TrueLife - Rites of Passage & Bitcoin: Uncovering Motivations for a Financial Rebellion

Episode Date: July 21, 2020

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/Speaker 0 (0s): Woo. Good morning, Monday, Monday, Monday, Monday. Well, you be go start another week, right? I'm going to try to be like a James Brown and get on the good foot. Right? Remember that song gotta get on the good foot. How'd you guys. We can do anything fun. I did. I did some cool stuff. I did some cool stuff. I got some time to think about a few things about, about our place in this world about interacting and transitioning and learning. Maybe judging, maybe some empathy. It seems to me that right now, our country, our world is in a pretty big transformation. In fact, when you start thinking about that, you go, yeah, there's a lot of things changing right now, but isn't that always the case. Isn't things always changing. It just seems that now things are changing at a pace that has picked up steam. And it's hard to, it's hard to understand where you're supposed to go. Unless you have a map it's hard to understand the right place to be at. Unless you have a guide it's difficult to know where you're going to end up, unless you can study about history or you can, unless you can understand where people before you have been in the same situation and what they've done. It also seems to me like there's a pretty big gap in demographics and, and intergenerational ideas. So what I mean by that is that people who are in authority positions tend to be, especially now, there seems to be a really big gap between like those people run in for mayor right now in Hawaii that are 90 years old, 75 years old. And while I'm not, I'm sure those people have a lot of good ideas. However, I'm not sure that there are, there are in touch with what the youth of today want the world to look like in the future. And it seems to me Speaker 1 (3m 0s): That you know, what, what it seems to me that a lot of the older generation, you know, they're living longer and they're, they're healthy. And they, they want to contribute to the world. They want to make their Mark. They they're beginning to think about their legacy and they, they want there to be a little bit of some of the great things in the future that was in their life. And so they're trying to make those things happen by clinging to power and staying in roles of leadership and, and leveraging their finances and their authority to stay in positions of power. And I think it's detrimental to the society at this point in time because the youth don't want what a lot of the older generation ones, you know, my, my nephew he's 10 years old and he was talking to his mom the other day. And he, this is what he told. This is what he told her. He says, mom, I don't understand why the people got to go and work so much and have so little, you know, why, why is it that corporations just don't hire twice as many people and give half the people six months off. And then the other people have six months off and you can, I mean, on some levels, it's a naive perspective, but it's pretty beautiful, right? Why not? Why not allow people the freedom to be creative? Why not allow people to have the ability to explore their inner nature and explore their own dreams. Now you can say, Oh George, when no one has to work for anybody, you're free to go out and explore and start whatever you want. Yeah. Kind of, kind of, but you don't get to pick who your parents are. You don't get to pick where you're born at. And if you come from a family that has it as well to do, it's much easier to go out and start something. Then if you come from a place of poverty, however, I'm kind of getting away from myself a little bit. I think that there's a, a road we could take where the older generation could maintain a high level of relevance and also, and also create a better place international bond. And I think we're missing in our society is like a Rite of passage. If you study like a lot of the Indian cultures and a lot of other cultures, you know, like in the South American culture is like a girl turns 15 and she has like a keen scene yet. All right, well, she becomes a woman like the Jewish boys have the bar mitzvah, come on, man. Some of the Indian culture, they had like a vision quest where they would go the men and they would, they would go out for their first hunt or they would be exposed to some sort of mind altering situation where it was signified that they were brought in to the next level of their life. And I don't think kids have that today. No, you could argue that the college experience is a of, but if that's the case, then not enough of our kids are getting the Rite of passage. And that's something that the older generation could do. They could develop a set. They could, we could develop as a society. As older generations, we could develop a Rite of passage that would simultaneously show the child. Hey, you've become part of the group. Now your roles have changed. You are no longer able to engage in, engage in activities that don't benefit the group as a whole. I mean, you can have your free time and stuff like that, but now you are going to, Hey, look, now you're a man. Now your responsibilities lay in providing service and providing for the betterment of the community. I think the Rite of passage serves a lot of things. It establishes a group cohesiveness. It establishes respect for your elders. It establishes, it establishes respect for, for the elder group, but it gives them purpose. It helps the younger generation to understand that, Hey, these guys that have gone before me have been in similar situations and are the best people to help me. It nurtures the mentor, mentee relationship. There's quite a few different ways to have a Rite of passage. I was reading this book and they were talking about how in this particular culture, when a boy turns 12, know he's free to do whatever he wants and play and learn. But when he turns 12, the men in the village, they dress up like demons and ghosts. And prior to the child's 12 year old birthday, the people begin telling the child, you know, there comes a time in a boy's life where his mom can't protect him and the spirits of the village come for him. And they kind of start psyching this kid out. And the kid's like, what, what are you telling me this for? And then on his 12th birthday, the men dressed up like spirits and goes, they come into the boys house and they, they awaken them. Right? And they start scaring them and they're like, the boy starts freaking out. So he runs over and tries to hide behind his mom and his mom. I mean, she knows what's happening. So she tries to protect them a little bit. But then the boy has wrestled away by the ghost in the spirits who are the men in his family. And they take him out into the forest and they, they then begin the initiation, the Rite of passage. And there's all these trials and tribulations that he has to go through for multiple days upon after graduating the trials, after being taught that the spirits and the people dressed up as demons are really the men in his family and the spirits and dem...

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 Seraphene. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Woo! Good morning, Monday. Monday, Monday, Monday. Well, here we go. Start another week, right?

and then I try to be like James Brown and get on the good foot, right? Remember that song? Got to get on the good foot. How's you guys, we can do anything fun? I did. I did some cool stuff. I did some cool stuff. I got some time to think about a few things about our place in this world,

about interacting and transitioning. and learning, maybe judging, maybe some empathy. It seems to me that right now, our country, our world, is in a pretty big transformation. In fact, when you start thinking about that, you go, yeah, there's a lot of things changing right now. But isn't that always the case? Isn't things always changing?

It just seems that now things are changing at a pace that has picked up steam. It's hard to, it's hard to understand where you're supposed to go unless you have a map. It's hard to understand the right place to be at unless you have a guide. It's difficult to know where you're going to end up unless you can study about history. Or you can, unless you can understand where people before you have been in the way. the same situation and what they have done. It also seems to me like there's a pretty big gap in demographics and

and intergenerational ideas. So what I mean by that is that people who are in authority positions tend to be, especially now, there seems to be a really big gap between, like those people run in for mayor right now in Hawaii that are 90 years old, 75 years old. And while I'm not, I'm sure those people have a lot of good ideas. However, I'm not sure that

they're in touch with what the youth of today want the world to look like in the future. And it seems to me that, you know, what, what, it seems to me that a lot of the older generation And, you know, they're living longer and they're healthy and they want to contribute to the world.

They want to make their mark. They're beginning to think about their legacy. And they want there to be a little bit of some of the great things in the future that was in their life. And so they're trying to make those things happen by clinging to power and staying in roles of leadership and leveraging their finances and their authority to stay in positions of power. And I think it's detrimental to the society at this point in time. Because the youth don't want what a lot of the older generation wants. You know, my nephew, he's 10 years old and he was talking to his mom the other day. And he, this is what he told, this is what he told her. He

says, mom, I don't understand why the people got to go and work so much and have so little. You know, why is it that corporations just don't hire twice as many people and give half the people six months off and then the other people six months off? And you can, I mean, on some levels, it's a naive perspective, but it's pretty beautiful, right? Why not allow people the freedom to be creative? Why not allow people to have the ability to explore their inner nature and explore their own dreams? Now you can say, oh, George, no one has to work for anybody. You're free to go out and explore and start whatever you want.

Yeah, kind of. Kind of. But you don't get to pick who your parents are. You don't get to pick where you're born at. And if you come from a family that has, that is well to do, it's much easier to go out and start something than if you come from a place of poverty. However, I'm kind of getting away from myself a little bit. I think that there's a road we could take where the older generation could maintain a high level of relevance. and also and also create a better interracial bond.

And I think what we're missing in our society is like a right of passage. If you study like a lot of the Indian cultures and a lot of other cultures, you know, like in the South American cultures, like a girl turns 15 and she has like a, a Kinseñezra, right? Where she becomes a woman. Like the Jewish boys have the bar mitzvah. Become a man.

Some of the Indian cultures, they had like a vision quest where they would go with the men and they would go out for their first hunt. Or they would be exposed to some sort of mind-altering situation

where it was signified that they were brought into the next level of their life. And I don't think kids have that today. You know, you could argue that the college experience is a right of passage. But if that's the case, then not enough of our kids are getting the right of passage. And that's something that the older generation could, you know, they could develop a set. They could, we could develop, as a society, as older generations, we could develop a right of passage that would, we could develop a right of passage that would, we could develop, we could develop, we could develop,

would simultaneously show the child, hey, you've become part of the group now. Your roles have changed. You are no longer able to engage in activities that don't benefit the group as a whole. I mean, you can have your free time and stuff like that, but now you are going to, hey, look, now you're a man. Now your responsibilities lay in providing service and providing for the betterment of the community. I think the right of passage serves a lot of things. It establishes a group cohesiveness. It establishes respect for your elders.

It establishes respect for the elder group, but it gives them purpose. It helps the younger generation to understand that, hey, these guys that have gone before me have been in similar situations and are the best people to help me. It nurtures the mentor-mentee relationship. There's quite a few different ways to have a write-a-passage. I was reading this book and they were talking about how in this particular culture, when a boy turns 12, you know, he's free to do whatever he wants and play and learn. but when he turns 12, the men in the village, they dress up like demons and ghosts.

And prior to the child's 12-year-old birthday, the people begin telling the child, you know, there comes a time in a boy's life where his mom can't protect him and the spirits of the village come for him and they kind of start psyching this kid out. And the kid's like, what are you telling me this for?

And then on his 12th birthday, the men dressed up like spirits and ghosts. They come into the boy's house and they awaken him, right? They start scaring them and they're like, the boy starts freaking out. So he runs over and tries to hide behind his mom. And his mom, I mean, she knows what's happening. So she tries to protect him a little bit. But then the boy is wrestled away by the ghosts and the spirits who are the men in his family. And they take him out into the forest.

and they they then begin the initiation, the right of passage. And there's all these trials and tribulations that he has to go through for multiple days upon after graduating the trials, after being taught that the spirits

and the people dressed up as demons are really the men and his family. And the spirits and demons that attacked him are the forces of nature that will try to corrupt him. then he begins to understand the nature of the rite of passage. And it's beautiful in that. The men are dressed up like the forces of nature, like greed and lust and corruption.

And each man teaches the boy, beware of this. Beware of greed. You can have all this, but you'll lose all that. And so it's just amazing what can be taught to a young individual's mind if five or six men or a female mind, if five or six women are able to take that child and show them the right of passage. Like, listen, you're moving on to this next spot of your life. Here are the things that are going to affect you. But not only tell the child, but act them out. So you communicate on a multitude of different levels what's coming in life.

How to be a better man. How to be a better woman. And it just seems to me that in today's society, we've gotten away from the right of passage. Let me ask you this question. If you and I pretend that a tail is a leg, How many legs does a dog have? What are you thinking? Five?

Wrong, my friend. You're wrong. If you and I pretend a tail is a leg, then a dog still has four legs. Right? It doesn't matter what you and I pretend. It doesn't matter what a group of people pretend. It matters what people believe.

It matters what people perceive the truth to be. And you can ask a child how many legs. dog has, and that child will say four. Because just because you and I agreed on something doesn't make it right. Just because you and I agreed on something doesn't make it true. It's an important concept. Too often people in positions of authority, too often us in our life, we decide to make a tail a leg. We decide to proceed to proceed. We decide to proceed. the world in a way that is inaccurate, we decide to come up with solutions that are not solutions. And when you do that, when you take the path of a non-solution, it's going to lead you to real

problems, regardless of what you pretend. I think that's something that is detrimental, not only in the individual's life, but in the life of a community and the life of a government and the life of a business. You see, sometimes we just go down these rabbit holes of abstract thought, which it's amazing the human mind has the capability of such abstraction. However, it sometimes keeps us from changing the harsh realities that need our attention. A lot of times I think about our monetary system and how it, you know, Money is such a, it has become this abstract idea.

I've heard people define money as a store of value or a medium to exchange goods. However, I think it could be better described as a set of lies agreed upon. I often think of like, I've been thinking a lot about cryptocurrencies and what can that change the monetary system? And if it does change the monetary system, what does that mean? for the individual. Does that mean that we're going to have more rights? We'll pay less taxes. We'll have more freedom to purchase things that we want. We'll be less able to be bought off by lobbyists and greedy politicians. That's the hope for cryptocurrency. However, I don't know. I don't know. how it's it's it's in a it's really abstract and one of the major criticisms against cryptocurrency

is that there's nothing behind it if you if you look at some of the debates that seems to be the major criticism from the non-believers in cryptocurrency is that there's nothing behind it there's no there's no value there's nothing there's nothing there and on some level i get it for a long time i was persuaded by the idea that it can change the money system can change our value system and so I want to believe in the revolution of cryptocurrencies I want to believe it's it's gonna take us there however the more I listen to some of the leaders in cryptocurrency particularly Bitcoin it seems to me that it's just becoming

a convoluted tool of change. And by that, I mean, it's going to change one set of leaders with another set of leaders. It seems that the majority of products being used by the cryptocurrencies now are these tools of speculation. You know, I can take, I can buy cryptocurrency

and then give it to this cryptocurrency bank and then they loan it to other people to speculate. with and then I get a percentage of that. Excuse me. That's no different than what we already have. And if the new currency can be used to speculate like the old currency, what's the point of getting rid of the old currency?

I guess you could say to flush out the old guard, which Lord knows we need to do. So let me try to tie this all together here. You have the motivations of the young and the old, rights of passage, money in its old form potential new ideas of money i think the underlying foundation of all these things are the ideas thoughts and beliefs that motivate us whether consciously or unconsciously which is the foundation of behaviorism which is also a principle of propaganda i'd like to read to you

a quick couple quotes from the book propaganda by edward bernard This general principle that men are very largely actuated by motives which they conceal from themselves is as true of mass as of individual psychology. It is evident that the successful propagandist must understand the true motives and not be content to accept the reasons which men give for what they do. It is not sufficient to understand only the mechanical structure of society, the groupings and cleavages and loyalties. An engineer may know all about the cylinders and pistons of a locomotive, but unless he knows how steam behaves under pressure, he cannot make his engine run. Human desires are the steam which makes the social machine work. only by understanding them can the propagandist control the vast, loose-jointed mechanism,

which is modern society. So often, the things we do have multiple motives. We can look at something like grinding our weight at the top and tell ourselves we do it because we want to provide for our family. We tell ourselves, I don't know exactly if this is the right thing to do, but the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. You know, we come up with these euphemisms or these things that we tell ourselves. You know, we come up with ideas like the tail is the leg. But if you take a few minutes to be honest with yourself, I bet you can find a more deeper motive, a deeper meaning to why it,

is you do the things you do. You know, maybe it's to have a feeling of power. Maybe it's an attempt to have the feeling of control over your life. And it's important to take time to understand your motivations because if you don't understand your own motivations, then there are people who will manipulate you because they understand your motivation. you know what I mean by that like a lot of times it's hard to see things when you're in the relationship but it's easy to see it if you're a third person like everybody's had you ever have

like a friend and they're in a relationship and you're like oh man that's never going to work and you just see all these red flags but your friend in the relationship they can't see them and they don't understand like why these things are happening and you're like well look they're happening because of this and depending on how much much your friend cares about your opinion, he may or may not or she may or may not want to remain friends with you. But the point is, it's, it's easy to see motivations from the third person point of view. It's not easy to see them in a direct relationship. And the direct relationship I'm talking about is the relationship with yourself. There was a famous

politician that kind of summarized leadership and politics. in a few in one statement. And I'm going to give you that statement and then I'm going to say it in a different way. But I want you to think about these two statements. I must follow the people. Am I not their leader? You see, there's a kind of a dichotomy there.

To say I must follow the people is absurd. I'm their leader. That's the statement that guy gave. So if he got criticism, I'm like, why are you not doing what the people want? He would say to them. Why would I, those are, I lead those people. I don't do what they say.

The second statement is, I must lead the people. Am I not their servant? So I'm going to read them both together back to back. So you can just think about them. I must follow the people. Am I not their leader? I must lead the people. Am I not their servant?

So it's kind of a fancy way of saying the same thing. And I think a lot, a lot of us, have difficulty truly interpreting, interpreting that role of a leader. What does a leader do? Does a leader lead his people? Or does a leader do what's best for his people by listening to what they have to say?

And at what point does the group get too big for the leader to listen to everybody? I would argue that most people begin to climb the ladder of leadership and in order to I think it probably starts out as a need to want to help people but I don't think you have to get too far up

the ladder of leadership to realize that you're not going to make it to the top of the leadership ladder unless you have a thirst for power and a thirst for power is a thirst that is rarely quenched. When you thirst for power, you begin to want power just for power's sake.

Man takes to power. Power takes to power. Power takes the man. Then you start coming up with more ideas of, hey, I'm the leader. These people should just do what I say. Then you're surrounded by opulence. You're surrounded by the means to create change.

And you begin to think, that you know more, you have more, you begin to think that you are in fact the instrument of change. I think too many of our leaders have gotten to that place where they think I'm the leader, the people follow me. Therefore, my ideas are what's best for the people. I think that's what's gotten us into the conundrum we're in today. And I think you can protect yourself from that by truly understanding your own motivation. You can enhance your relationships by understanding the relationships you have with people around you, by understanding the motivations of the people around you.

And that's why listening is so important. Like, I catch myself all the time thinking of things to say while people are talking. And I'm trying desperately to end that pattern of nonsense because you don't, you're not being fair to yourself. you're not being fair to the other person and you're not being fair to the relationship if you're not listening to what people say. And the more that I've cultivated this habit, the more I've been able to

fundamentally change my relationships. You know, I was talking to one of my friends the other day and I feel I'm getting to the point where I am a better listener and I actually could see my thoughts change where we were having a conversation and I was listening. And instead of saying what I was going to say, I just listened.

And that changed, that completely changed my rebuttal. It also makes you really aware of your patterns of thought if you can do that. It takes a little bit of time, but just thinking about it now will become a seed

that will grow into a pattern that will grow into a behavior. So if you pull anything from this lesson, and just know that you should be conscious of your thoughts and be a good listener. That's what we've got for today, my friends. I love you. I'll be back tomorrow.

And we'll do it again. Aloha.