TrueLife - Is Twitter the Tower of Babel - Benjamin C. George

Episode Date: July 20, 2022

Is Twitter the new Tower of Babel? Are other peoples perspectives of you like mirrors in a fun house and if so can they be helpful to you regardless of how distorted they are?

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

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. We are here with the one and only Benjamin C. George. If you've been watching or if you've been listening and paying attention to the podcast, or the channel, then you have seen some previous conversations. You probably know about his book, No Absolute, a framework for life.

You have probably seen us move off onto some different tangents. I hope they've been somewhat interesting. I know that we have been having an awesome conversation, and we're looking forward to this one, which I think we're going to start off with choosing your words wisely. But before we start on that, I want to turn it over to Mr. Wizard himself. And what do you, does there anything you want to say before we get started here? Well, not particularly, except I do admire your 3D printer in the background there. Nice.

I'm staring at one in front of me, and I think we might have the same one, actually. Reality? Yeah, I have an hinder five. That's what I got, too. Yep. Yeah, that's what I thought. All right. Well, so purchasing choices are important, too.

Yes, consumption habits, right? Indeed. I think it says something about someone who purchases something that can build the things that they want to purchase. Right, right. Yeah, well, I mean, there's so many, I'm sure you've discovered this. I love that thing. You know, just watching it actually 3D print is a mesmerizing experience. And to think that, you know, that technology has been around since the 70s but was under copyright for, you know, up until what, 2003, I think it was.

man i didn't i did i did i did not know that that was i think i may have heard that in passing but i was unaware of that oh yeah they used to call them rapid prototyping machines and they would cost quarter of a million dollars whoa yeah now obviously yeah and they weren't too much different from what you got behind you right there um back then i mean obviously there was some you know whole room size ones that they had for you know c and c type stuff but yeah rhaps rapid prototyping machines and it was under patent until 2003, I think, somewhere around there. And then that's when 3D printers came on the market like it was a new technology. But it's been around for a minute.

Yeah, I've seen a couple, I think maybe on Discovery Channel or something, they showed a picture of like them 3D printing a house with like the blocks and stuff like that. Oh, yeah. I actually worked with a company in Colorado here. they do that up in the mountains. And it's a really interesting process. It's the exact same idea of it as your 3D printer there. You just create a frame, a rail frame that, you know, this nozzle runs on. And instead of heating up plastic and printing out plastic, it's concrete typically or some, you know, geopolymer or something like that.

Wow. Yeah, it seems, it seems fascinating to me. You know, in a way, pretty much, in a way, the, idea of the 3D printer fits nicely into what we're talking about because, you know, if you look at the way in which you put in the raw materials and then all of a sudden this idea begins to get formed, it begins to shape up, the same way it seems are words. I think I heard it once said that your ideas become your thought. Your thoughts become your words and your words become your actions.

So it's like this idea of you having these things in your mind and then you're translating those, that vision into reality. And then all of a sudden you have this goal or this thing that gets outputed that way. And I think it's a good way to think about it. When you wrote a chapter in your book called Choose Your Words Wisely, what can you start us off with like, can you just give us a breakdown of what that means to you? Definitely. As I was, you know, still to this day, I mean, you don't have to look too far around to see, you know, people making declarative statements that are, you know, absolutes that, you know, identify them in one way or another, however that's perceived. And then you'll see, you know, these same people make another declarative statement that kind of contradicts their last one. And then if you stretch the time frame out, you'll see just a long series of contradictions. Well, how are you supposed to take somebody like that seriously at a logical, reasonable level? And to me, you really can't. I mean, somebody like that, you know, somebody who's going to just make statements like that is they're trying to get your money, your attention, or more likely both.

And, you know, in terms of how it fits into the actual structure of what it means to be a human, how you operate on a daily life, when you choose your words wisely, when you are aware of the perspective that you're painting with your words, not only to yourself, but to other people. Now you have control over, you know, how you're perceived, but also how you can perceive other people's actions and in their words. And through that, it gives you the ability to shift perspectives, have multiple perspectives, be more aware of the situations, the, you know, the subjects that you're looking into, that you're researching, the conversations you're having, et cetera. Do you, I really like the, I really like the words you chose there about painting a perspective for somebody. Like, I think that that is true. Like, you are painting a perspective.

Sometimes you're painting the other perspectives a different color or a different shape. Sometimes you're doing that in order to, so you can understand it. Other times you're doing that because you don't really like their picture. And the same is true of the words you use when you paint yourself a perspective. Another one I like to use, if we use the analogies like that, is choosing your words as a linguistic pathway. The same way you would choose a pathway in life. You know, if you can maybe choose some different words that people don't hear, you can make the pathway a little bit more scenic for people,

but you can also go down a different road if you choose to use or see things differently. And I think that that's the, yeah, I think that that might be part of the secret for living a life out of the ordinary is to see the world in a way that is different. And you can make a conscious decision to do that. Some people say, oh, well, you just see things different.

Oh, you're just different. But if you just, it's a choice. Like if you choose to see it different, you can't. Well, and you know, if you look at it from that perspective, too, what are the things that we attach to as a culture? Our stories. I mean, the stories have driven our culture since the beginning of recorded time, this cycle around. And, you know, when you have that type of, that's ingrained in it. That's part of who we are.

And, you know, those stories are. really what to find everything in our world. And, you know, now it's, it's a shame that we've gone from the epics of Homer where people used to memorize these, you know, thousands and thousands and thousands of words and orally regurgitate them in performances to 180 characters on Twitter. Now, one could, one could argue both ways, I'm sure, but at the end of the day, there is something lost when we distill things down to just, there might be minutia. Yes, it is a perspective, but at the same time, it's painting those perspectives with our words that allow us to create the imagery inside the head. You know, if the best stories

you ever read are when you're reading it and you're in there, you're watching the characters move. Yeah, you're reading the words, but, you know, everything's alive in your head. You have this this visual of faces even of, you know, you have a whole idea of how the looks of the person are, how their demeanor is, how they walk, how they, you know, move throughout this world. And you're not in the book anymore. You're in this story. And when we can paint those stories for ourselves, especially, you know, now you get to walk and live this story as opposed to just, you know, just rambunctiously moving around and, you know,

looking at headlines and popping out 180 character tweet. Well, I guess it's 240 now, isn't it? I'm old. Man, you know, that, I think, that touches upon what Marshall McLuhan used to talk about, but digital feudalism. I think back in the 60s, he spoke about hot and cold mediums. And a hot medium is a way of consuming.

information that puts the idea in your head pre-conceived. It's like a happy meal. It comes with a cheeseburger and fries. You know what you're getting. So TV gives you the whole story without you having to do any work. Like you don't have to imagine the character. You don't have to imagine if I say to you she clicked her ruby red slippers three times. You know, you may think that they're green ruby slippers.

But when you watch the Wizard of Oz, it's, oh, they're red ruby slippers. And I see her pan down and they have straps. Like in some ways, it's a work of art because someone has imagined it for you. But in other ways, it is robbing you of the ability to create your own mental images. And I think that, well, what Marshall McLuhan said is the problem with that is it allows your imagination to atrophy. And then you kind of get where you are. And you just have these preconceived notions. And it's this blah, blah, blah, blaze world of black and gray.

and people stop thinking for themselves. And, you know, you can argue that that's kind of what the internet, at least on some level is, is like TV times a million because there's the images where you don't need to think. And that's right. You know, if you can distill it down to 240 or 140 or shorts right now, be it TikTok or on YouTube, is like, hey, here's 30 seconds. There you go.

Here's another 30 seconds. And then you've got it all. But it seems we're being, it seems that there is a, campaign of sorts, and I don't know if it's evolutionary or commercial that is trying to force us into ever smaller and smaller bite-sized chunks of reality. I would argue it's more commercial. Why would you say that? Well, because if, you know, if you think about it, you know, we've always exonerated the storytellers.

Yeah. You know, they've always, you know, rather that be the author or the orator or, you know, what have you, they've always been, you know, central figures to society. And I think that is kind of the ingrained human experience. I think the idea that you can now take that, distill it down, so you can have hundreds of these with, you know, just minutes of time, and you can profit off of all of these. I think that is one of the primary drivers.

Now, the amount of people who are able to profit off of it is also another driver for that, right? You know, we're economically driven, whether, you know, you want to be or not. And that's just kind of the reality of the situation we're in. Yeah, I would agree with that. And I have like a love-hate relationship, but like I love it.

I love that everybody can maybe make a short and get a million views and understand what that feels like. And, you know, in a way, it democratizes the Hollywood 15 minutes of fame. And maybe now, 15 minutes of fame. Everybody gets a minute of fame, you know? Or 15 seconds. 15 seconds, yeah. Yeah.

Well, I mean, what was that? It was Vine. Those were, that, that was the first kind of popular video format back in the day. And those were only six second videos, if I recall or something like that. I don't, I don't know Vine. I, uh, yeah. That was like the precursor to YouTube popularity. And it was just like little tiny snippets.

And, you know, I, I, think there's a lot to be said for entertainment value about something like that, obviously, right? Look how many people sit there and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll on our phones. In terms of value to actual, like, you know, growing a human, growing a culture, growing a community, growing a society, I think it's counterproductive because you can't just, you can't, and, you know, it's kind of a similar problem that we're facing on the political side of things is these are large problems that mean, you know, really honest communication and logical debate and reason debate. And or I can get a whole bunch of people pissed off and I can write 240 characters and I can get

more attention. So there's a, there's an inequality of value at the end of the day when it comes to, you know, how much time is being put into this first, you know, what's actually coming out of it on the other end for the value to society. And I think, you know, we're seeing it pretty by and large that you're not getting any good information from these types of sources. Yeah, you get entertainment, which is there's a lot to be said about entertainment. But at the end of the day, I mean, what are we doing? Right.

You know, it's fine to, and I'm all for somebody, you know, making a million bucks as a TikTok star doing. silly things. That's awesome. I think, you know, those silly things brought joy to people and good on you. But at the same time, we're as a society as a whole, there's not a platform. And podcasting's kind of getting there, right? But there's not a platform that really rewards the effort of the conversation of actually having these law-informed discussions, trying to actually get to roots of problems, trying to find solutions, talking about solutions. why they may or may not work, et cetera. Those things aren't rewarded in society.

And at any echelons, besides, you know, this kind of emerging podcastcape. Yeah, I agree. I heard a recent, I heard a recent comparison. And they were saying that the tower, Twitter is sort of like the Tower of Babel, in that there's all these things, like different cultures. and language is just being put together in this giant tower. And on the bottom, you just have this tower

where it's just chaos. There's everybody there. No one's really paying attention to these people on the bottom. They have two or three, you know, like likes or whatever. And then as you rise up to the top, like on the top, you would have someone like Elon Musk that can tweet out, I like red cars. And it gets a million or like three million views.

And it gets disseminated down the tower. And it's almost like a game of telephone by the time. Oh, what he's really saying is, that he hates Ted Cruz because he had a red shirt on, you know, or, you know, like, but it's this interesting idea. And that was the beginning of the comparison. And the end of the comparison was like, okay, if it's like the Tower of Babel, does that mean it's destroying our society? Or does that mean it is a device that that has destroyed society? And if you look at the way in which, I mean, you could make that argument. I don't know if that's true or not. But I, I, I, I, you could argue that the

Twitter is a device that has brought about in an effort that was told to unite us has brought about chaos that is kind of destroying us. Well, I mean, you could certainly make that argument. And, you know, I'd be happy to make that argument probably six days out of the seven out of the week, right? Right. And then there's the one day where you can also make the argument that, you know, the kind of ability to share and digest information at such a.

a global scale. Yeah. You definitely can have some benefit as well. But yeah, I would say more so towards the detracting side simply because, again, you know, you're not engaging in a great conversation on Twitter. It doesn't matter what sort of skills you have in language. You know, comedians can be quippy and funny. Politicians can be divisive and offer their tribe.

and sports fans can be hoo-hura. But you're not getting philosophical conversations. You're not getting artists being able to share works of art in a setting where, you know, yeah, somebody might see it, but they're not going to sit and digest it, you know, like somebody would at a gallery. And so it's very limiting to a lot of aspects of society. As an information source, it's fascinating.

I have a sentiment analysis bot that I've built for Bitcoin, and it runs on Twitter. And so it's just constantly monitoring Twitter to see what people are talking about Bitcoin. And then I have, you know, words that are positive and negative, and it just keeps a running sentiment of what's going on, you know, at the Twitter scale of Bitcoin and what people are thinking about it. And it's interesting because you see correlations to prices and other, you know, like when big data or like when a big story breaks or whatnot, you'll see the amount of sentiment go up, but you'll see the ratios of sentiments stay relatively the same for most things. Until you see like, you know, like Bitcoin just dropped dramatically. Then, you know, the sentiment went from bouncing from, you know, anywhere from minus 100 to plus 100 or in that range to thousands of, of, of, of, you know, of, of, you know, of, you know, of, of, you know, of. negative comments. And so you get

to dissect information and from a different perspective, which is really neat from, you know, a data guy. But in terms of like improving our society, yikes. That's

I don't think so. Does your Twitter bot have laser eyes? No, no laser eyes. You know, I'm very much of the of the mind just because you can. Doesn't mean you should. That's super funny. Agreed. I, I, um, what, just staying with that for a minute.

Like, it makes me wonder, do you, can you see trends with that analysis before big price drops or, or can. Yeah. Yeah, typically. What can you see? Typically, because what's going to happen is there's always, uh, there's always, uh, there's always going to be a subset of people who are really in tuned really tuned in they follow everything you know PR releases from every company etc etc and those are always going to be the first bits of information that start off these little like cascades like you threw a pebble in a pool

and the ripples start to expand out now as those ripples expand out they get more and more people and build more and more ripple and so you kind of see like epicenters of these things occur and if you track the epicenters over time you'll see that the epicenters perceive price movements pretty, pretty correlated. So, you know, you could do a lot with that information, right? You can have trading box, which I do. And you, but, you know, you can analyze that information to kind of see how, how information flows through, you know, society as, as it is today.

And it's fast. It's so fast. It's, and it's gotten faster. back when I because I've been doing automation stuff and bot stuff for quite some time when I first started monitoring data like this you know you would see like

an epicenter and then you would see like it slowly kind of grow and you could see viral points and things like that but now things are so connected there's so many you know networks of people sharing stuff and whatnot that is you know you see these things spark off and then they're boom they're

they're in the zeitgeist almost you know within 24 hours typically yeah see that that brings me to another slice of twitter like it's clearly used to foment riots and information and disinformation and it is a world of propaganda genius if you want to instill a narrative or a worldview or some sort of information, be it true or false, into the general public. If you think about it as like a nervous system and you can get out information fast, like you said, faster than you've ever, we've ever seen before. Like it can't, it could be a machine or it could be a instrument for extreme awesomeness. And in some ways it is.

It's just, and then it gets back to the bots. Like there's clearly bots out there that are meant to manipulate, some for profit, some for propaganda. And do you think that when I thought, when I hear Elon and, you know, the Twitter board fighting about bots and fake accounts, this particular idea of bots didn't enter my zeitgeist or my mind. But yeah, bots are pretty effective at doing the things they're programmed to do. What other kind of bots are out there that maybe people haven't thought about? All sorts of things. Back when I first got involved in the whole bot thing, you know, it was, I was trying to build bots to, you know, build social media cloud. And so I had, you know, and I know more advanced bots than people who were doing much more advanced stuff than this.

But I would have bots that would go out and create a social media profile, propagate it with pictures. and then have a series of texts, you know, and to pick from from 100 or 200 different things, and it would just constantly tweet out. And it would, and then, you know, another thing that I do is like if somebody mentions philosophy, for instance, they'll get a message from my Mr. Wizard account. Says, hey, would you be my friend? And if they acknowledge my friend request, then it says, hey, George, thanks for, thanks for being my friend on Twitter. By the way, I just wrote this new book, No Absolutes, a framework for life.

Would you mind take a look at the preview and let me know what you think about it? So now I can effectively be, you know, three or four different people in a marketing team. And I can duplicate that process by just copying the code and having it run on a different account. And so now imagine if you're doing this for a narrative for propaganda. And so there's advanced, very advanced systems out there that will go off and they'll scrape, images from Facebook profiles from Instagram and they'll recreate profiles on other social media sites using those you know real person you know and even a lot of their thoughts and whatnot but then they'll interlace you know propaganda messages or you'll see that account always respond

to somebody who's in a position of power or authority like the president or something like that and there's all sorts of these things for every single social social media platform. And it's almost to the point where, unless you're a big brand, you really, or you have a lot of friends or a huge network, it's the only way to kind of compete in this type of marketplace. Or as you know, it takes three years of, you know, consistency, consistency, consistency. And who has some time for consistency anymore for three years, right? Yeah, right?

It's like a lifetime. Yeah, it's, it's so fascinating in so many ways. And it takes a lot of mental horsepower to stay focused on something when you're not getting the results that you want to get or that you think that maybe you deserve. However, I think that that's something that everybody should should know is whether you believe you can, or you believe you can't, either way you're right. If you want to be successful, you have to continue to be consistent, like you said. And I think that gets back to our words and our mental framework of presenting things in a way, using the right language and presenting ideas that are realistic, even though the goal you might want to have is unrealistic. If you can take these realistic steps one foot in front of the other, then you can reach unrealistic. expectations in a lifetime.

It might not happen in a month or six months, but the path is right there and it can be done, which sometimes I get caught up in and I'm wondering if how you think about this. When we choose our words wisely, you know, the frameworks we have for life, we stumble upon this problem of nothing is true. What do you do? like if we we never know everything about anything so how can we continue to move forward in life and when we're faced with that particular obstacle i personally find it liberating and free that means because that you know if because i remember when i was growing up um i really wanted to be

an inventor uh i had it in my head it was one of the first things i wanted to do as a kid right and I remember my grandpa at the time who you know he actually had some patents and stuff a really smart guy you know he made a comment in passing and it was there's nothing left to discover and it destroyed me as a kid destroyed me because I was like oh man there's nothing left to discover and I was like well what can I invent well turns out there's a lot left to discover I think he just said it in passing just because it was, you know, it was a lull in technology. You know, VHS had just come out. Everybody had a color television. You know, the internet was there. What else is going to happen, right? Yeah.

But, yeah, so having that freedom of knowing that, yeah, while there is a lot of really cool things that are pretty consistent that we, you know, we've built our society upon, there's a whole universe out there, things that we're just unaware of, unexplored. And I think part of the human condition is we have an innate, you know, desire to want to explore. And that's expressed through artistically for people. It's expressed through adventure for other people. It's expressed through the books that people consume for some, you know, et cetera, et cetera. but we there is there is an ingrained kind of behavior of exploration to the human condition and when you have the freedom of being able to look under every rock for your own perspective on it

and not have to just accept that all rock under every rock it looks exactly the same and this is what you're going to see that's a freeing and liberating thing for me personal yeah i would agree And I think taking that type of perspective, yes, it can be disconcerting at times if you look at it from the perspective of, oh my gosh, well, maybe everybody's full of shit. What are we doing here? We just kind of, we tread in water? What's going on? Yeah, those types of things can cause some existential dread for people. But, you know, again, it's those perspective shifts of, well, yeah.

But at the same time, that means that there's land on the horizon somewhere and we just have to pick your direction and we'll probably find it. You know, and we don't have to sit here in treadwater. And so, you know, or looking out at like the political landscaping, like, is this all that we got? You know, can we not do any better? Well, if you have that idea that, you know, these things are hard truths that are just absolutes that are part of society, death and taxes. Yeah, that's going to be debilitating in its own right. But now if you can look at that and you can be like, you know, hey, there's a whole bunch of crazy people doing crazy things. And I think there are different ways to do this.

Now all of a sudden, you know, that dread goes away. So, you know, it's a process. But through that process is definitely you gain a multitude of perspectives. And through that, it allows deliberation of thought and action. Yeah. Yeah. That's really well said. And I hope that more people will see the idea of the limits of truth as freeing. Because the opposite of that is people that I've learned that people who say, look, I know I'm an expert in this are usually full of shit. And I think that you could make the argument and I try to do so a lot. the majority of experts are just narrow-minded. You know, they have studied this one thing their whole life and not to take anything away from the true experts out there

that have studied and gone through and experienced so much stuff. However, it seems like authoritarianism is a form of absolutism, which is a form of truth. Hey, this is, and maybe it's their truth. You know, our history books are a form of our truth. But our history is different from, a different culture's history. In fact, the individual's history is different from everybody else's history. And that's when you begin seeing that, it should be liberating. It should be like,

wow, that means that I really don't have to listen to the person's an authority because they're not really in authority. They really don't know. And maybe I should challenge them. And if I challenge them, maybe I'll learn something about me or maybe I will learn why they think that or maybe I will learn how they got to that place? Ultimately, you're challenging yourself. Yeah. Right. Because if you, and again, we touched on this in another one, but, you know, the word

belief, it's a very dangerous word. If I believe somebody, you know, I'm foregoing my ability to reason about this situation. I'm accepting their expertise as an absolute truth. that's where we get into a lot of hangups in the world. You know, we have, and this ties back in everything we've been talking about. You know, if you have education levels the way they are, et cetera, and all these things, well, when you combine all these factors, you get a lot of problems at scale, which we're seeing now. Yeah.

I think of it as like a balloon that you squeeze. Like education used to be this, you know, you squeeze. the balloon and we got education where there was all this debate and there was all this like a hive of buzzing bees trying to figure out a world that we can get honey out of you know and and then all of a sudden someone's like hey take it easy this is how it is and they push down on that balloon and now the the bubble comes out on this side and it's it's the entrepreneur and it is the kid who's smoking some bongload in his basement challenging his teacher you know and it's this it's this idea of exploration has moved from the quote unquote best educational places to maybe the lower

underground levels now. And maybe it's been like that for a long time. But, you know, I, I think it is a liberating experience. And I hope more people choose to challenge authority. And maybe that's what's going on now is that that's what's bubbling up from underneath. If you just peel back the onion and you say, wow, there's shirks like a lot of populist uprisings everywhere. You know, is it, is it because of politics or is it because the world has been captured with someone else's truth? Well, I think it's definitely, definitely captured with somebody else's truth, right? When we look at, you know, just kind of how all this is unfolding, you know, the individual

is never represented. The whole idea behind, you know, this whole thing is that we have representation for the individual, but if you go talk to any individual, I would hazard to guess that up in the upper 90%. Most of them are going to feel unrepresented just about a fair chunk of scales in their life, right?

Yeah. And the reality is, is most people, you're on your own. You're with your family, your community. you know, if you're lucky to have good friends, you know, that's your group. Those are, that's your tribe of people who, those are how you solve your problems. Those are how you get by. Those are your emotional, you know, sticks in the ground. Those are everything that we use to navigate this life.

And then you are beholding to some magical power that you really don't have any attachment to, but yet can change your life in an instant. that nobody likes to be told what to do, especially on a scale like that. And I think because we have the ability to have, you know, just global communication, I think a lot of people are realizing,

hey, other people think this way too. Well, now I need to figure out, well, who should I listen to? And I think this is where we're getting a lot of these, you know,

this new movement of things. Yeah. I the more that I've thought about this and it seems to me that just maybe it's a process of getting older maybe it's a process of reading or maybe it's a process of talking to interesting people like you and learning and changing my ideas

the more I go back into history and I think to myself like what a load of bullshit like how do we get here you know and and when I start thinking about that I go well I guess on some level, if you want people to work together, you have to give them a story that they can all get behind. But it's that changing story that seems to have not just misguided us, but kind of hurt us a little bit. Absolutely. And I mean, if you look back throughout history, it's usually those stories are derived from people who are in positions of authority. Yeah. Who want to maintain and grow those positions of authority. You know, the people versed the, the heads of state,

the governments, the elites, whatever, you know, the throne, wherever you go in history, it's pretty much the same story. It's, yeah, well, maybe for a generation where, you know, it was a populist uprising and it was a person of the people for that group of people, you know, it's all hunky-dory, but once you fast forward a couple generations out of that, it's usually misery for a fair chunk of people. And when those people get upset about that, you know, all of a sudden you have these divisive tactics that come into play. And, you know, those divisive tactics are everything from, you know, the stadium gladiatorial matches, you know, much akin to our sports of today, you know, to these,

these movements that say us first them. And that us first them, if any of those people ever remove themselves from the emotional reaction standpoint and just had a reasonable conversation, a rational conversation with each other, they would always find that they agree on much more than they disagree upon.

I mean, even when you take these people who say, yes, I'm left, yes, I'm right, by and large, if you get them in the same room and you're having a dinner party, most people are going to agree that, yeah, it's good for humans to have a good life, the pursuit of happiness, liberty, freedom. At the individual level, you're not going to get somebody being,

no, I think we need more state authority. Nobody really ever says that, except for the people who are in the positions of authority. So, yeah, it is a massive. damaging to society. Yeah, and sometimes when I see riots happening on TV, you can see how that particular narrative can be spun in multiple directions, but the one thing that's accomplishing is continuing to move forward the existing power base.

Like, let's say you see a group of people rioting. You can market that to one group as, hey, you should be afraid of these people. Look what they're doing to your stuff. and then you simultaneously market to the other group that's doing it like, yeah, you guys are standing up for things. But both of those narratives do well for the existing power structure because both sides need them. It's the old divide and conquer and that what would you do without us?

And we need to take your money so we can fix this thing for you. But in reality, the group that's rioting is on the same side as the people that think they're afraid. Now, maybe if someone burns down your business, they're not. They may not seem to be on your side, but they're rioting because everything has been stolen from them. And they're pissed off and they don't know how to deal with it. And the same group that's upset about it wants to riot too, but they just haven't done it yet. So there's got to be some sort of way to crack that narrative to bring people together.

Have you ever thought about maybe some of those things or what a path going forward that could unite people? Well, I think one part of the problem is it's not just divide and conquer. It's divide, conquer, but don't look at me. Because, I mean, just look at the past couple of years. We had the single greatest transfer of wealth that this world has ever known. And it happened in some of the most turbulent times for the general populace, right? those are the types of situations where it's like, hey, by the way, these people are anti-vaxxers, you should hate them.

And then, you know, by the way, you guys should hate them because they're just sheep a part of the system. Don't look at our billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars and profits over here. Go off and hate each other. Because if we're not actually talking about the real problem, we're not, you know, when it, when it comes to like the riots or things like that, yeah, a real problem is the guy got his building burnt down, but that's a relative effect of a greater problem. And the, the relative media companies or respective media companies take those little bits of relative truths and magnify them into, you know, these juxtaposed massive, you know, points of contention with people.

again, and then that's just to miss the larger conversation, the root problem, which is the reality of the world that we live in is the socioeconomic divide is foundational to all of these problems. If, you know, and then you have the things like equality of outcome, which is crazy. That would just further these socioeconomic divides. You have the people on like the WF saying, you know, you'll own nothing and like it. And these are the wrong solutions to the problem. They're going to just further divide people and spawn more and more angst and hatred. If we actually talk about the problem, which is the inequalities in life, which is where all of these, you know, these situations are stemmed from, the inequalities, we can actually solve those problems. But it requires a sacrifice from the people who traditionally don't like to sacrifice this.

And that sacrifice is, you know, this insane pursuit for profits above all else is truly where the sacrifice comes. And it's not to say that profits go away. Capitalism is a great aspect, can be a great aspect of a society. it does have the ability to raise people out of poverty, you know, these TikTokers, for instance, like we were talking about. That's a great part of capitalism. You know, some kid who just has a phone in the backwoods, middle, or nowhere all of a sudden can extricate himself from a poor situation

and empower his friends, family, and community and loved one. That's awesome. That should never be discounted. but when, you know, that same kid has to sign up to a conglomer group of people and get promotion in order to get that viral thing and hack off 20% here, 10% firm manager, you know, another 30% for taxes at the end of the day, if they're lucky, if they did it right in a business mindset, you know, all these other little things right here. Problems arise and not discussing those problems, let alone the baser problem,

which is why should somebody who grows up eight blocks away from somebody else have all the ability to go to a school that doesn't try to indoctrinate them that teaches them how to reason through the world, teaches them applicable skills, you know, and then provides them with a network of opportunity. But yet, you know, just a few blocks away, you have zero of that. In fact, you have the opposite in many instances. Those are problems. And when you don't tackle those problems, all the other problems are going to stay there. They're not going to go away. It doesn't matter what top-down solution you put on them. Because the root problem is, you know, you can cover up the crack in the foundation as much as you want.

It's still a crack in the foundation. Yeah, and there's really no incentive to pour a new foundation when, you know, the people are going to. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah, it's interesting when you look at it from that particular angle. Like I, and like you said, I guess this is a situation. It's not new. It's, it's, it's the existing power structure that just recycles itself over and over and again. And in some ways, if we look at the consolidation of power and we look at the transfer of wealth and we look at it as a, historical issue. I guess, you know, the best predictor of future behavior is past relevant behaviors. So, you know, we could see what's happening here as just an attempt to destroy the last remaining avenues of wealth, like the food industry. Like you could argue the food industry is being disrupted right now and is in a hostile takeover. If we look at farmers and we look at, you know,

GMOs that are all of a sudden, you know, it used to be, they wanted to be labeled. And now it's like you can't even know about them. Right. Now it's like you're going to eat some bugs and people are buying farmland and people around the world are being pushed into an area where they have to either capitulate or not do it. On a side scale, too, like if you look at what happened with gas prices, like, here we're going to run this thing up to eight bucks so that we can bring it down to four and you'll feel good about it when it should be a dollar eighty five you know it's it's just we're going to push it super far okay we'll bring it back a little bit and then you guys just fight about this other dumb stuff over here while we've already raised it up to you know 50% more than we wanted to yeah and and that's replete through all industries all commodities um and you know the food one's an interesting one uh you know you have Sri Lanka.

You know, the result of those food policies, those GMOs moving in, the removal of the ability to use certain fertilizers led to basically, I think it was like 30, 40% of the crop

that they were normally used to. Now all of these farmers can't afford to pay their leases for their equipment, for the workers, for all this stuff. They have to give up their land on pennies on the dollar. Well, who's there to pick it up on pennies on the dollar. You know, that's a problem. And they obviously recognized it as a problem

because they went in and threw out the power structure. You have the same thing happening in Norway right now. You know, these, and these are old games being played again. You know, we could go through history and we can find examples very similar to this where, you know, the taxes or the stipends for the crown from the farmers was raised to such a point where the farmer becomes insolvent and all of a sudden, well, guess who's there to pick up the property and take it over? The crown.

So, you know, it ebbs and flows, right? And I think we see these cycles, you know, they're not true cycles, of course. It's kind of like a toilet bowl, I think. Smaller and smaller circles. Small and smaller circles. But we see these things. complete throughout history. And then, you know, with the right perspective, it's not hard to see them playing themselves out in the world of today. Yeah, that's interesting. Speaking of the crown and land, I read an article, I should probably try to put a link to it.

I'll try to do that in the show notes, but it talked about the farmers. Is it the Netherlands? Is that, is that? And they were talking to this guy. And he says, you know, while some of it is about food, another part is about our land. Like, they want to take all of our. land back so they can build housing there for for these people or that that group or whatever and you're like oh gosh that makes so much more sense what better way to seize the land and build stuff the same way

maybe a chinese model goes in and says we're going to put this here because this is the best spot for it well you can't do it because the farmers on it well we'll just rain we'll just say they can't use fertilizer now they can't farm it and since they have a lease they can't pay so we'll just take it back it's it's interesting and then if you factor in sri lanka or even gana for that matter I think Ghana a few years ago was energy independent. And they said, oh, you got to put these ESG scores in. And so they're like, okay. And now they're completely destitute.

You know, and if you were to look at it from that perspective, if I were to put my tinfoil hat on or maybe just my thinking cap on, whichever one you want to call it, you could say, wow, there sure are a lot of these third world countries that are industrializing. They're not going to need our help. They're going to be independent. and that means our profit's going to be down. That means our power that the world's going to be down.

Maybe we should force them to implement these, you know, procedures that are going to ruin themselves, and that will allow us to take it back over. I mean, I don't think that's too far-fetched to think about. Well, no, and I think there's plenty of evidence that suggests that that's exactly what's happening in some instances. You know, there's other evidence. When I was traveling down in Central and South America,

I spent a lot of time in Costa Rica. When I was first in Costa Rica, you know, lovely populace, everybody was fit because, you know, it was the middle of the jungle and you couldn't get anywhere besides walking through the jungle. As I was there for quite a few years, the first thing I saw was that, you know, the police force got all new cars and a helicopter donated to it. And then all of a sudden there was a new stadium being built that was donated, a new bridge that was. being built that was donated. Oh, who's building it? Chinese slave labor. Who donated it? The Chinese. After all this stuff's built, after all their goodwill is instituted, you know, then comes the payment. We want access to your fishing waters. Not only that, but every single grocery store, hardware store, convenience store in these countries turned into Chinese own. Why? Because they can,

And they get cheaper goods. And now they just signed a free trade agreement with Costa Rica. And they already have the connections in China to ship in all of this highly produced garbage. And they can offer it at a cheaper price than any of the locals could. So they just ran rampant through all these countries. This was up and down the Pacific Coast. And I was traveling from 2007 to 2014, 2013-ish. and I saw this happen in multiple countries.

And so, you know, there's different games that get played too, but all these games are just insidious mechanisms to gain more power, more leverage, more control, and then, you know, when instead of having to donate, next time you just ask. Because nobody wants, because now there's all sorts of kickbacks in play, right? And so now you just ask. And then if somebody says, no, well, there's somebody else that's going to say yes because of all the kickbacks that are in play. And so the next person comes in.

And, you know, we've seen this from that kind of level. We've seen it with regime changes instituted by countries. We've seen it, you know, up and down the scale of society. And again, these are old games. There is nothing new in these in these. handbook. It's an old handbook and it's an effective handbook. You know, how to

raise an authoritarian regime seems to work pretty consistently throughout the years of humanity. Now, that's an interesting conversation as why that may be, but it definitely seems to be. Yeah, it's like, it's like you're knocking on the wall. I'm like, you know what?

I have built this beautiful, giant horse statue. I'd like to put in the center of your community. There's nothing inside of there, so don't look. worry about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're going to put it right in the center right there. You guys just crash out, no problem. And to that point, you know, all of those, like in downtown San Jose, all of a sudden, one of the districts turned into a Chinatown. No, I'm, you know, nothing against that or anything like that. I mean, people are going to play the hands that they're a dealt and, you know, it is what it is. But that is what has happened. And, you know, to turn a blind eye to things like that, to all of these different things. Well, now, you're just resolving yourself to read the 240 character Twitter headlines, and that's how you're going to make your decision. I feel like the Chinese were looking at the Jewish diaspora.

I've been like, you guys almost got this right, but not quite. That's pretty cute. Hang on. Let me show you how this really works that way. Hold on. Hold my beer. Yeah. They're like, see this book right here?

This book is from like, you know, before 3,000 BC or whatever. Like, you guys kind of got the diaspora, but we're. going to show you how to do it the right way. It's, it's, yeah, I think it was President Z or something, it was like black cat, white cat, they all catch mice, you know? I remember the first time hearing that, I'm just having to sit down and be like,

okay, what is he talking about our system? He's talking about capitalism versus communes. Like, but it was everything. He's like, basically, yeah, it's everything. Like, it doesn't matter which system you use even though. Yeah, because they're all, they're all corruptible. Whether you're playing the black cat or the white cat,

You just play both of them. And as long as you're playing a longer game, when that game ends, you win. And to China's credit, you know, they definitely plays a long game probably better than any nation state has to date as far as I'm concerned. Now, that's dangerous. Of course, we know where that leads and what that leads to. And, you know, the crazy thing is the only thing I think that really stops it is actually conversation, is the open sharing of ideas. Because again, if everybody's locked into their headlines and their TikTok scrolling and all these things, they're not going to be aware that the world is changing rapidly around them.

Even though it's pretty apparent that it is, you know, people are just content to continue on because they're not getting any more information. They're not hearing those different words. And the words that are being chosen are definitely being chosen with purpose, with intent, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point. There is a lot of words being chosen. There is a lot of ideas changing right in front of you. But if you're so locked into your screen or you're so locked into a cultural fight that challenges you on an emotional level,

you're not seeing the big picture. You're not seeing the fact that the person around you, just because they wear a different color, is still part of you or still part of a system you care about or a system of ideas or a future that you believed in. Or a great conversation you could have, you know, a relationship or friendship. Yeah, yeah. You know, and you could talk to most people who've lived a good bit of life,

actually lived a good bit of life, and they have friends from every walk. Yeah. You know, they have the one guy who their wife hates for them to go meet up with that guy because he's just an animal. And no matter what, how good her husband is, that guy is an animal. But everybody in the family loves him. He's Uncle Ted, right? You know, but when your husband goes, hangs out with him alone.

Oh, shit. Yeah. Yeah. But yet that's still a valuable relationship for everybody involved, you know, so long as it doesn't go. completely off the rails, which does happen, of course. But, you know, having those relationships from all walks of life, I mean, that's an enrichment of life. Those are experiences, you know, a guy who served 20 years in the Navy. You didn't serve 20 years in the Navy.

You have no idea what that's like, but he can tell you. And you can have a perspective of it and you can have an appreciation of it. Now when you meet somebody else who spent 20 years in the Navy who might have a different opinion of you, you have a common bond between you're like oh yeah I know this guy who you know he was a submariner oh yeah I never do that those submarine guys are crazy you know and now all of a sudden you have a conversation and that conversation can go nowhere can you know blossom into beautiful relationships and friendships and friendships uh and without those connections without that ability to do that we're just we're we're cogs in a rail yeah

some of the best conversations you can have are with people you disagree with, right? Like, oh, absolutely. The best way, I mean, it's pretty rewarding when you can talk to someone and come away with a different perspective that you can use. And I don't think you can do that if you were set to, if you have a narrow mind and you already have decided that I can't talk to this person because they like this other person. I spoke with that guy yesterday that I'm hoping to get on my podcast, but he, he, uh, call me and is like, hey, I noticed you talked to this other person. So I'm going to have to

ask you some questions before we talk. And I was thinking to myself, like, we're going to come on, man. Like, I'm excited to talk to him because I can't, I can't wait to hear what he has to say. And like, that might be an awesome, challenging conversation. And it's an opportunity for me to say, look, maybe I spoke to this person you don't agree with, but does that mean I'm a bad person? Or are you at a point in your life where you can't talk to somebody because they talk to somebody you don't agree with? And if so, why? You know, why would you feel that way? Is there something happened to you? Or, I mean, why do you think that? That's an opportunity for awesomeness. It is an opportunity for awesomeness. But most people, you know, they don't want to be challenged.

Yeah. You know, because with the, with the propensity for challenge comes the opportunity for defeat. Wow. Can you say that again? That was beautiful. With the propensity for challenge comes the opportunity for defeat. that is that's so true and yeah well and you know and with that you know especially on like a public forum or something like that it's one thing if you're in a bar but when you're in a public forum all of a sudden you know that can carry all sorts of connotations depending on what sort of group of associations one has you know if you're supposed to be a righteous a hero for some cause and you get blown out of the water by somebody who's pragmatic and you know logical what does that say about your cause? What does that say about your position to, you know, be in that role? You know, people stand to potentially lose a lot of not just social credit, but, you know, economic capital resources, relationships, all sorts of things just because of how ingrained we are into this tribalism, you know, us for them type idea. Yeah.

What happens if you have built an identity for yourself? and then all of a sudden you talk to someone who may or may not be significant in your life and they push down your identity. Like that means you have to go back and start to thinking about all these other things. Hey, maybe you ruined that relationship with someone you loved because of this idea.

But now you have to revisit that and maybe apologize or... Oh, yeah. You know, and back to the book, no absolutes. Yeah. You know, that's another one of those liberating and freeing premises is that, you know, you're not tying yourself

into these ideas intentionally. And you're trying to look at them all from as great a perspective as you can. And you're trying to be aware of all of these angles and, you know, getting locked into something like that. And when you do that, all of a sudden, you know, those evaluations don't become problematic. They become a way to navigate. Yeah. I want to read.

I have it right here somewhere. Oh, yeah. I wanted to read a paragraph in this particular. particular subject. For everybody watching this, what the book looks like, it's really freeing. It's like a little manual to, to pull open and just navigate. It's like a map in a way. Like that's how I've used it. Like, I'm a huge fan of maps. And I think that everything can be a map, a mental map, a neural map, a network, a, you know, and when you can find a set of a set of a key to a map, okay, well, this, this means this. And you can set that up to think about. Yeah, like a legend. And I'm speaking to Mr. Wizard, the legend right now. You know, the legend that wrote the book. Okay, so this is the part what we began talking about today.

And it is called Choose Your Words Wisely. I want to read this opening paragraph right here and get your thoughts on it. Our words define our reality. They shape the lens that we view the world through. And consequently, the lens that the world views us through. This interplay creates physical changes in the mind, some quickly and some over longer periods of time, similar to the way we form routines and at the extremes addictions. Our words form the perspective in which we view the world because that is how

we are constantly defining it to ourselves. It is the foundation and all our possible experiences, emotions, assumptions, interactions, and they are built on this foundation. If we start at the beginning and we say that our words define our reality. They shape the lens that we view the world through. And consequently, the lens that the world views us through. What do you mean when you say the lens that the world views us through? Well, if I was to go on Twitter every day and proclaim that, you know, ants were going to take over the world, you know, and that was, and that's what I said on a daily basis, everybody would be like, oh, that's the crazy guy who thinks ants are going to take over the world. That's, you know, that's not who I am at any stretch of the imagination, but that's the way I'm perceived because those are the words that I'm putting out to be received.

So that's that lens that, you know, it's a two-way mirror, essentially. It reflects back to you whatever you put out to it. Yeah, that's a, yeah. What, are you going to say something else right there? No, no, no, no. I had a stream of consciousness, but, you know. Yeah, I hear you. I hear you.

I often, when I read that, I started thinking to myself too, like, you know, we are, if we look at ourselves as not coming into this world, but coming out of it, then maybe we're a lens in which the greater power sees the world through. And that would mean that everybody around us is a lens. Like, you know, like you said, when you say something to people, they reflect it back to you. But it's the way they're seeing. Like if you look at it, this is the way people see me. Then that makes sense. And we have lenses in our eyes. So why wouldn't everybody be a lens like that?

And another interesting point in that is that not all reflections are created equal, right? Depending on that not all reflections are created equal. So depending on the orientation, the nature of that person that's reflecting that back, you know, it could be a distorted perception. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, there's just like everyone. everything else, as above so below, and the multitudes of layers to these things are, you know, seemingly infinite and can be applied in conceptual form to, you know, most aspects of everyday life.

So, yeah, and to your point, lenses in the eyes, we use lenses to, you know, to view the universe. We, you know, the idea of a lens is something that most people never even think about because they're, you know, They're so ubiquitous in society and as part of the human experience. But at the end of the day, it's a very interesting piece of technology, whether you call it a biological piece of technology or manufactured lens. You know, because it is the way, depending on how the lens is shaped, is going to determine the nature of that reflection, of the image that's being perceived. And, you know, just like most everything else,

in the human experience. Are you familiar with Hormesis? It sounds familiar, but please, I don't, it doesn't sound, I don't think I could tell you what it is. So Hormesis, the idea is that, you know, through exposure, you gain a greater, you grow. So like, for instance, you know, when a kid eats a mud pie as an infant, you know, that's actually good for them, even though, yeah, it's a bunch of bacteria, it's all this stuff, but the exposure to that allows their immune system to grow. kind of same idea behind like resistance training. You know, I'm tearing down the muscles and, you know, and then allowing them to grow by providing

the proper environment, you know, for that. Okay. So this, that idea, you know, seemingly applies to just about everything when you're talking about growing a situation and tying it all the way back to our first conversation about you asked me, you know, you know, is it necessarily? for society to go through these types of struggles in order to grow. And I, you know, the idea of Hormesis suggests that, yes, you know, we need these confrontations, these adversities, these resistances, these debates, these, you know, and you could take it

to a violent extreme or you can take it to a civil extreme. But I think we need all of that in order to grow these different pathways, whether it be an internal pathway or, you know, a society. vital pathway or a communal pathway or what have you. Yeah, that's, that brings up two points to mind. First off, you know, if we, if we do see ourselves through the, the world sees us through different lenses and you look at it like a set of funhouse mirrors and you get a distorted view. Sometimes you maybe get a distorted view of the way people see you.

Or maybe your view is distorted, but so you sometimes you see yourself as like the short mirror mirror where you're all fat and stubby. And the time you see yourself all sucked in and skinny. Body dysmorphia, right? Yeah. Yeah. And you know what? Like it would be silly to say, I hate that mirror.

I hate the way that mirror shows me, you know. But in a way it's a gift because you get to see yourself in a way you never have before. The same way you get to see yourself in someone else's opinion of you, regardless of you like it or not. Like it's kind of a gift because you get to see a side of you that you can't see yourself. Well, and it helps you grow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

What if that view is partial? Like, it's an image of you, you know? It is. Right. And if you don't like it, what are you going to do about it? Right. I mean, you're going to change it. You know, if you truly don't like it, you're going to go out of your way.

It'll be like, well, I don't want to see if you're perceived as that guy. Yeah. Like maybe you do like it. Maybe you're like, wow, I look really good that way. I should try to see myself that way more often. Right. Yeah, the opposite effect is very, is ever present as well. What do you mean by that? Say that, I like that.

The opposite effect is ever present as well. Yeah, what is that? Can you break that down for me? So just like you said, if I'm seeing myself in a good light and I get that reflection back, like somebody says, man, you're just rocking it today. It is really awesome. You go, wow, I like that way that that feels. So, you know, I'm going to go off and I'm going to spend more of my time and invest more of my in time to get that feeling back. And that, you know, so the ever presence is that while you could take the negative from it,

there's also the positives that are there from it as well. Yeah, that's awesome. And I think the more that I think about that, I hope people are taking a lot away from this. And if you're with us this far in the conversation, take you just a few more minutes to think about that because that, There's some real growth that comes from there. And you can see that as a gift when you are shown an image of you that you may not be familiar with.

Don't automatically think it's bad. Don't automatically fall into the emotional trap of wanting to say something that comes to your mind. Just mow it over for a minute and think, hey, is there something good in there? I like to look. Or I like the way that sounded or, hey, that's funny. and what's funny about it and try to find your own truth in the non-truth of the other, if that kind of makes sense. I think you can really learn.

And even if it's still negative, take the positive twist on it is, well, what do I have to do to not be perceived that way again? Or not be seen that way or not show myself that way. And, you know, this kind of ties back to words are important. and you know choosing those words wisely will greatly alter the perception of you in the wider world in your social groups and in your you know your community online yeah yeah and maybe not it doesn't even it can be the words I think let me try to say like this sometimes people say things to me and I automatically react to them, but I have a choice of interpreting their words,

and maybe that's a way of using my words wisely, is that I don't have to take their words, but I can interpret their words in a different way. Maybe that's a different way to, maybe that's what you want, the ways you mean by using your words wisely. Absolutely. It's not just what comes out of your mouth.

That's what you think to yourself. Hmm. And probably more so what you think to yourself, because what comes out of your mouth is much going to be a reflex. to that unless you're live on the internet just going off the cup. Which is an interesting format. And I, you know, I appreciate that you wanted to do it live because, yeah, you can sit there and edit anything for days and make yourself look like a wizard.

But if you can actually perform it, then, you know, everybody loves a great magic show. Everybody loves the comedian. and everybody loves that sense of, that sense of potential failure and then utter success because it was pulled off. That's, you know, that's something to admire in somebody, really, I think,

is if you can have a real conversation, be authentic to, you know, your audience, what you're trying to, the point you're trying to get across to yourself. You know, that's going to change the nature of all conversations that you have for one. But, you know, it's also going to think everybody around you better forward as well. Those things kind of have a trickle, a real trickle down effect.

Yeah, I agree. I was speaking to another podcaster a while back, and he had mentioned that he, when he talks to people, he has found a better format in his view is that you reach out to the person you want to talk to and you say, look, here's how I do it. I offer this particular recorded so that if there's anything that you said that you don't like, we can take it down. And like, I admire that 100%, but we're opposed in that I have enough confidence in the conversation that, but let's just say what we mean.

And if somebody says something they don't mean, I think that that can be easily cleared up, especially if you're not like trying to be like a get-you person. I'm going to clip this and make it this way. I have no interest in doing that. And I think real conversations allow for people to make mistakes, but then fix those mistakes in the same conversation. Right. And I think if you're being authentic, people recognize real conversation.

Right. And the idea that most people don't want to do it live, well, not most, but a good chunk of those people are coming from the perspective of trying to sell something. You know, I have a narrative. I have a piece of propaganda. I have talking points. the list, right?

Yeah. And they, and straying anywhere off of that list is dangerous water for those people because that's not their authenticity. That's not who they are. And if, and if you're just using talking points, eventually talking points expire, especially in a live conversation. And then what do you have left? The emptiest barrel makes the loudest sound.

I like that one. Yeah, right? That's so true. All right, let me read one. How are you doing on time? Are you okay on time? Yeah, I'm good. Okay.

So this interplay creates physical changes in the mind, some quickly and some over longer periods. I think we were just kind of getting into that one right there. But when you say that, the interplay creates physical changes, some over longer periods of time, similar to the way we form routines, and at the extremes

addictions. Do you think that like, well, I don't want to put words in you about. How do you think that your words can create extreme addictions? Like how do you, how do those two, which web are those connected by? So, you know, it's the ability to justify something.

You know, because a lot of, of people who've had addiction problems that I've spoken to, you know, there's always a self-talk. It's, oh, I can do this today because it's a reward or I'm going to quit tomorrow or, you know, oh, it's just too stressful, just one more drink today, you know, I just need that today. Or, you know, on and on and on. And so we talk ourselves into these addictions. Our body is just, it's trying to facilitate what we're telling it to do. So as we talk ourselves and feed ourselves, our body's just going to respond and be like,

okay, I guess this is what we're supposed to do. This is, you know, the guy pulling all the strings here is putting this in our mouth and here we go. So, you know, your body doesn't, you know, yes, it has an addictive response to these things over time because of the way neuropathways develop because of the types of neurochemicals that are secreted when you go through these types of processes. And then the reinforcement behavior is, you know, that self-talk, those actions that you take,

the one more days, the things like that. And so, you know, these words eventually can lead us to that type of extreme. And they can also lead to other types of extremes. I'm sure you've known the person who's the eternal optimist. You know, you know, a bird drops dead next to them. They find something good in it. And it's like, it's like, well, gosh, that's just a different type of self-talk addiction, right? You know, you're, and, you know, that's probably more due to wanting to avoid certain types of emotions and responses and things like that. And so you can put yourself on extremes with your internal speak. It also combines with your actions.

But, you know, what you're talking to yourself is going to, like you said, it's going to lead to those actions. Yeah, I think it's something that if people take time to think about it, it's an experiment you can do with yourself that will lead to incredibly interesting outcomes. Like I've often, I think it was Victor Frankel who wrote a book called Man Search for Meaning. And in that book, he's a Jewish fellow who goes to this concentration camp. And after making it out of the concentration camp, he asked the question, why did some people survive and why did some people die?

And that became the title of the book, Man's Search for Meaning. And some of the parallels that you can take away from that are, you know, when you find yourself in an extreme situation for some of us who have had, all of us have seen death. And if you haven't, it's come in your way. you're going to have to deal with it. So you have a choice of some people see death in their family and it ruins their relationships with the people close to them. Other people see death in the family and it brings their relationship closer than it's ever been before.

And it's a matter of perspective. And it seems to me to be a matter of inner dialogue of how are you integrating this? What is the story you're telling yourself about why these things happen? And if you can control that, I guess that. Do I want to experience? this pain again, no, I don't avoid it at all cost versus, oh my gosh, I'm really sorry I didn't have all the time and said the things I wanted to say and spend the moments together that I wanted. I'm going to go do that with these people. And that's the internal conversation for those two,

right? You know, either you can't deal with it emotionally and you need to avoid it or you realize that, oh, these people around me is, that's what this is about. I need to be closer. I need to spend more time with them. That, you know, that reminds me of the yin and yang symbol, you know, like the two paisleys with the dot in the other. Exactly what you said about these two forces, I don't want to deal with the pain or I'm going to make sure it doesn't happen again. And it's just, there's that little dot in there and it's just moving.

And like, I always think of that particular symbol when I think of internal struggle. and it's both beautiful and dangerous and scary. But yeah, now that you put it like that, I could understand how that words can form an internal addiction, a cycle inside you that is repeating, be it for good or be it for bad. I'm glad you brought that up because I now have a mental mapper,

at least as described an image to it, you know, or a symbol that helps me think about it like that. It's fascinating how it works. And the other aspect to that symbol is balance, right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, and, you know, that's kind of the core of the book at the end of the day. It is seeking balance in the light of all of these things.

And, you know, that balance is, yes, you don't want to experience that again. But, and yes, you do want to spend time with these people. But the balance is, is realizing that you need to live a full life yourself. if if you go off to the extreme and be like and dedicate yourself to you know i'm just going to spend all my time with my family i'm going to remove myself from this my social fears fears and all these things you know you're going to end up in a detrimental situation just as you end up in a detrimental situation avoiding that trauma avoiding those emotions and pushing those people away you know it's finding the balance of those things looking at the perspectives being aware of those

multiple perspectives internal to yourself that really allow you to then move forward in life and not be stuck in that moment. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to try to put up this image that we have in your book because I think we have maybe brought this image up before, but I think what you just described is a very good linguistic pathway to an image that you,

whoops, in the book and that's the that's the that's the cube with the triangle with the fulcrum point in the middle and I think I have it right here but I I really believe that that is a a let's see if I can there we go there right there so this line right here represents the balance and it like I really I probably told you this before but the dang imagery you have in here is so awesome for mental maps and so awesome for for seeing that. I'm happy to hear that. Yeah, good.

And for people listening, let me try to describe what I see in front of me is a three-dimensional cube on each corner represents a linguistic representation of how to think. But in the middle, there's a triangle. In the middle of the cube, there's a triangle with a line on top of it representing balance. And we were just speaking about symbols, about the yin and the yang. And before that, we were talking about the language we use in our inner dialogue to help us navigate the world. And this is a beautiful representation of that. And I think they go well together.

So I wanted to bring that up and show people right there. Yeah. Okay. So let me move on to the next sentence I had that I have outlined here. Our words form the perspective in which we view the world. Because that is how we are constantly defining it to ourselves. It is the foundation and all our possible experiences. So perspective, I think, is a semi-large word that is easily misinterpreted.

Because my perspective may not be your perspective. I think we've covered that a little bit in the conversation. But can you dissect perspective a little bit more for us? Well, sure. in that context, you know, the idea is, is the only way we interpret the world is through word. You know, when we were very young, it was sights and sounds and colors and sensations. But as we get older, it's all words. And even if you look at something and it's a red square, you're still thinking red square.

Yeah. And so those words that we use are going to be our perspective on how we view things. you know, perspective is, you know, the way I like to think about it is if you have an image and you can see straight onto that image or you can take a little bit of a turn around the image and you can see a little bit on the side or you can go all the way around to the back and you can see it from the back. And being able to have a full perspective of a situation or an image allows us to then understand it. And with understanding, then, you know,

then we can, then we have a choice on how we want to, on how we want to act, on how we want to emotional respond, on how we want to identify this information, this situation. You know, situational awareness is something that's talked about with, you know, in military and things like that. lot, but situational awareness is something that anybody can develop and should develop, in my opinion.

And, you know, it's not just seeing the situation as it's unfolding, but, you know, in this instance, seeing it from hopefully a 360 degree perspective or as close to that as you can get, being able to walk around your problem and look at it from the back as opposed to tackling it head on. You know, there's a lot of wordplay that you can use to create the imagery to identify the idea of perspective. But I like, you know, the idea that you can view something from a 360 degree viewpoint by being able to put yourself in a different state of mind via the words that we use to see that. Yeah, that was awesome.

Really well done. The one I use, like people who are watching can see this cube, and I've described it to people that are listening. but think about every idea that you come in contact with as a potential used car you're going to buy. You want to walk around it. You want to kick the tires. I'm going to take up a little test drive. You might want to sit in the passenger seat or the backseat, you know, or if it's convertible.

Let's see if the top works. Let's check out the radio. You know, and it can be as detailed or as not detailed as you want it. But if you can learn to see your situation for me as an old. car and you can you can do it rapidly you can look at this conversation as a 360 degree object as a different perspective of yours but the more angles you can see it from the better you can become educated about it and the better you can become educated about it the more useful it is to you and the more useful it is to you the more useful it is to other people and the more useful it is to you

and other people, the better your relationship with those other people is going to be. So every idea out there is a perspective or a potential vehicle for a better life. And I think if you can see it like that. And that's it. Again, that's, I like that. Well, that's what, thank you, because that's what I got from the book when I read it. Excellent. Excellent.

Yeah. Another way I'd like to paint that one is, you know, by being able to have that perspective, that's how we gain knowledge. And then by accumulating that knowledge and, you know, thinking about it and applying it, you know, that's how we gain understanding. And then, you know, and then through that understanding is how we gain the wisdom to, you know, to use that in the everyday life or to apply it to our lives. If it's not every day, you know, maybe it's just a moment. But that process of, you know, being able to see something, understand it, be knowledgeable about it, and then be wise about it is not something that's really taught as far as I'm aware of. Yeah, it definitely wasn't taught to me.

It was something that, you know, that had to learn through some painful experiences sometimes. You know, it reminds me of the old, there's an old. set of linguistic representations that go something like if the soup was as warm as the fish and the fish as young as the maiden and the maid

then the dinner would have been beautiful you know but like I got to rethink that because it's pretty funny if I could say it the right way but the go ahead go ahead I can't remember yeah next next show I'll

and do it but yeah it's perspective can be everything. And it's amazing to me how in times of crisis, you get to gain perspective. Like there's been a lot of times in my life, and I guarantee you you've probably found this where you found, I've found myself alone, scared, angry, and just in my own little box.

And all that took was for me to change a few words in a sentence, to free myself from that place of scared fear where, you know, if you just change a few words, you can change the entire perspective and you can change your reality. And it can be your reality. And sometimes they're just perspective is a way of liberating ourselves, but also a way of confining ourselves to failure. You know, it's interesting how it can be both of those things. Very interesting.

And, you know, going back to our psychedelic bits of conversation, you know, a lot of the, a lot of the therapeutical benefits that people experience on these, on these psychedelic trips or situations, experiences, you know, it's all facilitated through these, this perspective of self-talk. And usually for a lot of people, it's, yeah, I thought about it that way in my head. You know, but then when I was having that experience, the way I thought about it was just a little bit different. And I realized that Sally really didn't mean to be so mean to me because, you know, you took just one little step back. And so, you know, there's tools that we can use beyond, you know, just trying to program ourselves linguistically that allow us to tap into this at a bit more of a fundamental level, which I find fascinating. you know, the idea that we can, you know, we can not only have this massive complex system of things, but we can also be aided by something random in nature that, you know, kind of threads all of this together and paints that perspective in just a little bit of a different light that allows us to open ourselves up,

remove traumas, get over addictions, things like that. that's wildly fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. Sally wasn't trying to be mean to me, but she sure is pretty. So that's why I thought she was mean is because she's pretty and she didn't like me.

Oh, yeah. That's right. Oh, okay. Every single man has fallen into that track. Every single man. Every one of us. Yeah, every one of us. Yeah.

And it's amazing how, for me, I had a recent, this recent, I took about five grams over the weekend. And for me, I've become familiar with this place and, or at least better understood that, for me anyways, towards the three hour mark, I find myself in a cognitive area where I can try on different ideas like a new shirt. I can try on different perspectives, without implication. without implication. And I can and I can live that perspective or I can live that for a year or a month or 10 years or 50 years and I can play it out. And it's fascinating to try on these ideas that I would never, some of them like are probably pretty dangerous. Like I probably should never do that. But right now I can live it out in a simulated reality and see what it would do. And it makes me think about, you know, different type of mythologies or different types of folklore about entering the spirit realm and being taken over by a spirit because ideas are almost like spiritual beings

in that if you have this spirit inhabit you, you can move forward with this idea. And if ideas are powerful, ideas can be something. that are intoxicating, not only to you, but to people around you, if you look at people that are phenomenal communicators and they can speak to you in a way that makes you feel beautiful. Or if you look at any type of cults, they're able to hit you with what they call the love bomb and they make you feel a certain way. But in the height of the psychedelic trip, I think that you are given tools that you can use to hammer out not only your perspective, but build frameworks for other people.

And that can be dangerous. If you use that in a way to trap people, if you use that in a way to instead of liberate people, you push them into a corridor that is, you know where that's going. And it gets back to what we were talking about, the farmers or governments or authoritarian rule. Like, there are ways to build frameworks for mass amounts of people that benefit only a small group of people. And a lot of people are caught up doing that. But I think I may have went off on a tangent there. Well, no, I think, you know, that's, you tied it back perfectly. You know, and I think everywhere we look, people are doing that.

That's, that's, you know, even if you look at corporate structure, it's the same idea. Yep. You know, now you do have things like decentralized cryptocurrencies and some of these things that are kind of turn that on its head. But they have their own problems and are a part of the larger system. as a whole, which creates an inherent problem, potentially an existential problem for every single one of these ideas, because now if it ever gets to the point where it could be, it could uproot the system and decentralize that power, it'll probably disappear pretty fast or be regulated out of existence, you know, just kind of how, you know, these farmers, all of their

their ways and means are being regulated out of existing. You know, whenever it becomes a contention point for who gets the bottom line, you have to expect that the person in power is going to try everything at their disposal to remain in power. Would you say, I'm sorry? No, no, no, go ahead. I've done. Do you see these structures, be it a corporate governance, a national governance, or any type of power structure, is it fair to say that these are the absolutes

and that alternatives would be the no absolute thinking? So in your book, the power structure would be absolute. These are the truths versus non-absolutes, which are the things we've been talking about here, whether it's choosing your words wisely or not prejudging or, you know, truth is relative or reflection. These all represent pathways off the absolutist. pathways. Absolutely.

No. Yes, they do. And yes, they are. And yes, they are. And I guess it gets down to the question, which is, should people be governed? Beautiful. And, you know, my stance on that is, I don't feel that people need to be governed. Now, people need to have communication. And relationship and there needs to be conversations and, you know, debates and things like that. But people being governed is inherently corrupted. And I don't think that there's ever been a single instance that anybody could cite throughout all of recorded history that would indicate anything else. Okay, I agree with you 100%.

But for the sake of conversation, let me push back on this a little bit. Okay. Let's say that there's a group of real. uneducated people and that if we don't help them that they are going to be taken advantage of. So out of the greater good, it's our responsibility to help out the people that don't. Like, there's all these homeless people where I live. Like, if we don't build shelters for them and help them, then, and by that, I think that's a form of governance.

Like, we are helping them do things because they can't govern their own life, then we have to govern them. Like, if we don't do that, who's going to do it for them? And aren't they better off because we do that for them? So I would push back on that and say that, you know, that's focusing on putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. Because if you think about it at the end of the day, you know, yes, you could build the housing, but the next generation of homeless people are going to be homeless. And then you're just putting, you're having to build more housing, you're more housing and more housing.

you're not solving the problem of homeless. The problem of homelessness is derived for many factors, but again, most of those are socioeconomic. You know, if you didn't have the opportunity to be a child, for instance, to have a decent childhood, to have a decent education, or, you know, to at least be taught how to reason through life, you're subjected to the localized environment in which you can, you know, walk or drive throughout. You know, your ability to get beyond that is going to be heavily limited because your ability to get a job to make resources to move beyond that situation is already shot in afoot because you don't have all of these abilities and skills that someone else in a different socioeconomic position.

had. And that's the, that's the crux of that issue. And now that leads to all sorts of different things. A lot of those places have problems with drugs with all sorts of other stuff that, yeah, you can look at those on the surface, but like, oh, we can just take away the drugs. Then I'll solve the problem. No, it won't. Um, you know, we've seen that plenty of times. You know, there's been plenty of cities who've tried all sorts of different things. Now, don't me wrong, you can improve the situation and to the end of your statement, yes, that would be an improvement for their lives, but you're not solving the problem. So then the question becomes, are we trying to solve problems or are we just trying to take care of people and, you know,

placate them and, you know, continue on down the same pathway? There's something to be said about both of those options, of course, but I think that if you actually solve the problem, problems, then you, you know, all of a sudden the next generation of people who should be homeless or not homeless, those people are a part of society. Those people are, you know, generating jobs. They're creating ideas. They're building, you know, the next generation of the iPhone. They're doing all these things because they had the opportunity to. So those resources that would be divested to, you know, putting a band-aid on the bullet wound if they were or if there was more resources to actually fix the problem. problem at a core level. Now fast forward a generation, yeah, the people who started that movement probably aren't going to see the fruits of their labor. But we stand on the shoulders of giants we always have. Do you want to be one of those giants or, you know, do we want to make the whole thing crumble in a house of cards? I would like to be a giant personally, but yeah, I agree. I wonder, what do you think about this? Like I it seems to me that

a lot of the rhetoric I hear from a lot of people, and there's rhetoric on both sides, but in this particular argument, it seems to me that people who are running big corporations, a lot of multinational corporations, and even some people that run their own business, they're constantly talking about the problems with government regulation and how they're not allowed to go and do things.

and if they could do these things, it would be much better. But that seems to be the same argument the employee has with his boss. Like, this guy's trying to micromanage me. And like, if he just let me do my job, I could do much better. If, if indeed multinational corporations or businesses were able to get government out of the way, wouldn't they just become the de facto governors? Absolutely. Oh, yeah.

It turns into a technocracy, which, we're kind of seeing. I mean, you know, you got Apple with a trillion bucks, right? Yeah, absolutely. You know, so they're on par with, I think, the top 30 nation states in the world as a single entity, as a business that's top down run with an iron fist. So, yeah, you end up, you actually end up in a worse situation because now, you know, especially at those companies lack any sort of unionization. and now you end up in a situation that's entirely authoritarian. To the regulation part of things,

I'm a firm advocate of free market. Now, free market should have some small regulations, the same regulations that kind of, I think, should be involved with, say, you and I or anyone else, which is you could do whatever you're going to do, but if it starts to harm other people there needs to be a conversation there needs to be there needs to be a stopping point

there needs to be some way to release valve on the situation you know in those types of things like so you know you'll hear like people from like a libertarian standpoint you know like just free market free rain

well yeah but then you have lakes that are so toxic that if you get five feet from it, you're going to expixiate and die. So, you know, there is a give and a take. And that given a take, it's the same line as it is between people. It's, yeah, you can go off and be a loon in your basement and dance around and, you know, wave your guns around, whatever you want to do. But you can't go out and do that on the street and potentially hurt somebody.

Because, you know, now other people's lives are involved. And there should be a responsibility there. We don't have any personal responsibility, let alone radical personal responsibility in society anymore. You know, it's always an appeal to authority. Somebody, especially these days, somebody attacks you in school, go talk to the principal. You have a problem. You call the cops. I'm not going to solve it myself.

I'm going to let the court solve it. I'm going to sue you. you know, every single bit of our society is an appeal to authority. We don't solve our own problem. Mostly probably because people don't have the skills to. But then on the other side of that is, you know, those skills were bred out of us, essentially. Yeah. From a large perspective.

But then on top of that, you're not allowed to solve your own problems in many instances. It has to be reported. It has to do these things. Otherwise, you yourself then stand in transgression of the system. them. Wow. That's a great point. I never thought about it like that. But yeah, it's, it's, it's like one giant chart of logical fallacies that like we, the people have decided, okay, only these Supreme Court people can tell you what a logical

fallacy is. Well, actually, I have a, I have a note right over here on my wall that explains them all. Like, if people just took the time to treat each other, not as the ideas that they think they are, but as the individual that they actually are, I think you could, and that was taught in school, if we could bring back some of that stuff, you know, maybe, maybe part of it does come back to, or large part of it comes back to education. Well, it's a large part education. It's also, you know, community, right? Yeah, that's a great point.

Who goes over or knocks on her neighbor's door and asks for a cup of sugar? You know, even though that's a, well, that's nice. But how many people? Even though it's kind of an old trope, right? Yeah. It's, you know, how many relationships do you have in your neighborhood? You know, you're a magnanimous guy. I imagine you have quite a few.

But, you know, by and large, you know, most people don't even talk to their neighbors. In fact, you know, people put up privacy fences and put trees in the way of their neighbors and all these other things because they don't want anybody to look at them. They don't want to even. And meanwhile. You know, it's a wild erosion of community just rampant through Western society. And, you know, you can attach it to quite a few things. But at the end of the day, that is as what happened. And when you have that erosion of community, you know, there used to be the old adage, it takes a village to raise a child.

There was good reason for that. And it's not, and it wasn't that it was the whole village disciplining the child. It wasn't that the whole village needed to, you know, point out all the child's faults. No, it was that if, you know, you see a kid doing something stupid and you know they're doing something stupid, you say, hey, kid, you're doing something stupid. You shouldn't do that. You can't do, you can't even say that in our society today. You know, you just talk to my kid. What did you say to my kid? I'm calling the cops on you. Right? You know, so it, it. it's a very wild detachment from, you know, actually resolving conflict at any sort of

logical, reasonable personal level and just, again, mass appeal to authority. Yeah. It's so, it's so interesting. Like, I had a recent experience where, you know, it's interesting to interact with different cultures. And it's very easily to misinterpret what someone from a different. culture thinks about you. It's almost impossible to know what other people think about you.

But in this particular instance, there was a family who they're Japanese and I'm, you know, I'm a white guy from California. I'm from a somewhat of a non-religious background, I guess. But, you know, just I grew up as a young kid in California, he used to surf and probably a lot like everybody grows up in, in the United States. States, be it whatever culture you're from, at least in my view, I had this idea of, I was taught that if you're going to say something, don't ever say something to somebody. You wouldn't say in front of their face. And that's, and if you do, say whatever you want, but that person might

punch you. And if you said something, you probably deserve to get punched. So they're able to fight back. So be careful what you say to someone. Don't, don't do that unless you say it to their face. And so, you know, you don't realize that you carry that with you for forever, it seems like. And so recently we were at a school event for my daughter. And one, I had asked the parents of the little girl, hey, you guys should come over sometime. Maybe your daughter came over for dinner. And then the little girl says, no, my parents think that your daughter is a bad influence.

You know, I was like, really, you know. And on some level, I'm like, that's weird because I was just talking to them a second ago. And we were having this nice conversation. They were complimenting me. And then all of a sudden they hit me like, oh, I see. Like, you really don't like me at all. You're just pretending.

And who am I? Like, is that wrong? Not really. I mean, I mean, it is kind of for me a little bit. Like, I was taught that you don't do that. And so I talked to my friend who was Japanese. And I told him that and he started laughing. He goes, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

In my house, I'm Japanese. In my house, you're really nice. Like, you save face. But when you get home, you just unload and you tell that person exactly what it is, how they should live. And it's more of an authoritarian style. But when you're out, you don't ever do that because you wouldn't want to get punched in the face, you know? Right, yeah, because somebody's liable to punch you in the face.

Exactly. But it's an interesting concept to think about narratives and different cultural ways of dealing with community like we were talking about. And that's, you know, you might ask someone for a cup of sugar, but you wouldn't tell them you're a bad influence or something like that. But yeah, when it comes to community, it's difficult when you have people who are bred and live on the same foundation. It's even more difficult when you live in an area where you're living in two different lifeboats and you're still trying to communicate. So, yeah, I agree with the whole community narrative. Yeah. And, you know, I've been in some small beach communities where it still has that core communal element to things.

Yeah. Everybody's an acquaintance, essentially, is what it comes down to. And so everybody has a degree of cordiality that's, you know, just above, you know, treating everybody as a stranger. Yeah. But just that little increment of, hey, I know, I recognize that face changes the entire dynamic of how the community act. Because, you know, now when those people go talk, they're like, oh, yeah, that's Bill. He does blah, blah, blah, blah. He's a volunteer firefighter at the thing.

Well, now when there's a problem, somebody knows to call Bill as opposed to trying to, you know, go through all these channels because Bill's a volunteer firefighter and he knows what to do in this situation. And so, you know, those types of that communication that evolves in a community is, you know, for my estimation, paramount to making a successful community. And when we get to these communities that we have these days, I mean, we're just. we're a wash in a sea of people in cars. And, you know, even though somebody might have lived on the same block for 20 years, there's still not the acquaintance that you waived to. And that's the case, especially in, you know, a larger city like in New York or in L.A. or something like that.

Yeah. And it seems to me that if we can agree that in a small community like that, there is a tighter sense of community. I think it's fair to say that diversity, depending on how we define diversity, let's just say we say diversity as bringing in people from different cultures to this community. That does have a destabilizing effect,

or at least it can, right, if you can't be on the same level. Well, yeah, I'll give it an interesting, for instance. I was traveling in Trinidad and Tobago. I was on Tobago Island in a little town called, Sara. Rainbows every other day on the little bay right there. Just absolutely gorgeous. It's a small little fishing village.

All the men are these giant dudes who pull the fishing net every day and then they sell that catch to fishing boats that come by and that's pretty much the economy of this little village. Well, some radical Islamic people moved to the island and set up shop. And they decided to pop up a mosque

in this tiny little village. And to the destabilizing the fact of that everybody looked at them cross, everybody. And it was a very interesting experience because they were clearly persona non grata

in that place, but they had no, because of what they were trying to accomplish, they had no motivation to leave because their motivations for being there were not to be a part a community, it was to take over a community.

So, yeah, you can have a massive destabilizing effect, especially if somebody has some malafaris intent, right? Nephari's intent, that's what I was looking for. And so there's a lot to be said about that, but then again, that should go back to the strength of the community, the communication of the community. If that community was, did have a communication system and was like, hey, and they were the, they were the authority for their community, as in they didn't have to go appeal to some,

you know, higher power to go get to remove these people. Those, those destabilizing elements don't exist long because I've been in other communities that are very strong. And all of a sudden, you'll see somebody comes in and somebody gets robbed in that community. well pretty much everybody within a day figures out who did the robbing yeah and that person is gone they disappeared I don't know where they disappear to but I've seen a few people just disappear and not show back up yeah and and so you know depending on the community and what sort of authority they have onto themselves I mean you're we're talking like jungle beach towns right so who knows

where those people actually disappear to they might have bust them out they might have bust them to the jungle. Yeah. You know, so, so, you know, again, it's that communal strength that allows, you know, the ability to have, you know, to, to not be destabilized by those nefarious intruders with malintent. It's almost like an immune system. Like, it's willing, it's willing to take in any sort of substance as long as that can

make it into part of the body. However, if a substance comes in that is foreign and poison, then it gets expelled. That's right. Yeah, it's a perfect analogy. Man. Well, I am having an absolute blast, and I could keep talking, but I have to go do some other things. And I feel like every one of our conversations have been really rewarding and really rich. And my hope is that the same way you and I are building a relationship by talking about the book and the idea.

ideas that it leads to, I'm hopeful that people listening or watching to this can participate in the relationship by seeing it grow and reaching out to us. And so I want to extend that invitation to everybody listening and watching. I'm going to put the links below. Please reach out to us or we're doing it live so you can even come to some of the platforms where it's live and those would be in the description as well and talk to us. Yeah, put us on the hot seat. Yeah, we'd love that. We would definitely love it. And so where can people find you? And what is it that you would like to leave people with this week to think about? Benjamin C.george.com is the main hub of everything.

Final thoughts for this week is words are important. Yeah, that's the best way to leave it on. So ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for spending some time with us. And we will see you guys next week. That's what we got for today. Aloha. Aloha.