The Rich Roll Podcast - The Mind of Daniel Pinchbeck: Evolving Consciousness To Reimagine Commerce, Community, Political Systems & The Environment

Episode Date: May 21, 2015

Philosopher. Author. Futurist. Counter culture provocateur. Described as a mashup of James Merrill, H. P. Lovecraft, and Carlos Castaneda, I was first introduced to Daniel Pinchbeck through his rather fascinating metaphysical study of prophesy in 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl*– a book that explored humanity's precarious balance between greater self-potential and environmental disaster. Raised by Beat generation parents — his mother dated Jack Kerouac around the time On The Road exploded on the scene – Daniel’s roots in the New York counterculture movement run deep. Throughout the 1990s, Pinchbeck matured into a member of New York's literary select. He wrote for publications such as The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Rolling Stone and Harper's Bazaar. But slowly something happened. As he approached his late twenties, he describes falling into a deep spiritual crisis fueled by a frustration with the inherent shortcomings of mainstream media and a friend's sudden passing due to a heroin overdose. Despair ultimately led him to an investigation of shamanism. Embracing metaphysical belief systems, his psyche and body began to open to the mystical. His first book, Breaking Open the Head*, chronicled these experiences and observations from a first hand perspective and was heralded as the most significant on psychedelic experimentation since the work of Terence McKenna. Today, everything Mayan, shamanistic and post-modern psychedelia seems to always point to this uniquely perspicacious, probing mind. And I think it's fair to say that Daniel is considered a leading pioneer of the post-modern psychedelic movement, advocating a measured, responsible exploration of shamanistic cultural rites and the substances they employ to expand consciousness. If Daniel is anything, he is a maverick, persistently challenging social, political, economic and cultural paradigms. A man searching for answers both personal and global, his insights are both provocative and fascinating, and more often than not imbued with hope for a better (if not idealized) future world. A confession: Daniel has a prodigious intellect. I admit to being a bit intimidated. Moreover, I have no experience with psychedelics, and as a sober person in recovery it is unlikely I ever will. So I was unsure as to whether interviewing him would be a good idea or even appropriate for this show. But the opportunity arose and I couldn't imagine passing it up. I’m glad I didn’t. Much like my recent conversation with Tom Hardin, this episode marks a departure into new terrain for me. On a personal level, I found Daniel to be engaging, introspective and not surprisingly possessed with the rare ability to muse on a vastly diverse array of challenging themes. This is a fascinating — albeit at times challenging — mind-bender deep dive into Daniel's paradigm breaking vision. Enjoy! Rich

It may be that humanity has unconsciously willed this extremely dangerous threshold that threatens us with extinction in order to bring about a mass initiation. That's Daniel Pinchbeck, this week on The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show. My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. This is my podcast. Thanks for spending some time with me today. So each week, I sit down with the best and the brightest, the most paradigm-breaking minds across all categories of life, health, spirituality, athleticism, fitness, and excellence, always excellence, to hopefully illuminate and inform your path, your journey.

And if today's guest is anything, he definitely fits the bill when it comes to challenging traditional paradigms. His name is Daniel Pinchbeck, and I'm pretty excited to introduce him to you guys here today. So I first became aware of Daniel, I believe it was, well, I know it was when I read his book, 2012, The Return of Quetzalcoatl.

I think I read it back in 2011. It's a pretty fascinating book, kind of a mind bender. It's a study of prophecy and very, very interesting. And then I heard him on the Joe Rogan podcast, and that just kind of deepened my interest in what he does. on a wide variety of topics like religion, spirituality, global consciousness, community, environmental awareness, Mayanism, shamanism, consumerism, commerce, art, technology, and maybe most notably, the mandate for new economic and thought paradigms. And he's got a really interesting background. He grew up in the East Village in New York City, and he is the son of Beat Generation parents. His mother actually dated Jack Kerouac around the time that he was coming out with his book On the Road.

And so his roots in the New York City counterculture movement run really deep. But in his late 20s, he fell into what he characterizes as a deep spiritual crisis, a crisis that led him towards the study of shamanism. And I think it's fair to say that Daniel really has solidified himself as a leading pioneer in this postmodern psychedelic movement, advocating the expansion of consciousness through exploration of shamanism and substances like ayahuasca, aboga, DMT, and the like. And he's authored several books, of course, 2012, The Return of Quetzalcoatl, but also a book called Breaking Open the Head and some other ones. And as a journalist, he's pretty prolific. He's written for Esquire, the New York Times Magazine, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Dazed and Confused. He's appeared on the Colbert Report. And he's also very involved in counterculture

movements and festivals like Burning Man. He's the founder of a website called Evolver.net. And I could go on and on. He's done quite a few things. But let me say this. I have a confession. I have to admit that I had a little bit of trepidation about talking to Daniel as his interest and his experiences in the mystical, mysterious worlds of shamanism and psychedelia are something that I have no direct personal experience with. Of course, I have friends who have, and I have friends who have benefited from such experiences. So I certainly don't dismiss them. It's just that as a sober person in recovery, I'm not sure I will ever explore these things myself. So I certainly don't dismiss them. It's just that as a sober person in recovery, I'm not sure I will ever explore these things myself. And I'm not sure they are endeavors that

I can recommend. But I am cognizant and acknowledging the fact that many people have benefited from these kinds of experiences. So Daniel has a prodigious literary mind. And a second confession is that I admit to being a little intimidated by Daniel's substantial intellect and a little unsure about whether interviewing him for this podcast would be a good idea or maybe even appropriate for this show. But I was in New York City and through our mutual friend, Stephen S Cesarini, the opportunity sort of spontaneously arose to do this. And it was something that I just couldn't imagine passing up. And I'm really glad that I didn't. So much like my Tipper X conversation, this podcast marks a little bit of new terrain for me. And it's a bit of a departure from my typical rotation, rotunda, I guess. bit of a departure from my typical rotation, rotunda, I guess. But it's a pretty fascinating deep dive into ideas and modalities around new consciousness, political and economic movements.

And there's also a lot of things that we bring up, a lot of URLs and books, etc, that we discuss. And so definitely, you're going to want to go to the show notes and the resources on the episode page for this podcast at richroll.com. So if you're inspired or intrigued by the conversation, there'll be plenty for you to explore and take the conversation a little bit deeper. So let's go down the rabbit hole. I know I've said that again, but I think for once, this phrase carries a little bit more of a literal meaning and expand our minds through the consciousness. Daniel, please be back. Setting the space thanks man hey daniel hey how's it going thanks so much for uh for doing this today i really appreciate it thanks for having me uh we are uh we'll set the stage we're in a church right now that has been converted into a loft apartment.

Our mutual friend, Stefan's humble abode. Thank you, Stefan. Where is he? Oh, he's over there. Cool. So it's a pretty cool setting for a podcast here in Brooklyn. We're happy to be in New York. And it's a treat to connect with you and to talk to you, man. I think I remember we were talking just before the podcast started.

I remember you being on Joe Rogan's show quite a while back and it being a rather provocative, stimulating conversation. So I look forward to getting into it a little bit with you. And thinking back on your work, I feel like, and disabuse me of this notion if it's incorrect, but I feel like you were sort of pigeonholed as the guy. Like when 2012 came around, it was like, oh, you're the 2012 guy, you're the Mayan end of the world guy, you know, and people not really understanding what your message is or not taking the time to actually read what your writing was saying or what you were speaking to specifically, because I think it really was about a shift in consciousness and this, for lack of a better phrase, new era that I feel like we're entering into in terms of human awareness, planetary consciousness,

what's going on with the environment, a whole number of things that we can speak about. Yeah, no, it was a fascinating experience. I mean, I guess I opened myself up to it because I wrote a book that I titled, it came out in 2006, called 2012, The Return of Quetzalcoatl, which I think is still just as germane and pertinent now as when it came out. And yeah, I mean, I basically was looking, you know, forward to that threshold.

I mean, I looked at a lot of different theories and scenarios and there were a lot of people, you know, from Jose Arguelles to Terence McKenna to just a whole bunch of other characters who definitely either insinuated or stated straight out that they thought something traumatic or, you know, some tremendous apotheosis or apocalyptic galactic superwave, meteorite, DMT mass activation was

going to happen. So I couldn't really, I didn't feel like I could rule any of that out because what do I know? But the thrust was more along the lines of what you were saying that we're being forced into a kind of consciousness change know, kind of consciousness change. And that's happening through the evolution of technology, the kind of growing awareness of how all the world's esoteric traditions kind of can be integrated. And also, yeah, the kind of rapid acceleration of the ecological crisis as a kind of threshold event for human consciousness

and but it was very instructive to see how the media will take something and deform and distort it and uh yeah it was interesting to be part of that process right i mean you you had to kind of weather that that that inquiry right of being on the other side of 2012 people saying well you know what happened didn't it happen though you know but we're in we're in 2015 right now and i think if you look back on what's occurred in the last three years i mean what what what uh strikes you as being consistent with that narrative well i mean the the most unfortunate part of it is the continuing revelations from what scientists are learning about what's happening to the biosphere, that it actually seems to be worse and worse and faster and faster than anticipated even a number of years ago. And faster and faster than anticipated even a number of years ago. So, yeah, to the point where we're literally putting the future of the human species in jeopardy, even in a century or two time frame.

And at the same time, we're in the momentum of this whole society that is very hard to interrupt or to stop. Even for those of us who are, you know, part of the, you know, new consciousness movement or whatever, we're still, you know, hopping planes all around the world, you know, buying, you know, beautiful seductive electronic equipment, you know, living well, I mean, eating fruits that come from around the world that travel 5,000, 10,000 miles to get to us. So we're all embedded in a system that in itself is degrading the life support systems of the earth as a whole. Right. I think no matter how lightly you try to tread on the planet, you're still participating

in this system. I mean, even if you live in the United States, and you're paying taxes, and then you know, you're de facto participating in a system that maybe politically, you don't necessarily agree with, and you kind of canvas what's happening, whether it's peak oil, or species extinction, or rainforest destruction, what have you, there is this almost, you know, impossible to stop gestalt of human progress and growth, that sort of mashes up against and stands in contrast to this rise, which I'm optimistic about this rise in consciousness that we're seeing, but how do those two meet? How do you see this playing out?

That's the question. That's a, you know, that's the question. That's a huge question. And, um, I mean, my effort to kind of work through that is, is the book that I'm writing now that I've been failing to complete writing over the last like six or seven years. I mean, I had a contract and forfeited it. I was also trying to kind of, um, you know, kind of you know kind of actualize the ideas by starting a company and a social movement and stuff like that with Evolver

exactly right and the Evolver network so yeah that was like you know a learning experiment prototype and now recently I started one version of a think tank called Center for Planetary Culture. And kind of the summation of that was we did a wiki around this

idea of regenerative society, like what would that look like? What would be the path to manifest it? And we sort of condensed a lot of those ideas in a paper called Toward Regenerative Society, which is on my site, danielpinchbeck.net, on the blog, or on the planetaryculture.com site on the blog there. And so, yeah, essentially, you could break it up into different areas. Let's say the three main areas would be the technical infrastructure, the political, economic, or social system, and then consciousness and culture. And then those are the three areas, kind of correspond to what Marx, I guess, talked about, is like base structure and superstructure or something like that. So we would need a rapid evolution in all three areas. Probably in a strange way, the hardest is the consciousness

and culture side. The fact is that people have been so programmed and indoctrinated into a certain set of beliefs on different levels that it's very hard for people to shift out of them, to recognize that they could become active agents of this change. But we know know, we know now that, you know, we could feasibly have, you know, 100% renewable energy sources within several decades. I mean, this engineer, Mark Jacobson, did a whole, I think, called the Solutions Project, where he maps out the whole U.S. and how the U.S. could become 100% renewable by 2030. There's...

Is that, can you find that online? Yeah, Solutions Project. Then Jeffrey Sachs, sort of an ambiguous figure. He's an economist from Columbia who Naomi Klein wrote about unfavorably in the Shock Doctrine. But he's done a larger project looking globally at how this rapid transition could happen. Jeremy Rifkin wrote a book called The Third Industrial Revolution looking at the internet of energy and how that could

develop rapidly to also allow for a whole transition in an industrial paradigm. In terms of the energy issue and other aspects of the technical infrastructure, it's certainly conceivable. In terms of the political economic system, it's extremely challenging. You would essentially, you know, our current financial system is in itself, you know, promotes competitive, aggressive and sustainable behavior patterns. Certainly. I mean, yeah, there's conceptual and practical realities, and then there's implementation of that.

And that begs the question of the structure that creates permissibility for that, right? And then there's consumer desire and consumer will and consumer choice. So I think that capitalism is woven through it as an impediment and also as an accelerator in certain respects, but it transcends capitalism, I think, also at the same time. Like, whether it's capitalism or not, there are other aspects of, I think, human behavior and the growth of human populations that also create, you know, barriers that go beyond political systems. Well, I mean, I think what's become clear at this point is that you don't have a political system and an economic system as two separate things. You have a political economic system, you know, so, you know, the media is woven into the military-industrial complex. CNN and the New York Times are, to a certain extent,

adjuncts of the Pentagon and the NSA and so on, and same with Facebook and so on. So, yeah, it's a tough nut to crack. So you're not going to solve this problem for me today? It's a tough nut to crack. So you're not going to solve this problem for me today? Well, I mean, in my own mind, I have an idea of how a solution might emerge. And we do see, I think it's very significant that we've seen things like the emergence of Facebook and Google,

or Jujol, as the comedian Reggie Watts likes to jokingly call it. In a very short period of time, we have platforms that can connect over a billion, soon it'll be two billion people on the planet. And that shows that we could create some kind of social infrastructure that really everybody could access and it could lead people towards collaborative decision making, cooperative ownership, sharing of resources,

very interesting developments. Bitcoin itself is very interesting, but then the idea that you could take elements of the underlying architecture of Bitcoin, which is called the blockchain, and build other forms of currency or other instruments for exchanging value that have different principles and ethics built into them. There's a lot of stuff emerging on the edge of the know, of the periphery. And it could be that it meshes together, but we are definitely facing some severe constraints. And it is even, to be honest, if you really look at the scientific data, possible that it's actually too late to save ourselves from extinction. Right. I mean, that's, that's the thing that was coming to my mind is

it's really, it's really a time thing. Like, are we going to run out of time before we can get our shit together? Right. I mean, you have, it is, it goes back to that same idea of it being this incredible, like, uh,

you know, dichotomy of all this amazing, you know, these amazing new tools that are arising that allow people to kind of get to the next level in their, in their consciousness and collectively organize to improve themselves and improve the world, you know, butting up against a never more powerful system that is trying to kind of, you know, create the opiate of the masses through television and

media and, you know, materialism and consumer behavior patterns, etc. And they're almost at, they're so at odds with each other, like there's this little war going on. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking and we're depleting the planet's resources at an unfathomable rate. So what is going to win out in this? How are we going to tip the scales in favor of the positive? Yeah, we may or we may not.

I mean, you know, many thinkers who've been looking at this type of situation that we're in, you know, something like Barbara Marks Hubbard or whatever, talk about transition of like the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into the butterfly and how it's like a total kind of breakdown and reconfiguring. It's not like the caterpillar sprouts wings in the cocoon. The caterpillar eats its way through the entire cocoon. Then it dissolves into a kind of undifferentiated goop. And a few what are called imaginal disks or imaginal cells in the caterpillar begin to activate and begin to propagate like a new program to transform this whole goop. And those disks or cells are then seen as viral invaders. And the immune system of the dying caterpillar tries to attack them.

And as they strengthen themselves, they propagate and they somehow reorganize the whole thing. So there's the metaphor, I guess, chaos theory, the idea of the phase transitions where you end up with something that's totally on another order of complexity or has capacities that were not even imagined or anticipated from the previous state um and maybe something like that you know that's like a quantum shift as opposed to a gradual evolution you know progressive evolution right

well it sort of sounds like something dramatic happening right well yes it would be dramatic but i mean then you get into the whole question it would be dramatic, but I mean, then you get into the whole question of what time is anyway. But I mean, in terms of it, it's certainly a telescoped process. I mean, even human history is not even, I can't remember exactly what it's like, but if the whole history of the earth is like an arm, it's not even like the tip of the fingernail or something like that. So we're already in some kind of very telescoped process

where we're throwing off our projections in terms of technologies and social systems and cultural constructs and religious philosophies and so on. It's definitely, we're in a kind of quantum phase shift. Even if on the scale of our own little lives, it feels sometimes dull, you know, and we're like waiting around for something. So then what's the thrust of the new book? What is the theme? It's pretty much what we're talking about.

I mean, the thesis would be that the ecological crisis is unconsciously something, or you could say it's maybe, you know, like a birth crisis, like something that somehow is programmed into the evolution of the human species. Or like an initiation. And initiation is something that I've been very interested in in the other books, like in terms of shamanism and kind of how cultures,

ancient traditional cultures all around the world all possessed initiation techniques until modern Western culture. And the idea from Joseph Chilton Pierce is that initiation is not just a cultural phenomenon, it may actually have a neurobiological function in that the neocortex is the most recently emerged, developed part of the brain that separates us from animals. It makes us distinctly human. It gives us the capacity to process symbols and think long term and so on. needs a second shock of cultural development or culturally induced development

in early adulthood, early adolescence, so that people shift from a kind of limited, ego-based kind of sense of identity to a more transpersonal or tribal identity. So that may be why these kinds of initiations were prevalent all over the world. I mean, we've completely lost touch with that as a culture. I mean, what is the equivalent?

Like your bar mitzvah or getting your driver's license or being on the high school football team? And we have no connection to that at all. And it plays such a huge part and has throughout human history in so many cultures. human history in so many cultures. And I think that that has really, that's an erosion of, you know, the fabric of what it means to grow up and have a more communal-based perspective on, you know, where you live and the people that you're interacting with. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, in tribal cultures, you need to go through initiation, especially men, to become like a fully realized kind of adult, mature member of the community.

Because once you've activated that neocortex more fully, then you can, you know, you get out of your personal identity and you understand that you're connected to the tribe and you have like a larger sense of identity. So it may be that humanity has unconsciously willed this extremely dangerous threshold that threatens us with extinction in order to bring about a mass initiation. If you look at like Rebecca, what's her name? Solnit.

Rebecca Solnit. Book, Paradise Built in Hell. She looks at disasters all around the world and how people in disasters actually snap out of their ego kind of state and become altruistic, recognize themselves as part of a community. And actually people will often remember those times of disasters like the most amazing times in their lives. And she points out that if we actually were just living, I guess, right, authentically, a disaster would just be a disaster. So that would be part of my thesis, is that we're unconsciously willing this threshold of global catastrophe to force our own initiation. Now, we don't necessarily have to do that, but we lost touch with these other aspects of the psyche and other aspects of being.

So now we put ourselves in this kind of pickle. Right, I mean, it's almost like if you're orbiting the planet in a satellite and you're looking down, it's become one giant organism. When you look at the way traffic is the way blood cells travel through arteries and veins and it becomes this self-perpetuating machine that's almost you know you could characterize as having its own consciousness and its own sort of life path totally well it's almost like you read my book or i guess maybe we're all writing the same

book but yeah so like this whole idea that um we're um on the cusp of realizing uh the human species in symbiotic relationship with the ecology of the earth as a whole system as like a gigantic planetary superorganism and as an as a kind of uh reflection of that realization we would then reorganize our you know productive capacities um and our way of using resources and, you know, exchanging value because like our bodies, I mean, a good book about all this stuff is spontaneous evolution, which was by Bruce Lipton, a cell biologist and Steve Behrman, who's a political philosopher. And they suggest that, yeah,

that this is like, you know, if you go back to the history of biological evolution, it shifts, it goes from competition, domination. Immature ecosystems are characterized by aggression and domination. When they shift into mature ecosystems, it goes into symbiosis and cooperation. They point out that our bodies are a great example of symbiosis and cooperation. You don't have the liver trying to invade the pancreas. Energy is shared efficiently. Right. But you're, with respect to the planet, then you're, you're presuming that,

that the human race is, is, has some kind of symbiotic relationship as opposed to parasitic. Like, you know, I don't know that we're, we're, you know, we're not, our, our existence is not in balance with resources and, you know, the sort of future, what the future holds in terms of how we're living here. No, not now, but this has also been a very fast period and the game's not over yet, right? I mean, you know, it could even be, I mean, it would be an unpleasant scenario for our children that the human population almost totally collapses. Like, you know, we know that, We know that thousands of years ago, maybe a few thousand human beings existed in the world

and they walked out of Africa and started trotting everywhere. But it might be that our population on the earth goes down to a couple hundred thousand, a couple million. Those people living in terrarium-like domed environments, like the biosphere that they set up in northern latitudes, and from there, over a course of centuries they have to figure out how to live symbiotically

and that type of catastrophe might be the kind of necessary precedent for something that in another 2,000 years would be extraordinarily beautiful. I hope that doesn't happen. I actually don't think that has to happen at all but from where we're going now, it's one possible outcome.

Right, but what prevents them from not making the same mistakes that has led us to this point? Well, I mean, it seems as if post-collapse societies often learn something from their mistakes. One example that some people talk about is even the indigenous Mayan people who, after the empire of, you know, the Maya sort of overgrazed its territory, they went back into a very kind of sustainable life pattern. And, you know, indigenous people around the world have overcome, surmounted, and empire survived it and, you know, found ways to live, yeah,

in kind of harmony with environment without taking more than they need. Right. So that being said, then I see an optimism in you, even if it requires some level of disaster to get there, that at your core, you're still optimistic about the human race. to get there, that at your core, you're still optimistic about the human race? Yeah, I think that we are only at the beginning of tremendous adventure. And what I think we see in technology

is ultimately something that is kind of connected to the ancient neoplatonist or William Blakey concepts of the liberation of the human imagination. We're seeing the gap closing between a vision and its realization. Even this podcast, like 20 years ago, we would have been typing out letters to each other on an electric typewriter and whatever. We're seeing that faster and faster people are able to do more and more creative things. I think that's part of the destiny here. Where I remain uncomfortable,

and this is something that I'm still thinking about all the time, is this whole singularity notion. What is the destiny of technology? The Kurzweilian concept is that we're not even going to need our physical bodies in the same way soon. We're going to have nanobots that breathe for us. Speaking of optimism,

he's extremely optimistic about that. And then you see Elon Musk tweeting, beware, beware. How is this all going to play out? Yeah, nobody knows i mean and it may happen in you know some way we can't even predict you know right but it's more and more part of the conversation you know i mean i think it's undeniable with the acceleration of technological development that we're headed in that direction you know and and this is something that you know the simple fact that in which direction in the direction. And this is something that, the simple fact that-

In which direction? In the direction towards, I don't know if it's the singularity per se in Kurzweil's specific notion of what that is, but some level of artificial intelligence and having to, we're seeing self-driving cars and we're seeing business people saying,

we need to talk about this. We need to take a moment. We need to take a moment. We need to take a beat. We need to consider what we're doing. But our system doesn't really provide for that. So I don't see a lot of considered thought. I just see forward momentum. Yeah, that's a big problem.

That's probably why it's taken me so many years to try to come up with a frigging book. problem. That's probably why it's taken me so many years to try to come up with a frigging book. I mean, it's even hard to think about this stuff, you know, because it opens into so many really bizarre areas. I mean, yeah. I mean, then you go into all this like occult philosophy, like Rudolf Steiner, who, you know, a number of visionary philosophers have proposed that, visionary philosophers have proposed that, you know, our current state is kind of an intermediary or transitional state to another level of consciousness and being, which Aurobindo talked about as like the super mental condition beyond where we're stuck in now, kind of like the mental structure. Steiner talked about it as the, you you know developing what he called the spirit self he looked at these different occult you know different bodies he felt that we currently

possess four bodies uh he's anyway it's a whole long you want to hear a little digression a little bit yeah yeah well all right so steiner is one of my favorite thinkers and he was a visionary who was able to like read the akashic records according to his own accounts and see into all these realms, kind of like he was constantly tripping on ayahuasca without need for any substances. And founder of the Waldorf School. Anthroposophy, Waldorf Schools, Biodynamic Agriculture. So that was also very interesting in that he was able to take

his very far-out ideas and sort of create practical applications that the Waldorf Schools are the most largest independent education movement in the West and biodynamic agriculture is a big deal and still a forerunner for organic agriculture. So anyway, he said the mission of his life on earth was to bring the knowledge of reincarnation back to the West, that not only did people reincarnate again and again

in much the way Tibetan Buddhism talks about, and in fact, he wrote a whole series of books called Karmic Relationships where he traced different individualities in the west back to previous incarnations but the earth itself reincarnates this is currently the fourth incarnation of the earth on the moving towards the fifth incarnation which i found very interesting because it correlates kind of uh exquisitely with you know mesoamerican and native american beliefs like the hopi talk about this being the fourth

world in a transition to the fifth world so reincarnation of the the actual like physical aspects of the planet itself or humankind on the planet well for steiner as best as i can understand it these incarnations of the earth are in a way like states or levels of consciousness or structures of consciousness or ways of uh realizing uh being in time and space um so you know each for him each of these and once again it's kind of like when you look at all these different occult philosophies you know they're like almost like different types of music and we get we tend our problem as humans is we get we get caught in the strain and we get, we tend, our problem as humans is we get, we get caught in the strain and we get caught in beliefs and ideologies and we become kind of overwhelmingly certain about one thing. Whereas I think we need to be able to sort of step back and almost play with

these different ideas, like, like their types of music or something like that. But anyway, so his idea is that in each incarnation of the earth, we've gained a different body. So we have four bodies now, which is the astral body, the physical body, the etheric body, and the eye. And we're on the

verge of acquiring another body, which he talks about as the spirit self. And that body is, when we go to sleep at night, the astral body and the eye detach from the physical body and the etheric body, and they go visit these other astral worlds together. What's happening is the astral body is where all of our cravings and desires and impulses come through that we're not able to totally control yet. So as the eye, the ego strengthens and it's able to hold or control those impulses and drives, that creates a new body called the spirit self. So the next incarnation of the earth for him is our individuality becoming strong enough so that we can master these cravings.

And, you know, yeah, so, I mean, it to me correlates with Jung's ideas or Barbara Marx Hubbard talking about conscious evolution or something. I mean, at the moment, we're in the inertia of kind of the evolution of our social and industrial systems, and we don't quite know how to pull out of the the the the momentum of it right um if we get a hold of ourselves individually then maybe we can figure out how to do it socially and collectively right it starts with individual responsibility it has to that's the only that's the only way through this but there's so much momentum the

idea of halting the momentum that is perpetuating these... Well, there probably seemed like a lot of momentum for the British Empire in India before Gandhi turned up and somehow got everybody to stop the momentum. And then, if we think about it in those terms, if you go to every yoga studio, they have little altars where they tack up Gandhi and Martin Luther King next to these Indian gurus and so on. In a way, by canonizing these types of figures who were flawed humans,

but somehow gave it 100%, by canonizing them and making them into these kind of saints, we kind of remove them from our sense of possibility. Wait, hold on. Let's camp out there. What do you mean exactly by that? Because they become inaccessible?

They become inaccessible. So we don't think that you or I could do what Gandhi did and build a movement and actually just do whatever it took to stop. Yeah, they're like the Beatles or something. Yeah, exactly. They become an idea. Yeah, but we probably would need, if we're really going to stop the momentum of the suicide system, several million Gandhis to just stop whatever else they think they're doing.

For instance, they had the climate march in New York a few months ago. It turned out I had a broken foot. I was in agony the whole time, but I did march for a long time. And it was great. All these people turned out. Rah, rah, rah. It felt really good. And then the march ended and everybody went back to their schools, their homes.

What if instead of going, and how many people were there at that march? Like 300,000? It was huge. Instead of leaving and going back home, what if they'd actually just stayed? And said, we're not leaving, we're not going anywhere until this system changes and we get a movement towards 100% renewables.

Well, Occupy Wall Street was sort of a stab in that direction. It was totally a stab in that direction. And there's differing opinions on the results of that. But I have to imagine that looking at current structures and systems that it's not going to be a situation of, oh, we're going to slowly wean ourselves off of foreign oil and we're going to, you know, make this gradual shift to, you know, self-sustainable systems and we're going to move towards, you know, biodynamic farming and growing our own food and away from the industrial food comp.

Like, I just think it's going to have to be something more dramatic. If it's going to tip the scales either positive or negative, I think something huge has to happen, an intervening event of some kind that we can't foresee or predict. And I guess Gandhi is an example of that. Something has to come along, whether you know, individual personality-based or, you know, event-based.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, I mean, events also don't have any meaning in and of themselves. I mean, you know, the fall of the Berlin Wall was a tremendous, you know, historical opportunity. And, but the problem was that there wasn't really an alternative model for

what those societies could become. So they got kind of subsumed into like neoliberal economics and privatization and so on. So, I mean, I think that we could predict that there's going to be another moment, probably another collapse of the financial system. you know when we look at um the whole thing is kind of smoke and mirrors and and it's like a big card trick at this point so the question is you know could we have something in place you know for that moment where enough people go oh you know actually we could actually just move in that direction bitcoin bitcoin is a good example

of that i think do you think or i mean it's Unless it becomes sort of co-opted by Wall Street. Yeah, I think Bitcoin has already been kind of carved. A lot of people own Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin is just a model for a future currency that would be based maybe on renewable energy credits or permaculture credits or sharing economy or something. But I don't think Bitcoin in itself has any different behavior patterns or ethics or values inscribed in its function. But it does provide the consumer the ability to sidestep the banking complex and create transactions independent of that. Yeah, no, I mean, it's...

So that's huge in and of itself, is it not? Well, it's huge. I think one of the biggest aspects of it is just conceptually for enough people to begin to say, okay, well, actually, you know, money is kind of a social network. I mean, ultimately money is... I mean, I like Antonio Negri, who's a political philosopher in Italy. What does he talk about? He talks about how, what is capital ultimately? Capital is a social relation, you know? You know,

if you meet a billionaire, everybody, a billionaire walks into a room and everybody's like, ah, a billionaire is here, you know? Here's like Sean Parker or Donald Trump or somebody like, it's like a physical force has entered the room. But actually, you know, where is that? Where is that billion or whatever it is? It's just in everybody's minds, right? It's an idea. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean,

that's represented by pieces of paper that are not even, don't even exist or are not in the possession of that person anyway. Right. It's chains of relationship. Yeah, exactly. So if you had to, let's say we're in some sort of post-apocalyptic state and you've been appointed to sort of reconstruct some level, some form of social governance. How do you create a functional society for the future that can grow, expand, is scalable, that would work with understanding the psychology of human beings? Great question. Good one.

So, yeah, I think we're seeing more and more developments in that area. And I think it would be, looking at Thomas Jefferson's idea of elementary republics, you'd have to create a participatory structure that goes from the local to the planetary scale. And I think that our social networking technology

is abundantly capable of providing ways that everybody could be brought into a direct democratic process. I really like these two tools. There's one started by a group from New Zealand that's called Lumio, lumio.org. Essentially, you can create a group of up to 500 or more people and start making decisions.

We're 10 people in this room or whatever. Do we want to start a media cooperative? Okay, yes. Do we want to, everyone puts in $1,000 to get it going. Sure. How do we want to assign that money? So Lumio is a very simple tool for a small group community decision making. It's actually being used right now by a movement that's developing a very interesting movement

in Spain called Podemos, which means we can. So Spain is a country that's pretty much wrecked right now. They have over 50% youth unemployment, totally demoralized, economically kaput. Podemos uses a grassroots organizing model. It's seeing revolution or social change as process rather than ideology. It's beginning at a local level.

It's creating these small groups. They won 1.2 million votes after just's beginning at a local level. It's creating these small groups. They won, I think, 1.2 million votes after just being around for a few months. And now they're polling first in a number of polls in Spain. So they're an actual political party. Yeah, they're a political party. Anybody who wins, they won five seats in the European Parliament. Anybody who wins from Podemos makes certain agreements,

like agrees to only make six times minimum wage, which I think they got from Plato. He talked about in the ideal republic, nobody would make more than six times more than anybody else. They can't fly business class, and they can't meet with lobbyists. And they have to report directly to their little constituencies. So the members of this organization

all mutually agree on this. Yeah, exactly. They come up with the parameters upon which, I understand. So Lumio.org, it's one really interesting tool that anybody can use right away. Democracy OS is being started from Argentina. And that's for larger, for municipal or federal levels. And once again, it's a tool for direct democracy, but it has the capacity to create proxy votes. So, for instance, you may know that you're not great on the water issues,

but you know somebody that you pretty much trust who would be good and that you could assign your vote to that person. And they're also running candidates in Argentina, and anybody who wins has to, basically, they're just a proxy for Democracy OS. They agree to vote in whatever way the community tells them to. way the community tells them to. You know, when you look at our current, you know, political system, do you, are you of the, do you share a mindset with someone like Russell Brand who says, you know, look, the only way to deal with this is to not participate in it.

We have to start completely over. We need a new way. Or can you see a way to evoke reform within the system piece by piece? I mean, how do you kind of approach that? Yeah. I mean, by the way, I had some influence on Russell's ideas in a lot of areas. He wrote a few chapters about me in his book and stuff. So I think it doesn't really need to mean either or. There's nothing, you know, I mean, I'm not a voter. I haven't been voting for a long time. So I totally understand where Russell is coming from.

If there was something like Democracy OS or Lumio, I mean, if there was Podemos in the US, I would vote for them. However, I think that the current political system is very problematic in that it's kind of 18th century social technology. You know, the governments that we have now were essentially constructed at a time when horse and buggies and schooner ships were the fastest mode of communication. And there wasn't super powerful hyper technologies. So they're totally outmoded by what we've actually got going on. So I think they could be superseded more or less through social movements that use digital technologies to make collective decisions.

Well, with transportation the way that it is. Which doesn't mean they have to be, you know, it doesn't mean they have to, we don't need like a violent revolution. You can think about, you know, the aristocracies in Europe still existed after the 18th century revolutions. It's just they became a little more vestigial. Right, right, right. I mean, I think that with digital communication and transportation as it is, the argument

in favor of states' rights becomes denigrated. gets under addressed as a result of, you know, some representative who's, you know, they grow corn where he lives, and he needs to make sure that whatever law passes favors that, that is, you know, not in the interest of the greater whole. Yeah, I mean, the system now is just, unfortunately, you know, lobbyists can corrupt it. Excuse me, corporations can corrupt it. I mean, taking that idea that we discussed earlier, that humanity might be on the cusp of realizing itself to be something like a superorganism. I think corporations then become really interesting

because we can look at them almost as nascent organs in that collective body. So for instance, like in energy companies, like the blood in the body, or media companies, like the perceptual mechanisms. Excuse me. But at the moment, we've created corporations, kind of like artificial life forms. Yeah, I mean, it's the first example of true artificial intelligence, is it not? Living, breathing, conscious on some level.

Yeah. I don't know about artificial intelligence, but they definitely have a will of their own because we've created a game called the stock market and we've programmed them to maximize shareholder value as their one kind of way of winning the game. So the way we've created them means that they have to ignore

environmental restrictions and social benefits and so on. If we could redesign the logic of the game, then corporations might become team players. They might become cooperative. They might actually become extremely powerful agents of social good. But short of, well, let's presume we can remove money from government to the extent that gives these corporations so much power, right? That we can sort of decimate K Street and remove the lobbying impact on Washington. Where do we,

you know, how do we stimulate conscious capitalism? Because we are seeing, you know, more conscious capitalism at the same time that we're seeing, you know, the nefarious aspects of, of what this system brings upon us. Give me something to the impulse of what you mean. Well, I mean, if you see, you see, you see companies that are a little bit more, at least maybe it's just marketing, but you know, more benevolent, I suppose, like you see the Tom shoes or the companies that are sort of giving back as they're, as they're growing and that's a new phenomenon, right?

So does that provide optimism for you? Or do you think that we have to just start over? I don't know. I mean, did you read Naomi Klein's new book? No, I didn't. It's definitely worth reading. But she basically demolishes conscious capitalism. As marketing hype?

Yeah, pretty much. As well as a lot of the nonprofit industry, and as well as the hope that some billionaire messiah like Richard Branson or Elon Musk is going to do the job. I think that, yeah, the problem is that, you know, it's going to take more than that. I mean, yeah, of course, it's better than nothing. But, you know, I mean, I heard the guy from Patagonia, one of the presidents of Patagonia speak. And that's like one of the companies that's trying to do things the best way. And he's like, look, even with everything that we're doing, the ecological footprint is still terrible.

Yeah, trying to be as sustainable as possible. He still has to move his product around on trucks, and there's no way around it. I mean, we may really need, you know, I mean, I guess these things are just terms in a way, but some kind of anarcho-socialism. I mean, we know, for instance, that 80% of the food that New York needs could be grown on the rooftops with aquaponics and so on. But who's going to institute a program like that? Right.

Right. I mean, it's not going to happen spontaneously it will happen it will happen when we run out of food or the system breaks down enough where we can't transport the food right so it will you know pain will motivate that but until then it's not going to happen you know voluntarily yeah but the problem is that the problem with waiting is um you know for instance the problem of the the methane under the Arctic. You know about that? Yes. 1,400 gigatons of methane.

It's like a huge ticking time bomb. The Arctic is melting three times faster than the rest of the planet. That's how the Permian mass extinction happened 250 million years ago. It's like once the temperature goes a few degrees above normal, then all these feedback loops kick in. And we're already seeing that with these mega droughts and drying out to the rainforest. And if the methane starts to erupt in large quantities,

there's some evidence that it's already starting to do that. We might have a 5 to 10 degrees Celsius temperature rise in a matter of decades, which would make... Well, that just puts it over the top. Then it's game over. Well, yeah, it's definitely going to be a tough one. Isn't 2% the threshold? 2 degrees Celsius?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So scientists determined that, and that's been what's put out. And to make that seems almost impossible at this point. It would require the industrial nations reducing CO2 emissions by 10% a year. In order to prevent the two degrees. Yeah, but now they're also saying that they may have been wrong about two degrees and it may actually be less than that. I mean, so do you think we're past the point of no return environmentally? Well, I mean, so I mean, I think that it's an evolutionary process like the

caterpillar to butterfly transition. And we also have, you know, uncounted for factors like for instance, our psychic abilities that, um, uh, you know, mainstream culture hasn't even contemplated. Um, you know, I'm, I'm, my own work with shopmanism, you know, that I wrote about in breaking open the head in 2012, a hundred percent convinces me that we have profound psychic capacities. And so once again, if we look at this as an unconscious self-willing of an initiatory crisis, maybe we're pushing ourselves to a threshold where we have to access these latent capacities that we're not going to access as long as we can go to Starbucks and get a double frappuccino, mocha, mint. Until we're compelled to have to reckon with them.

Yeah. Right? So, yeah, so in a way, like, you know, we have the time now to prep, I guess, as much as we can, even just mentally. With all the cultures that you've kind of immersed yourself in and experienced as a result of your travels, et cetera, I mean, what are the commonalities or the themes that you see?

We talked a little bit about the rites of passage, but what are the other kind of aspects of that way of life that we've lost touch with that we could benefit from taking a look at? that we've lost touch with that we could benefit from, you know, taking a look at? Well, I mean, technically a lot of these cultures had, had ways of, you know, being in harmonic balance with the planetary environment.

And some of them are now being developed as technologies like biochar, for instance, you know, biochar. It's you, you know, technologies like biochar, for instance. You know biochar? You slow burn biomass to create energy and you end up with a carbon-rich tilth that can be used to restore soil. And it turns out that this is what Indians were doing throughout the whole Amazon. They were actually tending to the soil and restoring

the soil by doing this slow burning process. Wow. Similarly, this guy Alan Savory won the Buckminster Fuller Prize. Right, yeah, I've heard of that guy. He discovered that herding cattle is actually a way to regenerate desertification, to interrupt desertification and regenerate grasslands, And that actually the nomadic herders were keeping their environment healthy and in balance with the way they were rotating their cattle and so on. So then he's developed systems where you almost take a military, precise approach to the cattle

rotation to regenerate desert areas. Yeah, I mean, there's been some aspects of that going on now where ranchers can sort of lease grasslands from the government, but it doesn't seem to be working out so well. I'm just giving you a few minor examples. I mean, there's probably tons more. But then the other thing that I think these cultures understood was that like I visited the Kogi and the Arawak in Columbia a few times and we did kind of work with

them and their elders basically wanted to convey to us that our level of spirituality and consciousness individually is reflected back at us by the natural and the physical world. So there's a deep reciprocity between our level of inner development

and what manifests as the shared reality. Of course, yeah, but it's still hard to get. I mean, hard to really anchor that. Right, but I mean, sort of on a rudimentary level, to get i mean hard to hard to really anchor that right but i mean sort of on a rudimentary level if you say all right well you know sort of a more you know regardless of your spiritual proclivities however that may you know work for you i mean there are certain commonalities like if you're living a more spiritual life you're less materialistic you're less consumer you're more community-based you're more of service to your fellow man all these sorts of things that are not really part of the uh kind of you know cultural

mandate we give lip service to it but look around at the world is that how we're really functioning yeah but i think that the point they're making even goes much deeper than that it's more like um like um you know if we were to have reached a certain level of mastery, like of our level of being, and if enough of us were to have... That would actually change how the physical world reflects itself back at us somehow. So you're talking on a more almost like a on a multi-dimensional yeah like everybody sort of was fully tapped in or anybody

yeah interesting that's that's a that that starts to get into super mind-bending yeah ideas yeah that's very cool i mean your own um excuse me. Sorry, I'll be able to cut my cloth. No, it's all right. I'm getting over it myself. Your own personal kind of trajectory and journey through all this is so interesting. I mean, you were a guy who was living in New York, kind of part of believing like maybe there's something more or a sense of emptiness or a sense of, you know, maybe greater possibility out there. I mean, walk me through a little bit about how you got to this place where you're at.

I mean, is that a fair, I don't mean to mischaracterize your journey. That's not accurate. Yeah, no, I mean, I suppose it's of some interest. I don't know. I mean, I was a journalist and I got into existential funk. And I remembered psychedelics from college and was able to get some assignments. I got an assignment to go to Africa and do the Aboga. But I feel that it was an exciting story 10 years ago maybe,

but now so many other people have really had similar experiences. Maybe I was just like a trailblazer. For me, in a way, yeah. I'm sort of questioning now the psychedelic movement in certain respects. I mean, we're seeing tremendous developments in the study of these compounds for medical and therapeutic

purposes. But however, I also think at the same time it's trickier than anticipated. I've been looking at my own past and I write this new book and I think in some ways, like for instance,

taking certain compounds over time had negative impact on my psychology. Interesting. And yeah, I think it's, and then I see also like enclaves of very wealthy people and elite places like Ibiza, where they've kind of gotten into the ayahuasca,

but it doesn't really seem to be turning them into Gandhis or Martin Luther Kings. It's more like become another form of spiritual materialism, or it's like an exciting new thing, and it's too boring to go to the same old parties anyway, so now they get together and do that. But I don't know if it's really having the type of, you know, I was sort of hoping that Ayahuasca would finish the job that LSD didn't complete in the 60s, like really create some

kind of awakening, you know, in kind of the first world elite that would allow us to overcome our hyper individual egotism and, you know, kind of be of service to this larger process. And I'm not sure it's happening as of yet. Yeah. That's a very interesting, that's very interesting to hear you say that because in so many ways,

you know, for, you know, I mean, you were kind of the torchbearer for this, you know, sort of coming out and writing, writing about it to the extent that you have. And, and it really is a movement that's grown, you know, I mean, you were kind of the torchbearer for this, you know, sort of coming out and writing, writing about it to the extent that you have. And, and it really is a movement that's grown, you know, considerably in, in the last several years. And, um, I can't speak to it

because I've never had the experience myself. I've had plenty of friends that have, and, um, so I can't, you know, it's like like it's difficult for me to have any kind of opinion on it because i i haven't done it um but i would imagine that it's something it's so it it's such a powerful thing obviously it redirected the trajectory of your life and and and for a lot of other people but i think that it carries with it a certain responsibility. Like I, what I'm hearing is a lament of, of a lack of kind of appreciation for that aspect of it. Yeah. Well,

maybe I'm trying to figure out if I, you know, do have some role as I can remember what you said, um, grand poobah or something. I don't know. Well, yeah.

Yeah. Torch bearer. Torch bearer. Yes. Um, yeah, maybe, maybe there's a way to like,

you know, it's time to like change, you know, reconsider the direction and, and, you know, navigate another direction. Because, yeah, it seems like it's not that anybody's going to really listen. And I see the same thing with the Burning Man Festival, you know, which I was, you know, very inspired by. Actually, even in 2012, I began to criticize it. And in a way, I feel that it's been co-opted by wealthy elites, libertarians. deeper aspects of it that really excited me were more that you could see

that how in a way, how easy it could be to change our social system because people will kind of move in a different direction if there's a set of principles that they have to follow

and those principles make their lives better. So like, you know, somebody who might litter and throw their cigarette butts on the ground in New York is going to go to Burning Man and it's like, leave no trace, and suddenly they'll be the most ecologically conscious person because that'll get them laid or make them look good with their friends or whatever. But that's all good.

You change the reward structure and people adapt immediately. So if the reward structure is leave no trace, give gifts, love each other, blah, blah, blah, people will, radical inclusion and so on, people will adapt to that new thing because it makes their lives better. So that to me was really, really something that was super amazing. What I've sort of seen is that Burning Man has created this kind of hedonistic desert oasis where people are kind of just going and having, you know, kind of, you know, I guess it's become a culture

and that's part of the problem. Culture is always part of the problem because culture is like people that identify with a culture and that becomes like a stop, you know, rather than, you know, recognizing that, you know, any culture is just a way of thinking or constructing. So I mean, ideally to you, Burning Man, how would that have developed in a better, in a better way to avoid these? I mean, it's sort of,

isn't it just innate in the way humans kind of function that this is how things go um i just like you know nihilistically yeah i mean um well i mean we saw you know there were some things like there was the one aspect of burning man which was you know creating what was it called where they would go to disaster areas and try to bring the skills they'd developed in building domes and create emergency shelters and all that stuff. I mean, I guess more in those areas and more of a sense of how, and it still may happen.

I mean, it's not over yet. Right, but practical. More of a socially transformative project. And practical applications beyond that window of time. I mean, it was interesting. I felt that Burning Man had a resonance or an influence on the whole Occupy movement. That if you went to the Occupy center in Wall Street, it was kind of like a micro Burning Man. There were camps with tents.

There was a drum circle area. There was a gathering area. There was a drum circle area. There was a gathering area. There was a media area. I feel like in that way, I think Occupy Wall Street was actually fascinating. Oh, good. I just remembered something that I need to write about in my book, so that makes me happy. But in a way, you can look at Occupy Wall Street itself as like a cell in a new social organism that was seeking to form in kind of like hostile terrain, you know, that had all of the living systems of a cell,

that it had like recycling and sustainability and food and so on. But kind of the mitochondria of, you know, what was born out of something like Burning Man. Yeah, because Burning Man has that same kind of feeling of this social organization on another level. So right now, where is your interest fall? What's exciting you? We talked a little bit about some of those technology platforms.

But where do you find your eye kind of naturally gravitating towards where you're thinking, that's really interesting. I need to watch that or what these people are doing is the future. That's a good question. That's a good question. Well, I mean, I'd like to take another stab at what I tried with Evolver and sort of try to build like a media networking platform that linked kind of media to things like Lumio, like tools so that people could go from getting excited about something to directly creating community around it or activating on it. And then I think Russell Brand, although I'm a little annoyed at him for different reasons at this point,

you know, why is that? We can talk about that too. No, it's just, you know, I feel that he made liberal use of a lot of my ideas and, you know, sort of reciprocated a little bit, but maybe a little more reciprocity would have been more truly radical. But anyway, you know, but what he's been doing with The Trues, which is his YouTube channel, is really changing people's minds in England particularly. And I met a lot of people there who, you know, just hadn't really thought about the stuff that he's presenting. And I think public artists could have a tremendous role to play.

If we had about 20 or 30 Russell Brands right now, you know, a lot of people would be changing their way of thinking really quickly. a lot of people would be changing their way of thinking really quickly. I mean, I know a lot of, I'm friends with all these kind of celebutants or whatever who have millions of Twitter followers, but they're still making it in the corporate mainstream. They're depressed. They don't like what they're doing. If they were coming on every day and doing what he's doing and shining light. I mean, like, you know, he recently interviewed, you know, this Pakistani guy who'd spent a year being tortured in Guantanamo Bay, who ran a girls' school in Pakistan.

That was so nice, you know? And, you know, where in the media you see somebody like that, you know, like, you know, you're not going to see that on CNN. Right. You know, just humanizing, you know, the people who've been, you know, like, you know, you're not going to see that on CNN, you know, just, just humanizing, you know, the people who've been, you know, turned into demonized other or degraded, you know? So yeah, I think we, we, we could use like, you know,

a sort of movement of people who already have followings or can develop followings who are, you know, sort of relentlessly shining light into all these different dark corners, you know, were using their charisma for that. I think that that would have a rapid fire effect, particularly if those, you know, media impacts were combined with tools that people could get quickly and directly involved in, you know, the alternative movements. Right. I think that is really exciting.

And I think that the democratization of the distribution channels of media, just by the simple fact that you're sitting here and we're having this conversation, like you said earlier, would not have been possible earlier or nobody would have tuned in. And now we're seeing not only the ability to do this kind of thing, but the interest level that somebody will actually tune in and listen to a long conversation in the world of the soundbite or will tune in, you know, daily to watch Russell Brand do the trues. These are not to be underestimated, I think, in terms of shifting consciousness. And I think you're right.

I think, you know, the modern day Gandhi is clothed like a Russell Brand. And if we had more people like that, or we have very dynamic, well-informed, interesting, provocative personalities that can capture the imagination of the easily distracted youth, that is the key to a better future yay you think i don't know i'm trying to be optimistic i am optimistic but it's it's difficult especially in the environmental context you know that's that's what has me so alarmed and will tip my scale towards a more pessimistic world no no i mean um no i mean i i was i was just being momentarily facetious but yeah no i totally agree with you i mean um you know i mean as as Bill McKibben writes about an earth, we're not going to get back the earth that we had. paradigm away from, you know, material, you know, individual goals to more of a kind of restoration, replenishment, regeneration. And yeah, that, you know, we could, you know,

move in a totally different direction. It's just a question of changing the culture. Yeah. And we have to shift the reward system, like you said, because humans, you know, we're wired to act in our own self-interest, like it or not. And so we have to be incentivized to do the right thing as opposed to the harmful thing. Yeah, I mean, right, which is interesting. I mean, one area that has been sort of maybe one of the more controversial areas that I've touched on is what that could mean in

terms of love and sexuality. I've been particularly interested in a community in Portugal that I visited a few times called Tamara, which was started by German radical thinkers who were part of the movements and the radical movements in Germany in the 60s and early 70s and tried to figure out why the alternative didn't actually come to fruition and began to realize that it was core issues around love and sexuality that were actually the deepest political issues that society wasn't able to address.

So they kind of went into an incubation, they separated from mainstream society and started creating these communities, these laboratories to come up with a different model for a non-possessive trust and transparent based relating. So Tamara is like 120 people and they developed a bunch of social tools. They kind of, in a sense, treat kind of some basic level of sexual community or sexual satisfaction as

kind of like a social, shared social responsibility. And they've tried a lot of very radical ways of, it's very interesting. How, so how does that work? I mean, how many people are doing, like, how do they just, so there's a, is it like on a very nuts and bolts basis? How does that look? on a very nuts and bolts basis? How does that look? Well, I mean, I think one of the most important things that they've established, which is obvious, and you find in indigenous cultures all around the world,

is cooperative childcare. I think one of the main reasons for possessiveness, jealousy, it has to do with, in our culture, with all the issues particularly that a woman has to think about and deal with, um, all the issues, particularly that a woman has to think about and deal with when it comes to the concept of having kids and, you know, needing a support system, you know, for 15, 18 years, you know, so in Tamara, like, uh, any child was a child, any, any woman who decides to have a child for any reason knows that that child will be taken care of by the whole community. And past the age of two, a lot of the kids actually live in a

children's compound. So that takes a huge amount of pressure and anxiety off. And yeah, but I think the nuclear family is a catastrophic problem, to be honest, for the most part. Yeah. I mean, we've just on a personal level, we've been homeschooling our kids and trying to create community around that and to be able to have the support of like-minded families who are collectively getting together with this shared goal of educating our children, you know, outside of the system in our own way has created a support network that far exceeds anything that we've experienced before. And it's been amazing and it makes you realize like this is the way we're supposed to, you if you go to the blue zones this is how they raise their children there you

know it's very village community based and and uh what are blue zones oh the blue where they where people live the longest okay these sort of very healthy uh communities where they experience tremendous longevity due to lifestyle diet culture, culture. But most of these places are, you know, basically living life the way that they've been living it for millennia. Yeah, I mean, so, so, excuse me, practices around cooperative child care, cooperative education, that's, I think, crucial. But then also, I mean, you know, if we're to be like, you know, there's a huge amount of sex trafficking around the world. I mean, one of the main reasons that men seek to amass power and wealth is to, you know, increase sexual opportunity. You know, almost all the men that I know who are in long-term monogamous relationships,

you know, express either the wistful desire to have other sexual contacts or they do it in an extraneous, secretive way. So, and I think on a deeper level, I think women also have these desires. It's just they're constituted in a way where they don't necessarily, you know, they're not necessarily having to express them in the same way as men. But, you know, if you really get deeper than that, it's like, you know,

if, well, there's a book called Sex at Dawn, which basically argues that we were never a monogamous species until very recently. So like Christopher Ryan and somebody gel in it. So for instance, if we're not monogamous by nature and we're forced into a social construct of monogamy where we're only supposed to love one person, have desire for one person, but we don't actually feel that, then we find that in our most intimate relationship with another human being,

we're in a relationship of hypocrisy or dishonesty often. And it's not true for everybody. Some people are totally, truly monogamous. Bless them. So the problem, though, is that for a lot of people aren't. And so if your basic, most intimate human relationship, your most deepest connection with another person is founded on the level of hypocrisy,

I think the problem is that that makes you then kind of expect and accept hypocrisy on larger levels, whether it's in corporations or political leaders and so on. So that's part of the problem. So how would we get to a more authentic place? And what does that look like? I think it looks different for every individual, but we would need a broader range of choices.

So at Tamara, many people have multi-partner relationships. Most people seem to have primary partnerships, but they also have other lovers. I mean, there's a strange kind of tone there. It's very unusual. Like the men are extremely soft-spoken. I think in a way it's a society that is more governed by the feminine in a way.

Yeah, exactly. It's almost like the form of male display that's super common in our culture is like frowned on there. Anyway, so you've removed that mandate for the male to be domineering or alpha, I guess, in some regards. Right. Although it probably still, I mean, you know, we're always gonna have the same drives and desires. I mean, that's like the Burning Man model. Like you have a corporate sociopath, you send him to Burning Man, he's going to put on a pink tutu and he's going to start picking up cigarette butts off the ground to make himself look better. You know, it's what the reward system is, you know? Anyway, so, so that, that, that I guess really interests me is

how, how easy it is to, you know, create a different social construct where the reward system changes and people just adapt automatically. Because everybody wants the same thing. They want love, they want approval, they want connection, and so on. So Tamara developed a whole bunch of social tools. One of them is called the forums. They create a circle.

Everybody in the community comes together. People go in the middle of the circle and they act out their relationships or, or, you know, with other members. So things that are made, you know, kind of,

um, that are secret or hidden for the most part in, in normal society are there very much like expressed to just get them out, you know, even like deviant desires or they, they even have a whole system where the younger people in the community will have an older person who's kind of their confidant and can also, if they want to sleep with somebody,

their older person can go and deliver a message to that person if they want to have a meeting or something. Or if they have a fantasy, like if they want to have sex with somebody blindfolded so they never even see the person, that can be kind of arranged for them. Well, I think it's important to survey and look at all of these different ways of life. I mean, we're so myopic, particularly in the United States, and we have this idea that this is how we live and this is the way it should be. And we need to open our eyes and understand that there are many, many different ways of living and to, you know, remove our judgment about these other ways and try the extent that that can be incorporated even on the personal level, if not the local level and then beyond, I think is a worthwhile pursuit and discussion. Yeah. I mean, I think somehow like, um, untangling sexuality, um,

you know, creating, creating a system where, you know, particularly for younger people, maybe there's more options and less hangups. It could have a lot of benefit because I think a lot of energy gets kind of, like if I grew up in New York and going to the East Village and bars and the weekend you see everybody, thousands and thousands of people getting hammered to try to connect with other people. That's such an incredible waste of energy and time. It's like all that extra energy that could be going into, I don't know, going out and planting forests or repairing wetlands or something is being wasted in a kind of antiquated construct that I think we could

heal or ameliorate. Interesting. Have you ever been to Dominer in Italy? I haven't gone to Dominer. You're familiar with it? Of course. Julie's been there. Yeah, she's been there. It's pretty cool. It's its own basically culture in the middle of northern

Italy. They have their own currency and they have built these temples. No, I know. They don't Italy. They have their own currency and they have built these temples. They used to have online the pictures from Atlantis because apparently they have an esoteric physics where they send people time traveling back 100,000 or 800,000 years in the past to figure out where we went

off the wrong, where we got on the wrong timeline to see if we can figure it out. I like it. It's like an occult mystery story. Yeah, very much so. Very much so. Cool, man. Well, I think that that's a good place to wrap it up. All right.

Thanks very much. Yeah, I really appreciate your time. You're a fascinating and inspiring person. Thanks. My website, I guess, is danielpinchbeck.net. People could come up and sign up and get on my mailing list or something like that. And you're on Twitter, same?

Facebook, all the places. And Evolver.net? Yeah, Evolver.net is still going. I mean, I'm not actively involved with it, but Reality Sandwich is still going and hopefully more things to come. Are you doing some public speaking lately? Speaking at, well, I mean,

I don't know when you're airing this, but the Envision Festival, end of April in London, the Breaking Convention, which I think is in July. And I'm sure there'll be other stuff. Soho House in London at the beginning of April.

Oh, cool. Is that all on your website? No, it probably isn't. I probably should put it up. You probably should. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, I'll put it in the show notes

for this. You can check that out. All right, man. You probably should. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, I'll put it in the show notes for this and you can check that out. So, all right, man. Thanks. Appreciate it. Peace plants. Oh yeah. Take us out with the gong. All right, you guys, that's it. We did it. That's today's show. It's pretty interesting, right? Pretty provocative. Uh, really interested in what you guys thought of today's it. We did it. That's today's show. It's pretty interesting, right? Pretty provocative. Really interested in what you guys thought of today's episode. So please leave your comments in the comment section on the episode page at richroll.com. We'd really like to hear how you responded to Daniel and our conversation. Daniel and our conversation. Also, make sure you check out the show notes on the episode page too. Lots of great resources there for you guys to explore more deeply. Once again, our new cookbook and lifestyle guide, The Plant Power Way, is now out. It's available at booksellers everywhere. People are digging it. We're so pleased to be on the receiving end of so much love. And it's great

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info at richroll.com. We're prepping some more of those shows, and they're going to be coming out soon. You can follow me on Twitter at atrichroll, and I'm going to start doing more Periscope Q&A chats. So if you're on Twitter, keep an eye out for those. I'm having fun doing that. So for all the information, education, products, tools, resources, and inspiration you need to take your health, wellness, fitness, and self-actualization to the next level, go to richroll.com, check out our nutritional products, check out our education products, and check out our garments, all made with 100% organic cotton. And we got new garments coming soon, which is pretty exciting, some new designs and the like. So I'm excited

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Thank you for supporting the show. Thanks for telling your friends. Thank you for sharing it on social media. Greatly appreciate it. And I'll see you guys next week. So have a great weekend. Have a great week. And I'll catch you later. Peace. Plants.