TrueLife - When Corporate Narratives Go Bad

Episode Date: September 22, 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. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. We are here with Mr. Wizard himself, the man, the myth, the legend. Ben, how are you, my friend? Oh, boy. I'm doing great, except for I got some technical difficulties here. Hold on one second. All right.

Let's see. Oh, boy. I'm doing this. There is. I found a tab. All right. So we're a little live echo here. It should be going on. All right. Sounds better now. I found a tab. All right. It's actually a little live by go here. Sounds better now. Now we got. All right.

Nice. Fantastic, my friend. How's it going today? It's actually a bit of a cold day in Colorado. But that's okay. I've been running for the past three days. So one day of break, it doesn't hurt too bad. So when you say you've been running, are you, you know, whenever you tell me you're running,

I'm thinking you're taking mushrooms and running. So is that what's going? on or are you just preparing or just something you do on the daily? Trying to do it on the daily. I was up to the daily for a while. I was up to about 50 miles a week and that felt really good. And then I had a little bit of an injury and then so I've been kind of just working that out. But the past three days I did 19 miles.

Nice. Yeah, you're about six miles a day right there. So that's pretty good, man. Yeah. Can you feel a difference in your body when you don't do it? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Everything starts to hurt a little bit more.

You know, things get out of the line than a lot easier. I feel just tons better when I'm able to do it every day, at least like three miles. I feel great. But, you know, I always find good excuses to not do it too. Oh, I got to get this done. I got to get that done. I got to go do this. But, yeah, I try to make it a bit more of a practice.

things. Okay. So what do you think about that that mindset, whether you're, whether you've been an entrepreneur your whole life, whether it comes down to building a company, building a website or going for a run? What is that internal dialogue, like that little bit of resistance that we find? Like, what do you think that is? Well, you know, it's that inner just laziness, that inherent, I don't want to do it.

Prove to me why I should do it, you know. Where's the motivation to do this? I think I'm not entirely sure where it comes. Never really thought about it. But I would imagine it's one of those things that really starts at a young age, right? It's the it's to clean your room. No, I don't want to clean my room. And then you just sit there and you just dwell and watch and sit and look at a dirty room

until you get yelled at enough times when you actually clean the room. Maybe it starts back then. maybe it starts even a little bit earlier. But yeah, that mentality of just, you know, especially if you've been productive, you know, we could go into the neurochemistry side of it, and there is, you know, different cycles to the day, like the ultradian rhythm, which is like a 90-minute cycle that you can do hard effort, you know, mental or physical effort in that 90-minute window.

And then beyond that, it starts to become much more of an effort to consider. continue up at that pace or at that rapidity of effort. So, I mean, you know, there's, there's things to look at it from different perspectives, I suppose. But at the end of the day, it's, you know, that inner, inner cry baby, inner bitch. You know what? Like, I've been thinking a lot about inner dialogue, but when you brought up the idea of these different rhythms, like the circadian rhythm, or what was the other one that you mentioned?

the ultradium ultradium so I'm wondering if on some level we could draw like you could you could somehow measure the rhythms throughout the day and then using your

blood or your heartbeat measure your own rhythms and kind of match that up you think there's a way to kind of to draw that out yeah I think so there's you could tap into the altradian cycle you could tap into the circadian cycles.

One way that everybody's kind of familiar, but not familiar with this, is intermittent fasting. So when you start to play with, you know, that cycle of feeding and fasting, you get to the point where instead of your body just processing food for while it's awake, it gets to go off and do some other functions

that seem to be pretty imperative and, you know, life-extending, you know, anti-inflammatory, a lot of really nice benefits. And so you can start to, people are already playing with this kind of inadvertently. And then there's people like Dr. Andrew Heurman who has a podcast. He's a neuroscientist. He really goes into kind of, you know, what you can do to actually, like physical things to interact with these types of systems,

how to, you know, rev them up, rub them down, you know, things like cold exposure, heat therapies, different types of supplements, breath work. there's a lot of active tools that you can do that actually really kind of and you know we kind of know this without knowing you too if you go off and hyperventilate for 30 seconds all of a sudden you feel it you know there's there's an excessive you know they're getting to a hypoxic state and you know you go well oh my goodness you know people hallucinate people have visions people pass out people do all sorts of things in that in that hypoxic state

but so I think there is definitely a way to tool this. And I kind of experiment with it in my life, which is kind of one of my practices of just, well, you know, trying to make sure my hard work is split into these, you know, 90-minute chunks. And then I usually take about an hour break between that. And then you can, you can get about three good ones in a day is what I found. Yeah. See, I think this all ties into the world of psychology. And I think we could even tie it to psychedelics. If we look at the way the world is moving, it seems like we're becoming so intertwined in the world of interdisciplinary actions. So I, you know, I see the world of of physical education,

beginning to mold with the world of psychology. Like when your body is in good shape, your mind is in good shape, probably because the blood is flowing through your body the same way it's flowing through your brain. And if you have a blockage upstairs, you probably have one downstairs. Some people say that the body is a manifestation of your health. And so if we can look at these rhythms, be at the circadian rhythm or the cycles in which we can oxygenate our body,

I think that we can implement a sort of physical strategy. Like I'm not aware of any psychologist doing this right now, but what do you think about this? that being a part of physical therapy, having some psychology with it. So if someone had an issue with a relationship, you would treat that relationship by helping them treat the problems in their bodies.

You think there's a there there? I think so. You know, it's all vastly interconnected as above, so below, as outside, so within, right? And I think there's a lot of wisdom to be drawn from that perspective. and thinking about the situation. And it's really interesting because if you kind of look at the different sets of literature,

you see this on these individual pathways of medicine or therapies. And, you know, they'll say, they'll recommend that exercise is great for X, Y, and Z. But nobody's saying exercise is great for everything, even though it is. But if you go down enough in the literature, you always see exercise is one of those things that is always beneficial. And I think I just read a couple days ago where they just are now allowing exercise as a prescription. So the doctor can now prescribe exercise because apparently they weren't allowed to do that by the medical association. Wow. That's a, that to me is obtuse in a few ways.

Number one, you know, in some ways it's almost like they're, They're not forcing you to exercise, but it's weird that they would prescribe it. I guess we would define prescription as like, oh, I don't know, something only the doctor can give you. And I say that because I think of drugs. You know what I think of a prescription, I think it's something that a doctor gives you. But it doesn't have to be that. It could just be advice from a doctor, right? So I guess in that angle, why wouldn't a prescription for exercise be okay?

Yeah, it's just, it's interesting to think about a doctor prescribing. exercise. Well, it's really interesting to think about that we have this whole medical system set up the way it is. Yes, it is. And where it's really interesting, I think what you might have been trying to touch on was, you know, people are so helplessly inured to that system that they can't see beyond the idea that they can do something unless it's prescribed by an doctor. Yes. And that is a, you know, that kind of that should make a reasoning individual going, I'm not sure that seems right, right?

Something off about that situation. Yes, thank you. That is what I was what I was striving to get at. And in some ways, you know, we talk about going full circle. And here we have doctors now beginning to prescribe exercise when probably 50 years ago, the doctor would be like, why don't you go out, get outside for a little bit, and it'll work itself out. Walk it up.

Rub some dirt on it, right? Get some dirt on it. Walk it up. Yeah, it's fascinating to think about. I have a niece, a beautiful young girl named Lauren, and she's getting ready to apply for sports medicine. And she is writing this paper to apply for colleges. And she was asking me, hey, George, do you think that there is room for

psychedelics in sports medicine. And first half, I was blown away. I'm like, this little girl's on point here. Yeah, I do think there's room for psychedelics and sports medicine. In fact, I could see that people who want to perform at the highest level may, in fact, want to take psychedelics. When I think about using the brain and athletes, I always think of Ken Norton, how he was hypnotized when he put down Muhammad Ali.

And the same sort of mental exercises can kind of be. done through psychedelics. I don't see why there's not sports team having psychedelic retreats or one-on-one coaching or mentors that have psychedelics. I think that that might be the next level for sports. And as someone like yourself, who you're the only person I know, Ben, who introduced me to this idea of strenuous activity and psychedelic. So I wanted to get your opinion on your ideas about psychedelics and high-level athletics. You know, I think you're right that we're going to see that trend, first of all. I think it's really evident that usually the famous sports people kind of followed the famous celebrity Hollywood type people. And that's where a lot of those people are at right now. And I wouldn't

be surprised. I mean, we just heard Aaron Rogers talked on Joe Rogan said he went down and had an ayahuasca trip before he won the last Super Bowl. So I think we've kind of already seen the tipping point in that. And I think, you know, there was, I guess there was a celebration last week where his teammates, after a touchdown, all pretended they'd drink ayahuasca and did a little funny thing much. So it's already pervading into the mainstream culture, you know, in those very interesting inroads that's something that kind of takes over the zeitgeist does.

So I think, you know, we're kind of, we're entering kind of a new era when it comes to, you know, sports medicine for sure. You've got all these supplements. You have all this, you know, all of the research chemicals, we'll call them that. You know, there's, you know, you have all sorts of different plant derivatives being derived from every single continent on the planet. it. And I think really only the largest hurdle is something like, you know, legalities. And there's already places like Portland and Denver that are decriminalizing a lot of the stuff. So probably those would be the epistem of something like that. But, you know, sports, psychedelic medicine therapy probably will be a field in the future, I would imagine. And from the perspective of

kind of what could be happening physically. You know, we already talked about the inner brain connections and, you know, the ionophores and greater charge density being delivered to the entirety of the body. These are the things that, you know, you can train years and years and years to develop that all of a sudden you can basically get nitro in the system. You're throwing nitrous oxide into the tank. You know, you're pushing the button. Now, you know, that's just from my very personal limited experience.

you know, limited experience or a couple other people. But if, you know, you could take a relatively moderate American-in-shaped person at 48 years old and have them running up mountains, you know, there's something to be said about that. And I think not from just, you know, the performance aspect, but also, you know, the healing aspect as well. You know, it never ceases to amaze me the wisdom of people that you talk to. And you and I have had a lot of conversations, but not until right now that I put this together. We're like, you know, are you, let me just, I got to, I'm just going to do a shotgun out the back right here with a few thoughts. So bear with me while I try to get this out here.

You know, do you, I wonder if you keep journals. And now I know you can't tell me the people you work with and stuff like that, but I'm curious if the guinea pigs or the people that you have begun to show your technique to, and by technique I mean taking mushrooms or psilocybin and exercising and running and getting out there and hitting the pavement, I'm wondering if you have kept journals on their performance or if you keep in touch with them so that you could keep track of their potential, you know, where they're at on their health and what they've done for them. Because it seems to me that, like, you could be on the cutting edge of this particular type of therapy. You know, I don't know if you would call it a therapy or if you would call it some sort of, you know, personal physical advancement or brain body advancement or, you know, I'm not naming aside. You're the first person I have talked to that has actual personal evidence of going. You know, I'm not naming aside. You're the first person I have talked to that, that has actual personal evidence of going.

through this process. I guess you could say you're kind of pioneering it in a way, but I'm wondering if you have kept track of some of the people you've worked with, and have you thought about maybe taking this one step further? Yeah, actually the people who I've taken down the path are pretty close friends. So always in contact. So yeah, and it's one of those things where I haven't really made it scientific to the sense that I'm actually, you know, got some spreadsheets and taking, you know, heart and blood samples and all that stuff. Because on one level, I just don't have the time for that.

But on another level, you know, it is just kind of, it was one of those pioneering things. He's like, well, it worked for me. Let me go. I can know a couple other fairly crazy individuals. Let me see what will work for them too. But, you know, it is one of those things where I want to, you know, if that's just something that actually does, you know, turn out to work for a greater number of people, it's one of those things where that's the information that should be shared freely. And just like the information of, you know, my book, I want it to be shared freely. And if anybody wants a free copy, they're free to ask me for them.

you know it's it's one of those things where I don't think it's something that I would want to profit off of in my life And there's you know there's been a few things that I've ran into in my world that have been that way and that's just one of them You know I think the Monetization of money is a very dangerous game of playing and I think if we were honest about everything that we at least see in recorded history We'd probably say that it's been a failing endeavor so far. Yeah, I agree. That's one reason I enjoy talking to you so much is that I think we share a passion for living and a passion for sharing information that can make people better.

You know, as soon as some of those, as soon as money is introduced into the conversation, the conversation changes. What could be a conversation about making the people around you better turns into a conversation of, hey, how can I charge the people around me to tell them what they could learn for free? Right. And, you know, in that there's always, and I would recommend anybody who wants to go down this path, seek out at least somebody who's experienced and there's the shamanistic ways of things. if you know, you know, just don't go run around the desert outside like Amanda, like myself.

Not the most safe thing, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. But it's one of those things where I think the more people that do kind of figure these stuff out. And it's not just this. It's all the other movements that are moving into the psychedelic world. As all of this becomes more and more common knowledge, I think, it gets to a tipping point, a precipice where, you know, you really can't,

you won't be able to charge for it. It doesn't mean people are going to try, right? I think, you know, they've already been patented offshoots of every single psychoactive molecule that we know of, right? So, you know, they had a carbon atom here, or a hydrogen atom there, and then, you know, into that chain of molecules,

and then they just say, oh, we invented this. Yeah, that's, that's the, that's the, that's the pharmaceutical way of, or the, maybe that's the strategy produced by big pharma. You know, and speaking of strategies and monetization, I was talking to this guy yesterday. For some reason, we were talking about copiers and, and toner. And he was, he was buying some toner or something. And I, I forgot how we got talking about it. But we did. And it just got me thinking like, wow, here's a company like Xerox that built a business model based on addiction. Like what does that say? Like, you know what I mean by that? Like, if you have a nice copier, the copier, they'll almost give it to you.

Even though it, you know, it costs more to make it. But then they get you on the toner because you got to buy that toner all the time. That's the same way as someone who's hooked on like crack has to go and buy the crack all the time. You know, when I was a kid, all the all the dope dealers used to say, hey, the first one's free. because they knew once you get the first one, you're probably going to want more. So it's this idea of addiction that, what does it say about us that we have monetized addiction? Like we have built business,

not just business, but profitable business on like we've seized this idea of addiction and monetized it. Like that seems to me on some level to be a bit nefarious. Well, it is on some level a bit nefarious, but it's also not new, right? What do you mean? Well, think about it.

All of the businesses back, well, you know, we'll just go back to East India Trading Company. Look at the addiction that they ran around the world, right? So, you know, this, and I think if we were probably to take it further back, it gets down to the point where you remove the barter system and you put in, well, maybe even with the barter system, You know, maybe it's just a, maybe it is kind of just an arm of tribalism.

Because, you know, even if you think it's about some of the descriptions of how the indigenous tribes are then throughout the world, you know, there's room in all of those tribes for very interesting people and characters and addictions and deformities in all sorts of different aspects of humanity. So maybe it is kind of, you know, an effect of just us recognizing the vast potential differences in the vast amount of variables that can fall upon us. Yeah. That, you know, I guess, you know, as soon as you said East India trading company, then I thought to myself, maybe it's just my first time seeing this model based on addiction. Maybe it's always been based on addiction, you know. And then you, yeah, that's a great way to put it. I guess if you need something, you know, addiction, what's the difference between addiction and supply and demand? Pretty similar, right?

Like I want it. Addictions, addictions entwined with supply and demand for sure. I mean, even to the effect where, you know, we're keeping up with the Joneses is the modern term, right? We're addicted to constantly this consumerism. And I don't think consumerism has never been not a part of the system. It might be a greater portion of these days. But, you know, again, I think it really could be drawn back to just the kind of how the diversity of humanity and how we approach this world and walk throughout this world and then pass that information along.

Okay, let me ask you this. how can you use the idea of no absolutes? How can you use that to battle the idea of addiction or consumerism? Or how can you use the no absolute thinking model to get away from that idea of consumerism? Well, you know, one of the beautiful things that I have in my head about the model is that it always makes all of the All the borders fuzzling, right? Because in doing so, you open yourself up to always being able to take in new information. Without having those hard borders of your perspective in the world, you're, you know, you're more than willing to then add information into the entire equation.

You're like, oh, well, that actually makes a lot sense. Whereas if you have those borders and you have these walls inside, because you believe a certain way, you know, you've accepted the absolute of something a certain way, you know, getting around those things can often be almost physically debilitating for some people at some times, right? When they get a counterpoint in your face and you see all these people screaming at each other on the streets, you know, voice screeching like they're, they're a toddler and can't control their emotions and it's all broiled over. That's what you run into when you put up all these divisions in the world and all these absolutes.

And when you don't have that, when you're approaching the world from the no absolutes perspective, you can then see the force through the trees. You can see what it means to see what an addictive society is. You can see the origins of it. You can see where it comes from. And it doesn't offend you. It doesn't hurt you. In fact, it can even inspire you to make changes in your own life or help other.

Yeah, that's well put. That makes me think that, you know, addiction is, is the idea of absolutes. I mean, if you're addicted, you absolutely must have this. If you're addicted, you must get this or you'll die. You know, and it's a way of shutting off the possibilities around you, which would be no absolutes, right? If you have something that you need, it's an absolute. But if you have no absolutes, then you have no absolutes, then you have, another way to get to this thing you want to get to, which what I guess would be like the fuzzy borders there. Right. Or, you know, in a more specific case, the relief of pain or, you know, the gaining of pleasure in some instances, you know, the pursuit of love in other instances. If you tie yourself into these absolute boxes, you know, you're running to these walls over and over again and you're, and you just keep, wondering, you know, well, why me instead of figuring out how to get around the walls. And this is kind of what, you know, we've talked a lot about when it comes to psychedelics, you know, the ability to move beyond those walls because you can zoom out and see them from a distance. You can reflect upon that without, you know, having yourself tied to that ego for just

a couple minutes, even can allow you to just walk right past them because you realize it wasn't actually just a huge wall. I was just staring at this little tiny sliver of wall and I was unwilling to move past it. And, you know, so there's multiple ways to climb the mountain. I think from a philosophical approach, you know, it also gives one a foundation to really draw back upon and, you know, fall back upon whenever there's questions, you know, around you, especially when crazy things happen, like, say, a pandemic, right? Yeah. You know, it's in some ways,

it's this chaos of a pandemic. It's the chaos of war. It's the chaos of an invisible enemy that there's like this weird dichotomy because you would think that in the moments of chaos,

it would free you to think differently. But it seems to have the opposite effect. It seems to kind of shoehorn people in one direction. What do you think that is? Flight or flight response. Fight or flight?

An emotional response. Okay. Yeah. So when that happens, you know, basically they've shown you actually do get physical tunnel vision, right? Your peripheral vision shuts off. All of the flexing of your muscles changes the way that the lights entering your eyes. That triggers off a whole other.

series of systems in the brain that kind of shut off the higher reasoning type stuff than kick in the reptilian brains they call it. And so once you get into that mode, you know, you're either hunting or you're the prey. And so that's all there is at that stage. It's fascinating to me to think that if we know that on a personal level to watch this pandemic that we just had or, you know, some sort of. of chaos. It's fascinating to me to see it on an organism level. You know what I mean by that? Like, it's interesting to see a small group of people try to reason it out. And then another

could be like, we all got to have an emotional response, you know, because we all know people in our life that probably are both. But it's weird to see it happen as a society. I thought so too. I, you know, the second that it all started happening, I, you know, I told my people closest to me and I said, this is going to be the greatest psychological experiment of a ring on the human poppies. Because not necessarily, you know, that there hasn't been other things that have affected great numbers of people, but simply because we have, it's all played out on a global stage, this, this internet-driven communication hub that, you know, we're all a part of all of a sudden.

So now all of the, everything gets magnified, right? And we saw that. All of the little things that would normally be, you know, some, you know, some, you know, one of the people in the town hall being, you know, raising their fist turned into, you know, hundreds of thousands of people all raising their fists collectively. And we just see these massive magnifications on all sides, really. And it just became a really clear demonstration of how close we are to tribalism still. And you know what?

On another level, too, I think two parts that are really dangerous, are the ability to measure that which is happening and the disconnect between the people at the top that are doing the measuring. I know it's kind of a mouthful of words. Let me try to break it down. As these things are happening and there's all these people responding on the internet, there's these different thermometers throughout the world that can take the temperature of how angry or how upset or how sad

or how close people are to the edge, whether it's an economic thermometer or it's a psychological thermometer, you know, goop by by people just going on Google and searching crisis. You know, they think what I'm trying to say is people can now monitor or measure the response of the people. And the people that are doing that are not necessarily the city governor or the or the state governor or the president. the people that are measuring it are disconnected.

So they have the freedom to try and, you know, implement strategies to move things around. And if it fails, it's no big deal because it doesn't really hurt them. You know, it's this technocratic type of government that's emerging that is incredibly powerful. But also, I wouldn't say it scares me, but it brings, it's alarming. I think it's alarming. It's alarming and highly potentially dangerous. Yes. You know, most people don't know about the Pinkerton Army and the labor movement

and what kind of conflict that turned into. There's things that were called battles because there were so many people involved. That's a return to something like that. If you end up with a whole bunch of big Democratic city states, they're all privatized armies. They're basically goom squads. And you have a whole different series of dictators emerge, right? Because they're all top-down organizations.

They all have CEOs and, you know, they're second in command and everything else like this. But it turns very dictatorial, very quick. And there's no constitutions for protections of rights. You might have a worker contract. But at the end of the day, that worker contract is subject to now the will of the state, which is these technocratic city states. And I think this has been recognized. There was that whole section 230 to try to make social media companies a bit more compliant with all this.

but all that really effectively did is kind of what Mark Zuckerberg told us happened just a little bit ago on Joe Rogan, that when the FBI comes a call and, you know, they say, how high would you like us to jump? And, you know, if they have the capability to say that, you know, for the FBI, that means that they have that capability baked into the entirety of the system and they've been running all sorts of experiments to what you were mentioned before. All of these experiments to what? to figure out how to piss people off, to figure out what makes people feel good, to figure out how to elicit emotional responses, how to figure out, to get more engagement. You know, all these video games are the same thing.

Look at all these games like FarmVills and stuff like that that we're making tens of millions of dollars a month for what? Flashing lights at the right time and bright colors at the right moment to keep that constant drip of dopamine flooding the neural system. so you feel like you're getting rewarded every five minutes until you're just burned out at the end of the day and have no emotional room for anybody in your life, no ability to love, care, and be compassionate. I mean, you know, and these are proven things. You know, but there's evidence in the scientific literature

to suggest that this is what's happening. So there's a lot to be said about that. And I don't think, and I don't think much of it is good. Yeah, it doesn't sound very good. I mean, to what end? To what end are the flashing lights? To what in is the scientific research on social media? To what in?

Like, you know, I read a study about the social engineers that would go into people's feeds and just feed them negative information for like six months. And then they saw this increase in suicides in anger behavior and in violence. They took people with positive stuff. and they showed positive influence in their life. Like to what end is this research doing? Like what if we know positive, you know, to what end? Are you just going to feed people positive stuff and keep them in this opium world?

Are you just feeding people negative stuff? Are you just doing it because you can because people are like rats in cages to your social media campaign? Like to what end? I don't understand the point. It seems like the only end is a monetary end. And it's sad to me. Well, I think most of the ends are monetary ends, but I think you'll get a conglomeration of motivations throughout, even if they're secondary motivations, but some primary motivations too. For instance, political parties are very much primarily manipulate or interested in manipulating as many people as they can.

you know ultimately that's a monetary end as well if you if you keep pulling on the stream of course but yeah whenever we have these big monoplistic systems if they become inherently corrupt it seems and part of the reason I think is because in order to achieve that level of the quote unquote success you're basically you're destroying your competition you're removing the marketplace and you're making things very you know like monocropping

essentially and we know what how you know we know what monocrop does to the land over a given period of time and I think you know that's where you see a lot of stifling innovation that's why we don't see a lot of projects that's why all the renewable energy stuff

hasn't really come around either you know, the technology for that stuff has been known for a very, very, very long time. Some of it was under patent for a long time, so it just set there under patent. You can only get prototypes of it for millions of dollars. And then finally the patents expire and now, oh, okay, here you go, world, you can have this technology. But now there's no money to invest it in it because it's been outpaced by the other technologies that have been invested in. whether, you know, the only cost-benefit analysis that goes into it, usually at the end of days, can we win? Can we beat our competition? Can we acquire enough resources? And this is a very, you know, we're watching what this plays out to at the end of the game.

And this is what we're seeing. We're seeing, you know, just look at what's happened in the past week in terms of, you know, conflicts around the world. I mean, you got Armenian as in Bajon, you got Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan, you have, you know, Taiwan, the United States saying it's going to put boots in the ground in Taiwan. You have Russia is saying that they're calling up 300,000 troops, you know, ready to use newts. I mean, we have, you know, we have conflicts breaking out all over in Mexico with cartels and the government and generals and arming and all sorts of things happening down there so we're seeing the results of this game played out over the past you know say 250 to 400 years of imperialism slash colonialism is kind of where it started yeah it's um

on some on so many levels like i think we one of one of many many levels like i think we one of many reasons why I love talking to you is that you're so well read and you know about the Pinkerton's, you know about history, you know about geography, and you read up on the technological takeover and how this was the same thing that happened a hundred years ago and the, and ultimately where science can lead us to. You know, on some levels, like, it just, it doesn't make sense, and I know it doesn't make sense because I don't have all the information, but some problems I don't understand are, you know, why in the world would Germany, the UK, why are they willing to sacrifice all their people to energy when they could just buy it for cheap from, just put the fucking pipeline,

just run the gas through the pipeline and give it to the people? Like, the fact that they're willing to sacrifice all their people, hey, we're going to let, we'd rather let our people die than buy your gas. Like, are you freaking kidding? me like no wonder why there's revolutions like do the p like on and on one level i think to myself well no one could be that stupid to be in power and just be like we're are we're we're not going to turn it on because we don't want to buy your gas like that is that how dumb they are like you don't see that you're going to rise up and murder you do you not see that do you not care like is it what am i missing here is it is it a level of malevolence where these people are like we're

these people don't understand the long-term game, that this gas field is ours, or, you know, what, is there a grander plan that I am not privy to? Is it, is it generational money where people, there's real owners of the world and they are playing their game? Or, you know, is it, is it that, because this fight will, will designate the supply chain holders for the next thousand years? Is it, is it something I'm missing?

like what's going on here? I'm like, why is it blowing up like this? So I think where a lot of the confusion comes from is because that question of why, just as you articulated wonderfully, is so multifacely. You know, and you hit a lot of the nails on the end, and I think there's a few more on top of it. But all of those, you have to imagine, these are all separate individual groups and entities. And yes, there's going to be crossover between them.

But by and large, they're motivated by their own massinations and generational plots, you know, their own just, I want to conquer the world in the business, in XYZ business sector. You know, we own, you know, like the Saudis and their oil. There's all of these, there's all of these different agendas. And yet these people do get around and they smoke cigars together and sip on the finest of liquors and whatnot from throughout the world. But they don't like each other. It's, you know, and I have a little bit of insight into this on a much, much lower level than the upper echelons of stuff. But when I ran my fishing business, you know, people would hire me for a couple weeks, and them and their buddies would all, and they would bring them all down for, you know, whatever party it was.

They're yearly kicked shindade in this foreign country. We pay everything for two weeks, you know, including me and my other buddy as a fishing guide. and it was a drop in the bucket for these guys. And so I got to set on a fly on the wall for some of these conversations. And, you know, other people would be around too from that kind of level of society. And it was like sitting in a high school lunchroom. It really was. It blew me away.

It was caddiness. It was, you know, all about entitlement. It was all about, you know, presentation. It was just, it was everything. It was like all of the kind of what we would call negative aspects of a human kind of magnified. And so that got me asking a question which you originally asked is, you know, what's the disconnect to me? And that disconnect, I think, is a lot of these people grow up in a world where they're not exposed to the reality that we know. right nobody's threatening to punch them in the face because everybody knows who their daddy is

and you know nobody has ever challenged them or you know they've never had to earn anything in their lives because there's always trust fund money and you know a phone call away where there's even a butler following them around all the time this creates massive detachments from reality and i think once you have those detachments from reality then you get a reinforcement of, hey, here's some power. Now you just put yourself in this feedback loop of absurdity and you end up, you know, a wild pompous ass. And then you're in a room of a whole bunch of other wild pompous asses

and you're all sitting there joking about how you're all wild pompous asses secretly thinking about how you all hate each other. And it's, you know, it sounds like, you know, some absurdity, you know, airplane type movie, but that's kind of, you know, that's what I saw at the small scale. And then if you extrapolate it and you think about it, and then you look at like how a Donald Trump has, right? And you're like, oh, okay, now I can get a little bit more insight into this.

And, you know, a lot of those people keep face for the cameras, but less and less these days, too. And so we're seeing this kind of unravel as well. We're seeing all of these little tiny fractures of the system, magnified at scale look like these huge caverns, you know, Grand Canyons. Yeah.

You know, and on a positive note for the internet and social media and technocracy, I think it does allow a sort of transparency. You know, and maybe things, maybe it's the fact that We as just everyday people that work for a living, read books and go to work and weren't given everything,

like maybe we are just now getting to peer behind the curtain a little bit and go, hey, what the frick is this? What is this? You taking all this stuff here, you know? And on some level, the level of corruption has gotten to a point where, you know, think of it as, the people have found for whatever reason, whether they were given everything or born into everything, or maybe there's some real people that have forced their way to the big boy table, they're playing a pot right now where people are going to leave.

There's going to be people that get kicked off the island. There's going to be people that leave the big poker table, and a lot of people have their chips pushed in. So if I look at it from that angle, if I look at, oh, well, Israel wants to build a pipe right. Oh, well, Saudi Arabia wants to have their pipeline come through it. And then Iran's just, they're going all in on their, you know, their King 8 over here, you know, and they're like, eh, that's suited. You know what I said? Let's see what we get on the river here.

You know, and you got Russia that's like, we're all in. Yeah. And let me just tell you, I don't bluff. You know, you got Putin over here looking like he's got a pair of aces. You know, and like, it's fascinating to look at the great game from that angle and go, oh, this is what Kisner. was writing about or, oh, this is what the devil's chess board was all about. I think we are getting to see, you know, maybe the firsthand or at least the firsthand that I have seen, been capable of seeing watching people play at the table.

And on that level, it's pretty fascinating. Right. My first introduction to that table was those days in the fishing business, listen to me. And I said, oh, now I see the game. because and you know you're for me and you we care about people's feelings they're you know they're how they're doing in life we we go way far out of our way to ensure that we don't hurt people these people these people hurting people's not even part of the equation because it's it is a piece on the chess board it's my rook is taking your queen that's that's what it is

There's no batting in eyelatch. There's no loss of sleep at night, apparently, for a lot of these people. Now, they're all usually in drunken stupers or drugged up stupers. But, you know, I guess people have to deal with, you know, the torment of their fellow human somehow. Or not, or they just don't see them as a fellow human. They just see them as a. Yeah, and I guess, you know, I, I guess, there would be a few sociopaths, psychopasts out there.

But you would think that if that's a small percentage of people in general, there's got to be something in there a little bit, at least you would imagine. Yeah, yeah. I think we have spoken about this prior. I think at the, at least on a corporate level, I can see the self-selection for sociopathic behavior. Like, this person gets moved up when they say, step on everybody. When this person has blinders on and they can only see the mighty dollar,

that's the guy you want in an upper management position because that's the guy that's going to throw everybody under the bus to make the profits. That's also the guy you don't feel bad about firing because he's a piece of garbage because he does that, you know? And the higher up you go, you know, it's almost like you're rewarding that behavior. Like here's a guy on the fence that may or may not take that path, but then he does something that throws the employees in the bus and you move them up. So you've reinforced that behavior. And now all of a sudden, here's the guy above him saying, like, you know what? If you don't do it, I'm going to fire you for what you did earlier. So it just sharpens that person to become more and more of a sociopath. It's like. And then people have a tendency to

fail up as well. Once you get to that, once you get to that level. And you articulate exactly why that is is because now you're breeding a yes-mean, yes-man. And so you know that they're going to do your bidding. You know they're towing company on. And so you reward those people even when they go off and fail miserably. You know, you just transfer them to a different department or a different company under your international conglomeration of companies. You know, you do, and we see it all the time in the news world. You know, these people come out and they have scandals and then all of a sudden, They're on a different network with their own brand new show at 7 p.m. And it's not just that world.

It's obviously all of Hollywood is, you know, the royalty. Yeah. You know, all of the, so you, you know, once you get to a certain echelon of society, there is, you know, failures just to propel you upward. That's really kind of maybe where the no press is bad press really kind of cements its place in reality. Yeah. And I would say as an adjunct to that, like, you know, when you say fail up, I've seen another aspect of that where people are incompetent. But because of the way they look or because of their orientation, they get promoted. Like I knew, I knew this young woman. She was a lovely young woman. But she was not a leader. And because they wanted her to be a leader, you know, the average person in her position was in charge of like 30 people. But because this person. looked a certain way or had a certain orientation, she was in charge of 30 people, but it became obvious she couldn't be in charge of 30. So then she was in charge of 10 and then she was in charge of

five and then she was in charge of three. And then she was promoted. And it's like, dude, this person and then she was, she held such a rank that she was making decisions that influenced the entirety of the company. And it's like, wait a minute, this person couldn't barely keep track of three people, why would you put them in a position where they're in charge of 300 people? Like, isn't it clear they can't do that? But because of our blinders or because we want to be good people and we move them forward. And now you have this psychopath on one side and a failure on the other side. It's like, it just brings me to that quote of like all that takes for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing, you know?

No, I think you nailed it on the head. I've seen that replete, not just in like a corporate setting in that environment, but you also see it in like venture capital type stuff a lot. You know, these people that go out, this guy, this WeWork gun. You know, WeWork was that big company. Dude lost retarded amounts of money. It was ridiculous. And then he just went out and raised money for a brand new company and, you know, raised $48 million or something like that.

Basically just on his knee. I mean, the company rents out like business space or something. I don't even know what it is either. But they were able to go off and raise a whole bunch of money led by one of the biggest venture capital funds in the world just from a failed venture. Right. Yeah. And so what is that, you know, when you remove the meritocracy from the situation, I think, you know, it's wonderful to have democracy. It's wonderful to have capitalism. You need meritocracy in that trinity to balance those things out. Because through the meritocracy as being the mechanism of advancement and growth in society, now. how you temper the capitalistic initiatives and you temper the corruption of democracy.

That is well put. There's a really good example of this. And this particular example I'm going to tell you has opened my eyes to the way the world works. And I can't speak on behalf of history, only the history of my life. So take that for what it's worth. There's a great book called Bad Blood, and it's written by John Carriaco, and it's the story of Elizabeth Holmes. And for those that don't know, Elizabeth Holmes was, I think, I think she went to Harvard or she dropped that at Harvard because she invented, quote unquote, invented a technology that would take one drop of blood and allow you to test it multiple times for multiple things. And if you think about the power that that particular set of goals would do,

if you could take one drop of blood and test it 100 times, that would do so much for health care. It would do so much for people that have diseases. And so this was her idea and she said that she had it all figured out. Now, let's just pull back for a minute. Elizabeth Holmes is a young woman who was an entrepreneur. and it's not so much that she had this idea. It's that this idea was almost thrust upon her. You look at the company she started and like Kissinger is on the board and the defense departments are on the board.

And all of a sudden, as you read John Carriaco's book, you realize that this was never her idea. This was the same thing that Facebook was. It was like, here's this thing we want to create. And here's a woman. We need a woman. Here's our story We're gonna put all the money behind it We're gonna bring our our Middle Eastern

Freaking weirdo enforcer to go to all the kids To be like, dude, this or I'm gonna kill you You know what I mean? We're gonna dress your life steep drops We're gonna drop we're gonna put on a turtleneck And make black and white pictures of her And we're gonna sit around on speaking gigs to women's stuff You know and like you just see the story

And you know I guess if you have your eyes open. Like, that's the story always. It's the Zuckerberg story. It's the same thing only in his case, it worked. And it's the, you know, and it's so once you see it once, I guess you see it as a pattern. Like, and, you know, it was just, it was, it was interesting because you got to see it fail. And you got to see how, you know, I don't know if it wasn't ready. I don't think it was her fault. I think it was the, the technology, they couldn't get the technology to work. So she, and it's also amazing to think how she, how there's the fall guy there.

So yeah, you are this person that gets uplifted as a savior. You could be Zuckerberg or you can be Elizabeth Holmes, but you're still the same person. It's just the story didn't work. Oh, just wait. Elizabeth Holmes will have her redemption art. Oh, guaranteed. She's, yeah. I think that's written into the contract.

Yeah, as soon as they break through on the technology, because people are very much interested in that technology. Like you said, that is a life changer for. many, many, many people. So that technology is still being researched. And as soon as they get it, all of a sudden, you'll find a redemption mark and maybe she'll actually bring it out for real this time. Yeah.

I don't know how I feel about her. Like, you know, John Carriacos had so many death threats because you wrote a book exposing that, you know? And, you know, I don't, on some level, I feel like, I guess that's the Faustian deal, right? Like, hey, you want to be famed? and have all this money. I can make you famous right here. Look at this.

You could be the next Steve Jobs. You want to take this? Are you sure? Yeah, go ahead. And you read her story and like, like she just got on some level, I feel horrible for her. But on the other hand, I'm like, well, she kind of decided she wanted that, you know, I don't know how to feel. Maybe it's not my position to feel. It's just to see.

Well, I mean, it's the story of the gym, too. You know, you get your three wishes. Just so happens that they're always going to screw you. Yeah. Yeah, the only move there is not to play. I guess you can take it back to war games. You know what I mean? Would you like to play a game, chess or thermonuclear warfare? Yeah, yeah. I don't know, Ben. I think that I think you've been put in that position where you could have taken, you could have taken the big paycheck.

You could have taken the briefcase. You could have taken the, the, the, the big payday and watch things crumble, man. What do you think it was about being... What do you think it was that allowed you to make the decision not to play? The reflection of looking at myself in the future. You know, I knew that, yeah, you could try to get past it with fun and games. Yeah, you can try to get past it with all these things.

But at the end of the day, I'm very well aware of my conscience and how much I do feel about things. And I knew that that's just, A, it was a selfish choice at the end of days because I knew it would root me, essentially, regardless of how much immediate success or potentially even downstream success, if you want to measure success monetarily, that manned thing. you know there's also a component of you know another selfish component which is legacy what do you want to be remembered do you want to be remembered for

you know somebody who took the dive in a sporting event or do you want to be remembered for paving your own way and doing and you know building something great into it or you know developing a song that is played through the agents or you know making a painting a

painting that people still talk about hundreds and thousands of years after your death. There's all sorts of beautiful aspects of humanity and things to be remembered for in the greater story of humanity. And that brings, that always run well to me. I always wanted to be on that side of things, just be remembered for something of, you know, greatness at least at the time. Yeah, man. I agree. At least in my circle of friends, and I would include you in this, like I have found, as much as I want to say that this is the American way, I don't know,

because I'm only born in America. And maybe that this is a, I like, I want to believe it's a human thing. And that is the story of the underdog, the story of the man or woman who had no business. being at the top. The story of the person that gets there and wins, sometimes by not winning, by not playing the game, but makes it to the top and shows the people that like, yeah,

hey, I belong here. And I have no business according to all your rules and all your games and all these things you're supposed to do to get there. I made it not because of that, but in spite of that, I still made it. You know,

and I look, I think that that's why, the world of boxing or the world of MMA has so many young men enthralled is because they can see guys that like, you know, that make it, that probably had no business being there.

And I think that that's what also makes wealthy families or governments or state entities nervous is that they too know that they have an unfair advantage being where they are. And the only reason that they might be there is because they have an unfair advantage. You know, whether it's the Count of Monte Cristo or, you know, these other works

of literature that just show you like, yeah, you the person on the ground, more than likely, have just as much, if not more talent than the person that's at the top. And I think that's just a beautiful story about the human condition. And I wish more people would embrace it. I think the underdog story is the human condition. Yeah. What do you, can you, can you, elaborate some more on that? Like I love that. Sure. I think we're faced

in a world where there's pretty good evidence that there's pretty psychyclitic cataclysms on this planet that wipe everything out every now and again. You know, we find fossils from all sorts of stuff all over the place. So, you know, to

be alive on this planet right now and especially achieving what we've achieved today, I mean, we're the underdog and, you know, most of us are walking around completely oblivious to the actual existential threats that do face us on a daily level, probably for the better for most people, to be fair. But, yeah, I think we definitely kind of, everywhere at least I've been travels in my world. I think the underdog story is even appreciated more than here.

I think there's a greater appreciation for the underdog story when you're, when you're raised in an environment that has less. I think you get like, you know, you're more third world countries that I've been to. There's very, they all love the underdog story. And especially from their perspective, like, you know, that's why I think the World Cup is so big for a lot of these countries, right?

It's the one, it's the one field that they can compete on at almost a fair level. You know, they, and they didn't have the right game. They didn't have the right coaches. They didn't have all the stuff. But they had the heart and the persistence.

And then you get these send to the last story, right? And those things move nations in a lot of these countries. So I think it's even a greater magnitude in different parts of the world. Let me ask you this. Like that makes me think, you know, when I think of the World Cup and I think of soccer, I think of South America. I think of Brazil and Pele and Argentina. But I also think of the Middle East, I guess, you know, I don't have a really great

thorough understanding of the World Cup. You know, I know that soccer or football is the biggest sport in the world. And here's my question to you. As someone who has traveled to Europe, as someone who has spent a lot of time in South America, you know, soccer being a team sport. It seems to me, at least in the United States, maybe this is just me, but it seems like the individual sport, like boxing or wrestling or swimming or,

is our individual sports something that is more accepted or more glamorized in the United States than South America? Because I'm just thinking soccer is the biggest sport in the world. It's a team sport. And that seems to represent something different than the way, than the United States glamorizes sports. I guess football here is big too, but

am I making sense? Is the team sport something bigger in South America than an individual sport? I see what you're getting at. And I think there could be a cultural factor. Yes, thank you. Thank you. I would actually say just,

you know, thinking about it off the top of my head, it's probably more socioeconomic. That makes sense. Because the soccer ball can make 22 kids, you know, able to do something as opposed to hockey or even like an individual sport like a, you know, a boxing or something like that. You need the gym. You need the ring. You need the gear. You need all that stuff. So, and that's just expensive. Yeah. Untenably so in some of those places. So I think more so is probably a socioeconomic factor. But, you know, in that, you also see like the Latin American culture.

cultures have a much greater emphasis on family. Yeah. Yes. So I definitely think there's a cultural component in there as well. Yeah, I wonder if I never thought about it until we just started talking about this, but it does seem that an individual sport, if you look at someone who is being trained in an individual sport from a young age, it changes the nature of what a team is. If you're an individual that goes out, like you have a team,

but that team is there to support you in a different way than a team of like Tom Brady, you know, than soccer or football or, you know, pick your team sport. Like it's, you begin seeing the world differently. Oh, yeah, and you win as a team you lose as a team. Yeah, or you lose as an individual or you win as an individual. It's, you know, you can, it's like if you are a great soccer player and you go out and you have a crappy game,

the team can still win. But if you were a box and you go out and you have a crappy fight, you know. Yeah. And in some ways, it's liberating because you know it's all on you, but in some ways it's debilitating because it's all on you. And then if you go through life thinking like that,

you could cut people out of your life and maybe you don't. I don't know. There's wins and positives and negatives on both sides, I think. I think so too. And I think, you know, if you were to enumerate that over a million into different cases, if we could just look at them from, a distance, I think you would definitely see clear positives and clear negatives from that.

But I think it would be pretty consistent on the results. I think the people who were nurtured in that more personal self-contained sport, you're going to have more insular people. You're going to have, I think you're going to have probably a greater degree of relationship-related problems, communication problems, as opposed to somebody who, by necessity, had to figure out how to get along with a group of other people who are more likely, highly, highly aggressive, and, you know, really tuned up because you got all that adrenaline pumping, you know, figuring out the world from that perspective allows you the ability to communicate, you know, you can recognize, you know, when you need to diffuse a situation, when you need to use

humor. You actually, a lot of people learn a lot of humor from, you know, that's why they call it lawful humor, right? And so I think you get a, you would get a more community care person, somebody who's able to actually, you know, kind of express themselves a bit better than somebody who's just trained as like, say, a sprinter in their entire life. That would just be a guess. Yeah, no, it makes sense.

I, in some ways, it makes me really think about relationships, you know, in culture, and the way culture form relationships. You know, when you take somebody, if you meet, I got, my wife is Laotian and, you know, it's so interesting when I talk about the idea of individual sports and team sports and culture and now I'm, I'm just going off the word of relationships, but it's no, it's no strangeness to understand why people

from different cultures sometimes probably break up more than more than they don't like if you don't understand the very foundation on which someone's life was built how could you possibly relate to them thus you can't have that really

even though the initial attraction may be so great if you're a team sport and I'm an individual sport you know we're not we don't we're not building on the same foundation. It's interesting to think about it from that perspective. It is, and it takes a long time to learn the culture. Yeah, it does. Lifetime sometimes. Yeah, I mean, depending on the cultures. I learned a lot of different Latin American cultures. And within the Latin American cultures that I, you know, I've lived in some of those places for a year, two years. Yeah. Even in that environment, you know,

there's so many differences between all of those different cultures. You know, to the point where you have Costa Ricans who, a good chunk of them will say, oh, we have no culture, which is a wild thing to say. But that's kind of what, you know, they say. But yet at the same time, every single Costa Rican will tell you, we haven't had an army since 1948. You know, so they have cultural things. They just don't identify it as the culture of, like, a Mexico, where they, you know, they have you know the day of the deads and things like this they don't they don't really

celebrate those types of events in like a Costa rica i mean they still do because things are all kind of democratized right these days yeah but their local traditions don't really have a lot of this in fact most of their local traditions are all kind of like cowboy traditions you know they have the festival and they try to slide the needle through the ring hanging from the rope going at full gallop which is wild have you ever seen that i never have what is that what is that oh that's pretty awesome they have this this horse festival called tope uh and so all the cowboys and cowgirls come down and it's i mean young is like 12 year old kids uh who can ride a horse better than i will ever be able to ride a horse you know full gala and i'm talking a ring a ring like you know size of your

finger ring hanging from a row across the stream and they come in with a needle at full gallop and have to thread it through the ring. It has an end on it so it'll stop if they get it. And every year people get it. Which

blows me away. You know, the visual acuity, the, you know, the reaction time, all of that stuff, let alone the wind blows and you part on the way in. I mean, wild stuff. Yeah. It is amazing to me. It makes me think about today how there seems to be this dichotomy.

On some level, there's a war on culture because some people see it as a obstacle or a barrier to community, while other people see it as the foundation of community. And I guess this is what wars are fought over on the most basic level is this is right and this is wrong. This is our culture. This is not our culture. And maybe that takes us full circle back to what's happening in our world today. I think that might be what is printed on the newspapers for every World Five. But I think the motivating factor in all those is resources.

Yeah. You know, when you can, when you look at that and you just see it over and over and over again, you have to wonder, well, why would they ever stop? And then you look at the world today and you go, oh, man, stop. Okay, we're just repeating this process. The difference is, again, you know, back to our conversation before, is now when we have lights to shine into the dark corners. You know, everybody has a camera in their pocket,

not necessarily the camera that they would first think of when they're pulling out the camera, but they have that ability to look at snapshots of the world from all over the world and peer into those dark corners and dark recesses. You know, rewind 70 years ago, we would never know Nancy Pelosi is the greatest stock trader in the world. Yeah.

Yeah. It reminds me. I remember this was back in the Bush Jr. days. So I guess back in Iraq. And I remember for some reason, I remember this interview with Dick Cheney. And I was a younger guy then, you know, and I didn't really pay too much attention to politics. And I remember him saying, I don't know what. who was interviewing him or what it was on,

but I distinctly remember him saying when asked about the war in the Middle East, he says, we need to be there so that doesn't come here. And that always stuck with me. And I was like, what the freak was he talking?

You know what? And for some reason, I just stuck in my head. And now that I see it here, I go, oh, that makes sense. Like, you know, when, in the topic of resources,

you know, I think of, the strategies that I've read in books and the strategies that my country applies to other countries when they want to take their resource. And that's divide and conquer. Hey, let's put this wedge in between the Israelis and the Arabs. Let's put this wedge in between the Sunnis and the Shias. Let's put this wedge in between the Han and the Uyghurs. And let's drive that wedge as deep as we can so that while they're fighting, we can just go and take what we need. And we can back both sides. We'll take some from their property.

We'll take some from their property. And as long as we extract X amount before they get at each other's throats, we're good. Hopefully we can take all of it, but at least we can get this much. Here's the business plan. And then now all of a sudden I see this wedge between man and woman, gay and straight, black and white, minority and these people. And so, you know, I see the implementation of sanctions being put on our own, country. You know, this idea that we're putting sanctions on Russia, we're just sanctioning ourselves. We're making it more difficult for us to live so the corporations or family offices or special

economic zones can be brought to this country. You're seeing all these things put in place that were put in place in other countries being put in place in our country. And I think it comes down to resources. I think you're absolutely right. And, you know, the resources of the times are the lithium, the rare earth elements, and the ability to manufacture. Yeah. You know, this rampant uptick in consumers and needed a manufacturing center, and that was China. You know, in doing so, that allowed China, you know, the world kind of, you know, gave a blind eye to China to let them do whatever they saw fit in order to facilitate that quote-unquote need.

And here we are is, you know, here we are. And it's one of those things where there's many contributing factors, but one that I think was very much unforeseen by many of the groups who participate in this larger game, is the advent of the Internet and the ability for us to have these types of communications and for people to talk. Because now there's a realization that, hey, we all are on the same bra. We all are accessing the same resources. There is relatively finite, you know, sets of resources for many of these different things that we've now grown accustomed to in our society. Why are we going to blow each other up again?

And so now there's actually a real question of why being used. Before it was back like what you said, when Cheney had his speech, it was, well, we have to go over there so it doesn't come over here. Yeah. The implication was is that if we didn't go and fight over there, we were going to have fighting on the streets in the United States. That was never a reality of what could possibly happen, right? There's no, there's no startup Arab state, you know, or, you know, religious movement that was going to build a Navy to be able to cross the Atlantic and come attack New York. It was never going to be the case. But, you know, when you can imply that, all of a sudden, now you get all this hoop bra and people willing to go to war.

But if all of a sudden we can ask the question, why? Because we get reports from people in Iraq. Like, oh, no, I'm here. Just grab my groceries today. Oh, what? You're not trying to build a Navy and come kill us? No, just go to get my groceries. Oh, okay.

Maybe we should talk before we go blow. people up. What do you think, guys? And so I think we are seeing a bit more of that as being a contributing factor to how this is playing out. Yeah, I think that question of why should be at the foundation of a lot of people's philosophies and ideas and should be a great starting point for the majority of conversations. And I think it can be a cordial conversation, you know, and some people are afraid to ask it. Some people are afraid. of the answer to it. But I think it's something that is,

it needs to be asked more often. I, um, Benjamin, I always feel like right when we start getting warmed up, I get the call to go somewhere. Like I just, I have all these questions in my mind, but I have a beautiful eight-year-old girl waving at me like,

Dad, it's time. It's time, Dad. And so if, if I don't go there, she's coming here. And I love talking to you, my friend.

And I feel, I really enjoy the conversations. And I, I, I feel like they are very rewarding. And I'm getting some feedback where that comes. And I know you got some big stuff on the table. So before we go, why don't you tell people where they can find you?

What you've got coming up and what you're excited about. Well, I'm never sad to lose to the daughter. So enjoy. Thank you. And have a good afternoon. Benjamin C.George.com. I actually just posted up on the homepage. I'll be dropping all sorts of new updates on that.

There'll be podcast stuff, stuff with George, stuff with all the other people on the Psychedelic Sunday Roundtable. Yeah. That was my testimony. What do you think? I love it. Yeah. I think that that should be the name of it all the time. And I love how it's growing.

And I think people are going to be really excited when they see the homepage and they, not only see the homepage, but I think people are going to be really excited when they get to have the Mr. Wizard experience. Well, it's coming. Pocu and Poco, as they say. Little by little. Yep. Well, that's what we got for today, ladies and gentlemen. I really appreciate your time,

and I hope everyone has a wonderful day. Reach out to Ben. Reach out to me. Reach out to the rest of the people on the psychedelic Sunday roundtable. And, yeah, that's what we got going on. Thank you so much for today, and we'll talk to you guys soon. Aloha.