Up to this point, we’ve understood Charles Eisenstein as the poet-philosopher of conspirituality, lending his Burning Man ritual workshop chops to the antivax faux-freedom movement. Out of deference to his apparent sensitivity and respectable writing skills, we’ve given him the benefit of the doubt—we even invited him on this show for two episodes to see whether we could find common ground. We didn’t.In our last Bonus episode, Julian tracked how Eisenstein has accelerated and intensified his rhetoric. Today, we’ll see how he’s fortifying his money networks, and starting to say the quiet parts out loud. He’s no longer “just” dog-whistling violence and QAnon. We’re reviewing a recent video he’s co-produced with Onnit multimillionaire and Austin bro-poet Aubrey Marcus. It’s an anime rendition of the ending of his 2013 bestseller, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible. In the book, Eisenstein presents “The Gathering of the Tribe” as a kind of personal mythology. As he levels up to the big leagues, this story about belonging to a group of blessed alien shamans sent to wake up humanity carries clear real-world literalness—and a culty vibe. If the high-end video doesn’t convince you, a tape from a hipster New Year’s Eve party in Ithaca NY might do the trick. As he holds guru-court for All the Big Questions, Eisenstein tells an Iraq vet that he has special gifts to deploy against the (fictional) building of COVID concentration camps in Rhode Island. Then he says he hopes the “pedophile elite” will just stop. Sound familiar?Eisenstein’s content is poetic and vague. Its implications are plausibly deniable. It pours out through an endless stream of radiant and inscrutable essay drops. He has mastered the cryptic prompt that either speaks to your soul, to your appetite for disrupting public health, or to your recent tactical training regimen. Who can really tell? His skill is to stand beside and above it all. He can avoid being pinned down. It’s almost as if he’s not really there, but only reflecting the zeitgeist of our broken moment. It’s time to just name him for what he is: New Age Q.Show NotesA Gathering of the Tribe | POWERFUL Short Film by Charles Eisenstein w/ Jon Hopkins & Aubrey MarcusA Gathering of the Tribe | Reality Sandwich (original, 2009)A Gathering of the Tribe (full version Charles’s site)Interview with Charles Eisenstein | Inner World Press | Shift in Consciousness Ezine In the Miracle (Eisenstein essay, 2009)Charles Eisenstein at Resonance NYE The Man Behind th
-- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Stay up to date with us on all of our social media channels, including predominantly Instagram.
We have a few others.
We are all very active on Twitter independently, so you can find us there.
And then we are on Patreon, of course, at patreon.com slash conspirituality, where for $5 a month, you can help support our work and get access to our Monday bonus episodes.
Conspiratuality 86, Charles Eisenstein, New Age Q. Up to this point, we've understood Charles Eisenstein as the poet-philosopher of conspirituality, lending his Burning Man ritual workshop chops to the anti-vax, faux-freedom movement.
Out of deference to his apparent sensitivity and respectable writing skills, we've given him the benefit of the doubt.
We even invited him on this show for two episodes to see whether we could find common ground.
We didn't.
In our last bonus episode, I tracked how Eisenstein has accelerated and intensified his rhetoric.
Today, we'll see how he's fortifying his money networks and starting to say the quiet parts out loud.
He's no longer just dog-whistling violence and QAnon.
We're reviewing a recent video he's co-produced with honoured multimillionaire and Austin bro poet, Aubrey Marcus.
It's an anime rendition of the ending of his 2013 bestseller, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible.
In the book, Eisenstein presents the gathering of the tribe as a kind of personal mythology.
As he levels up to the big leagues, this story about belonging to a group of blessed alien shamans sent to wake up humanity carries clear real-world literalness and a culty vibe.
If the high-end video doesn't convince you, a tape from a hipster New Year's Eve party in Ithaca, New York might do the trick.
As he holds guru court for all the big questions, Eisenstein tells an Iraq vet that he has special gifts to deploy against the fictional building of COVID concentration camps in Rhode Island.
Then he says he hopes the pedophile elite will just stop.
Sound familiar?
Eisenstein's content is poetic and vague.
Its implications are plausibly deniable.
It pours out through an endless stream of radiant and inscrutable essay drops.
He has mastered the cryptic prompt that either speaks to your soul, to your appetite for disrupting public health, or to your recent tactical training regimen.
Who can really tell?
His skill is to stand beside and above it all.
He can avoid being pinned down.
It's almost as if he's not really there, but only reflecting the zeitgeist of our broken moment.
It's time to just name him for what he is.
New Age Q. A gathering of the tribe.
Once upon a time, a great tribe of people lived in a world far away from ours.
Whether far away in space or in time, or even outside of time, we do not know.
They lived in a state of enchantment and joy that few of us today dare to believe could exist, except in those exceptional peak experiences where we glimpse the true potential of life and mind.
Alright, Derek, Julian, there we have one-time guest of the podcast, Charles Eisenstein, narrating an animated short called The Gathering of the Tribe.
It's nine minutes long, and when the naive and slightly creepy anime ends, the viewer is pulled out into an HD reality That shows us Eisenstein in the flesh sitting in tableau with multi-millionaire Austin supplement guru Aubrey Marcus in Marcus's sumptuous podcast studio.
The rich guy and the poetry guy gaze at each other through a new age fog and they smile.
So, the video is a retread of a text that first appeared on the Reality Sandwich blog site back in 2009, although with some key differences that we'll look at.
Eisenstein then plugged it into his 2013 book, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible, as part of his Sacred Activism series, which I think might be an oxymoron in this instance.
I don't know about the activism part, but in the book, he intros this text Which serves as a kind of epilogue.
It's right at the end of the book.
He writes, quote, I hope this book has served to strengthen you as a teller, a carrier, and a servant of the new story, capital S, of the people, capital P. I will end with a story of my own.
So, this is Eisenstein's story, and we should keep that in mind.
And at the end of the video we're reviewing, you even see Eisenstein holding a copy of the book in his lap.
Now, Aubrey captions the YouTube link by writing, My tears always come from a revelation of hidden truth, as if the frames of perception themselves liquidate out of my eyes so I can see clearly again.
This story made me cry the first time I read it in Charles Eisenstein's book, and every time I've watched it since.
Because to me, it is a true story.
Whether actually true, or metaphorically true, or just authentically truthfully true, I'm making that part up.
It doesn't matter.
This is basically the mask-off rationale of every conspiracy theorist.
Like, it doesn't matter what Whether it's actually true or not, I can feel it very deeply.
It's speaking to me.
It speaks to my intuition.
So to start out, guys, what are your top line responses to this piece of work?
Well, I just have to say, as you were saying some of those things, like being a servant of the new story of the people.
And then the, uh, the, uh, perception, the frames of perception liquidating out of my eyes.
It's really hard not to make like adolescent barf sounds.
I, yeah, I just, a lot of this just grosses me out because it's, it feels so manipulative and, uh, I don't even know how to describe it.
So anyway, at the time of recording this video, The Gathering of the Tribe, at the time of recording what we're talking about, the video will have been up for about five weeks.
It's punching towards 700,000 views.
With regard to the text, to me, it's just really corny New Age schlock.
It's that bad kind of New Age postmodernism, Matthew, a pastiche of alien sci-fi fantasy, idealizing and superficial appropriation of indigenous spirituality and yogic enlightenment.
And then it's got the cult recruitment style, vague Barnum statements or cold reading type of language designed to hook vulnerable people who feel alone with some kind of pseudo profundity and the promise of mission or purpose or belonging.
And it strikes me as transparently being marketing dressed up as art and philosophy.
I think it was James Joyce who talked about the uses of art for such purposes as always resulting in either propaganda or pornography, which is part of why I feel like gagging, I think.
I'm going to be a little more kind before I really say what I feel, and that means that if this were something that I read in a children's mythology book, I would think of it as completely unoriginal, but fine, but sweet, exactly.
You know, something that you grow out of eventually.
And my wife shared with me an article the other day from CNN about the long-term effects of the pandemic, and she specifically cited a line because the author made a reference to, nature has been trying to kill us since we crawled out of the ocean.
And she flagged that as something that I would write and I probably would.
But the top line response to the text and the sentiment behind what he's written is that these people really believe this shit.
They think that they are these special beings sent here from somewhere else to save the entire species.
It's so egotistical that it makes it really hard to take seriously— And the problem is by the number of views that Julian just talked about and the comments, if you actually read the comments section or read the Instagram feeds of these people, is that their listeners, their fans, also take it seriously and they think that they are part of that tribe.
And I think we have some precedent For what happens when people think too highly of themselves and start looking at everyone else as the problem.
And think that they're the center of the universe.
It's oddly narcissistic for a group claiming to be spiritually enlightened.
All right, so how about how it looks?
I mean, because this is a film as it is.
It was fine.
It was, you know, the visuals, the guy who animated it did a good job in terms of pure visuals.
If he was trying to match the visuals to the story.
Good job.
Yeah, he executed.
The visuals are very evocative and hypnotic, and so is the music.
And I'm kind of heartbroken because I'm a fan of John Hopkins.
It feels like it's designed to evoke a dreamlike trance in the viewer that plugs into an intuitive and emotional sense of revelation, right?
There's some huge, significant kind of moment.
And that's what we see in the comments as Derek was flagging there.
People are moved.
They're grateful.
They feel less alone.
You know, the comments are like, oh, my God.
Thank you so much for this.
This is so amazing.
You've given me hope.
The viewer in the piece is, I think, made to identify as the lost, tearful, lonely one who's longing for community and purpose and for a reawakening to cosmic destiny as one of the tribe.
I want to know if there's anybody who studies competitive gratitude and comment threads, because sometimes I feel like those comments are coming from somewhere real, and sometimes it's like if one person says, oh my God, this spoke to my soul, the next person says, oh my God, this spoke to my soul and to the divine essence within me, because it's got to feel a little bit more deep, like I really got it.
I don't know.
I wonder if somebody studies that.
That'd be really interesting.
I'm sure there is.
I'm reading a book now about money as a form of social media and a communication technology.
And one thing I never thought of, I always thought Venmo and reading who's paying people what was weird.
So weird.
But then I find out that this woman has studied it and it turns out that there is this own form of communication in that I'll send you guys 50 cents just to say, hey, here I am in your feed.
Or people will specifically use certain emojis or list services to show that they can afford it.
So I'm sure some of the same psychologizing is happening in common threads, and I'm sure there are people studying it.
Right.
Okay, so what about the big reveal at the end?
We've got Charles and Aubrey.
And Aubrey, sitting side to side, what's going on?
You know, the last line of the animation, they entered a deep trance and dreamed themselves into the world where we find ourselves today.
That's the first step.
of the of the reveal right um they entered a deep trance where we find ourselves today and then three times as they're sitting facing each other with a kind of you know somber sense of the sacred Aubrey and Charles say here we are here we are here we are bounces back and forth between them like yeah we find ourselves in the world today it's creepy as fuck to me
I think those captivated by it will identify with that maneuver from the animation to live action video and hear the we as meaning themselves.
I don't know.
I just wonder how much they realize how manipulative this is.
Yeah, I mean, there's the tripartite blessing of, you know, we're here, we're here, we're here, which is like goes back thousands of years in ritual liturgies.
It's three ohms, and then also, it's a Matrix waking up moment too, right?
Where the animation ends, and then, but instead of the constructed world, you're in Aubrey's beautiful studio.
Yeah, well you're coming out, you're sitting in those kinds of chairs in front of computers, right?
It is kind of perfect.
And you get the thing pulled out of the back of your neck, here we are.
With a pool table right behind you.
That's what I meant when I said that the egotistical nature of this video, if it were, let's look at the layers.
If it were just the music and the animation, I might like it.
I mean, oh, that's really beautiful.
It's well done.
The music is great.
Add the layer of the text to it, and I'm like, okay, children's mythology, cool.
Oh, you take this seriously?
That's a little weird.
Okay, then add that final layer of them actually just being like, yeah, guys, this is us.
We're the alien shamans here.
Fuck off.
But let's, let's actually go back a little bit.
You had some, both had some very nice things, complimentary things to say about the artwork.
The artwork is done by a guy named Aldous Massey.
Seems, I'm not an art person, but as far as I understand, it's pretty anime derivative.
Oh yeah, that's my shit.
For sure.
Especially with a lot of focus, and this is his whole Instagram feed, on young, thin, and naked women who are either crying or radiating stars out of their bellies and their vaginas.
So there's a lot of nudity.
It's very Barbie-like and hairless.
There are a lot of serpents as well.
And it seems to me that, for starters, if you're using Anime or manga, you're not only invoking the childlike vibes of cartooning, you're also pointing to the foundational aesthetics of the early Chan boards, which were built on sharing anime images, including images that either were or they invoked child pornography.
And we should point listeners back to the work of our past guest Dale Buran and his work, It Came From Something Awful, for more on that.
That's episode 62.
So immediately, we're in a referential aesthetics, and those references point to 1980s cartoons, but also to the volatile worlds at the bottom of the internet.
And here's where I think we find our first ambivalence two-step.
Like, am I saying that Eisenstein and Marcus are aware of or trying to invoke the porny aesthetics of 4chan?
No.
We can't say that.
They might be disclosing their unconscious influences, like what they look at in their spare time, but we can't say that for sure.
But this uncertainty is at the heart of Eisenstein's poetic fog.
Because as we build out this episode, I came to understand more and more that the heavy lifting that he does for conspirituality and Q-adjacent discourses is really the work of poetic plausible deniability.
He's like a poetic shitposter.
Like, is he really talking about the power of the cabal, or is he talking about the power of myth?
Does that anime point us towards the bright salvation fantasies that are indicated, or towards a very confused set of adolescent desires?
And I think the answer is becoming clearer as Eisenstein escalates, even though his aesthetic ambivalence will work really hard to keep it all obscure for as long as possible.
Yeah.
You know, the, the, the aesthetic in terms of the nudity to, to be fair, the crying, the crying woman is, is usually wearing clothes and she's depicted as being sort of, uh, the most, she's the most realistic looking.
I feel like the, what you're referring to in terms of the nudity, yes, they are slim outlines of women, kind of like you would see on the back of the mud flaps of, uh, of long distance trucks.
But, uh, but, but, but, but I feel like the, The smoothness, it's almost like these are their spirit bodies that gather in the circle of the tribe and can float up into the air and all of that kind of stuff.
Yeah, there's some kind of unconscious eroticism going on there as well, for sure.
For sure.
Well, there's more, and I was also just referring to the guy's Instagram feed, like where he's coming from.
So his whole, you can check out his whole feed.
Oh, I see.
So the crying women that you're referring to are from there too?
From there as well, yeah.
And the eroticism is much more pronounced, yeah.
So, it reminded me instantly of the anime recruitment videos published by Aum Shinrikyo Cult, which was the Japanese group that came to prominence in 1995 after their leader, Shoko Asahara, led his followers to attack the Tokyo subway system with sarin gas.
You may remember this.
So we'll link to one of those videos.
It has English subtitles, which is very helpful.
In episode one of the video series, it's the same length as this production by Eisenstein & Co.
It has some similar themes.
It's very focused on mythologizing Shoko Asahara.
But I want to point out some textual similarities in how each video opens.
So in the video that we're talking about today, it starts, once upon a time, a great tribe of people lived in a world far away from ours, whether in space or in time or even outside of time, we don't know.
They lived in a state of enchantment and joy that few of us today dare to believe could exist, except in those exceptional peak experiences where we glimpse the true potential of life and mind.
Okay, so that's the start of the Aubrey and Charles video.
Now from the Asahara piece, As they shift back and forth, just like in a gathering of the tribe, between images of the cosmic sky, floating figures coming to earth, and meditation, all of which are in both, it says, it is something that every person has.
It is something that every heart holds.
They were always holding on to it, even before time itself began.
It's hiding inside every person.
It's hiding inside every heart, transcending the absolute darkness.
So, you know, they're not carbon copies, but We're reading from the same prayer book here.
Now, let's do some lightning background, Julian.
Your bonus episode that dropped this past Monday was fantastic.
You ran down Eisenstein's escalation from the beginning of the pandemic, but you also backdated it as well a little bit.
So what did you find?
Give us the 101 there.
Yeah, so the thumbnail sketch of that, and I would encourage people to go check it out.
Thank you for the compliment.
It's certainly the case that during the pandemic, Charles intensified his crypto-conspiratorial utopian spiritual rhetoric, starting with his grandiose and incredibly poor pun in the title of the breakthrough March 2020 essay, The Coronation, which reached around 15 million people on social media, according to CrowdTangle.
He established a style of essay that situated the crisis we're in in the context of his favorite hobby horse, which is that we live, and this is all capitalized, in the Age of Separation, characterized by disconnection from nature, environmental crises, over-reliance on technology, and a loss of the sacred.
And these are all things that, of course, we might have sympathies with to some extent.
These motifs are then embellished with his both-sides-ism about conspiracy theories.
It often goes into great detail, outlining what the conspiracy theory is and why it shouldn't be dismissed, and how it likely holds important and profound mythic meaning.
Now, through the course of 2020 and 2021, with essays like The Conspiracy Myth, A Banquet of Whiteness, which is a really interesting one, Fascism and the Anti-Festival, from QAnon's Dark Mirror Hope, And then Source Temple and the Great Reset, and finally Mob Mentality and the Unvaxxed.
What we see in reading these is his ideas have traveled through anti-science and anti-quarantine tropes to arrive in the conspiritualist holy land of comparing vaccine requirements to Nazi Germany and idealizing an intentional community in France based on the teachings of Arida and A Course in Miracles as a model for what we could do in the new world after the Great Reset.
He's also drawing on a kind of faux allegiance with social justice issues, and this is where I want to ask you about A Banquet of Whiteness.
What is that about?
So A Banquet of Whiteness is a fascinating little detour in his trajectory here.
It's during the summer of the George Floyd protests, and it seems to be his attempt to make a gesture towards that particular moment in the zeitgeist, right?
And so what he does primarily is talk about Stella Emanuel, who is one of the frontline doctors who stood on the steps of the Supreme Court and said hydroxychloroquine was the cure and we didn't need to do anything else for COVID.
And then she got sort of publicly shamed in the media because it turned out she was also a pastor.
And it turned out that she had made a lot of very strange pronouncements publicly about demon semen causing various kinds of illnesses.
And because she's from Cameroon and she got her medical degree in Nigeria, Charles tries to make a case that this is an example of what he calls ontological imperialism, where the mainstream narrative rejects medicines from other cultures.
So he makes a very- - But she was pushing hydroxychoracline.
That was what she was selling.
Yeah.
That's like a folk medicine from Cameroon?
Well, it's a folk medicine from Cameroon if she endorses it intuitively.
Incredible.
And claims that it'll help you cure the diseases caused by ghosts and demons that rape you in your sleep.
So we can track Charles's escalation, of course, through these two years, as I've just been describing.
But what I dig into in the in the bonus episode is how we can find his quarantine is fascism kind of alarmist perspective back in a 2016 piece about Zika.
And in a 2013 piece about, it's called Synchronicity Myth and the New World Order, he's already elevating conspiracy theories as having some kind of actual influence on historical events, like literally, via the spiritual power of synchronicity.
So really what I found is that the very bad ideas have been there all along.
And as with many people we cover, they were just waiting for this perfect storm of the pandemic to find full expression and to be coronated, right, for a broader audience.
I'm really glad that you covered all of the backstory because often what happens when we dig into figures like this is that people will express incredible disillusionment.
They'll say, what happened to this person?
How did they change?
How did they fall off the cliff?
Not him!
They had such great ideas!
And nine times out of ten, you dig back and it's like, Well, the really good ideas probably came from other places, or they were paint-by-numbers, and you can probably find the roots of whatever has come to fruition going way back.
It seems to just always, always be the case, and I think we can prevent a lot of disillusionment if we're a lot clearer about what we read, I think.
Yeah, it's good to go back and track it all.
I'll just finish here by saying that central to the Eisenstein worldview is really a form of what we might call poetic accelerationism.
It relishes the idea of hastening the downfall of modern civilization as a prelude to creating a utopia in which all of the world's previous problems are solved by the facile intuitions of New Age pseudo-philosophy, right?
I've got this one idea, it's called the Age of Separation, and if we can just deconstruct that, then all of the world's problems will be solved.
And he, of course, refers to all of this again and again, as moving towards the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.
Everybody can, this is one reason why many people I talk to, and I have this history myself, when the big one approaches the Y2K, the 2012, the financial collapse, like the COVID even, the financial collapse, like the COVID even, There's part of me that's like, yeah, baby, bring it on because I want out of here.
I want to be liberated from the structures that have confined us.
The social structures, the economic structures, psychological structures.
And so COVID comes along, and along with Like a lot of despair, a lot of suffering, not just the suffering of people who have been sick and have died and their families, that's there too, but also the suffering of people being locked down and masked and confined and, you know, losing their jobs, losing their businesses.
The tens of millions of children who are facing hunger because of all this in the world, stunted children, starving children, like this is massive suffering.
And there's also maybe part of us, certainly part of me, that finds some hope in this, because we were stuck.
And now There's no guarantee that we will become unstuck, but there's a possibility.
So much has changed.
It suggests to us, wow, maybe more could change.
This reality that we thought was fixed is malleable to our will after all.
Derek, what can you tell us about Aubrey Marcus, about Onnit, about Austin?
Quite a bit.
Aubrey's father, Michael, reportedly turned $7,000 in investments into $80 million as a commodities trader starting in 1972.
to $80 million as a commodities trader starting in 1972.
He was also, at one time, a devout follower of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who was the guru of George Harrison and kind of the Beatles, but if you watch the Beatles documentary, more George, as well as the Beach Boys.
He was the founder of transcendental meditation as well, which is where most people know of him.
And while his devotees swear their guru lived a humble lifestyle, his estate was worth $300 million when he died in 2008.
Some former devotees describe a cult-like atmosphere that was focused on earnings, but we'll leave that for other episodes.
But as for Michael, he's made a fortune predominantly trading in the fossil fuel known as oil.
And I find it really interesting, given the back-to-earth messaging of the video that we're discussing today, that the fortune was made in oil.
But let's go to Aubrey's mother, Kathleen Harder, who is a former ranked tennis player.
And after divorcing Michael, she ended up marrying a man named Steve Shubin, who is the founder of The Fleshlight.
I personally take no issue with masturbation or discussion of sexual topics.
Steve himself is baffled as to why dildos are acceptable while male accoutrements, or what did you write Matthew, silicone vaginas?
Our taboo.
But let's just say that this all points to a lot of money flowing from many different directions.
Aubrey comes from a successful family, but he's also taken cues from them.
His first company focused on something else that I Guess is taboo in men, which is a male nail polish.
Alpha nails were marketed to give you swag and sex, which Marcus promoted as a form of peacocking.
He wanted his nail polish to allow men to use bright colors to attract mates.
But without that effeminate feeling of the normal sort of packaging, right?
There were some chrome colors that were on the site, yes.
Here's an actual marketing line from the Alpha Nails website.
The more noticeable the male is within a positive context, The More He Humps.
Is that what it says, Derek?
The More He Humps?
Yes.
That's the line.
The More He Humps What?
The More He Humps What?
He Humps.
He Just Humps.
Just Humps.
From there, he founded Onnit, which is how most people know of R.B.
Marcus.
It was started as a nootropics outlet.
Oh, no.
No, wait, it wasn't.
It was started by selling hangover cures, which I guess was for after the peacock's hump.
So you can see there's a chronology here.
The company actually made its splash with AlphaBrain, which is the nootropic that makes Aubrey's business partner, Joe Rogan, quote, write better sentences.
The scientific study that Rogan promoted for a lot of episodes during that time that supposedly proved AlphaBrain's efficacy has long been riddled with conflicts of interest, but that shouldn't surprise us given that it was formulated by a homeopathist and acupuncturist named Janet Zand, who happens to be married to Aubrey's father, Michael.
Great.
So Onnit was sold to Unilever last year.
Unilever, of course, is responsible for sourcing palm oil from ecologically catastrophic farming operations.
It has also been cited for animal abuse Human rights violations, as well as there's been some very big cultural taboos with some of their hair cream and hair shampoo lines.
So again, here's a company that is making Aubrey very rich with environmentally damaging Catastrophic effects.
While the terms of the deal remain undisclosed, estimates range from $100 to $400 million based on previous sales.
So that's a brief history of the back-to-earth healer from an alien race that we're discussing today.
Right, so now we're going to run through the clips from the nine-minute film, and we'll go in order, and then we have some comments interspersed.
And again, so this is The Gathering of the Tribe.
It's from the end of Charles Eisenstein's book, which is now retitled The More Beautiful World Aubrey's Oil Money and Unilever Helps Us Visualize.
For the elect.
Right.
A gathering of the tribe.
Once upon a time, a great tribe of people lived in a world far away from ours.
Whether far away in space or in time, or even outside of time, we do not know.
They lived in a state of enchantment and joy that few of us today dare to believe could exist, except in those exceptional peak experiences where we glimpse the true potential of life and mind.
Okay, so I want to talk first about a couple of main themes and where they might come from.
I'm not exactly sure.
I know that they're not original.
The first theme is really, you're not from here.
And I've got to say, it's chilling to review this because it was a favorite phrase of One of the leaders of one of the cults that I was in, his name was Charles Anderson, and the cult was based on A Course in Miracles.
And a lot of Eisenstein's actual rhetoric and ideology seems to flow from that particular landscape.
But Anderson's point, you're not from here, was really meant to praise the followers for having found his gracious circle, but also reassure us that What we had suffered in the world was not right, that it was illusory, that it shouldn't be so, and that it could change instantaneously.
It could change through some sort of sleight of hand or shift in perception.
And just to give a little bit of context from A Course in Miracles on that, a famous quote would be, your kingdom is not of this world because it was given you from beyond this world.
A second theme that I think comes up often in Eisenstein's work is the theme of the miraculous, which he describes here.
He doesn't use the word, but he uses the phrase, those exceptional peak experiences where we glimpse the true potential of life and mind.
Now, just a side note, I would say that the entire machinery of the wellness industry, and I would include on it as a company, the network of
Ashrams and retreat centers and guru culture itself, all of this stuff is really set up to generate these experiences for a particular price, usually in person, which we'll get to a little bit later in the script because, you know, the notion of meeting in person becomes very important as well as this story plays out.
But a lot of this, as I said, sounds familiar to me from A Course in Miracles, and when I tried to figure out whether or not Eisenstein quotes from ACIM directly, he does give an interview in which he says, I skimmed just a few pages of it just to get the energetic feel of it, but he says he hasn't studied it.
But then, Julian, you just quoted from an essay in which he visits an intentional community where that's their central text.
So, I think there's some sort of tie-in.
I don't know how involved he is, but suffice it to say that a brief comparison will show that there is nothing original about Eisenstein against the backdrop of what I would call the urtext of New Age spirituality.
So, let's just listen to a couple of quotes side-by-side.
This is A Course in Miracles, Chapter 13.
What is a miracle?
A miracle is a correction.
It does not create nor really change at all.
It merely looks on devastation and reminds the mind that what it sees is false.
Oh, I should do this sort of weird dissociative voice.
It undoes error, but does not attempt to go beyond perception nor exceed the function of forgiveness.
Thus it stays within time's limits, yet it paves the way for the return of timelessness and love's awakening, for fear must slip away under the gentle remedy it brings.
A miracle contains the gift of grace, for it is given and received as one.
And then this is from a course in Charles Eisenstein from an essay called What is a Miracle?
or Thinking of the Miraculous or something.
He writes, What is a miracle?
It is not the intercession of a supernatural being into material affairs, not an event that violates the laws of the universe.
A miracle is something that is impossible from one's current understanding of reality and truth.
But that becomes possible from a new understanding.
A miracle is more than an event.
It is an invitation.
It says the universe is bigger than you thought it was.
It invites us to step into a larger world in which new things are possible.
A miracle can blow apart our world if we accept it.
Yeah.
Now, the third theme is that it's the miraculous thing, a majig, that overcomes the story of separation.
So as you've mentioned, Julian, Eisenstein's big focus is the story of separation, which is kind of an endless riff on the consequences of dualism or just basically living in the world.
And Eisenstein will always suggest that a miraculous new perception is required and imminent for this feeling of separation to be resolved.
And this happens to be the entire point of A Course in Miracles.
And the problem is, is that, you know, in a video like this, he's actually creating an extraordinarily split world in which there are people from another planet or they're from out of time and they're coming as emissaries to the Earth.
So how does he reconcile this yearning for non-dualism with a story like Gathering of the Tribe?
This is weird, but in 2009, he knew that this was a problem, and when he posted to Reality Sandwich, he wrote a kind of caveat.
He wrote the following.
He said, I would like to advise caution against dividing the world into two types of people, those who are of the tribe and those who are not.
How often have you felt like an alien in a world of people who don't get it and don't care?
The irony is that nearly everyone feels that way deep down.
When we are young, the feeling of mission and the sense of magnificent origins and a magnificent destination is strong.
Any career or way of life paid and lived in betrayal of that knowing is painful and can only be maintained through an inner struggle that shuts down a part of our being.
For a time, we can keep ourselves functioning through various kinds of addictions or trivial pleasures to consume the life force and dull the pain.
Okay, pretty good, because in 2009 he has a caveat, an analysis that shows that what he's talking about, or it shows that he knows that he might be perpetuating what he's criticizing when he goes on about the story of separation.
He has this qualifier that suggests he's not actually talking about a real off-planet species, but he's talking about our own internal alienation.
But does that caveat stay in the text?
No.
It doesn't show up in the 2013 book, and it doesn't show up in Aubrey Marcus's studio.
And I think this is part of the very tragic Eisenstein story, which is that he builds an audience over years by expressing a higher degree of subtlety than a larger market can tolerate.
Because over the years, it seems that he narrows down his content until he's basically retweeting like one sticky idea.
Case in point, you've already referred to this, but I'll just put a line under it, Julian.
He goes on to, early on in the pandemic, QAnon FAQ.
Alright, so this is a QAnon podcast run by a guy named Sean Morgan.
Wait, this is the podcast that Christiane Northrup went on and then afterwards said, I had no idea anything to do with QAnon.
Yeah, she's totally full of shit.
She didn't read the email.
This is the name of his podcast, his QAnon FAQ.
When you go to the show notes on Northrop's episode, at the top show note it says, get my free ebook on how to red pill your mom.
Which I guess worked, I guess she downloaded the book, right?
Yeah, and then in the video she says, let me tell you how to red pill someone who's ready, you gotta read the signs.
Anyway, so Sean Morgan asks Eisenstein for the 101 on his work leading up to the coronation, because that's why he's on the podcast, is that it was such a hit.
And Eisenstein literally says, everything that I speak and write about is basically an application of a conceptual tool that I use to understand the world.
That we are in a time of transition from an old story of separation into a new story of interconnection, interdependency, interbeing, where we're not understanding ourselves as separate individuals in a world of others.
My work basically examines how our current civilization is built on the story of separation, how that story generates crises that in So what I would like you to do, Derek, is actually clip that audio out so that we can say that this is Charles Opus.
Like, this is all he's got.
This one paragraph.
Because he says it himself.
This is my one idea.
Everything that I do is an application of this single tool.
If you clip it out, we'll save the world a ton of reading.
That's it.
That's it.
That's the whole thing.
Well, actually, hold on one second, because I just wanted to say that as you're reading that, it became really clear to me, because this is something that we talk about a lot, the apolitical nature of a lot of the yoga space for many, many years.
The supposedly apolitical nature, right?
And a lot of that came from people invoking ideas like, well, politics is divisive, and that's the old story of separation, and we want to come together as one.
Totally.
The way to come together as one is to ignore politics altogether.
And then when the yoga space started to get more politicized, and some of the people who did this are friends of mine who I love and I respect where they're coming from, but that was also part of where they went.
They went, okay, we're going to now become politicized from this place of saying some political points of view are about separation and some other political points of view are about oneness.
And that's how we're going to like, that's the calculus we're going to use for our politics.
Right, fantastic.
I think that's very cogent.
How did it work out?
I think you know.
Here we are.
Here we are!
All right, back to the video.
One day, the elders of the tribe called a meeting.
They gathered around, and one of them spoke very solemnly.
My friends, she said, there is a world that needs our help.
It is called Earth, and its fate hangs in the balance.
Its humans have reached a critical point in their collective birthing.
The same point our own planet was at one million years ago.
And they will be stillborn without our help.
Who would like to volunteer for a mission to this time and place and render service to humanity?
Tell us more about the mission, they asked.
It is no small thing.
Our shaman will put you into a deep, deep trance.
So complete that you will forget who you are.
You will live a human life.
And in the beginning, you will completely forget your origins.
You will forget even our language and your own true name.
You will be separated from the wonder and beauty of our world and from the love that bathes us all.
You will miss it deeply, yet you will be unable to name what you are missing.
You will remember the love and beauty that we know to be normal only as a longing in your heart.
Your memory will take the form of an intuitive knowledge as you plunge into the painfully marred earth that a more beautiful world is possible.
So here he's appealing to this Heideggerian and kind of existentialist sense of throne-ness.
He studied philosophy at Yale, apparently.
And this is the sense that you arrive into your socialization raw and ill-equipped and naked.
Yeah, you just kind of find yourself in the world, like, what the fuck is going on, right?
Exactly.
Now, in non-teenager, non-paint-by-numbers philosophy, the cause here is not that you come from somewhere else.
But, because you were born into the flow of a history you didn't choose, and you're surrounded and driven by forces that are, like, immense.
They're immeasurable.
You can't conceive of them.
Now that's something to grapple with, and by grappling with it to develop a kind of courage that isn't dependent on fantasies of grandeur.
Let me just say how much bullshit that that shaman piece is, because if he had studied shamanism, he'd know that historically the shamans took the psychedelic or the medicine, journeyed, came back, then told the villager or the tribesperson or however you want to frame it, What their healing protocol would be.
The shaman did not put you in a trance.
That is a very new idea.
You're saying they didn't market their shamanic healing circle to a bunch of people who would privilege people who would then pay and show up to get dosed while he sang songs to them?
No, this is perfect, though, because I think it's the consumerist model of, like, this is shaman consumerism, where you go to the elder, or you understand, you go to your retreat center, and the assumption is that they're going to give you a treat, that you've paid for the treat, that they're going to blow the treat up your nose, and then you're going to have your trip, and then you're going to have your revelation.
Not that you're going to go and bear witness to somebody going through a ritual event, Yes, because specifically, people knew that Westerners would not travel internationally to sit while someone else tripped and then told them a story later.
So that's how the model of shamanism switched.
So this idea that this is coming through from ancient times is just complete, utter bullshit.
Yeah, and then the other piece of how that evolution or corruption, or however you want to frame it, continues developing is that then the individual who's gone and had the initiatory experience of being given the treat that they've paid for and having the mind-blowing experience, they then identify as a newly-minted shaman, and they then hang out their shingle and start doing the same thing, right?
That's sort of the way it works.
That's the Los Angeles model, yes.
Yeah, so speaking of fantasies of grandeur, I want to go back to comparing the Asahara video, the Om Shinrikyo video, with this Eisenstein bit.
In the Asahara video, we see him.
So it really focuses in in on him as the holy one who's coming to save humanity.
And it shows him flying in full lotus posture through the universe, then being enlightened by the Buddha and then floating towards a city.
And there he meets with a throng of meditating followers and they're all dressed in white and kind of gazing up at him.
And the text makes a very strong set of claims about how enlightenment will come with the paranormal abilities like clairaudience.
They list a few clairaudience, the remembering of past lives, some others, but also transcending the ultimate darkness.
Now, Now if we switch to the Eisenstein animation, It says there that these alien tribal emissaries, which again you're supposed to identify with if you're watching, to the earth will forget the beauty and the love of their world and the love that bathes them.
Excuse me, the beauty and the light of the world, I meant to say, and the love that bathes them there.
And now I'm quoting, you will remember it only as a longing in your heart.
Your memory will take the form of an intuitive knowledge.
The transcendent darkness in this case is a depth
Quoting again,
from her third eye accompanies the words.
There's all of that, and then what initially made me see a similarity between these pieces of propaganda was the visuals, especially the floating orbs of light in the sky with twinkles of light coming off of them, right?
Oh yeah, yeah.
And then the representations of rays of spiritual energy passing back and forth between human figures or shooting up their spines Kundalini-style.
And you know, in the Asahara video, there's like a floating, there's a floating rising phoenix early on that kind of moves through Asahara as he's becoming enlightened, not dissimilar to the serpents that you described, Matthew.
And in the Asahara video, there's also a reveal.
There's a moment where we shift from animation into live-action reality, about six and a half minutes in, and there is the cult leader sitting in meditation, and then standing in silhouette, gazing up at the sun, and then we're back into the hypnotic animation, and the question, this is in the Asahara video, would you like to meet our leader, experience the spiritual, and develop your soul?
Now, to me, this corresponds with what happens in the Eisenstein video where they talk about face-to-face gatherings in special places where you will launch a new stage of your journey that I assure you will end where it begins now.
Beginning now, meaning on the alien planet, right?
And at the end of the Asahara video, because of his guidance, improving during your training becomes easier and it is certain to happen.
So I assure you and it is certain and the end is known in the beginning and so shall it be.
The whole shifting back and forth between animation and HD and invoking the importance of face-to-face contact is really charged at this point.
Not only because of COVID resonances, but also in light of how tight they want and perhaps need community bonds to be.
I think what we've seen so far, especially in the COVID era, is that online cults have lower commitment thresholds and lower retention.
They're more fragile, or more ephemeral, I think.
And I think the online conspirituality set has done a great job of monetizing online networks, but I also think they can feel the emptiness of the screens, and how ultimately You know, it's difficult to create immersive experiences in online spaces.
They really need the retreats, the workshops, the eco resorts, the tantric massages, the fire pits, the smoothie bars.
Just this morning, I got an email invitation from Kelly Brogan, so sweet of her, to join a local meetup group associated with her online subscription platform, Vital Life Project.
So I think this is another sort of, I don't know, step in the consolidation of followings is to reestablish in-person contact.
I think it's really important.
As you grow up in that world, your knowledge will be under constant assault.
You will be told in a million ways that a world of destruction, violence, treachery, anxiety, and degradation is normal.
You may go through a time when you are completely alone, with no allies to affirm your knowledge of a more beautiful world.
You may plunge into a depth of despair that we, in our world of light, cannot imagine.
But no matter what, a spark of knowledge will never leave you.
A memory of your true origin will be encoded in your DNA.
That spark will lie within you, inextinguishable, Until one day is awakened.
You see, even though you will feel for a time utterly alone, you will not be alone.
We will send you assistance.
Help that you will experience as miraculous.
Experiences that you will describe as transcendent.
These will fan that spark into a flame.
For a few moments or hours or days, you will reawaken to the beauty and the joy that is meant to be.
You will see it on Earth.
For even though the planet and its people are deeply wounded, there is beauty there still, projected from past and future onto the present as a promise of what is possible and a reminder of what is real.
Okay, this takes a little bit of a turn for me.
You know, Eisenstein is describing what I think is a very common alienation, but one specifically that is also heightened for children who are sensitive, perhaps neurodiverse, perhaps bullied as when they're young.
You know, I remember that he introduced this story in his book as his own.
And I think we can lean into that a little bit imaginatively.
He's describing loneliness and dissociation while images of extremely young people flash by in the anime.
And as the story turns to describe how all the lonely starseeds will start to find each other, the anime starts to beam gleaming white lines between the pineal glands of the figures.
And this gleaming white is like a cadmium white, like an oil streak across a canvas as previously seen as the tears from the doe eyes of the New Age Barbies.
And so we have anime intrusive eye contact and an allusion to something that I think all cult members will say to each other, especially the new recruits, which is this feeling of, hello, I see you.
Welcome home.
We're connected.
You know, you put your hand on your heart and you say, you're safe here, you've found your people.
And I just can't overemphasize how much intrusive, sappy eye contact is the one-on-one kind of ice-breaking technique in cults.
I think because it's primal, it's instantly recognizable, or it's conflated with sex gazes.
Also, anyone can do it!
Even as a young recruit, like a greenhorn, even if you don't know the ideology yet, You can't speak all of the words.
You can just sexy gaze at the newbie in the room and gain social points by drawing them in.
Also, there's extra points if you can do that gaze with therapy eyes.
So there's a lot going on here, but I think it starts with a lot of melancholy.
I wanted to say too, related to this and also what you were saying before about the online space and the difficulty of maintaining sort of the bonding process.
It's really, I think it's really difficult to love bomb through the screen.
For sure.
There is something about getting together in person.
Like as much as you can have the intrusive eye contact from the Instagram feed, as much as you can band together and do the live stream and send all the little floating hearts and like have all of these gestures of love bombing, the real love bombing.
I think hijacks certain areas of our brain that are only really going to fully activate when we're in person.
Yeah, you can't get the horizontal sense, I don't think, of the group experience where you are activated and charged because the person beside you is going through something unexplainable.
Yes.
And yeah, that's just not going to happen.
It will happen in VR.
Yeah, how's it going to happen in VR?
Because the technology isn't there yet, but it's coming.
I work adjacent to VR.
I always got to find out something about you every week.
I'm going to put your VR experiences on the blockchain, Matthew.
You're going to see how you're going to have a contact high from an NFT.
No, but seriously, like how is, I can understand, I, I can put an Oculus on my head, uh, and I can imagine that somebody's body is next to me, but how am I going to get, you know, that feeling that I had in 1998 when somebody's doing like Kundalini Jitterbug on my left shoulder?
Haptics.
I mean, haptics is developing as well.
So the actual feel.
I just have to say to the listener, Derek just shrugged.
He was like, haptics.
It's like, what are you talking about?
It's right there.
He just shrugged.
All technologies move in this way.
It will soon, like I'm wearing eyeglasses right now.
And one day this will be the VR goggle.
And then my clothing will be the haptics.
Like that is going to happen.
So, you know, we're in a transition space.
So yes, right now, the way that these online cults are operating or trying to operate is clunky and will continue to be.
But as the technology develops, it will get there.
So the sense of presence that you feel in the room with others will be there in the metaverse at some point.
Aubrey Marcus is going to look back on this video and he's going to say, oh, we were so naive.
We were so, we, we, we made a good run at it.
We were trying with the anime.
We were trying with all of the stuff.
It was, it was, it was, we did the, we did the eye contact and the, and the weird ropes of light, but it didn't, but it wasn't, we didn't have the haptic, uh, what, wetsuit.
Well, but essentially, because what you're talking about, Matthew, is inputs, right?
Yeah.
When you're when you're live in person, there's all of these inputs that you get from the people around you.
And then there's a feedback loop that says, well, they're having a big experience.
I should be having a big experience.
They're going to the next level.
I should escalate.
We all belong in this together.
And that's really electric.
I believe that Derek believes that that will happen, but I can also say that some of my own haptic excitations in cult life didn't even happen because people were touching me or because something was happening right next to me.
I think some of the most intense Somatic experiences I had of absolute panic and fear had to do with crossing the threshold into the building every morning where we were going to do our prayer session.
And I could feel that people were gathering there and I'm like, what kind of AI would be able to sort of predict that and like create these sort of circles of, you know... It's not AI.
It's VR.
They're different domains.
And I understand what you're saying, but I do think the technology will get there.
I feel like such a loser.
It's not AI, Matthew.
It's not AI.
I work with these people on a daily basis and I see where it's heading and it will get there.
Oh, who are these people?
Wait a minute, are they from the planet?
They're not alien shamans, but they are blockchain and VR enthusiasts.
They're the people pulling the strings behind the alien shamans.
Oh, God.
I'm in touch with George Soros' puppet master, so I don't want to brag, but... After that glimpse, the flame may die down into an ember again as the routines of normal life there swallow you up.
But after each awakening, they will seem less normal, and the story of that world will seem less real.
The ember will glow brighter.
When enough embers do that, they will all burst into flame together and sustain each other.
Because remember, you will not be there alone.
As you begin to awaken to your mission, you will meet others of our tribe.
You will recognize them by your common purpose, values, and intuitions, and by the similarity of the paths you have walked.
As the condition of the planet Earth reaches crisis proportions, your paths will cross more and more.
The time of loneliness, the time of thinking you might be crazy, will be over.
You will find the people of your tribe all over the Earth, and become aware of them through the long-distance communication technologies used on that planet.
But the real shift, the real quickening, will happen in face-to-face gatherings.
Gatherings in special places.
When many of you gather together, you will launch a new stage on your journey.
A journey that, I assure you, will end where it begins right now.
Then, the mission that lay unconscious within you will flower into consciousness.
Your intuitive rebellion against the world presented to you as normal will become an explicit quest to create a more beautiful world.
I like this last line a lot here because it also presents the Eisenstein shuffle, right?
Like he says, your intuitive rebellion against the world presented to you as normal will become an explicit quest to make a more beautiful world.
I mean, first of all, there's a lot of looping sort of, you know, stuff in there, but is he writing about an an intuitive internal rebellion, or is he proposing explicit actions in the real world?
Like, I think if you ask him, he'll probably just gaze at you.
And maybe you'll feel that wet white line extend out and connect your pineal glands. - A woman said, "Tell me more about the time of loneliness that we might prepare for it." The elder said, "In the time of loneliness, you will always be seeking to reassure yourself that you are not crazy.
You will do that by telling people all about what is wrong with the world, and you will feel a sense of betrayal when they don't listen to you.
You might hunger for stories of wrongness, atrocity, and ecological destruction, all of which confirm the validity of your intuition that a more beautiful world exists.
But, after you have fully received the help we will send you, and the quickening of your gatherings, you will no longer need to do that, because you will know.
Your energy will thereafter turn toward actively creating that more beautiful world.
A tribeswoman asked, How do you know this will work?
Are you sure our shaman's powers are great enough to send us on such a journey?
The elder replied, I know it will work, because he has done it many times before.
Many have already been sent to Earth to live human lives and to lay the groundwork for the mission you will undertake now.
He's been practicing.
The only difference now is that many of you will venture there at once.
What is new in the time you will live in is that you will gather in critical mass and will each awaken the other to your mission.
The heat you will generate will kindle the same spark that lies in every human being.
For in truth, each one is from a tribe like ours.
A whole galaxy and beyond is converging on Earth.
For never before has a planet journeyed so far into separation and made it back again.
Those of you who go will be part of a new step in cosmic evolution.
Okay guys, did you get the traditionalism reference?
The hint there at Kali Yuga?
We're in cyclical time, right?
Like, I know it will work because he has done it many times before.
So, paging Professor Ben Teitelbaum, episode 82.
And I think it's time to talk about tribe, this word.
I can't remember the episode number, but listeners will remember that we had historian of white extremism Kathleen Belew on a few months back to talk about her great new book with Dr. Ramon Gutierrez called A Field Guide to White Supremacy.
Part of it is a style guide for journalists, and they're very blunt about tribe and tribal.
They write, these words refer to an indigenous nation, do not use tribal to discuss broader political division.
Or, I would say in this case, to name your made-up alien identity.
It's an odd choice.
Yeah, but it's very common, right?
It's a lazy choice.
Yeah, no, in fact, in all of the digital marketing, sort of, the canon of digital marketing coursework will tell you you're trying to build your tribe, and here's how you have to do it.
And, you know, yeah, it is the language.
Well, there's a rich post-colonial discourse.
I'm sure there's a lot of listeners we don't have to, like, tell you about this, but we should say that there's a lot of stuff around this word tribe that just says to white people, especially, please leave it alone.
We'll link to a great essay by a professor of African history, Chris Lowe, who notes that the term is really inextricable from colonial mislabelings of 19th century social theory.
And it was often used to either homogenize various indigenous groups in reductive ways, or to idealize a primal or savage state, a la Rousseau.
I appreciate that, but I have to say, you also need a signifier of the fact, in terms of evolutionary biology, that we did gather in groups of certain sizes.
So, I just want to point that out.
I think there are multiple uses of words, but it is hard to tease apart and distinguish in circumstances like this.
Well, to his credit, Eisenstein has an analysis of this.
Where is this coming from, actually?
This is in A More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible.
He actually says, many writers will recognize that the story of interbeing echoes the worldview of various indigenous tribes and ancient wisdom traditions around the world.
None of the principles enunciated herein are new at all.
I am wary, however, of appealing to Indigenous wisdom as a way to legitimize my beliefs.
First, because that would imply a uniformity across Indigenous belief systems that trivializes their diversity.
Second, because various elements of Indigenous spirituality have often been ripped from their context and used as sales props for all manner of questionable products and ideas.
I mean, this is good stuff.
This makes me understand why there are people who say, wait, what went wrong?
I mean, this is good stuff.
This makes me understand why there are people who say, wait, what went wrong?
I mean, nothing he just said is out of place.
Right.
It's all really good stuff.
Now, who is he selling it to?
Now, he's sitting across from Aubrey Marcus, who is a big fan of cosplaying as a Maori warrior in quote-unquote tribal gatherings for his coaching MLM, which is called Fit for Service.
And Derek, I think you know all about it.
This is a seven-minute marketing video for I believe the cost of entry for this quarterly service is about $5,000 and there are add-ons from that.
But you can go and you get different things, but it culminates in these gatherings and that's what the video is promoting.
So on August 17th of 2021.
Fit for Service, which is Aubrey's organization.
According to its rather vague website, it is a place to learn, be inspired, transform, and connect with your tribe around the world.
Nice.
So, we're talking about a video from one of its gatherings, and honestly, I know I defended the use of the word tribe a moment ago, but this is the exact opposite.
This is as bad as it gets.
It is a group of predominantly white adults cosplaying shamans in what appears to be a haka ritual.
Now, Haka is a ceremonial dance in Maori culture, as Matthew said.
The dance remained especially important to the native people of New Zealand when the British colonized the island, though it was the Dutch that first landed there, and they were immediately repelled by the dance.
It's intimidating.
It is, and the world knows of it because of sports, predominantly, thanks to the nation's soccer, and then more famously, rugby teams.
who perform it during international games.
It is ceremonial nature and traces its origins back to Maori mythologies of creation and destruction, as well as celebrations of life and their war dances.
You may recognize it when they stick out their tongue and they puff up their chests.
And it's actually quite beautiful.
It's gorgeous.
But it has received international attention thanks to televised sports events.
But in the hands of modern conspiritualists, Haka suffers from what we in America will recognize as blackface.
It is exotified renditions that pretend to pay homage while really denigrating the culture.
Now, to be clear, I want to be honest, I don't think Fit for Service are mocking haka at all.
I readily believe that they think that they're carrying forward some sort of global shamanic tradition.
I will also say that for the people involved, if any of you were listening and you were there, I'm sure it was exhilarating.
You might remember it fondly.
I don't doubt that if you were there, you had that feeling.
But when you put this into a broader context, this is a group of people paying thousands of dollars to enroll in this organization, to borrow from cultural traditions dressed in Burning Man garb, and to specifically mimic dances in your remixed tribal ritual, and it just honestly leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Now, they were challenged on Instagram about cultural appropriation, and interestingly, whoever handles the Fit for Service feed deleted the comment that was challenging them, but they left their reply, which is always obviously in good taste here.
But I'll read it in full and then I want to hear your opinions on their response when they were challenged about cultural appropriation.
All right.
We came together in celebration of the elements.
Earth, air, fire, water, ether.
A celebration of our simultaneous humanness and spirit.
People from all tribes all around the world have painted their faces and adorned themselves since the beginning of time.
The rules were so simple.
Create.
Adorn.
Express.
Compete.
And we were all cleared not to steal sacred elements such as chieftain headdresses, etc.
Paint, feathers, and dance do not only belong to one people.
We were all creators, and this day was a celebration of that expression.
The mention of the Mayora Haka was simply a reference point, not an invitation to copy.
And those who were present in that day can attest to the uniqueness of each dance.
None looked anything like a Haka.
Watch the video and you tell me.
It's easy to look from the outside and make judgments while looking for something to be angry about.
Know that we are always happy to create a space for understanding, and that begins with a desire to understand.
Except we will delete your comment if you challenge us.
Derek, look, I'm really disappointed.
I think you just had to be there, feeling Aubrey's hot breath on your painted nipples, to know the true authenticity of this creative ritual.
Thank you for that.
I can feel it now.
If you don't understand how the paint and stomping and tongue wagging have completely transcended the petty tribalism you're trying to defend, you are missing out on your own story of reunion and I think you should read some of Charles' books.
I can actually throw you a digital copy because I had to buy them.
Yeah, I like the, I mean, if it was a reference point, I think you need a citation.
Like, that's the rule, I think.
And I think the line that really made me laugh is that we are all creators.
Because it kind of social media-izes the event through that language where, you know, neoliberals will say literally anything to make themselves feel better about, you know, copy pasta and exploitation and to sort of bless themselves with this feeling of authenticity.
Yeah, it's interesting.
You know, I have a visceral response to the video too, and it's not a positive one.
And yet at the same time, this is loaded territory for me because I've moved a lot in dance circles and just in groups of people who, you know, You know, I do have a certain sympathy for the desire to sort of tap into shared experience of movement and slightly altered states that are not readily available in our broader culture and that do feel meaningful and liberatory, liberating and can I do have a certain sympathy for the desire to sort of tap into shared experience of movement and slightly altered states that
And, you know, there is something about that that I, you know, I still have sympathies I mean, there are all kinds of forms of movement and group trance experience that don't have to involve the overt commodification of disappearing cultures.
Yeah, I would never participate in or lead any kind of dance experience where we were all cosplaying in some kind of tribal garb.
That would feel really weird to me.
It would.
You know, you said, Derek, that it might have been exhilarating, but one of the things that I found very uncomfortable about it was that it was clear that for all of the participants, there was a constant awareness of being filmed.
There was a drone shot to start, there was pan shots throughout the throughout the sort of It was like a covered tent that they were in.
The cameras were everywhere, and people were gazing into them.
Also, it was clear, too, that there were real makeup and costume people on set preparing folks, unless, you know, somehow everybody who signed up for that day was somehow a makeup expert.
So the notion that it was Kind of an in-the-moment experience, I think, is really complicated by the fact that it was obviously marketing.
Yeah, it's the performance of a spontaneous ritual.
A tribesman asked, is there a danger we will become lost in that world and never wake up from the shamanic trance?
Is there a danger that the despair, the cynicism, the pain of separation will be so great that it will extinguish the spark of hope, the spark of our true selves and origin, and that we will be separated from our beloved ones forever?
The other replied, that is impossible.
The more deeply you get lost, the more powerful the help we will send you.
You might experience it at the time as a collapse of your personal world, a loss of everything important to you.
Later, you will recognize the gift within it.
We will never abandon you.
Another man asked, is it possible that our mission will fail and that this planet Earth will perish?
The Elder replied, I will answer your question with a paradox.
It is impossible that your mission will fail.
Yet, its success hangs on your own actions.
The fate of the world is in your hands.
The key to this paradox lies within you, in the feeling you carry that each of your actions, even your personal secret struggles, has cosmic significance.
You will know then, as you know now, that everything you do matters.
There were no more questions.
The volunteers gathered in a circle, and the shaman went to each one.
The last thing each was aware of was the shaman blowing smoke in his or her face.
They entered a deep trance and dreamed themselves into the world where we find ourselves today.
Here we are.
Yeah.
Here we are.
Exactly.
I mean, in the video, here is Marcus's pod studio.
In the visual flow, here is reality as transformed by the anime animation, but Eisenstein is in other places too.
So, we encourage you to listen to Julian's bonus from last week, where he clips from a recording of an in-person Eisenstein appearance at a New Year's Eve sleepover in Ithaca, New York, where he's the featured guest.
And he holds court with a kind of guru type Q&A for the anti-vax and anti-lockdown crowd that has gathered.
And there's a number of chilling moments that you highlighted, Julian.
Yeah, I mean, this was billed as a New Year's Eve event with yoga, cacao ceremony, crypto and NFT workshop.
You'll be pleased to know, Matthew.
It was clearly a sleepover because they had brunch the next day and this is all after a catered dinner with Charles and that's the recording that I found on this very tiny channel.
He guides the group into a meditative state to feel the presence of questions, feel the presence of the question they really want to ask him.
And of course most of the questions are really earnest and benign, there are things like how to align Desire with purpose and what are some mantras for balance and what story can we tell the children?
And then right after that, what story can I tell my mother?
But then in the midst of the stream of questions that Charles has elicited from the group in this contemplative moment, there's an Iraq war veteran who asks earnestly, will there be concentration camps for the unvaccinated?
of course, he's rightly suspicious.
He talks about how while he was at war, he had no idea that Iraqis were being tortured in the buildings that he drove by every day.
And he would later find that out.
And Charles validates this and says, you know, it's possible that there could be concentration camps for the unvaccinated in the US.
He actually talks about his own conflict of wondering whether to stay in Rhode Island or move to Texas, because he thinks that probably there won't be concentration camps for the unvaccinated in Texas, but there probably will be in Rhode Island if that's how it goes down.
And, you know, he says to the vet, quoting now, you have special gifts, the gift of your time in Iraq.
The reason that this question is eating at you, and he spends an inordinate amount of time addressing this particular question, not all of the other kind of sweet and benign ones.
The reason this question is eating at you and that I'm responding to it in depth is that when you see each step down that pathway, you cannot rest easy as it happens because your gift, your purpose, your desire calls you to do something about it.
And that's why it bothers you so much.
I don't know what is yours to do.
It may not be some big loud thing, but you are definitely part of the know.
This is not happening.
And as part of this sort of stream of consciousness, Charles evokes the great prophet Elon Musk as an example of someone who embodies what he refers to as the power of word.
Before asking this Iraq vet and the group for the third time, will there be concentration camps for the unvaccinated?
And then answering his question really emphatically, no.
And the group says kind of a smattering of different people say, why not?
And Charles says, because I said so.
Yeah, it's so bad.
It's so chilling.
And then I think it gets worse because closer to the end, and this is, I think the billing for the evening put the schedule at, you know, this is dinner with Charles Eisenstein from 6.30 to 8.00 or from 7.30 to 9.00 or something like that.
And maybe the cacao was going to be after or before the You know, Yoga Nidra or whatever and then the dancing.
So this is also part of like an induction ceremony kind of evening.
Closer to the end of this talk, there's this other very earnest guy and I just have to say too that you do a great description of the actual venue in the bonus episode.
I think you say that it's either somebody's large living room that is converted into a yoga studio or a yoga studio with hardwood floors that could be somebody's living room Yeah.
And I just have to say that this is, if it's Ithaca, New York, this is Eisenstein's kind of home stomping grounds in terms of Northeast progressive liberal culture and spaces.
There are hundreds of yoga spaces like that or gathering spaces like that throughout the Northeast associated with yoga and wellness and so on.
And including in the place where he spent a lot of time, which was at Goddard College in Vermont, Plainfield, Vermont.
So this is very, very familiar territory to him.
It's like he's come home in some way culturally for New Year's Eve.
And so this other guy asks whether the anti-vax world will ever get accountability from the criminals that surround them now.
And this is Eisenstein's answer.
So what does accountability actually mean?
Does it have a meaning besides punishment?
Yeah.
I'm sure that we're going to have to sacrifice on the altar vindication Like, that makes it harder for people to change their mind.
Not only do they have to change their mind, but also they have to, like, gobble.
And admit that they were wrong.
For me, like, it would be enough for me for the pedophilia elite to just never do it again.
That's enough for me.
If they don't get punished, I'm okay with that.
I mean, there's definitely part of me that wants to see them punished, you know?
And wants to, like, dance over their defeated, groveling bodies.
You know?
Like, really, is that what I want to serve?
And maybe it looks like you can serve both.
Maybe it looks like the things that will bring them to justice We'll also be the things that make it stop.
But at some point, you cannot serve two masters.
At some point, you will be asked to choose which one you serve.
And I would like to put a word in for choosing, let's have it stop.
Even if they get off scot-free.
And all of them.
Gates and Fauci.
Like, what if they get off scot-free, but all of this ends?
Because otherwise we're feeding the wolf of domination.
You know, and that takes over.
And then we end up with, you know, a revolution just like all the others.
Where we become the new oppressors.
Because we're serving victory rather than healing.
So there we have it.
QAnon lingo right out in the open, but with the extremism hidden by this glow of equanimity and possible irony.
And he uses the ambivalent tools of his poetry to endorse these ideas, but with in a way that gives him plausible deniability.
There's always a backdoor.
And then he also offers this Christian argument of forbearance, which I think lets people who really believe in the pedophile elite, which he does not deny, it allows them to maintain a kind of moral high ground in which they can remind themselves it allows them to maintain a kind of moral high ground in which they can remind themselves or they can pretend that they would I notice sometimes on our comments that people ask why we do what we do.
Why we spend so much time looking at these people and criticizing them or talking about what they're doing.
Just let them be and do your own thing.
And it really came into perspective in this video and this episode in a lot of ways.
And I want to recall Julian's segment earlier about the Aum Shrinriko cult.
Because in 1997, one of my favorite novelists, Haruki Murakami, he published an oral history of the Sarin gas attack.
It's called Underground, the Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche.
So besides an exceptional memoir that he wrote called What I Talk About, forget it, I forget it.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, that's what it was.
He was overweight jazz club owner and then lost a lot of weight and became very fit and much more focused when he took up ultra marathons.
So it's a great book.
But Underground is the only other piece of nonfiction that he's ever written, at least in book form.
I highly recommend it if you're interested in hearing directly from the victims, former cult members, and even some people who still believed in OM after the attack.
But there's one moment in the book I want to highlight.
And Morikami begins by writing, what alternative is there to the media's us versus them situation?
So again, this is 97.
This has always been in our cultural, not even just our culture, this is something that has the media Splitting people apart has existed for a long time, but Murakami is asking why we push people like the OM followers off to the side, pretending they didn't rise from the same environment as everyone else in that country or region.
And he continues, and now I'm quoting, "...we will get nowhere as long as the Japanese continue to disown the Aum phenomenon as something completely other, an alien presence viewed through binoculars on the far shore.
Unpleasant though the prospect might seem, it is important that we incorporate them to some extent within that construct called us, Or at least within Japanese society.
But even more to the point, by failing to look for the key buried under our own feet, where it might be visible to the naked eye, by holding the phenomenon at such a distance, we are in danger of reducing its significance to a microscopic level.
I personally don't think that I'm overstating the danger of a group of men who are armed with hundreds of millions of dollars, a number of whom boast of the tactical training they're doing.
We can point you back to the Lake Travis commune that's forming right now in Austin.
And these men who think that they're a special breed sent to Earth on a mission I don't think that we're wrong by flagging the dangers of what this produces.
I'm just wondering how many times we need to repeat this pattern until we recognize the danger before it actually occurs.
Yeah, and in the end of what I was describing there with the Iraq veteran, that was particularly on our minds as well as we listened to that, right?
The sense of like, oh, here's a guy who served in the military who probably has firearms and actually as part of that discussion, When they're talking about the concentration camps for the vaccinated, he says it's already happening in Australia.
It's already happening in China.
And the only reason it hasn't happened here is because America is a different proposition because of the Second Amendment.
So there's a gun culture overlap happening here.
Can I just add in your bonus, Julian, when Charles talks, when they ask what's going to happen in China and Charles feels qualified to answer, he says something to the fact that, you know, eventually the Chinese people will rise up against it.
I'm like, you have never studied Chinese history.
They call them dynasties for a reason.
And again, it just speaks to this idea that people can consider themselves polymaths, walk into these spaces and just riff and say whatever shit's on their mind, and just think they can get away with it without actually understanding the historical consequences and what they're actually dealing with when you're talking about movements of power and authoritarian power in this specific instance.
It's just mind-boggling, the ego that exists in these men.
You know, to me, the problem also is that, you know, you said, Derek, I don't think I'm overstating.
I mean, we could be overstating, but then at the same time, we could be understating.
And it's hard to tell because the figure at the center of this episode is a bullshitter.
And we can't tell what the status of his writing is, or how much he believes what he says, or what the impacts will be on his readers.
He is LARPing into politics and public affairs.
This is someone who is looking for the edgy take, or at least is attracted to it.
No matter what the cost.
Someone so committed to the pleasure of being a literary edgelord that he was able, and we know this from many sources, to basically ignore a ton of precise and even sympathetic criticism for his BS COVID views.
It just rolled off his back because that's not his gig.
It's not accuracy.
His gig is provocation.
Not in a Proud Boys way, but in a way that can later be framed, I think, as visionary.
So he's not going to wear Hawaiian shirts out to rallies, but you want to look out for the Thai fisherman pants.
And, you know, when I think about why we, and I in particular, have spent so much time wondering about the internal world of Eisenstein and whether there's anything in there worth communicating with, I think I recognize in myself the frustration of just being a writer.
That feeling of being a brain in a jar, probably neurodiverse, certainly introverted, given to depression, probably dissociative, retreating to writing when there's no other way of imagining a beautiful world.
Like, I know many of those feelings.
And I also know that, well, I think, because this is not my category, that being a New Age writer in late-stage capitalism is just fucking boring.
It's this merry-go-round of poetry circles and cacao ceremonies and angel cards and creepy eye contact.
And so I can understand the appeal of leaning into demagoguery.
Of wanting to actually do something, of starting to believe that your internal strategies for quelling anxiety should have public purchase, public consequences.
People should do what I'm doing in order to make themselves feel better.
It's the same reason we've discussed before with yoga moms going full QAnon.
Like there's this point at which the utter moral vacuity and dread of smoothie life is just so nauseating.
You might have no choice but to fantasize that you're ending sex trafficking, like that's going to be your thing, because that will be meaningful and effective.
That will be like their off-the-mat into the world moment, right?
Right, exactly, where they really made it happen.
I don't know, Charles, I guess I'm going to address you directly now.
I think you should stop fucking around, like for real, because there's nothing brave about getting onto the Austin payroll because you wrote a story in 2009 that makes a wealthy supplement bro cry.
There's nothing brave about preaching a galaxy brain answer to everything.
Like, you've probably done that since you were 15.
Like, I think we've all done that since we were 15.
There's nothing brave about cloaking reactionary provocations in vague mysticism.
