years above what I thought I would have ever been able to achieve going the traditional academic route whenever I was in school for these things. and so like continuing to sort of carry that momentum forward even now has just been like like it's not it's not shocking anymore when something when something sort of happens like when the next tea leaf falls into place like it's not go ahead well i was going to say if you if you haven't read the alchemist folks if you haven't caught on by now read the alchemist it's fantastic book um it also at the end of it shows it's like uh um i find it very interesting. At the end of the alchemist,

where's the gold? Back home. At the end of the Lord of the Rings, where do they got to go to finish off evil? Back home. And you start to see these similarities in really big stories

or old stories. Anyways, what I was curious about is, you know, by the end of the alchemist, he kind of gets it, right? Like he's got to,

he's got to, he's got to, he's got to, and sometimes it's going to go, okay. And he just goes with it. But at the start, he's very confrontational to the pull of a venture, to the pull of like,

this is where it wants me to go. And I don't really want to go there, right? Like, I'm going to fight that. When I was curious with Vance, and, you know, and then we'll get off Vance,

but with the initial car ride, were you already there? Did you, or were you fighting it? Were you, like, what stage of the alchemist, if you would,

where you at? Were you like, oh, no, I totally get what's going on here. and you jumped at it. Because certainly now, if those type of emails come through to me,

I kind of get it. You can kind of feel it out like, oh, yeah, that's going to be, I mean, I just literally went and talked to a women's conference, which seems really odd to say out loud. And it was very,

well, it was very interesting, right? It was very interesting. But to me, I'm just like, I kind of get it now a little bit. I don't know a whole lot.

What made that interesting for you? you, the talking at the women's conference. That there is a giant need in the world of men. Same work. Well, okay. You go there and it's all women. Yeah. But they're talking about men, right?

Like, they're certainly talking about all the things, the workshops, whatever. But when they approach me, what they want to know is, like, what are you been doing? Like, how did you get there? And I don't think I'm special at all. I just know I've been working on this for a very long time. And a very long time to me is five plus years, maybe longer of like doing some inner soul searching and trying to get to the bottom of things. And they want that for the men and their families, their relationships, whatever.

So they're actively searching it out. And what I would say is, you know, like there's, okay, if there was 240 people there, there are 220 of them were women. and a lot of them have those men already and a lot of them are searching for things for their man. Like, this would be good for him. He needs this because he's an island and he doesn't realize there's more men out there talking like this.

And it's really encouraging and yet you understand how far we have to go. Like, I've listened to a lot of your podcast, Sean, and you know you and I have interacted in person. And I've heard you use the terminology of calling people or a baby referring to being an island like this before. Like what does that say more about what that means to you? And do you see yourself as sort of an island? Or do you feel like less of an island like you have your community?

Sorry, guys. I think at times in different aspects, we're all islands. And we all kind of get in this like an island can be a lonely place. but I think I think of it more now of like an archipelago like that there's there's a whole ton of islands and we're we don't have to be living on the same islands you know like where we're side by side and you know you interact every single day but just knowing it's there loosely is a is comforting

and then certainly with uh with uh here in my community with having a men's group and I know people are just laughing about this I keep talking about it just keeps coming up. But meeting with people that push and challenge your ideas, your thought processes is really, really, really beneficial to me and I assume beneficial to them. But as for like the islands,

I just look at COVID. COVID, my belief system, I was, I felt alone. Like, even though there was a whole bunch, that's what Ottawa showed everyone is you're not alone.

And the, the island metaphor can go to a lot of different things, not just COVID. It can extend to a lot of different things that the world wants to make you feel like is an odd idea. Yeah, so there's, I don't know if he uses the word archipelago, but there's a guy named Rob Long, who you know as well, right? Yeah, well, he's been a guest on the show. He's been a guest on the show, that's right. And so he writes about what he refers to as island universes.

And he says, we are all island universes, but we are island universes, like, trying to build intersubjective experiences with sort of others, right? And so what is an intersubjective experience? Like, if you think of what a subjective experience is, like, that's you on your island universe, like perceiving everything that is without what's going on. And so, like, if you put yourself in scenarios where you can experience things with others and share that subjectivity, like that, that is an intersubjective experience. And that, as you know, you talk about sort of putting together these men's groups or like creating whatever that value is,

there's something sort of affirming to that that I think as much as like, you know, humans in general, but also like men can think like, oh, I need to set a goalpost and achieve it for myself. There's some amplification effect that takes place whenever you're able to sort of share the context of partaking in that journey with, like, others who are who you view to be, equals, right? And they can kind of amplify you in that pursuit. I think it's a really powerful thing. Like I, you know, I'd host a similar group once a month on Thursdays. There's like a group of young guys that in this room, the studio that we're at, like, we come together and we like we didn't know what to call ourselves until literally yesterday. We sort of came up with the name. It doesn't matter. But like we just referred to ourselves as the room of equals, right?

So is that the group name, room of equals? It's parium, which is Latin for equals. Well, the reason I'm curious, and then right now, it's a Monday men's group, but I'm like, man, I hate the name. I don't even know, but I have nothing, I don't know how to call it anything different, because I have no idea right now. Yeah, we kind of didn't either. That's where we were at.

It's like. Parium. Parium? It's just what we came to because we, the language that, like you're saying, you're Monday group of guys, and you're like, I don't like the Monday group of guys. For us, it was the room of equals. And we're like, because that was what we discovered after meeting a couple times. We were like, ah, we view ourselves as equals. And, you know, you can go out into the world. And not that you're like looking down or looking up to other people, but we're like, you know,

this is, this is great. We're not like out meeting strangers at the bar. And like, there's just that process. Like, I don't think it's arrogant necessarily to say. Like, people are at different stages in regards to thinking about the things that they want to achieve. Right. And if you have a certain sense of clarity for the things that you are wanting to achieve in your time on this earth, then it can be isolating. Like it can make you an island. You can be like, are there other people out there like me that I can like share context with? Right. And I was sort of in the room with two of these guys who I respect very highly. And I was like, you know, like this is this is great. Like, you know, so and so person A, I spend a lot of time with you. Person B, I spend a lot of time with you. we should like I know maybe one or two other people like this I know you two probably do because you're you're nuclear like you attract this type of this type of energy or whatever right we should we should host a group of people like us to sort of get together and just share context and do do just that like amplify each other and so yeah we came to that terminology of like what is this this is a room full of equals and again literally only yesterday did we be like okay we have we have to name this

something else. And so I was just like, what is Latin for equals, right? Parium. So that's what we came to. How many guys in your group? Seven right now. You know, Vance and I, he talked about the number four. What is it? The Dunbar number, yeah. The Dunbar number, yeah. The Dunbar number? Yeah, geez. And I listened to a little bit on that, found that fascinating. Do you think seven is too much? Perfect. Do you want to go up, down? I'm curious about the number. You know, as I explore this idea more about getting people together, and in this case, it's meant, what can be achievable on having something that is beneficial to all and yet doesn't, well, I don't know, allows for as many that want to enjoy it to have it, but that doesn't. get to a point where it's so watered down maybe is the right word, where nothing gets accomplished.

And I don't know. To me, I'm like actively exploring this right now. There's some sense of, like, I talk about this and I love St. Louis. Like, I'm from St. Louis. I live here in St. Louis. The reason that I call to that context is like what it says when you talk about groups that were valuable getting watered down. Like I, for the company that I was talking about, I'm very active in, or I was very active in our startup community out here. And, like, the problem that I have acknowledged is that to a degree, I don't participate in that community at all anymore because it has become too watered down.

It got too inclusive to the degree that, like, they were saying, you know, anybody with an idea, right, come out and come to these things and, like, talk with others and, like, take up time and energy to come out. And that's the reason that I say that to your question is because I saw the effect that that had there where I was like, yeah, there's a good thing going on there. Like, there's a really good article called Geeks, Mops, and Sociopaths.

Have you ever heard of or read this? I have not. It talks about the evolution of subcultures. And like a startup ecosystem in a city is very much a subculture, right? You've got your subculture of people who are like building things that they hope will improve the world, right? And so in geeks, mops, and sociopaths, it talks about how subcultures always start with the geeks. The geeks are the ones contributing energy attention. intellect to the evolution of the subculture.

And then you start to sort of get to a point where the mops come in. And like, why do they call them the mops? It's because you, like, picture a mop head sort of on the ground where it's like, I used to work in McAllister's sandwich shop for two years. You know, a mop doesn't do much actual cleaning. You're just moving dirt around, right, on the floor. And, like, it's wet for a little bit, and then it dries. And then, like, in the morning, we all pretend it's cleaner than it was yesterday.

It's like, you know, and so this is where the mop terminology comes from. like you hit a certain point where mops start to sort of come into the ecosystem, and they're not contributing to the subculture other than, like, they're sort of moving ideas around, and they're just kind of in the sphere. And that's okay. That's okay to some degree, right? But then there's sort of like a ratio that gets hit between the geeks and the mops where your sociopaths start to come in.

And sociopaths, like, you know, might sound like an accusatory sort of terminology, but really what it means is, like, these are the people, that see what's going on to enough of a degree, that they're like, okay, there's these people that are building things and they have energy that they're contributing. And there's people that see enough value in it, but they're not contributing, that they like,

but like I see that they see the value and they kind of see that as an outsider looking in. And there's like, there's a way that I can make money here, right? And so then they kind of come in and they start sort of organizing the geeks and, you know, like a lot of entrepreneurs, I was talking about this with someone the other day where like maybe entrepreneurs in some sense

and the geeks, mops, and sociopath. sort of model are sociopaths. But in any case, you asked, we got on this subject because you were asking about how to think about bringing people into the fold on something like this. And there's some level of, there's some level of like actually being defensive about who participates in something like that, like, because it means something. And this goes back to the context of the St. Louis startup community is it's become so watered down that I will not participate in it anymore.

You know what I mean? I understand what you're talking about. And I'm like, this is an ongoing battle in my head of like, you know, whatever. I'm just going to embrace this sucker. You know, like I just keep talking about it. But it's an idea that for whatever reason will not leave my brain along. We had a group of five. We met once a month, sometimes more.

And we understood the value in it. And instead of inviting more in, we kept it tight because there's something that's very powerful about having a tight group where you can get down to brass tax immediately. And that trust takes time to build. And it can be undone real fast. So that's where you're like, you don't want to bring in the wrong person. It can change the trajectory of something like that real fast. And you have COVID.

And COVID comes along and presses everybody. And I remember getting asked, how did you survive? I get asked it a lot. How did you like mental health, everything? I'm like, well, I had, you know, a strong family unit, one. But I'm like, I had this group that helped support me when I had tough days. And I think all of us up here had tough days. So I'm like, okay, this needs to be shared.

And I hear what you're saying with the money thing because I think the one of the, one of the things that it is going to happen, if it hasn't already, is people are going to wonder, And it's like, I even think about it. How do you scale this idea? How do you get it so that people want to do it? And the next thing is your brain can go to is how do we make money on it? We could probably make money on it. And I'm like, yeah, but I don't want that.

I don't even want to be near every single group. I like an archipelago because I can still be this island but have share ideas. And that's what I want. I want to share ideas. I want to see what other groups are talking about. And sure, if we all get together once in a blue moon, great. But that isn't the goal of this. The goal is to allow guys to create.

create this tight unit that can protect not only their families, but hopefully their communities. And if all of it started to go that way, what would that do for society? I think it would be net positive is what I call it. It is very pie in the sky. I get that. But I'm also like, if it's decentralized, meaning you are in fact an island. And an island is your community or your whatever, how small you want to make it. But you understand that there's a group of islands out there that you can interact. interact with whenever you want, I feel like it takes away from the watered down effect because you're going to have your tight group. It keeps it away from, there's always going to be people

that want to snake oil salesman, like I have the solution and here it is. But if you lean back into what Jordan Peterson has said, like there's no simple solution to this. This is like, you know, this is mining gold, man. You're going to need to extend a lot of energy and effort. And if you don't do that, you don't get better. Your family doesn't, you know, like, so I don't know. It's, I hear the watered down thing and I, I just, but you want to maximize impact, right? Yes. You're like, more men need this or more people need this. More people need it. I speak to men because I understand, I don't expect to understand what a woman needs. Yeah. I think that'd be, I don't know. You're preaching to require, yeah. But, but you want to maximize impact, but you don't want to do

it in such a way that it breaks breaks the thing that was valuable to begin with. So I think about like you create a playbook, right? So like our, like have you ever heard of Ben Franklin did what he referred to as the little Juntoe in Philadelphia? Yeah, he called it the leather apron club

was sort of the other terminology. Juno is just Spanish for group. You should research this. You'd probably find it really interesting. I'm going to write this down. The leather apron club. He called it the Junto, which Juno is just

Spanish for group, right? The group. But like their sort of nickname terminology was the leather apron club. And so the reason that they were the leather apron club is because they were all sort of like a class of men that like wore leather aprons and the things that they did. Yeah, and work. Working class men. But they would have philosophical discussions and discussions about how to achieve things that were like greater than like their present states. And like it was just a group that he brought together. And so the reason I say this is because like Walter Isaacson, right, he's written the Steve Jobs, the Da Vinci, the Einstein. He wrote a really good biography on Ben Franklin. And I remember reading about this in that book and being like, yeah, like I have the memetic desire. I want

something like what is being described in this book. And at the same time, you know, I know we told me we leave them in the past, but we're getting back to Vance. Like I'm seeing Vance organize these groups, right? Right. And I like see the power of like bringing together like-minded people in settings where they can exchange ideas and create value that is more than the sum of its parts, right? And so I say all of that to say that there was a playbook that allowed me to not be like, I need to go like find something out there that already exists to be a part of.

But like I had enough of that activation energy to be like, I will build this myself, right? And it takes a certain type of person to have that, right? but you're talking about this idea of like how do you maximize impact while keeping the thing pure. I think it has something to do with making sure that you're distributing the message of what the playbook looks like to the right people in the world who have the activation energy to create their archipelagos and sort of be the central node to their groups of people and what they need to be doing. Does that sort of make sense or what do you think about that?

I think I'm really fascinated. I fight talking about this because I know I can already hear like, you know, I had a text sent to me. I thought it was hilarious. Like I think it's really funny. But, you know, I have the open line so people can text me. And so I've learned that I talk about this. I've been increasingly talking about this more and more and more, especially as I start to have more conversations. And out of the conversations comes ideas or topics or lessons from history that I have nothing, no clue about.

And so as I do this, I can already, I talk about the podcast. having kind of like chunks where it's very directed. So like the first 100 was very focused on community, getting my feet under me, right, like just exploring people's stories, but very focused on community. I would say the next 100 was leading towards talking, becoming who I was and talking about what mattered. And that was certainly COVID. It was like, okay.

But then the next one that came was a little bit of a surprise. me. It was politics. And I didn't, I didn't, I didn't see that one coming as much as people think that I was directed that one. I was like, that one kind of slapped me across the face. And I was like, oh, yeah, we'll embrace it. And this one that, that's here right now is, is like this group idea. I don't know why it won't leave me alone. But it just, everywhere I go, I think about it. And it's like, I'm thinking about it so much. I was telling, I was telling Vance, actually, before we got on here, you know, like, I had this, this women's conference, I almost slept through it, if you can believe that.

And if people, I'm the guy who shows up like five hours before an event, and I can't sit still. So for me to almost sleep through it, you can see the contrast, like the, whoa, what happened? And I was dreaming about what I was going to say or this idea. I can't remember most of it, but I remember just like thinking about it so freaking hard that I was so deep in slumber that I almost slept through the damn thing. I mean, I wouldn't, I'm sure somebody would have come and woke me up, but that's, that's the way it was. I showed up like 10 minutes before people were, well, by the time I got there, people were already there, right? Like, this is opposite of what Sean does. And this idea won't leave me alone.

And so I look at the progression in the podcast, and I'm just like, here, here we are. So distributing the, I guess what sticks out to me, Ben, is the fact that I didn't walk in thinking we're going to talk about this. And yet, here we are. And I've written down like six more things. And this past weekend, I had six more things. And I'm like, oh, man, this is going to be an idea that I'm going to get to the bottom up. Or I want to. I don't know if I can.

One way or another. Because... And I just see the importance. I know the importance. And finding a way to share that that makes it something that men are attracted to is really important. Yeah, I'm curious where, like, your reluctance, like, you keep bringing it up, like, man, here we are. again. Where does that reluctance come from? Because it seems like a positive thing to, I guess, me as an outsider looking in, you and I both participate. I feel like I'm preaching,

and I don't want to preach. You don't want to be a guru. No, I don't. I just want to, what I really want to do is, I like your, here's the playbook. We've already kind of started. Like, here's some ideas. I don't think this is right for every single group, but here's what works for us. Right. Well, here's, here's an idea, not a playbook, idea. And, you know, it's funny. I send that and then the other group sends me what they do. And now you have, okay, here's a couple of ideas or templates or whatever. And then I run into another one who's been going for five years and they're sending me their stuff. And now you have, what is that called?

It's not a playbook. It's a, or maybe it is a playbook. I don't know. Yeah, I don't want to be. I don't want to be a guru at all. You shouldn't be dictating. Yeah. I just want to give ideas.

Yeah. You want to be like, you know what the word. catalyst means, like in a chemical reaction, a catalyst is like the element that you add that like it like sparks everything off, right? Like, you don't want to be like, this is the, you know, a substance that increases the rate of chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change. Ooh, I like that. Bingo, right?

Because you don't want to undergo change in your group, right? Nor do you want to, like, impose constraints on what's going on. You just want to like, you want to like flick the marble in a direction and like see what sort of like sparks off of it, right? Might be like a good model for thinking about that. I think that's, I like that. I, and that's what this is. This is what we're doing.

Hopefully there are people who, like, I've had the great fortune of meeting people in your audience. You know, the reason we talked about it, like I wanted to, I want to come visit you at some point in Canada. And the reason I couldn't next month was because I'm hosting this group of guys for, we usually meet on Thursdays once a month. we're going to do sort of a three-day intensive, right? But, like, I say all of that to say that, like, that's what the conversation is.

This is the activation energy. Hopefully this is a catalyst to someone, like, slamming their fist on the table and being like, you know what, I've got my five group of boys and, like, we need to, we need to systematize this so that we can, you know, bring each other together and achieve these sorts of things. I think that's part of it, Ben. they talk about like advertising or selling an idea or whatever that it doesn't

the first time for somebody for sure they heard it and they're like boom I'm I like this but for a lot of people it's repetition and hearing it and finally they're going to get annoyed with me and they're like all right I'm going to go screw you Sean I started one and they're going to see right and I understand that

and I don't know you know at some point I'm going to understand that I don't need to talk about it anymore or it's run its course but it isn't there yet. And I'm as interested about this topic as anything I've ever been in my entire life. And that came from going to St. Louis and meeting with all you. And it was like, we were already doing it, but it crystallized this idea. It was just like, light bulb, boom.

Oh. Okay. Well, I got to dig into this, right? And in advance, I've had these talks about four. and he says it's four and I'm like it's more than four because we had five and you've got seven and I've heard you know Peterson talked about Moses and how they broke down into groups of 10 and I'm like okay well if the ancient text says 10 I have to assume we can get to 10 that yeah I assume that I don't know for sure I haven't tried it yet I don't know here here I sit

rambling on about this yeah I don't think that there is a right answer I think it's totally we're totally comfortable being ambiguous in terms of like there's all these different models and like you know you talk about throwing out these numbers like I experienced exactly what you're talking about like at the type of setting that we met at in St. Louis a few months ago like having gone to prior ones in the past I was like yes

that same bug that you're articulating now I'm like smiling as I hear you talk about this because like yes Ben has like felt this burn inside of him and be like oh my God like any of my friends, if they're listening to this, they've been victim to me catching this wave and being like, I need to replicate this model as fast as I can. So what grabbed a hold of you? Like, the, I think about things a lot in networks because of my interest in biology and the way

that networks pass information around. They're different scales, right? And so, like, it's easy to think about a social graph in the same sort of way. you and I, Sean, are nodes, right? And we have like an edge between us, right? And so, like, you know, we were connected by, like, there's properties of networks and there's probabilities of things happening that you can come up, come to conclusions about. And so there's a terminology and network theory called triadic closure, right?

And so, like, you and I, before we knew each other, there was the Vance node that was connected to Ben. We had an edge. And then there was the Sean node that was connected. that was connected to Vance and there was an edge. But there was not an edge existing between Sean and Ben for a period of time. But so like when you have a structure like that, a sort of V shape in a network, there's a very, very high probability of a triadic closure forming that like bridges those two.

And so like that's sort of talking about it. And could I could I, I haven't, I've written this down as well, but could I add in as soon as I knew Rob? Yeah. Now it becomes even more the probability of me closing. closing that gap or us closing it becomes even more. And the more you start to connect, it feels honestly the idea that comes to mind is LinkedIn, right? Like this is how many connections you share.

It's like, oh, maybe I should connect with that person. Yeah. And so why do you, and so why is this a desirable, a desirable path of evolution inside of networks? It's because it creates resilience, right? And so in like our, like again, to the context of where Ben thinks about these things very deeply, is like in gene regulatory networks, there's lots of redundancy would be the word, right?

There's multiple different ways of getting from point A to point B in a gene regulatory network because there's lots of different nodes and edges that have like combined over time in order to create multiple different paths from achieving what can be referred to as like a homeostatic or healthy outcome, right? And it's the same thing in a social network. Like when you bring these groups of people together where they're like sort of disparate nodes, they're islands floating around in space and you bring them together into one of these archipelagos, you're basically drawing those edges

between each of those nodes and you're creating a more resilient structure. Like that's the value I see. When I think of it, I don't know why this idea comes to mind, but I think of a balloon. You know in the old movies, the balloon salesman, I think of all the nodes,

you just like plucking the string and pulling them down to a center point. And you pull, and that's how, they're all kind of floating, and they get to all do their thing, but they're all grounded in a similar, I don't know if it's idea, but I don't know,

I actually know what that is, if that's a placeholder, or if that's a person, or if that's an area or whatever else. But I think of them as balloons, and I don't know why that is, why that idea comes to mind, but when I hear you talk,

that's what I see. Yeah. How do you define intuition for yourself? Hmm. Well, I was just having, I don't know how I define it for myself. For other people, I define it as they can see things before they happen, or they can feel things before they happen.

So they can understand a person's energy or a situation's energy, or they can read, you know, whether it's sea leaves or whatever, they can just see something that others can't see, maybe. Yeah, I was looking for a note. matter. But in any case, like, my language for intuition is, like, you were talking about the plucking down balloons, right? And, like, how do you know which balloons to pluck? Like, intuition has something to do with that as far as, like, intuition is diametrically opposed to reason, at least in the way that, like, a lot of people think about it. Like, there's,

you might have heard of, like, a Manuel Kant, maybe. Like, he's a philosopher. He wrote a book called a critique of pure reason, right? And so the enlightened. period and what would it have been the you know hundreds of years ago we went through this period that preceded the renaissance and the way that like if you google the enlightenment the three words that come up are you know rationality skepticism and individualism like very uh traits that are very grounded in this idea of reason and so um reason is sort of the trajectory that uh like humanity sort of evolved towards uh over subsequent periods of time and like that was just the way that was just the way that that societies grew to think more and more and more, rather than being rooted in, you know,

like rule of law from kings and like all of these different things that sort of guided the evolution of humanity before that. And so then you've got guys like Kant who sort of come along and be like, well, you know, reason is good. It's brought us a lot of things. It brought us like science and engineering and all these different advances. But like we can't say that this is like the goal state alone because like there's something that's like, missing if we base the way that we navigate the world off of just reason. And I think a really good book that sort of, like we're talking about good books that sort of give models for thought. Have you ever heard of or read the brothers Karamezov by Dostoyevsky? Peterson, who you love

talks about it talks about it a lot. It's his favorite author. I've started. I've started that book. That is a daunting book. It's a daunting book. I'll tell you this. If I like, if if I'm trying to pitch it to somebody and I'm like, okay, I get it. It's really long and it's really dense. I'm like, read this chapter and that chapter is called the Grand Inquisitor. And it's a conversation between two of the four brothers in the book. And so let me talk about sort of the characters of the brothers and it'll relate to what I'm talking about in regards to being limited by a reason. You know, you've got two brothers that are really devoutly religious that are sort of opposite, right? You've got one brother that's like devoutly religious and he like

lives his life in that sort of moral framework, like authentically and, you know, for all intents and purposes, he, like, does a damn good job at it, right? And then he's got another brother who's devoutly religious, but he kind of uses the forgiveness of his transgressions in the present, his sins as sort of an excuse to be like an excuse my language, like a shithead, right? Like he uses his religion as an excuse. And so then you've got the opposite sort of dichotomy and two of the other brothers. You've got one brother, who, you know, he doesn't live in the small town where his, like, talk about the rural urban divide. He's gotten, he's gotten the ideas from the urban area, right?

You've got brother Ivan, who he's a writer and he's an intellectual, and he went to college and he studied law, and he published an article. It's like, nothing is true. Everything is permitted. There is no such thing as objective morality. Like, it's only, only reason. But in saying that, like, while he's this intellectual brother, he struggles throughout the book with this idea. that like he's like I know I think this way he's like I know I've like come to these conclusions because of my like reason but I still feel a draw towards doing the right thing inside

of me and I'm thinking so deeply about this idea of reason and I can't rationalize my way to understanding like why I feel like I should do the right thing and so then the final brother he's like he looks up to Ivan he's like oh my god like brother brother Ivan he's like he's he's achieving all these things and like he's an intellectual and so like he subscribes to sort of these ideas but he does it naively because he subscribes to this idea that um nothing is true everything is permitted there's no such thing as objective morality but he doesn't he doesn't have that draw towards like um morality inside of him right and so these are sort of the four characters and so this one chapter that's sort of like my short pitch for the book if anybody out there is like

heard of the brothers Karamazov from Peterson's or whoever before and they're like, it's just too daunting. I don't want to pick it up. Like read one chapter called the Grand Inquisitor because it's a discussion between the two most important characters in the book, which is Ivan and his brother Alyosha. And Alyosha is the one who's like devoutly religious, but like uses that as sort of like a framework for living his life the right way. Like he's like, I've subscribed to my religious framework and like I'm going to live my life in that way. And they sort of have a discussion. And that's my pitch. Read that chapter.

It's a damn good book. But we were talking about this idea of reasons sort of being a limiting factor. And that's sort of why is because if you get to the end of the track in terms of like evolving towards a state of like operating off of just reason, then you're like still missing something. Like how do you come up with like what's the right thing to do based off of like a given scenario, right? And we were all sort of faced with, you've talked a lot about this, right? We were all faced with this during like the COVID period of like, you know, there are there are reasoned explanations being created. That same book that I referenced at the start of our conversation, Prometheus Rising, like it had something it said at the beginning, it said there, we all have

two brains inside of us. There's the thinking brain and the proving brain. The thinking brain like comes up with thoughts and the proving brain rearranges data and experiences in the world to prove what the thinking brain thinks. And so I say that to say is that like there's, there's all this noise. There's so much stuff going on in the world right now. There's like, we have less of an ability to derive like objective truth than perhaps we've ever had before.

But also we have more power to do that independently than we've ever had before. But you like have to incur the responsibility to do that yourself, right? And so if you're trying to guide yourself off of reason alone, I guess the idea that I was getting at is, that you can achieve that up to a point in regards to creating ways to like navigating the world. But then you just have to sort of feel out like, okay, but aside from like what everything says, what all the information out there is saying, like what the reason's conclusion is, like what does my intuition tell me is the right thing?

Like what do I feel like I should be doing for my family in my section of the world or whatever? is like sort of how I think about these things I guess jumping back to the main polar like intuition versus reason thing I think we hit a point where everybody's grappling with

intuition with that which cannot be seen because reason alone cannot explain the world there's too much going on that just doesn't make like reason can't reason out. Like you can kind of get close, but you can't get it all.

And I think a ton of people are just like, well, what do I do? What do I believe in? How do you move past this? And, you know, I saw a meme the other day. It was rather funny. You know, when the extreme, you know, when going back to faith is extreme, you know, and there's a ton of people that are talking about the Bible and or, or, or, whatever your, you know, your avenue is certainly in the Western world.

Christianity is, is the main one. But talking about that and actually starting to pick it up again, you know, it's, it's, because you know what that is, Sean? You know what? It's canon. You know what? Like, canon, when people talk about, like, fiction or, like, storytelling, like, what's, what's the, what's the canon, you know, like, in, you've got, like, in a fictitious universe,

like, you think about the Marvel or DC universe. Like you've got your canon or like canon, if you just Google the word, it's like the basis against which things should be judged. Like that's with the Bible or the or the Bhagavad Gita or like the Vedic texts for Hinduism or like in Greek mythology. This is like their mythological structure. It's like a general law rule principle or criterion by which something is judged. Yeah, exactly. A collection or list of and the other one is a collection or list of sacred books accepted as genuine. Exactly. That's like what those things are and why I think we're seeing a resurgence of these things because there's not like aside from like the Ten Commandments is probably as close as you get in the Bible to like your reasoned explanations, right? As far as like how you should navigate the world. But other than that, it's not a, it's not a text of like, you know, a bullet, bolded out list of these are the things that you should do or these are the ways that you should navigate the world. It are their stories and like stories give us context.

to derive intuitive explanations for ourselves, right? Like, it's not, again, it's not like rationalizing what you should do, like creating if-then statements for yourself saying like, hey, if you're faced with this thing in the world, it's giving you these stories so that you can sort of like download that software in such a way for yourself, that you can be intuitive in the right sort of way and not feel stagnant whenever you're not able to derive what the next correct path forward is. And the reason that I call these things canon is because, like, you know, religion, broadly speaking,

used to be a lot more important in, like, the societal substrate of, like, humanity, right? Like, we used to give it a lot more, like, it used to just be a lot more prevalent. I think most people would agree with that. And so whenever you had leaders that would sort of come around and create interpretations based off of, like, texts or stories or what was going on to justify their actions, whether they be correct or incorrect, there would always still be like something canonical for people to fall back on

as the basis of judgment for like their leader's actions, right? And so that's like what I feel like is kind of missing right now in regards to like a lot of people haven't subscribed fully enough to like a religious framework in such a way that they have somewhere that they can go to not get answers as to like what exactly is going on in the world right now, but a place where they can gather the content, so that they can come to conclusions about how they should be navigating the world, right?

Like one of these sort of like just texts that gives models for thought, you know? And that's what these men's groups that we're talking about, or these women's groups are just groups of people like islands, archipelagos gathering is sort of like the next version of that that I think is sort of evolving for humanity maybe. Like not that I'm saying like it's replacing religion, but it's like, you know, we've had. It might take you back to... Here's... It might take you back to religion. Yeah.

Here's my... I don't know. My... Don't go lightly into a group setting thinking it's just going to be all this like, kumbaya lovely thing. It is not. It is, you know, for me, it has been...

You know, back in ancient times, times they used to train with wood swords. Why did they do that? Well, obviously so you didn't kill the other person, right? And it's still hurt and you get to use technique, weight, et cetera. These groups are going to challenge you over and over and over again. It's not going to be fun some days. Some weeks are going to be better than others. But lots, it's going to challenge your ideas on life, on how you interact. It's going to force you to look at yourself over and over and over again. You know, the first time you talked with Vance,

you talked about the shadow. And I didn't, you know, if I'd listen to that when you guys first recorded it, I would have had no flipping idea what you're talking about. What a good men's group does is it forces you to look at yourself and realize what you're capable of in good and bad. That's exactly right. And the longer you're in one, the more challenging the questions will become.

and eventually you're going to have something like COVID come along. And I mean, it doesn't have to be COVID. It's just the, you know, you get the point. Everybody gets it. It's the most clear example where you have something you have argued about and you have your line. It's like, there it is. And we've stepped across it by 15 feet. And this is where it gets challenging.

If you are going to continue, you have to acknowledge it and then stand there and say, no, no, I won't do that. or whatever it is. And so what I say, don't go lightly into this. What I mean is, is long term, it's going to force you to do things that you never would have thought

you would have had to have ever done. It's going to force ideas on you. You know, I would have never talked about related. Like, I can't believe on this podcast. I've got to where I'm talking openly about this because it was a taboo thing.

Politics was a taboo thing. I'll talk about COVID was a taboo thing. Now it's just like, well, let's talk about taboo things because we might as well. And that is, it's going to take you to the edge of your reality over and over and over and over again. Because there's things that I had never contemplated that now I have to come to terms with and think about and then realize I don't know Jack Squat, which is a fun thing to realize. because that means you get to learn the rest of your life. But I mean, that's what going into something like what you've created or advanced has created or certainly what I'm trying to work on.

If it's done right, it's going to take you closer and closer to that as you go deeper and deeper into it because you're going to be challenging yourself month by month or week in, week out, and eventually you're going to hit things that are very fucking uncomfortable. And I make no apologies about that statement because I've had to deal with it over and over and over again. And you get reprieves, but eventually you come back to it over and over and over again. And if you're joining one of those groups, you're making a decision of whether to be a pond or a river. Right? And so the reason I say that, that's like not Ben's terminology.

There was someone in my group who said two things whenever we were sort of like having the early conversations about like, you know, you have a really good discussion with a group of guys that you, like, trust to give you feedback and think about the world with. like and you're talking sort of the meta conversation of what have we what have we got going on here and it might have been like the first or second of our gatherings where um someone in my group said two things he said everybody here is a river not a pond right and you've got you've got ponds in the world people that are like totally good settling and they're like and that's fine like you don't want to push the edge but that's like you're not a pond right you're a river you're rushing against the edge of chaos trying to figure out what's going on

And then the other thing he said to what you were saying before that is that like we're all the type of guys that want to know if we've got shit in our teeth. Right. Yeah. Because like you've got some people that are like, okay, well, thanks. But you get a weird sort of hair shirdy response to it, right? And that's not the culture in these groups to what you're saying. As we're sort of talking about like playbooks for these sorts of things, broadly speaking. You've got to trust the people in the room enough to be like, hey, like you've, you've,

you've got this behavior that I've been seeing happen in you over the last few months. And this is something I learned, again, from Vance in regards to giving good feedback, is like there's one way to do it in terms of like, I'm imposing that you are doing something wrong. And then there's another way of giving effective feedback that is, hey, I noticed this change in your character or I noticed you're doing this thing. And I have a perception about it, but that doesn't matter. I'm bringing it up because I want to know if you,

knowledge what you're doing here, whether that's like telling a friend that they've gained 20 pounds, right? Be like, hey, like, I as a friend, as a person you trust, I'm telling you that, like, I have seen you gain weight over the last X amount of time, right? And I'm bringing that up just because I want to highlight it and be, say, is it something that you know that you're doing? Or has it just been happening and it's fallen out of control and you needed me to, you need me to be a catalyst here, you need me to highlight it for you. And that can be anything. It can be behavior, frustration, anxiety, whatever.

And every person on the planet needs that. Yeah. Because sometimes you just become, I think of, you brought up weight, I think of becoming closed off. Like, you're struggling with something.

It's quite evident to the friends around you that you've interacted with. And sometimes that's a very difficult bubble to break when they get stuck in it. And to have people around you that can like, just tell it like it is, like in a way that, you know, is conducive to hearing it. But that takes trust. That takes a, that takes, that takes work and energy.

And that's one of the things, uh, Ben, about, about entering into this is it's fun. But it takes, it's, it's like mining gold, you know, like you don't just, you don't grab a pit. I mean, maybe you can if you go up north, but for the most part, a gold mine doesn't work as you just start skimming the rocks off the top of the surface. Maybe in the beginning, that's the easy stuff. but as you go deeper and deeper, the amount of energy and thought and work that goes into this is a lot. You don't find the gold the longer you go on the surface anymore.

You've got to dig deep and go into deep, dark areas of your character that is uncomfortable. You know, I've been, well, I don't know. As you say that, a thought comes to my mind, and it's, you know, as you dig deeper and deeper and deeper, a lot of people are anxious right now right like anxiety and you know depression and these sorts of things are like really on the rise and like I have a sort of hypothesis as to why that's the case as you're talking about getting deeper and deeper and deeper in regards to self-improvement like you know humanity is not just evolving technologically like we are evolving in regards to like our cognitive capacity and you know our like our ability to like reference our present states and like

make improvements on ourselves, right? And so in saying that, I think a lot of where that anxiety and sort of depression comes from, whenever you do acknowledge these things in yourself, sort of in the way that we're talking about, comes from the fact that that never stops. Like, it never

stops, right? Like, and that's like we were talking about peace a little while ago. Like, peace doesn't come from, like, Ben being content with who Ben is in the present. Like, that's separate. That comes from, like, Ben just being content, being present. but like later I've got to get back to work I've got to like go back out into chaos and try to be better right and so like going back to like why I think anxiety and depression are more on the rise it's because like people are contending with like an artificial intelligence you would call this a runaway AI right this is what everybody's afraid of like that the thing will get smart enough that it will just like hit a parabolic curve and ramp up that's what we are doing right now that's what people are doing like we've hit that point in our intellectual development where we're we're We're like runaway AI because we're like, we're having to contend with the energy required to continue making improvements on ourselves and like simultaneously not get burnt out.

And so going back to this idea of religion, right, like what did religion used to do for us? Religion used to give us like an infalliable, idyllic figure, right, of like the Christ figure or like a God or whoever, right? and be like, this is your standard. Like, go, like, go be that, you know. And there was, like, a sort of, like, peace that came from trying to do that. And, like, this is what I think, where I think the word salvation comes from, right? Because, like, here's a standard that you could not possibly live up to, right? Like, you couldn't possibly.

You'd have to be, like, you'd have to overcome all of, like, your sins and all of these things, like, don't need to dive into it. But in any case, like, here's, here's the highest. version of yourself that you can possibly figure out. Now go get it and like still be content with the fact that you will not actually achieve that state. You will never be perfect, right? And so again, like I think going back to this idea of like, I think salvation is partaking in the process of that and like finding maybe not peace, but like contentment with like doing that. And I think that's what people don't have right now is like we still have this draw as humans to like want to see ourselves and the world change in ways that are better.

There's a guy named Adam, Adam Mastriani. He writes a substack, which is like a sort of new blog outlet called Experimental History. And I really like this guy because he's followed a trend that like a lot of academics that I admire are, they're like jumping out of the ivory tower, right? Like he's doing research independently because he's not on board with the constraints being imposed on him by peer review or academia or institutions or whatever. And so in saying that, he went to his substack and he was like, I'm a Columbia University and New York professor of psychology. I know how to run these experiments. Here's my experiment in regards to how people think

about how things should be different. And he found that by interviewing people about like asking them not how things could be better or how things could be worse, but just how things could be different. like everybody like not everybody but like a striking percentage above 80 above 90 percent thought of ways that things could be better if you were like how could this table be better how could a trash can be better how could like the roads be better or not be better I'm sorry be different be different how could this thing be different everybody envisions how things could be better I got off on that little tangent because we were like thinking of like okay so everybody's thinking of how they can be better and how the world around them can be better

but they're like so anxious and so depressed because they feel like they'll never like feel at peace with trying to make things better. But like they'll never like that will always be there. Right. Like my pattern language for this like my internal model is like we all have like our allowance, our attention allowance, which is like this constant amount of energy that we have allocated towards bringing about positive change in the world. And like that will never go away.

Like it will always be like say 10 units of like energy for change. per day or poor month or per year. And so if you are like, like if you make progress, like you'll still have that same 10 units and you make progress, you'll still have that 10 units. And so now we're in a world today where like you have sort of two options when like all of your Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Like you've got your shelter, you've got your food, you've made your money.

Your kids are healthy, right? And so where can you allocate that 10 units tomorrow? Well, you've got like two options. You can either set a goal state that is like higher, or you can allocate those same 10 units to like a really small problem. And that's what I think that a lot of people are doing now is like we're like isolating small problems. And we're one of the reasons we've got like, you know, so much angst or like, you know, fans talked about unlike you guys' past episodes like the worries with the mob and these sorts of things is because people are realizing, oh, everybody's got their 10 units. they're not taking on the responsibility to like set higher goals for themselves we can like direct those 10 units of like attention that they have for wanting to bring about change on these really

small problems and we can get them riled up right and if we get enough of them riled up like we can achieve what our goal state is but like that's not good we shouldn't we shouldn't be like outsourcing our attention to other people in that sort of way can really like way back I guess what are you hearing here what do you think is the interesting thread I'm going to pause this for a second Sean's going to take a pee break. I feel like Joe Rogan right now. I're going to ban's crow because he did it to me. And I'm like, what did I do?

Drink too much coffee. So give me one second. I'm going to think about that and I'll be right back. Great. I don't know. I was going to say like when you talk about the 10 units of energy and outsourcing it, is that like, I guess I might need to rephrase it to me because I'm like, is that like allowing someone's idea to control your energy?

energy? Is that what you're trying to, am I hearing that right? Because when I think of that, that's why, well, no, I'm going to start there. Is that your thought with the 10 units of energy? Like, you have to be careful who you allow to control it? Yeah, let me, let me try to pick this apart really carefully. So we got here because you were talking about like it requires more and more energy to keep burrowing beneath the surface to see room for improvement when you're in one of these groups or and yourself. And I would add to that, your ability to mine becomes, it's like you get, as you get better, you actually use better tools.

It's not like, you know, at the start, you literally have a pan and you get a couple of pieces of gold on. Holy crap, it's pretty easy. And then you can upgrade and you upgrade and you can dig a little faster, but now the gold's a little deeper. And so it takes energy, but you're building this muscle. I mean, I'm using like 17 analogies here all in one. But to me, that's, that's the way it was.

Anyways, sorry. No, that's great. And so that's how we got on runaway AI, which is like that's the same thing that people are worried about there, where it can get not only better at predicting and thinking things, but it can improve itself and just go parabolic, right? And so I think about that in terms of like there's a difference between sort of ways that people can allocate attention to bringing about change and like the energy that they need to expend to bring about change. I see those two things as like separate. And so I think that's the first important thing to sort of pick. a part there, that there's like sort of the energy to mine, and then there's like the attention on what to mine, right? And so when you get to sort of like the bottom of that tunnel that you were talking about, Sean, right, where you're like, God, like, I just, I don't feel like I want to go any deeper here. Like, you know what I mean? Like, can you envision sort of getting in that state where you're like, I feel like I've reached the absolute edge. There's nowhere further out to go or further down to go and like maybe myself sometimes.

or on whatever the subject that you're trying to uncover is. And so you pull all the way back up. I think of what I think of is, is Lord of the Rings. And what I think of is the dwarves living in the mountain. They dug too deep. And what they found was a ballerock. I think I'm saying that, right?

Geez, I'm even sounding. I'm channeling my inner Gandalf here. And what I mean is, I don't mean there's, well, actually, I do mean, it's, it comes back to the shadow idea. Like, you dig so deep, you realize some of the evil in the world can be committed by yourself, one. Mm-hmm. Which is a very terrifying realization. But then you also come to terms with, as you dig deeper, you realize that everything you've been told all your life isn't exactly what it is.

and then as you dig deeper, you realize that there's a part of the world that is unseen and you can never truly probably understand it. I mean, you will spend your life trying to understand it maybe is a better way of explaining it. And that is, although beautiful, very terrifying, all in the same breath. Yeah, it's daunting. You know, like someone who spent his whole life trying to understand these things is Carl Jung, right? Yes. familiar with his ideas. Yes. One of the first talks

me and Vance ever had, he brought up Yung. And of course, Peterson's talked about Jung lots. And so I've read a bit of Jung and his there's thoughts he has where you have to sit back and really think about it. They're very piercing

thoughts. And so he writes about exactly what we're talking about and you know, Jung has sort of like layers of stuff that he's written, right? Or I like, my gateway drug to Jung was similarly, I think Peterson, or it doesn't matter, but I get into Jung, right? And so I'm like, let me read some of Jung's sort of popular science books, like the undiscovered self,

man in his symbols, dream analysis, whatever, right? Because he's a psychologist, psychoanalytical theory and these sorts of things. He was a student of Freud for anybody who doesn't, but he sort of broke from Freud for various reasons. For those who read Peterson, the natural logical step is Jung. Yeah, that's right. Jung is like a step behind Peterson whereby Peterson's ideas are very much informed by eumes. And so then he's got sort of like his academic writing, which is like a layer above the popular science writing in regards to like depth of ideas and like, man, this is so dense.

Oh my gosh, you're blowing me back here, right? And then he's got a different thing. Like at the very back, he's got like his black books, which are sort of his personal journals. And then a book that was compiled after his death by, I can't remember exactly who I think a family member called the Lieber Novus. his red book, which is sort of like his sort of personal writing organized and then analyzed by him. And so he would do sort of exercises where he would write out ideas like very nebulously

with context that really only made sense to him to do this mining that we're talking about. Like just think about it broadly as like your journaling exercise. Like Jung journaling to himself to try to mine deeper and deeper and deeper. and then feeling so daunted by how deep he had gone in his own psyche that he's like writing then because he would like do this journaling and then like the pattern of the book is sort of like the journaling followed by the analysis of the journaling and so he then goes back and he's like let me analyze what I wrote today or yesterday with like a more sober mind so to speak and so then he would pick these things apart further and be like I can't believe I got this deep I really only

have two choices here, right? To go deeper or regress. Right? And so regression looks like closing that door, like going back up and like knowing that like that door is there and like unlocked to keep going deeper in.

But like being content to leave it there. But like still having those 10 units of energy that we were talking about to like want to bring about positive change or himself in the world. And so he's like I got so deep. Like there's only two directions. There's like upper like upper like up or down, right?

There's micro or macro or whatever spectrum you want to think about it on. So he's like, if I'm not allocating my attention to going deeper in myself, I'm still going to have like this anxiety to seek that change somewhere. And so he's like, where do I put that? And so that's where I was talking about this idea

of like people can get sort of like, if they have that budget for change, but they're not using it on themselves, this is where you can get indoctrinated by ideas like COVID or, climate change crisis or you know um inflation whatever whatever like is in your gravity well that's like capturing your attention and making you anxious or making you worry um and making you feel like oh well something's got to change here something's got to change right um that's i think what that is

if that goes back to sort of like the question and makes sense because if you're not allocating that attention to going deeper to uncover things of yourself like you still have that same budget You've got like those 10 units in the analogy. And so like, like if you're not putting them on a problem that you're choosing or a goal state that you're choosing, then like you will be susceptible to be indoctrinated by some other problem or goal state that is not yours. And you'll be like, whoof, it's going to cost me way less energy to not have to dig deeper in myself. I can just allocate my budget to this person's sort of thing. It's like building a business for yourself versus like working for someone else.

you can build a business for yourself it's going to take a lot more energy than like going and helping someone else build their business but at the end of the day you're not creating leverage for yourself right you don't have like freedom in that scenario you know yeah and

I would say in that the way you phrased it there the anxiety that comes because of what they feed you to keep your energy coming yeah right like that and that goes on all yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah You know, I was wondering, you mentioned Jung and his work on dreams and different things like that.

I was curious, you know, when it comes to dreams, do you see importance in it? And the reason I asked that is it's come up three times this morning. You've said it multiple times. I had a phone call right before I got on with you that said, oh, I'd had a dream about your last night. I thought I'd give you a call and I was like, oh, that's odd. And then I'd had a conversation right before that where it brought up dreams. And then actually one more on that is I mentioned that I got trapped in a dreamlike state where I almost slept through a freaking conference. But it was, I don't know.

It was, I don't mean anything strange by it. It was just like that normally doesn't happen. When it comes to dreams and how they play out, work in the world, I don't know what I'm trying to get across. here. What importance do you put on that? What importance do I put on it is like a very interesting way to like I guess to answer that like I take my dreams super seriously. And so when I say super seriously like I wake up and I pretty much always have like anybody on video I've got this little black notebook like is either in Ben's pocket or five feet from him at all times. And so if I wake up and I don't have time to immediately write out my dream,

then I'm at least writing something that will allow me to remember what the dream is so I can write it out later. So that's step one is like I want to recollect whatever the dream was. And like I don't want to get wishy-washy-woo, but like over time as I've continued to do that, like, again, to what we were talking about with the alchemical stuff earlier, the alchemist book, like there's a certain point where you can be like coincidence, coincidence, coincidence, coincidence, but like I've recorded my dreams for a long time. How long is a long time? more than two years. Okay. And what coincidences have... You're not...

Listen, at this point, if people are still tuned in, they're on board. They're full past wishy-washy bullshit. Like we've been talking about some stuff that has really piqued my interest. So what coincidences have you seen out of your dreams? I've seen

the ways that I will work on things or like the settings that I find myself in. and that's sort of like most broad. I suppose I'm trying to avoid personal context, but it would make it more valuable if I was like willing to go into these sorts of things, right? Like I've seen ways that I've interacted with people that I love. I've like seen behaviors that people that I love are partaking in. And then like I'll come around and like, you know, my dad will be listening to this and he'll know what I'm talking about and I won't get into the weeds of it.

But like, I was like, hey, it's kind of funny. I had this like dream about a month ago. And he was like, wow, I've got to like tell you in Sydney something. You know what I mean? Like, and I'm like, I wrote this down November 17th and we're like gathered for Christmas. And like, it was just a weird thing. You know what I mean? So there's a specific example.

Like a lot of ways that I like interact with loved ones. I'm like, this is the scenario and the setting I was in when this happened. I'll like write this out in a dream. Right? and then like months may go by and I'll like find myself in that setting and this is when deja vu happens right people hear the term deja vu I think a lot of people get the feeling without that context and this is what sort of like saving that context by recording the dream gives you is that like you get that wave of deja vu like you felt that Sean right oh I've had deja vu yeah

yeah you've had deja vu so you get that wave of deja vu and when I get that wave of deja vu and when I get that wave of deja vu as someone, not all the time, right, but as someone that like rigorously records my dreams, when I get that wave of deja vu, sometimes I remember why I'm having that deja vu. And I'm like, I dreamt this, right? Like, I remember the context of the setting that I was in whenever I had this feeling. And now you have a choice, right? Because like, you can choose in the present to be like, do I want to do the thing that I did next in my dream? And like I've literally been there where I'm like, I know what I did next in my dream, right?

I know what I did next. So that scares me. That really scares me to do that right now. And so you've got the choice of like whether to do what that thing is or to like branch off in some other direction, right? And so more often than not because the thing that I dreamt was what I wanted, I like am like positively

I'm positively reinforced it's like a positive feedback loop I'm like no I'm going to do this like I'm going to do this right now why wait this this is what I want like and then I'll do that thing and so again I'm like I'm dancing around vaguely because I'm like I'm trying not

because a lot of this is like really personal stuff but like that's well I apologize then no you're fine I'm not offended by anything in this world there's you can ask me any questions and I'll just answer them so do you think I sort of did. Like, I don't know how better to say this.

Do you think dreaming then is time travel you can see into the future? So tomorrow on my substack where I like put out written content, I'll be sharing like a 15-minute conversation that I had with someone who is the president and director of research for something called the Qualia Research Institute. And so what is qualia? Qualia is like subjective experiences in the way that we. we were talking about them prior. And so the reason that I say that is because we had a conversation about dreams.

And so I'll share it with you and it's out. But in any case, my sort of model for this is we've had a guy on our podcast two times who I admire a lot. You know, I've talked like I've talked to you about his ideas of like emergence and these sorts of things. But he has something that he calls the overfitted brain hypothesis, right? and so what the overfitted brain hypothesis says, this person's name is Eric Howell. He's a neuroscientist. He studied consciousness with one of the leading theories in Minnesota.

Really wicked smart guy. He has since, in the same way I was talking about this other guy, Adam jumped out of the ivory tower. He's like, these structures are broken. I'm going to write for myself. And like, I hope you trust me as an individual enough to like buy my books and like read my substacks and stuff because that's how I'm going to make a living from now on.

But so in his overfitted brain hypothesis, what Eric says is that in artificial intelligence, what we do to prevent algorithms from what's referred to as overfitting data, we will add entropy to that training set to expand what it's sort of capable of recognizing. And so, like, let me give a really grounded example of this. If you have like a artificial intelligent program that like its sole purpose is to recognize images of cats, right? Or yeah, like let's say cats. And it's got a training set of like 10 million pictures of cats. And so then you're like feeding this thing like pictures and you're being like, is this a cat? No, this is a dog, right? Is this a cat?

Yes, this is a cat. I know what cats look like. And so then you might show it something that kind of looks like a cat. Like let's say it's a mere cat, right? which is like an animal that looks like a cat but is not a cat. And what overfitting is is whenever it sees that image and it's like, oh, I know what that is. That's a cat, right? And that's wrong.

That's like the wrong result, right? And so to keep artificial intelligence algorithms from doing this, what we do is, yeah, we like, we want their training sets to be bigger. And so going back to Eric Howell's sort of theory of the overfitted brain hypothesis, what he believes is that what our brains are doing when we're asleep, when we're unconscious, when we're not like using our energy to perceive things in sort of like our waking conscious state. We're sort of like pre-modeling future scenarios in our brains to sort of expand our training sets so that whenever we are in our waking state and we're like perceiving things when we're

awake, we are more accurately able to recognize symbols that are important to us, if that makes sense. And so that kind of skeeters around your direct question of like, are dreams time travel or not, right? But that's like my high context framework for thinking about this. And I guess broadly speaking, if I was to answer your question, I suppose, like, I would lean more yes than no. You obviously placed an immense amount of importance on your dreams. Very much.

I mean, you're taking the effort to jot down what they are. I don't know if you can share benefits of it. I'm just curious, you know, I keep digging into personal things, but I'm like, okay. Go deeper. Yeah, that's why we're here, man. Let's make it valuable. Well, I'm just like, okay, so you can see the event before the event happens. What is the, what's the point?

What does it matter if you're just going to follow the same track that you've laid out in your brain, in dreams? Like, why, why does it matter to record it? What does that do for you that you didn't have? before. And as you sit and think, I'm just going to say like, you know, there's things that I didn't do and I've started doing again. One of them is very simple. I've been getting up at 5 in the morning, pulling my ass out of bed, and walking the dog. And what that does is net benefit for my day, just across the board. Actually, as I sit and you talked about Doisie F, I hope I said that, do I say, anyways, I'm like, why don't I start, you know, daunting if I get up every morning,

I can probably have that book done in a month, two months, doesn't matter, and then I actually have what is very meaningful, and I have it, and I've started it. Anyways, and so I'm like, ah, ah, so to me, getting up early, I can quantify or explain why it's important. It's important because it extends your day. It's important because you beat the day before it even starts. it's important because you're going to start to check things off and that is net good for you and positive and everything else why would you say

somebody should start recording their dreams if all it's going to do is tell you what's going to happen in the future and you're going to do it anyways because and I'm someone I don't record my dream seven days a week but call it three to five like sometimes I'll wake up right three to five days a week

I'm jotting my paragraph down for like what I can remember that's a lot of my point being is that that's a big data set right and that's not to say that each of those paragraphs contains salient information like maybe ben left like last one like i'm recollecting from this morning like i left my car open like my door was open in my car in the parking lot and i saw you know uh Olga walking across the parking lot i'm like oh i want to go get her attention but like my car door is open um i should go close the door in my car and then it's like the car i must have left the break off too because now it's driving and it like runs into a road and it's disrupted these people and i'm like ah my car but like i don't actually care about my car i just want to go get

her attention right this was my dream like i wrote down this morning like that like there's symbolism there it's like okay i like want her attention more than i care about like the state of my car right now you know what i mean like there's like little insights to take away so that's sort of like the daily micro value of like oh there was like some salient information in my dream that was like valuable to me this morning, right? But that doesn't mean that, like, a year from now, I'm going to have, like, my car, you know, with the breakoff

running into, like, open traffic from a parking lot, and I'm going to be, like, having to go get her attention instead. I hope not. Right? So there's, like, micro value in regards to, like, those symbolisms, those like affirmations of, like, okay, lesson for Ben is, like, I care about

getting her attention. That's, like, what I want. That's what's meaningful to me. Like, macro value, is like these like really high fidelity recollections that we're talking about, is that like when that does happen, it's like I said, like you have a choice of like whether to do that thing or not. Whenever you like find yourself back in that present state

of like, I dreamt this, right? And like the deja vu wave comes over. And like it's not a deja vu that's ambiguous where like some of us might have deja vu and like we don't know what to do next. We like have to make a free choice. And like you can choose what you can choose what you want to or you can choose what you don't want to do.

Maybe this is the way to think about the tangible value. It's like what you're saying. You get the deja vu and like there's something for you to do next there. Right. And like it's totally ambiguous to you. You don't know what the right path is. Again, it's not all of the time. But more often than not, when I get those senses, I like, I'm in tune with my intuition.

I'm like, I know what I need to do next year. And like, I don't care what the rational repercussions of that choice are. like I have to do this thing next. And like when I say have to with that much conviction, it could be easy to sort of like chalk, chalk that up as like a sort of, I've subscribed to an anti-free will determinist framework. But that's like not actually the case either,

because I like believe that I could make the other decision. Because like in the past, before I had the context to know that I was doing the right decision, like I could still fall either way. I could like do the, I could do the irresponsible thing or I could do the thing that didn't put me in most, direct alignment with the better path forward for Ben.

And like, I've made those decisions too. And, like, maybe I had to make those decisions to be able to make them more effectively in the past. But I, like, as much as I feel like I have to do something in the present, I also, like, share equal conviction with the belief that, like, I can do whatever I want to at any given moment, if that makes sense. Not from, like, an arrogant sense of, like, oh, I can do whatever I want and I can go this place.

And, like, no, that's not what I mean. I mean, like, I can orient whatever direction I want to, and I can, like, move forward from that direction. Like, I can plot, you know, the direction of motion anywhere. And, like, that's the way that Lee Cronin on our podcast has talked about this. And, like, I've talked to multiple past guests on, like, our podcast about this model thinking about, because, like, people, as you get in these groups and, like, you get this far, you know, we're an hour and 45 minutes in the conversation. It's like, all right, here we are on free will again. You know what I mean? Like, one of the most important questions.

I just think it's, when I think about it, I just think about doors. Yeah. You get to step through whatever door you want. Yeah, that's right. And there's doors that present themselves all the time. You either see them or don't see them. I mean, that is an ability in itself. And the understanding you can walk through a door and back up and walk back out at.

Like, nope, didn't want that one. And so, I don't know. The dream thing is interesting to me. just because I've been reading more at night and I have found my dreams to be more vivid, memorable, like I can actually remember them. They are strange, all over the place, and I don't know what to make of that. I don't even know where to begin. Other than it's interesting you journal.

I assume that gives you some sense of like a semblance of like dreams and what they're trying to maybe tell you. Because I've heard lots of different people talk about dreams before. I just haven't yet at this point found enough importance to sit down and write about it every time. Although I have written about it sometimes. I find it very, like anytime you have that amount of consistency where you're doing something, there will be meaning that comes out of it. Consistency is very important with a lot of things. Yeah, that's 100% right.

I think the word for like analysis of the Bible and Catholicism is like hermeneutic analysis. I could be wrong on that. But like whatever that word is, like what you're doing there, like or literary analysis would be like another, like in your English class, you'd read a book, right? We'd all have to read books. And then we'd have to be like, you know, it had a really, like, at least in my English classes, there was like the model of, you know, talk about this story or something. subject or chapter as it relates to you, as it relates to world, and as it relates to another book. And so what they're teaching you there is like how to analyze a thing that doesn't directly relate to you, but then put it in relation to yourself, the world, and a different thing.

It's teaching you to pattern spot, right? And so like that's what you're doing with your dreams, except you're, like it's what I was talking about with Dostoevsky, right? Like I'm pattern spotting things that are salient to me as I'm reading this book, you, anyone else who's listening who picks that up might read it and pick up patterns that are more salient to them that are entirely different from mine. But it's the same thing with your dreams where like your dreams are your most, what I'm wanting to get at is that your dreams are the most dense place you can go where like the thing that doesn't necessarily map directly onto your experience, you can do that same thing of like placing it in context to yourself in the world or a different thing. But it's like

most directly related to you in some way. It's like the most dense version of doing that because it's like dreams come from you, if that makes sense. It does. It's really a gray zone or something along that lines. It's a very like, I understand, but I don't understand.

You know what I mean? It's like I guess if I started journaling, maybe I could understand more of what you're talking about. I remember Rob telling me that he was doing the same thing. And I'm like, oh, that's interesting. I'm not running out to do it, but at the same time, you know, it took one of the things, one of the things that got brought up last week was a time, I'm going to say journal, but I don't know if that's what we called at a time report, something along that lines,

just to see what you're doing in your day. And I'm like, oh, you know, when you talk about different ideas hitting different people and being like, that makes a lot of sense. Why am I not doing it? As soon as I did it, the next day I was up at 5 in the morning. It's like, this makes sense. Boom, done, here we go. And I haven't turned back since.

I don't even need to do the time journaling anymore. It's like an idea that was like, it must have been right behind the old eye sockets because it was sitting there. And as soon as it was said, I was like, that makes a lot of sense. Why aren't doing this? It took two days. I'm like, I'm wasting a bunch of time that I know was important and away I went. With the time journaling, or time journaling, sorry, with the dream journaling,

I'm sitting there and I'm like, it just can't. see right now the importance of doing it that does not mean a guy shouldn't do it. I've been sharing like for whatever reason when I when I venture away from from Lloyd right you go to do these conferences you go to interact with all these different people that come from all over the place. I'm like oh there's going to be these conversations that happen that are going to be like out of this world like you're like oh that's why I came. Yeah. Like that's and it happened like three straight times and three straight days of leaving. And then you come back and you get in the grind of doing these and these are great conversations. I'm not trying to make light of that.

But then the next adventure will come where you can't see why you're going somewhere and maybe dreams could shed a little light on that as kind of what I'm taking from what you're saying. And for me, I'm like, I don't know if I need to see the, but in saying that, me and Vance were just talking about intuition. And I was saying, for whatever reason, women have this intuition where they can my wife and I were talking about it and she was just and I've heard other women talk about this where they they can

they just got a gut feeling like something I don't know something's not gonna be right anyways she didn't tell me this before I left and this wasn't this last week and this is a long time ago and after I came back and I'd had like this weird experience and I tell her she's like I yeah something I just knew something wasn't right I'm like well when did you know that?

Well before you left I'm like well why didn't she say anything well because it was weird and I didn't want to tell you. I'm like, no, next time you tell me, because then I know what to prepare for. It isn't this like going off to be like, you know, this is going to be the greatest time in the world. And women have that ability to do that better than, better than men, in my opinion. They have this ability. And I come back to, I'm tying this all around to dreams. And it's like, well, maybe a way to help along some of your intuition and to see things,

maybe that's the importance of taking a peek into your dreams. Does that make sense? That's a that's a hundred percent spot on like dead 100 percent. Like can't put it on a high enough pedestal. Like if you are articulating the value, it's the like what I was saying before of like, I feel more convicted in the decisions that I'm making in the present. When like most like not most people, right, you're like navigating the present and you're like, I don't know what to do next because the future is ambiguous.

Like the future is still ambiguous for me. I have like no idea what's going to happen the rest of it. I'm like, I don't know what's going to happen next. see this conversation coming? No. Yeah, I'm like, I'm like I have things planned. There's like events. There's like milestones. But I'm like, I don't know what the trajectory

is. But like when I'm like making decisions in the present, which like goes back to this like why I believe that I have will and like agency to make choices is because I'm able to orient myself in the present in the direction of like this intuition, which is sort of like a calling and like where to

orient in the present. Like I do feel like Like it's done that for me. The dream analysis thing has like improved my intuitive skill to like not feel as anxious in the present in regards to the ways that I'm orienting myself. I'm like, I am going to get up. I'm going to do these things today. I'm going to like head in this direction. And I'm like more certain than I was yesterday that I'm heading in the right direction. And that process like continues and continues and continues. I think you're exactly right about women too in regards to like women having more default intuition, which is perhaps why women are like more. tune with like emotion than men because like intuition is hard to explain like we've we've spent however much time an hour and a half on it pretty yeah like like yeah trying to like there's there's not much to it goes back to the same idea of like you can't articulate what's going on with intuition with reason like you and I no matter how hard we try here will never derive like like the reason model of like what's going on in regards to the intuitive process itself we can

like reason ways to get in touch with that process like dream analysis and these sorts of things. But we will not be able to like explain that away. And like emotion is like Jung, going back to Jung, Jung says that to explain a thing as to a take away its power. And so this is what he says if you're like feeling

like a rushed emotional response that you want to be detached from. He's like figure out the model to explain it away. Right. Like if you're feeling angry, like understand that that which perceives anger is not angry, you're just like feeling that anger and you need to like rationalize why.

and then you won't be angry anymore. And I found that to be true. But like there's going back to this idea, and I don't think it's a sexist idea at all, but like women more in touch with intuition. That's a benefit. Why there's more of like an unexplainable like emotional response perhaps sometimes as well is like because there's a feeling

and an inability to like explain why that feeling is there. Right. So that's how like intuition and emotion I think they're sort of tethered in this way. And like no matter how hard you try, experience is the only thing that we'll explain. that feeling away, perhaps for someone that, like, does feel positive or negative or however they feel in regards to, like, an intuitive feeling. And to be unable to, like, detach from that in the present, then, like, yeah, it's unexplainable, right? I guess is what I'm getting at there.

I have a thought, and I'm going to try and pull it out because I'm... I believe in you. Yeah, no kidding. I'm like, I listen. I hear you. I hear you. And then in my brain it goes, if you put all your energy into trying to understand, whether it's a concept, an idea, which I guess are the same bloody things, you may be amazed at what comes out of that.

Once upon a time, if I go back to episode 150, and I just listen to it, I had this hypothesis of the world working as a grand opera stage. one of those old theaters. And media was the one pulling the curtain. And you could, you know, get a glimpse.

And I said, I want to see behind the curtain. I'm one of the people sitting in the opera, and all they're showing me is what they want to see, you know? And so for probably 100 episodes, I chased that idea in one way or another. You can call it truth, you can call it whatever it is. and all I keep telling myself now is be careful what you asked for because that led me to I'm going to say some of the darkest days in my life or darkest day of my life but what I mean by

that is just like it stretched my brain for about as far as it could go like I had to wrestle with something that I did not want to wrestle with and I did not realize that when I was like this is my idea and this is what I think and then I spent a crazy amount of time, no different than you talking about journaling on dreams, I spent a crazy amount of time talking and focusing on this problem. And when you finally got to the end, I was no better prepared for it than episode 150

when I was still in there going like, eh, it's only going to be this. And I don't know what I'm trying to get out other than be careful what you put your energy and time into. Because, well, you mentioned, with you. You keep digging and pretty soon you've dug so deep, you're like, oh my God. You've rather got to just keep digging or you regress, right? And so what I hear you say is

you talk about that loop from episode 150 through mining for truth and then coming back, like no more prepared than when you were then, right? That recursive loop, there's like a, there's a difference in perspective that can happen there. You will never be more prepared. It goes back to this idea of like you're only constantly prepared for the uncertainty of the future in the present. Like that will never change, like, ever, right? But there's like a level of comfort that comes from the process of continuing to derive chaos from the future in the present, whereby like the next time you go around that loop from episode, what episode are we, like 300? We'll be close to 390, somewhere in that range.

From episode 390 to, you know, 475, like that. that loop will be like, you know, Sean, Sean didn't like trek through the mud of like, you know, you're on your knees, like crawling under the barbed wire for the truth. Like you're, you know, you're prancing in an open field and you're like, there's, there's, I can uncover whatever I want in this landscape. You know what I mean? There is so, there is so much going on.

Is this making sense in terms of like, it's just a difference of perspective of like, you're not. Yeah, it comes, it comes back to like the different stages of the podcast. Speaking of the podcast in particular, It comes back to different stages. And the stage I'm in is extremely hopeful. Like, I'm extremely optimistic right now. Because I see, you want to get out of tough situations.

All that is required is energy and work and, like, putting yourself into it. But at the end of that, I say all that in optimism. I'm like, it's hard times. And I don't mean from the sense of, like, ghouli. legs and stuff like that, it means at some point you have to become, you're going to have to stand up to probably what Vance would consider the mob or something along that lines. And I mean, look at what Peterson's doing over and over and over and over again. We all love them for it, but nobody really wants to go do that.

And yet what we need more out of people is more people willing to stand up to the mob, not in a sense of like antagonizing it, but of this stoic no. I can't be touched by it That is power, not force That is You cannot get to me I believe this To be true

And I'm immovable And I want that in the best of ways I want that in the best of humanity Not the worst But like So if you That's what lies at the end of this At some point, maybe

If you could ever get there I don't know if I ever want to get there But I'm like That's what I know that's what that the end of this sucker and I want as many people there with me so that you don't do it alone because I think one of the things Peterson is doing for a lot of us is taking arrows every different way from this way to that way and that has a health impact on them like nobody else or nothing else sorry not nobody else and somehow we have to all find that level within us wherever we're at in our little communities

whatever. I don't mean we all got to be on the global stage like Peterson. I don't want that. I really don't. I just want to have the ability to articulate my beliefs in a way that I'm like, no. Like, this is why, no. And if you can model that, maybe we can all get there and have a hundred of us instead of one. Yeah, the Sean Newman podcast is a catalyst for getting people to find more conviction. uncovering the truth. Well, Sean's trying to find it as we go along. Like, listen, I, I, this is why I say I don't like, one of the things that bothers me about talking about this lots is it sounds like

I'm preaching. Sean is preaching it because he's trying to preach it to himself to find the confidence to continue to like, audience text, Sean. Audience text, Sean. Let him know if you feel like he's being too preachy or if you want more of this. Right? Like, I think, no, I think, I think this, I mean, I'm, I'm only on the other side of the

camera and, and I suppose, microphone, if anything, I've been preachy as well. But I'm not getting the sense of you being preachy. I'm getting the sense of like what I am seeing, like what I'm perceiving on the other end of like this conversation is someone with such genuine interest and curiosity and like undergoing that process, right? Which that's what it is, right? It's like the undergoing the process. Like another guy I admire a great deal. We've had in the podcast, Jack Butcher. He's like he's out there teaching people how to build stuff. Like that's, I think he's one of the most important people alive, literally today because like he's not out literally literally and I'll tell you why

it's because like Vance Vance whenever he was at your your rural versus urban divide Sean Newman presents a few weeks ago Sunday January 22nd what an odd day to have that anyways carry on Jack Butcher yeah but he presented he presented the three options right yes a voice loyalty or exit and maybe like this is a form of exit but what I see Jack Butcher doing out in the world is I see him teaching people how to build things and How to create independence for themselves through Creating independent financial leverage and it is like once you have financial leverage like sure you can like keep pulling that lever like it's a slot machine or Like this is when you are like most enabled to like once you've alleviated your constraints that

then you can like pick your domain of like creative action or doing positive things right and so it's like sort of like a fourth option maybe it's kind of like exit but it's like build stuff right he's like build stuff for yourself that makes you money so that you can be free build stuff for the world that makes it better so that the people who inherit it from you will like have a better world um you know build a strong family structure the nuclear family what i don't hear is Build stuff so you can be a millionaire. Yeah, because it's not that. And that really interests me because...

Build stuff to be free was his message. And that's why I was like... That's why I'm like... I'm preaching his holy gospel on the Sean Newman podcast because that's what it did for me. What I'm going to do now, I haven't heard anyone say quite... Maybe Vance is rubbing off on you.

Maybe that's what's happening. I don't know if I've heard anyone say, the line you said, the most important man on the planet is Jack Butcher. The only other person who's ever said that has been Vance Crowe, and he said it about one of the guys on stage that night and Steve Barber. And so I find that, I'm like, hmm, interesting. That means I'm going to hassle you in Vance to hook me up with Jack Butcher because I'm like, well, I'm, we'll clip this out. I'll send it to him.

Like, I don't, like, I wouldn't say we're like tight, but like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Jack is our people. I hope we're his people. Like, yeah, he's a builder. I respect him a great deal. That's cool. Well, before I let you out of here, I'm glad I said we're going to, you know,

give me the two hours and we've gone past it. It's been a ride. I've loved it. Thank you. Well, here, here's the final portion. It's the crewed master final question. T's words. If you're going to stand behind a cause

and stand behind it, absolutely. What's one thing, Mr. Benjamin Anderson stands behind. Things are getting better. That is the cause. Don't let anybody dissuade you that things are on a downward spiral. Things are getting better. Every single day, every single week, every single month, every single year.

There is so much power to be garnered from people in power selling the interpretation that the things around you are getting worse. But as you dive into the weeds of the things that you care about and figure out that technology is evolving in such a way that this is getting better, social structures are changing in such a way that this is getting better. Like my dissuaded space for this context more, right, was like, I'm like, academia is broken. I'm like, Ben wants to do this kind of work, right? I'm like, I want more than anything in the world to contribute to like, like, make

progress in the space of like bioengineering that like I'm focused on that like you won't dive into right now. But that's what I want more than anything in the world. And I was so dissuaded for a long time because I was like, I went to school. And like I had to drop out after a semester because I never took on a loan. I paid for, you know, the first semester out of pocket. And I was like, okay, I'm tethered to what I'm spending and the ROI is not paying off. I need to exit. Right. that was what I did. And then I started my building process. I built wand.

Like I talked about building that before. I have since sold wand. And now I have my financial freedom. Ben can do whatever he wants now, right? The thing that, like, I'm getting back to this idea that, like, things are getting better. And I was dissuaded by academia specifically. And that, like, this is a system that's broken. I will never be able to effectively contribute to this space.

But, like, you talk about the tea leaves. That's what the Vance Crow podcast did for me, man. Like, having these people on the podcast, and like them sending me papers and me asking questions and like them having on and I'm frontloading questions to be like hey ask Michael about this right like you know um like I've traveled all over the world to visit these people to the degree that like literally yesterday I got and I'm not sure I'm skyhooking myself I got invited to like lead a mini conference in Montenegro on the subjects that like and I have no credibility I've got no credibility right I'm a I'm a drop out of one semester um of like wash you and St. Louis but I've like built the things that I care about building. And, like, I see people like Eric Howell and, like, Adam with experimental history, like exiting that structure, but they're not just exiting. That's, like, what's most important. It's like the, it's like the exit and, right, as the third option. Exit and build something, because that's what they did. They, like, exited and they, like, started,

they kept doing their research without constraints in the ways that, like, the existing structure was preventing them from doing. And they, like, built their substacks. And, like, they built their computational pipelines. And, like, they're writing their books. And they're getting these things out there. And I'm like, yes. Like, it's getting better, right?

Because other people are, like, acknowledging what they're doing because they're, like, paragon's of, like, the next stage of development in regards to, like, how ideas are distributed through these systems. And they're like, yeah. And so, like, I took that main idea in regards to, like, what is the thing that Ben stands behind? I stand behind the idea that things are getting better

and nobody should be dissuaded by the fact that things are getting worse. Like find the place where things are getting better in regards to what you care about and build stuff to keep making it better. And like go from there. That's like, that's my, that's, I'm standing happily preaching on my soapbox for that. Well, man, I've, uh, um, I've enjoyed this, you know? I, uh, I say this, I've been saying this a lot at the end of podcast. don't know where the old dusty path leads me, but somehow I know it'll cross again with

Benjamin down the road somewhere, whether it's pattern spotting or what have you. Either way, I'm glad the, you know, I'm glad somewhere along the lines, wherever conversation was, I decided to have you on to sit and chat some things because it's been highly enjoyable. And I'm chuckling at myself at all the notes I wrote down from you. And I'm like, oh, my God. Got like 18 books to read now, folks. so let's get at her and get going. But either way, I appreciate you giving me some time, sitting down and doing this, and look forward to seeing where your path takes you,

and certainly look forward to seeing you in person again. And if we have you up this way, we'll try and show you some things, Canadian style. Well, amen. I'm honored to have been on, and yeah, Godspeed, Sean.