TrueLife - Eight Arms, No Cage: Perry "Dr. Octopus" Knoppert and the Architecture of Nonlinear Thought

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

Support the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USOne on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingThe structure was always the cage.Somewhere between the eight radiating arms of an octopus and the single load-bearing column of a linear thought, there is a third thing — a way of moving through ideas that has no center, no hierarchy, no beginning that obligates an end. Perry Knoppert calls it the Octopus Movement. He has also been called, by people who love him and by people who feared him, Dr. Octopus.This is not a conversation about an animal. It is a conversation about the skeleton we build inside our own skulls without ever being asked if we wanted one — the linear chain of cause, sequence, and conclusion that we mistake for reality itself, and what happens to a mind that never fully accepted the architecture.George Monty sits down with Perry to take the load-bearing wall out of thinking. What's left when a thought doesn't have to lead anywhere? What is a connection that happens without thinking — the thing Perry calls nonlinear thinking, the space between thoughts, one awareness distributed across many arms instead of one command issued from a single head? Is that dangerous, or is the real danger the tidy hallway of linear cognition we've all agreed to walk down single-file?Threaded through: growing up gifted and unlicensed for a school system built for hallways, not oceans. The unwritten social architecture that autistic minds are handed blueprints for but never taught to read. Why "it's not working" might be the most linear sentence in the language. Love without thought. Focus as a fault line, not a spotlight. And the moment Perry names the thing he's building — not an organization, not a brand, an uncaged way of connecting minds — the Octopus Movement.This episode is TrueLife's own structure put under the same pressure it studies: no single spine holding the conversation up. Rupture as method, not metaphor.In this episode:What nonlinear thinking actually is — and why Perry argues linear thinking is the more dangerous of the twoThe Octopus Movement: connecting people "without thinking"One awareness vs. one mindAutism, giftedness, and the unwritten rules nobody hands you a copy ofWhy "it's not working" is a trap built out of languageLove, focus, and attention as structural — not emotional — phenomenaGuest: Perry "Dr. Octopus" Knoppert — founder of the Octopus Movement Learn more / connect: octopusmovement.orgTrueLife is hosted by George Monty. The structure was always the cage. One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Legal Disclaimer / Release of Liability for Podcast:This  content  is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this transmission constitutes legal, financial, or professional advice. I am not your lawyer, financial advisor, or telling you what to do.This podcast documents historical events, analyzes publicly available information, and explores hypothetical scenarios. Any actions discussed are presented as educational examples of how systems work—not as instructions or recommendations.You are solely responsible for your own decisions and actions. Any application of information presented here is at your own risk. I assume no liability for consequences of actions you choose to take.By continuing to listen, you acknowledge that this content is educational commentary, that you’re responsible for researching applicable laws in your jurisdiction, and that you’ll consult appropriate professionals before taking any action that could affect your legal, financial, or personal situation.

Turn on. Take the power back. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. Tonight I am joined by the one and only Perry Knopert, founder of the Octopus Movement, a global experiment in connecting human minds across disciplines, cultures, questions, and perspectives. Perry's premise is deceptively simple, that our greatest intelligence may not live inside any one of us, but in the invisible web between us. Perry, welcome back to the True Life podcast. How are you, my friend?

Number three. This is the third time, right? Yeah, yeah. I love being back here, George. Thank you so much for inviting me. I think you're awesome. We just talked about it offline when nobody could hear this. I said, you know, how many episodes are there?

This is number 889. George said, maybe, maybe not. Maybe it's 887 or 893. Who fucking cares? Sorry, I don't use that word. That is amazing. How many people think about starting a podcast? Do three, four, five or ten episodes and then that's it.

And let's go to something else, which is fine. I'm totally on. Yeah, it's perfect. How cool is it to make this number of podcasts interviewing so many people? Really cool. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. It's been a journey. I like I've learned so much. I feel like I'm an eternal student. And I mean, this podcast is what brought me to you. And so many incredible thought leaders and individuals and smugglers and academics and troublemakers and just so many amazing people that I never would have got to reach unless I followed this, this passion and this dream that I had and just kept it going. We were talking about people giving up when we first started. Like, why do you think that is? Why do you think people give up? Why do you think people give up? instead of continuing to pursue something they're passionate about. Oh, that's a good one. Why do people give up?

Because they are in a hypnosis of thought. They want to go somewhere and they think about going there in a certain route, in a way of going there. It's a thought pattern. That's the reality. So I want to go there. want to be famous on whatever platform because I've made so many podcasts. And then they're in kind of a hypnosis.

How do you say that? And you don't see anything else anymore. And then you snap out of it and you see you're not there. And then, oh, it's not working. I think the thought it's not working is a weird thought. Why do we say to ourselves it's not working? What do you mean it's not working? You don't know if it's not working, right?

But we say that pretty fast to ourselves. And we see the world around us and we see all the stories of people that are successful, whatever the bleep that means. And they always show off like it was so simple. You know, I was a calling. It was so easy. Of course it's not easy. And then we say it's not working.

It's a weird thought. It's really weird. Yeah. Maybe it's also the idea of, of, you know, taking the decision when you think it's not working, not to waste any energy on something that's not working, but you don't know if it's not working. One thing I found out of doing this for five years now is that you have no clue what is happening. You know, sometimes people come into the octopus movement or reach out to me and I have all these stories and I'm thinking, who are you? Where are you coming? from, you know? And it appeared then that they have been lurking for three years. And they know everything about the movement and everything that I'm doing. And I've never, ever seen them. I've never seen a like. I've never seen a comment. I've never seen them in any Zoom rooms. They're there. You have no idea what's really happening. So don't give up too easily.

Have you ever had that thought? Have you ever thought about giving up to an octopus movement? Never once. Never once. Never once. No. I've had, no, I've never, this is weird because I know that feeling

of giving all like, shit, you know, this is really, I'm not doing this. But, and I'm not saying because it's so easy,

it's not, I'm hurting cats. You know, we have almost 12,000 nonlinear thinkers in the movement. Okay, what is a nonlinear thinker?

Is a human being? everybody's a non-linear thinker, but a lot of neurodiverse people are in the octopus movement, not because we're a neurodiverse organization or movement, but there are a lot of non-linear thinkers, people that are slightly different, that are in the space of neurodiversity. And organizing a group of people like that is an interesting challenge.

I understand why the corporate world likes neurotypical people. I understand that. I understand the box. I understand the structure. I understand the system. I understand it now better than ever. But I've never thought I'm going to stop at this because it's,

it's, I'm enjoying this so much and I think I'm doing this for myself, basically. I've created a space that I feel comfortable in. So why would I stop doing something that I feel comfortable? and because I'm enjoying this. Other people are enjoying it as well. So I can never stop this.

This will always be there. And what do I think when it's difficult? I sometimes look at NPCs. I'm thinking, why? How is this possible? So I mean, NPCs, non-playable characters, you know, they just do their thing. They get paid well.

everything is normal, whatever normal is. And I look at them and I'm like, but, but I'm doing so many things and I'm changing things and I'm moving things and I'm creating results. And it's also powerful and beautiful and change people's lives sometimes even and kids' lives. And why? Why? You know, I have that thoughts from time to time. And I'm thinking it's weird.

but this chaotic space needs to be there in order to create really something. Otherwise, it would just be a development, and that's not what I want. Yeah. As well said, it's interesting. Some people, it seems to me that some people go through their lives just chasing this next big thing

that never arrives. You know, when I turn this age, I'll get a car. When I turn this age, I'll get married. When I turn this age, I'll buy a house. When I turn, you know, and those things, they might show up, but there's always something else you're chasing. It seems like you're not really living. You're living on like the default mode network.

I just met this wonderful human being. And he said, I'm on a universal basic income, Perry. What he meant was he lives in Belgium and he gets a, how do you say that, he gets paid by the government. He's on welfare. And he sees that as the universal basic income. And he's there because he wants to take care of his wife. He used to be an entrepreneur, very successful.

And he does a lot of successful things. But he just wants to focus on his wife and not being worried about his business and other things. So he disconnected completely and said, you know, I need help. And that's it. And he said to me, is it Perry, this is the best space I've been for a long time. I don't need any money. I don't need anything. I can do what I want to do. And that's not buying a Porsche, but it's taken care of his wife, right? And don't have to worry about the next day. And he's growing his vegetables in his garden and taking care of his wife and doing things for his seven kids and whatnot. Interesting. Doesn't always need to be what you're saying as well, like changing that, chasing that big thing in your life. And I need to get a lot. I need to get to. It doesn't always need to be what you're saying as well, like changing that, chasing that big thing in your life. at these results. I think we're moving away from that anyway, in a way. You think so? As like a society, as like a world, we're moving away from that?

Maybe not. What the hell do I know? You know, I say this and like, what am I talking about? I do think the biggest change is that it's not about knowledge anymore. So in our days, George, you know, it was all about knowledge. You would go to university, get a good degree, do an MBA, whatever, and you know things. And the more you know, the more successful you can become and you get a better job, you get paid better, people listen to you because you know so many things. That's not the case anymore. And we're in the middle of that.

It's not what we know. I think it's what we see is the most important thing now. Because what we know, knowing is AI. AI took care of that. AI is the most beautiful construction of humanity in linear thinking. That's knowledge. That's taken care of. So now we're going back to seeing things with the connecting.

I think that's, that is the big change in the world. And I think that also changes in what the focus is. The focus used to be, the more that I know, the more intelligence that I are, the better job that I get, the big car that I drive, better the holidays are, what more beautiful my wife is, whatever. That's not it anymore. I don't think it feels wrong that success is going to be about seeing things and wisdom. And there is a different connection there

in how we illustrate success, I think. Because knowing things and success with showing off how big your house is, that makes sense, right? Oh, he knows a lot. Look where he lives. Yeah. For me, it feels that it's going to be different in that way. You know, your success is going to be not based on what you know,

but in what you see and how do you and how does that result? I don't think it's going to be a result in a bigger house. Could be, but I don't think that's, if that's what you see, then that's not what we're looking for. Yeah, at least it seems like in Western culture, we've gone down this road of this person must know a lot because they have lots of money. But I agree.

I don't think that that's necessarily, you know, the result of being. really smart, it might be the result of being very tenacious. It might be the result of being very dedicated. I don't know that those two things are a derivative of each other, intelligence and money. I think, good. Yeah, I think when in the old days,

let's pretend that a year ago is the old days, in the old days, I think knowledge was always fragmented. And I think in the Western world, There's so much focus on the fragmentation and becoming a specialist in that fragmentation. And that's going to shift. And when you look at India, you know, why is it that all these wise people are coming from India and why is it all these gurus are from India? They're thinking together.

They're not fragmented. They're not in their little spaces. They look at the whole picture. And maybe that's the big shift that is coming up, thanks to AI, where AI is the fragmented tool of knowledge, where we can move towards a hole again and see the bigger picture.

It would be nice. And if I'm not mistaken, I can mistake and I can see that. You can already see with CEOs saying, you know, the future, lies with the people that think differently. And how do you think differently? It's not based on knowledge.

It's based on what you're able to see. Different thinking is not linked to knowledge. Because then it's not different, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's well said. You know, I wanted to ask you, Perry, can you remember a conversation

where you became smarter simply because of who was in the room. Yeah. Okay, let's hear it. In the movement, there are so many incredible intelligent people. Sometimes a bit scary even.

Totally. There are a few individuals that if they start talking, everybody's like, I don't know. So when I think, oh, I do think that I understand what he's talking about.

about. I feel a little bit more smart. It's the conversations are so different. The conversations are from a different level without, this is the big thing, without trying to be intellectual. Because I've seen communities where it's all about thinking and let's think together in creating wonderful solutions. And it's one big ego show where there's, There's a lot of masturbation and it's, that's not what I'm talking about. It's, I can't explain. And the fact that I can't explain for me is the proof that it's, that is for real. And I meet, I think, six, seven people a day still.

I do that already for five years. I've downloaded my Zoom records one day to see the results. It's like, whoa. Those are a lot of conversations. And I notice that every time I'm meeting someone, I learn something. Always. And as soon as I learn something, I feel better. I feel more wise.

I feel more intelligent. And it's just connecting the dots that I didn't see before. You know, everything that I'm saying right now is not because of me. It's because I've met other people and I've been listening to them and they inspired me and they're thinking with me and new connections are being made.

You know, I don't know what I'm doing and that's fine. But I'm learning from everyone that I meet every day. And there's, in every conversation that I have, I have learned some always. And I take notes of every conversation. These are my favorite little black books. Yeah.

and every conversation, everything is in here as a stack of books with all the conversations and what do I write down? Just a sentence, right? This morning someone said judgment can only be linear.

I write that down quickly. I didn't create it. Someone said that. And I'm like, oh, I can use that. That's interesting, right? I think about it. And I think about it. And I'm like, yeah, judgment is always linear.

So, yeah. Does it answer your question? Yeah, I think so. It's, you know, another question that comes to mind is this idea of hierarchy. You know, when we look at the world in which we were born in, be it a corporation or a gathering or even a meeting sometimes, there's always, especially in the corporate world, like there's this idea of hierarchy, how things are done.

And maybe that's part of the human condition. But it seems with like the octopus movement, it's more decentralized. I'm curious, though, Perry. Can it really be decentralized? Like, how do you, you mentioned earlier, it's like hurting cats. How do we move forward in a world that's successful and everybody has an opportunity to participate in a way without a real hierarchy? Is that possible? Yeah.

I'm the living proof of that, or the octopus movement is the living proof of that. First of all, it's possible because I do believe that I have no clue what I'm doing. That's step number one. That's really helpful, right? So it opens up all the possibilities. As soon as I start thinking, I know what I'm doing and this is how we should do it, it limits.

So I mean that seriously, that I don't know what I'm doing. Then when you open up the, I always talk about the laws of thought. We're so conditioned. So we're so conditioned that there needs to be you know, all these levels and it needs to be leadership.

We think that that's the way to go because we don't have many other examples. And then we look at it from a scientific perspective. And then when science says, this is how it works, then we all say, that's a fact. And that's really the case. Is it really?

Is it really? I don't think so. We have 12,000 people now. We don't have any rules, which I'm very proud of. We don't have any expectations, which makes it sometimes difficult for people. The standard thinking is that they need to be supported in their next steps because that's what happens everywhere.

So there's control. And they come into the octopus movement and there's this huge ocean of weird octopies swimming there, and then go and have a swim, you know, and find out what you want to find out. Everything is possible, but you need to do something. I'm not organizing because then it becomes, I don't say that word because I can't get it out of my mouth,

because I'm Dutch. This is a very difficult word. If there's a control center, then it doesn't work that way. I'm proud of my human mycelium that we've created together. Nobody can be in control in the human mycelium. There's this beautiful book finding the mother tree, which is about the mother tree in the forest that controls the human mycelium.

I haven't finished the book yet. It's fascinating and boring at the same time. sometimes there needs to be a little bit of control. Sometimes, indeed, it's useful when someone says, we're not doing this. No way. We're not going this direction. That's not a good thing.

But 95% is, it happens as it happens. And we have a group of founding members. And if I look at the 176 founding members, then they all have a different story. they all have a different reason to be a founding member. They all have a different energy. They all have a different connection to the octopus movement. It's all different.

And for some odd reason, it all works together. And I think it works together because there's no head office. And this works. Otherwise, I would have been dead already. And I've seen other communities, especially in the space of neurodiversity, who passed away a little while ago, a few of them. Sometimes communities come to me and say, can you help us?

Because apparently you're doing something right. We need money. Otherwise, we can't survive. It's always the same story. We need money. We need money. And our director has left. And there's chaos in the management team.

It's always the same thing, right? It's always the same thing. And otherwise we don't survive. I said, well, I think you're already dead. But, you know, it's already gone. Maybe you should accept that. Maybe you should just let it go. I think within the octopus movement, this is how it works.

We just let it happen. Yeah, I like that. It's so funny to me to think of a neurodivergent community or a non-linear group. that has like a director of telling people what to do. It's like an oxymoron. It's like, okay, here's all you independent thinkers. Let me tell you exactly what you're going to do.

But I will tell you a secret. These independent thinkers love that. Humanity loves that. That's how we're conditioned. Please tell me what to do. Yeah. The fear of freedom, Enrich Fromm, very interesting book to read.

People are afraid of their freedom. Yeah. They want it. True. It's true in a lot of aspects. I want to, what else do I got over here? I got some, like I was telling you earlier, I got some, I got a few more that I want to, I want to throw your way, but then I want to get into some challenging ones here. Let me, let me, let me knock this one off you first, though.

Have you ever had an idea emerge in a conversation that genuinely surprised you? Something neither of you seemed to bring into the room. Like, say you're at an octopus meeting and all of a sudden, there's just this idea. that emerges. Maybe you weren't even talking about it. I know what happens to us as nonlinear thinkers and probably most people out there,

but maybe you can tell me a story about that? So in this book, I have a system, okay? Various systems. Nice. And I draw a little light bulb like this,

and I write down what happens. So I'm in a meeting and an idea pops up with me or someone else. I write it down immediately so I can let it go. because if I hold on to it and we're in a meeting and something, then I can't let go and I go into that rabbit hole,

then fuck the whole meeting, I'm gone, right? So I need to write it down and it's out. It's in my book. And sometimes on a rainy Sunday, now, I don't know, that sounds nice, right? I take my book and I go to all these light bulbs. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's a stupid idea. Like I wrote this down.

Let's create a dictionary of unwritten rules. How cool would that be? That would be amazing. In the space of autism, the biggest bitch of all is the unwritten rule. Think about it. An unwritten rule is ridiculous. And if you're missing the ability to connect to the social, cue to read that

and you're being punished because you're not reading the unwritten rules, then life is horrible. So this came out of something and I wrote down Lightbulb, the dictionary of unwritten rules. And this is happening non-stop.

And then the fun thing that, and the fun space that I'm at is if I want to do that, if I want to create the diction, of unwritten rules, which is actually a very good idea when I say this. I should do this, right? You should. Then I mentioned that in the octopus movement and say, guys, what about the dictionary

of unwritten rules? And then I see what happens if there are any fruit bodies popping up in the human mycelium. It doesn't mean it will be there. No way. I have created so many different fruit bodies, but they have died. because there's not enough air, there's not enough water, it's not the right timing.

I don't care, you know. The fact that I wrote this down for me is already enough. You know, this is already fun. And how it works for me is when I see, I write this down, so it's there somewhere, and I never forget about it, and it's already in the book.

But then I meet someone, and that person is saying, yeah, I love writing dictionaries. I don't know. I'm like, Wait, I have something for you, right? And then it comes together and we create it. It's so much fun.

So yes, this happens a lot. And we also have even an event for bad ideas. And so we start with a very bad idea. And then everybody has to respond with yes and. And not yes, but it's illegal. You cannot say anything negative and you cannot say but it's only yes yes and

so it was this octopus lady of 85 years old and said you know if you don't have a good story anymore at the age of 85 then just kill yourself you know get remove yourself out of the system you're a complete waste of energy and everything and you know that's a bad idea

And then the group has to respond to that with yes and. Can you imagine how much fun that is? That sounds amazing. And things are created from that. And I write down things and, you know, when someone is sitting in the room listening to this and thinking, wait a second, that's interesting and not saying anything. And then the meeting is over.

And that person then connects with someone else who was also in the room. And it becomes something. And I've had so many times already that two or three people together created something based on something that happened in the meeting. And I'm like, where is this coming from? What are you doing, George? I had to cheat. My computer was about to shut down right there. Sorry about that.

There we go. I forgot to plug in my computer and it's like, I'm going to die. Episode 889 and he forgot to plug in his computer. I love it. So then sometimes, George, then, you know, and then someone created something. And I'm like, you created a new product. And I both know you. You're both Octopi.

And then I reach out to them like, hey, that's fun. You guys are doing this together. I'm like, yeah, Perry, you remember that meeting, you know? Yes. I love that. It's like a spark. You know, it's like this one thought can lead to transformation in people's lives just from a conversation. And it makes me think that it's the relationship, this the real currency, whether you're in a meeting with an 85-year-old octopi or whether you're in Belgium or whether you're in New York or whether you're in Hawaii or California.

Like one conversation with a group of people can have a radical effect on people's lives. It's amazing to think about that. We do this now with kids as well. We finally have our kids think tank. So kids log into this platform where we ask questions and they make drawings based on the questions. And imagine a very simple question, draw an octopus and then we explain that an octopus

can take any shape or form of color, whatever they want. So any drawing, whatever the bleep you're drawing, could be an octopus, right? Yeah, yeah. So and then these kids start drawing octopye. And but we also ask more deep and difficult questions and these kids starts drawing things. What do you think makes your parents happy?

Make a drawing about that. And then we have kids from all over the world doing that at this platform. From Korea to Saudi Arabia, Netherlands, Japan, Canada, everywhere. and we're connecting these dots. So cool. It's interesting. I'm curious if when you look at those drawings, what makes your parents happy?

Are the kids from different parts of the world drawing the same thing or similar ideas? I don't know. We asked that question, and I haven't locked in yet on to see the first result. So this is a bad example because I don't see the drawings in front of me right now.

But I'm curious. I want to know. Yeah. Yeah. What does an eight-year-old or a nine-year-old or a seven-year-old, whatever, draws when we ask them what makes your parents happy? Maybe they draw a little heart. Yeah.

I would say it would be symbolic, symbolic of love or symbolic of, you know. Or just an ice cream. Or just an ice cream. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's true. Or steering wheel because dad loves driving his car. Whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. Could be so many things. And the beauty to ask this to kids is that they don't think about it. So what makes your parents happy? They start drawing, you know, and something cool comes out of it. And they're not, they don't think about the bigger picture and, you know, what does people? If we would ask this to ourselves, what makes us happy, George, so many thoughts come in, you know,

and we start, what does happy mean? Yeah. And all the conditioning. It's not about money because that's what we need to say. I can't say that. I can say that. No, it's not prostitution. You can say that either.

God, what is it? So many thoughts. But with these kids, like, oh, dad loves this, you know, and draws a can of Coke. Right. Yeah. It's interesting to see. I got some naysayers in here, Perry.

Let's deal with some of these questions about people. And first off, thank you to all the naysayers out there. For those listening, I put out some stuff in the Discord about questions, about the octopus movement, what you have to say. Here comes Marcus from San Francisco. Marcus is a systems engineer. He says, Perry, isn't collective intelligence just a poetic way of describing ordinary collaboration? What's actually new here?

If two engineers solve a problem together, why call that a new intelligence? rather than two intelligences cooperating. Yes, but? Yes, and? Yes, and. When two system engineers come together and they create innovation, they do that based on what they know

and use their skills and knowledge and wisdom and intelligence to improve something, to make it better. If you go to the art, I like to give the example to Mark Rothko. I don't know if the audience know Mark Rothko. If you're listening, Google Mark Rothko, and then you see a painting where you probably will say, oh, I've seen that before. That is creativity. That is not innovation.

He created his line of paintings that were completely different from everything else. The result is that now when you're in front of one of his paintings, your emotional trigger can happen. With many people, they start crying when they're in front of his painting and they don't know where it's coming from. There's an emotional trigger when you look at these paintings. He created that out of nothing. It's his creation.

It's not based on knowledge. and improving and improving. This has been in a creative process where there's an interesting little detail there. He was married and his wife left him. She divorced him because she was a painter as well and her paintings were sold for more money than his paintings and she didn't want to be with the loser.

So she divorced him because she was doing better with her paintings. Now, Mark Rothko is doing like $75, $100 million, if you can find one. How funny is that? So two system engineers working together with their knowledge and creating innovation, that's nothing new. That's absolutely true. That's nothing new. What we're doing with the octopus movement is connecting people together without thinking, which we call nonlinear thinking, and there is no thought.

and there is a connection that is totally unexpected and creates human intelligence. And that creates new things, new things to create new things to look at things, new relationships. And so many things are based on relationships. So we're not doing anything new is also so true and so linear. We're not doing anything new because we're just bringing people. together. We've been doing that as humanity. Always. This is what we do as humans. So I'm not saying we're doing anything new. I'm just saying that our introduction on how we connect with each other is slightly different because we focus on the people that are slightly different. And there are not a lot

of organizations that do that. And that's different from the octopus movement. That's all. I don't see this as innovation because then it's based on something that already exists. I see this as something new where we're exploring ourselves where this is going. And we don't know. So he's absolutely right. The system engineer.

Yeah. Thanks, Marcus. Jamal coming from Chicago. Jamal says, I've seen groups become dramatically dumber than the individuals inside them. Crowds panic. I know. I've seen it too, Jamal. You're not alone, my friend.

He says, why should we assume that connection produces intelligence rather than conformity? Oh, cool. Wow. That's a very good question. There's conformity when there is an entrance. What does that mean? Well, that means, you know, you're allowed to be in our community. if you're gray and wear glasses and you wear a headset

and you have a microphone from that brand, what is it? What is it? Sure. Sure. Sure. You know, I have a sure as well, but it became an octopus. So you're in the community of sure when you're wearing a headset

and you wear black glasses and you have a gray beard. That's conformity. That's, that is looking at things not as a whole. And that's why a community becomes dumb because it's individual. It's fragmented. You need to fit into this fragmentation and then you bring this fragmentation together

and it becomes stupid as hell. Duh. That makes sense. It's about the whole. It's about together, really together. We talk about diversity. Yeah. It's, it's, it's,

Language is awesome. I love language. So diversity, what does diversity mean? So when we talk about diversity, automatically there is no diversity. Otherwise, we wouldn't imagine diversity. Because when there is together, you never talk about diversity. When you bring in individuals, fragmented individuals and you put them together, then you talk about diversity.

But when you start as a whole, then there is no diversity. It's irrelevant, right? And I think if there's too much focus on that particular fragmented definition of being a part in a group, then the individual knowledge and the group's intelligence

then the group's intelligence becomes not very smart because it's based on these individuals that as a fragmented one human being is very intelligent but if we bring them all together and they're all in that same space then the bigger space is less intelligent right because it's just based on that one gray guys with beards and black glasses and sure microphones and headsets. George is very intelligent. I'm not stupid.

But when we bring 5,000 parries and George together, is it going to be an intelligent group of people? No. It's a very limited group of people. It's per definition more limited. than Perry and George by itself. Because it's all in the same fragmentation. Yeah. Good question.

I think it comes back to language. I think it comes back to language. We're always trying to define. And then maybe that takes it back to hierarchy. But in these big groups, when you get all these people together, you know, ultimately, it seems that there is a person defining what that word is and then everybody follows along. But the real intelligence comes from when we.

all look at that word and then give our different meanings to it. And then, you know what I mean? Like, we all have a different idea of what a different word is. Maybe that's why language is constantly being redefined. Like, what's the difference between diversity and inequality? Those are pretty much the same things. This is diverse, but, you know, I don't know how to square that. I guess that's an interesting concept to think about, but, yeah, I agree, Jamal.

It's an interesting concept. What else do we got? I got Diego from Mexico City. Maybe Jamal. Maybe Jamal has a very important point. Yeah, let's be. Let's go. Where, you know, there is this,

it's important to build communities. But the big question is, are we building the right communities? And when we listen to Jamal, then he is on to something that. And for me, that's why I don't call the Octopus Movement a community, because I have a difficulty with the word community, meaning belonging to something. is a community and I want to bring people together that don't belong.

It's not necessarily that you don't belong so you belong in the community. That's not what I mean, right? But when you open up the space for everything to be there and you have a true togetherness, that is a community.

But most communities that I see are based on a fact. I have the community of ADHDers or the community of neurodiverse people or the community of single dads or the community of people with a tattoo or the community of people who drive Harley Davidson. It's always the same.

You hardly see any communities that doesn't look at that, individual connection towards the other, which feels good, right? Yeah. So when I drive a Harley and I meet another Harley driver, I don't drive a Harley. I don't even have a motor license,

but I can imagine that, that I see another other Harley driver and I feel connected, which feels good, right? Or I do have ADHD, so if, really, and so if you meet someone else who has ADHD, it's fun because you understand each other. I'm a single dad. So if I meet another single dad,

we get along very well and get it. But is that the only reason to create a community or when we live in this area or whatever? I think the community is so much more intelligent if that's together, not based on anything. That's why we call this non-nian thinking, which is human intelligence.

So we're connected because we're humans. That's all. Yeah. It's true. I like it. Okay, other question with a no. Yeah, let's go. Another negative question. Diego comes from Mexico City.

He says human beings have always lived in networks, tribes, villages, religions, cities. I think we might have covered this, but he says, what's different about the network you're describing? I think that kind of harkens back to what you were just saying in that it's not just about one thing. What are your thoughts? It's, it's, it's, the thing is that it's not a network. It's an organic connection that is happening anyway. And it's not a network. It's not an entrance.

It's not a badge. It's not a membership. Of course there are memberships, of course. But it's very free. And I don't see that. I don't see that at all. I don't see any networks where it's completely free. Do whatever you want.

And that's why it is a network, but it's a different network. than our normal thinking of a network without trying to be a different kind of network. Does it make sense, George? It does to me. I see this with creativity. Sometimes you have creative people

that need to shout to the world that they're creative, right? They have weird classes, weird shoes, everything is weird, and I'm so creative. And I always get a little bit of an itch that I'm thinking, if you're so creative, why is there a lack of creativity in showing your creativity? Because you're so standardly creative. How does this work?

Right? Sorry, if you're walking around with pink hair and weird shoes, I love you. And it's fine. It doesn't mean that, you know, you're trying to be creative. But maybe this illustrates what I mean. That sometimes we're trying so. hard. And we do that with everything, right? If you're a rock climber, I bet you, being a rock climber, George, that you have a water bottle of a specific brand, you know, the white water bottle with

I, I bet you have one like these. No, not that one. Another one. You know, it's my coffee one. It's so interesting, right? We connect with that. And so is this any different than any other, any other network. Yeah. But I can't explain why. Yeah. We run up against that language boundary again.

It's exactly the same, only different. Yeah. I like that. It's exactly the same, but then slightly different. Who else do I got? Andre, Andre coming over here from Toronto.

He says, distributed systems have a fundamental problem, and that's synchronization. How does a network of millions of humans maintain coherence without becoming centralized? I don't understand his question at all. Explain this to me, George. I'm lost. I hear so many things.

I know. I'm thinking, what? I'm getting this. I don't understand this. I think you when I touched on this earlier when it comes down to hierarchy. I think that that's what he's saying. I don't know.

I have never built software. I don't thoroughly understand code. I've never written code. But what I get out of this is that he is talking about coherence and centralization, which would be a really linear thing to say. It's like, how can you distribute anything without a hierarchy? That's how I break that down. Yeah, okay, that's a good question. How can you distribute anything without hierarchy?

Well, go and have a walk in the forest. Yeah. You know, Tokyo, Tokyo used the my sense. to design the subway system there. If I live in a forest, if I look at my garden and, and I see how that is organized with all the trees and all the plants. And it works very well. And I think we, we from the start of the industrialization,

started to believe that with our system thinking, we can be in control. and we proved that that's the case, right? We've made a lot of progress thanks to that. But can you then just say that the only way to distribute whatever is through that architecture, then no. How is it possible that I can feel what you can feel, George, while I'm looking at my bloody laptop.

I'm looking at a computer screen. You know, we're not together. whatsoever. I can feel how you feel. I can feel you. Explain that, right? How does that work? So I think systems thinking is limited thinking. And just because we've had a little bit of limited success with systems thinking, like we don't even thoroughly understand intelligence. When I think about our conversations in the past today and the group chats that I've been in the octopus movement, And like, we know almost nothing in the world that we live in. And we've gotten by, we've done pretty well if you look at some of society's major milestones and science and engineering.

And those things are phenomenal. I'm not discounting them. But they're so limited. You're right. When you look to the forest, like, they're all interconnected communicating in ways that they don't even know. That we as humans have no idea. But the influence that I have had from people in this group, from yourself, the conversations that I've had, the ideas that have been spawned because of it, that's a radical form of

intelligence that we can't even explain in words. And it's happening all day. And the octopus movement is probably one of the only movements that I have found where that just, it happens to inspiration, through language, through someone just sitting there and scratching their head and then boom, the idea pops up. Like we don't know what intelligence is, but I think it comes from the relationship. with people, regardless if it's a spontaneous relationship, whether it's our friend from Mexico coming to meet you, that's the rock climber playing guitar in your living room, you know, but just those

chance encounters spawn ideas that maybe we're there all along that we needed a catalyst for, but that's the real intelligence that we're barely tapping into right now, that I think that the octopus movement is sort of spearheading in a way. So I don't know if that answer is Andre's question, but that's what I think of. Good question. Thank you, George, for explaining what Andre was saying. Yeah. I'm sure he'll reach out to me and let me know what else is going on.

Let us know, please. Maybe Andre is like, oh, look at these two bastards. They really don't understand. He's like, these dummies. You know, these dummies. Little fuckers. Yeah. Hopefully he'll share it with some of the software friends that he has.

Look at these guys over here. Yeah. Who else do I got over here? Okay, here's a cool one. Sam from Portland, he says, is there a danger that you're taking something that's philosophically beautiful and making it sound scientifically established? Okay, first of all, scientifically. What does it mean that this is scientifically established? Because in the world we live in, as soon as we say scientifically established, then it means that it's real.

That's true. Yeah. It's the making that claim for sure. So say his question again, because it's interesting. Isn't there a danger that you're taking something that's philosophically beautiful and making it sound scientifically established? So something is beautiful and it becomes scientifically established, meaning it's not beautiful anymore.

So something that is light becomes dark. And isn't that dangerous? First of all, thank you for seeing this as being beautiful. Yes. I think this is beautiful and this is beautiful and this means the connection between humans is beautiful. I think the answer is love. I think true love in the true life podcast,

true love, love means without thought. So, call me, write to me, debate with me, whoever is saying love is about thought I want to debate with. Because I think love is without thought. That's the whole purpose of love, right? When you love someone, there is no thought. When you fall in love with someone, there's definitely no thought. Everybody knows how it feels or how it felt when you were a teenager

and you saw that other teenager and out of the blue, you couldn't eat for a week and you couldn't think about anything else than that person. That is love and that's love not based on thought. Because then if love is based on thought, you can think about falling in love. And that's ridiculous. Because then I can think about falling in love with George.

I think George is doing something really beautiful. He's a good looking human being. Thank you. He's very kind. I really like George. So I have all these thoughts that are normally in place to fall in love. Yet I'm not falling in love with George. And it's not sexually.

You know, I can fall in love with a human being male or female. It doesn't matter. But it cannot be controlled. be controlled by thought. So the question you just asked has to do with love. How are you not afraid so afraid is thought that something beautiful becomes scientifically proven and apparently according to this question scientifically proven means automatically less beautiful and and I can follow that right so is there not a risk when we look at the octopus movement where the connection is love where we don't always understand why

the connection is there and we're not a love hippie tribe but we could be it's a bit like that right so that spiritual connection that is happening in the octopus movement. Being afraid is linked to thought immediately. So am I trying to prove any scientific reasoning why nonlinear thinking is important? Yes, I've read some very interesting, and we talked about it in a previous podcast. There was some very interesting research paper about nonlinear you're thinking and that's scientific research. But what does scientific research mean, right? We create a system and we measure within the system

so we can create the conclusion that it's true because we use the system to measure that. So what a complicated question this is. Am I afraid? No, not at all because it organizes itself. I'm not afraid of anything with the octopus. I'm not afraid of, in the beginning, I was afraid that if I wouldn't be on top of everything, it would die. I was afraid in the beginning, I admit, you know, I was replying to all Facebook messages and everything.

I was constantly on top of everything, like, something is happening and I want to hold on to it. I'm not doing that. I'm not afraid. If I die tomorrow, the octopus movement will continue. I don't know in what kind of shape and form. I don't care. I'm dead. You know, I'm not registering anything, but I know something will continue because it's, it's already there.

It's moving. It's growing. So it's beautiful and I'm not trying to convince or to prove anything we're just doing. So it's a very good question. No, I'm not afraid. Yeah. I like that. I would add to that too.

Like, there is a danger. there's always a danger in taking something philosophically beautiful because beautiful is dangerous beautiful has the ability to change people's lives beauty has the ability to inspire beauty has the ability to fundamentally shift the way in which people live in their world like beauty is dangerous people look at helen of troy or like men fight wars over beauty you know and beauty ideas and fighting like i think those two things are linked together. They're sharp sides of the same sword.

There's this beautiful book. There's this beautiful book. When you talk, I will do the Google search. I only know the Dutch title, so I need to find the English title. Please, let me know what it is. And, oh, yeah, I'm going to look it up now. Who cares? Yeah, let's do it.

Oh, oh, oh, it will come. It's written by. a writer in South America, Chile. He even ran for president. He's very famous. I'm so bad with names. I have so many books of him. And I think it's the difficult girl or something.

The difficult, difficult girl. I know a few of those. Some of the most beautiful. Yeah. Some of the most interesting ones. Absolutely. Absolutely. No, not. I can't find it. I will look it up. This is boring for the audience.

But that's, that whole book is this is a boy and a girl. And it starts at the age of seven and they find each other very interesting. And the whole book is about their whole lives and they're constantly connecting to each other. And she is beautiful but dangerous. That's why I had to thought about this book. And the whole book is about the beauty and the danger of this girl. And he's constantly in contact with him. And in the end of the book, it becomes clear why he sees dangerous and what's wrong with her.

And it's fascinating. So beauty is dangerous. Yeah, I get that. Are non-linear thinkers dangerous? It all depends from what angle you're looking at. at this, I think. That's a great point. I think when you are a very linear system, and you want to make sure everybody stays in their corner, box, whatever, in that linear system. And you change a thousand, so you have a system with a thousand linear neurotypical people,

and it all works well, and you change the thousand with all non-linear thinkers. I promise you it's going to be chaos. Then non-linear thinking is dangerous. Yeah. Is non-linear thinking dangerous? No, because it's not thinking. And I think the most danger lies in the real thinking. And I think we have a few examples in the world

that are very dangerous because of their thinking. And we wish they would think differently, people starting war because of thought. So how can non-linear be dangerous? I think it's the opposite. I think linear thinking is dangerous. I think judgment is linear, what I said earlier. Yeah.

I think it's the obvious, the opposite. I think linear thinking is more dangerous than non-linear thinking. Do you think that the octopus movement, Perry, like this sort of movement of people is, is becoming I hate, it's such a problem with language, but do you think

it's something that is becoming more widespread like we're breaking out of this linear thought system's thinking and more and more people

are going to embrace their own internal visions and think in ways that many of people in the group are thinking. When I look at,

there's so many people in this group that are outliers that have always been outliers and that have built their own path and they're defined

with their own success is. Do you think that this is something that we're going to see more of in the future? We're going to continue to see not only the octopus movement grow, but the world itself grow in this non-linear way. It has to be. I think so too. It has to be. I think, you know, what I said earlier, the change of knowledge into seeing that we need different thinking to survive. I think the outliers and the different thinking is always. there and it's not that all of a sudden there are more different thinkers. The only thing that changes is the ability to express yourself as a different thinker. So I think the world is changing

in embracing the fact that different thinking is something positive where it wasn't positive. If you were a different thinker, you were difficult. Yeah. And we don't like difficult people. You know, what happened at school? Here in the Netherlands, 80,000 kids are not going to school because they're highly gifted and they're autistic. So they need to go, apparently they need to go to special education, but there's not enough special education. So they're at home.

But the problem in the Netherlands is that it's illegal to a home school. school your kids. So you get the police at your front door if your kids are not going to school. So thanks to the government, you're not able to go to school, but that's a problem, 80,000 kids. I just read that there is an organization that is going to file a lawsuit against the Dutch government because of this. Why do I think things are changing is apparently because when nothing changed, right, Perry was as weird as Perry was when he was seven. But when Perry was at school at seven, he had dyslexia and he had all kinds of other issues,

but there was hardly any names for it. And the only thing to deal with it was get over it. And whatever, you know, there's no space to talk about this. Now, we found language. we can say someone is dyslectic, has ADHD, autism, dyspraxia, bipolar. You know, this is what's going on. So the language has changed. And all of a sudden, 80,000 kids' future is being destroyed.

I mean this. I get furious about this. I know some beautiful people who were not able to go to school and are now adults early 30. And they didn't finish high school because of this. So they weren't able to go to university. They weren't able to get their right diplomas. They want to work.

They're super intelligent. This is also a weird factor. These kids are super intelligent. These kids are awesome. You want them in our society. You want to work with them. These kids are the future. And what do we do?

We do this with them. So your question was, Because, you know, is this changing? I think this has already changed because all of a sudden there is more language around this that is now in a space of labeling ADHD. I think that will be gone in a few years. We're not talking about neurodiversity anymore in the near future.

It's going to be about humanity. And it's going to be about us together being awesome. intelligent creatures and creating something together rather than you don't fit the profile. I give you label so everybody understands and then let's remove you. That's where we are now. But that's shifting already. It's shifting because the CEO of Palantir is saying the future lives with the neurodivergent thinkers.

Those are the people that I want to hire because they can see connections that others can't. Right? And an AI creates a little linear system based on knowledge. It is wonderful. So we need something else to work together with that. And so we already have the language. There is already space. Some adjustments will be made. What the hell do I know? But this is only my experience from my world. And we will be moving into a space where different thinking is celebrated. is going to be seen as wisdom. That's what I think. I love it. It brings up another question for me. You mentioned when I went to school too, there was no those kids on the spectrum.

There was none of that. There was no space for that. But do you think that the labels, sometimes we give people, like ADHD or autism, a lot of the times those come with like a really negative stigma. And people can, you know,

you go to a professional and maybe you are given this sort of shirt you can wear. Are you given this label? I'm autistic. I have this thing. Does that create a victim mentality or are we making victims out of these people

by using those labels? Yeah. We're not creating victims. We're just trying to understand them. Right. They create the victim hood themselves. Attack Perry now. cancel the dude.

It's not what I mean. Right. If something goes wrong, we like to have a problem so we can hide behind the problem. I think we are addicted to problems. We love problems. We say, you know,

I don't want to have any problems. Yes, you do. You love problems. Because if you have a problem, you can hide behind the problem, right? Yeah. I was unable to do this because I didn't have any internet connection. So you have a problem and you don't have to take any responsibility for not doing that

because your problem was you didn't have an internet connection. So what you see now is, and I'm allowed to say that, you know, I made a mistake in my writing because I have dyslexia. It's true, right? I can blame my dyslexia if I write something stupid. within the laws of thought, am I a victim? No, because I know that I can make writing mistakes. So I take my responsibility to have my proper tools in place

to check my writing if something is important that there are no stupid. Trust me, I make really, really weird mistakes in my writing, right? I can't, I'm not a victim of my dyslexia. I'm also not saying that I have a superpower because of my dyslexia, because I think that's exactly the same thing as being a victim. Bullshit, right? It's, we did research once with the university in the Netherlands, and I asked a group of international design students to design the space before neurodiversity.

When I came in, this was a project of a week, and I came in on Monday, I said, guys, okay, I have an assignment for you. Designed the space before neurodiversity. blue screen, right? What is this dude talking about? So who knows neurodic... Okay, some of them, you... I explained neurodiversity,

and then I was like, oh, I have that, yeah. Okay, so then I had to explain. So where are you, if you're diagnosed with ADHD and you get the official label, now you have ADHD, or like my son who has dyspraxia? So I can share this story

because it's really happening. happened in my family. My son has dysprexia. His handwriting is awful. Disprexia means your fine motor skills in your brain are fucked up. And you notice that by the handwriting of a person. The handwriting is really impossible. He's a left writer and dysprexia. So his handwriting was so horrible that he couldn't even read his own handwriting. Right? And so at school, he always was in trouble. And some of his teachers, some of these nasty teachers were saying to him every time he handed it in a paper with the red pencil, check your handwriting, you need to do better. So he went to occupational therapy and all of

it. We had no idea. He had dyspraxia. And every time he heard your handwriting sucks. You, you need to focus on your handwriting for years George and he got tested even with an MRI everything you have dyspraxia he was so happy he went to school with the paper of dyspraxia and showed it to his teacher and said can you now let it go please this is who I am so I'm wondering who was he before the label of dyspraxia he was exactly the same kid exactly the same handwriting, but the handwriting was a problem. Then he got tested,

and now the handwriting is not a problem anymore, because now we can understand. So the whole issue of labeling is so complicated, because there's so many different elements to it. It really served him. Did he became a victim of his dyspraxia? No, because he isn't blaming dyspraxia if someone doesn't read his handwriting well.

He just has fun with his handwriting. If he writes something down and someone has to read it, he says, I hope you can read it because I can't. And that's it. He's not a victim, but that's his own thinking connected to his own dyspraxia. So, boy, is this complicated.

We like to have a problem so we don't have to take that responsibility. You know, there's also the whole debate of entrepreneurship within the space of neurodiversity. A lot of entrepreneurs are neurodivergent, right? They see things differently. They find it difficult to have a job and it's, I would do it myself. And as an entrepreneur, you need to work in a system of entrepreneurs, right? You need to file your things and have your paperwork done and whatnot.

It's not okay to say, I'm an entrepreneur and I did well, but I fucked up everything. everything else on paperwork, yeah, you know, I'm, I'm in the space of neurodiversity. I have ADHD and dyslexia. I can't. Well, you need to take your responsibility to make sure you get this in place. And thanks to AI, it became more, it became better to do so. You know, if I need to file in all kinds of reports and whatnot with my dyslexia, I use AI to help me. Like, am I doing this right?

Are they, am I giving the answer to the actual question? I guess that to AI sometimes because I fuck up these things with my dyslexia, but I'm not blaming it. I'm aware of that and I use my tools to make sure everything goes well. Or I just give it to my accountant and say make sure everything works. It's a long answer to a short, simple question, George. That was a beautiful story, man. Thanks for sharing that.

I think it illustrates the idea behind hiding behind labels or like you said, saying my this thing about me is a superpower because they they seem to be classified in either or sometimes and I always say you know I'm autistic that doesn't mean I need to be a prick true right what the hell is this so I'm I'm autistic that means I can be an asshole and I can I can ignore all social cues because I can see them and I can be very blunt and I don't care about other people's emotions and wake wake up you're a human being. What the hell? We all have to learn. We all have to sacrifice. We all need to go through

difficult positions. Don't bring me that. Don't be an asshole when you're an autistic human being. Don't. I think that should be a bumper sticker. Don't be an asshole. That's a pretty good slogan right there. Don't be an asshole. Right? Don't be an asshole. Why would you be an asshole? Mad at the world. I will tell you another story. Okay, please. I met someone who's a photographer and who did an asshole story with her photos. I'm serious.

Okay. She was hired by a toilet manufacturer to create an artistic collection of assholes. Seriously. And so she took pictures of assholes and zoomed in and made an exhibition of that. and it became very successful and beautiful photos. Beautiful is dangerous, George. And I was, so she was, I was having a conversation with her and her portfolio was on our website as a photographer and all very beautiful.

And she said, yeah, Perry, I had one exhibition, you know, did you scroll down all the way to the bottom in the right corner? You can check that out. I thought it was amazing. She did a photo exhibition of assholes. Everybody has one. You don't have to be one, right? And I told in the octopus movement, I said, oh, that's cool.

Because, no, I'm not saying this. But I said, let's do that as well. You know, send in your asshole and we make it into an exhibition. The nonlinear assholes in the world, nobody responded, George. It didn't work on. That would have been fun, right? man it's not too late it's not too late so if you're listening to this and you're thinking oh i want to donate my

asshole to you send it to me and it needs to be and i even created an anonymous database so you can upload your photo anonymously so i couldn't tell whose asshole was whose right i really took proper you know steps to make it all very um intelligent and safe And I still love the idea. How cool would it be to show the assholes of the world? Am I now too non-linear for you? What is, you know? This is perfect.

I love every second of this. Like my mind is just racing. Like, yeah, you could send in a picture of somebody you know or your actual asshole. You know what I mean? It could be whatever you wanted. Yeah. I asked my girlfriend. I said, can I take a picture of your asshole?

And I said, why don't you? Go away, Perry. Didn't work out. Seriously, I'm not kidding. I'm not making this story up. Seriously. No, she said, no. Okay.

Fair enough. Who was, can you mention the artist? I would like to talk to her too. I'm not going to get her connection. She's an octopus movement, right? Yeah, I spoke with her. Photo. That is so awesome.

This is why, if you're listening to this right now or you're watching us live, like this is why the octopus movement is so amazing. Like, just this whole concept. of where this discussion can go and what can come out of it and the possibilities and the laughter if it's probably my favorite part god uh yeah it's it's going to be on the list with the book i will i will circle back to you george okay i'll put in the show notes for everybody too if you guys are interested yes parry i've been i've been talking your ear off for like an hour and 20 minutes man um how you doing on time you all right over there i'm fine i'm enjoying this yeah okay me too let's let's

I got one from Soren from Copenhagen. She says, your brain is made of billions of cells that don't individually understand you. Why couldn't humans be doing the same thing? I think she's speaking to the idea of the octopus movement. What is neuron? Oh, maybe she means that why don't you have your own octopus movement in your own brain? Maybe you do. I mean, if you look at synapses and, like, denials.

Andrites, they kind of look like these spiraling arms going out there, reaching for things. That's nonlinear thinking. It is very simple. That's why we call it the octopus movement. That's why it's the octopus. It's the nonlinear thinking. It's the moment where you're having a shower in the morning and all of a sudden you're thinking, I gave my book to this person.

I totally forgot that. She has my book. I need to send her a message that I want to. on my book back. We all know this and it's coming out of nowhere. That's nonlinear thinking. It's the space between thoughts. And so we have our own human mycelium

in our own brains and we connect it to others, but you have your own magnificent space. What I don't understand why this is not a topic at school. Why don't we teach children how their own operations system works. We have no clue who we are, right? That's why when someone says, who are you?

I'm the founder of the octopus move. That's not who you are, asshole. You know, it's, I love that word. You see that? I know, me too. That's why we use that because we have no idea who we are. And maybe we are nothing. We're just a human.

And then we define ourselves who we are based on what others, are saying or the labels or who are you well i have ADHD um right who are you we're nothing right and and we live in this space between thoughts where awesome things happen it's when we fall in love it's when we connect it's when we have our gut feeling when we think this george dude is awesome i need to work with him right or when we're in a flow In the flow state, you know, everybody knows that. You're in a flow state. It's so good.

And then all of a sudden, like, is this four hours ago? Really? That's, and, and, and you're not thinking about it. You're going for it. And I think that is your own mycelium in your own head, which is not just here. It's here as well, right? You have neurons at your heart as well. It's a fact.

and in your gut and in your intestines. And there are neurons everywhere, and it's all connected. And so that's why when we say, I feel it in my gut feeling, that you do this, that your thinking goes from here to here, when you know here, you cannot trust this. Or you know here that you shouldn't get on the bus now and you should take one later because this is not working out for you. Yeah. So he's absolutely right.

It's, you have that yourself. And if you want to go there, it's difficult because we're conditioned not to go there. Or we are conditioned to go there and becomes woo-woo. I'm not against woo-w-woo-ness, but sometimes the spiritual ego can take over. And then spirituality becomes a thing and it stays as linear as it was. so it's it's an elegant dance in that narrow space where so many things can happen yeah it reminds me

I read this somewhere forgive me I don't remember where I read it but it was talking about education and linear thinking and it was saying we spend so much time trying to focus on something you know like if you're a kid doing homework or you're an engineer trying to build something or you're a podcast or whatever it is. Sometimes you decide, I just need to sit down and focus on this one thing.

And what happens when you really try to focus on something? Everything else pops up. Like I'll be thinking about, I got to set up this podcast with Perry, so I need to reach out to Discord. I need to start making these thumbnails. And then all of a sudden it pops in my mind like, man, my...

We need to eat pancakes tonight. Yeah, totally. I'm going to have waffles for dinner. You know, I think I'll make waffles for dinner. Yeah. And you think that that is throwing you off course, but that's the next thought. That's the next thought in the evolution of what you're supposed to do with what you're doing. Like that is the nonlinear process.

And it's not a bug. It's a feature. Like that's how it works. You're supposed to go to that next thought. Even though it may seem radically irrelevant, it's not. It's the next thought in progression to getting you where you need to go. Like, we don't understand that. But at least I think that way.

I think lots of other people think that way. I wish you would get away from this idea of focus as being the narrow scope of speciality. Instead of like, it's this broad horizon of like pancakes and thumbnails. And like, you know, it just seems like that's the natural progression. We've gotten away from that, man.

If I see an AI generated social media posts with advice, which I think 75% is right now, and then if you want to be successful you need to focus. Totally. Yeah. And I'm and I'm always, when I see that, I'm always thinking yes and no. Maybe it's it's about not giving up. Maybe what is focus, you know, what does it mean actually to focus on something?

Does it mean that whenever another thought comes in, you remove that and you only allow thoughts that are in your thinking directly linked to the topic. Is that focus? Is focus executing only the steps that you think belong to whatever project? Is that focus? What is focus? I had one debate one time with an investor. And he said, Perry, you need to focus.

This was before the octopus movement. I can hear you know what I'm saying that. He said, Perry, focus. And I said, wait a second. right? He said, you're not very good in focus. I said, okay, fair enough. You're an investor. Tell me about your investment. Very proud. He built two buildings for offices and he's renting it out and making a shitload of money. And he's doing a good job in that. And he said, that's my focus. I said, that's cool. What else? That's it. And typically a guy, so, you know, either he was in the in the

box office work investing in an office building or he was at home but the combination wasn't possible and I said to him and I said you know and you're saying to me that I'm not good in focus that's funny because in my world you suck in focus you can't focus because you can only do one thing and one thing only otherwise you get upset and it doesn't work for you does that mean focus, or if you're able to do multiple things and you can draw your attention to this and then to that and then to that and organize this all, is that focus? And I think that's more focus than he was doing. Everybody can do that, right? One single job, one investment in an office building. That's easy. Focus. What is a narrow-minded to me.

I would say focus is narrow-minded. There's this beautiful book. I think we talked about it before, Nomads from Anthony Satin. And he researched for six years to write this book about nomads because there's no history on nomads because nomads are not building any monuments. History is based on monuments because that's what we can see and we can learn and that becomes reality. But nomads are not making anything.

And in this book, he describes so beautifully the two different kind of humans is the nomad and the specialist. So the nomadic tribe would be somewhere and create their city or whatever. And the nomads would continue to go to the next space. And some people stayed and specialized in one thing in making bread or creating tools or whatever. and such a beautiful book in understanding how that works. So it's fascinating to listen to someone who became a specialist, which is totally fine, but then saying to a nomad, you need to focus.

This is hilarious. Yeah. I wonder to what extent it's biological. You know what I mean by that? Yes, he found a within, um, nomads, he found an ADHD DNA. So the ADHD brain is more linked to the nomadic human being than any other brain. And I think that makes a lot of sense.

I think the horrible word of procrastination is a very dirty word for a lot of people with ADHD. And I think the one who invented this word should be shot. Because it's ridiculous, you know. If it has become a language, oh, I'm procrastinating. It's so bad. No, it's not. You're taking your time. You're widening your space to do all your research.

And you're creating whatever needs to be created to create what you need to create. And you can't organize that. And we label that into something negative. Yeah, like it's an ailment or something. Right? It's a dirty word. You're procrastin. You should have finished this already.

Why? The deadline is next week. Otherwise, you're procrastinating. Who cares? Right? And if I want to do it the evening before

and I don't go to bed and that's how I operate and it's fine. Yeah. Then you cannot check if you made any mistakes. Ooh. Yeah.

It's interesting to think about and there's no, you know, there's, Some people are specialists, some people are nomads. But when I look at my own life, I've lived in different states, different towns, radically different relationships my whole life. And it seems like the people I gravitate towards are the other nomads. You know, that's how I found the octopus movement.

That's how I'm talking to you. But it is refreshing to know that there are other people out there that are living that sort of nomadic. lifestyle. And there's people doing it way more radically than me, but you know, it's nice to know that you're not alone in that aspect. Because sometimes it seems pretty lonely. Maybe that's something that everybody goes through. But what are your thoughts on that? My thinking immediately is I agree, but I also enjoy meeting the opposite, the specialist, so much.

And you show you a different side of you. It's fascinating. So, meaning another nomad. Yes, cool. Oh, cool. Yeah, we understand each other, but not necessarily the coolest thing. And then you meet a professor in New York who invited me to come to New Yorker University to lecture on leadership. And he's not a nomad, you know, definitely not. And we're best friends. And I love his thinking. It's fascinating. his thinking and my thinking and and it's something else and that something else

also really inspires me and it's yeah I don't know how to respond to that George it's I met someone yesterday who is a musician and who's clearly on the spectrum very very intelligent and he's creating something and

and he said I'm so lonely nobody understands me and I said oh boy are you going to have a wonderful time in the movement because I think everyone in the movement understands what you're talking about not being lonely but what you're talking about in your creation and your music and how nice is it to be in a group of people where you don't have to feel lonely because it's it's your thinking that creates your loneliness right if you think think nobody understands me that creates loneliness sure and as soon as you think oh i found my tribe you're no no longer lonely and the only difference is the thought what were some of the highlights

of your leadership speech that we know very well what's going on under the service but we're we're not saying that and i think within leadership that is something we need to focus on. When you enter a room in leadership, it's not very common to address what you feel in the room. It's very common in leadership to address your KPIs and your next steps and your systems and your measurements. I think your measurements. I think in leadership in today, it's all about measurement and I think the highlight is that you can address what you can sense immediately and that's probably spot on that's what I write about in my book Octopus leadership and it's a philosophical essay a beautiful philosophical essay I think I use the word beauty a lot in that book

so it's a dangerous book yeah of course it is you know if if I look at Octopus leadership, it is about that connection that is not obvious. It is about that awareness that we all can recognize, but we don't talk about. It's a different form of leadership away from measurement. And probably within the organization and measurement is there, but does leadership need to exist based on measurement? I don't know. And that's why it's a philosophical essay. So I protect myself a little bit. Like, you know, this is not, this is not an explanation how it should be done.

This is me thinking up loud in how it can be done differently. And of course, creating the Octopus movement was the inspiration to create the book, Octopus leadership in creating the movement, doing something without a blueprint, without any guidelines. just based on that connection, that gut feeling, that is very clear if you open up for it. And it's only clear when you don't think about it. What do you think is the biggest or some of the biggest pushback you get when you talk to people about the octopus movement? Are there people that come and say, well, this is not this or this is not that?

Like, what are some of the, what's the biggest pushback you get or some of the biggest criticisms you get when people talk about the octopus movement to you. I don't understand. That's the biggest one. You know, I don't understand Perry. Okay. What is it that you don't understand? You know, it's, it's, I think sometimes with people, let's first say, talk about the opposite.

When I just started the octopus movement, the website looked very different and, you know, I don't know what I was doing again. And people were signing up, and I would always ask people, why did you sign up? You know, what was the trigger for you? And a lot of them said, I don't know. I don't even know why I signed up. It resonated to me. You know, there's something in it that resonates to me.

The octopus without understanding why, but I feel related to the octopus, and I don't understand why. So that is the opposite of, I don't understand. So it resonates or I don't understand. And I think the start of the movement really attracted a lot of nonlinear thinkers because they didn't have to have that explanation of what it was because it just resonated with them.

I was lucky with that because automatically people that I find very interesting and the purpose of this nonprofit is to bring people together that are slightly different, is that I didn't have to explain anything to the slightly different people because it would resonate with them anyway. And now we're not an idea anymore, but now we're a global organization. So now I'm having conversations with linear institutions and companies and organizations. And then they go to the website and say, I don't understand. And for me, that's a bit of a showstopper. If I have a meeting in corporate world, and the first remark is,

Perry, I don't understand what you're doing. I'm always thinking, it closes all doors in a way, right? I don't understand. Like, if you go to a museum and you're not into art and you're looking in front of a painting and the painting doesn't do anything with you,

what do you say? I don't understand this. My eight-year-old could do the same thing. It closes up all the possibilities, to fall in love with that artwork. So the biggest drawback for me is when people say, I understand what this is. That means there's no space between thoughts.

There's only thought. And the only thought is it needs to make sense to me in this and this way. Otherwise, it doesn't. And I hope that in the evolvement of the octopus movement and the website is, constantly update. I wish that at some point it can be clear in a linear way that everybody can understand this. That would be awesome that I don't have to hear anymore. I don't understand.

What are the people coming to you for? Like when you get invited to a corporate room, are they seeking the brain trust of a group of nonlinear thinkers? Are they trying to solve problems? Is there a pattern of why these people are approaching you? They want something and it's not working. That's always the same thing. They want something and it's not happening. And they've tried everything. So the last resort is the non-linear thinker.

Because nobody knows about the non-linear thinking. So this is not common. Like, I don't know. So let's use some non-linear thinking. So they come to us when they've heard of us doing awesome things. And it's always the same. We want something, but it's not happening. Why is that?

And so it's not necessarily a problem. We used to focus on solving the unsolvable, which I always had to laugh about that sentence, because from a linear perspective, it's hilarious. We don't do that anymore because people don't want to solve problems because sometimes in corporate world these problems create

revenue and the livelihood of that person. If there's a problem in the management team, that manager linked to that problem has his job because of that problem. So we don't necessarily want to solve problems, us humans. What we do want is we want to grow. We all want.

to grow. So if if someone wants to move forward, they come to us because they understand that this human mycelium of connections of brains, if you want to move forward, there needs to be some kind of unexpected input. Otherwise you're not moving forward. So if you want to improve your product, improve your sales if you want to improve whatever your team or you know i'm i'm always laughing it's friday afternoon let's go with the team to a creative brainstorm session make sure you wear your weekend clothing we go to a different space out of the office and let's think together in finding right solution okay according to i forgot his name but 95% of our thoughts are the same thoughts every single day So if you go there with your same team, good luck in thinking in a creative way.

It's not going to work, right? So if you want to grow, call the octopus movement. It's almost like call ghost busters, right? It's, who do you call? It's, they all have the same thing. We want something. It started with NASA, not with the octopus movement. That's why I was so excited to work for NASA.

Because I love this story. It's 1965, they want to go to the moon. They hire an external consultancy firm, and they are looking for the most brilliant creative minds to solve some of them, their challenges, to create the system to go to the moon. And then this consultancy firm finds out that those are three to five-year-old kids, you know, 85% of them are creatively brilliant,

and only 3%. Don't shoot me if I have. I have the numbers not correctly, please. I do know that they had done research on 180,000 adults, and only 3% of them were creatively brilliant. So look at Musk and always endeavors and landing the rocket back on planet Earth, right? Yeah.

Such a good example. Everybody is saying it's impossible, forget about it. It's not working. So what does he do? He invests in people. He spends money where all others would say, this is enough. It's not working.

He just says more and more and more. Just make it work. It's possible. It's not rocket science. It is, but it's not, it is possible. And the only way to get there, is not to create an AI system to do the work for you. The only way to get there is to use different thinking

and then support your different thinking with AI to get the right measurement and to make it possible. He understands that very well. That's why people come to the octopus movement because they want to move forward. And then we have a think tank, George. I'm so proud of that. So cool.

40, 50 people from all corners of the world log in and they're in this digital whiteboard and then I create a thing tank and all kinds of questions. There's sometimes also music, put the pressure on and there's this way of working with 40, 50, 50 non-linear thinkers. Create a little bit of chaos and then 50 minutes, in, out, done. And then I all of a sudden have 1,200 post-its with ideas. And then, you know, the brain starts and connecting all these things and I have a team of savants working with me and finding angles and producing something interesting. But it starts with the group of people that are not connected to the question.

They're not specialists. Sometimes they don't even know what's going on. what's going to happen and they just produce and sometimes they don't think because I put the pressure on and the music and I annoy the hell of the out of them and I'm like

leave me alone and they get upset and I'm like yes get upset and then I get all these answers and then I see patterns and like this is interesting and sometimes from the 1,200 post-its makes all the differences in the whole

topic and like this is the This is the different one. This is so cool and then connect that to everything else and like present that to the organization. Like what about this? We never thought about that exactly. We now are creating something new within the think tank institute and it's the exit table and the think tank team is then not just a team of nonlinear thinkers. It's a team of exit founders. Most exit founders are non-linear thinkers, but then they have the linear result to celebrate

their non-linear brilliance, which is a mantra of mine. You know, it's so important. You need to have linear result to celebrate your non-linear brilliance. Otherwise, you're just a weirdo. So when you bring a group of people like that who succeeded their linear results and they have that experience with them together with their non-linear. thinking and you ask them to think about something that is fascinating as well. It's yet another angle.

So there's the angle of nonlinear thinkers from all over the world, all different backgrounds, and then you have the exit table of exit founders who did something spectacular sometimes. Sometimes they were just lucky, but most of them they did something different. And that's why they succeeded in this linear way. And we have them now as well within the things. thing. What do you get out of it, Perry?

Like, what are you most proud of about the octopus movement? Us, you, me. Oh, and my computer

thinking immediately thumbs up. I'm most proud of all the incredible individuals that are there, and I'm not saying that it sounds a bit

marketing when I say that. And that's why I'm, you know, it's, that's what I'm proud of to see these connections to know these people otherwise if I wouldn't have started this I would have never met George I would have never met Chenez who yeah she's awesome who's awesome right talking about NASA I would have never met

Anshar I would have never met Michelle I would have never met Karen I would have never met Cliff Cliff is someone who designed the human square with us it's two to measure human centricity in organizations so you can have a sticker at the door at this organization is the human score is an A it means we see you and it's not just a system

and he designed that and I'm most proud of these connection that it would have never been there if there was not an octopus if I would have called it the special thinkers movement I would have never met Cliff.

I would have never met George. I would have never. So maybe I'm the most proud of that octopus. Yeah. The relationships of the true currency, that's what I've come to learn, is that conversations like this or just meeting people,

the fruiting body that comes from the conversations between two people, whether you're just staring at each other, how about a conversation? It's invaluable. Invaluble. I got a few more. lined up over here and then I'll let you.

Okay, here we go. Let me see. Julian, another Canadian, what's up, Julian? Thanks for being here. They say, if I remove your childhood memories, your language, your culture, your friends, your teachers, and every idea you inherited, how much of Perry remains? Love these questions.

They're pretty awesome, right? I get the best audience in the world. Here we are, Perry, put them on the table, remove the childhood experience everything language culture friends teachers then what remains I tend to say me is that weird I'm I've had a brain infection and encephalitis and that created some brain damage and sometimes I have some difficulty in remembering things from the past that's not bothering me at all and I think Perry

is I think if I look at my expertise then it's creating the balance between linear nonlinear thinking I think that's what I do I live the nonlinear life and I embrace the linear the linearity

and I let them dance together the nonlinear part is disconnected from the past, the language, the childhood period. The linear perry is the condition perry, but my conditioning is now so inspired by my nonlinear thinking that my conditioning is always a question when I think something. I'm thinking, Jesus, George, you could have worn a black t-shirt as well, then it would have been so much better. Didn't I get the memo? I should have told you. If I have that thought, this is then linear, I question that thought immediately.

So that's why I think this is a beautiful question. If I remove everything what stays over of Perry, I think then you will see the same Perry. because it's, for me, it's an art form to be aware of all the conditioning that is happening in my mind. Good question. Yeah, that is. It makes me, I always turn to psychedelics for that

because I feel like so much of the conditioning. It's been so ingrained in all of us since primary school and your, you know, how much of your own thoughts are really yours, whether they're your parents or societies itself, but psychedelics, for me, have been a way in which I can touch the intangible, which I can brush up against the ineffable, and I can really begin to see with a lot of the filters removed.

You know, and I, I, I would define the octopus movement as psychedelic. Like there's, it's, it's just like coming, encountering beings with knowledge and ideas that are so far out there, but still makes sense to you. You know, and I can't help but see the mycelium. Like as someone who eats a lot of mycelium and watches it grows and has grown mushrooms, you know, if you really watch mycelium grow, you can actually see it make connections the same way in which this group makes connections. Or maybe we as humans make connections like that.

And how it makes sense as well. And how it makes sense. That you don't know what's about to happen. All you know is that this is the next point of contact. And then this weird right angle direction you're taking, which seems radically strange and fundamentally wrong, that's the exact move you're supposed to do. And in some way, that gives me faith in the idea of the bigger picture.

Like you are moving exactly where you're supposed to be. You are in the process of becoming. And you are fucking not supposed to know what that looks like. That's okay. You don't know. You are becoming, so. You shouldn't know. And I have a short LSD story.

Yeah, let's hear that. I've never done LSD. Okay, that's a short story. That's a short story. There was this Netflix series about the explanation of a lot of things. And in episode one, it was about LSD and the professor in Switzerland creating LSD and then selling it to the schools in America for math students and whatnot. Good story. And he was describing this professor, you know, how LSD worked in his mind.

So here we are this linear, tied underwear, scientific dude taking LSD. It's art. It's so beautiful to watch his interview. It's so cool. And he's describing what happened in his brain while using LSD. And the thought I had was, fuck, I'm on LSD every day. because what he's describing, that's my automatic system in my head. Wow.

So in the movement, in the Facebook group, I wrote a post, hey, has anyone seen this documentary on Netflix, which is new about the brain and whatnot? And then people started to comment on that writing, I think I'm on LSD every day or something like that. And I thought that was fascinating. It made me so happy. It was like, look at that, right?

Look at that. It's and psychedelics are so interesting because cannabis. I use cannabis. I'm Dutch. So, right, it's almost impossible not to use. I use cannabis. I'm Dutch. Yeah.

So if you have. ADHD, cannabis is absolutely fucking amazing. It shuts down your thinking. It removes time, right? It's amazing. It quies things down. And that's why people

use cannabis. And then you have, I'm not an expert, but then you have LSD, you have mushrooms. And so for everything that is going on in your brain and you need the opposite and to open a door, there can be something

there that can open a door for you. If I look at the documentaries of Paul Stamets, who introduced the mycelium to me, that's why I call it the human mycenae, because of a documentary of Paul Stamid. How cool is this dude, right? How cool is this company? How cool is this story?

How cool is this story that he's eating way too many mushrooms? And then it was completely zoning out and everything. How fascinating. So I'm not saying, you know, let's all go for LSD or not, but it is interesting to explore the corners in your brain, I think. And I only did cannabis. So I'm not allowed to say too much about this thing. But my modus operandi is already on LSD, I think,

without using LSD. And this would be a scientific, interesting research if a non-linear thinker has the same brain pattern as a linear thinker on LSD. So if you take LSD, new connections are being made. So maybe that non-linear thinker when he's just in a relaxed zone and in an MRI machine, maybe then we can prove that there are connections being made

standard that is not being made by a linear person. And this research paper that I talked about earlier is the difference between linear non-linear thinkers is that a non-linear thinker has been training itself constantly with the thought, why am I different? And if you constantly ask yourself, why am I different, you start to investigate how your mind works.

And there's a huge benefit to that. It means you understand your own thinking. If you understand your own thinking, there's less fear when you understand your own thinking, you know when there's chaos, you're going to be fine because you know how you're going to respond. If you are a linear thinker and you never have that conversation, you never have that research in your head,

then you want to be in control, you want to create systems that next week, next month, next year is exactly the same because you don't know how you're going to respond if something fucks up. That's it. Yeah. linear is safe chaos equals nonlinear it's interesting to think about so many people that i know that seem to be nonlinear have grown and become accustomed and even made friends with chaos whether it was as a young individual or or just the height of psychedelic journey is like

there's no getting away from chaos and like that forces the neuroplasticity at least i'm not a scientist because I'm not an academic, but it seems to me when you are introduced to situations beyond your control, neural plasticity is probably at a high. Your brain is probably frantically searching for new connections

to get the fuck out of here, man. And it creates space between your thoughts. Yeah. Yeah, time slows down. It creates possibilities. Chaos creates possibilities. There's no rocket science to that sentence. It's true.

Everybody knows that. Yes. Have you talked to people at Mastriac University? Like there are some really incredible students out there and researchers and academics that are doing a lot of the work on psychedelics right now. We should make that connection. I think you would love some of those people out there.

Let's do that, George. Okay. Can we do another question? I love these questions. Yeah, okay, of course. What a crowd. Oh, my God. I've got a ton of them too.

I'm jealous. Yeah, May. May's coming to us from Singapore. Shout out to the True Life audience in Singapore. May, thanks for being here. I truly appreciate it. She says, if another person changes the way you think, they physically change the future behavior of your brain. So where exactly does their mind stop?

Let's just focus on this first part. If another person changes the way you think, they physically change the future behavior. When another human being, changes the way you think. Is that possible? Another person changes the way you think. The way you think is the way you think. No one can change that unless they inspire you to think differently. So someone else changing the way you think is, I think, impossible. You think as you think, you can be inspired to have a different thought based on something else. Yes, you can. But I cannot

make you think any other way than you want to think that's thought what if someone tells you something so profound it changes the lens to which you see the world is that not changing your thinking yeah but it's then you have a different thought that other person is not changing your thought you you are always responsible for your thought you're right So you would change that to influence, like if another person influenced the way you think. Yeah.

Is that a better way to say that? They have physically changed the future. That's true. If we change it to influence, if another person influences the way you think, they physically change the future behavior of your brain. That's a pretty, I'm trying to wrap my mind around that question right there.

I guess that's true. I don't know, I don't know that they have changed it. If I go with your premise, if only you can change the way you think, then I don't, I guess that you would change your own behavior. Her follow-up is, so where exactly does their mind stop? Maybe it's that neither one of us are thinking. Maybe it's that we are thinking as one organism. You know what I mean by that?

Like maybe it's not Perry changing my mind. Maybe it's you and I collectively changing our mind. Maybe like we're not individual. That's nicely poetic, but of course, that's not how it works. Okay, how does it work? I think there is a lot of people like to control other people. Yes. And you control other people by changing their minds.

I agree. Right? Yeah. So in that part, he's absolutely right. So if I'm inspired to think differently, I change my future. That's why people can be, this is something,

you know, a simple sentence in a book can change your life. Yeah. It's a trigger of your own thinking. So if my book changes something with you, so you read my book,

Octopus Leadership, and there's a sentence in it and that changes the way, you think about something and that changes the way you act on something because you think differently on it and it changes your life. Did I change your life or did you change your life? You did. I didn't do anything. I just wrote that book. You read the book and you made your own decisions. And of course, you know, manipulation is all about changing someone's mind towards an end goal that they have in mind,

maybe the government or some institution or whatever, or when there's war and propaganda and whatnot. It's constantly there. But you have a responsibility to think as well. So if you see that something is changing your mind, you know, that you still have a responsibility to understand what is really changing your mind and what is changing and what changes your mind and what is now

different. There is a responsibility there. Agreed. It's your thought, not mine. So if I inspire you with my book, cool. It's not me. It's you. Yeah, I'm a big fan of question everything. Yeah, almost to a detriment sometimes. Yeah. It's annoying. I have to sit with it. Wait a minute. I don't, I don't know. May, that was awesome. I appreciate you. Yeah, May. Thank you. Singapore.

Yeah. Raphael coming in. He says, he says, maybe influence isn't something that passes between people. Maybe influence is the temporary merging of two minds. Maybe that's confluence. Yeah. Influence seems to be on some way to have its own sort of agenda.

You know what? Just using that term influence, it seems like. it has its own agenda. Like when you're trying to influence somebody, like, there's usually an agenda behind that, right? What is this question again? Maybe influence isn't something that passes between people.

Maybe influence is the temporary merging of two minds. I think if you want to, if we talk about influence, it means that also, it changes your mind, right? Right. I think the couch is red, but someone influenced me to think it's green.

It happens, right? Right? Yeah. Of course. Again, there is a responsibility of your own being. Right. To understand how you're influenced. I think a lot of, I think everybody's influenced.

I think everybody's influenced on social media, You know, your algorithm influences your understanding of the world. It's constantly happening. I'm curious why he asked this question or created this statement based on the octopus movement that I don't see. What is the, okay, let's take it to the octopus movement. Would you consider the octopus movement an influential body? No. Why not?

it seems like we are we are influencing non-linear thinking no people people see it and they want to be part of it it resonates with them I think this is I think there is not I think some of the feedback that I get is from people

that are in a Zoom room with us or an event or whatever and say oh that's weird normally I was the weirdest one in the room and I'm not the weirdest one in the room anymore So is that influence? No. Are we trying to influence anything? No.

If someone comes to us and says, we want to grow and give us your perspective on this with nonlinear and different thinking, is that an influence? No, we just give them something else and they can do whatever they want. maybe it becomes influential when there are 20 million octopi in the world and it becomes something else but then it becomes influential if it becomes something else not as it is right now and

I think that will never happen because that influence is pretty linear again like there's there's so much space in all kinds of possibilities, then is that influence? Do we influence people to be themselves? That's a weird sentence. Can you be influenced to be more George? Only by myself. Yeah, we can create space where George can be George,

but do we influence you to become more George? I don't think so. Maybe that's, I'm sorry, go ahead. But maybe to influence someone means going somewhere what is not, that doesn't make sense. So if I want to influence my child to become very good in math and she's not, you know, I want to influence her to go somewhere, but it's not automatically where she would go herself. Yeah, difficult. Yeah, it's interesting for sure. Do you ever worry about that, Perry, that the influence that the octopus movement might have

or that some people may try to corrupt the message of the octopus movement? I don't know. Maybe they try and say this is this movement and we are doing this. Like, can they, I don't know, like sometimes you see certain individuals that try to corrupt the movement. You know what I mean? Like a black block. They're like this. They were like this anti-corporation group.

But then they have like CIA members come in and pretend to be a member of that group to make that group look bad. Okay. I think we are too non-linear to go there because we're not against anything. Right. So we can start there. We're not against anything. We're just connecting. So we're not against.

We're not against linear thinking. Some people think that. Right. Oh, you're not all about non-in you think. So you're against systems. No. Are you kidding me? We're not against anything.

So that makes us uncorruptible, maybe. Look it. And I have examples. In the five years, I think three individuals came in who were trying to corrupt, corrupt the octopus movement. But it's only because they were expecting things for themselves that didn't happen

and blame the octopus movement and had the opinion that the octopus movement should do this and this to support them and we didn't because that's not what we do and they get upset

and it's funny with this I think three or four individuals only three or four cases George that was difficult that's all and all four of them said the same oh you're not that non-linear, I think you're very linear.

You know, it's, they all said that. At hominem attacks. It's funny. You know, I was laughing. And I'm like, yeah, but you know, you want something. If you want something, then do it. But you want something and you're putting it at the octopus movement. And then you blame the octopus movement for not doing that.

What are you? A child? How old are you? It doesn't work that way. Where's your responsibility? you want this, you organize this, you want this happen, connect with the network and with others.

If it resonates, it works. No one cares, it doesn't work. So maybe because of its organic movement, it's very difficult to corrupt this because if someone comes in with negative intentions, because it's so non-leafing, non-linear people will feel that it will not work and if it doesn't work then they blame the octopus

problem fine they can blame me oh god did i hear things george of course they can blame perry i've been accused for running a terrorist organization i'm not kidding what i've been accused of a terrorist organization yeah yeah yeah it was someone who was i don't know i don't even know what the problem was and and she wrote me a message he said you are running a terrorist organization I'm like, oh my God, that's a new one, right? Blame it on me. It's fine. I have a deal with my kids.

I have three kids. We have a deal. Blame it on me. It's fine. I'm your father. That's my responsibility. My role. You can blame it on me.

It's your fault there. Fine. But I only do that with my kids. No one else can do that. Everybody else, take your own responsibility. Don't blame it on me. Only my kids can do that. I got drunk.

It's your fault, dad. Fine. Right? It's okay. You're my son. I love you. It's without thought. It's okay.

If that helps you, I'm fine with it. Yeah. So I'm not afraid of that. No. And maybe now someone is listening and thinking, ha, do I have a plan for the octopus is moving?

Let's get these fuckers down. And, okay, you know, Maybe I will regret what I just said. I don't think so. I don't think so. No, I don't think so. Like, I've been in enough chat groups where I can attest to exactly what you said. If you have something, an idea that resonates, it'll be supported.

If it's just nothing there, then maybe it's the wrong time, or maybe it's not going to work. But it's an ultimate proving and testing ground. So that much I know. Who else do I got over here? I think I have two more over here. Ingrid, Ingrid says, What if loneliness isn't the absence of people? What if loneliness is the absence of meaningful, cognitive connection?

Yeah, totally true. 100%. Absolutely. You know, loneliness is so interesting. You can be having a lot of friends and be lonely as fuck, and you can be all by yourself, solitude, and not be lonely at all. I love to be alone.

It's, it's, it's, I'm just here. There's no one here. I love it. And I don't feel lonely at all. And maybe I don't feel lonely at all because I know so many people like George. And yeah. Makes me happy, you know. And if I celebrate my birthday, we had that recently in June.

And my daughter said, who do you want to invite? I said, this is a tricky one because my best friends are all out there and nobody lives in the Netherlands. You know, it's not possible. We need to do it online or something else. Am I lonely? No.

But I think loneliness is also a state of thinking. Yes, a cognitive deficit in some ways. Interesting. Ingrid, thank you so much for being here. That was awesome. I think I have. Did I miss somebody over here? Here's one.

There's no name on this one. So whoever it is, thank you for that. They say, Perry, what if there was never an individual mind in the first place? Yeah, that's cool. So a mind that means thinking, meaning your thinking is the collective thinking. I don't think so. because if you look at thinking in the West versus thinking in India, it's a huge difference there.

So then you cannot say there is a collective mind because in India, the thinking is together as a whole. It's a fact. It's a different way of thinking. And when you look at thinking in the world, the West it's fragmented. So that cannot be one thought. I do believe that there is some form of collective non-thinking and then it's not a collective mind but then it's more a collective awareness. If awareness is not thought and in many cases awareness is being explained as thought,

because you are aware, so you think about what is real. And that's not the awareness that I'm talking about. The awareness is without thought. So it is not awareness. It's just being. And I think collective being is definitely possible. And I think you can see that also in a smaller scale where you go into a city and you have these neighborhoods where you can feel how this neighborhood is doing. And people are living in a way that is triggered by the area they live in.

and I think that is connected. So I don't think there's one mind. I do think there's one awareness. Yeah. I like that term awareness. Hmm. Yeah.

The thing with awareness is that you can't just be aware of more good things without being aware of more bad things. You know what I mean? those two things come in context with each other. Yeah, isn't an awareness seeing just everything, right? Yeah, I think so. You know, that's without judgment, just aware of.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it, yeah. Doing a half hours, George. I know. I know we were crushing, but we made it through everybody to participate with us today. And that was important to me because I put this out to the audience and I wanted to make sure everybody got heard.

I appreciate you hanging out with us and spend it some time. with us. And to everybody that's watching right now, there's a QR code right at the bottom right there. You can scan that. You can go to the octopus movement. You can reach out to Perry yourself. You have a picture of the book over there. Here we go. Buy the book, people. Go to Amazon and find octopus leadership. Just a tiny little read. It's my philosophical way of looking at leadership. I think it's beautiful. I'm very proud of it. Yeah. Congratulations right there. Go out of it. Everybody go to Amazon, check out the book.

Check out the QR code down there. And if you are listening to this right now, whether it's today, tomorrow, or 20 years from now, Perry, could you be so kind as to tell people where they can find you, how to reach out to you, what you got coming up? The octopus movement.org, go there, have fun, explore. There's always movement on the website.

I just created a guided tour, a listening guided tour, and when you're on the homepage, you just click the button and then an AI voice explains what is happening on the website. It's not reading text, but it's explaining what we do. Dive into that. Connect with me on LinkedIn. Send me an email, Dr. Octopus at the octopus movement.org. It's a nice long email address, but you can remember that. Doctor SDR and an octopus like the villain at the octopus movement.orgat the octopus movement, not just

octopus movement. That's nothing. The octopus movement.org. And send me an email. I love that. If you have a question, if you're thinking, shit, I would have asked this question

about buttholes or whatever. Don't send me just pictures, please. But send me an email. I love that. And if it takes a little while for me to answer your email, don't take it personally. You're not the only one emailing me.

So sometimes it can take a little while. But I will respond definitely. because I love questions and I love comments and remarks and thoughts. And let's connect, right? George, let's connect. Absolutely. That's what it's all about. Perry, hang on briefly afterwards to everybody else within the sound of my voice.

I hope you have a beautiful day. The octopus. Check it out. Go check out Perry, the octopus movement. No, the octopus. One more time, Perry. Tell me one more time. The octopus movement.org.

The octopus movement.org. Ladies and gentlemen, check it out by the book. That's all we got for today, ladies and gentlemen. Aloha.