TrueLife - Prometheus - The fire of Creativity

Episode Date: September 15, 2022

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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. 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 Seraphini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. These and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. We are here with our good friend Benjamin George. That makes it George and George here on this Wednesday. Benjamin, how you doing, my friend? How's your day going?

What are you thinking about today? It's another beautiful day here in Colorado. We're finally getting into where autumn is starting to knock up the door, which is always kind of a nice time of year. And trees are changing. So, yeah, my day's been consisting of putting out just a few technical fires because, you know, apparently people like to hack websites these days who knew. And yeah, looking forward to another George and George conversation for this lovely Wednesday, 14.

Nice. Yeah, it's interesting on the topic of hacking systems. My wife and my daughter were at the grocery store and they were in line and they had all their stuff. They had some ice cream and a slice of pizza and they get to the front door or the cashier and the whole system goes down. Like I guess the whole credit card system went down and, you know, we don't, she didn't have a debit card or anything. They're like, oh, no, what are we going to do? She goes, you know, when I was younger, I used to work at the grocery store, and what they would do is they'd just take one of those carbons, and they'd swipe your credit card like that, so they had the number. But in today's world, they don't have those carbon.

They don't even have that old little machine anymore, you know. Well, they do still have them in some places in South America. There's a couple places where you're like, oh, yeah, we can do a credit advancement, and they pull out this big old thing, set it on the counter. They start ripping through the carbon paper, and you go, I haven't seen that in a while. And then you start to get a little questionable. You're like, I don't even know if that process still works. Are you guys sure about this?

Right. No, it's classic, man. Yeah. And it kind of brings me to one of the topics I wanted to talk about today. And that's, you know, looking into the future so that you can understand what's happening in the past. And for me, this has been like a good way, like a good thought exercise, a good mental exercise that I do sometimes so that I can understand where I'm at. And if it's if it's with business, it's like, where is it that I want to be in 10 years? Like what is this podcast?

What should it be? And then I envision that. And that allows me to understand what I need to do to get there. And I'm wondering if you, if you have ever used that technique or have you, do you use a similar technique? Or what are some of the techniques you use to, to forecast the future? I've definitely used that technique. But I also use, you know, you don't know where you're going if you don't know where you came from. And, you know, you might just end up walking in circles if you never knew where you started, right? Right. And by and large, extrapolating that to, you know, just like the greater human condition, you know,

has been kind of an exercise for me over the past some years, especially delving into anthropology, you know, ancient history and indigenous histories and things like that. because it's really interesting when you start to correlate all this information, how many parallels there are, how many pieces of information actually exist through the swath of all of them. Even if the words are a little changed or the context a little bit different, the overarching premises are still there. And I think it's, you know, from a, what are you trying to do on a personal level?

it's very important to, you know, understand your choices and what you're going to do next. But I think if we're kind of looking at a larger picture of where we're going and just, you know, predicting the future, whether that be if you're just trying to look at it from a business perspective, you know, what's going to be the next big thing, right? Do I, you know, is it going to be a crypto-related thing or is that ship sailed? You know, what's the next thing after that? Is it VR? Is it this metaverse? Is it all of these things? and finding a way to rationalize and predict where those things are going, you can't do it without a reflection of the past, I think.

But then, you know, the envisioning of the futures, you know, the other aspect of that. If I'm looking at it and I know where we came from and I know where I want to go, now I can devise the steps I need to get there, or at least an idea. They're not going to be perfect. They're going to change. That's just the kind of the nature of things. You know, we make our best guess, we make an estimate, and then we move towards that. So I do it all the time, like, for instance, in crypto trading.

So I have an automatic crypto system that I've developed that trades on active markets, and it's constantly weighing the past versus the present, and then doing calculations on that based with other things like sentiment analysis and whatnot of what people are talking about in the zeitgeist, and then combining that into kind of an algorithm to decide if I'm going to buy now or something. So I think there's a lot of ways that this all applies, and I think it's probably one of the more fundamental ways

that we kind of plot out our paths in line. Yeah, on that topic, what do you see, do you think that maybe Bitcoin has kind of bottomed out right now and we're seeing a rebound? What is your take on the Bitcoin maneuverability right now? Well, so when Bitcoin first came around, it really was acting as a hedge against what was happening in the global. Now as Bitcoin's been more widely adopted by especially institutional investors, that hedge is kind of gone. You know, we're seeing similar effects with like gold, for instance.

Gold was typically thought of a hedge against market fluctuations, but yet it hasn't really worked out as a hedge in this current climate either. So I think there's a lot to unpack, and you could approach this from a lot of different angles. But I think Bitcoin has, because it's just been beating on this like $19,000 to $20,000 range for so long, what typically happens when you have something like that happens, you have the people who are willing to accumulate or just start accumulating more until their kind of position

lets other people know that, hey, these people aren't going away. This is the price point. And then you have these, you have bull markets tick off. I think a lot of the reason you're not seeing Bitcoin going lower and it might be that bottom is because you did have lot of like, who was it? Michael Taylor? El Salvador just adopted it as legal tender.

There was a couple other countries talking about it as legal tender. And when that transition happened, I think Bitcoin kind of lost its hedge against done your fiat debt-based markets. And now it's kind of finding a new value point in the marketplace. And so I think we're witnessing that right now. I expect that to bounce around at this level, at least until after midterms, if people are looking to invest. Yeah.

Yeah, I think so. I'm curious because Bitcoin has a few, am I right in saying that Bitcoin has a futures market now? Well, yeah. So the way it works is exchanges, which are just privatized companies, will set up different types of markets. And you can, there's future markets. There has been since many, many, many years ago. Okay.

And so you do have a lot of people taking out, you know, margin positions on this. And recently, the whole reason that Bitcoin kind of came down in value this last time was more related to a different, a different cryptocurrency that had been over leveraged and institutional investors took advantage of it and crashed it out. And it was they wiped out some $600 billion in value, roughly speaking. And it was, it's kind of articulated. Like, you know, we know the players, we know, you know, who did the loans, what markets it were. And typically in normal markets, that's when you have like an SEC, right? But because Bitcoin is the way it is and all these private companies are in multiple different jurisdictions, you don't have any governing body that can really kind of affect. what is and what is not, you know,

good practice when it comes to these types of situations. So it's a very interesting dichotomy, you know, the factors that kind of weigh into this. Yeah, I was curious. I know that, you know, in the last few years, like, there's this, this incredible grift of paper gold, you know,

like you can buy all this paper gold. I heard something crazy. Like there's, for every ounce of, of real gold, there's like a thousand versions of paper gold or something similar like that. And that, I think, stems from the futures market. Is it possible to do something? Is it not possible to do something like that for Bitcoin? Like you can't sell paper Bitcoin, can you?

Or future Bitcoin that would cause the system to do the same thing? No, technically you can from Bitcoin's perspective. Now, if I'm a third-party institution, I can easily say that, yeah, we're going to sell you Bitcoin futures. we might not have the assets to cover that in case of litigation. You just have to kind of accept these private companies word for it, that they can maintain these markets. And some of them, you know, they go through processes to have verification.

They have third party on it. There is processes for this stuff. However, at the end of the day, you know, without 100% transparency, it's still a little bit of the role of the dice in the middle of what, especially if you have huge markets, You know, kind of similar to like the housing crash, right? All of a sudden, somebody realized, oh, I can bet against these subprime mortgages, and they're all about to go belly up.

And let me go ahead and make that bet. And then all of a sudden, you had a lot of private settlement coming in saying, hey, we can't honor that. Just to let you know where you accept this. And, you know, there's a good story about that big short, right? Yeah, yep. So, yeah, when you have these third-party companies that are, just private companies.

They're not directly tied to Bitcoin. They're not directly tied to any sort of other financial institutions necessarily. And they kind of make their own rules. And their sale is that, yeah, we have the assets to cover this in case of liquidation. But often cases, the reality is not that. Yeah. Yeah, I remember when, right when Block 5 first came out, I was like, well, look at this. These guys are offering, they were offering crazy, like a 20% month to month.

return. Yeah. I was like, are you kidding me? And of course you want to get in there and set up your account. And then all of a sudden you see Celsius kind of go down and you start realizing, you know, there was so much talk from the institutional investors. And there was so many people that wanted things to fail. And, you know, whenever there's that kind of money, there's greed involved. And I'm sure that the risk taking for a lot of people, whether it was an institution or an individual, it was worth it. Because I mean, If they can loan it out and give you 20%, what were they making? You know, it had to be incredible amounts of money.

And it brings me to this idea of, you know, it's fascinating to see the birth of something like that, to see the birth of Bitcoin, to know that we were there when that happened. It must have been similar to maybe after Breton Woods when the dollar exploded, you know. And it's interesting. So I'm wondering if we can use our forecasting. ideas. And this is just, no one can really forecast the future, but we can pretend that we know some similar path. So if we can, if we can compare Bitcoin to the dollar, is it possible that we see, let's say El Salvador, they've already taken it up. Let's say that Russia decides to start

taking it for some sort of imports or exports, maybe India. Is it possible to see Bitcoin become the World Reserve currency? I mean, if all things were equal, I think yes. The reality of the situation is all things are not equal. Because you have vested interests in this debt-based fiat system that is deep in all industry. So for fiat to lose its peg kind of as world currency and then for crypto to be adopted means the liquidation of magnitudes of debt, right? And the people who own that debt are unlikely to let that come to fruition without putting up a fuss. So now at the same time, you do have where settlements are

now international with cryptocurrencies and they're becoming pretty instantaneous. You've had a couple cryptocurrencies kind of let's play the Fiat game and the central banking system doing like an XRP, which is say, let us be your settlement layer and we'll just, you know, we'll figure out all the details. You don't have to maintain the network. And then you have, you know, Bitcoin, which had no interest in being in part of all of that. And it's just kind of its own sovereign thing. But because of that sovereignty, it's continuing to be adopted. Because at the end of the day, nobody, you know, even Western Union or other remittance companies, like, you know, you would go send something. A, you're paying.

an armed way. But B, there was always a chance that it could be seized, right, for whatever reason, especially if you're moving money into a country that, you know, has a very authoritarian government. They're in control of that economic system like a Venezuela or something like that. You know, moving money into Venezuela, you can't do it over those electric channels. They're going to take a huge chunk of that stuff, but you could do it over the digital channels, the blockchain channels and you, you know, pay the maybe a buck in fees. And then, you know, we send that $500 and the person gets $499. There's great power and value in that. And I think that kind of is continuing to fuel the everyday person adoption of these types of systems. Now we're seeing

where they're running into the head of, you know, nation states. And now all these nation states one to central bank digital currency. China has one started last June. United States has mandated one to be done by 2025. Canada is already rolling out theirs. So the writing's on the wall, in essence, where these people want to go. They want to take these digital currencies

and make them a centralized system, which actually defeats the underlying premise of Bitcoin itself and why it became so popular was its decentralized nature. And still it. you know, to a large degree. So, you know, kind of predicting where this is going to fall out, 2025 is kind of the line in the same for these central bank digital currency. So I think, well, by 2025, you're going to see a lot of these kind of roll out.

To the tune where, you know, hey, download the U.S. dollar, you know, central bank wallet, and you're going to get $500 a month. Yeah. And, you know, there's going to be caveats to that. and the TOS that you signed for that is probably going to be quite aggressive. You know, I have a suspicion that these are going to be linked to, you know, kind of the World Economic Forum, the International Monetary Fund, where they say that you're going to own nothing like it.

How are you going to own nothing like it? Well, you're going to have to be supplied with something. And I think this is that supply solution that they envision. I'm highly speculative how well it's going to come off, if you will. And by that, I mean, I don't think it's going to work at all. I think it'll work in larger municipalities like huge city centers where you do have, you know, nobody can afford bread anymore or they can't afford the dollar six per kilowatt hour for electricity to run their apartment.

I think that's where you'll see the adoption. simply because of me. Yeah, at a necessity comes, you know, out of necessity comes the answer. It's the old problem reaction solution, and that solution is this central bank digital currency or, you know, it's a, it's a payment for someone who is desperate. And I think you'll see it probably, like, if you look at what's happening in,

you know, some of these third world countries, I just saw this little report that talked about Peru and Argentina and Bangladesh and, you know, even Sri Lanka where most people have seen they ran their president out of town like he left on a military plane and stole a bunch of money. Now, these people, they're going to the IMF with their handout wanting billions of dollars. And like, what a perfect opportunity to try out your digital system right here. Okay, here's our new digital system. We're going to give you the money, but here's all the caveats. And it, you know, it, you know, and then you start, it's not too far of a stretch to think that, oh, wow, there's not going to be any food coming up this winter. Oh, there's not going to be any gas coming up this winter.

You know, and I once heard it said that before someone can help you off the ground, they got to beat you to the ground. Like, you're not going to ask for help until you're laying on the ground. You don't need a hand up until you're laid out flat. It sure seems to me that, you know, all these sanctions that we've put on Russia are in a way. sanctions we've put on ourselves. You know, we are forcing ourselves to pay, you know, five bucks at the pump, you know, and that's in a country where, you know, you don't make that kind of money. When in a country where you're already struggling, you know, you're paying four bucks at the pump.

You have the same thing that happened with the, what was that the Middle East Spring or something like that or the Arab Spring? You can kind of see that coming back around again where there's not enough money. for food and people are beginning to struggle. And, you know, it makes me wonder if, you know, as we were talking in the future, we forecast the future to look back on the past. Are we looking at the crisis before the war right now? What do you think?

Well, I think there's definitely an angle there that suggests yes. You know, and I think it's a much more multifaceted kind of jewel, if you will. you know and we can look at things like this whole the whole climate change situation which you know disregarding the actual science of it the climate change of it looking at the policies that are being enacted versus what's actually possible in reality from terms of like global productions resources resource count things like that and if you if you just look at those numbers you know there it's it's a non-start you know the amount of energy that we consume the amount of consumption to create renewable energies even um all these numbers are so you know you're talking 85 percent of the

energy production has to use for this in order to maintain the world that we're at whereas you have renewable type infrastructure only supports you know five to 15 percent depending on the country and there are some countries like oh, we ran 100% for renewable energy. But that's a bullshit answer too, because you didn't. How were all the solar panels made? Where did all the generators come from? How did the wind turbines get manufactured?

Those are all extracted via heavy machinery out of the earth at a massive expense to the environment. What you're talking, just the chemical processes that we have to do. I mean, just look at the lithium fields, right? Yeah. I mean, they're so toxic. But yet, you know, renewable energy is our solution, which don't get me wrong, I'm all about renewable energy. I love, you know, one of my passions is energy. But at the same time, you have to be realistic with these things.

And I don't think we're being realistic on purpose from some aspects of this problem. Because if we're not realistic about it, then nobody can actually judge us. And then, you know, these mandates come and these proclamations come. And then, you know, these, you know, agreements come and all of this stuff. And it's not supported by science. It's not supported by, you know, how we're going to offset the cost. We don't actually have real solution for this. We just have declarations.

We just have politicians standing on stages and waving their arms or their fists. Yeah, exactly. You know, that brings me to this idea of privatization and government. and, you know, I get torn sometimes. And let me give you an example of a area of privatization that makes me a little bit queasy. Born in California, I was in California when Enron was a big force. My sister is an investigator, and she cut her teeth on the Enron scandal. And for those people that don't know, Enron was this energy company that what just happened to be at the right place at the right time when electric companies were, you know, they became.

They were no longer public utilities. You were able to get in on the game. And they took over a large swath of the California energy market. And what happened was, you know, because it was a public works, it was running on, it was running the way government's run. And it probably wasn't the most efficient place. But a private company, their job is to make it profitable. So all of a sudden, they had people that were shutting down plants so that they could charge

people like emergency yeah way more money oh oh no this this thing went down now we got to charge you five times you know it's like it's like surge pricing in a way yep and they figured out well well how come there's all these rolling blackouts you know what the hell's going on and all of a sudden one person figures out hey these guys are just scamming everybody and then they they realized it wasn't just this place but it was all up and down California and in ron was making tons of money They were using this incredible way called mark to market where they were judging themselves and forecasting profits. And then they would use surge pricing to blow it up even more. And the reason I bring up Enron is because they would have people, they would have rolling blackouts at the most opportune time, which is the time everybody was using their stuff.

And isn't it interesting that right now the companies in California are introducing a very similar idea. My family lives in California, and they recently got these notices that say, hey, you got to cut your energy use at this time. There might be blackouts. And I don't have a graph or an infographic, but I bet you could lay Enron's surge pricing and inrons cutting off and rolling blackouts right over the top of California's property and the new company's procedures today.

And I bet you they would line up exactly perfect. And when you look at it, when you step back and go, wait a minute, they're not trying to be green. they're just raping people for profits. That's all they're doing, and they're doing it under the guise of being green. Hey, none of you people can use your electricity between five and seven because that's what everybody uses it,

and it's not profitable for us. Don't you guys understand that we have to replace things when that happens? We've got to send people out to fix shit. Come on, man. Are you guys using it at midnight? Yeah, exactly. How are we supposed to be the last year's profits when you dummies use this? No, we have shareholder responsibility, sir.

have you have you no shame you know like it's it and it blows my mind to think like and then the more that I started thinking about that the more than I'm like that's the fucking exact same model that Enron used that these guys are using and why wouldn't it be it was terrific profits it was it was incredible yeah that's their charge as as a private invested in company that's beholding to shareholders their first you know their first line on their item list of what we have to satisfy is shareholders. Yep. And so, you know, to your larger question, I think is, you know, yeah, I think it is,

there are certain industries that having them as for profit is going to inherently and fundamentally be against the common individuals. One of these things, media. Yeah. Another one, healthcare. communications, electricity, anything that we would consider

kind of one of these fundamental things that kind of are the pillars of society, to have those set as for-profit institutions. I mean, we can look at the evidence, and the evidence suggests that it doesn't work out

too well except for the people who are the shareholders in that scheme. The common individual is going to get ripped across the cult. And so unless you have some sort of shift, and you know, it's not like we don't have the framework for this, right? We have non-profit companies. Now, that's a shitty framework in the end of itself, rid of with other problems. But the idea is that why would you have pillars of society, pillars of community as a for-profit industry?

What sort of madness is that? You are going to take advantage of people along the way. There is no other way to compete in that marketplace once you do that. So, yeah, it's, I think one of many problems that we're seeing fracturing at the scale of society today is having these four-profit institutions that are, you know, very fundamental in the way that our society works. And, yeah, you're not going to get away from it easily, right? You're not going to be like, okay, health care is not for, anymore. See, everybody will go, oh, well, shouldn't doctors make money? And that's not the way

it works. In a nonprofit, everybody's still getting paid. There's just no shareholders who get paid from the profits of the business itself. Everybody still gets a salary. Everybody still gets, you know, and if you look at the numbers, a lot of the salaries for positions in non-profits exceed that of the private space. So, you know, it's not like we're without, I ideas on, you know, and structures on how to fix this stuff. But at the end of the day, the people who are lobbying for these roles and regulations and people who appoint chairs in these committees and the SECs and FBAs and all of this stuff in our world, that's all for profit. And it's generated by groups of people who are interested in maintaining and growing their profit. Yeah. It's fascinating me

to think on some levels, it seems that things could be fixed with, you know, I hate, it seems to me that things could be a new, a new sort of contract could be written up and things could be fixed, but there's no will because the people that hold the power, there's no incentive for them to do that. But if we just change the way we looked at healthy, like maybe people should be, doctors could get paid on the people they save and are healthy. Like maybe that could be an incentive. instead of, you know, the insurance model where, you know, you apply to the insurance company and then they decide whether they're going to pay it out or not. But I think by changing some of the incentives, you could fundamentally change the health and well-being of a society. Absolutely. And that was kind of, you know, back to Bitcoin.

That was, you know, that was kind of the idea of that model. You changed the incentive structure so that even the selfish players in the game are beholding to the other players in the game, you know, who might not be selfish, but collectively have value or use case for this service in this case. So, you know, those incentive structures do need to be wrong. Otherwise, you know, we already know where this is going. We've watched the richest people get richer and richer and richer with the promise of trickle-down economics for the past 50 years. And, you know, if you were to take a subsection of people 50 years ago versus subsection of people now, the people who are at the top are, you know, 100 times more wealthy than they were 50 years ago, which is dangerous, right? And we know this.

We know that when a small group of people accumulate the vast majority of wealth, they typically have incentive to keep those structures in play. and not only do they have an incentive, now they have the ability to put all means on the table to do so. Yeah. Go ahead. I was just going to comment on the part of being dangerous. Like, you know, on some level, that concentration, when you concentrate anything too heavily somewhere,

it doesn't hold. You know, if it's a weight. Or it becomes volatile. Or it becomes volatile, yeah. And, you know, whether it's a chemical reaction that it explodes or if it doesn't hold, it falls through the floor. And you could, I think that that's, there's something to be said about that. Now, I was listening to a speech by Lyndon LaRouche, who recently died in 2019. And he, I guess this, this guy had run for president eight times.

He had been thrown in jail. And his main message was the idea of a corporate slash ruling class. of people that are that do nothing but speculate. And he gave this very elegant speech just about how, look, these people were in Venice, and then they moved over to Europe. And now they used the American military to just speculate on entire countries, just to go in, speculate and extract all the resources, using money that's not even theirs.

And he got back to this idea of just a small group of people that are becoming richer and richer and richer. But the question is, how much longer can this group of people extract resources when there's nothing left to extract? Or, you know, when you look at, if you own everything, you look out your window and you're surrounded by a gutter, like, what's the point? Well, I think they can continue to extract a lot. I mean, look what's coming down the pike. They want to individualize people's carbon content that's being added to the environment, which is ridiculous in many facets. But, you know, Dave estimated that that market's going to be a $20 trillion market.

Wow. That's why they're pushing for this. Because if they can get everybody to download the app and be a part of this shenanigan, then they figure in the next, I think it was 20 to 30 years, they'll be able to extract $20 trillion of value from that marketplace alone. So in terms of speculation, that's how these people think about. these things. That's how they think about these markets. They, you know, it's not a, it's not a human aspect. There is no humanistic aspect to this. This is, oh, we're going to make billions and

trillions of dollars. That's not, in, in that number, there's not a little attachment to every individual that that's going to impact. They don't think that way. If you thought that way, I think it becomes pretty quickly untenable to maintain that position, unless you're just in, you know, 100% sociopath. But, There are those too. All right. Yeah, it's, I always think about, I had a conversation with our mutual friend, Dan Hawk, who's a member of the First Nations.

And, you know, we were talking about, he was telling a story that I had also read in a book called Black Elk Speaks about how, you know, when, when the settlers came across, you know, manifest destiny and they were pushing some of the Indians into reservations, they'd come up with these contracts, and they were like, look, we're going to buy the land. And some of the indigenous people are like, you can't buy it. And you can't buy it. And what I told Dan was like, I think the same thing is happening now.

Like, we're going to buy the air. You know, we're going to buy the most abundant thing on the planet that nobody owns. It's a blue ocean strategy. We're creating this whole new thing. And we're going to own the air. And then you have to pay us for it. Like on some level, you have to admire the creative, creative

the balls on these guys like you do I mean you have to you have to give credit we're credits too right right I'm gonna buy the air it's awesome you know and to that point Nestle and water yeah do you remember

in the 80s there was water everywhere there was water found everywhere nobody paid for bot there was no fucking such thing as bottled water yeah that was for the 2000 everybody's drinking bottled water yeah and and Coca-Cola the parent companies

of all these places are raping countryside. Raping countryside, not even that. They make these insidious deals with governments that allow them to do this and then charge local people around for their encumbrance or they're getting rid of their waste and all of these different things. And in terms of evil, if you want to quantify it as, you know, which I would quantify as the removal of other people's freedoms, These people are egregious in all of their actions with, you know,

and it's similar to the, hey, you can buy the land. Oh, you can buy the water. And it's like, no, I'm pretty sure the water's right there. Yeah. I'm sure I can go stick a straw in the water and drink the water. Oh, no, we'll find you for that. We own that water. I'm like, I don't think we do.

And even when they don't, they just have their security with them. Like, this guy will shoot you. And then it becomes a show of course. It's like, oh, you don't think we do? This guy with the gun says I do. How many guns do you have? Yep. And unfortunately, that is fundamentally the conversation of the planet right now.

Because, yeah, even though we try to have this permanent proper civilization, you know, at the end of the day, it's, we're going to do this and you can't tell us not to because we have guns. Yep. And that's not a way to run a civilization in my thing. Yeah, it's, is that the way it's always been run, though? It's a good question. I think it's probably pretty close to the way it's always been run. You know, the saying might is right isn't replete around the world

because it was, you know, a nursery run. Typically, the people with the best technology, the greatest might, you know, were able to conquer and did so without discretion, right? We are at kind of a different day and age where you don't just have wanton marauding military campaigns everywhere, but if you kind of stretch the picture out and look down, you still do a little bit, right? You know, we just don't call them military campaigns. We call them peacekeeping efforts.

Corporations. Corporations or, you know, service industries in some places, right? Yeah. So, yeah, has it always been that way? I, you know, I think it probably has, at least for our recorded history. What do you think? Yeah, I think so. I think that we, and by we, I mean, those of us in the United States have been insulated for a long time.

You know, I think that we, everybody knows the story of Smedley Butler and his book, you know, War is a racket. And in that book, he talks about, you know, being a hitman for, you know, the United Fruit Company and going into all these other countries strictly to extract resources. Like, that's the job of the military. And this guy, you know, later in life, he, he was asked to do the same thing in the United States. And this is back in the 20s or 30s, I think. And, you know, these corporations said, look, you're our guy. You've gone to all these countries. You've extracted, had helped us, you know, clean up all these places and let us get our foot in the door. We want to do it here.

And he's like, okay, let me see. And he got all the names and he went to Congress and he said, look, these fuckers right here. Excuse my language. All these people right here want to take over the country, man. They want me to do it. Here's all their names, you know. And nothing really happened. You know, they scolded the people.

Yeah, all those people were funded by the majority of those people on that list. Yeah. Yeah. It's, yeah, it's, it is a travesty, but it's also interesting, too, when you look at a larger scale of pictures, you know, again, we take all of this for granted. We've grown up in a time where by and large, you know, workers have had rights. Most everybody's been able to vote. There's, you know, all of these good things from kind of a base level where if you were to rewind 100 years, the majority of those are gone. You know, the times of the Pinkerton army in the labor wars, which we just celebrated Labor Day, are long forgotten by most people in this country.

And, you know, so it was much more egregious in the past. And it is changing. And I think it's the advent of global communication, first via the telegraph. And then, you know, just continuing on down to now, where we're, you know, talking 12, you know, 1,1, 1,1,600. hundred miles of heart, probably more than that. And now all of a sudden, you know, we can have these conversations and other people can listen to them and talk about these ideas. And instead of just a group of people feeling that they were wrong, now you have collective

groups of people understanding where they're wrong and how they were wrong. And sometimes even why they're wrong, oftentimes that's something. Yeah. I do see like some on the topic of bright spots and communication kind of being one of them. You know, I look at demographics and I see 10,000 baby boomers retiring a day. And because that group of people were so large and a lot of them to this day still hold significant positions of power. If you look at the octogenarians in Congress or in government, like there's still way too many of them. And if you have this giant group of people retiring, leaving the workforce, you know, they're still buying stuff.

And you could make the argument that the baby boom, the majority of the wealth is trapped with the baby boomers. And that's why there's not a whole lot coming down. But on the bright spot of what I see is if you just peel back the onion a little bit and you go, man, look at these jobs report. It looks like the job market's pretty hot, even though the Federal Reserve is doing everything in their power to get people fired to, You know, in my opinion, the financial industry is just disgusted that their labor rates and the, the wages for labor are going up. That's a huge problem for them and profits and whatnot. And maybe you can argue it's bad for the country, but I happen to think it's a good thing. And so, you know, what else is happening with the labor market is because all these, this big group of people are retiring.

There's not enough people to replace them. And so that's why you're seeing wages going high. But on top of that, there's some really big labor contracts coming up. Like look at the rail service right now. These guys have been fighting for a contract for three years. They're getting ready to strike. Like that is going to be a problem for people. That is going to continue to be a problem for inflation for food.

But the way around that is to, you know, pay people a little bit more money. You know, the same thing with UPS. Like UPS is getting ready to strike. And the international brotherhood of teams, Teamsters has a new Irish guy in charge. And I listen to this guy. He's, you know, I read one of his quotes and I'll be damned if he doesn't sound like a young Eugene Debs. He's talking about, listen, the Teamsters and Labor is a contact sport.

And I'm afraid that people in positions of authority that run corporate offices haven't been hit in a long time. And guess what? We're going to hit him harder than they've ever been hitting their life. You know, dude, he's just banging out this crazy rhetoric. And it's like, oh, you know, as we move through the circular path of history, you know, I do see the labor movement coming full scale. I do. And it becomes like the door to the corporate world is an aging wooden door that hasn't been oiled in a long time. And people are knocking on that door.

And I see it beginning to splinter. And that could be another reason why there's so much pressure right now. on people for inflation is because they want people scared. They don't want people coming together to, to fight the annals of power. They don't want people, especially labor. Like,

labor has the ability to be the third party of Republicans, Democrats, and maybe why not a labor party? It is in a few places, right? Right. Of course. Yeah. Yeah, that's,

you know, it's a really interesting point. And I think it is kind of coming full circle, but, you know, the other side of that circle is that you're, you might just move up the next notch and you're going around again. You know, we've oftentimes whenever these things happen, the costs get uploaded to the end consumer, right?

Yeah. So it's like, oh, we're going to, we're going to mandate a $15 an hour minimum wage for all over. Well, guess what happens? Every, every meal that you're going to have goes up $2. Your price of gas goes up 35 cents. You know, everything that would be a commodity in their life is the price is going to increase because if they can, they will offset that to the consumer every single time. At the same time, we do see a progression in all this, right? You know, we're not sitting in the same hobbles of a higher than 20 years ago.

You know, you're not having nine kids to support a single home. You know, so there is progress to this. But I think in the larger picture, I think people really expect it changed. It has all changed now. When in reality, I think this is a much slower process. There's so much momentum in the system that's change its course just a little bit. It takes a monumental effort. And while that course over time extrapolated does actually move the needle, you know,

how much time it takes to actually realize that shift is a different. a different factor that's often not talked about. You know what? Can you help me try to understand this. So when we look at the average inflation of the, the Fed sets a 2% inflation goal. So over 10 years, and that's, that is according to their numbers. Like, let's just pretend that their numbers are accurate and it's, it's always two. So in 10 years, your money is worth 20% less.

In 20 years, it's worth 40% less. So if you are making a way, let's say you make a wage for a living and you know, you're making 10 bucks an hour. Within 20 years, you're, you know, you're making five bucks an hour. You know, and but yet the price of how everything is going up, your wage is going down, but the price of everything is going up. How like how can people possibly, how can the average person possibly make their way in the world with those two of opposing forces. Well, the reality of that situation is eventually we can't. And we're seeing that.

We're seeing where now it is getting to an untenable position where, you know, even if you were to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, you still can't make it in a lot of places. Yeah. Because proportionally, those housing markets and all of the cost of living in that area has jumped up, you know, 10 times that. Right. And so this gets back into the Bitcoin thing and why our current economic iteration of how we do things has been considered to be broken by some economies, you know, throughout time. And I think we're really seeing the pain points of that now. You know, another of these funny things is worth $30 trillion plus in debt.

To who? Where's the money? Right. you know, and the reality is that there is no money, right? It's pieces of paper and zero's on the computer. You know, we back it up with the threat of violence or the threat of you not being able to participate in the marketplace, you know, and then violence.

And those are unsustainable positions. And, you know, because it is such a monolith of instance, You can kick the can down the road effectively and they have been You know, and there's a lot of economists that have argued ever since you know the 90s on that eventually you can't keep kicking this can it will break It will break. Yeah, here we are 30 plus trillion dollars in debt. We're printed off six trillion dollars the past few years I mean, you know when does it actually break is more of an interesting question. I think To say that you can do it indefinitely I don't think I don't think you can.

You know, I think we're already seeing the kind of growing pains you have or shrinking pains of it, if you will. You have the Sri Lanka, you have the Netherlands. And while, yes, these are tied to policies relating to green policy and climate and nitrogen news and all of this stuff, that is a part of the economy. It's the part of the greater economy of what's happening in the world where these situations are unsustainable. and when they become unsustainable, the solution is to take from the common individual to perpetuate the system. History tells us that the common individual can take that for a very long time until they can't. And when they can't, that's when we see monumental shifts in policy.

You know, we see revolutions. We see, you know, the rise of dictators. We see many other, you know, examples in history. I'm pretty sure you're aware of, too. Yeah, I agree. And I'm hopeful that, you know, you brought up a really good point that I wish more people, I hope people listen to this will listen to the idea of, you know, you become the thing you hate. And if you hate the government, if you want to fight the government, you end up using the only tactics that you know how. And those are usually the same tactics that the government used on you.

So the way out of a situation like this is to create. a new environment, which is a difficult thing to do. But there's ways about it, whether it's using cash or whether it's coming up with a system of trading work for work or somehow rising above the controlled demolition that is being put in front of us. And I think there's solutions there. And I think they're worth talking about, you know, what are some of the ways we can do that? Let me just throw out an easy question for.

you. Well, so, you know, I'll cite the free market here. The free market has existed before there was ever any market, right? The free market was the barter system. I have two chickens and you have a goat. You don't have any chickens and I need a goat. What do you say? That's the free market in essence, right? And that's been happening well before we had any sort of tax systems, government systems, legal systems to support it. So to assume that, you know, all of it just crumbles is kind of an absurdity. Because at the end of the day, even if things were actively crumbling, I'm going to go to my neighbor, but like, hey, I see you're growing tomatoes.

I got a whole heck of zucchini. And my family doesn't want to eat any more zucchini. Let's trade. And so quickly you'll see the reemergence of free market in society, if any of these institutions kind of go by the wayside. In fact, if you look at something like a Venezuela, a lot of that started to happen. Despite their authoritarian stuff, now you just have people who are like, well, we're kind of a community in the mountainside and everybody's working together now. You know, you kind of forego property rights. You don't really care who's growing on what, you know,

it just becomes a communal effort. And that's born out of me. Now, I think if you put some intent behind them. And I think if you take the reality of that for the market, you institute it with things that we know have worked for us well, for collectively. And you combine these systems and you take the idea of, you know, well, people should have representation, except that representation shouldn't be me electing George to, so George can go say what Ben wants. The representation should be George and me, both get to say what

we want and have a conversation about that. And just these little fundamental things, I think if you begin to add them together, the parts of society that we can clearly identify or beneficial for not just me and you, but the collective poll, and you start to tie these together, that's where you start to find the next iteration solutions to this. Yeah. I think, you know, now that you say that, it brings to mind just thinking about the situation, different. It's not so much that we are becoming poor or we're fighting over financial assets. It's that

we're fighting over the idea of what money is. And maybe it's not a bad thing for everything to crumble because we're not really fighting over money. We're fighting over the placeholder between the chickens and the goats. Hey, I have two chickens, but I don't have them with me. I'm going to hand you this promissory note. This says, I'm going to go grab them. Okay, no problem. But I live like a three days travel back. So hold this. Three and six days. Yeah, exactly. So when you look at it from that angle, you know, you're not really losing any assets.

The average person may not be losing any assets except that promissory note to pay. And that might not be a bad thing because that's, that's the debt that's holding everybody down are these promissory notes. And so if we're not losing assets, we're not really losing productivity, all we're really, the average person, all you're really losing. is who controls the promissory note. And that could be anybody. We could just come up with Bitcoin.

We have all kinds of placeholders. But the people that own the rights that promissary notes have the most to lose because they lose all their authority. They lose all their power if that system collapses. And of course they would want to ramp things up and make people scared and you're all going to die, you know, and there's no water. And look at these poor people. But you know, when you look at it like, wow, these poor people over here have to go back to living a life that is a little bit more awesome. That's not a slave mentality.

You know, when you look at it from that angle, maybe what we're seeing in today's world is a liberation. You know, the same way that we liberate things. Maybe we're having our own liberation. And if you could think about it like that, I think it kind of lifts, just begin to think about, wow, this currency collapse is pretty liberating.

Like it kind of takes the weight off your shoulders. Well, I think this whole thing is liberating. You know, this is the people's, the people's movement at the end of the day. Yeah. Because we have the advent of global communication and the ability to speak to one another so concisely without the distance being the problem, you know, we're able to hash out these ideas.

And now instead of a small collective group of people saying, this is how you should think, now you have a larger collective, it's still small, but a larger collective group of people going, you really think so? Yeah. And that's a liberating thing. And I think we're seeing the liberation of all of our institutions and all of this stuff, you know, in real time, just out of slow, stales, pace. Again, that momentum of the system is so large that, you know, these shifts are, you know, while they are happening and we are seeing reparations of them, it's such a monolith of a monstrosity that's moving, that it's going to take time to move into the directions that are more highly beneficial for.

for a greater number of people. Because like your point, for like a Bitcoin or something, the ideas are there. And it's not just that. We have sustainable agriculture. We have the ability to do make renewable resources, but it's not going to be the instant fix.

None of these are the instant fix. And I think that stands in stark contrast to the way we run our governmental societies in many countries, especially in the West, where everything gets recycled every four years, two to four years, right? Now, if I'm trying to be a part of that system, my promise has to become fulfilled in four years, otherwise I look like a charlatan in a hack.

Whereas most all of these solutions are much longer-term solutions than for a even, you know, 20-year implementation. You know, it's going to take effort to move these needles in the right direction. We are seeing him at certain points. But then at the same time, you have the, you have the counter to that, which is all of the people who have accumulated wealth and power, do not want to relinquish wealth and power, whether that be a corporation, private institutions, family money, you know, landowners, there's a lot of different aspects to this. where I think because of conversations like this and because of what's happening just at a greater stage,

more and more people are coming to conversations like this. I think we're seeing and we'll see that in probably the next three years. Yeah. Yeah, it's it kind of brings me joy a little bit to think about all these ideas that are becoming part of the zeitgeist. been around for a while, but are just actually beginning to manifest. Like, there's this term called quiet quitting where people are like, yeah, I'm just going to work that hard, really. I don't really want to.

And on one level, like, you can be like, these people are just lazy. But on another level, you're like, yeah, I don't, like, as a, I work as a truck driver. And I see a lot of younger kids come in and are like, dude, I'm not doing this sucks. And I'm like, yeah, it does. You're right. You're not wrong. You're not wrong. Yeah.

You know, you can make it awesome. I'm like you can go out and you can meet people and talk to them and get to know them and know their kids. And you can create a great time in your environment regardless of what you do. But people are right in that the amount of work that is people like my uncle Bruce, he never called in sick. He's a generation of the 50s. He worked for 35 years, never called in sick one day. And when he started working, he was making a nickel an hour. And, you know, you could say.

that in today's world, people don't have that same work ethic. But I don't think you could say that without bringing up the other side of the equation and that other side of the equation is he got to play a major part in something and he was valued on top of being paid. He was part of the infrastructure. His opinion mattered. He was valuable. There's no loyalty on the other side. There's no loyalty on the other side. So if you have no loyalty from this institution. Why would you, the employees of any corporation or a direct reflection of the leadership of that corporation. And when you're moving CEOs in and out, cutting this, cutting that strictly for profit, when you give your employee in a number,

you take away their humanity. And yeah, they're easier to get rid of. It's easier not to have any emotion towards them. But you're also doing that to yourself. You know, the, you're all incorporated in this thing. And what you do to the person on the bottom is a directory reflection, not only of your leadership, but of the company's values. And so if you devalue the person working, you devalue the service. You devalue that particular interest. Yeah. Yeah.

Just look at all the companies that abandon their pension programs. Yeah. In favor of providing more profits to their shareholders. Yeah. It tells you all you need. Yeah. And we're back at the, we're back at that consolidation of power that you spoke about, where, you know, you consolidate everybody here.

and then the center can't hold, whether it's an explosion or it falls through the ground. At some point in times, it becomes so concentrated that, you know, it's like a, it's like back in the day when you would go to Kmart and get a slurpee, you know,

all of a sudden you'd suck out all the strawberry, all the coke and all those left are just ice. You know, there's no more juice in there, man. And you know what? Like, I've been reading, I reread all this Huxley's, a brave new world.

And like, there's so much in there. But then, you know, what I did. Then I reread Aldous Huxley's book called The Island. Have you read the book, The Island? A long time ago. Okay, so I had never read it.

And actually, Cole Butler, if you're listening to this, thank you for the recommendation on there. It's like the exact opposite of Brave New World. Brave New World seems to be Aldous Huxley's idea for the lower classes. And his book, The Island,

tends to be a book about how the people in the ruling class should live. And you can imagine my joy when he started talking about the use of magic mushrooms throughout society. I was like, are you kidding me? And he talks about giving magic mushrooms to kids at the age of 12. When he talks about all these rituals and like, you know, it's like, oh, yeah, I would much rather be part of that class than this class down here. you know and it hate him or love him that guy was a genius man the guy wrote just the the the the techniques he used to write and the structures that he used like it's beautifully written and the ideas are really well put out there and you know i don't i guess i'm torn because i i could

see and i don't know what this makes me but i could see how you would want to structure society in the way of Brave New World. And you can say that genetic engineering, and you can say that, you know, the brain chip and all this idea of the singularity is really moving us towards Brave New World. But I don't, I think that you could also have a parallel structure, the Terra Libre project that could be structured somewhat like the island. And you know what I'm, I'll send you a copy of that book. I might have a free one.

And I think it would help give you some ideas or that could be incorporated into that. Like there's some really cool stuff in there. But yeah, I thought that was where no one ever talks about the island. We always talk about brave new world. Maybe we should talk more about the island instead of brave new world. Well, you know, the plight of the common versus the plight of the few, right? Yeah. And it's a really interesting thing because, you know, as far as I can see, most everybody today is a slave.

Yes. And that's such a loaded word. You get a whole lot of blowback for saying anything close to that. But, you know, if it's not the slavery of governments, it's the slavery of religions. If it's not the slavery of religions, it's the slavery of, you know, culture. Yeah. And when I was born into this world, it's not like somebody gave me a choice, a checklist of choice. It's like, choose your own adventure.

What would you like? No, you're going to do this. You're going to like this. You're going to not like this. You're going to this school. You're going to study this. I didn't have a choice in all of this. And then, you know, the assumption becomes, oh, well, these people must have it all figured out.

They must know what's right for me, right? And then as you get older and older, you go, nobody has anything figured out. So how are they, how are they, you know, indoctrinating people into these systems? How are they making these choices that are lifelong impact choices for all these people? Willie nilly. And it turns out the answer is oh, because of some obscure text. That most of those people can't even cite specifically.

It has a wild thing. Is that we are so locked into these systems of rule. And most of the people, even the people who are doing the ruling can't even articulate why that is. And I think that's an important kind of question for people to kind of ask themselves. You know, is who rules me? You know, who am I a subject of? You know, the queen just died, right?

Yeah. And now you have a new king being proclaimed. And a lot of people are asking themselves these questions. We're like, my king? Hmm, that's an interesting thing. I never really thought about that before. I don't know if I want a king. Did you see that there were people in Britain?

that were holding signs that were like, I think the monarchy is a bad thing. They could put in jail. Yeah. You know, and you started thinking about that, and you started thinking about how fast this transition is happening. Like,

maybe that's the purpose of a quick transition is they don't want people thinking about the government in which they're ruled by. You know, if you look at a map of the territory owned by the United Kingdom, it's that they own 20% of the earth. Like, that's a lot of land that these people own.

And they're abys. absentee landlords, like, you know, start thinking about that. Like, yeah, you know what? What the hell do these people even do? Why do we need them? Like, you don't. You don't need them. And, you know, another thing that adds on to this is this idea.

Maybe you can come with the term false scarcity. There's not, it shouldn't be false. It's like a, a manufactured scarcity. A manufactured scarcity. Like that is, or at least seems to be. the thing that puts people in a small mindset. You know, they used it in the internment camps in Germany. They used it in the internment camps in Japan.

We use it in the internment camps we call prisons here. This idea of scarcity. Oh, no, you have to have water. Oh, no, you don't have enough money. Oh, no, you don't have enough air to breathe. And then when that scarcity is felt, it's usually attributed to somebody that they're trying to demean, demolish, or otherwise get rid of. Yes, and that's the policy of the green agenda is this idea of scarcity.

Like we have abundance. Like the opposite of scarcity is abundance. And if we operate from the idea of abundance and look at the whole scare tactics of global warming, it's based on scarcity. You're running out of this stuff, man. We have to stop. You guys have too much. You have to stop. You greedy, selfish individual.

How dare you? And I think that it takes. us to this idea of mental slavery, scarcity, mental slavery, and I'll even try to tie it back to the Promethean flame. Like every single one of us, every single one of us have this flame that burns inside of us. And it's this thing called creativity. And I know because only recently have I began to feel the flame burn inside me, this flame of creativity. Yes, you can. I think Barack Obama said it beautiful. Yes, you can. You can start something. You can become a better you. You can inspire people around you. You can lift up your family from poverty.

Yes, you can. But think about how scary that is to people in positions of authority who cannot do it, who have ruled by decree, who have been given the crown and the idea that they're rulers and they're better and they're smarter. No, they're not. They have just been given everything. And you as an individual on the lowest level have something that burns inside of you, this Promethean flame of creativity. And you can build it, man. You are smarter than you have ever thought possible. You can build up something that is so incredible if you just begin the journey with one step. And I think that that is what people in positions of authority are afraid of, because that's an uprising. That's a revolution. And it's a revolution of one, like a forest fire that spreads to the next.

tree and the next tree. Pretty soon it becomes an unstoppable flame that can burn down anything. And that is what scarcity is meant to stop. That is what scarcity is meant to quench. Absolutely. Because there's also a realization on the other side of that coin is that, oh, I do know how this works and I do know I abuse it. Yes.

Yes. So once other people realize how deplorable I've been, what sort of travesties I've been involved in what sort of uprisings I was complicit with or, you know, what I just signed off on because I got a couple bucks. They're not going to look at me fairly. You know, those people, I mean, arguably those people, they are incapable of looking into the black men. Those are the people I'd love to take on a wild mushroom trip because you're going to, that, that's going to be, that's going to be one, you know, they're going to see all of those things reflected back at them. Now, those people will be the last people to sign up for it because they are at some level aware of their transgressions against their fellow human.

Do you think that that is why so many people in positions of authority have children that just grow up to be absolute messes? And I don't say that with Schaerfroid or like I don't say that from a sad note, like so many people in positions of authority children end up committing suicide or. Because the trust fund kid. Yeah, yeah. It's because the parents have compromised so much of their values. The parents have compromised everything in life that matters, including their children. They're so willing to, or they have such of this complex of like, I must show everyone how great I am. I must have the most wealth in the world. I must buy this island. And in doing so, they have given up everything in their life that matters. You know, we have Larry Ellison that lives over here. You just bought Lanai. Yeah, I heard about that. Yeah, and, you know, it's on some level, I can't imagine what it's like to have that much. Like the guy's got an aircraft carrier that he parks over here,

like on Oahu sometimes you're like, one person owns that boat. And on some level, you can't help but be like enamored by it. Like, wow, what a display of wealth. It's a marvel of engineering technology, right? Yeah. And, you know, I went to Lanai and stayed at the four seasons over there, prior to him making that his house.

The guy bought the four seasons and lives in it. And on some level, you're like, wow, it's so crazy. But the story I read talks about Larry Ellison's, he's got a number system. And he numbers people. Like, if you're a five, you can't look at them. If you're a four, you can make eye contact, but not for more than a few seconds.

And he's got this crazy number system. And, you know, like his son is like a two where you can talk to him, but not about anything important. And so, like, I just like, what does it take? Like, first off, that's a pretty crazy system. But what does it take for you to have to come up with a system like that where people can and can't even talk to you? Is that because-

You're a deplorable piece of shit. Yeah, dude. I'm sorry. There's, yeah, we can articulate the process of the system, but you're a deplorable piece of shit at the end of the day. You are, man? I'll take any one of those fuckers on stage anytime, bye. Let's go.

Yeah. You know, and I see it here. Do you think at some point in time, whether it's Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Ellis, at some point in time, do those guys ever just step back and be like, wow, I have so much, but I have caused so much chaos or I have caused so much heartache? Is there ever a moment where those people look at themselves and go, what the fuck am I doing? Oh, I'm sure. I would attest that those people probably lack any sort of true happiness enjoying them.

mostly because you can't get to those positions without taking advantage of a grand number of people. And even unwillingly, but much more so willing, you don't get into those positions without willingly taking advantage of people. Or even if that's just the fact that you had kids and you decided that you weren't going to spend time with them today because this big deal that you needed to go close type idea. All of those things add up into that process and that willing acknowledgement of I've decided to trade my humanity for profit. I think probably keeps a good chunk of them up at night when they're not drugged out in whatever cocktail of concoction that they're taking to fall asleep and maintain their station in mind. But if you look at them, when you watch them on stage, these don't look like happy people. You look at a guy like an Elon Musk. He's got nine kids with X amount of different women.

He never looks happy. He always looks slightly confused and confuddled. But, you know, he's willing to throw a raven 4 a.m. at his factory, knowing that, you know, what sort of harm that causes to the people that work for him and the consequences of such things, you know. And don't get me wrong. I'm on. I love what he does in the technological space. Like, SpaceX is awesome.

Privatized placement. Really cool stuff. Not the end of the day. There's no end. The admiration is for the human ingenuity, the technological iteration that it took to get there. Not the dude. And I think they probably know that at the end of the day, too. When they looked in the mirror and it's like, I'm not that dude.

Because most of them are in the idea. You know, that's just the facade to begin with. And then you layer on everything else. I would argue most of those people do not find great happiness in one. Yeah, I saw this document, like on a similar note. I saw this documentary. I forgot what it was, but they were interviewing this guy,

and he was from, I think he was from either Connecticut or New Jersey, and I don't know what he did, but he was really wealthy. And in this documentary, they were asking him, like, what is some of the things that keep you up at night? And, like, I'll never forget about it,

because he was so honest, he goes, you know, it's a very uncomfortable feeling to know that my kids will never reach the level of success that I've reached. They'll never be able to do it. You know what? I was like, wow.

That's like it just blew. And he said it like in this con, you know, you could tell that the guy that kept them up at night. Like it was like this rare show of consciousness and, you know. And how far off the path one can get. Yeah. And he's just like, you know, my kids will never reach the level of success that I had. And there was this sound of loneliness in his world. Disapporte.

Yeah. All of it. And like I've stopped it and played it back like five times. And I was like, wow. Like that's every parent's dream is to think that, hey, I can push my kid up one more level. Or you know what? I hope that they achieve happiness in their life. Or I hope that they achieve this thing.

And here's this guy like, they'll never do it. I was like, wow. I think there's a key word in there too. He said success, right? Yes. This level of success. Right. How do you measure success? What's, well, what's success to you, George? That's a great question. I think success to me is being able to look at yourself in the mirror and know that you are happy with the person you've become and that you have made the world better and that you can have a, fuck, as I'm saying it, there's no reason why.

why these people couldn't say the same thing, you know. You know, but that's success to me. My success to me is finding the beauty in life, even when my life seems hectic. Now, that's a different answer entirely. Okay. Yeah. Right. Right.

You change. That was, those are dichotomy different answers. I don't know. I'm having a difficult time with, with that. And maybe that's why I am where I am. Well, no, I think if you, and the reason I asked is because if you go off and post something on LinkedIn, what is success? You're going to get as many answers as you get replies. And, you know, you could take the Merriam-Webster's definition of success and, you know, or you could try to articulate it yourself.

But the reality is success is very independent and personal thing. And, you know, and it's going to be a reflection of, the values that we hold is going to be which is which is a reflection of our relationships it's a reflection of our of our of our learned and unware and you will never get a consistent answer for success but yet meanwhile all the people who are telling you what to do with your life say this is how you become successful but if you were to ask them the same question they won't be able to to articulate success. It's a really interesting thing

because I watched somebody go around and interview people from, you know, like C-level C-suite stuff. What's success to you? What success to you is part of this startup program? And the answer is just they cracked me up because most people tried to start with the, you know, exactly where you started.

You know, I want this for my family. I want the, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then they were kind of think about it. And I'm like, I don't know if that's, actually made me happy, right? That's the second one. And then you're like, so success has to include happiness. So what would make me happy?

And then they start to get so beauty becomes a part of the conversation. Yeah. You know, relationships, imagination, creativity. And but usually always the second opinion never included anything about monetary or profit or any of those types of ideas. It was all about the personal and relationship experience of the people. Yeah. Okay, so that makes me wonder, like, you know, I had a conversation with my wife the other day,

and I was telling her how much, like, I hated the queen. And she's like, I didn't say I hated the queen, but I was like, you know what? Like, what do these people do? A concept. Yeah. And my words to her were something like, this person was given everything, like, literally given everything. And when they look, yeah. And then when I look back at the accomplishments that people were saying is like, well,

they were the longest, she was the longest living monarch. And she was one of the richest monarchs. And on top of that, her face on the most money. And like, it just made me so disgusted and maybe jealous because I'm like, fuck, no one gave me that. No one gave me that. You know what I could do with that? I could make the world better with that.

And like, but no one gave it to me. So I felt like this anger. And even at Zuckerberg. If it was given to you, you wouldn't be able to make the same decisions you have thinking about it in the context that you're thinking about it. Yeah. You know, it's an interesting thing. You know, it goes back to our conversation on Sunday. You know, what would you change about your life, you know, if you could?

I wouldn't change anything because I wouldn't be this guy. Yeah. You know, I'm okay with this guy. I've made my, I've made my peace with a lot of life. I found joy. You know, I have found happiness. So I'm going to be very hard pressed to change anything, even my most deplorable acts in life. But if I was just given everything, I would have never, you know, made those same decisions.

I would have never been in many of the same environments to make those decisions. And eventually, you know, you get to the nurture nature aspect of this, right? If you're born into this environment of royalty, you are, you're in this position. you're going to be disconnected from any the aspect of someone who has to struggle through life to go up and, you know, they don't know where they're going to get their next meal sometimes. You've never had that experience. You've never had that experience. There's no way you can understand what that person's thought process is, what they're willing to do to get that need, especially if it's not for them for the child. And then yet you will be the quickest to condemn them for that action.

And so, you know, there's in this kind of, this kind of goes back to the conversation of, you know, equality of opportunity. And I think when you enable the equality of opportunity, that's one of the mechanisms that you can utilize to provide a foundation for people to find the path of themselves. But if you thrust people into these trust funding kids and these, you know, old family, They're never in this is why a lot of them end up suicidal or just pieces of shit in the world is because they never have that perspective They never and they never will even if they decided to run away from their family and try to go live in a foreign country with no money Eventually they know somebody will come pick them up if they pick up a phone It's not the same thing you know it's very different when you have nobody to call right? I can't go call my mother right now and I'm not going to get money today.

There's not going to be food unless I figure something out. In figuring those things out, in those hardships, you know, that's what, you know, that perseverance breeds personality. It breeds our ability to understand these situations, not just in ourselves, but in others, right? And that breeds empathy. You don't get that when you're just thrust into these things. That's really well put, man.

Well done. Yeah. Yeah, it makes me, you know, when you look at it from that angle and when I listen to what you said, it makes me feel silly for being so angry and upset with people like Ellison or Zuckerberg and like, but I still am, you know, and it's probably unwarranted. It's not fair and it's not right. And it makes me look at myself a little bit more critical. Like, why are you so mad at them, man? Are you really jealous of them, you know? You're mad because you honestly do think.

I've gone through, and I still go through bouts of this, but I've come out the other side quite a few times too, is you think that in that position, given said resources, said influence, the ability to talk to an audience, my goodness, what good could I do? First, this schmuck, talking about fucking the metaverse? Oh, God, you can't fucking kill me. Jeez, you know, like, so I get it. I completely empathize with that because I feel the same way, plenty of times too.

And, you know, it's one of those things where it's like, yeah, but it's just a clown. And you know what, too, like on some level, I can't help but think, well, they're there and you're not. So they're better than you. And that's not. That's not true. Why not? Why is that not true?

You know, circumstances is something that you can't factor into that equation. You didn't have Alphabet Agency come supply you hundreds and thousands of dollars in funding money to develop this app that was already developed. You can't replicate that. Right. So, you know, to put yourself in comparison to that is a silly endeavor. Comparing people. Yeah. You know, your mother always told you never compare yourself to others.

Right, right. Unfortunately, we're kind of, we have to compare ourselves to others. kind of what culture is. But at the end of the day, it's not that you shouldn't compare yourself to others. It's like you should compare yourself to others, but you shouldn't stop there. That comparison should be a reflection effort. That comparison should be, you know, well, in this case, why do I feel? And you know what?

If you're really honest with yourself, because I've been really honest with myself a couple times, it's because I was lazy. And I didn't work as hard as I should have. in this instance. And I know it and it still bugs me. And I think if I did, I could have done this. And I blow up this situation in your head where it's dispensful thing. And then you're like, fuck that guy.

Yeah. But it is. It's a reflective process. And I think the more we are reflective about that and honest with ourselves about that process, you know, you gain the ability to move beyond it. When you move beyond these things, I think that starts to begin the rest of people for happiness and joining life. Yeah, I think that the ultimate

end point of that self-reflection is, well, I'm here and I like where I am. You know, so, but it's, it's really, I think it's important to go through that what we just went through right there. And I know I do it to myself quite a bit sometimes. And it takes days sometimes, you know, like, and sometimes it can be a dark spot, man.

Sometimes I do get angry and I get sad. And, you know, I got to pull myself out of there. And that's usually where, the giant mushroom trip comes in. It's like, okay, come on your dummy. Yeah, good job. You thought about all that. Now let me show you this other side of it.

But it's important to go through those ideas. Why do I feel this way? Why is that not fair? Why is that fair? What could I do that was different? And those are really, I think that's part of growing, right? Like is confronting these ideas, confronting these feelings of inadequacy and coming through the other side and saying,

okay, well, now I'm here. Now what are you going to do? You thought about all this? you're here, here's where you're at, here's what you have, now what are you going to do? And it's what you do from that jumping point forward that defines who you can be or what you can be. And it's, I think that's part of the reward you get is by asking yourself the hard questions. I think, you know, we find the path to enlightenment through reflection. Yeah.

And we maintain our ability to see the path through that same reflection. And that's the problem that narcissistic. had, right? When he saw his reflection, he's loved it. I'm going to stay right here. Look at that handsome devil down there, that water. You can do no wrong. Yeah, it's interesting how the idea of myth can, you know, help steer us in a direction that is beneficial to ourselves and our community.

Well, I think in a way that that's what myth kind of underlies is the things that get exemplified into that zeitgeist of mythos throughout antiquity are, you know, they're metaphors for life. They're the, you know, the hardships of the world at the time reflected in a story. Yeah, they're the, they're the hardships of all time, you know, that sometimes those myths, yeah, there were really no different, you know, we're really no different from a psychological point. point today than we were, you know, a thousand years ago. We still have these, you can still read Tamaeus today and be like, oh, man, I never thought about it like that, you know, and there's still so much information in there that we can mine or, you know, you can still go to the allegory of the cave and find out that you are the one seeing illusions, you know, and you're still in chains,

or maybe you've escaped the cave, but you haven't gone back in to tell your friends about it yet. Well said. Yeah. It's fascinating to think about. Benjamin George, I'm having an absolute blast, man. As always, time goes by way too fast, but I feel like I'm emerging a better person, man. And I really enjoy the conversation. And I, yeah, it's fun.

And so what do you got coming up? What, where can people find you? And what are you excited about? Benjamin C.George.com for everything. I have actually started recording some monologues, George. So our podcast is coming. When are you going to book me on the one can I come on? So end of the month is still my target date.

I'm just trying to build some content pipeline, right? But I will actually be, I'm going to read every chapter of the book and release them as their own individual episodes. So the book eventually will be free for everybody in audio format. because I wrote the thing not to make money, but to share the information. So I'm happy for that. I'm really looking forward to that. And the Terry Lieber project will have a whole lot of new stuff dropping probably at the end of this week, actually.

So things move slowly, but surely. Yeah, absolutely, man. It's a beautiful process. And I enjoy getting to be a small part of it. and watch it and see it manifest into the world and see it released into the world. So I'm super excited for you and the project and our conversation. So I will be back tomorrow with our friend Ranga. And Lord knows what happens when you get the East and West together.

And we start talking about some crazy ideas. So I'm looking forward to talking with him. And some big guests coming up. And I hope everybody can learn a little bit about themselves by listening. to us talk about some of the problems we have in our life and some of the things we see in the future and saw in the past. So that's what I got. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being part of the True Life podcast. We will check back in with you next Wednesday. Aloha. Our six seconds of awkward