TRIGGERnometry - You Are Being Brainwashed - Duncan Trussell

Episode Date: January 1, 2025

Comedian, Duncan Trussell discusses the cultural and political forces that quietly condition us.  Sponsor: *Qualia Senolytic* Go to https://Qualialife.com/TRIG for up to 50% off and use code TRIG at checkout for an additional 15% off.  Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Substack! https://triggernometry.substack.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Shop Merch here - https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're putting profit over humanity. How do we quantify motherhood? Imagine if your mother at the end of your life wrote you a bill. Like how much would a mother charge? What's the value of a mother? Capitalism and motherhood don't seem to go very well together because how do you quantify unconditional love?

Why is Donald Trump acting like our dad? Why is Kamala Harris acting like our drunk stepmom? We don't need that. We need each other directly around us, the people here. And I'm just saying they're not the ones coming to save you. It's your neighbors who you're going to when the power goes up. So Duncan, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you.

It's such an interesting time. I'm seeing people losing their mind over jokes, people getting angry. Yes. Presidents commenting on it. And I'm thinking, what is going on? Crazy. It's crazy. Yeah, it's why.

It's a wild moment. It's always like this every four years. You know, people seem to forget that. Every four years, the whole country kind of goes nuts. It's really like a terrible kind of national menstrual cycle. It's really brutal, though. I think, you know, obviously anyone who's in America, I mean, who's living in America right now is being subjected to incredible amounts of propaganda.

And I'm talking about, like, historically. levels of propagated because I think in considering why, that's what you're talking about, why. It's a good thing to wonder about. Why? It's the United States of America, theoretically. United. We're united. And yet, we are being just shotgun blasted in the amygdala with so much hyper-sophisticated, hardcore propaganda, cooked up by people who've spent their entire, entire life studying how to hack human consciousness, studying exactly how to implant into people's minds, seeds that grow into words that feel like they're based on some kind of autonomous self.

And which is why you sort of run into the invasions of the invasion of the body snatchers experience online, where you realize people are not just saying the same idea, they're saying the same sentence over and over and over again. And it creates a real eerie sense when you look at it holistically, which is like it doesn't seem very normal or human that so many people are saying identical phrases over and over and over again. And then when you look into that, and you realize, oh, of course, this is teams of volunteers

and paid people on both sides of the political spectrum and not even on both sides of the political spectrum, but from other countries, who are actively firing these propaganda weapons into the psyche of Americans to try to warp their perception in a way that produces a result that doesn't benefit anyone in the way that the people think it's going to benefit when they vote.

I mean, that's the really sad thing to me. I don't need to make it very cynical or anything like that, but it appears that a vast amount of the money that is, that we pay via taxes doesn't even go into the country. And so there is something really sinister about that. And I, but I think it's good, like if you're out there and your friends got nuts and you've been getting ear beatings, I think this is where you kind of find a place to be compassionate with people because no one in the history, of humanity that I'm aware of, there's never been a time where this much propaganda from so many different sources has been injected into the consciousness of people.

Yeah, and it's interesting because you walk around, and like, maybe it's me projecting, maybe it's me spending too much time on X or whatever it is, but I just feel like there's an edge. There's an edge. You know why you think that? Because you're a racist fucking nonsense. You know what I mean? That's why.

And no, there is an edge. And it's an edge and there should be an edge. The edge is happening because there's a ghost story being told. We have two incredible storytellers. This is the whoever's running these campaigns. They're good at telling stories. This is how you sell a product is you tell a story about it, you know, whatever the thing is. You ever seen the perverts guide ideology, Zijek.

You ever seen that? Oh, it's so funny. It's good. But, you know, he's like out in the desert or something with a Coca-Cola, but a can of Coke, and he drinks it. And he's just like, it's not very good if it's not cold. It's just this sweet shit that if it's cold, it's okay. But look at a Coca-Cola commercial. The story they tell about Coca-Cola, at least in this commercial,

is that you are going to have a peak experience. They're trying to pair this. I think it's the one he shows is like a race. or something. I mean, it is the greatest night of somebody's life and they're drinking Coke. You bring these two things together. And now instead of just having some syrupy brown shit that tastes good when it's cold, nice with whiskey, you've got like the key to liberation, freedom, your true self, actualization, getting laid. And so that's the story that you do when you're doing branding. And so you've got, when you hear about the money that pours into these

campaigns on both sides and the donations, the money from corporations, the money coming in from unknown sources, all of that money goes to cooking up a story, a big story and little stories week to week. And those are ghost stories that we're being told right now. The story is one of peril, one of apocalypse, both sides are telling the same story. And the story is, this is the end of America.

If this person gets elected, say goodbye to everything you've known. Well, by the time people are watching this, one of the two people has been elected. We don't yet know how the elections turned out as we're recording this. So the America is over. Yeah, the irony is people are like listening to this in nuclear waste.

They were right. Well, they need entertainment, right? But I thought you made a really interesting point right at the beginning, and I've been thinking about this a lot, which is some people will be like, what do you mean the most propaganda ever? What about the Soviet? What about Nazi general? What about... But actually, in terms of

quantity, there has never been a time when somebody would have been consuming propaganda of one kind or another for like eight hours a day, which is what most people now do. Yes. In the 30s, yes, there was a lot of brainwashing going on. But that was the radio. Maybe a little bit of television starting to come through, right? Newspapers.

Yeah. So what would a normal person do? They'd pick up a newspaper in the morning. They'd glance through a few headlines. They'd maybe have the radio on while they're making dinner or something. by the time TV comes along, you'd maybe watch an hour or two of TV before you go to bed. Right. Nowadays, you're getting eight, ten hours.

And as you say, it has been very carefully, not just made and designed, but it's been selected by an algorithm that knows exactly what you like and more than exactly what you hate. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And the other reason it's completely different is because, though I do think throughout, since the invention of the printing press, people have read this or that they called the news and thought, well, that is real and if, like, in their own mind sort of simulated some version of

the world based on the data they got from 2D space versus, like, data you get from 3D space. But I think the difference is that because, like you said, someone in the 30s, when you were walking around in the 30s, 40s, 50s, you would see people looking at their newspaper, but you wouldn't be like in a conversation with somebody and they'd pull the newspaper. They weren't getting alerts from their newspaper. Oh shit, breaking news. So you would, it was sort of modulated day to day. Every new issue would sort of move the story forward a little bit. Now we're getting stroboscopic news and it's insidious news. And that's another important factor that people really need to understand is that maybe you're at a cafe, you're in France

in the 30s, and somebody comes and sits down with you and starts talking about Germany, starts talking about whatever the news is of the day. One thing that will not cross your mind is, is this a robot? And the other thing that's happening is because we've begun to equate our interactions online and with this being actual community. And also, we've all made the normal human assumption that the people we're talking to are not large language models or not AIs or not robots. It's way more insidious because it's not only, I mean, sure, there's always been shells. There's always been people who during a protest will instigate and make the protest turn violent. That's a classic technique.

But the idea that you can create essentially golems, you can create essentially these artificial intelligences that tune into key phrases, go into a thread, derail the thread with an agenda, an intent to point the thread in a different direction that matches your corporate goal or state goal, is brand new. and incredibly insidious. And so it would be easy if you weren't attuned to what's happening in the world right now

to have an idea of reality completely separate from what reality actually is, because the moment you start thinking, 2D space in your phone matches 3D space, then that means that the entire landscape of people's subjective universe could be completely warped, transformed changed by data wizards, essentially, who are just intentionally manipulating people

without telling them. And there's no regulation for that. There's no regulation. There's no, like, why would it be that, like if you do an ad on Instagram or something, you don't say it's an ad, I think it's illegal. Like I don't think you can do that. It's illegal, you're in trouble.

So why would it be that if you are a volunteer for a political organization or where a state entity fulfilling some goal, some state political, corporate agenda via information that you don't have to have on there, you're getting paid by this group of people. It's not, that seems like something that should be regulated way before you start trying to regulate.

I'm not saying regulate speech, I'm saying identify corporatists or statists who are spreading propaganda so that least people can understand that whatever they're hearing might have an agenda. to it other than what the person is like stating. Right, and foreign bots especially or foreign organizations and other countries that are really trying to do a lot of that.

And you just see how much, I'm sure people have always been like this, but it just feels like there's such a lemming effect. Like during the election we saw, you know, Tony Hinchcliffe opens with some jokes at a Trump rally and it's front page news. You go, a comedian made some jokes. Right. This is front page news in a country that's, It's got massive economic problems.

It's got an immigration border, all kinds of shit, healthcare. Like we can go down the list of actual real issues. Comedian made some jokes at a rally. Well, I think if you think of it more in terms of like a ball has landed in some nice, soft, wet grass, and a dog sees the ball, grabs the ball, and runs with it. So when you consider that this, those jokes, So like if you're looking to sort of, it seems like the angle that they're taking right now, the ghost story they're telling is that half of our country is fascist garbage.

Half of the country doesn't care about the environment. Half of the country are compassionless beasts, monsters. The President of the United States said they're garbage. So this is the picture you're wanting to paint. Not just because you're looking, you're not looking for the garbage monster vote. The garbage is already voted. What you're looking to do there is alienation. So the idea would be, do you really want to be garbage?

Do you really want to be like part of a fascist, neo-fascist American movement? If you're on the fence, if you're on the fence, how could you even be on the fucking fence? Well, you are a fascist if you're on the fence. If you're on the fence, you're a fascist. And so what you're hoping to do there is like any outliers, anybody who's like somehow still undecided, you want to shame them into the correct vote, right? And so to do that, you want to paint half of the country

as either sort of fascists, pre-fascists, idiots, gullible fools taken in by a maniacal psychopath. And so then Tony does this joke, which if you've ever gone to any comedy show, if you ever seen Tony roast anybody, it's just like a basic roast joke, you know, non-complex, simple. And then kill Tony, it would do good and like whatever. If you know Tony, as we do, one of the sweetest people who ever meet, I'm sorry if that fucks up your thing, Tony, but he's so sweet. No, he's a comedy. We're going to save his reputation. Oh, yeah, he's a little demon, a real demon.

He murders, he murders like small animals in the green room and laughs. He paints his face with their blood. But so, so. That's probably a protected characteristic by now, lack of religion or some sort. Man, the main thing is, I think if you like zoom out a little bit, if you zoom out just a little bit and look at a few different actions. aspects of what happened. One thing is like this got the ball and the dog in this case is the DNC propaganda, the arm of the DNC that wanted, this helps them confirm via some kind of,

I don't know what they're philosophical and I always hate it when people like are like, that's an ad hominin attack, but what is it a red herring or something? Like basically you take four minutes of stand up from a roast comedian known for that and then you apply that. to the entire, half the country must be like that, and that's who they really are. Well, it's ridiculous. I mean, and it's also, like, very condescending to all sides of the arguments, very condescending that you expect any rational, logical adult to imagine that because a comedian who, on any show, you don't want to go first.

Yeah. But at a Trump political rally to fall the fucking national anthem and try to do you stand up? Oh, this is like a fever dream. This is something you wake up from screaming. a comedian. But regardless, to take that and then use that as a way to paint entire groups of people, many of which are Latino people as being fascists or whatever, is just, I think, fairly irrational and incredibly sad and doesn't do anything for the greater good, if you ask me. It just perpetuates a ghost story and it asks people to ignore their rational mind.

And so that to me is the main thing. I think that if you really want to cut to the core of why everyone's acting so weird right now, it's because both sides of the fence seem very comfortable in inviting us to disregard our rational mind. And this is what they do in any cult. In any cult, that part of you that is still, what do they call it, the small, the still quiet, voice, that part of you, they want to encourage you to stifle that. Because that voice will say things that go, if you're on the right, it'll say things that might go against what the right wants you to think or what you equate with team right. If you're on the left, that voice starts

speaking up, you want to suppress it because you don't want to be a Nazi. You want to be a good person. And on the right, you don't want to be a global elite. pedophile. Right? So on both sides, you're being invited to disregard what is the most important aspect of being human and what makes you not an animal. And then you factor in, it's not just politically, but people, when they're in their family situations, when they're with friends, even with relationships, they're going, well, I can't say what I really think because I know that they will alienate this person. And then my relationship's going to win. My family are going to hate me. saw this time and time again with people essentially cutting off ties with family members because

of Brexit, the vaccine, Trump. And you're going, this is lunacy. The most important thing that you have is connection, is your family, are your loved ones. That's right. And your community. And really, like, you sort of, what ends up happening here is the classic set of conditions for a cult. And so if like you're wanting to, or an abusive relationship. Both are abusive relationships are incredibly similar to cults actually,

which is you want to isolate, you want to gaslight. You want to essentially replace this person's subjective experience of reality with a simulated experience of reality. You're telling them I mean, this is the classic Orwell.

What is it? One plus one is three. One plus one. Two plus two is five. That's actually, it's one plus one is three. Yeah, he was wrong. But you, yeah, so that is what is going on. And the last thing that you want, if you're trying to cast this subjective distortion spell on somebody,

the last thing that you want is for them to go to their friend and be like, hey, dude, two plus two is five, actually. Because their friends are going to think, what are the first thing? fuck are you talking about? Who told you that? Oh, this guru that I met told me two plus two plus two is five. Well, he's an idiot. It's everyone knows two plus two is three. But you know what I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely. So, of course you would want to make people turn their backs on their families, on their loved ones, on anyone other than whatever the particular team is that you're a part of. And you want them to do that, not because you give a fuck about them.

You want them to do that because you can't successfully execute the propaganda campaign if they have anybody outside of the Galapagos island of data that you're trying to create to produce these mutant status propagandized people. And that's ridiculous. It's ridiculous and sad and scary. But also, the other problem is that there's so many people. people right now who are looking at the left and are looking at the right and they're saying, oh, what the fuck is wrong with these idiots? How do you get so brainwashed? Are you out of your

fucking mind? Don't you understand that you are supporting the military industrial complex? Don't you understand you're going to get people killed? Don't you understand they don't give a fuck about you? You get mad. But it's like, man, these people, and this is where it gets so sad, These people legitimately want the world to be better. These are people who have kindness, compassion in them. They have humanist ideals, maybe some of its utopian humanism, maybe some of its idiot compassion. But their compassion impulse, that basic human impulse to help, has been hijacked by the state and worked in this terrible way where the ideas we only are compassionate to people with than this zone. To be compassionate to that person is to collude with a Nazi. Were you going to be

compassionate with Hitler or, oh really? So you're going to be compassionate with some trans pedo? That's who you're going to be compassionate to? I guess you're fucking one of them. They deserve nothing more than rejection. You know what I mean? Both sides, the language that gets used, all of it is warped distortions that have nothing to do with legitimate direct encounters with human beings. And so in that, we are robbed of our ability to have, to express compassion universally. And in that, we have been essentially taken over by a demonic. I don't think it's literally demonic, but I would say, like, if, like, in a fantasy book, if there was something that could get in your head

and make you think that not everyone deserves compassion only the people who agree with you, then you're a fucking demon-possessed person. I was looking at the Tony joke situation and I was thinking, do you think part of the reason we get so inflamed by a joke because the people wouldn't do it if we didn't react is because it's such a small, simple thing

and the solution to a, lot of people is very easy. We cancel the comedian, it goes away. Whereas it's more far more difficult to get angry and enraged about an issue that is more complicated because it's not simple. It's more nuanced. Right. So therefore, what we can all do is channel our rage, channel that demonic rage at a figure like Tony because it's simple. He made a racist joke, destroy him. Okay, yeah. I would say this, picture this. I'm going to invent a fantasy creature, okay? Picture this. There's a creature. The creature, I don't know, I'm into Eldon Ring. I'm picturing it like an Eldon Ring style creature. It's really creepy, a big dark robe with lots of weird spindly arms that stick out of it, right? Now, what this creature does is the moment that people realize that's a fucking monster. One of those spindly arms produces a brand new mask that it pokes out of its robe. And it brings the mask. over here and people start attacking the fucking mask like a Matador style like you know the weird red thing that bulls apparently ate so this if I can do this and make people just cut off my appendages that regrow instead of attacking me the monster then I can avoid people attacking me so I would say what you're looking at in all forms of this and I think it's really important to understand that it is simple It isn't complex. The thing wants to seem more complex than it actually is it. But I think you have to base everything on like actual value. Like what has real value in the world? What has value in the world? And I think like what has real value in the world and people will mock this and jeer at me or whatever. I would say like an important good thing is to try to reduce the number of babies that get blown up. I don't think you should argue with that. If people do argue with that, if people do argue it,

that. Like if like we're sitting down like, okay, what do we work on first? Let's try not to blow up as many babies. And someone's like, you know what? Actually, I think we need to start dealing more with like carbon emissions than like directly stopping the explosion of innocent babies. That person's like got their priorities mixed up. Like we got to deal with like the basic violence that goes along with having a military industrial complex that is being funded by taxpayers to execute things overseas that I'm not sure directly benefit the people who are paying for the fucking thing. To me, that's the main thing. And I don't care who is behind the wheel.

I think you have to first look at that. Like we have to stop this war situation. We have to stop blowing people up. We have to stop killing people. All the other socialist stuff, capitalist stuff, libertarian stuff aside, they're just a basic connection to humanity that feels like it's been lost a little bit in the alleged complexity, which doesn't seem very complex to me. You know, the, you know, you ever read Diogenes?

No. So he had this idea of, there's a lot of critiques against him. He was a cynic. Diogenes, I guess I'll lead with the bad shit he did. He would jerk off and publishes. So he's a comedian. Diogenes would jerk off and publishes. And he had a great saying about that because obviously people complain.

He said, if only I could deal with my hunger by rubbing my belly, how great that would be. You know, he was a funny guy, but he was also loved by Alexander the Great, and he was a great, great philosopher who called himself a cosmopolite. He thought it's important to no longer identify with the state country of origin,

but rather to recognize that you are a citizen of planet Earth, not in some hippie, cheesy way, but literally we are on a planet that we all share together. But also, the Greek roots of the United States, That could also mean literally the galaxy. So this fixation on the identity as being localized within the state or city or country creates a distortion in what we actually are, which is we are born onto a planet with borders created by people will never meet or dead. And within these borders, you have cultural sort of, you have traditions within these borders.

And these traditions, that's what Diogenes was mocking. He was like, he was saying this is absolutely insane that we are fighting over these traditions and ways of being that don't reflect nature, which is his big thing was to harmonize of nature. And which is why Alexander the Great loves. And there's so many awesome stories about like the many disses he gave to power. Like Alexander the Great encounters him on the road. And these could be all myth, but supposedly Alexander the Great says to him, I will give you anything you want.

Whatever you want, I will give you. It's a great emperor. And he said, can you move a little to the left? You're blocking my son. And you know, this was this big fuck you to power. Yeah. And that fuck you to power. to power, that fuck you to the peacocking pomposity of people who have established themselves

as the shepherds of humanity who wear their costumes and parade about with their proclamations regarding what we need, that we depend on them, this paternalistic fucking relationship with humanity, that is what needs to be rejected. And it is that paternalistic hierarchical relationship with hypnotic power mongers that is causing all the problems. They're not our daddy. You'll never meet them. Why is Donald Trump acting like our dad? Why is Kamala Harris acting like our drunk fucking stepmom? We don't need that. That's the bottom line. We need each other directly around us, the people here. It's not fucking Kamala Harris wasn't the one setting up table. of fucking food in North Carolina

when all the shit got washed away. Donald Trump wasn't out there fucking hauling lumber. You know what I mean? And I don't think we should expect either of them to do that. I'm just saying they're not the ones coming to save you. It's your neighbors who you're going to when the power goes out.

And people have forgotten that. And people are turning to the state and some desperate, pathetic hope that the state is going to rescue them from some perceived threat. They don't know their fucking neighbor. names. Like, come on, man, get your priorities straight. But isn't the problem the fact that we've disempowered people, Duncan, we've disempowered people. And now people feel that the only

way that they can be safe is to give up what little power and agency they have to the government who will come and protect them. And, I mean, COVID was the perfect example of this. People were so willing to give up autonomy, to give up their power, to give up their power, to give up freedom if it meant that they could be given this thing called safety, which actually didn't really exist anyway. Well, I think I love Carl Jung, and I think if you look at these big social movements as the projection of the collective shadow, COVID's fantastic, because what was the instruction with COVID?

Social distancing. COVID, if the goal is to separate us from our neighbors and make us latch on to the state Like that poor monkey that like did you ever see that terrible experiment with a wire monkey? Oh, it's the most fucked up fucked up thing. I hate it so much. They take this little monkey away from its mama. They give it a wire monkey. It's got like these like bicycle reflectors for its eyes.

Made it kind of look like a monkey. This poor little monkey baby, it would rather cling to this fake ass wire monkey than food. because they just thought that was his mommy. And so if, if, like, what we're looking at here is some kind of movement to disconnect people from the actual, like, joy of being human, which is connecting with others, and then connect with the state, then COVID, it was a perfect way to do that. You had to cover your face. You had to distance from people. You had to fucking hate people who didn't wear the mask or hate people who didn't wear the fucking mask.

It created these bizarre teams and the craziest team outfits you've ever seen. And what did it do? It separated us. It separated, separate, separate, separate, separate, separate. And any time you see an invitation to disconnect from this group or that or separated from this group or that or most importantly to not forgive, then you should be very suspicious. because that is serving the purpose of creating a fragmented planetary civilization, and that can only lead to aggression, violence, and suffering.

And that is not political. That is not a political statement. Sure. Spring weekends are all about family, sunshine and enjoying the season together. Before everyone arrives, I stop by my local total wine and more to grab a great bottle. Maybe a favorite we already know and love are something new to try with the meal. With so many bottles to choose from, it's easy to discover something amazing. lowest prices, make it easy to grab an extra bottle for everyone. Find what you love and love what

you find, only at Total Wine and More. Curbside pickup and delivery available in most areas, visit Totalwine.com to learn more. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina drink responsibly B-21. Do you think, how realistic do you think it is for us to overcome that? Because, you know, I don't know if you read Sapiens by Yuval No Harari. He talks about why human homo sapiens became the dominant species of hominids on planet earth. And the reason is that they out-competed other types of humans, effectively. And the reason was that they were able to build tribes that went beyond the Dumbar number, 150 people or so. And the reason they were able to do this is that, according to Harare is that they built these shared myths, nation, country,

money, all of these things that aren't real, as you say. We're just a bunch of animals living on a planet, but we've drawn these arbitrary lines over which we frequently fight and so on the one hand. So it's all arbitrary, on the one hand. On the other hand, it is how we evolved. And so we are tribal creatures. And I wonder whether realistically we ever have a choice about whether we are tribal. my thinking today has been, and I'm obviously open to change my opinion on it, is been that ultimately you can't overcome the tribal nature of our evolutionary history. And so what you can do is find the right unit of tribalism, right? So when I look at America or our country in the UK,

what I see is that we went from kind of like, we're English, we hate the French, which was like good. Right. That kind of work. Yeah, yeah. Right. to, oh, I am a, you know, African American, I'm a this American, I'm Latino, I'm this, I'm that, whatever. And suddenly, instead of being a United States of America, we've now become, you know, in the UK and here, the divided states within itself.

So rather than focusing on external threats, which, by the way, we may wish that they weren't there and all man was one and all of that, but they are there. Like the Chinese aren't sitting around taking psychedelics and going, you know, how do we chill out? I wouldn't be surprised they were taking psychedelics. I mean, I think the idea that you give psychedelics to a fascist and suddenly they're like peaceful as madness. I eat that whole like give Kim Jong-un some mushrooms and everything that we find stuff fucked up. He's going to launch the nukes right away. I bet on mushrooms. They don't tell me to love everybody.

And if I had access to nuclear arsenal, I got paranoid enough, I might fire a couple of icy VMs. So that's what I'm saying, right? So we do have people who want to take things away, to fight, to challenge, et cetera. Yeah. So is it that we should be heading towards some kind of, I would argue, utopian vision where everyone is like all one and whatever? Or is it just that we've become tribalized along the wrong lines? That's cool. You know, man, I would refer you to like Buckminster Fuller.

Have you ever read, what's it called? Something like Manual for Spaceship Earth. It's really cool. So he, I don't know what he would say about that book he reciting, but he talked about sort of the evolution of human beings from living on land and becoming a seafaring civilization. He talked about how like, you know, you're born into whatever part of the world. There's no satellites, airplanes, trains.

You've got maybe horses. But your world is going to be the circumference of that which could be explored by foot or by horse. Once you get to the ocean, that's it, baby. It's done. It's like the wall in the video game that you can't walk past. And suddenly, we figure out a way to navigate the oceans. And he called those people the first the great pirates. So the people who began, the explorers of renown were also pirates.

And this is where we got into territorial expansion. Now what's happening is the circumference of the subjective world that people were living in was beginning to slowly grow. It was growing now past the area that you had been living into the ocean and getting bigger than that. Eventually, we realize the Earth is round. It's not flat. We're on a round fucking thing. So every time those kinds of things happen, global consciousness shifts.

And he points out, the moment we got a picture of Earth from space, now there's no way to deny it, to argue with it, that we are living on the same thing. It's a planetary civilization that we are currently living on, a very divided planetary civilization. But if you were to look at the, if you were to look down on planet Earth and just spin the globe, if you could do that, I mean, if you could actually do that, it would destroy the planet, I guess. But if you did that and you're looking at Dubai, New York, Moscow, Israel, and just looking at it, not understanding anything about the cultures there or the laws there, the leaders there, it all kind of looks like the same ants nest, right? It kind of looks like the same thing. you might be astounded to find out that people who are getting in their car and driving in the

pulsation of traffic that happens every morning and night according to where the planet is rotating in accordance to the sun. You might be astounded to think that each one of those people thought they were doing something different. You look down and see what's going on. You would see clearly like a clock, the inner workings of a fucking clock, this pulsing of life that is just completely based on the solar cycle, and you would be astounded to imagine that people on one side of the planet at any given moment might launch nuclear missiles at people on the other side of the planet because they were so very different from them. That would be astounding. Now, from Buckminster Fuller's perspective, because it was the early explorers or pirates who were the

conquerors and who created the areas that we call countries. And obviously they weren't all sailors. They're like many of them were like, I don't think Gingas Khan ever got in a fucking boat, did he? I don't know, maybe. But the point being, the conquering mentality,

it's what became our laws. It became the legal system. We, we, in America, you know, the first, quote democracy was pirate ships. They were democratic. They were diverse. They were. They didn't give a fuck and they would vote. And so what ended up happening is like maritime law, basically pirate code became encoded within a lot of the systems, the legal systems of these countries. And so Buckminster Fuller was saying, we are now living on a planet. We know it is a planet. We know it's one thing, but the way we are executing life on this planet is with pirate code

based on a complete lack of understanding of the system that they were actually on. And this is why we are having so many problems right now is because we don't know how to adapt to the reality of living on a planet. And I'm not talking about hierarchical, top-down, one-world government anti-crass systems where the new, world, order controls the mind of the people, and there is no more freedom. I'm talking about it at all. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about a fundamental connection with reality, which is you live on a planet that has been here for what? What is it? Five, three point eight billion years? Something like that, a very old planet. You live on a very old planet that has a set of laws according to these imaginary boundaries drawn by conquerors that vary from place to place,

but essentially result in the same damn thing. A lot of skyscraper cities, cars going around 40-hour work weeks, some various forms of slavery, human bondage, justification of hyperviolence based on these boundaries. And it might be that the reason that's happening is because of a distortion in our ability to comprehend what is actually going down. And you're not going to have this state is not going to. going to tell you that. You're not going to, no president is going to come out and be like, hey, guys, we're all on one planet. And I agree with you, because we're all on one planet,

doesn't fucking mean. It's like saying, well, we all live in one house. There's a dude with a hatchet over there. So we should just love that guy. It might come swinging at us at any given moment. I'm not saying the move is some irrational embrace of people who are an existential threat. That's called idiot compassion. But I think the first, step would be to shake off any propaganda that's given you a sense that you aren't a planetary citizen, that you aren't, that your birthright isn't being an earthling. Throw that off. Don't be afraid. It's kind of scary to do. You feel dirty just to say, I'm not an American. I am an American. I love this country. I really do. But also, all of us, we aren't planetary. We live on a

planet. And then this is a sort of universal all one perspective. Now that's called eternalism when it gets out of balance. If you get too caught up in that wishy-washy-wooey-wooey bullshit, then what are you going to do when the taxman comes? He doesn't give a fuck that you think you're a planetary citizen. You can go fuck yourself. I'm taking your house, your car. I don't give a fuck. This is ridiculous. It's eternalism when it gets imbalanced. Also, on the other side, you have what, when it gets embosses, nihilism. All we are is just like our country, our state, this planet, we're just matter. We're like the universe malfunctioned and atoms coalesced together and some horrific amalgam

that produced the awful disease of consciousness with an immortal body. What can be more torture than that? Now that's nihilism. So I think the goal is to find a way to connect these two. things together in a real moment-to-moment way, instead of trying to fix the problems of the planet, I'm gonna wake everybody up. We all have to realize what planetary citizens.

I'm gonna bring world peace. I think it's like my friend Jack Hornfield says, tend to the part of the garden you can touch. You know, go micro, go small. What around you needs help right now? It's all that matters. That's it. You aren't going to bring peace to the Middle East.

You are not going to be, you're not going to solve the Ukrainian-Russian crisis. You are not going to stop us from blowing each other up. That's never going to happen. And by you, I mean the individual. But collectively, ground-level, micro-acts of compassion would theoretically change everything. And it would happen very quickly, in fact. You know, it's a really profound point you make because I remember when I was teaching, there'd be, in every school there'd be one or two teachers who would transform kids' lives.

Like, a kid would come in to their class, and a year later you'd come out, and they'd seem like a fundamentally different human being. They'd come in hating maths or hating English, I can't do this, and you'd see the child transform. So if you think that one person can do that for, what, 30 kids? Yeah. Over a career. I mean, that's thousands of people. That's right.

So if one person can do that, then, and they've made that commitment, then maybe we can't do it to that many people. But we can certainly do it to double-digit triple-digit people, numbers of people. Oh, and this is where you get into the disempowered thing you're talking about. This is the, I mean, if you exist within the system, which is you are inside an infinite system and within you is another insane system when you consider like the perfect harmonization of your cells, your biological, internal universe, and then you consider the atomic universe and the subatomic universe and there you are like on the outside of the bubble in another bubble.

It's profound to be part of this thing at all. And so I think the first step is recognition of what you actually are with. the system that you're actually within as much as you're capable will re-empower you right away because you begin to see holy shit man I like think how long it takes erosion to like make a to change a landscape give me a fucking shovel I can I can do a thousand years of erosion in a minute no problem and that's being human we can do that's incredible not just what we could do to like it's a like it'll be a landscaping but when you look at the historic precedent for people who have absolutely completely transformed the cultural,

technological landscape that we're living in. You realize these ideas emerge in the minds of people like Nikola, Tesla, Karl, Marx, you name it. For better, for worse, these ideas come into a human mind and get articulated in some form or fashion that produces ripples that we are experiencing to this very day. People long dead. And you are one of them. You were running the same nervous system. You were running the same, oh, you're not, maybe not the same OS. You're running, you got the same basic system. So you should feel empowered because you're sitting in the same kind of body. Gingas Khan was sitting in, Mahatma Gandhi was sitting in, Martin Luther King was sitting, and you go on and on and on. Buddha, Muhammad, all of them out of body. Maybe they had different

operating systems, who knows, but that's you, you, the individual, you, the person. He doesn't me and go megalomaniacal about it, but for God's sake, in a world where we all are walking around like deflated balloons, we're walking around feeling all guilty and bad and scared, and I can't do anything to help anything. If I'm going to help some, I got to help the whole fucking planet. It's like, no one ever talks about Buddha's great-grandmother. You never hear that. You never hear about Buddha's great-great-grandmother. You never hear about the person who, like, I don't know, like invited Buddha's great-grandmother to some kind of lunch where she met Buddha's great-great-grandfather, and they bang that night.

You know what I mean? You never hear about that. But now we have the Buddha. You only hear about the fucking Buddha. And it's like, if you were interacting within the system, you are participating in a system that inevitably produces people like, Jesus, the Buddha. Like, this system produces that. And that is not woo-woo. That is, you can look in history. And you are participating in that system, meaning that theoretically, you could be one tiny drop of sand. You could be one tiny drop of sand on the scales that shifted to producing the next Buddha. They happen here. They show up.

And shit changes for the better, sometimes for the worse. But, you know, that is very exciting to me. That's a really cool thing. And that transcends politics. that transcends some transient temporary propaganda machine. And people, I hope that more people recognize that. And that you don't have to be the one. Do you really want to be Jesus?

Like, look at how he ended up. All these motherfuckers want to be Jesus. I wouldn't want that. I'd be nailed to a cross stab with a spear. I don't want to get assassinated like Gandhi. You don't want to be that. But if you could, I wouldn't mind being part of what produces a thing that brings the alleviation of suffering or a mind that is like able to articulate some way of living

that unifies our planet in a nonviolent way. That would be cool. What I really like about you, Duncan, and I see it in your stand-up, is that you're very pro-human. You're very, you talk about, you know, the wonder of having kids. Yeah. And it seems to me, and part of what I realize in myself is I contend if I'm not mentally balanced or stable at that particular time. He hasn't taken his meds. If I'm fucking bashing back with some whiskey, mate.

Yes. But luckily I have for this interview. But I guess we're, we, and one of the things that I find really sad is as a culture, we become anti-child, anti-human. And that to me is a civilization where something is going disastrously wrong. You're so right. You're so right. It is really dismaying. You know, I got lucky enough to be on a show Bill Burr. We were backstage with Rogan shooting the shit.

And it had come on the news that they'd figured out something like child blood transfusions could actually maybe reverse the aging process. We're just talking about that. And Bill Burke goes, tough time to be a kid. But I do feel like it's a tough time to be a kid. And the reason I think is because we're putting profit over humanity. Like making a profit seems to be the goal.

And so what ends up happening there is this bizarre hierarchy appears within which the mother is reduced to like a kind of antiquated form, a sort of appendix of the system that you would stay home and raise your kids. You should get into the corporate world. You got to get out there, make some fucking money, dual earning household. Let's get fucking rich. We'll take our kids, put them in fucking daycare. You can go in the cubicle. You can go in the bathroom and, like, pump your breast milk. And then the baby can have breast milk.

You know, to me, that is a real, like, devaluing of something. And it's really fucked up because how do we quantify motherhood? In other words, like, you know, like, imagine if your mother at the end of, your life, like wrote you a bill at the end of your life, like, how much would a mother charge? What's the value of a mother? Like, we know what minimum wage is, but they also grew in their womb. Capitalism and motherhood don't seem to go very well together, because how do you quantify unconditional love and destroying your pussy for a fucking thing that's going to tell, call you a bitch?

Because you don't let him go smoke weed in a fucking slumber party. It's like there's no way to, like, quantify them. I don't know of the economic metric. for this. And so what ends up happening again is propaganda. Like the idea being like I want to, I want to get people working, not working because having a kid and being a mom, that doesn't count as work. That's something different, almost like a vacation. And the implication, when they, there some shaming of mothers because they want to be stay-at-own moms is the implication is, look, being a mom's a part-time fucking job. You know what I mean? It's a dilution of what is in

anyone who's been around a fucking mom, three kids, just like being the center of a vortex of life. It's a constant need, constant. You have to be there. And then you add to that that you were invited to leave your kids at daycares and shit. You know what I mean? It's a constant need. It's Like everyone like bashes communism. They talk about they want to take the kids away. Let the state raise the kids. And that's true, I think. I think they actually did want to do that.

They did do that. I was raised in a communist society where that happened with me. They would take. Oh, I would go to a nursery at like before I was one. There you go. Right. And the nursery, you're getting state propaganda, right? The nursery, you're getting communist propaganda.

I think at one, I don't think they bothered at that. There wasn't any saluting of the flag. drying hard enough. No, no, there was no hammond sick. You know, one year olds love communism. Yeah, they do. No, they fucking don't. Kids hate communism. My kids don't want to share shit. I love who my kids to be fucking communist. That'd be incredible. I got to buy everything for these boys.

It'd be incredible if they could share. I should give them Karl Marx. But so this in the... Two-year-olds are fucking hard to indoctrinate, aren't they? Dude, I have not been able to, yeah. It's impossible. It's really difficult. Well, Elaron Hubbard's a wonderful person. I think we can do it.

You drop your kids off at daycare. Now, this is different from communism because they go to daycare and they're not getting some communist indoctrination. I don't know what they're getting, like blippy or something. But again, if you look at it, if you zoom out enough, it's the same goddamn thing.

For an economic system, you're leaving your children with somebody else. And so to me, yeah, this is a, this is a really sad thing. And it's a really sad thing when the fashionable attitude right now is, anti-natalism is like all over the fucking place. It seems to be some kind of like it's running rampant at least in the blogosphere, which I don't think is real necessarily. but there's a general sense that to have a child is to hate the earth,

that to have a child is to either wish for the child to experience just a hellscape style planet or the carbon emissions from that kid's fucking macaroni and cheese farts is going to be the last nail in the coffin for the ice caps and all things are going to melt. I know, it's crazy, man. But also there's so much you talk about propaganda, If you think about your point about motherhood, there's so much propaganda in that area where,

like, my wife spend a period of time just being at home with our son. And there's very few people who will be like, that's a great thing to have done. A lot of people are like, oh, oh, you're a stay home mother. Oh, is that it? And that's crazy. But also, we know from all the polling that most women would like the opportunity to, to be with their kids if they can. Of course.

But at the same time, especially if a man like you or me comes along and goes, well, maybe we should think about how we arrange society to make that available and goes, what, you want to chain women back to the radiator where they've been all their evolution. And so there's a kind of propaganda war over women's minds that's going on. And a lot of women have internalized that propaganda. And they are the ones that are the front. of anyone who says, guys, guys, maybe this isn't working out? Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think

any kind of social experiment has, like, real risks, any kind of utopian vision of the world or something like that, has incredible risks. And, you know, I've heard this, I don't know if it's true, I'll probably mispronounced it. I've heard that the actual word for Hinduism is Sanatindarm, which means the eternal way. And so you sort of just look at the world, you look at like, what does it mean to live in balance with the world? What does that look like?

I mean, we're talking like for thousands of years. What does that look like? What would be the best way? And certainly, for the majority of human history, at least as far as I'm aware, and if I am wrong about this, I hope people will tell me, there isn't a lot about dropping your kids off at a fucking daycare. You know what I mean? There isn't a lot out there. So, but I say, let's invite, I think, again, like, when you really start thinking about this stuff, as what I think you two are, and I think most people are, as someone who wants less suffering in the world, you want to come up with the solution, some way to fix this.

And I don't think, I think if we're looking for that, that solution has to be encouraging people to connect with reality outside of the propaganda. and not be afraid to do that. In Buddhism, wisdom and compassion are the same thing. Like, the understanding of emptiness or the understanding of the actual reality that we're living in spontaneously gives birth to compassion. Now, maybe I'm a naive, fucking idiot, but I really do think that's true. And I think that's exciting because what that means, that can be really controlled by propaganda. You don't need books for it. You don't need books. You don't need anything

other than what you've got, what you're walking around in. And a little bit of courage to just for a second put all the propaganda up on a shelf and look around and ask yourself, what is this? What is really happening? Not symbolically in my mind, what I've been, not my set of, what are they called, emoticons, emojis, not my set of symbols that have been implanted in my mind to act as a filter between me and reality. But what is really happening here? I think the more you start connecting with what's really happening, then you don't even need a long-term plan. Moment to moment, you find yourself making decisions that create a more novel and fulfilling life.

Duncan's been great having you on. We barely scratched the surface, to be honest. So let's do this again, man. You guys have such esteemed guests. I was nervous being on here, and I think... Yeah, you should have been. I was a idiot. Look at how badly you fucked up.

That's how you know you're a comedian. No, man, it was awesome to chant. Like I said, I think we only got a little bit into it, but we'll continue. So it was great to meet you. Before we ask you questions from our supporters on substack, the last question we always ask is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that you think we should be. Before Duncan answers the final question, at the end of the interview,

make sure to click the link in the description. It'll take you to our substack where you'll be able to see this. Do you think everyone needs to have a psychedelic experience before they die? She says, I have phoma about it. Fear of missing out. 5% of comedians smoke marijuana. The other 5% aren't funny. Oh my God, I'm so glad they asked this question.

You are? This is so good. Finally, we can address this. Quantum computers! That's all anyone should be fucking talking about right now. If you really want to find, and I don't mean to go sinister all of a sudden, but if you really want a line in the sand where you can find a place, not Book of Revol, but where the apocalypse is going to happen, look into quantum computing and look into the reality in like five to eight years.

Oh, for fun. Another thing? Oh, currently, I know. It's not AI. It's quantum computing. Oh, boy. AI. Fuck. And monkey pox. Yeah.

This makes monkey pox seem like chicken pox. We're talking about the of encryption as we know. We're talking we have five years. Maybe we have a look at. We have a little bit of them look at. five to seven years. So imagine this. In five years, all car locks are not going to work anymore. Anyone who wants to get in a car and drive it around can, they're just not going to work anymore. In five to seven years. So we have to replace all car. Well, we'll go back to mechanical, surely.

What? We'll go back to mechanical locks then. Well, yeah, but the problem is, how the fuck do we do that with encrypted data that has been sniffed up and vacuumed up already and exists in servers, encrypted data that it would take seven thousand. thousand years for a supercomputer to decrypt, we'll take a minute for a quantum computer to do that, meaning any data back in the, I don't know, 90s, when people were sending encrypted emails and making encrypted phone calls, I don't think they were thinking there's going to be quantum computers that somehow are able to use superpositioning to solve problems at the quantum level, quantum computers where it has to be the coldest thing in the universe, just to fucking function.

It looks like something out of an HP Lovecraft story. If you look at the damn things, no one thought that was coming. There, I think, are terabytes of encrypted data just sitting in servers with people waiting for quantum computers to catch up so they can decrypt it, meaning all state secrets, anything that's been siphoned up, any encrypted data that anyone has that is just sitting somewhere in a hard drive. We're five to seven years away from whoever the fuck has access to these computers decrypting them and all the secrets. All the secrets people will know. And so when you realize there's literally a, there's an hourglass right now, there's a ticking clock.

We're on the other side of it. Any thing you think is out there, and you're like, well, you know, it's encrypted with this incredible technology that I barely understand. You better hope that. Incognitive mode is not going to cut it. What?

Incognitive mode on the browser is not going to cut it. No, incognito mode, is a wonderful, gives you a wonderful sense of security when you're jerking off to German foot fetish porn. Yeah. So I would say quantum computing is a really interesting thing to think about and also think about that it could be that timeline is wrong. And what happens if someone does achieve one of these quantum decryption computers, why would they tell anybody? And if you look out at global events, I would say take a look at if you're seeing anything happening that seems like magic, that it just seems like some state knows where someone is at any given moment. That doesn't make any sense. You might ask yourself, do they have a fucking quantum computer? And, you know, I have no data on this at all. Obviously, I'm a rambling woo-woo comedian. But, man, I scratch my chin wondering, does Israel have a fucking quantum computer? You look at. You look at. back, they just opened up like a big quantum computing center out there and then all of a sudden they've got pagers blowing up in people's pockets. They know where everybody is at any given moment.

Shit, man, it's worth looking into. It's worth thinking about. Like, that's going to change everything. So yeah, I think we should be talking more about quantum computers. Well, you've just been disinvited, mate. All right. All right. Head on over to Substack where we ask Duncan your questions. Before Duncan answers the final question, at the end of the interview, make sure to click the link in the description. It'll take you to our substack where you'll be able to see this. It seems there are a few people out there who promote use of psychedelics without considering the very real potential consequences. Why is this? Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify.

They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website to marketing to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz, and all birds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into... Sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash special offer. Olivia Rodriguez, The Unravel Tour, across North America, with special guests.

Get tickets Thursday, May 7th at Olivia Rodrigo.com.