TrueLife - Israel Wilson - The Merger of Culture & Technology

Episode Date: August 29, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Newsletter:https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/intersection-web3-ai-synergy-enhanced-innovation-impact-israel-wilson?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&utm_campaign=share_viaLinkedInhttp://linkedin.com/in/iswilsonTwitter@israelswilsonIsrael Wilson is a seasoned professional and advisor with over 10 years of experience in business development, spanning across media, entertainment, finance, and education. My passion is to empower the next generation of professionals and entrepreneurs to break into and thrive in the rapidly evolving world of decentralized technologies and digital assets.As an Advisor and Mentor, I leverage my expertise and network to guide and support our students on their learning journey and career launchpad. As a scout for various funds, bridge the gap between innovative founders and forward-thinking funders in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. As an Advisory Board Member at Breathe!, I contribute to shaping the direction and success of the event that fosters thought-provoking discussions and networking opportunities in the intersection of Web3 and entertainment. With my background in media and entertainment, as well as my skills in machine learning and artificial intelligence, I bring a unique perspective and value proposition to the digital asset ecosystem. One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

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. 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. Stay over there, you're monkey. You stay over there. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope everybody's having a beautiful day. It's Tuesday.

The world is unfolding in ways. in ways in which you've never imagined before. And I've brought to you someone who seems to be on the forefront. Someone who seems to me with his incredible newsletter, with his ability to forecast the future. Maybe that's because he's always on the front line and it seems to be he's the person creating the future. The one and only Israel Wells and business developer, innovator, creating at the intersection of Web 3 and A.I. Israel is a seasoned professional advisor with over 10 years experience in business, development spanning across social media, entertainment, finance, and education.

I recommend everyone check out his newsletter founding the future. A man that's passionate about merging culture and tech, always learning, always building. Israel, thanks for being here today, man. How are you feeling? Thanks for having me. I'm feeling great. Nice, man. You look great.

You know, it's a beautiful day. And I'm so excited that I was, you know how I found you is I was just cruising through LinkedIn. and I came across this newsletter, the founding, founding the future. And there's so much cool stuff in there that speaks to everybody out there that wants to get a leg up. And it's almost like a little window into the future, man. But before we jump into that newsletter, I was wondering to give us a little background on who you are, how you came up and what you're up to.

Man, I was wondering how you found me. And I'm glad I, and I'm glad that I started writing that newsletter. I'm actually getting back to it. I've been focused on building this community and kind of when I zoom in. on something. I kind of, I've kind of focused hyperly on that. I've been having to create all these courses and stuff. But yeah, so I've always been, I always was into the future since I was a kid. I think I was really dissatisfied. We both had a commonality. We lived in, you almost live in San Diego. How dare you. I grew up in San Diego. I went to, and I grew up in a couple miles

from the border. I was spending the early majority of my life. I moved there when I was about five, San Ysidro, California in southern part of San Diego. And during that time, I was dissatisfied, I think. I think a lot of that was built on dissatisfaction with the way things are. And that led me to start thinking about the possibilities and way things could be. I started reading really young and I got deep into sci-fine. And so I read Dean Coons and Robert Heinlein and was a big fan of Frank Herbert and Dune and things like that

and just basically got into this place where one moment, one moment. Yeah, man, you got it. And so I got into, I basically got into sci-fi and everything at that time delved deep into that and hold on one more yeah you got it man always a sci-fi man

there's so many awesome sci-fi books that help people envision the future there's a there's a great series called Red Rising for those of you that are watching looking for like a sci-fi series called Red Rising will blow your mind I think that the I don't know it's a tremendous series if you get a chance

There's like five books in it. It's called Red Rising Morning Star, Golden Sun, Dark Age. And I think he just came out with a new one called Lightbringer. But it's like a metaphor for the class system. And it uses different races and space to talk about the haves and the have-nots. I'll see if Israel's figure or if he has read that book. But Herbert Dune, awesome book. Isaac Asimov, another stellar, another stellar sci-fi. series of books to read. So those are some of my favorites. Yeah, sorry about that.

Minor, man. I got a 15-year-old man. Well, congratulations, man. You know what I mean? A lot of work, but you know what? Happy and healthy, man. That's all you can ask for, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, healthy. Healthy is all you can ask for. But yeah. So I was deeply, so I got I was deep into sci-fi, really became a big part of my life. And I was always looking out, looking out, looking out, dissatisfied with the way things were. I thought that the projection of the future, I thought we would have already gotten here.

But it seems like now we're at this hockey stick point in time. And suddenly all the thoughts, processes that I had, all the things that I was interested in suddenly became popular interest. So, you know, artificial intelligence, what's now called Web 3, cryptocurrency and all these things. And so about 15 years ago, I read the Bitcoin white paper 15 years ago coming up in November. I read the Bitcoin white paper. And I was already inspired to do these token experiments because I realized that human beings are valuable, but money is a medium of exchange in that value exchange.

And that we couldn't solve the problems of society within its current, confines. And I'm still out. I'm still looking out to that. Every time I'm sitting in traffic, I'm dissatisfied with why are things like this? There's so many things that are the way they are, not because they serve us, but because they're preserved by people with their own interest, self-interest, or a lack of interest in changing things. And these decisions hopefully are made by better parties. And it looks like, you know, if I was to give one perspective of, if I was to fast forward 100 years from now, I don't believe that human beings are going to be trusted to make decisions because we just don't make the best decisions. And our society is a result of our poor

decisions. Man, I am glad you read sci-fi, man. And I'm glad, in a way, I'm glad you came up the way you did because someone who has the insights, the ability and imagination to create the future, you know, I'm hopeful that that person is someone who wants to benefit mankind by making the younger versions of himself better. You know, it seems that, you know, I was going to jump into this a little bit ago, but I'm going to read off, like, I'm going to read off a few positive aspects and a few negative aspects and then tell you what those aspects are about. But see if you can guess what they are. Okay. So the first comes a list of positive aspects. Rapid innovation. with fewer restrictions,

innovators could build upon existing ideas more freely, leading to accelerated technological process. Two, collaboration. Open sharing of knowledge could foster greater collaboration among creators and researchers, leading to more interdisciplinary breakthroughs. Number three, affordable access. Reduced copyright restrictions make more creative works,

more accessible, especially in less developed regions, improving education and cultural exchanges. Diverse interpretations. Art and media, could be reimagined and interpreted by various artists, resulting in a richer and more diverse cultural landscape. Five, community-driven development. Communities could actively contribute.

I should read that part again. Communities could actively contribute to improving and extending technologies, adopting them to specific needs. These would be the negative aspects. Number one, diminished incentives. Without strong protection, creators might have less incentive to invest time and resources and innovation, potentially slowing progress. Two is quality control. Lower barriers to copying could lead to lower quality products and services as competitors rush to replicate without sufficient development.

Economic impact, reduced protection of intellectual property might deter investments and disrupt traditional business models impacting economic stability. Ethical concerns, creative works might be exploited without proper attribution or compensation to creators. Cultural erosion. Strict copyright laws can protect cultural. heritage, indigenous knowledge from being appropriated without consent or belief. And the question I had asked was, a world with less strict patents and copyright laws could have both positive and negative implications. And after reading your newsletter, so many different things, it seems to me, Israel, that's kind of what we're seeing right now, was like this breaking apart of the poor decision

making of the past or these guarded gatekeepers or these rails that are only letting so people funnel into the top, man. What do you think? I would say that both there, I would say that both the positive and the negative have caveats. I don't think that I, you know, I would say that definitely that the positives outweigh the negatives, but the positive of collaboration is really hard with our current structure of corporate structure.

Right. So I've always, I keep more on thinking about this example. If Pfizer, Merck, Johnson, and Johnson opened up. their research and let AI run through their research, we'd probably cure all diseases in the next decade. But that level of collaboration won't happen because of the current property. And that's where alternate economic systems come into play. That's where cryptocurrency and blockchain starts to make sense and a changing of the guard as far as our economy goes. We can't Winston Churchill. I don't know if it's Winston Churchill or Einstein has been quoted but from both.

Right. But it's the thoughts that created them. Our problems can't be solved by the thoughts that created and the same type of thinking they created them. And I think that that's where we're at right now. We're at a place where we have to start thinking about things differently. We can't preserve things. Right now we're thinking about holding back AI because it's going to disrupt the job

economy when really we should think about the way in which AI can support a future where jobs just don't make a lot of jobs don't make sense you know ever since rumbo was invented anybody vacuuming a floor is probably in a bad place and and eventually but iRobot is doing bad in stock market term right now while there's somebody still that has a job vacuuming a floor and it's really all these things are going to change in the future. Automation, as far as transportation, I've been on four podcasts this week, and one of them, the author of the host of the podcast,

wrote an article recently about to test the cyber truck. And so if we look into forward 20 years, automation should definitely be the norm when it comes to transportation of goods, not just trucking, but drone deliveries and different things like that, are going to diminish the ability for people to gain income that way. We should start repurposing society to support that.

We should start helping those people plan for a better future without that because it's a likelihood. And if we don't do it, the only thing that I could say is certain places may not do it and may not speed into the future. But those countries that do, like the Middle East because of their resources and their focus and they know that their oil, they've already hit peak oil in the 70s, they already know that they have to be planning for the future and sustainable energy automation and cryptocurrency and all these things. They're going to just leapfrog us and going forward into the future.

And places like China and others that are embracing of this are going to be in a better place. And we as Americans need to start really embracing the fact that the future is coming, regardless of whether we like it or not. and we have to get prepared for that. And I think that that's more. Da Vinci during his lifetime was extremely limited by the materials that he had. He had plans for planes, helicopters, and other things, but his materials were limited. Jacques Fresco, who doubted in a couple years ago, had his plans limited by the structural,

by the structure of society. All of his plans were good. All of his plans could be implemented. but the structure of society disallowed that plan to happen. And to see how far backwards we've come, we can't currently build another great wall of China with our resources. We don't even know how to build a pyramid. And for reference of how long ago the pyramids were built,

Cleopatra was born closer to the iPhone than she was born to the construction of the pyramids. So we've lost information and lost ability. right now, and there's no way we're going to catch up continuing to do things the way we're doing them. Man, that was really well said, and it makes me excited because I think in some ways we're speaking to the ideas of centralization versus decentralization. And it seems to me that centralization had its place in the industrial revolution.

On some level, that helped us build this giant machine, but it's so antiquated right now. You know, I once heard a quote that said, when the instrument becomes institutionalized, then the corruption begins. And it doesn't matter what isom you use is that instrument. You know what? It's all rusted. It don't work anymore. Man, you're on me. You're speaking my mind.

And that's what I say. It's like we're trying to fit a rocket engine back inside of a horse. The horse is dying anyways. The whole reason that cryptocurrency was invented was so that. that we didn't, all of humanity didn't die along with the horse. And now you're trying to figure out a way to make it fit into the horse. The horse is dying. The economy is, we are in a midst of a debt crisis, a liquidity crisis.

We have several different issues, war, famine, poverty, all caused by the current structure of the economy. And we want to try to make this thing thick. And then the sad thing is that these two adoption cycles, 2017 and 20, 2021 brought with them people who didn't have any idea of the ethos of cryptocurrency, the reasoning behind it, but wanted it, but began using it as a way to make money or an investment and really made it use this through that process. And then those people are proponents of trying to figure out a way to make it fit into the system that it was made

to help us at least have an option against. I think there's a great option for cash. I think cash and currencies, especially if we actually had currencies that were printed up by governments instead of by banks. That would be an amazing, amazing turn. And it would be great that the American people actually had their own money. I would be a proponent of that. And then cryptocurrency could be taxed and help to fund that system. But right now, our income tax doesn't go to pay for roads or schools or hospitals.

our income tax goes to pay on a debt that's growing forever more, and there's no way out of it. And so we at least need to have this other option, which we do with Bitcoin. We have another option, but it's just a matter of taking a choice option, and the criminalization of that or the institutionalization of that are both wrong paths to take in the efforts to stave those things off. and all of the arguments made around cryptocurrency, oh, it could be hacked, oh, it could be used for illicit acts. Well, identity theft is happening every day,

and your bank account is hacked every single days. We're not arguing against bank accounts. Cash is used for most illicit activity, but everybody wants to preserve printed money, but printed money even more so than cryptocurrency is the best tool for doing it. illegal things in the world. And that's why it's used for doing all of the illegal things in the world.

Your drug dealer wants cash. And especially cartels love cash because they can move it around and things like that. Man, I love it. I love every second of it. You know what? I want to get into this. I want to sometimes I tend to fire off on all kinds of directions, man. I'm going to try to maintain my direction.

We're one and the same. Yeah, I know we are, man. I know we are. You know, we're going to get into this idea of momentics that you talked about in a previous podcast a long time ago. But I want to draw a parallel between the unrealized dreams of the boomer generation that is dying and the way that the system is trying to be preserved. There's such a giant class of boomers throughout the world. A lot of boomers and a lot of people that are still holding existing power have these old existing ideas of how the world should be. And in a weird way, you see the crypto coming up.

You see the ideas of, you know, people innovating from the bottom and creating their own brand in their own personal stuff. There's all these new ideas that are bubbling up from the ground and exploding. But the same way you see people trying to put the rocket engine back in the horse, you know, we're still spending money that way. Do you think it's just like, is this just an evolutionary process, like the tide going in and the tide coming out? this older generation slowly dying out and new new ideas emerging is this something that like you know just is is is is is nature is are we expanding and contracting we've expanded now we're contracting and get ready to blow up again what do you think man i think you need to talk to an anthropologist that can answer that a lot better um but i would say that they lived during a time

that where a lot of things were realized it uh that The boomer generation lived amongst a great time where we had a lot of growth economically and they lived inside of this bubble where they had more than their parents. And they invented this mortgage and they started just handing out money. And they've been handing out money for years. And some of them may not realize that this generation is the first generation in years, in America that has it worse off than their parents and that has a less likelihood of the of the American dream than their parents. And while wages are basically going this way,

going horizontally at the same time, the cost of living and the cost of food and all these things continue to rise. And the amount of jobs continue to go down, our unemployment numbers are actually kind of manipulated numbers because they only mention the people who are collecting unemployment. They don't mention the people who have given up on seeking employment or the people who were never employed or the people who are currently incarcerated

in the United States that basically is a big thing or the people in the military that are one of our largest employment programs of the United States. And if you take away some of those things, unemployment rates for actual, jobs that contribute to society are really, really low. And we got to figure out a way to kind of adjust. And I think that that is a part of society and civilization that they go through boom

and bus cycles. And all civilizations at some point fail. We've gone pretty, pretty long, especially being at the top of the heat in the United States. And I think that it's time that we either adjust if we want to stay there or we have to or we're going to have to take the hit and fall further and further behind. And it shouldn't be the saddest thing is that because of our way our political system is structured, people that and the way our society is structured even in the tops of corporations, people that had to learn how to use a pager for the first time or had to learn how to use a cell phone are now predictors of the future and inhibitory. of the future and having their hands on that,

not saying that plenty of them or other scientists that saw the future, but by and large, the vast majority of society doesn't understand the things. Legislators, just like journalists, don't understand the things that they're talking about and writing about fully, and they shouldn't have an opinion on things

that you should reserve your opinion for things in which you have expertise around. For subject matters on which you have expertise around, have an opinion there, because it's an informed opinion. Otherwise, the only thing that you can inform your opinion around are your biases and you can be misled and misinformed around a subject matter. And I see that when I hear people on the Hill talking about cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence. Yeah, I agree. It's the voice of the donors that speaks from the top of the hill and is

everyone on the bottom is just supposed to take this as gospel. Like it's sort of this Ten Commandments from the donor class. Like, this is how things will be. The dollar is mighty. It's all garbage, man. I see the world of cryptocurrency. And we talked a little bit about parallel economies. You know, when I see some of the articles coming out in your newsletter,

I see you reaching out to people and showing them like, Hey, here's a list of resources that you as an individual can go to, whether it's, you know, mobile monkey or mini chat or here's, you can go to GitHub and take this and put this together. Like, you are in so many ways doing so many cool things to show people places and resources they can go where they can begin learning about the future without going to an Ivy League school, where they don't have to sit down with someone, but they can actually go there and start playing around and putting pieces together, man.

I love that. That's a cool thing to do. How did that come about, man? Out of necessity, basically. So I, you know, I didn't, I should have went to school for computer science. I wanted to go to school for computers and business. I already had, I thought I had business all focused out because I had already made money and done business before I went to school. And then computer science, someone kind of prejudiced me against, prejudice me against it. And then later on, I started twiddling. I built my. first website in around 2008 and then 2009 I started playing and building things with

php and databases and things like that and my I spent up a Bitcoin node and learned to get technical around because of cryptocurrency at the time and I've all and out of necessity I've never had the ability budgetarily to go and have someone build a website and all and actually I was able to access capital for years by being that person that could build a thing. And I saw, okay, I'm working for you. You're about to pay this person $15,000 for a website. Well, I'll do it for five or for two or whatever I could get. And really just, and so I have this do it yourself mentality.

And that do it yourself mentality actually held me back for years. And now I have a do it with others mentality where others, where, okay, you're an expert at this. I know how to do this, but you did go to school from computer science, and you're not filling around in the dark every time you hit a hurdle and this and that. So here, let me empower you

and how do we create complete teams and how do we bring people together to fill each other's gaps? And there's somebody out there. There's somebody out there with a ton of money that doesn't know how to do with it, that's not using it properly, or that hasn't invested in a way that's actually scaling their capital.

Meanwhile, there's people out there that are searching for capital that are able to build things. Then there's people that, though they are able to build things, nine out of ten startups fail because they don't know how to actually make money. They don't know how to move fast enough to make money or preserve money. And so now they need people like me that can, oh,

I'm going to challenge your assumptions. I'm going to help you do this cheaper than you possibly could have ever done it. And I'm going to focus on us actually making money. And if we're not actually making money, let's stop focusing on that. Let's at least have some type of secure revenue. stream because you're not going to be able to build this and depend on your next raise without revenue, without capital. More revenue you have, the higher your multiple, the more your revenue

is going, the better the proof is that you deserve more capital. Otherwise, you're running around here building a thing, utilizing millions of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars to build something that you haven't even tested in the market. Nobody's buying it and you're trying to sell it to somebody else. And I see so many founders getting caught up in that. And so, that just happened in me over time. I've worked on so many things. I've seen so many failures, both from small business scale to the large business scale from the inside. I understand what's going wrong here. And I know what the solution is. The solution is people. And now it's just about getting people to understand what can actually happen if a group of people come together

around a thing. And I wish that I was more opportunistic during 2021. I would have created a Dow, but for me, Dow's really were automated things and you had to build out the actual automated infrastructure, rather autonomous infrastructure rather than have people being the autonomous layer in the Dow. But so many Dow's became big because of that. And some were mis-executed poorly like the Constitution down. And then NFTs came out and so many people were able to raise money utilizing NFTs, but those people weren't able to actually make money themselves or didn't believe in the vision. When I do business, I'm always looking for missionaries, not mercenaries. I'm looking for comrades, not contractors. So if we get a million dollars and we start something, it doesn't

matter when that money runs out. We're going to finish this. We're going to keep going. Because that's what we told our investors that we're going to do. And if whatever hit, I have to take lifestyle-wise to continue on this journey. And if I'm doing something and it wasn't working, I'm not going to waste money while it's not working. Let's figure out how if we could, Groupon started out as a political activism app. It took people from one place to another, we're organizing protests and things like that, meetups. those people didn't those people didn't actually grab onto the app the app was unsuccessful suddenly groupon in its failing stages says we're going to make a coupon for pizzas downstairs they sold 12

pizzas they pivoted their business model around that because they understood that this worked because they had a comparison of failure to compare it to you a lot of people have having gone through enough failures to know what success looks like. And success is actually completing an app or getting another investor. But that's not success. Success is somebody, a market actually believing in your thing. And if you can't pivot or change your business structure to fit a new market, then you're going to die.

And so adaptability. We're in the age of AI and Web3, the ability to adapt to forthcoming realities is the greatest tool that we have. And, you know, but I've learned all of this through experience. Man, that's so beautiful. In some ways, it seems to me, like the new currency is relationships. And when you were talking about the way in which you choose, you know, comrades over contractors, your use of language seems to be, your use of language and your understanding of relationships

and business and people seems to mirror the way in which strategies work in cryptos and NFTs. Like there's a real big understanding. And it's kind of mind-blowing to think about the way in which we relate to each other is the foundation on which we're going to build a better world.

Maybe you could speak to that a little bit. Yeah. My friend Kerry says collaboration is the new currency. So you're definitely on on key there. And the thing is that relate, though this could work, people often,

there's a certain group of people. We see this happening in politics. We see this happening in companies. You saw it happening in high school. There was a person that wasn't necessarily the best person to do a thing. They weren't the nicest person. There wasn't the nicest guy that got the most girls.

It was the guy that maybe was the best at manipulation or best at cues and things like that. And that same person is very successful in these realms, these people that can manipulate a mass group of people. Yeah. And they may not even know that they're doing it. They're just naturally been born to pull people together around leadership. But that thing, but on the other side of that,

that person has to be willing to sacrifice themselves. I think that that's the new thing is that to really do something great as a group, the leader has to put themselves, leaders eat last is a book. I love that book, man. Yeah, the leaders eat last. So you have to really embody that ethos. I believe in Web 3.

You have to worry less. I was asked a question years ago, would you rather have $10 million and not be able to give it to anyone? Or would you rather have $1 million and be able to give away $100 million? And I'm the second person. I do not, for me, the ability to bring to life the things that I want to bring to life. And that's how you really do great things. Elon Musk has driven himself near poverty multiple times to be able to do the next thing.

He has put his whole wealth on the line and this and that. And that's the only reason he was able to realize his vision. And so you're like that's where his missionaries over mercenaries is, You have to have a vision. Your vision has to be so strong and so overpowering that you won't let it die. A lot of these NFT projects, they were focused on creating a common business structure with a payroll, not where people eat with their keel or eat because they value. And then once the payroll runs out, the team falls apart.

And then no longer, and now all the buyers, 10,000 people that trusted you with their money are asked out. And so many projects that I bought into failed because of that. And I realize that now as I'm building this community that I'm building now, that the goal is to create, my goal in life is to create environment in which all types of genius can thrive with emphasis on the all. And that focus in every single person, if 10,000 people join my community, it may take me a year.

year, two years, three years, to talk to every single person individually and get to know every person individually. So I started out with a 77 NFT collection because I know I can know 777 people in a year individually. And how can I help you as an individual improve your life? And guess what? How can we help each other? So that's the real power of it is, okay, I'm showing you by example, I'm willing to help you do whatever you want to do. Are you willing to embody the same example and help everyone else? And then in turn, next thing you know, 700 people are helping every one person. And we have all of the resources, all of the abilities, everything that we need to do this thing. And its possibility is on us as a group. And that's when things really get

powerful when people stop putting responsibility on leadership and hoping that leadership will create some magic wizard wand and make everybody richer and everybody more successful. But instead, each person takes an individual responsibility to contribute to community in such a way that they make the community more valuable. And people, when they look at projects like board apes, they don't see that that's what actually happened. You know, Gary Vaynerchuk and V Friends is a different thing because he's. He has a whole corporate structure, 20 years of experience, relationships, and all these things

to build this thing around and gain value around it. But the biggest project of monetarily board apes, what they had is in their early members. They were getting people from the major talent agencies and getting people of note and this and that. And people were bringing their friends in and bringing that value in and creating value for the community. and so the thing becomes more valuable. And then they're talking to investors and VCs

and getting them to believe in the thing. And the value was way higher than the actual value of the thing, but that's actually because the leadership isn't actually intentionally creating the most valuable ecosystem that they possibly can. And so my focus is trying to do that. And I really believe that that's the key to making these things.

And NFT, they say a diamond is forever. An NFT is forever. It's a token. It's non-fungible. It can't be broken around. It's on the blockchain. It's going to exist forever. If you don't have a forever plan on how you're going to make a community more valuable to its members forever, then you shouldn't even start within this room.

Man, it's deep. It's deep. It's tough for me to wrap my mind around forever, though. Like, that's a long time, man. Like, you know, how do you balance that? like I love the passion behind creating an idea that lasts forever or better yet inspires forever. Yeah, that's what it takes, right? It's that ability to see a vision and then translate that vision into reality in the mind of the others and empower them to move forward.

It's almost like you're creating a new pattern, man. That's it. And you said you struck on him. You said the minds of the others because me, you know, I could disappear tomorrow. But if the people, and then if I do disappear tomorrow, here's the thing. If I do disappear tomorrow, the keys to that smart contract disappear with me. Everything disappears with me. Or if I burn my other key and send it somewhere, then I can't do anything with the contract.

And a contract just becomes this forever thing. And these NFTs become symbols. They become relics. And they become symbols of an ideology. And that's why rather than, you know, I've been trepidacious to put myself out there because every human being is fallible and all these different things. And I'm not really, that's not my goal. My goal is to make the community far bigger than I am. My goal is to make my companies far bigger than I am and not have them depend on me as an individual.

As we see, if someone else had bought Twitter besides Elon Musk a controversial figure, the conversation will be. completely different. But he bought it and everybody hates Elon and this and that and and they're putting their prejudices and their biases on Elon and embedding them in the thing and it's losing and it's lost some traction because of that or it's changed the community in a result of that. But ideas and especially a good idea going back to memes, you know, medics. Yeah. It's a thing where there's a viral nature to ideas, Richard Dawkins wrote a book called The Selfish Gene. They're basically in 1976 that went into this idea, introduced this idea of memetics, and it's crazy enough,

in my expository writing class at Rutgers, I got introduced to this idea in 2007 and before it became a popular term. And I think that that's one thing you were talking about how I'm always, get in the future. And I don't think that that's like anything intentional. I think I'm just, I'm just aware of things. I get deeply involved in the things that I'm aware of and I'm interested. Curiosity is my thing. So we were just talking about nerds and geeks and nerds basically are, by definition, is a person who obsesses over things to the neglect of all other things. And at some points, that's an issue. It becomes a soul.

social issue when I don't want to talk about anything else but this thing that I'm interested in, but it's a superpower when you're doing the thing and working on the thing. And so creating that, creating this, this culture where people are focused on intentionally recognizing the genius, the greatness, the goodness and others and embedding their value in these other people and creating and co-creating value together, I think that there's explosive, there's explosive nature to such a thing because, you know,

people really have all this value to give, but also to say that it's very hard. But I've been working on this, in a group setting for the last nine months. And as crazy how a baby is born in nine months, coming out of our gestation period, and now the baby is being born in the last 10 days, we've reached close to 100 members.

And so if growth keeps going on the same track, we'll be over 1,000 plus by the next 90 days and by next year will close out. I think I want to close out the community, keeping with the 7th theme, close out the community at 7,777 members, with 777 core founding members and a variety of different interests that intersect with culture and technology. Man, you know, it's common to give a baby a name when they're born.

What's your baby's name? What's the name? Oh, yeah, well, it's ICNU. That's been the name. It's I see five letters. I see G&U. I constantly gain new understanding or I see God in you. I love it, man.

And so just really focused on that and focus on building something. I really want to build a home for people. I really want to build a home where people are lack judgment, deal with forgiveness, recognize the best of our traits, and augment them with the traits of others, rather than recognizing the best of your traits, then seeing your applause, judging you for your flaws and disowning you for your flaws when I, you know, especially if we're embracing our flaws, I know what I don't do. And I continually attempt to find colleagues who do what I don't do well. And in turn, that it's happened repeatedly that those people

then believe that their trait is more valuable than my trait. And then they think that they can do what I can do, and they attempt to go do it, but, you know, to do what you could do with me, you're going to have to find another me. And each of us are rare. Each of us are that other, that X factor. And success is a game, true success and perpetual success is a game of 100%. And so you can have a guy that walks into a room and one guy gets 90%, another person gets 80% on the test, then another person gets 25%. The world is dealing with these 90 and 80%ers, but that 20% may have got all the questions right

that those other two got wrong. And when you have those people together, suddenly you have a complete picture, you're able to be successful at a whole other level, and too often we disregard those people unless those people have mastered being likable. So like how to win friends and influence people or the 48 laws of power.

These are 48 laws of power gets celebrated as this book on success, but it's really a book on manipulation and on and taking the advantage and this and that. And yes, you can embody those principles, and those principles may serve you, but will they serve the greater good of society

and are you actually being of service to moving things in a positive direction? And I would say more often than not that those who influence people We see this with influencer culture. They're not actually actually influencing them to be better. We have some of those influencers that are focused on that. But you can influence a person to do anything.

And Hitler knows that, knew that very well. Yeah, it's so true. You know, it kind of reminds me of like Carl Young in a way. It's like if you want to know what you need to work on as a person, think about the things you hate about other people. all day long people are showing you what you need to work on. Every time you get irritated, that's the world showing you what's wrong with you. Hey, I don't like this person because they're weak.

No, you're weak. I don't like this person because they always do this. No, you do that. And if you can begin to see the world that way, do you walk around with a constant smile on your face? Like, oh, hey, thanks, world. Oh, look what you did for me today, Bird. You know what I mean? The world's constantly dancing with you.

If you're willing to realize that you just have two left feet, the world is a beautiful dancer, but it's showing you constantly what you got to work on. And it's hard because, man, I am a, I am flawed Israel. I got all these problems, man. But the world's constantly like, take it easy, George. I'm going to show you some things today. Don't get upset. Don't take it personal.

But you've got to work on this, you big dummy. There you go. It's so cool to see. In some ways, like, can me try to, let me try to parse this time. In some ways, I think we're beginning to speak a language for the very first time. And what I mean by that, is that, you know, we all learn, at least in the Western world, this idea of, you know, linear thinking by the language we are taught. A is a letter in the word apple.

So you have a letter, a word, a sentence, a paragraph, a page, a book, an encyclopedia. You know, and it's all these little cogs, and it teaches us to think so linear. You know, on some level, that's how we begin to learn to speak. this is a building block of this. This is a building block of this. Okay, we've got to figure it out. But now all of a sudden, we have like AI to help us speak a bigger, better language that can be beheld. So the word part of our language was like the last 200 years. Okay, now we have the letters. Now we're going to introduce this imagery coming in here. And that's going to be another part of the language. I'm going to show you this image. I'm going to talk behind it. And I'm going to throw some emotion in here.

Now we can really begin to build a system of communication where we aren't guessing what the other person means about it. And how much of the conflicts that we've built in this world are based on miscommunication, whether it's your girlfriend, your wife, your kid, a loved one. Communication is a giant problem. Half the times you and I are using the same words with different definitions. How the hell are we going to get anything done, man? But guess what? I think it was Philo Judeus who said the next logos will be a language. language to be beheld. And if you look what you're doing with NFTs, if you look what we're doing

when we use imagery and memes, what you're beginning to see is language evolve. I'm telling you what the world we're moving into is so exciting for those who are watching. Like, ah, and if you want to get a good glimpse, take a giant dose of mushrooms, man. Take a find a psychedelic out there that will put you in front of the ineffable. And you will begin to see that you'll come into this when you come out of it. and the magic that can happen there, man. Woo! Thanks for letting me share that, man. I've been thinking about that for a while.

Thank you, man. I think that that's a great place to end, and I've got a 130 scrum. But yeah, it was good talking to you, man. I look forward to linking with you. Hopefully you join the community and we can feature this podcast and get some more members on the podcast.

And yeah, I look forward to it, George. And if you need anything for me, give me a heads up. Yeah, man, right back at you. man everybody check out the newsletter is just crushing it over there he has a really unique way of of looking into the world and helping people and you've already heard about his philosophy check out his newsletter subscribe the notes will be in the show notes down there check them out that's all we got for today hang on real fast as well i'm going to talk to briefly after this but i'm going to shut it down here with the people ladies and gentlemen aloha