TrueLife - Post-Truth Rebellion: Who Controls the Past Controls the Future

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USThe Lila Code: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-4612-3942🚨🚨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/Post-Truth Rebellion: Who Controls the Past Controls the FutureIn this raw, mind-expanding episode of the TrueLife Podcast, host George dives deep into George Orwell’s chilling warning from 1984: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”We’re living in a full-blown post-truth era—where history isn’t fixed stone, it’s clay being reshaped in real time by algorithms, deepfakes, generational divides, and competing narratives. What happens when the past loses its grip on reality? When the history you grew up believing starts crumbling under new questions, viral clips, and shifting cultural tides?George explores powerful examples that hit close to home:•  The radical transformation of Christopher Columbus—from celebrated discoverer to symbol of invasion—and how that rewrite reshaped holidays, identity, and public discourse in a single lifetime.•  The stark generational rift on the Apollo moon landings: Boomers who lived the triumph vs. younger generations scrolling through “hoax” breakdowns, asking why we can’t go back and why the footage looks… off.•  The unsettling erosion of Holocaust memory among the youth—not to deny suffering, but to confront how fading education, viral aesthetics, and algorithmic repetition can turn sacred history into debatable content.This isn’t just misinformation; it’s a civilization-level phase shift. When authority becomes optional, skepticism turns into identity, trauma loses its anchor, and time itself becomes editable, we’re left with fractured realities, weakened consensus, and a future nobody can agree on.George challenges listeners to talk history with people from different generations, build tribes around shared truths, and ask the big question: If we can let go of inherited traumas and outdated narratives—personally and collectively—what kind of future can we actually create?Part philosophical wake-up call, part psychedelic reflection on purging generational baggage, this episode is a rallying cry for radical responsibility in a world where narrative control is the ultimate power.If you’ve ever felt the ground shift under what you thought was “settled history,” this one’s for you. Tune in, question everything, and take back your timeline.Aloha. 🌺 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, furious 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. Hope you're all living the dream out there, making the best version of yourself possible, man. Thanks for hanging out with me today. Man, I have been rereading some classics. I was just going over George Orwell's 1984. There are so many parallels to what's happening today.

I know some people think that brave new world might be more of our future than 1984. And there's some debate there. They might be right. But for this particular episode, there's one quote in this book that I want to bring out for you guys. And it says, who controls the past controls the future? Who controls the present controls the past? I want you to think about that for a minute. Think about what it means if you can change history.

just take a second to think about that what if the history that you were taught was all bullshit and i know i know what you're saying you're like george history's history what if it's not what if history is what we believe that it is i want to give you some examples of that but before i before i start giving you some examples of it i want to talk a little bit about what this actually means. I feel like we're living in a post-truth world. Whatever the hell truth is supposed to mean out there. It seems in my lifetime truth has sort of been manipulated and shaded in with different colors of gray. And so, you know, it's like history, when I was growing up, history was solid. There was documents, photographs, testimonies. There was all these things that we learned in these

books that were supposed to be the true history of where we came from. But fast forward 50 years, and I start looking at the way in which history changed, right? It used to be we used to have Columbus Day. And we had, we would celebrate Columbus Day because without Columbus, we wouldn't even be here. But in my lifetime, Columbus Day has radically changed. It went from being this individual who discovered the new world to this invader that came and slaughtered everybody. And I can understand both parts of that. I can see how on some level, I probably wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Christopher Columbus.

And I can see on the opposite side of it how, man, that guy just came in and slaughtered lots of people, lots of indigenous people. And it's pretty disrespectful to say he discovered the new world, right? Like, there was already people. He didn't discover shit. But maybe for his people he did. That's one example of it. And like, think about how that has changed culture. Think about that, how that has changed the way we interact in this world.

Some people that are afraid to say, oh, man, it's Columbus Day. Where do you sit on that? Like, how do you feel about the changing of history? Like, that's just one example of some of the things I've been going over. And it fits well into that George Orwell quote. You know, if you really want to control the future, you have to control the past. And that's what we're kind of here to talk about is that you can change history. What you believe happened in history fundamentally changes the future of the world you live in.

Here's another example. When I was growing up, and I think this speaks to the generational divide as well, and I'm curious to get your guys' opinion on this, the moon landing. Remember that? Like the Apollo missions and Neil Armstrong and walking on the moon and the moon buggy and all of this incredible history that really you know, Maybe the world. You know, it was one of the first times we created something that seemed like the first moon shot. It was literally the first moon shot. And we made it.

We got up there. We're driving dune buggies. We're picking up moon rocks. People are playing golf on the moon. Let me fast forward, you know, to where I am now. And there's all this footage out there. There's that movie, something strange happened on the way to the moon. start looking at the pictures of the moon buggy

and you're like, we fucking drove this thing on the moon? Are you sure? That doesn't really look like an antenna on the moon bug. It looks like an upside down umbrella. How the hell did we get there? Why can't we get there anymore? All these questions start arising.

And you know, you find yourself down a rabbit hole looking at like, I don't know, some YouTube video or some TikTok video and they're just laying out this eloquent argument why it's all bullshit. And it was just a way in which we could, you know, bankrupt the Soviet Union. And you start thinking, man, maybe.

Maybe that's true. Maybe that's true. And you know where there's a big divide on this whole argument and this speak to the idea of changing history? Is it if you ask somebody in their 60s or their 70s, if we went to the moon, the answer is always like, of course we did. Without a doubt, I remember when it happened. I remember hearing the radio when they, when Neil Armstrong phoned into the White House from the moon and was like one small step for man, one giant step for mankind. But then you ask somebody in their 20s, hey man, you think we went to the moon? And they were like, fuck, no, we didn't go to the moon.

Man, what are you on? Were you smoking crack? There's no way we can get there. We can barely land rockets right now. And so you have these two competing ideas. And I think that they come from like different age groups of course people in their 70s who witnessed this who who were actually part of this monumental event of course they believe that to be true But then you have this younger generation that's like there's no way we did that that was just propaganda What does that mean going forward think about it? What does it mean when a large part of society believes that we did something?

And the younger generation believes it's all bullshit. I think that that causes quite a bit of problems, doesn't it? I think it erodes trust from the younger generation to the older generation. I think it sort of erodes the idea of authority. How can a younger person who believes there's no way we went to the moon look at someone in the older generation and be like, that person is really smart? You see, there's these two competing ideas that are happening. Not only in science, not only in society at large, but between these generations, it's these old ideas dying. And what it means for the future is kind of uncertain.

You know, there's another one, too, that I've been looking at that is really pretty powerful. I'm not trying to trigger anybody here, but to get triggered on this, I don't know. the hell to tell you but uh let's look at the holocaust right when i was growing up it was gospel it was in all the books you know people would go down to the holocaust museum and you would read the diary of anne frank and i'm not downplaying that tragedy at all my father or my grandfather fought on world war two he drove a tank but you start looking at some of this new footage coming up you know there's this new clips of like Adolf Hitler's speeches, and it's like, whoa, what was this guy saying?

You know, and it's, I don't speak German, okay? So let me just throw that in the route. I don't speak German. I don't know if these translations are 100% accurate or not. But I'm just speaking about the changing of history as a phenomenon. And I want you guys to think about this. You know, if you watch some of the radical young, the young guys coming up or the young girls coming up, there's a large part of the population that no longer believes in the Holocaust.

like and whether it's true or not if people don't believe it's true then that fundamentally changes the world going forward think about that for a minute i think germany's still playing still paying reparations to israel you know and there's all there's so much money that gets involved in that particular part of history what if in another five years it's deemed not to be true how would that shift the political dynamics in play right now how would that fundamentally change the amount of money that flows to Israel how would the rest of the world look

on particular people from Israel it would be a radical shift you know and it brings me back to orwell like i said in the in the beginning of this podcast that you know he who controls the future controls the past and he who controls the present controls the past i bring up these points because i think right now you listening to this have a radical decision to make you have a decision to make

in which history you believe you have a radical decision to make in the future going forward and it stems from what you believe happened in the past I'll challenge everyone of you listening right now talk to someone older than you

if you are if you're someone who's middle age talk to someone in their 70s and then talk to someone in their 20s. And if you're a young buck coming up, talk to someone who's in their 50s and then talk to someone who's in their 70s and then talk to some people your age. I think ultimately the future belongs

to those who are willing to believe in a history that serves them. Now, I know that's a slippery slope because different histories serve different people. But I would argue that's what's happening right now. Like we are fundamentally battling for history. We're battling for what the truth of history was. And that's why there's so much chaos.

That's why the narrative control. That's why control of the narrative is so important. And that's why there's so much censorship. That's why that there's so much defamation. And that's why so many people are being canceled. is that people in positions of authority no longer control the narrative. And if you can't control the narrative, if you can't control history, then you can't control the future. And it's both exciting and I think scary for lots of people.

For a long time, before AI, you know, before the explosion of the Internet, and all of this social media, history was a set of lies agreed upon. And it was agreed upon people in positions of authority. It was a set of lies agreed upon by people that held institutional power so they could remain in power for the foreseeable future. But not anymore. Not anymore.

what would it be like if you and do this this probably happens to you already but think about your five closest to friends okay have you pictured them so you think about those people sit down and have a conversation with them about history and ask them what they believe and try to come to an agreement on what you think happen because i think when you build a community around you of like-minded people that all believe that all believe that in the same history then that's a group of people that you can build a future with you know i think that that that particular thought experiment right there if you just think about that long enough it'll explain all the chaos that's happening now like there's so many different ideas when it comes to multiculturalism there's so many different ways in which trying to to be kind and trying to be respectful and trying to be thoughtful of everyone around you it sort of erodes the future am i being too dark there can we live in a world that's multicultural if none of us believe in the same past you know there's the great quote from i think

it was james joyce who said history is the nightmare from which i'm trying to awaken It's a pretty powerful quote. You know, another aspect of it might be that if you don't remember your history, you're doomed to repeat it. Maybe that's what's happening now. I think a positive note though is that you must find like-minded people around you and believe in a future that's possible. You must find a way to build a better future.

Maybe that means just believing in your own personal history. Maybe that means just believing in what you've accomplished so far and moving forward. You know, I do believe in radical responsibility in trying to build your future from your past, looking at your mistakes in that aspect of it. But the crux of this argument today is that, you know, we live in a post-truth world. that the history you may have been taught as a youngster may not be entirely true today so what happens when the past stops holding its shape what happens when the past when history is no longer true

well I think what it actually means is that this isn't just misinformation this is like a phase shift in civilization when the past becomes unstable there's four things that inevitably follow the first is that authority collapses not because it's corrupt but because it's optional in a world where every archive can be disputed or every video can be deep faked every expert can be debunked you know and don't we see that right now You have one expert come on and then another expert comes on and they just they kind of debunk each other

But it's far too often. It's not an intelligent debate about both sides. It's like whoever can scream the loudest It's whoever has their finger on the mute button. It can shut the other person up. You know, I I would like to see you know what would be epic and I like sports and stuff like that. I don't really follow any or watch any too much, but I like the idea of people competing. But wouldn't it be a better world if we had giant stadiums where people were debating? You know what a debate

that I would love to see happen today would be Ben Shapiro versus Nick Fuentes. I don't know if you guys are familiar with who they are. But both of them hold radical ideas about the past. And I think that

debate would man, you could sell tickets all day long to that. I think it would rival an MMA event. I think it would rival a heavyweight fight to see the youth. This guy, Nick Fuentes, coming up speaking about the radicalness of history, who owns the world versus Ben Shapiro, an incredibly intelligent guy who is for a long time held the microphone of what happened in the past. I think a radical series of debate would be something I would definitely pay for. You could live stream and I think tons of people would do it. But that's the idea about the experts, you know. Another thing that happens is that authority no longer comes from institutions. It comes from aesthetics and repetition. They say

repetition is the mother of skill. Repetition is the mother of skill. They also say that the big, the more you repeat something, the truer it is. A good example of repetition. is you ever hear a song that like you're like I hate this song but then it just plays nonstop all day long and you're like I kind of like it you know it's this idea of repetition if you can just repeatedly say something or repeatedly play something

people will begin to find something they like about it I think this also speaks to history it speaks to the idea of what you learn in schools the idea of memorization the idea of repeating something over and over and over and over again until you believe it. That's not education.

That's indoctrination. And I think we say a lot of that. I think we've seen a lot of that in education since the industrial revolution. You know, we stopped really looking at critical thinking. And we started just drilling facts into people's minds so that they can be functional workers. I would like to see that go. I think that the next generation coming up, education has to change on that aspect of it. The second thing that happens is that skepticism mutates into identity.

You know, questioning history used to be an intellectual act. Now it's a personality trait. You know, moon landing denial, holocaust debate, ancient civilizations, rewritten as TikTok lore. You know what I mean? Not because people, they're stupid, but because doubt now feels like autonomy. You know what I mean by that? Like, if I doubt everything, nothing can control me. But here's the twist on that.

Like, when everyone doubts everything, the loudest storyteller wins by default. And the future consequence is that people won't ask, is this true? They'll start asking, does this feel like my truth? The next thing that happens is trauma loses its anchor, atrocities become content. You know, when genocide becomes a scrollable argument, when mass death becomes two sides, when suffering becomes aesthetic, memory, it stops protecting us. It stops saying never again and starts whispering, maybe it wasn't that serious. Future consequence, and we're already seeing this, is that atrocities lose their moral gravity. you know repetition becomes easier history stops functioning as a warning system and that's when we get back into the ideas of you know those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it and you could make some arguments already here you know i've seen a lot of people speaking about the holocaust recently and there's a lot of evidence that if what we believe happened to the jewish people

in Nazi Germany from what I read about concentration camps and people starving and being experimented on and you know the inhumane treatment of children

you could argue that the same thing's happening in Gaza right now a lot of people make that argument I'm like if you just think about that like how could that be how could it be that one set of

people had this incredible horrific thing happened to them and then a hundred years later they're doing it to someone else well it kind of speak to the same cycles of of people being molested right a lot of the times people say the people that get molested as children end up growing up and molesting other children maybe that's how it works you know maybe that means forgetting your history. Maybe that means that there's some sort of imprinting that happens intergenerational and when these these traumas affect people, they go out and they act them out on others. You know, I, it's a crazy time to be alive, to be witnessing this, to seeing that. I don't believe it has to happen. But I believe that.

that there's generational trauma. And if you don't break that generational trauma, then you are kind of doomed to repeat it. You know, in the world of psychedelics, they have this thing called purging for your family. And what happens is people will go and have this incredible psychedelic experience and they'll remember all these things

that happen to their parents, that happen to their grandparents. There's phenomenal stories of people having visions of their grandfather being shot at or watching one of their children die. And a lot of times in these psychedelic spaces or these visions or this idea of purging for your family, when you revisit that, you are given the ability to let go of it. you know, to understand that this trauma you're going through was never really your trauma. In fact, it was a traumatic experience that's been handed down to you from generation to generation. And we see people break it, whether it's an addiction or abusive relationships. You know, you hear this term of breaking the chain or breaking the cycle.

And I think that this idea of... You know, Orwell's quote about he who controls the future controls the past. So it is sort of a digging up and letting go of the past. No matter how much that event meant to you, whether it was the moon landing or the Holocaust, you can't really move forward when you're holding tight. Right as can be under this event. that happened before you were born you can't move you can't move forward if you're holding on to that there's a quote that i like to use about psychedelics or my life that's came to me that says it's not

about how much you take it's not about how far or how fast you can go it's about how much you're willing to let go of and how much of the how much of the the the past of history are just old debates, our old traumas that we refuse to let go. You know, maybe there is only the present moment. And maybe that's how we build a better future. Another thing that happens is that time itself becomes editable. You know, we're no longer moving through a shared timeline. We're moving through personalized past.

Your algorithmic history feed isn't mine. Your version of 1969, it's not mine. Your version of World War II. It's not mine. And I think ultimately that's what the youth is seeing and saying today. When you look at all the turmoil, when you look at all the generational divide, I think that that's what the youth is saying.

saying is that this is not my history. These are not my wars. These are not my concerns. These belong to you. Your moon landing, your Holocaust. I'm not going to pay for these anymore. I didn't do them. These are for you guys to hold. And I know that can be hard for people to hear. but I think we owe it to the youth. I think the youth, the kids coming up today and the kids coming up tomorrow, I think they deserve a chance at social mobility. I think they deserve a chance

and not fighting your fathers or your grandfathers or your grandmother's wars. And I think that if we don't find a way to come to grips with it, to let go of all these atrocities in the past, We're just doomed to repeat them. You know, the future consequences are collective reality fractures. We're already seeing it. Consensus becomes impossible.

We're already seeing democracy weakens, not through tyranny, but through incoherence. And you could argue there is no coherent future. You know, look at all the layoffs and how much is AI going to fundamentally change the world? you cannot coordinate a future if you do not agree on what already happened so interesting interesting to think about today I just wanted to drop that one on you guys that's what's been going on on my mind and I wanted to share it with you guys I hope you're all having a beautiful day and remember the quote the quote comes to us from our friend Orwell and that quote is who controls the past controls the future who controls the present controls the past so take your history think about it find out what's important to you and that way you can control the present moment and you'll be in charge of your future ladies and

gentlemen have a beautiful day aloha You can't Yeah, come on, you're going to be away, way, way, way, way, way, away. It's me up. Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm going to be. Go! Better know you're right.

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