TrueLife - Primitive Zen

Episode Date: September 4, 2022

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 once again to the True Life podcast. We are here with Mr. Wizard, Benjamin C. George himself, the author of the awesome book, No Absolutes. He's been on the podcast multiple times. Benjamin, what is going on, my friend? How are you?

I'm wonderful. It's another day in paradise here. It's a beautiful day in Colorado. We're out of, we had a fake fall come in and now summer's back with full force. So, yeah, I've been busy, busy, busy this week, but happy to sit down and talk with you today. How are you doing? I'm doing fantastic, thanks. I've been reading this new book that I wanted to come.

kind of get your opinion on. And it's called the disappearance of rituals. And I wrote a note right here that this is one of the first times I've really heard this term. And tactical empathy. And it makes me think about, you know, when I think about empathy, and he was specifically talking about empathy in society, in the workplace, and in relationships in the modern day.

And when I think of empathy, I think of myself. feeling the emotions, be it sorrow or joy or whatever emotion you choose of the other. I think of, oh, man, I can't believe that person's kid died. I can't believe that that person was in an accident, you know. And for me, it kind of tends to be feeling sorry in a little bit, but it's putting myself in that person's situation. However, in this book, Disappearance of Rituals, what the author talks about when he talks about tactical empathy is empathy is used as an you feel.

means of production. And I had to step back for a minute. I'm like, how are they going to use empathy for production? But the author goes on to claim that, you know, in today's world, you know, there is this idea of rational management, the way the top tier governs the bottom tier, be it in government or business, has been, you know, through rules and this and that. But ever since we have been at home and ever since society has kind of been, you know, moving the way it has, it seems that emotional management.

this idea of managing through empathy as a means of production is new to me. What do you think about using empathy to manage people? Well, I mean, you know, we kind of do that in all of our relationships just kind of as a status quo of a human being, I think. Well, most of us, I mean, depending on where your psychopathy levels happen to fit. But tactical empathy is a very interesting turn of phrase. Because tactical empathy, you know, implies that you're going to apply this with some sort of greater strategy in mind, right? And in one hand, I see empathy and I, you know, to make it tactful or tactical, it almost seems like you're kind of, it's almost seems counter to the idea of empathy. Yeah.

Yeah. Now, if, you know, when you say tactical empathy, the word that pops in my head is manipulation, personally. Yeah. Now, you know, what the extrapolation of what he meant by that, I think there is a lot to be said about that. I mean, just look all around in the world today. Everything's about, you know, personal growth. Mental health is always a topic of conversation. You know, we're pretty, we're getting. to the point where we realize that everybody's not an automaton. And when you do that, there's actually benefits to that as opposed to the old way of thinking, which was, hey, we just need more worker beats.

So I could see from like a top-down managerial perspective where you would like to tactically insert empathy into your process so that you're not, so that you are, you know, maintaining your, your workers' ability to produce. again, that really strikes me as manipulation at some level because, you know, I think part of the empathetic process is that I'm just experiencing what you're experiencing, not for any, any, you know, benefit to myself or any profit or anything like that. It's just part of that empathetic experience. And then when you tack something else onto that, I think you run the risk of corrupting it

pretty quick. Right. Yeah, I agree. It makes me wonder if the world we live in like a more digitized world, be it Zoom or any sort of online communication, do you think it's easier or do you think that it's trending? Like social media is trending towards a more manipulative bent than if we were to work face to face. It just seems to me when you're face to face, there's a lot more information that I can take in. as far as your eyes, the little sinister smile, or even like a certain smell or, you know, they say you could smell fear sometimes. How do you think the digital environment is changing society on a manipulative level?

That's interesting. I actually just read a paper this morning that took a look at gamers. And they hooked them up to fMRI machines, and they found that there was, that brains would go and sink. despite, you know, despite distances. Because usually, you know, you know, people have done lots of recordings about people in the same room listening to music and you get a synchronized brain wave pattern from everybody. But, you know, they're in the same room. This study went in and found that, you know, and they did it via video games.

And they found that people playing the same video game, you know, like the same chapter of a video game would have a very, their brain patterns would be in sync. And so, you know, in that sense, we're very, we're highly manipulatable by social media and what's placed out there. And I think that's not rocket, you know, it's not rocket science or any grand revelation to anybody. I'm pretty sure most people can see the detriments of social media these days. Yeah. And then, you know, is it growing? Is it an increasing problem? I'd say absolutely.

simply because of the profit centers, the motivations that drive that. It's very valuable to be able to influence the crowd. And once it becomes valuable to influence the crowd and there's a mechanism to influence a crowd, I mean, game theory would suggest that that's going to be used to influence the crowd

in a negative way. And I think we're seeing that. And I think it's one of the of those things where it is a double-edged sword, right? Because now we get the hash-out ideas, but then the problem is, is now all of a sudden there's arbiters to say that you're not allowed to talk about that idea. So I think it's a very interesting precipice that we stand on. And that precipice is, I think we're about to see some revolutionary change in how these things kind of operate within society. First of all, you have, from the

political level, people trying to dismantle, regulate, you know, take advantage of. But then at a societal level, you have people who are just kind of fed up and people who are waking up to, you know, realizing that, well, if I read this yesterday and now it's this over here today, and next week, you know, it's going to be this big blown out thing, but it was all because of just one little sentence and one little scientific paper that was one fifth of the conclusion of the paper and all of a sudden now it's dictating policy. You know, these types of arcs of information are really damaging to society at multiple levels.

So I think we're going to see just kind of a natural movement away from these kind of centralized chinglamor and its social media company. Yeah, it's interesting. Sometimes I wonder the app, like the society, especially the United States, it's so giant, it's so large and so massive. And I often wonder, like in part of my mind, in the conspiratorial part of my mind, I think to myself like, yeah, this is like there's totally like a ministry of truth. They're actually trying to be one, right?

Yeah, they did. They tried to be one. It's so funny. That's so funny. I couldn't believe that. That one blew me away. It just right out of the open right there. You know, and that makes me wonder, like, on some level,

there are government agencies trying to enforce. influence the population to act a certain way. We know with like, you know, say Cass Sunstein and the even like the United Nations taking up his book Nudge, like we know that there are, there's a lot of money that goes into influence. And that influence is trying to change behavior. And so we know that happens. However, on the other hand, I think to myself, it's such a large amount of people. Is it even, are they just, you know, are they throwing stones at King Kong? Is it even going to change anything? And it's hard.

I think on some level it has to influence people, but I don't know if it's just a waste of time. What do you think? Is it somewhere in between or what's going on there? On the conspiratorial side, you know, up until 2013, it was illegal to broadcast propaganda to American citizens. The Smith Mund Act, I think. Yeah. And then Obama, you know, quietly kind of changed that. And, you know, I think we've been reaping those rewards over since. So, you know, there is, why else would you repeal that? Because it was very specific language. There was no, there was no obtuseness to it. It was, you are not allowed to broadcast propaganda to American citizens. And then, but now you are. So what message was that said, first of all? So I, I think, you know, there's definitely an effort. And there is value in that, right?

Again, if you can control the thoughts of 100,000 people, you know, that's going to disseminate to their families, their friends, their groups, all of this stuff. And all of a sudden, you can have, well, we see it today. You have people who are so filled with vitriol and hate and, you know, willing to just go out and, quite frankly, almost murder people because they've been so propaganda. into whatever extreme that they've been pushed to. So I think there is something, you know, to be said about that definitely existing. And that, you know, not necessarily conspiratorial, but it's happening. At the same time, it is a massive thing to move. You know, it's 330 million people, right?

But if you think about that, what really moves those people? It's a very small handful of people at the top who are dictating, policies, regulations for their companies, rules, systems, processes. And at the end of the day, you really only need a handful of those people who are on board, which, you know, you can kind of see by the woke movement in corporatocracy. All it takes is just a couple people at the top mandating to, you know, thousands and thousands of employees. And you end up in the, you know, with these, you know, companies that are now having all sorts of different struggles because of it. So I think there's something to be said that it is a big massive thing that has a lot of inertia,

but there's so many moving parts that I think more often than not, it's the impact is not something that we can measure, but we can feel and see. Yeah, that's well put. I definitely can feel and see the amount of turmoil that's happening. And I think everybody can. I don't know to what degree it is a nefarious thing from, but I do know it's rapidly changing.

And it seems like the rate of change is accelerating. There's so many unknowns. Like there's all this money going to. And it's the amount of money that's going to Ukraine probably went to Afghanistan. We just weren't really as aware of it. Oh, yeah. And it, right? Yeah.

Well, I mean, if you go look historically, over the past, just say, 10 years at all of the bills that have been passed through Congress, you know, not only are they thousands of pages in length, but there's a litany of line items. There are, you know,

millions and millions and billions of dollars to different causes in different countries to support these, you know, programs and ideas and research and all this stuff, which at the end of the day, you know, be like, oh, what, you don't support women's studies in Pakistan?

And it was like, okay, yeah, but the 50, $25 million that went for that didn't actually go to women's studies. They went to these multinational NGOs that are now facilitating who knows what, right? And it's kind of the same hiccup with the nonprofits in this country. You know, you're only really required to spend a very small amount on your dedicated cause. The rest is, you know, you can do whatever you want with as long as you can justify it. Yeah.

I often think to myself that the most people's idea of the United States is antiquated. Most people think that we live in this fictitious idea of the United States that came to be after the Civil War. And we're this United 50 states and we work together. Like I don't think that's true at all. I think that we are part of the world's system. and we tend to be the military force and the tax base that the world comes to when they need to remove a dictator, when they need to install a bank. And I think that more people are beginning to see that. We don't really have the rights that we thought we had.

And if you don't, if you need more proof of that, just look at all the IRS agents that are just been hired. Just look at all the money that's leaving our country. Just look at all the military hardware that we leave in places. You know, and it's very difficult to think that any of those are a mistake or that any of those are for the reasons they're telling us. Those are clearly reasoned. Those are clearly part of a bigger, a bigger, you know, product, a bigger game. Yeah, a bigger system. What part do you think the United States plays on the world scene?

Do you think we're a world system? and if so, what part does the United States play? Well, I mean, inextricably, we are kind of a world system. Our supply chains are global, you know, things like these. But then when you start to pull back a couple of layers, to your point, you know, the United States hasn't been involved in any sort of war or conflict without in a country that before we started, they did not have a central banking system. And then after we were done, one was installed.

And that's been the history of this country, you know, for quite a long time. So in that sense, we're kind of the world police for the banking cartel, if you will. Now, this all kind of gets effuscated because, you know,

it's all of the, the petro dollar and, you know, it's the United States hegemony and all this stuff. But who's really pulling the strings in that scenario? It's certainly not the voters anymore. It's not the taxpayers, right?

We don't have any saying where our money goes. It's not like I have an app that says Oh yeah, I want to fund cancer research and, you know, arms development, you know, which most people wouldn't. They wouldn't fund the arms development. But yet that's where most of our money goes to without a choice of the taxpayer, you know, under the guys that we can elect our officials who are supposed to represent us in these matters. I think the wool is being pulled from the eyes of many people in regard to how that actually works. and, you know, over the past couple elections, especially. And I think, you know, I think a lot of people are seeing that, that system for what it is.

And I, you know, it's at this point, it's kind of, it's too late. Like, it's already bought and paid for. Yeah. So it's kind of, we're along for the ride, which is, you know, scary in a lot of aspects. but it also does provide a lot of opportunity in other arena. And those opportunities are in re-realizing community, I think. You know, just look at podcasting and how it's exploded because that was the re-realization of the distribution of information.

And, you know, I think we're seeing a lot of these kind of renaissance throughout different aspects and levels of society that are kind of, you know, the people are like, hey, still here. I'm still a person. I would like to have a say in there. And then, you know, eventually there's enough people who raised their hand and they're like, well, why don't we all just get together and talk amongst ourselves and see what happens? Well, you know, that's where countries are born.

That's where, that's where new experiments are started. That's where, you know, that's how this country was originally founded, right? Yeah. And I think we're seeing a renaissance of that just across the board. Yeah. it seems that's really well put I often think about the idea of once I go down the rabbit hole of

oh man look at this craziness I tend to end up back in the ideas of there's so much opportunity right now and whatever you know if you have a favorite food like I like pizza and if I don't have pizza I'll eat it I'll eat it every day for like a week sometimes and then I won't eat it for a month but then when I go back to eat it I'm like oh yeah pizza is so awesome

It kind of seems like that is the American way sometimes. Like we just go hard at something and then we quit it and then we go hard at it again. And another resurgence I see is this idea of spirituality. Like it seems to me when everything just kind of goes to crap, all of a sudden it's this idea of spirituality that is the glue that brings things back together. And I've been noticing so many different interfaith preachers and so many different types of religion, religious backgrounds, kind of bubbling to the forefront.

There's all these new religious leaders kind of coming together. And it just, it seems like a renaissance. But wasn't the Renaissance getting rid of religion? I guess this would be like an anti-rennaissance where they brought religion back or a revival maybe or something like that. But not, go ahead. We would have to look it up. But I think the Renaissance, the definition is simply,

it has nothing to do with religion. I think it's just a re-emergence of, you know, the previous thing, essentially. But, yeah, to your point, the renaissance that we were all taught was the kind of, you know, the Enlightenment movement, if you will, kind of moving away from religious hierarchies, which we needed to do. Yeah. You know, that was, you know, those things, you don't have to look too far, Spanish Inquisitions and all these other things where you go, Well, that was, we didn't really do too well there, did we?

Which, you know, this is kind of a segue, but, you know, the Salem witch trials, I heard this story, and I haven't verified the veracity of it, but I think you might enjoy it. Nice. Because it has to do with psychedelics. So the Salem witch trials kind of ended abruptly. But what was leading up to the Salem witch trials was they had a, it was some extreme weather conditions and most of the people were eating rye bread and so this rye bread ended up you know it's suspected you know they have this recorded throughout monasteries too where all of a sudden the ergot they get ergot poisoning they start seeing demons

they start killing people and but then all of a sudden the the weather conditions changed in Salem and they got like fresh grain fresh grain crop and the salem which trial ended. They got all the witches. Imagine that. Yeah, which was really interesting. So you have to wonder, it was like, were people just in mass hallucinating in a region?

Because, you know, those mass stereotypes things are very interesting study too. That was just kind of a fun segue that I thought you might enjoy. No, without a doubt. Like, I imagine taking like a huge dose of LSD or something like that

and not knowing it. And then all of sudden being like, I'm God. You should have gone to your neighbor's house, like, I'm God. And then your neighbor says, no, I'm God. Yeah, right. Because they ate the same bread, right? Right. Yeah, I mean, or I can fly, you know, or like any of those things.

It makes a lot of sense. And, you know, maybe those are taking a huge dose of a psychedelic substance and not knowing about it is a recipe for destruction. You know what I mean? Or enlightenment. it. Yeah, melt reality for sure. Yeah. And that's not even, you know, that ergot poisoning is very different than, you know, like a high dose of LSD, right? Right. There's a whole bunch of other alkaloids and all sorts of stuff that's growing on that on that rye with that ergot. So I imagine it's not just like your LSD trip. You're probably, your whole body is probably malfunctioning at multiple different levels, right? Right. Just from the toxicity of it all. I can't imagine. And you think about, the nature of religion at that point in time, you know, coming from like this Puritan background, it's blasphemous to start saying things like your God and, you know, there's a pretty strict

code there where, you know, I was reading too about history in that time and the Puritan background was like, you know, you didn't even, you worked every day because to not work would be to the idle hands, do the work of the devil. Yeah. And you'd be looking at your neighbor, like, does that guy sitting around today? Look at that loser over there, you know? Well, and you know what? We haven't stretched too far away from that ideal today, have we? No. If you really think about it, you know, people, people, yeah, they don't feel like they're, you know, compelled by the devil these days necessarily.

But they're lazy. They have, you know, people, they'll instantly say there's drug problems, there's family problems, there's mental health problems, all of these things, you know, you could call that filled with the devil, you know, if you rewind a couple hundred years. So it's interesting how we really don't. get away from these really ingrained ideals of the past. They just kind of slowly evolve over time. Yeah, I agree. Even today, like, I know so many people that work so hard. And I remember growing up,

but everyone was like, I remember one time I went to Amsterdam, and I was with a couple friends. And we were just walking through the back streets, checking stuff out. And it was kind of late one night. And when we had got off the train and there were some people like, hey, you guys are in Amsterdam. Just be careful.

A lot of people have to pickpockets. And if you stay out late, there's a bunch of knuckleheads. And so that was, we were kind of prime to look for people that were unsavory. And so it's like 11 o'clock. We'd had some beers and we're walking around. And all of a sudden I hear, hey, you lazy Americans. You know, and I'm like, oh, shit. What?

I look back and there's like this Ford big German guys. And I'm like, those guys are pretty big. And they were wasted. He's like, hey, you're fucking lazy American. I'm talking to you. And I'm like, oh, man. And then, like, finally, I can feel in the right behind us now. And he's like, you, you little lazy American, because I'm like the smallest guy.

And I'm like, what? I turn around. And I'm like, what's up? You drunk-ass German? And he's like, ah! He starts laughing. Yeah. Hey, let's go play some pool, you know?

But it's just weird how these stereotypes get involved. Like, I'm like, how did we get to the term lazy American? Like so many Americans I know work so damn hard. They don't have six weeks vacation. They don't have three weeks vacation. Like I know a lot of Americans that are far from lazy. So I wonder how these stereotypes sometimes get into play, especially when our background is like what we were talking about with the Puritans.

Like you shouldn't be lazy. How do you think sometimes? Good. I was going to say, I think that brings us back to propaganda. You know, what gets broadcast to those people is the fact. American eating in McDonald's. Right. And so if that must be all Americans because that's what they're broadcasted.

You know, the movie stereotypes if they're, if they're playing like the nationalistic roles, the Americans usually always fat or overweight, likes McDonald's, likes fast food, you know, is always looking for like, you know, the easy way to do it type idea, the more efficient way to do it. And those are a lot of the tropes that could kind of,

kind of played out in just the larger media. So, you know, especially when I was traveling central and South America, there was a, even at back then, there was a stigma on Americans coming down. Most of them, but it wasn't the fat, lazy American down there. It was the rude entirely American. Yeah. And I met quite a few, to be honest. So there are people who reinforce the stereotype.

which doesn't help the situation. You know, I had to escort a couple of them out of a restaurant once because they were being so entitled that I was reading the room and knowing where I was that I was saying, this isn't going to end well. Yeah.

You guys need to leave. Like now. Yeah. So, yeah, I, you know, that propaganda that gets spread out. So, you know, bringing it back to what, what sort of influence does that have? Well, I think pretty profound, especially if you're extrapolated over time.

And if it's continually reinforced over a longer period of time, I think you get a stronger and stronger impact from it. Yeah, kind of a cumulative effect. I was thinking as our conversation's progressing, you know, I remember, was it back in the 60s? They had Air America where they had broadcasters, broadcast on the boats and try to give like a different level of propaganda. I wonder if something like that could be done today in the United States with like podcasters.

Like what if we came out and we just had this level of like a message of camaraderie, a message of, hey, we are the best, you know, or, you know, I often think of a commercial of like, you know, a black guy and a white guy and a Mexican guy. Like, you know, like this slow music pans back and there's just three guys working together. You know, you could do some really cool visuals and probably fundamentally change a lot of the attitudes of those that are influenced by TV. If you've got a massive campaign to do it, if we know the propaganda works, if we know it can be used on CNN versus Fox, if we know it can be used for people to get upset about CRT, if we know the propaganda can be used as a wedge, then we also know that the propaganda could be used to bring people together, much like after 9-11, when you couldn't buy a flag, you know,

and everybody, there was all this propaganda that was like, hey, we're one, we're a nation. And it often blows my mind. Like, if people want a one world, if there's, if the industrial powers and the governments want a one world government, why wouldn't they just use the propaganda machine to bring about harmony? Why wouldn't they just use the propaganda machine to show images of everybody around the world? Michael Jackson, we are the world. You know, why wouldn't you go back to that, you know? Well, I think they do to a certain extent.

It's just the channels that we tune into. We don't necessarily get that. I don't watch TV. On my LinkedIn, you know, just because I like to keep abreast of things, I get the world economic forums. Absolutely. Posts and what they're up to. And they essentially have those propaganda messages. You know, very, you know, all we're doing great by the world.

We're doing all this great stuff in the world. We're going to fix this. We're going to fix that. We're all great people. Everybody get along. You know, meanwhile, they're probably one of the largest arbiters of bad shit. It would be falling people all around the world. So, you know, so I think it does happen.

I think the other aspect of that is, you know, the media in this. in the world is by and large owned by a very small group of people. Yeah. You know, I think six media companies account for, you know, 90, 95% of the broadcasted information on the planet. So when you start to look at that,

from that direction, you go, oh, okay, well, then the message is that, you know, it's not getting through at that level or it's not coming down from that level.

Um, and I think in part because, you know, you can't, you can't just all of a sudden, say, hey, we're all, we're all a one world government because there's been so many years, religious institutions, social institutions, cultural institutions, of identifying as a certain group, a certain, you know, the tribalism of all this stuff.

I think if you were just to come out and be like, hey, give everybody a hug, you alienate the most radicalized people that you would use to actually impart, you know, you change, really, because that's where a lot of the change happens is when people get very radicalized about, you know, the information of movement, what have you. And then they're willing to not go to work today and go out and stand on a street corner and protest. Right. So I think there's a concerted effort to not have that as the message. Also, you know, bread and games, right? Yep, yep.

If all of a sudden, you know, they switched away from dividing people and, try to unite people. People united now will talk and say, hey, do you know that they did this? They did what? We need to go talk to that guy. Yeah. You know, I'm pretty sure if we saw the laundry list of dirty deeds of, if you're like a, you know, a Pfizer, we already know some of them that have come to light in court. But if you saw the laundry list, you'd be like, whoa. How is, how are these people still allowed to do this. You know, I mean, you're responsible for millions and if not billions of lives at this point, you know, potentially negatively impacted.

And so you have to say, you know, you have to look at all of these different pieces of that. And I think by and large, it serves the purpose of the state and, you know, the people, and authority to keep people divided. because the state is operating at a less than ethical and moral level. And it usually does. I mean, you know, if you look through history, the state is replete with not taking care of its citizens and doing, in fact, doing most everything it can to, you know,

devalue, rob, demoralize, whatnot towards their citizen. you know, more egregious and sometimes than others. But I think, you know, from the, from just what, you know, the systems that we have architected into society, into culture, that's kind of our status quo right now. Man, that's, that's a lot in there. Yeah, I kept rambling. No, it's, it's all great.

I'm just trying to figure out a good jump-off point. I guess if you look at Europe as the model right now, You can see the attempt to bring Europe together as a European Union through an economic union. You know, they never quite got to the military stage of it, which maybe that's what they're trying to do now. But, you know, it is every world war has started over there. They've been fighting in Europe for thousands of years. And they're not European. They're Serbian.

They're British. They're Irish. They're German. Yeah. And then the farther back you go, you know. Right. You're all haplogroup act. Yep.

And so are we for that matter. Absolutely. Except for the blonde-haired, blue-eyed aliens. Those are different. Well, that's where haplow group X was read into. Yeah. Do you think that this idea of the state trickles down into the ideas of the individual?

I think that's going to be highly dependent on the education level of the individual. I mean, I think, you know, for those of us who are aware of the massinations of the state, it's very hard to be compelled by the state. Simply because, you know, you can see, you know, the, them very much taking advantage in many, many, many aspects. But if you're not familiar with the massinations of the state and you grew up saying in the presence of allegiance, or the Pledge of Allegiance, and, you know, you know, America Great, here's the American Dream, white picket fence.

People still believe that. But if you were not educated and weren't able to see the inner workings of the machine, then, yeah, I think a lot of people buy hook-line and sinker still. Especially if you've never had any contention, right? Like, if you never found yourself at odds against the state, then, you know, it's just like when Edward Snowden came out and said, hey, everything you're saying and talking about is being recorded. You are being spied on by the state.

Everybody went, I don't have anything to hide. Well, guess what? It's not about hiding stuff today. It's about what they declare illegal tomorrow and retroactively go back and say, hey, guess what? You're of fault now. And, you know, that was a little bit of it was cancel culture, right? They were retroactively going back and doing these.

things, but that's just, that's very, very minor, minor legibility of what could happen in these kind of arenas, you know, if all of a sudden it gets very radicalized and they say, hey, it's illegal for you to have ever voted one direction or the other. And we're going to go back to your voting records and you're going to have to account for that. Well, yeah, you had nothing to hide at the time, but now you're really up shit creek without a battle. Now, obviously, that's very, very, very extreme in. But between that extreme and, you know, the ability for them of this cancel culture thing, all that ground in between is just steps along that path.

Yeah. And it's, it doesn't matter if it's a blue path or a red path. Doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's the same path. Yeah. Yeah. That's, you know, that's the thing.

It doesn't really matter blue or red, liberal conservative, all that stuff, especially if you look at what they stand for has all gone 360 degrees full circle, in terms of who supports what, when. It just so happens that it was more valuable or the base decided to resonate with something in a given year or whatnot. And then all these policies just go 360 degrees. It's a unit party at the end of the day. Yeah.

And it's paid for by now, especially big money in corporate interest through the aspect of lobbying. Yeah, it's, I think a good example of the Uner Party or sometimes I see it as a magnet. It's one magnet and the people are poles apart, but it's still one magnet. It's just on one hand, you have Trump and on the other hand you have Sam Harris. Like those are the exact same guy. That's the exact same guy. And I wish people could see like here's this one guy that's babbling about, you know, China this.

of that or he's babbling about democracies, this, Democrat, and then you have this guy over here like, I would protect, that guy could have dead kids in his claws, and I wouldn't care. Like, that's the same rhetoric. And I just, I'm hopeful, and I believe it's happening. I think people are having

a moment where they're like, wait a minute, this kind of seem like the same thing to me. You know, at some point in time, what are? Now, clearly in history, this happens, this seems to me, according to our previous conversations, this seems to me to be what you talked about, the end of a system.

And at the end of a system, what do you think are some likely outcomes? Is reform a possible outcome? Is the strong man an outcome? According to your work on systems, what do you think is the most likely outcome? Well, that's a big question, because there's a lot of moving parts in this system. Right. You know, there's a propensity for a lot of these things to happen. Like a strong man, for instance.

And this wouldn't be a Trump or anybody near like that. I'm talking somebody who charismatic, well-spoken, well-thought-out in their philosophy, has a strategy. You know, somebody like that who, like, came to the table with, look, guys, we're doing one through ten here and we're going to win. Yeah. that type of person right now could create a populist movement. With the way, the state of things right now and the craziness, it does look like it's more likely going to move to kind of a disillation in some sense.

Whether that be a very limited federal government and the more kind of the growing of state power, or, you know, like a true fracturing. I see it less likely being a true fracturing just because there's the nuclear arsenal to consider. Yeah. You know, that's not an easy thing to say, okay, you guys can keep the ICBMs over there, but, you know, we're going to keep the access codes. Nobody's going to agree to any of those terms. They're going to want, you know, so in order for some sort of fracture to happen,

and things would have to get pretty egregiously bad, I think. But I can definitely see, and we are kind of seeing it, right? We're seeing the Supreme Court kind of just kicking out a whole bunch of precedent now and remanding a lot of things through the Tenth Amendment to the state. And I think a lot of people are probably more apt to, you know, say, hey, I can pick if I want to live in Colorado, Texas, or why. You know, I can't throw out. I can't throw out the federal government.

So I think there's going to be a movement more towards, you know, larger state powers. And then I think we'll eventually see, you know, those things kind of turn more like of a technocratic city state. So, you know, you'll see. And, you know, you already have California doing it, right? Yeah. Yeah. They want to, they want to ban all petrol by 2030 and all petrol vehicles. Yeah.

So, you know, what is, you know, so I can see when when these states start to gain more of their own kind of independent flavors that you'll, you'll have kind of like, you know, kind of Greek city states essentially, but they'll definitely be technocratic in nature, kind of, you know, kind of evolve as the power structures. They'll still be a federal government, but I don't think that it's going to, I don't think it's going to continue on this centralizing power route. I think that's kind of getting to a fracture point, just because it's so egregious. It impacts so many people and everybody's pissed off. Yeah. And I think that has repercussions. Now, this is a very slow-moving system. And so those repercussions are going to continue to, you know, take some time to unfold.

But I think eventually we'll see kind of just, you know, the movement in that direction. that being said you know there are you could fix it if there was the political will to do so you know but that would be things like term limits you know no no lobbying you know having things like set budgets for campaigning you know all the things that basically make it a pay-to-win system, you would have to cut out all of those and you'd have to do it concisely. You couldn't just willy-nilly do it. Right. And I think that would be, you know, the path towards a reforming, but I don't think that there's the political will to do so. Yeah. The level of entrenchment is so deep that after I hearing you speak, it seems like the preferred method would be a

a lessening of control. It seems to me the preferred path would be to do everything in your power to stop a strong man from coming in, whether that's a breakup, whether it's a consensual or non-consensual. That still seems to be the path people would rather take or lean towards rather than the other way. Now, there is also the other option. There's the existential crisis. The what crisis? The existential crisis.

Right. You know, World War III kicks off. or, you know, if an alien invasion happens or something like that, all of a sudden a lot of those, a lot of the conversation, these conversations just get kicked down the road, almost indefinitely, you know, if there's some external threat.

Now, you know, so if World War III kicks off, it's one of those things where I think you would see kind of like a 9-11, like your point before. You wouldn't be able to buy a flat. Because now all of a sudden, if World War III kicked off, you know, daughters would be sacrificing their lives. And that's a different, it's a different level of societal impact.

And it has, I was going to say, and it has been, that has a very interesting way of kind of like smoothing out the, the ripples, right? Yeah. Yeah. At least in the short term. Yeah. It's like getting in a dumb fight with your brother or your sister. And then, you know, all of a sudden somebody dies and you realize like, fuck, what am I doing, man?

It's my brother. That's my sister. And I really think that, you know, as fractured as we are as a nation, if somebody were to hit us, if there were to be a, you know, whether it was a false flag or someone actually attacked the United States, I think that you would see a level. And this might be dangerous because this is where the strong man may come in. That's where the populace comes from.

Oh, especially right now, like, as mad as people are and looking for a fight, like I used to know these two brothers Josh and Nick Yeah they might as well be I love these guys but man They fight each other Oh they punch it in the face you know I'd get mad at each other

But God forbid they were out And one somebody tried to fight the other brother Because then they both just came together And then it was like this They had their moment of camaraderie I just When I think of America I think of Josh and Nick

Because that's how we are Like we'll fight each other But guess what Stay out of our fight Because we'll fight you You know And that's the last thing the world wants. Last thing the world wants is a United America to just be like, oh, yeah, you know what,

let's build more arms. And you know what? Let's all go fight now. I can get behind this. You know, that's not. Absolutely. Well, and, you know, it's so much so that other nation states have spent billions and billions of dollars and people resources trying to impact just that, just so there isn't a United, United States

that wants to go stomp on people. people because that, you know, from a technological military perspective, by all measures that I'm aware of, you know, we're still arm and a leg above anybody else. It's not even close. And you could say, yeah, China has the power, the manpower and whatnot or, you know, Russia, Soviet Union, but, you know, we've seen what the former Soviet Union is capable of in terms of waging more. And then, but technologically, we also see what we're capable of. And then, but technologically, we also see what we're capable of. every single day, let alone what we're not talking about. And, you know, if you go look at some of the interesting patents filed over the past few years, you know, there's some technology that has yet to be revealed to the world. There's pretty game-changing in terms of ability to be out of place, attack a place, or see a place, you know, at a moment's notice. Yeah.

I was thinking a lot about what you said about how. the helical model of the world, the helical model of history. And when I look back at World War I in World War II, I'm always amazed at how the German army was able to raise an army after World War I. How did they, where did they find this fortitude? Like how did they just go from having nothing? How did they go from, you know, having the major catastrophic inflation to building up one of the most incredible armies of all times.

And if you look at the level of desolation, like desolation breeds the need to succeed in some ways. You know, it's like when you have nothing left, you have nothing left to lose. And you start, right, I'm going to work for free. What else are you going to do? I'm going to build this thing up. And then all of a sudden you layer in some redemption in there.

You layer in some nationalism. You know, I don't thoroughly understand the entire world of geopolitics. politics. But I think the world would be wise to look back at history and say, oh, it could never happen there. Like, you know, when I, when I see Werner von Braun, the world's greatest rocket scientist at the time, all of a sudden I see Elon Musk, the world's greatest rocket scientist of this time. I see when I look back there, I see a nation of people that were destroyed by international finance. When I look at America, I see a world of people that are being destroyed by international finance.

When I look at World War II, I see this level of bankers saying like, well, look, man, these guys, they cannot have any national interest. They cannot have their own currency. We need them to be on board if we're going to unite Europe. And I see it here. The bankers around the world. Look, we need the money from the United States. They have to pay for everything.

Damn it. I don't care about these stupid people over there. The world's more important. And I think the world should be very weary. They should be very cautious of repatriation. repeating a mistake that might not end the same way the things ended last time. You know, I'm not saying that one group would be persecuted, but I am saying that when people have nothing left to lose, they lose it.

And there's a lot of people in the United States that would rally behind an idea of taking back what they thought was theirs. If the majority of people in America understood that all their money, is going to buy real estate, to buy resources, to extract resources. And all their hard work and labor is being given to other countries and then siphoned back to family offices, siphoned back to non-governmental organizations, special economic zones, CEOs and bankers.

If people in the United States understood that all of their kids' future was being siphoned off to this handful of group up here, this group of people up here would be in a world of pain. The rest of the world will be in a world of pain. If the United States just decided, you know what, we're actually going to work with the Russian people and we're going to take it all over. We've had enough of you guys.

We don't need you. We're bringing in Eric Prince over here. We're bringing in this guy. And you guys are going down. Like, I think that that could happen really quickly. It could. But so, you know, it's really interesting. There's certain details about World War I and World War II

that get left out. of the history books that I find, you know, add a lot of flavor to the whole conversation. You know, you were talking about how did Germany recover from one to two and raise all of this stuff. Well, it was exactly that. They were told that, you know, we're going to take back what's ours. Yeah. To the point where they kicked out the central bank system. Then World War II started. You know, if you go back a little bit,

further, where did income tax, where did the Fed come from in the United States? Well, it was all a plan hatched off a Jekyll Island by some of the richest people in the country. The other rich people in the country didn't agree with them. They all happened to die on a ship called the Titanic. You know, there's very interesting nuances to these stories that when you look at them, you go, oh, so it's always been the money pulling the strings in all of this game. And, So yeah, to your point, if people realize that, I think people would say, let's go ahead and give that back. The problem is, is that before people typically have been able to realize that reality, bombs start dropping. Yeah.

Or people start shooting or swords are, you know, on chief. So there's, I think it's a wonderful notion, but I think the practicality of it is, is that in order to, you know, in order to get rid of these centralized power structures, you have to find a way to out-compete them. That's a good point. And that's not going to be through a force of arms. It doesn't work that way. You know, it's too destructive. So I think, you know, ultimately the solution, I think, is to find a way to out-compete on a scale of, you know, economy.

And I think that's starting to be realized. I think, you know, cryptocurrency is that very idea embodied into something. So, you know, it's not that people don't realize this. They're just what mechanisms do we actually have available to us to make this change. And I think that's the only mechanism that I can see that allows us to take the system that we're in and move on to the next system without destroying the whole damn thing in the process. to make their idea irrelevant to make their idea no longer worthwhile yeah that's well put i and if you look back maybe maybe that's the mistake of history and maybe that's the end game for the people in power it's like okay well just destroy and build another one and we always win this way because our idea is the best

idea but if they've got they've gotten progressively more resources and more power over time right so They're not compelled to change their behavior. So do you think cryptocurrencies are as a monetary system, do you, maybe we should define, do you think that we're looking for a way to better distribute the profits of labor? Is that one of the fundamental issues? I think so. I think inherently we're driven to fairness. until we

we're confronted with an unfair situation you know every little kid says that's not fair yeah we we we under animals for that matter you know they understand fairness too

if I go give my dog a bigger plate of food than the other dog that dog looks at me now he loves me that loves me to death so he's not going to do anything but I get a funny look yeah you know it's more egregious and you know once you're out

in like the wild and that you're competing for resources. Yeah, I've read some studies. I don't, I don't think it was Harlow's monkeys, but I've read some studies where, you know,

they would, they took these monkeys and they would give them a grape to, and one time they, you know, they would give them each a grape, each a grape,

and then they broke them up and give, would give one like a sugar cube. And so the one, so one would get a sugar cube, one would get a grape. And pretty soon the one they got the grape

would take the grape and throw it at the guy. Like, what is this? I watch this. I want this, I want this, sugar cube dummy. Right. Yeah. And I think, you know, so we do have a sense of fairness. Right.

You know, as, as animals. And I think once that, you know, if we can develop a system that's fair, people will see it for fair and will participate in it at, you know, in good faith. But if you put people, especially if you thrust people, like we are into a system that is inherently unfair, now you have behaviors developed to game the system, to try to get ahead, to cheat, to steal, to all of these things. Because, well, if they're not going to play fair, why should I play fair? And that's the guy throwing the grape. And that's the monkey throwing the grape, right?

Well, I'm done with this game. Give me your sugar cube. Yeah. What do you, like, let, so if we were to put ourselves on the top of the pyramid and say, these dummies down here, they're talking about fairness. You guys don't understand. There's people in the third world, they don't have it fair. You guys get to live over here.

You get to go to the dentist. You have all these amenities. And you're way overpaid for what you're doing. There's a guy in Somalia that works 10 times harder than you. They have no money. So we have to take your money and give it to them. It's not even your money, you greedy little punk. It's our money.

It's our system. And we are giving it to the people that need it. We are the arbiters of fairness. Like, how do you combat that idea? See, the problem is, is humans are just inherently infallible. I mean, are inherently fallible. So, you know, we're not going to be fair. Even if all of a sudden magically you and I were placed at the top.

And, you know, we've both done our fair bit of work in life. We would find ourselves in situations where we would be compromising for an ideal for a group of people for relationships, for, you know, people who were just nicer at the end of the day, you know, because there's all of these, you know, back to empathy. There's all of these different variables in that equation. So to create some grand arbiter of everything is kind of almost acknowledging that it's going to be an unfair system. And I think that's where cryptocurrency really kind of, you know, comes about is because you've decentralized that centralized power. structure. So there is no arbiter over the system. The system is a balance of interested parties.

And I think that, you know, that balance word is probably the key word in all of this, right? It's being able to find a balance of all of the variables because that's what fairness is. You know, just because, you know, just because we have three grapes doesn't mean I get two and you get one. We figure out that we can cut it in half and we both get one and a half. Yeah. One person makes the podcast. and the other person chooses. Well, yeah, and that's, you know, essentially that's kind of what, like, Bitcoin, we'll stay with Bitcoin because cryptocurrency is a very broad term.

Sure. That's kind of what Bitcoin is. So you have, you have the miners who are, they're running the equipment. They're, they're invested in that to, and they get a reward every time that their equipment finds a block in a blockchain. That's their incentive structure to, play into the system is because they're getting rewarded. And then you have the people who are the coders, the development, who they say,

this is how the system works. And then you have everybody who adopts that system, they validate how the system works. So now the person who's the coder can't just say, I'm going to change the system. You have to get the consensus of everybody running the system to change the system. And that includes the miners as well. And so you have these interested parties who, yeah, you know, there's like very interesting things to Bitcoin. There will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin. Technically, you could change that.

That's just a line of code. It's just max equals 21 million. Or max supply, I think is actually what it's really called. But when I did a little bit of Bitcoin coding back in the same. day. I just have to say the the term max supply. It makes me think of max as Satoshi. You know what I mean? Anyways, go ahead. Well, yeah. So you know, so you know, so Bitcoin you have the balance of these incentive structures, right? And so the idea is that even if you have a bad actor, they can't they can't take over the system. Now, if in Bitcoin's instance, if you had 51% of the mining power in the world, you would be able to impart new rules on the network. And then kind of the idea behind that is, well, all the people who own Bitcoin are vested in it, in the rules being what they are.

That's what they bought into. And so you're not going to, it's very hard to accumulate 51% consensus on anything, especially in a distributed worldwide system. but then to, in order to change that system, not only would you have to get their consensus, but you would have to sell them on the idea that their investment is going to be more valuable by changing the system. And so it becomes a very, you know, it could happen, right, in theory,

but it becomes an increasingly unlikely scenario. Yeah, I like Bitcoin. Yeah. Sometimes I worry, like, you know, if you look at, there's so many ways, So you have the gray scale and like, you know, and, and I understand that Bitcoin can be broken down into smaller and smaller and smaller pieces. But it just seems to me like, and maybe this is the way new money systems work. But if somebody already owns, you know, 20% of it, like that guy owns 20% of all the money.

But I guess there's, you have the Rockefellers, the Ross, you probably have these families that own. Exactly how it works already. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's the international monetary fund, right? Yeah. It is. Black Rock. It's the vanguard. So, yeah, that's kind of how monetary systems end up working.

And, you know, you could even, we can even, you know, put it down to a small scale. You have a little tribe. You have one guy in the tribe who just works twice as hard as everybody else in the tribe. Eventually his accumulation of resources is going to be more than the rest of the tribe and you have that imbalance. That's why, you know, this equality of outcome idea is just, the grandest absurdity ever. Not only is it just absurd because it's impractical, but it's absurd because of what it would do to people. Now that guy who's working twice as hard,

who is getting rewarded for his work, now all of a sudden it just, why would he be incentivized to work as hard? Because every little step that he gets ahead is going to be taken away from him. So now his motivation to go off and do that work that was accelerating the tribe at the end of the day, even though, yeah, he was gaining more resources, but it was advancing the tribe. Now that's not going to happen. Now the tribe just kind of eventually dissipates them into nothingness because you have a race to the bottom. And I think that's what equality of

outcome essentially kind of creates is a dichotomy of a race to the bottom. Yeah, I think the word equality is something that should be thought of as out of a science fiction book you know like it's a beautiful thing yeah there's no true to it we know that i mean even if you take two twins who are born into the same family it's not an equal situation there's there you know yeah you could you could even raise them for 12 years to be this you know in the same environment with the same teachers and all that stuff and they'll turn out two completely different people because it's not an equal situation because it's two really different environments the whole human experience as his own separate environment.

Do you think that nothing can ever be equal because we don't have the ability to account for all the variables? Is that why there could be no equality because we cannot measure all the variables? Well, I think to establish an idea of equality, you would need to be able to measure all the variables. Even if you could measure all of the variables, you would then have to be able to manipulate all of the variables in order to institute inequality. So, you know, again, this just gets more and more in practicals, the further along you take

the thought experiment, right? Yeah, it does. I heard another thought experiment a while back that was something along the lines of society and social mobility. And in this thought experiment, the guy was saying, the person was saying that the problem we have in society. is that we take people, whether they be in corporations or governments or in society, that are really smart and we elevate them to the next level.

We should force those people to stay at the same level, because those are the people that bring the most value. And they don't bring the most valuable to the world when they're up here. They bring the most value to the world where they're in the middle because they're forced to be with people that are less than mediocre, that are mediocre and that are well, and they can move through the system that way. But once you take a person that's really good from the middle,

and put them up here, they become a different person. You need them to be down here in order to make the world better. And I thought to myself, like, well, that would take away a lot of the incentive to be good. And it must be horrible to be, on some levels, I think it's horrible to be, it would be confining and horrible to be, to know that you're at this level, but you'll never rise above. But maybe that's the wrong way to look at it. Maybe it's a beautiful thing to know that you're a level above,

but what you're doing is being in the middle to help everybody become the next better level of themselves. What do you think? That kind of, I mean, that brings us back full around to spirituality and personal role, right? Yeah, totally, man. You know, because I would argue the well-adjusted, world-wise individual, could look at themselves in that situation and say, yes, this is where I'm, you know, being the most effective and helping the most. How many people can make that judgment of themselves today? I think that's not as many as we would hope or you need to pull off something at a grander scale.

Yeah, so it's interesting. I think, you know, it's one thing to talk about this in terms of success, right? Has success has always been tied to monetary, you know, mean. Whereas, you know, I'm sure you well know, some of the greatest joys in life are had very much outside of that world. And to call those unsuccessful would be, you know, unreasonable. So, yeah, it's a very interesting thing. I think we're looking at it from a monetary perspective.

Yeah, you could make the argument that that was. I think if you're looking at it from a holistic perspective, I think that it leaves something to be wanting in terms of, you know, why is there a structure that's dictating this? What sort of real mobility is available in that structure? Is there a glass ceiling on that structure? Who's pulling the strings in that structure? You know, there's a lot of other variables to that that I think are very important to that thought experiment when you're being holistic. about the idea. Yeah.

I would like to try and push that narrative on people that the structure that you think you see may not be the actual structure that you live in. And that maybe if you're listening to this right now, I want you to think that I think you are the person that is at one of the pinnacles. Because if you can see yourself as someone that, can help everybody around you. If one of your goals is to make everybody around you better,

then I think you're functioning at a really high level. I think that you have the ability to see somewhat clearly and not be blinded by these shiny trinkets and these idealistic things that you think will make your life better. And it's so hard to not be blinded by the idea, of a giant house on the water or the idea of whatever you're a crazy idea

is that you think would make you better it's not that thing that would make you better it's the pursuit of the happiness right it's the pursuit of happiness it's not the attainment of happiness it's that pursuit that thoroughly quenches your thirst for being

successful and happy it's the pursuit of that so if you're listening to this I think you're on top of your game and you're moving between different places and you're helping everybody around you. So thank you and keep doing that. Well, if you're listening to this, you're definitely in the upper echelon, folks. I second that. Without a doubt, without a doubt.

You know, please. Oh, go ahead. No, I got nothing. Go ahead. I was going to say, you know, in that regard, you know, this kind of brings us back to the topic of do people need to be governed? You're here. And when we, when we, when we, we look at the monetary way of doing things, you know, it's really easy to account for the yes answer in that question. When we look at it holistically, I think you start to see that it's, you

know, a much more leans towards no. And yeah, I think we're seeing, you know, you have like a burning man with radical responsibility and radical personal responsibility. And you have a lot of these growing movements and ideas. And again, to your opening point about the return of a lot of more spiritual aspects, a lot of interfaith communications now, a lot of, you know, a lot of roundtables when it comes to all of these ideas. I think we're seeing kind of this grassroots movement through society. And I think the more and more we go down that path, I think it becomes harder and harder to keep a population like that in check. Because now they're not going to just accept that you're going to go off and do X. They're going to ask you for a whole litany of

reasons why you think that that's a good idea. And our power structures aren't geared to facilitate that conversation. Yeah. And, you know, maybe maybe one answer to the question, do people need to be governed? Maybe one answer is yes until they don't. And maybe that's where we are. I think that's, I think that's where we are. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I didn't think about that until you just said the way our society is set up. Like, yeah, there's a lot of corruption, but there doesn't need to be. There could be people that just say, you know, and I spoke about the, I spoke about learning from the people in China.

Right now, I read an article about the corrupt banking system. They're having their own Lehman Brothers moment over there where banks are failing. But what a lot of the Chinese people did is they just said, you know what, we're not going going to pay our mortgage ever. This company lost all the money. We're not giving you a dime. You could kick us out of our house. You can try to, but we're going to fight you the whole way.

And the government's like, what? And we hear all this propaganda about how ruthless China is and how bad they are. But here's the people saying, you know what, we're not going to pay our mortgage. You guys burned us. We're not paying it. Go pound sand. Yeah. And, you know, authoritarian ruthlessness only goes so far.

Right. Because that's going to be a small handful of people always. Right. And when it butts up into the greater response of the citizenry, you know, when 100,000 people are like, eh, I don't think we're going to pay our mortgage. And they're all in one location. What are you going to go do? Rat out 100,000 people.

Where are you going to put them? You're going to throw them all in jail? You're going to kill them? What are you going to do? Your options become very limited from an authoritarian perspective. And, you know, those limits are usually just violence. But violence is only good up until a certain point of noncompliance because then, you know, yeah, you might shoot 10,000 people, but you still have 90,000.

very much more angry people to contend with. Right. You know, so there is, and you do see a call for, you know, radical noncompliance and for a lot of things now. But, you know, from just a reasonable, rational perspective from that Chinese person who that company did lose all their money, why the heck should I pay you? Yeah. You know, unfortunately, because of the structures we had, when the Lehman Brother thing happened,

we didn't have that option, right? Right. Um, of course, that option always always exists, but there's so much to lose for people. Right. You know, back to what you were saying before, if there's a lot to lose, then there's a lot more on the line. But if there's nothing to lose, people go, eh, I got nothing to lose. What are you going to do about it? I'm pretty sure you have more to lose than me.

Yeah. It, it, I read a study recently about courage and they said, you know, in the face of adversity, when, when there's a, let's say that somebody runs in with a gun and they're like, Or I'm going to grab this kid, you know, they say the first person that stands up and is getting ready to rush him, while that takes courage, it's the second person that stands up. Because he, like, maybe the first person acts out of nobility or acts out of just spontaneous reaction or fear. He goes to chase him. But the second person, he sees that he knows there's a good chance he's going to get shot, but he does it anyway. And it's usually the third, by the time the third person gets there, the whole crowd reacts.

So, you know, on the topic of 08 and banking and Lehman Brothers, I had bought a place in 07, the top of the market. And I got into it, you know, and I take full responsibility for getting into a place. I couldn't afford. And all of a sudden, like, I couldn't make my payments. And so I'm like, okay, what am I going to do? Am I going to just let it go? Am I going to try to keep it? Well, let me try to get a loan modification.

So I and in Hawaii there's no Bank of America in Hawaii. So I had a countrywide loan, you know, those great guys. And it got bought by Bank of America. And so I called Bank of America and I said, look, I don't, I'm not living here. I don't have the money to pay it. You know, I would like to work to try to figure out a way to pay it, but I can't do it. Can you guys help me? And the guy's like, you've never missed a payment so far.

You don't have any problems. And I go, no, no, no, you didn't hear me. Like I'm not buying any food. Future here. Like I can't continue to do this. Like, you know, either I make the payment or I don't.

I've made it so far and I thought that that should count for something. You know, what can you do to help me? And he goes, no, you didn't hear me. You don't have a problem. And I went,

oh, you need me to miss payments before you'll help me. Wait, Mr. Monty, I didn't say that. I just hung up on. I'm like,

okay, fine. And so, you know, talk about sleepless nights and, you know, I just gotten married and like, you know, my wife's pregnant. I'm like, dude, I'm going to lose my entire, I'm going to lose my everything I have, you know, and I'm just going through these times. And I go, well, I'd rather just, I'll just file bankruptcy and start over, you know, unless they help me. So, you know, I start missing payments. And lo and behold, I missed two months and they call me right up. Hey, Mr. Mont. He looks like you're

having some problems. Can we help you out? You know, and I'm like, man, That's so crazy. Like I try to do the right thing and they want nothing. But here's where it gets interesting. Like I end up getting the modification, but I know other people in Hawaii. There's two kinds of foreclosures. There's a judicial foreclosure and a non-judicial foreclosure.

The judicial foreclosure or the non-judicial foreclosure says that the bank can come in and take your place. That's it. The judicial foreclosure says the bank has to come and go to court and explain to the judge in front of you and you get an option to say your piece before they can take your home. And, you know, as a young man, I didn't understand any of these. And being in a situation where I was desperate, I didn't take the time to do the research to figure out what my rights truly were. I didn't have money for a lawyer. I didn't understand this.

And so, lo and behold, in Hawaii, because they're, they force you to go in front of a judge if the bank wants to foreclose, there's a lot of people that went to court and says, you know, I would love to pay Bank of America this, but they can't produce my loan. I have my country. You know, it was the exact same thing. It's like, I have my loan document here. And they, they don't own my house. I can't pay my loan because they don't own it. And I'm not going to give them money because they don't own my house. And then, and then so the judge would be like, well, can you show us that you own this loan?

And they're like, we bought it in this, in this securitized thing over here. The judge is like, yeah, can you show me the guy's loan document. And they're like, no, we can't. And he's like, that's your house, you know, because the bank, The bank could not prove they own the house. They owned a securitized package of homes they bought. Right. Right.

But they didn't have the paperwork. And so they couldn't show to judge that. And so to this day, you know, there's people that like they got like an $800,000 house, a $500,000 house, you know. And I was thankful to get, I was really thankful. I got the loan modification. I continued to make payments and I ended up selling it. You know, I didn't make any money on it. But that's neither here nor there.

I honored my commitment and I got the help I needed and I did it. But I think back like, wow, it was there. Like you had your rights were there and people did observe them. So, you know, I think that, please. Well, I was going to say, you know, the big problem with that, you know, comes down to education, right? Yes. And you just, you just said it. You're like, I didn't, you know, I didn't know, nor did I have the time, resources to go to go find the right information.

and if you look at the tax code in this country, if you look at all of these things, nobody really knows. If you could give me one guy who said, I know it all, I would be very impressed. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I think that there's structures there.

I think that, and I just want people that are listening to this to know if you find yourself in a crisis, maybe we find ourselves in a crisis by the middle of the next year, take the time, to do the research, no matter how stressed you are, no matter what's going on in your life. Like, there's a way out of it that could probably benefit you.

So just take heed. Look at the world around you and look at the way people in other nations are dealing with problems that may come here or that you may already have in your life. And maybe you can find a solution or at least a spark to an idea that will give you the pathway to a solution. Don't accept the absolute. No absolutes. The book is called No Absolute. by Benjamin C. George. It's a framework for life.

Good plug. Yeah, I do think that there is a emerging sort of synthesis coming. And maybe this is the kind of globalization we want. You know, I enjoy looking to the people in other parts of the world to see how they're dealing with their government. I think we can learn a lot from them. Instead of us looking down our nose at the people from other nations, maybe we should be looking them in the eye and trying to comprehend their struggles

so that we can apply those same methods that they are using. Absolutely. You know, in my travels, I learned one important fact above all others, which was everywhere you go, people are just people. Yeah. They want the same stuff.

They want their family to be happy. They want to have friends. They want to have good times. They want to laugh. They want to make sure their kids have a rule. over their head. They want to have a roof over their head. They want to know where their meals coming from the next day. You know, very simple thing. By and large, people, especially individuals, don't have these grand machinations for, you know, global takeover, you know, regime

change or anything like that. Those ideas start to formulate when you get larger groups of people trying to take things from other people. Yeah. So yeah, looking people in the eye is a wonderful thing. I mean, you know, I call everybody brother and sister just because that's how I view everybody, you know, even if I don't know yet. Because that's just, you know, my outlook on the world now is, you know, we're all on this rock hurling, you know, ridiculous amounts of speed through space. And there's no other, there's no other outlet. There's no other recourse. There's no other, you know, we can't just turn and say, okay, we're not going to deal with you guys anymore.

No, we're all here together. And while some people would like to eradicate, you know, all that competition in their mind, you know, that's where I think we're going to see a dramatic shift over the next 10 years in, you know, provided we don't blow ourselves up, I think we'll see a much more radical shift towards, we're kind of already seeing the grassroots movement of it, but I think you'll start to see international groups of people. You know, adopting similar ideologies, you know, frameworks for society. Yeah. And moving in different directions that take us away from this precipice of impending disaster every time, you know, one nation state of half a billion people gets mad at some other nation states.

Yeah. Well, in fact, we all are people. Yeah. Yeah, I often wonder if, you know, there's that old trope about the world would become united if we were attacked by aliens. But what if greed is the alien and has infected people in boardrooms and governments all around us? What if we had a one world populist movement where the new Bible was John Ronson's book, The Psychopath Test? And we could give this test to people. You know, it's a wonderful thought experiment. Unfortunately, we always end up with the same problem,

which is the people who are pulling the strings will not allow you to play that thought experiment out in any sort of real capacity. Because the likelihood of it is that people would go, oh, no, we don't want anything to do with you anymore. So you've got to go. And, yeah. It comes down to ideas. Yeah. And I do. And I do.

I think we're approaching the ideas. Like there's whether it's cryptocurrency or the Terra Libre project or whether it's parallel structures or people utilizing radical noncompliance. The modalities of the world are no longer strong enough to keep the bull in the pin. Like the fences are no longer stronger. The system, no matter how many patches you put on it, no matter what you read. reinforce it with the structure is decaying and people are fleeing the the reservation right the system uh it got to such a scale where the the tiny fractures that you wouldn't be able to see at the small scale turn into these ripping chasms uh at the at the largest scales um and that that

dramatically changes the you know the nature of the system uh like imagine a crack in a in a pipe Water is still flowing through the pipe, but if all of a sudden that crack is, you know, very large, in margins, all of a sudden, you know, that pressure in the water is going to dissipate and some of it's going out the crack. And it's going to continue putting pressure on that crack, widening it and widening it and widening even more until the pressure equalizes out and it's being pushed in both directions at equal pressure, minus some environmental effects. But I, and, you know, as society has scaled to those levels where those cracks are now little fissures that are, you know, are leaking, we're going to see more and more of that pressure move into those leaks because it's going to expand those cracks in the system. Yeah. Would you say that the system, if we use that same system of like the cracks in the dam or the cracks in the pipe, Do you think that regardless of which way it breaks that we need a new pipe? Is there no patch big enough to put on this system?

I mean, there might be a way to patch two or three pipes. The problem is that if you have cracks in seven pipes and you patch three, now the pressure grows in the other four. And the fissures in those pipes are just going to expand that much faster. Yeah. And I think that's kind of what we're seeing from a metaphorical perspective of society right now. You know, you have like the cracks of like a social media for instance, how information is generated across the country. And the more and more that the mainstream media tried to push pressure onto the system, the more and more it's leaking out into things like podcasts, right?

Yeah, absolutely. So from a, yeah, from a grand perspective, you know, there are, you can patch some. certain things, but if that patch doesn't account for all the cracks in the system, all you're doing is just reappropriating the pressures that that crack had to other broken parts of the system. It's amazing to think about it like that. Like, you know, the water that came from that crack gave life to an ecosystem outside of it. And now that ecosystem is strong enough to survive on its own, you know?

So maybe it gets us back like, gosh, dang, it's full circle. back again. Like, you know, it's, it's almost like this was necessary. And you know what? You said it before Benjamin, it's the end of a system, you know, and it's it's it's the new formation of a system. Right. And, you know, we talked about this a bit before, but, you know, it doesn't have to be some existential crisis either. Right. You know, it's it's the flourishing of something new. Yeah. And the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in a new beginning, which, you know, many, many generations, have not had a chance for a new beginning, right? Yeah.

And with that comes mountains and mountains of opportunity. Yeah. Yeah, that's the exciting part. And I know it's easy to get bogged down in the minutiae and the doom scrolling and the excitement and the opportunity. But the truth is, who doesn't want to celebrate a new beginning? Who doesn't want to be there at the birth of something new? And I think that that's a great way for people to look at it.

And that might be a good way for us to end this one right here, is that we are beginning the birth of something new. And you have the great fortune of being here. You have the great fortune of participate, not only participating in, but perhaps giving guidance to this brand new form being born. And when this new form is born, so too is a new form of yourself being born,

new relationships being born. new opportunities and new ideas being born. And you listening to this, you get to be part of it, man. Congratulations. I'm so stoked for you guys. It's a wild ride. Buckle up, folks. It's going to get great.

So thank you to everybody for taking time to listen and participate in. Randy John talks about how big of a crowd we had today. Thank you, Randy, for coming out, my friend. We are always open to answering questions and talking to people and learning from everybody out there. So I got, what do I got coming up? I have a couple more podcasts coming up in the future. I may have some giant news.

I don't want to jinx it. So I won't. I won't do it yet, but I'm really excited. I don't want to get too excited because it might not work, but I'm super excited. Benjamin, what do you have coming up? Where can people find you? And what are you excited about?

Benjamin C.george.com for all my projects, efforts, book, et cetera. Right now, I'm working on running and starting a parallel structure. So if anybody's interested in parallel structures, stay tuned to

the terra librae.group website. There'll be more updates, infographics, information coming down that pipeline here soon. Have some big meetings for that, so we'll see how that goes. I won't jinx them either. Well, I'm sending you all my good thoughts.

and if you're a listener out there, send you good thoughts to Benjamin. He's got some big, big projects coming up. And I'm always stoked to have you, my friend. I really enjoy talking to you, and I feel like I get to walk away with a clear conscience

and a good spirit after we finish our conversation. So I appreciate it. Okay, that's what we got for today, ladies and gentlemen. Aloha.