TrueLife - Rev.Dr. Jessica Rochester - From Screens to Society: The Hidden Effects of Social Media on Behavior

Episode Date: November 6, 2025

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/In this episode, we dive deep into the fascinating connection between social media and human behavior. How are platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook reshaping the way we interact, form relationships, and even think?We explore:How social media affects real-world social skills and empathyThe psychological mechanisms behind likes, shares, and engagementWhy online behavior often differs from offline behaviorThe long-term impact of digital culture on society and personal relationshipsDrawing from research, interviews, and personal experience, we uncover the hidden ways social media influences our choices, habits, and even emotions.Rev. Dr. Jessica Rochester is a bridge.Madrinha Torchbearer, & Founder of Céu do Montréal, the Santo Daime Church she established in 1997—restoring sacred memory to the North.A transpersonal counselor shaped by Assagioli and Grof,she guides seekers through the fire of self-confrontation.From 2000 to 2017 she secured a Section 56 Exemption,protecting the Santo Daime sacrament from the state.An ordained Interfaith Minister, Doctor of Divinity,and author of the two-volume Ayahuasca Awakening—she has spent more than forty years leading workshops, counseling,and teaching the radical act of spiritual adulthood.https://www.revdrjessicarochester.com/ One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

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

The poem is Angels with Rifles, the track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Seraphini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope your day is going absolutely beautiful. We have with us today, Reverend Dr. Jessica Rochester, the Madrina. torchbearer and founder of Sue de Montreal, the Santo Dime Church she established in

1997, restoring sacred memory to the north, a trans personal counselor shaped by Asagioli and Grau. She guides seekers through the fire of self-confrontation. From 2000 to 2017, she secured a Section 56 exemption protecting the Santo Dime

sacrament from the state. An ordained interfaith minister, Doctor of Divinity, an author of the two-volume, Ayahuasca Awakening. She has spent more than 40 years leading workshop, counseling, and teaching the radical act of spiritual adulthood. Dr. Jessica, thank you for being here today. How are you? Well, I'm happy to be hanging it with you. Thank you so much. Yeah, that's right. In November, we were just groaning about that before you hit the switches. And so, you know, around the world,

there with any changes. And so we have such an interesting topic today. At least I hope people find it at interest. I do. And I just have a couple of questions to launch out just to make sure we're always in the same definitions and working from the same understandings. Our respect and good manners is a foundation of a healthy society. Yes. Okay. Can you disagree without being a aggressive or rude? Yes. Very good. Can you make your point without losing your dignity?

I think that is what we're losing, but I believe the answer is yes. It's possible. It's possible. Okay. So, yes, you passed the first test. East it. Okay. So what we're looking at is, you know, the question is, is respectful social behavior

a victim of social media. Well, to accept that as a kind of working principle, we have to accept that around the world through various areas. What has, you know, the rise and fall of empires and everything else? We go through cultural and social times where what might have been acceptable in the past is absolutely not acceptable in the present. owning slaves was fine for a long time, right? And, you know, everybody kind of focuses on America, but can you break, you know,

slavery has been around since Jesus talked about it. And, I mean, going to the Old Testament, you can look at the Jewish people who were slaves, but before that, they enslaved people. I mean, it just goes back and forth. So right now it's unpopular, okay, socially to say the least. Okay. And, you know, I'm taking this as a very good thing, right? That's a very good thing moving in the right direction.

But we can then agree that some things that were acceptable. It was acceptable, but women didn't have the vote. I mean, maybe not to women. It wasn't acceptable. But society accepted. And so if we take that long look through, you know, the decade, centuries, millennia of human existence, we can see that change is something that is consistent. Isn't that funny that the one thing that is consistent is change, you know?

And so we can say, okay, well, here we've arrived and what got lost in the shuffle of change? And is there any effort to bring it back because does it, does it not serve society and culture? And for me, that's the key question, that there's things to get left behind because they don't serve for the higher good of a society or a culture. It did not serve for the higher good of all people to have slaves. It did not serve for the higher good of all people for women to not be able to vote. I'm just using those two examples because they're so blatant, right? So change pressured things. Okay.

It wasn't for the higher good for us to be doing all kinds of things that we have done in the past and we're doing now. And so if we look at things that kind of look like they're only in our rear view mirror because we can't see them in the present very much anymore, that's the question that we have to ask is what happened? Why is it happening? And can we bring it back if it's really for the higher good? If respect, good manners, and let's just name it, human decency. I'm going to call it out how I see it. Just basically human decency.

Doing what all great spiritual features have caught us to do, doing as you would be done by, for example. a golden rule. We can agree on this so far, yes? Yeah. So having agreed on some basic foundation things, let's launch into what are the key factors contributing to what's happening in our culture in our society right now. Now we can point at AI and we can point at technology and we can point at all of the social media. But the thing is, this is like pointing at knives when somebody has been staffed. Okay. Knife can carve your Sunday roast or you can, you know, carve a beautiful wooden figurine. It's how you use it, what you use this, what meaning this has for you.

Okay, so we can say that technology is wonderful, but how are we using it? And is it serving for the betterment of the human species? Is it increasing the positivity of the human experience? Is it contributing to the well-being of humanity? Is it furthering prosperity and peace? Because it could be used for all of those things, right? And, chappot, it is being used for all of those things. There are many organizations and people and individuals and groups who are using technology to further information. Look at the developers of the wide world where they gave it free. Everybody was furious. We could have made billions.

Yeah, that's for everyone. You know, it's for everyone. It's our gift. And so that is still possible. people who are still devoting their lives to technology to research to studying human nature to understanding how to help us correct the mistakes that we make along the way so let's call out some of these things and see if they make sense as to what's happening and why what's the motive underneath okay so key factors to disrespectful behavior and i'm going to dare to say it

self-importance. That's always the thing that trips us up, right? Self-importance. Okay, being anonymous equals reduced accountability. Users hide behind fake names, fake personals, or a general degree of being anonymous. that these platforms provide. When you're behind that screen, when you're behind that mask, you're going to feel less accountable for your actions and your roles, right? You're more likely to be aggressive or rude than you would be face-to-face with somebody. No, that's rather cowardly in my world.

You know, but call me old-fashioned. And I'm okay with that. That was the good thing about what we're saying in the review year. It's accountability for your behavior and your actions and how you conducted yourself. You know, for a very long period of time before this kind of technology, so much of what we learned about people was how they conducted themselves socially,

how they spoke to other people. You know, I've always counseled people. You know, if you're going to start dating someone, pay attention to how they treat their dog, how they treat their family members, how they speak about their ex, you know, how they treat a waiter or a waitress and their restaurant. Okay, just pay attention to those things because they might be like super nice to your face, but it's not a all that stuff is going to leak out. That's what happens when you're in person, a person face-to-face with someone. And there's a period of time in which you can observe their behavior and their moods. You know, this isn't my, I'm not the source of this research, but research indicates that it takes about 18 months to really get to know someone,

to see them in many different situations, to be able to make a kind of a personal judgment on their character. Because it is our character. that is manifesting through our words and our behavior. Can we agree with that? Yes? Yeah. That's showing.

You know, no, it doesn't mean we can't have a difficult day or bad mood. You know, that happens to everyone, but it's our character still there. We usually apologize for it, right? Okay, so being anonymous reduces accountability. The lack of nonverbal cues also. contributes to a lack of empathy. They're just words on page. So the problem with just words or images on a page or a cruel cartoon or meme or whatever they're called these things, okay, it's missing three fundamental things is when we talk, there's more than one thing happening. It's not so

the words coming out of the mouth. It's the emotional carrier of those words, the vibration of the words that we are actually hearing along with the words. Okay, we can say to where cat has just jumped on the table. Oh, pet cat, you know, what a bad cat you are. Okay, what does a cat hear? It hears and hears all that loving tone. It doesn't care about the words. It has not figured out that it just did something wrong.

It's just opening up to them, mommy loves me, right? And so the emotional carrier is the key thing with words. And then you have body language and facial expressions. So those three things are imperative to our understanding what's behind the words. you know some people are great liars they can lie

really really well okay now often great liars need to be in a certain situation to be able to lie like that okay they need to be at a podium

they need to be in front of a TV screen they need to be so there's a distance okay for a lot if there's that kind of liar who needs the stage to lie and then that's a kind of acting there's a part of them that knows that they're making promises like a politician they're making promises they have

no intention of keeping right so there's that kind of situation and then there's the kind of the very practice and skilled liar okay it's like a con man con woman women are just as good as men are and so and and they have the ability to manipulate people on this level, to lie to them in ways, that they have skilled their body language and their facial expression and the tone of their voice. They have skilled it to a level where they can lie and actually might even believe their lies. This is a sign of a certain kind of character. Okay, so where are we now verbal cues? So when we don't have those, the body language, the facial expression, the emotional carrier of the words,

that energy had a kind of charge with the words, but positive, neutral, negative. All we have is the words. That's not how we have lived a human experience for hundreds of thousands of years. Animals read our facial expressions. Animals read each other's body language. There's. There's entire, you know, dialogues that happen with how a dog waxes tear or how a cat, what it does with his eyebrows and its ears. Okay, it's conveying an entire expression of something. Okay, so animals will be our vibration, our tone, our body language, and facial expression. And, you know, just to use an example, you can get on an elevator and there is a lot of it. five other people in the elevator.

Okay? And within a nanosecond, you can tell who's in a good room, who's in a bad room. And no one said anything. Okay, so that's body language. And so all of that is kind of hidden behind this mask, this screen. So because of that, the person who's behind the screen, dishing it or whatever they're dishing out, doesn't have to have empathy because they're not seeing the effect of their words and their actions. And so over time, their ability to empathize shrinks.

That's not a good thing. Compassion and empathy are really important human experiences that we need to cultivate and have wise boundaries. Did you want to say something about that? You know, I was, it's interesting that you brought that up because I was thinking maybe what we're beginning to see is the atrophy of those skills. You know, when there's so much incentive to just show one side, if you were, one dimension, just this actual spoken word without any of those other dimensions. It seems like if you, like a muscle, if you don't use those other attributes, you begin to lose them. Yes.

And so the, the natural human experience of compassionate. empathy just shrink for people who aren't paying attention, who, and we're talking now about the people who are, you know, driven by self-importance to think that their every opinion and word actually matters. Okay. Sorry. I mean, some people's opinions, words do matter, and I take me very seriously. Okay.

I'm very happy when people who I have respect for share their thoughts and opinions on things, but they're not hiding when they're doing it. They are standing up and saying, pull on what their thoughts and opinions are, and they're doing it in a way that is self-respectful and respectful to whether it's speaking the truth with dignity. Okay, so right now we're, I'm talking about those people, that is the good, skillful use of media, okay?

Truth speaking, calling out problems, having the courage to stand up and speak to that, which is wrong, even if there's consequences to doing so. Yes, versus people who hide. And then from behind the screen, they're sending heat-seeking missiles, okay, and carpet bombing, whatever target they've chosen today to do so, to use kind of war language, but that's what it can feel like on the other side for many people. So it's easy to, so the person doing this is going to lack empathy and compassion.

On the other side of that becomes the facility to dehumanize others and engage in hurtful behavior. Like maybe you're the kind of kid at school that would never dream of bullying anyone. Okay. You wouldn't go up and shove someone or, you know. But the next thing you know, you're in a little chat group, everybody's laughing and they all have anonymous names, and the next thing you know, someone's laughing about somebody in your class and you join in a lot.

Okay, and you can get swept up to these things. Okay, so on to the third thing. This, the, what happens is that the natural inhibitions that we have, natural human inhibitions, okay, that we either are natural to our character or, you know, Lady Godoyevna stripped off and rode her horse down the center of town. Okay, I don't think I could do that. Okay. So, you know, people do all kinds of things. And I think, no, I couldn't do that. Okay. So there's something that we can do. I can stand up and speak the truth too many things, and I'm willing to do that. But there's other things now I'm a little doing a bit of, oh, let somebody else do that when you know. So, but that those in additions are way laid, okay, because there's no consequences. It reinforces the sense of entitlement. I can say what I want. I can be as outrageous as I want. I can say anything about anybody.

I can bring up my darkest aspects of myself, open the door and let it all dump out, because there's no consequences. So people believe that they can do what they want, say what they want, okay? No inhibitions, no consequences. They have their opinions or engage in other people's opinions in a way that, that they do not face any social, emotional, personal consequences. You want to say something about that? Yeah, I would say it goes even further.

I think that there is rewards, like there is benefits for people doing that. Like the incentive structure has been turned on its head. Yes. That's right. We're coming down to that. Exactly. Exactly. But there's no consequences.

you know, in the era that I grew up, and if there was certain behavior in school, you got, you know, you got reprimanded, you got center of a classroom, if it was, you got your attention, it was, you got sent to the principal's office, if it kept going worse, you could get suspended, and it went further, you were expelled. There was always consequences to behavior. I hear nowadays in school, you know, everybody's got a phone, everybody's got their ear pods in, or whatever they call. And the consequences have changed. There's things that happen that I hear and I think, my goodness, that wouldn't happen. That wouldn't be happening. But consequences are different. And that's part of social change.

Whereby parents, instead of supporting a certain level of discipline, and that's a whole other conversation than to itself, right? Is what happened with parents and discipline? They were leaving it all to the schools. And then it's a really interesting transversion rejection because they are not doing the correct discipline and the schools are trying to and struggling with it because if you don't disagree with your kid and there's no consequences at home, this kid's going to do it at school, right? And so what happens is, is the parents send them bringing the schools. But that's just a transformation. It's your fault.

of my kids acting like this. Nope, that's backwards. Where did your kid learn that behavior? And then it was okay, do that. And so it's such an interesting dynamic of how society has just shifted. And accountability on so many levels has changed from how it was in the past where parents felt accountable for their children. But now their children are doing things on screens with fake names and, you know,

And how much do parents watch them? And how much your parents are doing? You know, you learn it at home. Yeah. Okay. Echo chambers and polarization. Isolated perspectives. That's what it means to.

Do we agree on that? Okay. So algorithms, prioritized content. Okay, you keep looking up something. Okay. You keep going after a certain. conversation in your social media. After a while, your computer algorithms of looking for that keeps feeding me more things in that long. Do I understand how this works correctly? This is how

it's been explained to me. Okay. You know, if you're, the interesting thing is, is you decide you want to look to see where you can find a certain winter boot, for example. Okay. And so you go looking, Google search, winter groups, certain kind. You want cheap skin, let's say. Okay, you go, the next thing you know you open your computer, you have all of these ads and clicks to winter boots, right? Okay, some search engine notice that you were looking for this and now it's providing me with all this information. And so this echo chamber leads to isolated perspectives. So it can reinforce existing beliefs. So this is what technology will do.

Oh, you want winter boots here. Let's give you another selection of 300 pairs of different winter boots. Or you like hate crimes and you want to read about hate crimes. Okay, well, you know, here's more hate crimes. You want to find a chat group that talks about should we bomb choose whichever country. And it'll find you. It will find you that. And then it starts sending you more of the same thing.

It's like how our brain works, you know. You understand that the neurotransmitter and the neural pathways, if we keep thinking the same thoughts, then we have our brain actually builds a very strong neural pathway to that story, to that narrative. Whereas if we decide, okay, I don't like that narrative. I don't like that story anymore. I want to transform it.

I want to forgive it. I want to release it. I want to let it go. After a while, the brain stops taking you to that story. It realizes you're not going there anymore. So the neural pathway to that memory, that story becomes very, very small.

It's like what they do in a library. You know, you have the new books all up front on display. Then you have the popular books and the main part of the library. And then if you're looking for, you know, an author who published a certain book, years ago they have to put down in the basement in the stacks okay that's what our brain does things that we keep revisiting it has that right on the front shelves when you first walk in and so that's what the computer will do that's what

technology will do it'll keep putting in front and now what does that do that keeps reinforcing whatever it is you were starting to believe no matter how you know all these conspiracy theories and all of these things you start going those tunnels so next thing you know you're lost down that tunnel and then your brain will start mirroring that tunnel because your brain will keep going there and the more your brain goes there your fingers go there on your computer or your phone or your screen and it's a repetitive cycle of negative stories and negativity so this leads to a hardening of ideology a loss of shared understanding, making respectful, disagreement, difficult, not impossible.

Because that tunnel vision has narrowed somebody's thoughts down into such a small narrative that they now believe, okay? Let's choose something silly, the world is flat. Okay, so let's say they go flat earth then and they go down that tunnel, flatter, okay? The more of the more they spent time they spend down that tunnel, the more they come to believe, oh my God, look, so-and-so said this and oh my God, so-and-so said that, and then it goes. Until now, it's a hardened belief system. But you know, if we were talking about spiritual and religious beliefs, we would say that's a cult. But how isn't it a cult? It is. It's an ideology that is based on false premises with usually charismatic leaders calling the lies.

How is it not a cult? So the whole cult mentality then sets in and when somebody has that cult mentality, it is very difficult to help them do program from that. So if you have been going through at home and on the street and through all your social media, a narrative that tells you it's okay to call women bitches and it's okay, oh, well, I get believed in my love to say.

No. Where it's okay to swear at people and you don't have to respect people and you can sing all these unbelievable songs that talk about even hitting women. I can't even believe they're allowed to play. In my era, those things wouldn't get past censors. Maybe I'd be told, no, sorry,

don't belong on TV, don't belong on. radio don't belong, printed and don't belong, published in record stores, remember record stores? So that was an era where those things were considered negative to healthy social behavior. The thing is, is where did that slide? Where did that slide? But it did, and here we are. Okay. Next point.

edited narratives and social comparison leads to self-esteem issues. These are hard things, eh? We're talking about their hard things. When we create an idealized version of our life and put it online, and I'm talking about everything from dolling up our story a little bit to creating a completely fake persona, which many people do. You can have a 15-year-old man pretending to be a 16-year-old female teenager and create a whole narrative and story and photographs to go along with it. That doesn't happen in person.

It would be like, hey, you're a 50-year-old guy. We're pretending to be a teenager, female. Weird. Okay. When that happens online, on the inside and on the outside, there's going to be. This is curious. Feelings of inadequacy, envy, and lower self-esteem and others. Oh, my God.

Look at her life, his life. I wish I had his fill in the blank body that's been completely photoshopped, faced by Mattel. Okay. And you know what Mattel is? I mean, dolls. Right. Toys.

You know, I wish I had that car, that home, that. So this whole structure is put in place. where people will feel envy or inadequate on one side because they are comparing themselves to what they see. Now, that's been around forever because there's always been the wealthy and the board, right? 2,000 years ago, Jesus said the board will always be with us. So there's some of that that's been around, but not faked the way it is today and not the impression that leaves, because on the one hand in the past we can see that people who had a lot of wealth either inherited it, okay, worked really, really hard to get it or cheated.

There's only three reasons. Whereas today it's all distorted. We don't have any idea of who the real person is. They don't have any idea of what's real and what's not. This is confusing? No? Yes. Yeah, it's almost impossible to make sense of.

It is, it is. Because when we don't have the in-person experience, when everything is just images, Photoshop images and words, we don't know what's real anymore. So the less we expose ourselves to that kind of the better. Now, there's one little note here, which again is a whole conversation unto itself,

the false victims. And that can show up, motivated on a number of different levels. a person, and I'm talking about a genuine people who have dreadful things happened to them, okay, and who choose to share their story in the hope that their story will be helpful to others that how their struggles and how they dealt with their struggles, okay,

is a narrative that might help others in this and they're a struggle, okay? Or they're doing it to shine a light on a situation that needs attention, right? These are all valuable and worthy ways of using technology. I'm talking about them. I'm talking about the ones who falsely claim that things happen to them. I mean, there's people who have claimed to have cancer and how long they're to find them.

They tell all and they're all false. Whereas in person, you kind of couldn't get away with that so easily. You know? you're going to say? Why people do that, that's a whole other conversation. And then you have the cons. You touched on that a moment ago, what's the payoff? It's always a payoff for this, right?

What's the payoff? So for some, it can be a feeling of power. Look what I can do. I can throw a bomb and it ignites. And, you know, 400 people like my nasty mean comment about someone. about 4,000 people, for a million people, okay, like my need. And it's a sense of power, false power, because, okay, so what do you really have in your life? It's power that feeds self-importance, but it doesn't teach your life, nourish your life, okay?

So you have the cons, you have the false statements, you have misleading, others for personal gain. So sometimes it's just down to greed. So self-importance power, greed. Try to con people out of how many fake people are pretending to be something or do something in the hopes of getting access to your bank account or your credit card or your personal information to then steal your identity. And so this is what technology, people used to have kind of what, those take a rope and climb up the side of your house to get in at your,

papers and your jewels, right? I mean, you had to be like a cat thief, right? You have to be really good at it, not get caught now. I think you can do what they really want because they're all hiding behind the screens, which run through, because of technology, they run through so many different hide who the sender is, hide who the sender is, hide who the sender is. So these are the false, in the moment looks like a win. for me. Now lastly in the conversation is the keyboard warrior. Now again this has a

very positive sign. You know we can think of old-fashioned journalists who would sit with their manual typewriter and they would they would hack out furiously a report on something that is absolutely newsworthy but they know is going to get fact-checked. They know it's going to get fact-checked. They know it's not going to to pass their editor unless they have absolutely, you know, nail down source and facts. That level of fact checking, truth-telling, integrity in print, integrity, in reporting, of which there are still many good people doing that, of course, many, many. But this technology allows from the dark side.

People who feel that their opinion, their thoughts, doesn't matter, they can take the most ridiculous statements and actually make people believe them. How do they do that? And they do it. They do it in a way that they would never do in person. They would never do it like, you know, like credible media where their name in photographs is, whether it's in print or whether it's online. but they're you know it's like you're sitting there we can see you you're a you know your name is there it's verifiable that you're you that i'm me okay keyboard warriors the ones who are working for good and who put their name and their face on things

and then the ones who hide and now what does this have to do with social behavior that's we're looking at and their review. How did we arrive here? And is there anything that we can do to bring back a sense of accountability, the social responsibility, dignity, respect, what can we be doing? I feel like it's a necessary part of the process. I think people have to, sometimes you don't know what you have until you lose it. And I think that you have to see this sort of breakdown in cohesion, this atrophy of skills so that people want to bring it back. You know, when you just look at the demoralization that's happening online, whether it's through the, you know, the, the rampant rise of porn industries that's destroying human relationships, or it's this idea of the fake

influencer who appears to have everything, but it's probably the most lonely person in the world. Like, think that people need to see that and they need to go through their own sort of dark night so that they realize this is the illusion this is the Maya what will you do to rise out of it and the only exit from the social media is community I think and people must find a way to get there by themselves you can see mentors you can see other people ultimately the choice is yours and you have to get to that point of despair in order to rise above it yes I agree that there's there needs to be some kind of you know awakening and whether that awakening comes from personal suffering or or the consequences on those who we love

seeing somebody that we love and care about being affected by these things and then we realize wait a minute I'm I'm somehow part of this and if I'm somehow part of this, how do I step out of it? How do I, you know, what does that next step, that next great step look like? So sometimes, yes, it's born of personal suffering and hitting that slippery, tricky patch in our life where we need to reassess the path that we're on and how we're walking it. And sometimes it's because of those who we care about, but it could equally be because we care about an ideal. I mean, look at the struggle for democracy right now around the world.

Many, many countries that we just assume were democracies and with the rights of their people would be respected. And now that ideal, that kind of way of life is being questioned and challenged. And on some level, that's not a bad thing. Yeah. Because sometimes these things have to be tested and go through the fires and come out stronger, better, you know. Yeah.

I think it is that clash of ideas. It's the, you know, the whole idea of democracy is changing. What we've been living through, it seems to me, hasn't really been democracy. It's been like a slow creep into totalitarianism. And we still call it democracy. And I think the younger generation especially is waking up to the idea of like, I didn't vote for this. This is not what I want. And if I were to...

That's what happens when skilled buyers get on the platform. Yes, yes. That's it. I think it was Marshall. And very important teaching. A very important teachings. All of these things are. What do we really want?

And that nobody should take anything for granted. You know? And that these ideals. these concepts, these political platforms that we have, they do need to be tested and try to ensure that they are doing what they should be doing, what they say they're supposed to be doing. Are you really for the people? Are you really for fairness and equality?

And that's both sides. Everyone needs to wake up. everyone needs to wake up. If you've been suffering because of the system, then you need to be part of helping the system improve. Right. Okay, you need to add your voice to write your letter, to attend an event, a meeting or something, sign up,

whatever it is that you need to do. If you feel that the system has not been serving you in a way that it says it's going to, in a way that's appropriate for the benefit of the citizens of a country, then you need to speak up. Don't go, oh, I can't be bothered. No, no, you need to speak up. Now, on the other side, if you have been using and bilking the system,

okay, if you've been finding some tiny little loophole or misrepresenting yourself and or your situation to try and gain through all of the dark side that we just named self-importance and issues of power and what have you. If you've been doing that, then guess what? You need to stop because both sides are responsible to the system. You know, if you're misusing it, wake up. You're part of the problem.

If you're not speaking up when you should, awake then. You do are part of the problem. So everybody needs to find their voice and not just let Just go to that oh, I don't care. It's too much trouble. Let somebody else do it. Yeah, I do see a shift in social media. And I see it, and this is only through my lens,

but it seems to me for a long period of time, the narrative has been controlled by people in positions of authority and power. When you look at the legacy media and the, consolidation of news channels into a large umbrella corporation where a narrative was kind of was put out into the world. Like, that was a great way to control the narrative. And it allowed people to be cohesive. But with, as of lately, I believe that the younger generation, especially, are finding

ways to create their own narrative. And we have talked about some of the negative aspects of these rabbit holes that people go down to. But I think you're beginning to see the younger generation coalesce into a more meaningful message. My daughter, at the time that she's allowed to use social media, she can swipe through an ad that is purely an emotional-based ad in like a second. So I feel on some level, even though some skills are beginning to atrophy, new skills are beginning to be born where they're like, this is garbage, this is no good, and they're looking for something more meaningful. And that to me is sort of a green shoot of responsible users of social media beginning to move through the ranks. What are your thoughts on that?

Yes, I believe you're accurate. And we need to teach our children as best as we can how to use technology in a way that's for the higher good, for themselves and for others. And what misuse looks like and that eventually there are consequences, even if it's just to our own soul. you know and and and you know give them the balance that that you know I'm a great believer when my kids were growing up you know and my daughter will be 50 next year it's hard to imagine and my grandchildren you know being active in their lives that sports community activities charitable work all these you know this is what a healthy society was based on you know good education, good social structure, always charitable work. I was raised that, you know, you went to

church on Sunday and you made your charitable efforts. You, you know, it was always, well, choose one that speaks your heart. You want to do the spring cleanup on the mountain. Go do that. You want to do a walk and get people to sponsor you or bike or whatever it is that you do. My daughter was working in Singapore for a year. She was with a charitable organization, they rode around Singapore Island. So find something and do it, you know. And this is where that's the role of parenting is that we need to instill the importance of giving our time and energy to benefit our community and our society. And that we have, that we need to have. To have self-respect, we actually need to respect others.

How can we respect ourselves if we're slagging off on people online? How do we look in the mirror at the end of the day? What do we see? So accountability first to ourselves. We are accountable here. Yes? Yeah, without a doubt. Yeah.

So when we're accountable here, when we really look at ourselves, we say, does that, just doing that really nourish my soul, does it really bring good into my life? Does it bring healthy things into my life? Is it helping to enrich my family, my friends, my community, and I mean enrich in a positive way, nourishing way? And if so, how do I help others in that way? what's the message that we can do?

What do you want to say? I think maybe a good way for people to redefine their relationship with social media is to see the content they're viewing as an extension of themselves. Because ultimately, that's what it is. What you're consuming becomes you. If you're watching these, whatever it is you're drawn to, like why why are you watching the things you're watching if you can ask that question i think you can help to sort of wake you up a little bit and be like why am i watching this and maybe another

question might be instead of consuming try creating because i think that those two things are opposing forces are you either consuming or are you creating because if the act of creation is liberation when you can create you begin hopefully doing something positive but i think the act of creation is a positive attribute and when you begin doing it, you begin becoming more whole and in touch with the real ideas of who you are and then you answer that question. Why am I doing the things I'm doing? Yes. So self-awareness. Yes. Well said. Very well said. Self-awareness. I'm thinking this. I'm doing this. I'm saying not. And then a reflection. Our ability is for self-reflection, the self-awareness. You know, that's the key and the four things that I

that I say are the cornerstones is self-awareness, self-love, self-respect, self-responsibility. Those four pillars are the foundation for how we experience life, how we co-create our lives. Yeah. We need awareness first. You know, I'll say to me, should it love be first? Well, actually, no, awareness. It needs to be first. Just simple presence, awareness, presence, being present to ourselves.

what I'm saying, what I'm feeling, what I'm doing. Not in a hyper-vigilant way, right? In a kind, mutual way. And so then self-awareness can lead to self-love, can lead to self-respect, can lead to self-responsibility. And once we're working with those things, then we find that we start to tune our thoughts and our words differently.

Because now it's coming from a place of awareness and accountability. And so we begin to offer that to everything around us. It's kind of resetting our moral compass, which I think is kind of society's lost track and society. We're not out. You know, and we need to re-find it as individuals and as individuals and as a larger community, as a nation, as a society. We need to reset our moral compass and say,

without going too tight that excludes a healthy human that we just may not agree with, that is still healthy, you know, and at the same time is discerning as to what is harmful. Does that? Does that make sense? Yes, a little bit? Yeah, I really like the relationship between awareness and attunement. I think that there's, it's really well said.

But I do think another aspect of this is the sort of demographic divide. You know, there's a great book called The Fourth Turning. And in there they talk about the way in which the different generations move through this larger cycle of life. And I see the younger generation that seemed to be starved. for opportunities, whether it's buying an $800,000 home or so many people in positions of authority, like our presidents and prime ministers, or some of them are well into their 80s. Like at some point in time, and there's that old idea that power is never relinquished. It's only taken.

You guys just elected a young mayor in New York. Yes, some new ideas. Young perspectives and some. And this is what needs to happen. Yes, the voice of maturity and reason is needed. Okay. And it's also constricted. Maturity and wisdom is needed.

It's needed in parliaments and it's needed in when you don't have a parliament. So, you know, it's needed. Yeah. But it shouldn't, it needs to be balanced with youth and fresh ideas and a new way of working. I mean, that's what your former president, Barack Obama brought in. He knew how to work social media. He knew how to speak to young people. He was young enough that he was able to catch the social drift that needed to be paid attention to.

And so hopefully going forward, our countries, because many of them are all challenged with the same issues, will be able to find the balance of embracing younger ideas and younger people bringing them into the knowledge centers and the power centers. And because we need it. Yeah. And sneak it. And I think we'll see the face of social media change with these younger ideas.

Oh, I should hope so. Yeah, me too. Yeah, you too. What I really hope for is for, you know, your country in particular, because it's, you know, it's like a drum with a very large voice. Yeah. Drums. Okay. And a drum can overtake just about any other instrument if it's, if it wants to.

Okay. So a big country would allow a voice, you know, can often set the tone culturally. and so be it, you know. And so it's a wisdom on all of our parts to be able to have a better discernment, to be able to adjust and realign from that vast amount of materialism that has taken over. You know, in North America, more so North America than in any other countries, I believe. and that that needs to be rebalanced somehow because it creates such a schism and because you have the haves and the have-nots even more greatly accentuated

and the have-nots spend their life either in envy or trying to get up that grab, find any way to get a hold of that materialism because it's constantly being shoved in our faces that to be happy we need to have this to be fulfilled you need to have back. In case of materialism has taken the place of authenticity, true authenticity, you know, as to who I am and what this life is about for me. And I think the social media has,

was highly materialism. And, you know, I was choking, you know, face and body by Mattel, but that's really scary. I think we talked about that in another conversation. It's kind of scary that just being kind of old isn't okay that you somehow have to change to get accepted instead of, you know, my philosophy is, is my face tells the story of my life. If, you know, you can look at my face and you're going to see 99% of my wrinkles are laugh lights and smile lines, okay? And so you can look at someone's face and you see their story.

You see their life story there. Why would you want to erase that? You know? Anyway, conversation for another day. It's been great hanging out with you and talking about social behavior. I'm praying self-respect and responsibility and, you know, dignity and all these important things come back into each of us and therefore into our communities and into our lifestyles and into our societies and into our societies. and into our society and so more compassion, balanced compassion, healthy empathy,

deep sense of gratitude for all the good things that we have, learning to disagree in a way that is respectful, to allow someone to, right, I'm going to close up with this one story, my father of my children, now deceased, right, wherever you are, that his, parents long deceased, okay? They were just a wonderful example of this, and this was a very long time ago now when my first was married. This was 1974, okay?

And his parents belonged to different church, both Christian church, but one was, I don't know, Anglican, the other one was Presbyterian because of their Scottish heritage or something, you know? And every Sunday morning they would get up and they'd get their Sunday passed off and they would go off to their respected churches, they'd come back and have Sunday lunch and they would discuss the sermons. And what was the sermon on this morning in your service dear? Oh, how interesting, very nice. Now that is respect. That's what respect looks like, being able to let someone be themselves and have their opinions without imposing yours on them. And as long as their opinions are,

let's say healthy for the higher good of themselves and others, okay, then what's wrong? What's wrong? Nothing. Nothing. It's all good. Yeah.

That's a beautiful story. Yeah. Isn't it wonderful? Yeah. Okay. Great hanging out with you. Wishing you all the best. You always ask me what I'm excited about.

You didn't ask me today. Well, I'm just now getting there. because I want to tell people, go down to the, if you look at the bottom of the screen, or if you're just listening to this, it's www.w.w.com. Check out the books, Iowaska Awakening. They serve as guide books. You don't have to read them all the way through, but you can kind of sort of flip through and find something that speaks to you.

For me, they've been of immense value in my life. So I would recommend everyone go to the sites, check out the books. And of course, what do you have coming up? What are you working on and what are you excited about? A whole bunch of things. We just had two weeks ago or another retreat that we have. I worked for quite a few years with University of Ottawa and then Vancouver Island University and some other organizations to put together a retreat that would be part of the field work

for the graduate level students. because now there's graduate programs in psychedelic studies, consciousness of psychedelic studies, have both of these universities on advisors to the programs for both these and guest lectures. And so happy this in 2025 we were able to launch, the first one in April, the second one in October. We'll have another one coming up in the spring in April. And this is kind of an educational aspect of the field work. The students participate, participate in our in our Santa Blanian works we don't take any other visitors at that time and and then there's you know the screening and then there's kind of an inter interoperation on the

Sunday there's a Zoom meetings because our this past one we had people and students in from Netherlands East Coast west coast of the United States west coast of Canada a little bit up a few more locally, India. Okay, so people from all over coming in to participate in these retreats. And a lot of, I do quite a lot of teaching on non-inary states, consciousness, because these retreats aren't about the center of dining. We're to helping the students. And we also take people from allied fields.

So we've had doctoral students in psychology. We've had medical doctors. working in palliative care and so what we're trying to help them is have their own experiences of deep experiences in the non-artagnar states of consciousness to be able to understand if they're going to be working with people in non-adinary states and so we're really happy about that and the other thing is is we are going to be part of an exhibition uh rural ontario museum spring 2026 and which which will feature our church so Montreal and the sanpani with the clinical aspect it's it's on consciousness psychedelics connecting with the divine all kinds of stuff like that can you

imagine this kid and it is best like more most famous museum the most well-known museum and and also the retail people because when they approached me to ask me because they were going to do something on psychedelics and and it was through my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Brian Rush, who's a senior scientist at Cam H. And he said, yeah, great, let's do something. But if you're going to talk about this, you have to phone her and get her in on it. So they did. And then I said, you have to have the indigenous people. If you're going to do this, you've got to do the three things. of the religious spiritual use, the clinical use, and the indigenous use, the history of the heritage tradition. So it's a great honor that this exhibition will be sharing also with the Ouich people from the United States.

We don't have them here in the peyote people. These peyote is there's ankerment. So that's coming up opening June in Indra, we're only Ontario Museum. So we're kind of excited about that. and, you know, helping the public. I'm all about education, spirituality and education, and how can we educate people to not be frightened of these things, to be respectful of these things,

to never participate unless, you know, there's really, and they're really strong on harm reduction and really understanding what you're doing, why you're doing it, who you're doing you with, you know, when, why, what, where, etc. And so that's what's happening now. It's exciting. It's so cool to see it permeating into, you know, the more of the mainstream and making sure that it stays viable and not get put back on the shelf somewhere. Education.

You've got to educate. Community and your government. And all those people who are hoping to be able to work with either because they're in heritage or traditional. or because they're new age or whatever it is they're doing, then that's the way you have to go. Stop working illicitly under the table. Educate work with your government, educate your government, educate your community.

If you really believe in what you're doing, and if you know what you're doing has the science and the heritage behind it, then stand up. Another conversation for another day. It's been great. Thank you. Always wonderful to hang out with you.

Always a pleasure. Likewise. Thank you so much for your time today. And with everybody in the sound of my voice, I hope you have a beautiful day. Go to the website. Check out the books. You won't regret it.

Have a beautiful day, everyone. Aloha.