TrueLife - Cunning Linguists & Master Debaters

Episode Date: August 26, 2022

What if every night on prime time television there was: “The Debate of the Day” Imagine if you could tune in to see cunning linguists & master debaters squaring off to tackle the biggest issues in our country…. How would that effect the level of discourse in our neighborhoods, city’s, & states?

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. For me too, having conversations, like all of these conversations help me see the world better. and sometimes I realize, man, I get a lot of heat sometimes. And I say stupid things sometimes. I don't mean to. I don't mean to say.

We're a live stream of consciousness. You know how hard that is? That's not an easy animal, man. It really isn't. Right. You know. And on the same while simultaneously trying to make a point, make a point.

But it always, afterwards, I always find that. that there's something in that conversation that helps me see the world, at least from my point of view better, or, hey, gosh, I was wrong right there. I'm glad I'm glad I figured that out because I would have kept going down that path. And that's what conversations are. There are a way for you to figure out the way you think, for good, for bad, for right, for wrong. But when you get out there, whether it's a debate, whether it's a conversation, whether it's someone pushing back on your ideas, or you taking a few moments to try and push back on your own ideas, I, I, I really think that that can help other people.

And like that that's the beauty of what and the beauty is everybody can do it. You might get in a conversation with somebody. And if you're having some public discourse, it's probably going to help you. Like I said, sometimes I, I can't tell you some of the, some of the biggest help for me has been being wrong in front of other people. Like that's a huge driver of understanding. You can't run away. You can't disappear. You can't go anywhere, man.

Yeah, all of a sudden, the spotlight's on you and you go, oh, shit. Yeah. I can't believe I just said that. That's, oh, boy, here we go. Yeah. You know, for me personally, I learned my debating. I don't do much debating these days, but I did a lot back in the day. But I did it all in bars.

You know, I'm traveling in these, you know, destination locations. So you're ending up with lawyers and doctors and politicians and all of these people. So all of a sudden, some very interesting conversations erupt because these are not just people from one country. These are people from multiple countries, right? And so I learned a lot of my debate style by, you know, being in those types of situations where everybody's drinking, everybody's loud, everybody's heavily opinionated. Everybody has something to say. Everybody wants to be the center of attention and nobody wants to be wrong. those are that's a fun place it's a really fun place because that's where you that's where you

that's where you really get to hash out an idea and if you don't understand your idea you're really going to find out really fast yeah it's a gift i mean you know i the problem with with talking out ideas and bars and sometimes you get punched in the face never been I've never been punched in the face because of an idea. I have a silver tongue when it comes like, hey, look, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I might have called you a monologue, but you're not a monologue. You can enunciate, right?

Oh, man. Yeah, I've, I've, every time I've been punched, I thought to myself later, I kind of deserve that. I was being, I was being a dick. How many times you've been punched? A lot. A lot. A lot. I mean, maybe 10 or 12. I guess that's kind of a lot, right? That's kind of a lot. That's kind of a lot. Yeah. Yeah. I, um, yeah. You're eradicated. I was just dumb, you know, and I was small and dumb and sometimes, sometimes I was right. And sometimes people are like, what, you think you're smart? And I'm like, yeah. I kind of do. I do think that. Boom.

give pun. That wasn't very smart. You know what I shouldn't have said that, you know? But yeah, it's part of learning. I guess when I was getting into a lot of that, I had just enough, just enough of that moxie to make it a funny situation or to realize that I was about to get punts. So I should probably self-deprecate and make everybody laugh about me

and take the heat off of this dude who's looking pretty steam. You know, so I developed that little, that little nuance of ability as well, I think. Kept me from being punched. Yeah. I'll never forget. One of the first fights I was in was in, I was probably like in third grade. And I, like, I'm five, six, like 135 pounds. So I was always the smallest kid.

And I, everybody was a year older than me. It was back when, you know, you know, I should have been, I should be one grade. less, you know? It's a big difference, stature-wise. Huge difference. Especially when testosterone starts to kick in for those boys. Yeah.

And I remember in, I think it was, like, third grade, I got him this, for me and Paul Arandondo, we got in his fight. And it was me going up to him and I was pushing him, pushing them. And he just picked me up and threw me down and punched me, punched me a couple times. It was a kid fight. And I remember we're sitting in the principal's office and, like, the principal's like, I'm going to call your parents and send you boys.

home and my dad comes and picks me up and he's like what happened i got in a fight he's like did you win i'm like that was it when i got home my mom's like what happened i'm like i got to fight go through the whole emotional well she she gave me some of the best advice i've ever gotten about she goes you know what george you're younger than all the boys in your school you're not going to be a very big you're going to be you're a big man but you're never going to be as strong and as tall is those boys physically. So you need to figure out how to win with your words because those boys are going to pound you.

They're bigger. They're always going to be bigger. You're younger than them. You're smaller than them. You can't fight that way. You have to fight with your words, George. And I'll never forget that. And after that, like I started learning how to learn riddles

and learning jokes and learning to look at people and see the way they act and listen to their words because I'm going to have to react faster than them with my mind than I am with my fist because I'll always lose there. But it was some of the best advice I've ever gotten in my life. Jokes are the bully kids best friend. Yeah. If you can learn how to make a situation funny,

you can extract yourself from just about any situation in the world. That's a great point. Unless you did something heinous, of course. Not a lot of joking yet. But, you know, it's one thing. You know, if you can learn humor, and I think you can learn humor, because humor is more about timing than it is, you know, just random raw talent.

Timing wit, right? Which, wit can be expanded upon by, you know, multiple conversations, reading more, having a greater breadth of knowledge. And then, you know, humor is really about timing. It's about getting that moment where everybody's, you know, has been quiet for five seconds because somebody might get punched. But then you point out somebody's massive zit that just grew out of their forehead. Oh my goodness.

What is that? Something land on you last night? And everybody looks at that kid and it erupts in the laughter. And all of a sudden you're not getting punched in the face anymore. You're getting slapped on the bag. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that would be, but that's something like, how do you teach that?

That's a wild one. I don't think you teach that. I think that's just an almost an emergent aspect of society. Yeah. Like it comes out of necessity. It comes from not, you know, it's, I always think of humor as anger's attractive sister because, you know, when everybody's angry and all of a sudden this beautiful girl shows up, everyone is like, whoa, look at that. You know, and everybody forgets. You know, it's like that guy's attractive sister.

Whoa. Hey, what were you talking about again? Don't look at my sister. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. It works on so many levels, man. But yeah, that's, that is something that, you know, adaptability.

and you're either going to learn, you're going to learn eventually. You're either going to learn to fight. You're going to learn humor or you're going to learn to withdraw and become a serial killer. One of those things. They're all interesting to the earlier part in our conversation.

I wanted to mention it. You were talking about how words are associated with war and things like that. And you have, you know, like Sun Tzu's the art of war. Yeah. You know, and it touches much more on, you know, just like battle formations and tactics and things like that, it very dies

into psychology of humans. And, and, you know, when to do things, why to do things, what's impacting your opponents, you know, you know, where are they weak, where they, where's their guard down? Is their flank exposed? And these are, these are ideas that, you know, they transition, you know,

actually, I think almost even better off the battlefield, you know, to social interactions, human interaction, navigating tricky situations, especially. That's one of my favorite books that I read as a younger man that really kind of, you know,

allowed me to look at the world in a different light. Yeah, one of my favorite quotes from that book is the best way to lose any war is to let the enemy dictate the field of battle. You know, and like how well does that translate into everyday life, everyday conversations.

Yeah. Yeah. If all of a sudden somebody's super angry and aggressive and you're letting him dictate angry and aggressive and you're not an angry aggressive guy. Guess what? Who's going to lose that war? Yeah. It'll be you.

But if all of a sudden you can transition that battlefield to humorous and light and that angry guy is no longer on the battlefield, guess who won the war? Yeah. Yeah. It's the same thing. Like I see it. I remember, you know, I work in a warehouse. And the warehouse, the, the,

the warehouse, the multinational corporation is a lot like an authoritarian regime. And we know when the person up here is like, hey, man, I want to talk to you. You did this wrong. Hey, come and talk to me in the office. Well, that's your battlefield. Hey, hey, everybody. My object is, hey, everybody gather around. I'm going to say something.

And you got 40 guys circled around another guy. Guess who's winning that battle? Me. Hey, let me ask something. Why don't you have any integrity? Do you think what you're doing is right? Hey, how many guys have been divorced? You know, somebody that can speak well can change that crowd.

And you can literally see the fear on people's faces when they're surrounded by a group of people. Like, oh, you think you're in charge? Watch this. You know. The story of the authoritative or dictator throughout history, right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, those people rise to power on ideas that are hard-coded in the sand.

Yep. And then when people realize that it's sand and that they can actually just kind of brush it away all of a sudden, it's like, ooh, well, there's some danger all of a sudden. Yep. Yeah. So it happens when you abuse people for a prolonged period of time via unjust meat. I mean. Yeah. There's something so like powerful and beautiful.

And I can't even think of a better word. Like, you know, when you see somebody. that appears to be in a position of weakness but they know they're going to win you know and they're just toying with the person now but the other person doesn't quite know they're going to lose yet but this other person's oh yeah and so they're and so they're going full steam like they got it in a bag it's it's already a done deal yeah

and but you're like oh boy that rug's about to be pulled I'm watching it's you know it's like the little guy who's trained versus some big guy who's picking on it Or like these days You got all these nerdy kids You know Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Yeah And you see this big

You know Like I saw a video A big football player You know picking on his Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu kid Get the shit kicked out of him And the kid was like No, no, no, no

Until the guy smacked him in the back of the head And then he was like, all right Yeah, all right I should walk away Yeah It's it's the same look And sort of like the knowing smile of the Buddhist, too,

that's just like, mm-hmm. Well, you know, it's, you know, it's, there's some quote about, you know, and it's been quoted many different ways, but the, the, the premises is that, you know,

you shouldn't, you shouldn't fear non-aggressive people or, you know, you should fear the people who are, who know how to be aggressive, but have it in check. You know, there's, and that's,

you know, there's military quotes from it. There's a lot of different quotes about that. But it's essentially the same idea is like, you know, if I understand violence, I know how violence applies and I know how to explicitly apply violent. Yeah. But yet violence is never my choice. I'm going to be the most powerful person in the situation,

typically speaking. And, you know, and that's not just violence in the physical sense of violence. It's also, you know, the verbal sparring. It's also all of that. Like, if I know I can destroy somebody, that doesn't mean I humiliate them, right? It just means I make my point. And there's that type of nuance, I suppose, you can say.

I mean, it's not the word I want. But that type of ability, you know, that really defines great individuals from tyrants, really. Yeah. Yeah, I heard someone define meek like that. Like someone who's meek is someone who is, doesn't want to be in a fight, but they're more than capable of handling that fight.

And when you take, if you use that definition of meek and apply it to the biblical structure of the mech on her at the earth. Right. Well, yeah, I think like the actual, the old translation was those who know how to use their sword, but keep it cheap. Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah, and then the meek shall inherit the earth. I was actually looking at that this morning. Believe it or not. Because I've heard Jordan Peterson talk on it. And then it popped up and, like, he came up on a clip and a podcast and it talked on it again a few days ago. So I heard it like three times in the past week. And I was like, hmm, all right.

Well, if I hear something three times in a week, I should probably take a little extra time for it. Yeah, it's weird. kind of like the universe speaking to you, like, okay, get ready. You know, don't be ready to fight, but yeah. Pay attention. Yeah, it reminds me of like there's this samurai colon where like this ancient samurai, I may have told this story before, but tell it again, this is a good one. There's this ancient samurai whose father has handed his, there's, and they have this

sword. It's been handed down from generation to generation. And it's this most sacred tradition where the father gives his son the sword. And in this sword is embodied the spirit of the family. And on the wrap, it's been just handed down for generations. And it's the most sacred thing to this samurai. He serves the emperor. He serves him well and protects him and his family and becomes a great samurai.

And he embellishes all that a samurai is with integrity and, you know, all these great qualities of life. And as he gets later in life, he decides that he's going to seek out some questions that he's never had answers to. He asked the emperor for leave, and he rides off on his horse to find the wisest man in the land. And he rides off for three days, and he finally finds this wise old man way out in the middle of his Zen garden in the mountains. And he approaches the man, and the man has his back to him. And he waits there patiently. And finally, the old man after some time turns to him. And he's like, what, why are you here?

And the samurai says, I seek to know the gates of heaven. in the gates of hell. The old man just stares at him. And he sees, he looks at him and he's like, oh, I'm sorry. A man like you, a poor warrior who has spent his life in violence, you can never know either.

You know, you come from a poor family. And look at this aluminum toy you carry with you. What sort of a man would carry a device like that? I bet the man who gave it to you was weaker than you. Any man who had that in his family, it was a horrible individual. What a disgusting piece of garbage that is. Just unloads on this guy until the samurai can't take it anymore. And he looks at his sword and he hears this old man just decrying his family.

And everything in him is boiling. And he grabs his sword. He begins to unsheat it. And the old man says, behold, the gates of hell. And the samurai starts crying. And he puts it back. You got me. Yeah.

And he starts crying and puts it back because he forgives him and he goes, behold, the gates of heaven. You know, and it's like, oh, man, you get it. There's anger and there is turmoil and there is emotional, you know, just onslaught. Like, there you go. But it's, I think it brings us back to the meek. Yeah, and it also ties us back into the hero's journey too, right? Yeah, absolutely.

And that's what we're all on, ultimately. we're all on our independent hero's journey. And, you know, understanding one's anger, understanding one's rage, understanding one's love, understanding, you know, one's emotional variability. You know, that is part of, you know, in my perspective, you know, the quest for myself. I do a fairly decent job at it because I've been trying to do a fairly decent job at it for quite a long time. And yet there's still times in moments and situations and things that arise that would be like that challenge that. And, you know, this kind of ties in like stoicism and, you know, resurrectionism and, you know,

resurrectionism and in different Gnostic type ideals and things. And, you know, just like it continues to tie into the greater conversation, all of these things have a very interesting meaning. And there's a, and I think there's reasons that they consistently show up as themes. throughout society. And there's reasons why we talk about them like now, for instance. Yeah. And I think, oh, go ahead.

No, I was just going to say, I mean, we're back to constructs. And maybe the, maybe there's only one social construct. And it's the one that we choose to see in our lives. And there's plenty you can choose from, but they're off the shelf, it seems like, sometimes. Well, I'd say, I mean, I mean, ultimately, right, that's true at some level, because the social construct I choose to participate in, whether that be, you know, directly or indirectly is still a personal choice. But I, you know, kind of is set in setting. You know, I think there's there's definitely social constructs that weigh upon us, that limit our ability to make choices for our own personal path through the, through, through, through, through, through, through, through, and through these social construct.

You know, one of those, for instance, is tactic, right? I mean, that's pretty apparent. You know, for everything that I do in my life, some ambiguous entity gets a portion of it, which, yeah, you can get into the context of what that is, for sure. And, you know, there's arguments to be made about and again. But at the end of the day, that is a reality of a construct that is weighing upon my ability,

to navigate the water's fly. And so I would argue that there are some that are just kind of imposed upon. And maybe maybe the removal of the constructs of impetus from society

is something that would be beneficial to humanity. That's well put. Yeah. What do you think would happen if they, if all of a sudden you woke up tomorrow and there were no more taxes? Well, I think the national government dissolves in pretty short order because they're not paying pay paychecks. They can't even afford to pay pay paychecks these days half the time.

But they can just print it, right? I mean, they're just printing it now. I guess. But I mean, if you print it, if all, then it just goes to zero technically from an economist's point of view. the only thing that supports the value is the social construct. Right? So I think if all of a sudden taxes are gone, the value of the dollar becomes much more fluid. Because now, you know, if I'm looking at it and, you know, there's, now we're just talking taxes, but if taxes went away,

I think it implies other things go away as well. But if, let's just say taxes, let's just identify taxes. I think, you know, by and large, you're going to have celebrations across the globe, but then the erosion of nation states would cause the, you know, similar to how the United States was founded with tax without representation, all of a sudden you're going to get a community of people who, like in New York City, be like, hey, how are we going to pay for, you know, all of the functions of this city? Well, we're going to have to tax the people. That's the only way to do it, right? Because we're not going to rely on philanthropy. Either that or cities fall into a

state of decay. So I think quickly it would, you know, a new tax system would arise, similar to how it did in this country when there was revolution. You know, the idea was no taxes, all of a sudden, you know, fast forward 130 years and you have income tax for everybody

on top of a litany of other taxes. And now most states have sales taxes. And most, you know, it seems to be a pretty concurrent theme that in order to have some sort of larger conglomeration of society, there has been a need to tax

the everybody in society to create that. Now that's an interesting, now that I say that loud, that's an interesting aspect of what society is because can you have a society without that sort of tax? I don't know if you can. Well, I think you can up to a certain limit of number. because if here's here's the thing if we're all having a conversation we all agree on where that money should be applied yeah

then there's it's not a big deal yeah we're all right putting into the pool but the second that that conversation uh doesn't incorporate the greater hole and now you're going to have derision and now you're going to have, you know, politics. Yeah. And I think that's kind of what. Yeah. Well, that's kind of what we see today, right?

Yeah. I mean, if we were to, if we were, you know, think about what a, it's kind of what a business is, a corporation is essentially. You have a whole bunch of people who are agreeing to tax themselves in the, in the, in the terms of time in order for a greater goal. So in there, to extrapolate from that, it seems that, you know, in order for us to create some form of, you know, collective society, there has to be an agreed upon level of compromise, right? I think it's kind of the fundamental axiom of that. Is it fair to say that the only real difference in government is who decides?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, because, I mean, if you look at it from a historical perspective, just in terms of what each side, you know, supposedly supported or, you know, didn't support, those have gone full circle from a conservative to a liberal perspective in just about every Western country that I'm aware of. so you know in that context yeah it really doesn't matter you know who's in charge and they're just pulling they're saying yes yeah and it just so happened the only the only aspect of that that changes anything is time yeah but you know i i mean politics from what the latin root was many blood sucking creatures right i didn't know that yeah yeah that's the latin root of policy i was a high school I remember taking Latin in high school, and that was one of the first lessons in Latin was politics, blood-sucking creatures is the translation.

I was like, or many blood-sucking creatures. Sorry. It's so true. And it's like, wow, that's pretty true. Yeah. Yeah, I don't understand why. I mean, I realize why this doesn't happen, but it seems to me it could happen. Why can't you vote where your tax dollars go to?

Like, you vote on everything. Why don't you vote where your tax dollars go to? I think we at originally it was because there was a tech technological impetus right because you know there was distance there was communication you know pony express isn't good for deciding what needs to happen today um that technological situation has changed and I think that may be an influencing factor on why we see a lot of people kind of now waking up to the reality that I'm not represented at all you know that This whole system is kind of shammy, especially when you start to factor in the monetary aspects of it. And I think why there's that push is because there is a realization that, hey, I can send an email to anybody in the world and it gets there instantaneously. Why can't I vote on something that would impact me instantaneously?

Right. And the aspect of why we haven't gone that direction as a nation can only be answered by greed. and corruption. You know, and you don't have to even look all that far back. Just look at the last election, right? I mean, just look at, you have a proprietary company based in a foreign country

that has systems deployed that's transmitting data internationally before it's processed nationally. And, you know, from a technical guy who builds systems, I'm like, hmm. How could that go wrong? A couple red flags here. I don't know if you guys knows this,

but this is all garbage. A lot of hot garbage. But, you know, everybody doesn't have that background. So I understand why, you know, there's the illusion that these systems need to be in place. And the people who are grifting on them, you know, they're pretty good grifters. They've got a lot of money behind them.

Yeah, because there's a lot of money behind it. So they've perfected the art of grifting pretty well to their credit. It doesn't change the fact that it's a grip. So yeah, you know, we have the ability to have a one vote representation system. We don't have a will from the people who are in positions of power and authority and control resources and money to make that a reality because that limits their ability to gain the system. If it's all transparent, then there's no ability to manipulate. the system, they make a lot of money manipulating the system.

That's just the reality. I mean, how many times is every largest company in the world been charged with fraud? I mean, Apple's paying a couple billion in Europe for, you know, their battery situation. You got Pfizer who's paid out tens of billions of dollars for, yeah, we know it's going to fuck you up, but we're going to make more money anyway, so here you go. You got all these. So, yeah, what are we, you know, of course these people are going to act in their self-interest. And that self-interest is not us having a transparent look into that process because then you can't hide the corruption.

So, I mean, there's, you know, why it hasn't happened isn't, you know, some grand mystery. But I think we do have the resources and technology. And I think we're starting to gain the social will and the wisdom and knowledge to say that, hey, we should try to move down these pathways to get to the point where we do have a one vote, one person situation, where everybody is represented. Because why shouldn't people be represented? Because if you look at the big grand picture, that's the real question. Well, if you can do this, why aren't you doing it? So why shouldn't people be represented individually? And the answer to those questions is, you know,

there's no really good answer unless it's for my pocketbook or my bottom line some way. Otherwise, why wouldn't you want everybody to be represented? Sometimes I wonder if a catalyst to change this might be to have a, some sort of like like a blast an email blast or some you know

put a little bit do a go fund me or get raise some money to pay some info or get out on the internet something that says we the people would like to offer the white collar

criminals our government officials a one time opportunity for immunity we would like you to take this and here's it's good until this day and we're talking to the Pfizer CEOs.

We'd like to give you immunity for one day. It's a beautiful idea. Problem is money buys gun. They have all the money. Therefore, they have all the gun. And you can say we're going to offer you immunity or we're going to lynch you on a tree. However, they have that part out. That's the quiet part.

Well, you know, that's the implication, right? However, the reality of that situation becomes, oh, that's great. I'm not going to do anything. I'm just going to call my black rock security. team to go handle this. Right. You know, so the,

you know, these social constructs are, they're limiting to our ability to manipulate the situation. And part of that's by design, right? Now, I think

where that design breaks down is at a very local level and potentially a regional level, where a group of people, individuals get together and decide to be individuals and but decide on a common cause.

And, you know, I think the way to structure that in this day and age is to, you put it under a corporate structure because that's just the way the world's kind of ran. And you have a very explicit business model that dictates people's rights and responsibilities in that system. You're essentially creating,

you know, a met a nation inside of a nation. but that's the only infrastructure that we have available to us as a common person to kind of create our own dichotomy in the world. Otherwise, you're going to end up shot or in jail pretty quick. Right. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's essentially what Scientology and Mormonism did. Is it they just set up their parallel system of like, okay, we're a religion, we're do this. And these people, we're all going to, we're all coming together.

We're all going to kick in our own money to our own little world. And the only reason those were allowed to survive is because they had enough people. Right. Because now all of a sudden to go against that, now you have, yeah, you could call the police force, but what's the will of the police force or even like a, you know, National Guard versus a group of people who all agreed on their terms, on their definitions and have agreed that this is the way we're going to live our life? Well, it's just a different, there's just a different, uh, dialogue. economy, right? You know, the people who are defending their very ideals, their livelihood has always been shown historically to be the people who are going to fight choose the nail harder and with

more passions than their, than their opponent. So I think, you know, realizing that, and from a democratic standpoint, you know, that's why there is the separation of the church and state, essentially. It's because I think there was a realization that you can't just tell the church what to do, because then the church is going to say, fuck you. Yeah, that happened in middle England. Yeah, it happened multiple times. And every time it's happened,

a lot of people died, and it didn't end up for the people who were in power being so great. Right. So the answer seems to be to establish a parallel system without getting killed somehow. And that's, but like,

and the power, our structures that B have done their very best to make sure that no one else can do that. Like, okay, no more parallel systems. There's already too many, there's already too many of them. And so I guess maybe that's one of the things that being online has allowed people. You could even say that the metaverse is the parallel system. And that's this new one that's trying to emerge. And there's no rules there. And they're trying to make them now because people can see how much money's in there. It seems the parallel system is the answer. But it just becomes so abstract sometimes.

It does. And I think the parallel system is the answer. I think, you know, every system is born from another system. You don't create systems from scratch. Right. You know, even if, even if like a wildfire happens, for instance, that burst in an entire new ecosystem that would not have happened without that wildfire. So, you know, the interconnectedness of system is one of those things where I think in order

to change it, you do have to start a parallel system. And it's just, you know, and in this case, I think in the world that we inhabit in the Western world, I think it simply comes down to you need to create a better business model that can create in the marketplace. And

if your business model can compete in the marketplace and yet you can still retain all of these ideals of community and society, that's the winning recipe. Inter-Tara Libre. Enter turn.

I've been thinking about this for a while. What can I say? Yeah. Yeah. So on the topic of that and parallel systems, when you came up with that or even going forward thinking about that, do you research, it sounds like this is a yes, but let me just ask you to do you research the spinoff of parallel systems, have you looked at other parallel systems and how they're born, how new ecosystems work.

And it seems like that would be a piece of the puzzle is to identify when they pop up, how they pop up, and how they maintain being successful. So they usually pop up when there's a level of stress in the current system. And they pop up right now, essentially, is what happens. This is kind of why I'm out here. talking now. Right. Because in order to have that conversation, nobody's interested in a parallel system or a parallel

process if they're sitting and they have no struggles in life. If, you know, as far as all as far as they're concerned, they're living a great old hunky door life, the American dream or whatever. What happens? The reality of the situation is now people have been rocked out that rocker and they're looking around saying, hey, I didn't realize I built my house on a bed of sand here. What can I do? And so now is the time for a system like that to emerge

is because you need people's curiosity to be peaked. They need to be searching for other solutions. You can't sell somebody on something like that. They need to see it for themselves. It's an education problem and not a publicity problem. Because people who are properly educated and understand the dichotomies of things and what's happening, the systems in the world will look at it and say,

hey, that's broken. That'll work. And it becomes, and it's not a choice. It's simply, it's simply an acknowledgement of a solution. And the ability for us to put ourselves in that position exists right now, because now people are aware and are looking and searching for a different solution. Because they, you know, it's not working for everybody. It hasn't been for a long time, but, you know, now after the past couple years,

a lot of people realize it's not working for them. So how do you, how does it go from, like when you talk about it, it's a dream, when you envision it, it's possible. But when you schedule it, it becomes real. So how do you take it from, clearly we talked about it, it's been envisioned. How do you take the next step? Like, how do you schedule it and begin to do the actual work on it? How does that come about?

I kind of take them the first steps from that. First, you register it as a nonprofit business. you create an infrastructure around that. And then you start to bring it to the world and you test that idea. And you refine that idea and you get other people's opinions like yourself and others. And you have these conversations and we refine the idea together because the whole point of this idea is it's not an individualistic thing. It's something that raises all ships and raises all ships concurrently. You know, it's not like somebody's sitting, you know, on an island that's raising above the water, which is kind of how everything's structured these days if you look at it from that metaphor.

And so, you know, to make it a reality is just to have these conversations, to hash out the really nuances of it, the internal infrastructure of it. What happens when A happened? What happens when B happens? What happens when C happens? How do we handle that? Once those are agreed upon, once we agree upon our terms, then we can, then we can foment something together that becomes, you know, just like the United States was an experiment. It becomes the Tara Libre experiment. Yeah.

Yeah. It's, it's a, it's a something that can be the most liberating thing possible. And it's so fascinating to me to think how something so liberating can only come from something so confining. Like the current system, like if I look at my life, like, there's a lot of things I love about it. But the system around me has become so constrictive. I got to work 18 hours a day to keep my head above water. And, you know, and it just seems like the harder you work, the more that gets taken from you. But it's only from this type of pressure can something new be born. And it's, it's just a weird thing to think about, like, and I do sometimes. It makes my

mind spin like crazy and it gets out of control. Like, how can that be? So roll it back to all of our conversations. Yeah. Yeah. As above so below, right? Right. All of these things move in way forms. All of them are ebb and flows. All of them have peaks and troughs. All of these, processes, all these metaphors we speak about, all the, all of the analogies. They're all a similar process, right? It's as above so below. As we see. these processes come in the play, we see end results. We see the ebb and the flow of the river as it transgresses over the, that's not the word.

Traverses. Traverses. Thank you. You know, we see, we see the, the, the ebb and the flow in society, in all of the, you know, even the trends that we see in society. We see this dichotomy, always at play. This is just an extrapolation of that dichotomy. It's just, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's the same principles being played out just in different scales, in different times, in different regions.

And, you know, we're, we're in that state of transition. And I think, you know, much to, you know, the book we were quoting before, the average is 250 years for, for an empire. We're, you know, 250 years, folks. you know, we're four years away. Here we are. You know, it's, you know, and, you know, it's an ebid and flow. It's an evident flow. You look at, you know, even things on a grander scale, like the Sahara, for instance.

It's a desert now, but 5,000 years ago, it was a lush paradise. You know, the climate on this planet's an avon of flow. You know, and, yes, there are certain ways where you can impact ebbs and flows, but by and large, if you get into one of those too soon, or too late, it's going to be detrimental, kind of like trading on the stock market. If you're buying at the top and selling at the bottom, probably not going to stick around too long, right? But if you can manage to see that ebb and flow and you're buying at the bottom and selling at the top, you're raking in all the profits that you need to continue to expand that enterprise.

I get scared there because, man, being really early looks a lot like being really wrong. You know what I mean? And I have been really early a lot of times and just left. Yeah, in often cases it is too. Just because you're early doesn't mean you're right. It's true, man. It's true. You know, sometimes early is right, but there's a lot of times it's not.

How many, you know, how many Myspaces were there before MySpace? Yeah. You know, I remember GeoCities was essentially MySpace before in Tripod and all these things. They were all those social media companies before. they were social media companies, but they were just too early. They just didn't have the right technology, the right adoption,

but all of a sudden, a Micep rolls around, and they're doing pretty good. Then you have a Facebook rolls around. It's the exact same damn thing. Just happened to be a little bit later in the cycle, and all of a sudden, Facebook wins the game.

So it's not always the early wins it either. Just because you got it at the trough, doesn't mean you're going to get it at the height. You know, so there's, There's interesting dichotomy to pull away from all of the, you know, interactions and interplay between society and corporations and, you know,

culture and constructs and how we, how we interact with all of this and the interplay between all of those. But there seems to be a resounding, overarching kind of premise. And it is as above so below. We can observe these processes play out at smaller levels and then extract our perspective and, look out and say, oh, it's playing out on this level. It's just, you know, a different scale of

things. And so, you know, us having this conversation, for instance, is us going up that height of the communication flow, right? You know, if we were wanted to have this conversation 20 years ago, it was impossible. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, we could do it on the phone, but we couldn't have it like this, broadcast it to numerous people, have interaction, answer questions. We couldn't do all of that. But now we can. And at the fraction of a cost of what it would cost us to try and envision it 20 years ago, it would be millions of dollars to try to pull us up 20 years ago.

And now it's, you know, free if we did it the right way or a couple bucks a month, right? Right. Yeah. Yeah, it makes me think of the old maxim, the most powerful force in the world is, an idea whose time has come. And you pointed out. Like, everyone's had these ideas. In fact, the idea is all, even right now, the winning idea is all around us.

And people are doing it. And it's not necessarily who gets there first. It's, it's, I don't think there's another, I guess you could say where opportunity meets preparation, but I'm not even sure if that's the right that says it all. I mean, there's something called luck or chemistry or something. There's factors that we may not thoroughly understand that create that secret ingredient. I would agree. I think there's a multitude of factors that go into it.

You know, and not the least of which is timing. Yeah. Yeah. Timing's everything. Can be. Yeah. And, you know, it's one of those things for, like I've been working on this Tara Libre project idea for 15 years.

When I first came up with it 15 years ago, I was all gone, oh, I made T-shirts, I had people donating, I was going to have festivals, I was going to do all the shit, right? And then the reality of that situation came and knocked me in the face and said, hey, it's not the right time. People, you know, I'm spending all my time trying to sell somebody on why their system is broken as opposed to highlighting while my system works better. And so I realized that, you know, it's not going to be the time until people realize, that their system is broken and then they're looking for the solution that's better. And that goes to, you know, that's more than the terror labor process. I've extends to my entrepreneurial efforts. And, you know, I think most, you know, business ideas if we were to extrapolate to that as well.

I think there's, you know, there's a time when the pet rock sold a million pet rock. Yeah. You're not selling a pet rock today. It's not going to happen. There's too much, you know, stuff that has LED in it that sells for five bucks from China. you know so i think the time of the pet rock was perfect the guy who decided who was probably i don't know the story of it but i would imagine he was you know like a bit of a gap a bit of a ha ha look at this i'm going to list this in a magazine right let's see how many people buy a rock

from me all of a sudden the dude's a millionaire well okay but you know so sometimes that timing is luck right you know sometimes you know timing does have components of other ass of society. But so I think that recipe, while interesting, I bet you it's probably different over time. I think there's different weights to the ingredient, I would say. Yeah. It's a great point. I think that guy lived in Baja, California.

And I think a lot of people ended up wanting to kill him for selling that rocks. I think I read that. I could be misremembering that. But I, I, my daughter, we, uh, we do a lot of. crafting and stuff. Well, she did a lot of crafting. And so we were at like Home Depot or something. It's like, I want to get these rocks. And they were like the river rocks. You know what I mean? What do you do with them?

She's like, I'm going to paint faces on them. I'm like, all right. Let's get them. Yeah, yeah, that would have been done. So on the way home, I started telling her, I was like, I'm like, you know, there was a guy that created the pet rock. She's like a pet rock. Who is a pet rock? And so we looked it up. But I think I remember reading stories about that.

He became incredibly famous with his packaging, you know, and then. but I think that there were people that got so upset with him that they wanted to kill him. I should probably revisit that, but I could see it. You know, it wouldn't surprise me. Like, imagine some dude who, you know, just went belly up in a business who, you know, had, it was massively complex, had tons of working parts, took so much to get it to where it was, and he still didn't make it, and this dude comes out and puts, sells rough. I could imagine, I could imagine some resentment being born, you know?

It's kind of one of those things. Yeah, there's some force of nature that's just slapping it to me. Like, watch this! They got to get some rocks! And I guess, you know, I could honestly say whatever's younger and wanted to be an inventor and want to be, you know, respected for those types of things. I would get jealous and envious that people who came out with similar ideas. In fact, I remember the first one, this was way back in the day.

I was in second grade. and I had the bright idea no first grade I was in first grade to pop open the back of an Elmer's marker and take that marker thing and put it in my glue and make colored glue and I shit you not it wasn't seven months after that that Elmer's came out

with color glue as a product and I felt so cheated I felt so cheated as a kid I was like oh my goodness they stole my eyes idea. But I was making color glue in first grade for everybody with markers. You know, it was like, that's back when those markers came out of that thing, man. That was a long time ago. Right. Yeah, it was a long time ago. Yeah.

I remember him, man. I remember him. Man, it's so, you know, and that just makes me think, like, it gets back to this concept that the information and the ideas are there for everybody to harness or see or use or borrow. And it's just, it's so odd how we feel the need to constrain, to wrap chains around those ideas. Like, this is just mine now. Only I can have this.

And how profitable that can be and create the illusion or maybe even the, it can definitely make your life easier if you can control an idea. No one else can. That's kind of a weird thing to think about. It is. It's a really weird thing,

especially when like, you know, there is certainly something to be said about once an idea is alive in the world. Yeah. You know, other people pick up on it, perceive it, or have similar ideas, something like that. You know, I mean, look at how many times

gunpowder was invented. You know, and it's really interesting to me is the ancient Greeks understood this to a different degree. You know, the whole definition of the term discover is to uncover hidden knowledge.

right so if you think about it from that perspective you go huh if all we're doing is just uncovering hidden knowledge we're not creating anything then who has ownership to it because if i'm just uncovering something i didn't create it i just happen to be in the right place at the right time however the dichotomy that we have today in the world is if i came up the idea it's mine you must pay me for it yeah but if it's not mine if I just came across it. Yeah, I might have some possession to it at some level, but it's not

mine. And I think there's a very interesting dichotomy at a just an internal level that develops when you have that type of perception. You know, it's kind of a similar idea of, you know, we have this patent office thing yet the only reason that anybody could ever come up with an idea

that would be patentable is because they stood on the shoulders of all these giants in the past. Yeah. They're not paid for it, but yet you're reaping all the rewards and then it even gets more egregious when you have shit like Disney who pushes out these things for like 75 years and all this stuff

where they're just, you know, how much money does Disney have? Yeah. It's like and they didn't invent cartoon. They didn't invent anything. They didn't invent mice. They didn't invent

they just, they just uncovered the idea that I could put together, you know, this and people enjoyed it. They didn't do anything novels. They didn't bring anything that revolutionized the world, and yet they're able to profit off it almost in perpetuity the way that they play this game. You know, where do we draw lines as a society on saying that, you know, is that an acceptable behavior? year. Well, you know, this gets us back to the point of, you know, well, who's going to change the

patent office at this point? You know, these systems are so ingrained that, you know, you can't, you can't, even if you were running for president and say, I'm getting rid of the patent office, everybody's going to spend all the money that has patents to make sure that you're not, you don't become president because that's how they make their money. So, you know, there's, we're stuck in a lot of these institutionalized citizens. that we've incorporated into our greater system. And I think, you know, it's one of those things. Again, it has to be to where people realize that this is the case

before we can actually create some sort of parallel economy, parallel system that allows us to take the highlights, the good stuff of what we've learned, put it into the new experiment, and get rid of the parts that hold us back and drown us. Yeah. Yeah. What in a parallel system are like if you could reinvent the idea of the patent now, would that would that would should we need to reimagine what a patent is or a time frame on that or do we need to reimagine ownership and especially ownership of ideas? That's a big question. Yeah. And, you know, I think I think the simple answer to that question is yes, we do need to reimagine that.

I don't think it's something that's wholly different than what exists today. But I think that there needs to be different processes to evaluate, you know, what gets part of, what gets patented, you know, why a patent would remain a patent. Like, for instance, I could see something where if, you know, I created a, you know, like, say, my book. okay and somebody were to go out and you know print every single word and just change the title right you know that's an egregious misrepresentation of of of you know my effort so there should be some recourse there uh at the same time should i have the ability to say that if you took a paragraph from my book and extrapolated it into your own book that i should be able to sue you for you know in infringement on that paragraph.

I think those things need to, you know, so again, this comes out of defining our terms. You know, what as a society, what we'll call it a parallel system? What in our parallel system do we define that, and I would say is foundational for society, and then what do we define as something that, you know, creates personal opportunities slash personal wealth. And, you know, there needs to be a conversation about what, and it's going to be a case-by-case basis. You know, it can't just be a blink at all saying, you know, everything media is going to fall into personal wealth and everything, you know, in industry is going to fall into, you know, a benefit for society. Because that's just not going to be the case all the time.

at the same time, I think if you did this the right way, if you created the right parallel economy, where instead of, you know, individuals really rising to these, you know, Elon Musk Heights, and the focus of the business, the parallel system itself was to the focus on individual wealth and enabling individual wealth at every step of the way, I think you have a, different dichotomy of what it ends up is, you know, what's mine, how do I benefit from it? If the whole system is set up for me to just benefit at an individual level, that I don't need to go expand my personal wealth. Right.

Especially if that, and then, you know, this comes into the idea of like things like NFTs, too, and stuff like this and incorporating modern technology into a system like this where you can say that, yeah, even if I do have this book, no absolutes, now I have an NFT of it that, you know, and we can work it out that every time the book gets shipped or bought, for instance, I get a portion of the royalty. So is that a fair arrangement? Sure. You know, so there's different arrangements that we can make with the technology that we have that allow the individual to be, to be heightened over the, you know, the corporate entity or, you know, or the nation entity or have your, what have you. But I think once we focus on the individual, once we enable the individual,

once you give the individual all of the ability and none of the roadblock, the, you know, I think then you can have a real conversation about where is the actual value in a system like that. How is that value derived? Who should benefit from that value? uh, et cetera. Yeah, it's so weird to think that corporations have spent so much time trying to get personhood. And yet here we are as individuals.

Like, why can't I, I think that that's really brilliant to have the individual rise above the corporate structure. Like in, in some ways, it's, it's,

it's just a meshing like, okay, yeah, now I'm going to get corporate personhood. Now I'm going to be a corporation as an individual, you know, And I guess for some sort of, you know, I don't thoroughly understand all the laws. Let me just put that up front.

And I can understand why a corporation would want to have the right as a person, but have the protections to not lose everything. But why can't maybe there's some sort of way for a person to, I don't know, I have to think about it more. Well, so that's kind of the idea of the Terry Lieber project. Because usually, you know, if you were to look, if you were just imagine a corporation, it looks like a pyramid. Right. And all the people at the top and it goes down like this. But if you look at like the Tara Libre project, the idea would be a network.

And so it's all network together, but then the nodes on the end of the networks, the individuals, that's where you would have the growth. And now if you think about this from, you know, just like a like a biology perspective and thing in the way that we see nature grow, you know, this is, this is fundamental to how, how nature behaves. And so to not try to mimic it and how we, we formulate our communities and society, you know, nature's been doing it a little bit longer than us. We should probably take the hint.

And I think when we do this, I think you will actually see that there will be greater wealth generated across the board. Simply because you have, you know, if you have one point that's making all the wealth first a hundred nodes that are all growing and expanding the hundred nodes as long as they're all networked properly are going to form this massive network faster and more robustly than you would at just one point trying

to disseminate down layer by layer yeah yeah from a just a purely like physics and biology perspective. You know, I'm really a fan of mimicking nature and the systems that I design. And I don't think that there's any drawback that I've seen when we do mimic nature's systems, those are the systems that we hold to be kind of our most dear in society, really. Yeah, I think that you could argue that all of our language is pointing towards that. When we look at a crisis, when we look at a transformation, when you look at a transformation, when you look at a system changing, awakening, like we becoming, and it's crazy as some of the nonsense about climate change is, you know, it is making us more aware of the environment in which

we live and opening our eyes to the system itself. And I think sometimes even in the worst ideas, there are salient points that are well worthwhile to look at it. Well, there's a reason that people harp on those ideas. And usually they are derived from some salient point. Yes. However, butchered it may be at the end of the argument, right? Or how about it was a great idea and someone just says, okay, and it gets just right back to where we were.

The idea of people being to loving the environment and wanting to rally around that is phenomenal. Yeah, of course everyone loves the environment. We should rally around that. But then someone just went, okay, I'm taking that idea and I'm making them out. You know, and then we're going to. Oh, and I'm going to make some money off of it, by the way. Yeah. And now you guys are going to die unless you do what I say because it's my idea now.

And I'm in charge of it. Like, do you get out of here, man. But anyways, Benjamin, I feel like the conversation is just becoming more rewarding. And I would want to start going down this direction right here, but I got to go to work, man. I know, man. It just started getting better and better and better. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, what about this? And so, yeah, maybe, um,

I think maybe Sunday I'm going to try to rally up some other people. Maybe we're going to have an even more dynamic conversation about what we're talking about now and get some other points of view that other nodes on the point. And I think it would help, man. Absolutely. I'll reach out to you here after this and get it all scheduled. But thank you so much for today. Everybody can see you on the website.

Tell everybody again where they can find you and what you got coming up. And then we'll go from there. Yeah, Benjamin C.George.com is the website for all the links and information of everything. Stay tuned for no absolute podcast proper coming probably towards the end of September, with George is my first guest. And yeah, everybody have a wonderful rest of your week. All right, everybody. Thank you for spending time with us today.

And thank you, John, for making some comments. And everybody else, I hope that you find this as rewarding as we do. And send us your ideas and thoughts. we'll address some more here and let us know if you want to join the podcast that's all we got for today ladies and gentlemen hello