Oct. 5, 2017 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:19:07
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unidentified
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Four, three, two, one. | |
| I'm going to do what you're doing. | ||
| What are you doing over there, man? | ||
| What is this? | ||
| Well, actually, I was thinking about making sure that I'm in a position mentally and spiritually to talk openly and clearly and connect. | ||
| But you're doing it with fists, which I found interesting. | ||
| It's like you're going to talk openly, but you're going to be strong about it. | ||
| It's not like there's this meditation thing where you're just gently touching your fingers together. | ||
| Yeah, right. | ||
| I suppose then I'm looking to be embodied as well. | ||
| You're intense. | ||
| Or like present. | ||
| You're like a hybrid. | ||
| Yeah, that's right. | ||
| That's what we've got to become these days. | ||
| Yeah, a little bit of both. | ||
| A little bit of spiritual, a little bit of warrior. | ||
| The whole thing. | ||
| We've got to survive in this world. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you can't be all ethereal. | ||
| It can't all be in the consciousness. | ||
| Yeah, otherwise you'll never get anything done. | ||
| Right? | ||
| You'll just be constantly dealing with other people's wants and wishes. | ||
| Unless you're going to make the decision to be one of those cave people. | ||
| Because sometimes I think about that, like, let's put on robes, meditate. | ||
| Only that. | ||
| Only live in the consciousness. | ||
| But given my extreme levels of attachment I've experienced over the years to physical things, I don't think that's my path. | ||
| You know, I'm here. | ||
| I'm in the world. | ||
| I'm... | ||
| Selling books. | ||
| I'm having a baby. | ||
| I'm caring about what people think about me. | ||
| I'm wondering if I'm going to be in a film. | ||
| I'm dealing with the world. | ||
| Being a man in the world. | ||
| Being the type of man I am. | ||
| It's not like I just life myself off in a cave. | ||
| Well, there's a certain amount of attraction that I think we all have to this idea like, hey man, I'm just going to get away from it all. | ||
| But the problem is it's going on whether you like it or not. | ||
| It's happening. | ||
| Even if you're not there, it's going on. | ||
| So you should probably be there just to go, what is this? | ||
| Yeah, what is this? | ||
| Even in Christianity, Christ says, in the world, but not of it. | ||
| So, like, trying not to be defined and determined by other people's opinions of you, the systems and structures that are set up around you, particularly if you question those systems and structures and think, well, I don't trust that system, I don't agree with that. | ||
| You don't want to be defined by that. | ||
| But the fact is, we are here. | ||
| And I think there are certain people, you know, that do have a monastic tendency that should be meditating, that aren't equipped for the material world. | ||
| And one of the great things that makes me sad about our times is if you don't have economic and productive value, then you're a nobody. | ||
| There are some people that don't know how to resource themselves. | ||
| You've found a way of turning yourself into an economy, of creating a kingdom. | ||
| I found my own way of like, oh right, I can make my mental illness work for me. | ||
| People pay me money to be this crazy. | ||
| But not everyone gets those kind of breaks or has that kind of skill set. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, obviously there's some people that really do thrive on that monastic lifestyle. | ||
| Have you ever seen, there's a Vice documentary on this guy. | ||
| His name is Heinmo. | ||
| He lives in the, I believe it's the eastern part of Alaska. | ||
| He's in this... | ||
| This Arctic region. | ||
| There's a vice piece called Heimo's Arctic Adventure. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Arctic Refuge. | ||
| Heimo. | ||
| H-E-I-M-O. Heimo Korth is his name. | ||
| And this guy lives in the Elastic Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. | ||
| Hmm hundred miles from the nearest human and he lives there with his wife and he lives in this little log house that he's sort of built himself and he Thrives up there. | ||
| It's very strange because we're attracted to these people like like to just go. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| What do you do all day, man? | ||
| Like what's what's your life like and Do you miss people? | ||
| He has like a VCR and he plays old movies And it's a fascinating thing because I think when you watch someone like that, you always run it through your head, like, could I live like that? | ||
| Like, is this guy happier? | ||
| He says he is. | ||
| I mean, he says that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that he lives is, like, uniquely attractive to people and uniquely satisfying. | ||
| And it's something that we don't get in our everyday world, so we're never, like, completely even, whereas he is just... | ||
| Running around, fishing and hunting caribou and stuff. | ||
| Well, we're fitting in with someone else's idea of what life should be. | ||
| The system within which most of us operate, this isn't what I would do if I had a free start. | ||
| I don't mean just personally me, Russell. | ||
| I mean anthropologically, yeah. | ||
| It's designed to be nomadic tribes people. | ||
| My podcast that I do as a suggestion by you, I had on as a guest Yuval Noah Harari. | ||
| He wrote that book, Sapiens, and he does a lot of that anthropology stuff and says about that we're designed to live in tribes of about 75 to 100 people, or at least that's what chimpanzees do. | ||
| When they get bigger, there's normally a conflict and a separation and a splitting, that nomadic tribes would Follow the food sources that were available to them. | ||
| So, in a way, if you can replicate that or get close to that in some way in your own life, it would make sense that it would make you happy. | ||
| When you're saying that about the guy who's 100 miles away from the nearest person, I thought there's people that live in suburbia that mentally are 100 miles away from the nearest person. | ||
| Really, your life is you sit in front of a screen, you don't connect with people, you've not spoke to people for days. | ||
| You know, I think about this when people make these desperate attempts to connect through. | ||
| Dogging is a thing in my country where people meet up in lay-bys and just have anonymous sex, masturbating in public. | ||
| What do they call it? | ||
| Dogging. | ||
| It's a uniquely British phenomenon, Joe. | ||
| Dogging. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| I've never heard of this. | ||
| Well, welcome. | ||
| Welcome to Britain. | ||
| Dogging is people go to lay-bys, quiet lay-bys, and it could be sort of suburban. | ||
| It's a bit like swinging, you know, but it's like you pull up in a car with, you know, this is, I've never done this. | ||
| I'll just clarify. | ||
| You pull up in a car with a partner. | ||
| It could be, you know, I think it's a kind of heterosexual thing or homosexuality. | ||
| You can do it wherever your persuasion is. | ||
| There's a particular place with particular people. | ||
| And, you know, the lights go on and people jerk off and, you know, you can have sex. | ||
| And I'm sort of thinking these are desperate attempts to... | ||
| Find some connection to nature to sort of drop anchor and hit your primal self to get into who you are because you wake up and you've got to do your job and you've got a screen in front of you and you're a consumer and you're not living in the world anymore. | ||
| You want some visceral experience. | ||
| One of the things I get from listening to your podcast is like oh you're a person that's questing after with the whether it's the archery or the DMT looking for what Is it that we're meant to be as humans? | ||
| And I'm doing that in my own way, having unfortunately written off substances because of my stupid, stupid mistakes in my 20s. | ||
| I can't go into the DMT ayahuasca world as much as I would like to. | ||
| And I want to find, how is it that I be me in this world? | ||
| And yeah, I don't think it is through isolationism. | ||
| I don't think it's like, right, I'm going to try and get an island and fuck this. | ||
| I'm not going to participate. | ||
| I think it's like, right, what, you know... | ||
| We are nature. | ||
| We created this. | ||
| This is a form of nature, our civilizations, our manifestations. | ||
| But is it the best we can do? | ||
| Can we change it? | ||
| Can we pull back from what seems more than ever, like some kind of apocalypse with, you know, your current president, no disrespect, and with our country, Brexit? | ||
| It's sort of like a weird time of frustration. | ||
| Fracture and the manifestation of ugliness, stuff bubbling up. | ||
| I feel it like dark unconscious matter bubbling up, man. | ||
| I was in the airport traveling to here and I was in New York and just the people that are working the lines when you put your cases through, people seemed heavy and low. | ||
| If you're British, Donald Trump's just something that, you know, you kind of make jokes about and you hope that there isn't going to be a nuclear war, but he seems like a sort of a comic figure. | ||
| But here, I sort of sensed, oh, there's pain. | ||
| Now, I know there's a lot of people that obviously like him, enough to have made him president of the United States, but I think even in those cases, he speaks to a particular rage, something that wasn't being addressed, the failure of neoliberalism, the lies of the last 30 years of a kind of politics that was just about management and not about giving people truth. | ||
| I don't know, Joe. | ||
| I like our individual journeys. | ||
| How can our individual journeys inform our social and tribal journeys and our national journeys? | ||
| And is there even hope anymore for such a thing as the United States of America or Great Britain? | ||
| Or should we start looking at smaller projects? | ||
| Because, you know, if the United States of America and Great Britain lead to colonialism, mass capitalism, consumerism, ecological meltdown, if that's what you believe in, then maybe we need to look at breaking down some of these great institutions. | ||
| I wonder if what's going on is that our biology and what we've been sort of programmed to for the thousands of years of living these tribal existences where in these tribal existences we had these small groups of 50 to 60 or 100 people plus that this is the new thing and then part of our chaos is our trying to adapt to the new thing it's almost inevitable we've created this Incredible way where we can get food to people, | ||
| so more people had babies, more people stayed in these areas where they're not growing food, and then you're dealing with these massive numbers of people, you know, in LA, 20-plus million. | ||
| And we're trying to figure out, like, how do we get along? | ||
| How do all these different ideologies coincide? | ||
| How do we cooperate? | ||
| How do we figure out what to do with all our waste? | ||
| How do we figure out what to do with what we're doing to the environment? | ||
| How do we figure out who's right? | ||
| Are the doom and gloom people correct, or are we going to be okay people correct? | ||
| What's the right attitude to take about this? | ||
| Many of those significant movements that you're talking about, agriculture, And industrialisation and urbanisation. | ||
| Agriculture obviously meaning food available en masse. | ||
| Industrialisation, products available en masse. | ||
| Urbanisation, people living together en masse. | ||
| None of these things are good for the people en masse. | ||
| They're good for a select strata of people that primarily benefit. | ||
| They say that the average diet of human beings got worse after agriculture. | ||
| Before that, varied diet. | ||
| People ate loads of stuff after You're on potatoes now, peasant. | ||
| You're on rice now, peasant. | ||
| I think each of these movements are to benefit a particular aspect of the system, a particular class, a particular strata, a particular economic class. | ||
| Me and you ain't doing bad. | ||
| We're relatively near the top, but we're not the engineers of it. | ||
| Corporations and elites, to use that very popular word these days, that benefit from things being like this. | ||
| When you're saying, is there a way that we can all coalesce and get along in urban conurbations of 20 million people? | ||
| No, because the power is too centralized. | ||
| The power needs to break down. | ||
| Mostly we are getting along? | ||
| I mean, mostly. | ||
| Mostly we are getting along in these weird groups. | ||
| And even with whatever static that we have with each other, even with the weirdness of it all, the diffusion of responsibility that comes in these gigantic groups and you see things happening, you just get away from them. | ||
| We still, for the most part, are getting along in this weird new world. | ||
| I think you're right in a sense, Joe. | ||
| I'm not a doom and gloom guy. | ||
| I think human beings are really, really beautiful and brilliant. | ||
| And I don't think, oh God, this is such a mess. | ||
| What I think is that we're trying to inhabit systems that are not designed for us to live within. | ||
| And I think that, yeah, people are getting on. | ||
| But I also think, don't you think there's a lot of tension in cities that everyone's one right turn or one traffic light away from getting out of their car and smashing someone in the face? | ||
| You can feel it bubbling under. | ||
| And the feeling I had in the airport is that the people that were working there were under undue stress. | ||
| Now, this is just one... | ||
| I feel like we're being forced to live on a particular aspect of our consciousness, a particular bandwidth of where we're kind of a bit frightened, a little bit too much desire. | ||
| I'm talking about most people. | ||
| Again, I'm not poor no more. | ||
| Money creates distance, isn't it? | ||
| Fuck off, problems. | ||
| I'm getting in a nice car and I'm out of here. | ||
| But I remember the feeling, and a lot of people are living like that, where the tension's up in their face. | ||
| And so, yes, I agree that people do muddle along, and that, I think, shows you that we're not as in a Darwinistic model or some of the ideas derived from Darwinism, rather, like the selfish gene and the Richard Dawkins idea that people just want to survive and we just want to kill and fuck, and this is what propels us forward. | ||
| I think, no, we're cooperative, collaborative, artistic, imaginative, beautiful people. | ||
| But we've created systems around the worst aspects of our nature. | ||
| Greed, selfishness. | ||
| This is what capitalism and consumerism thrive on. | ||
| And they're so all-encompassing. | ||
| Our cultures are domed by them, and we can't see beyond them. | ||
| We exist within them. | ||
| And I feel like if we were to break down those kind of systems, live in smaller assemblies, smaller groups... | ||
| Where power is as close to the people that it affects as possible, where people would vote on, well, this is how we want to use our resources. | ||
| This is how we want to run our street, our hospital, our prisons, our schools, our systems. | ||
| This is how we want them to run. | ||
| Then things would really, really slow down. | ||
| But man, what's the rush? | ||
| You know, things would slow down, get a lot slower. | ||
| But I think that people would be empowered and you wouldn't have resources and power filtered to a small group of people. | ||
| No, I think you're definitely right. | ||
| I think you should probably start a cult. | ||
| You've got a good idea about how to run it and how to keep the resources in the community. | ||
| I think that also this discontent that we have is a sign that people being upset with how this is and the momentum of the way things have sort of established themselves today, that this is like what we need. | ||
| This is the momentum and the motivation that we need to try to improve upon things. | ||
| I think we're uniquely qualified to do that today because we're talking about it. | ||
| So you could be the doom and gloom guy today, I'll be rose-colored glasses. | ||
| So I think that this tension that we have, even a guy like Donald Trump or Brexit, I think the good thing about those things is that people are looking at What they don't like about the way we're running the world, what they don't like about our culture. | ||
| And they're getting upset about it and hopefully we'll sort it out that way. | ||
| And that being completely content with everything and everybody just sitting on the couch and smiling all day, it doesn't necessarily lead to progress. | ||
| I think we're more informed now than we've ever been before. | ||
| So I would hope that with our ability to communicate and being more informed now that we have the potential to move towards a better society. | ||
| I agree with that, mate. | ||
| But I also think that what's important in the world is who has power. | ||
| Power being the ability to effect change. | ||
| I'm not one of those people that I'm not baffled by what happened with Trump. | ||
| I feel, oh, there's an indication that a good many people feel extremely angry and disenfranchised, the same as Brexit in our country, and I recognise and I understand it. | ||
| Similarly, I don't think, oh, wouldn't everything be zippity-doo-dah if Hillary Clinton was President of the United States? | ||
| That was the way stuff was going. | ||
| That's what the previous 30 years has been like in your country, my country, managerial politicians with no vision, We've seen the failure of recent promises that were offered by administrations recently. | ||
| I think that what Trump is, what Brexit is, is a big fuck you to the system. | ||
| We want something different. | ||
| And for me, in a way, these things are good because I believe the people that feel those things are right. | ||
| And I would like to see more power delivered to ordinary people, genuine change happening. | ||
| But I think it won't happen unless you sort of look at, well, where is the power really? | ||
| The power really is with people that this system works for, a sort of a particular corporate elite, a particular strata of, I don't know, politicians and bureaucrats. | ||
| And I hope that what these sort of cataclysms of recent years lead to Is devolution of power, new systems. | ||
| Because even in the time that I've been in your country on this trip, Joe, you know, there's been that mad sort of massacre that, you know, that's... | ||
| It's sort of, for me, is a... | ||
| And this tells me that this is a sick society. | ||
| Not, you know, I'm not... | ||
| Oh, and Britain's wonderful, of course. | ||
| You know, we went round plundering the world. | ||
| We're crazy, crazy. | ||
| We've got enough problems of our own. | ||
| But, like, for me, what is causing this? | ||
| Why is this happening? | ||
| You know, for me, I don't see it in isolation. | ||
| I don't believe in Lone Wolf. | ||
| I think the system is coughing up these mad events, and there are patterns, and there's things that we can read, and there are things that we can change to improve it. | ||
| Well, he's certainly a part of, the guy that was that shooter is certainly a part of our society, right? | ||
| So if we have a sick culture, You know, I mean, there's evidence of it. | ||
| I mean, it's not a completely sick culture. | ||
| I mean, we're not all dying, right? | ||
| We don't all have this disease. | ||
| But some of us most certainly do. | ||
| So, this thing that you're saying, like, that people looked at Donald Trump as a big fuck-you system, the tipping over the apple cart, I think that's absolutely what people were hoping for. | ||
| And then there's a bunch of people that just love saying fuck you. | ||
| There's a bunch of people that when fuck you is flying around, yeah, fuck you, they just get in it. | ||
| Fuck you, too, fuck you! | ||
| And then you're seeing a lot of that with Donald Trump supporters as well. | ||
| You're seeing people that they're looking for some excitement, they're looking for some fun. | ||
| You're seeing people that enjoy chaos. | ||
| Maybe they're trapped in cubicles and they're just completely frustrated by this fucking grind. | ||
| This day-to-day grind. | ||
| Like, literally being... | ||
| Their soul being ground down on a cheese grater every day. | ||
| Being forced to stay under these fluorescent lights in this fucking small little box. | ||
| Dealing with human resources in the corporate environment. | ||
| And they're going fucking crazy. | ||
| And anything that happens that tips that over, it's all fight club, right? | ||
| They're just looking to get punched in the face. | ||
| They're looking to go crazy. | ||
| And there's a lot of that as well. | ||
| You know, but I think... | ||
| This chaos, the worst parts about it, there's no good to, right? | ||
| There's no good to mass shootings. | ||
| But what comes out of all these things is the discussions and the intense realization that we have real problems. | ||
| We have real problems with the way we're communicating with each other. | ||
| And I don't necessarily know if the solution... | ||
| I mean, it would certainly be a solution for those involved if you get a hundred amazing people and everybody just starts a co-op in Maine somewhere. | ||
| I mean, yeah, it would be great for those involved. | ||
| But for all of us, I mean, even while that, I mean, it's almost like that monastic lifestyle we're talking about. | ||
| If everybody just isolates, it's all going on around you. | ||
| If you put your phone in a drawer and never use it again, and you stay off the grid and you get your water from a spring, all those people out there are We're still drinking water with antidepressants in it, and there's a bunch of fucking smog that people have to deal with. | ||
| There's a bunch of problems with hurricanes now because the water's warmer. | ||
| It's inevitable. | ||
| It's inevitable that this is all... | ||
| I mean, you can decide, hey man, I only have a hundred years on this planet. | ||
| Fuck this. | ||
| I'm just gonna ride this out. | ||
| But if you do make a kid... | ||
| And you have, and I've got a bunch of them. | ||
| I mean, what's going to happen to them? | ||
| You know, we have to think about what happens with them as well. | ||
| We're all this global community, really. | ||
| Yes, we are. | ||
| And that's why I don't go for the hedonic lifestyle of, oh, fuck it, I've got a century. | ||
| Let's line up some blowjobs. | ||
| I tried that route. | ||
| Line up some blowjobs. | ||
| A century worth of blowjobs. | ||
| That's a great way of putting it. | ||
| Let's line up some blowjobs. | ||
| Ice cream here, blowjobs there. | ||
| And off to the boneyard. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, like, because I, like you, believe in the possibility of change. | ||
| And I've been, like, again, I've mentioned it again. | ||
| I started a podcast because you said, you know, start a podcast. | ||
| And it's good fun. | ||
| Like, what I do on mine is I get, like, a... | ||
| Because I'm doing this university degree, religion in global politics. | ||
| In fact, this thing happened. | ||
| What happened to me really is I hit 40 and I thought, right, now I know a bunch of things aren't going to work. | ||
| The ice cream, the blowjobs, the attention, the privilege, heroin, crack, all these things I can chalk off as not working. | ||
| I can't control them. | ||
| I've got to find a way through this. | ||
| And oddly, peculiarly, it's a sort of a personal version of spirituality. | ||
| That's what I've found. | ||
| William Blake, the great English poet, says, each artist must find his own religion. | ||
| We have to find our own way. | ||
| What works for you is not going to be the same as what works for me. | ||
| You know, there are ways that we are collective, but there are ways where we are individuals. | ||
| So I thought, right, I'm going to have to educate myself. | ||
| I'm going to have to do things that mean something to me. | ||
| A big part of that was like doing, you know, in my own small Fragile, brittle way, Brazilian jiu-jitsu. | ||
| I've never done stuff like that before. | ||
| Live in your body, be in there and go to Genesis Gym in Marlowe. | ||
| I give them a drop because all these guys are such big fans of your show. | ||
| I go there and I do sessions with Chris, that titanium skeleton of a man, that black belt. | ||
| He twists me up. | ||
| He can cause pain in ways. | ||
| How is he even doing that? | ||
| And when I try to do the stuff back, it doesn't work. | ||
| Or puts me in my body in a different way. | ||
| Learning the history of the ideas that are in religion. | ||
| The distinction between politics and religion is sort of an imaginary distinction. | ||
| When people talk about religious violence versus secular violence, they're saying their violence is irrational and our violence is okay. | ||
| I've learned some amazing stuff in the last few years. | ||
| And as a result of that... | ||
| The kind of guests I get on my podcast, like this guy Karn Ross, mate, you'd love him on yours actually. | ||
| He was a diplomat in the Foreign Service around the time of the Weapons of Mass Destruction and 9-11. | ||
| He believed in the system. | ||
| He's like, all he wanted was to work in the Foreign Service. | ||
| He knew they were lying while it was going on. | ||
| So he's like, oh no, this thing I believed in is not true. | ||
| Like he's being asked to participate in it. | ||
| He's come out of the Foreign Office and believes that no centralised power can ever work. | ||
| We have to have... | ||
| Devolved power. | ||
| Assemblies. | ||
| Anarchism is the word. | ||
| Anarchy doesn't mean chaos. | ||
| Anarchy means devolved power to the smallest possible groups. | ||
| That there's no power between you and I and Jamie. | ||
| That we're equal in here and we should run the space according to what all of us think as a group. | ||
| That hospitals, schools, institutions, communities should be run on a democratic basis. | ||
| You don't need, like, you know, minimise the amount of centralised authority. | ||
| We need roads to be run. | ||
| There needs to be some security and all those kind of things. | ||
| But it should be minimised where possible. | ||
| That's what this guy came away with. | ||
| And he explained it real well to me. | ||
| And what I like, increasingly what I think is that when you talk about that, mate, the cheese grater on the sole, that's the phenomena of the West. | ||
| You know, that's what people in our countries are going through is... | ||
| Alienation. | ||
| It's talked about, like, one of the things that another guest taught me about Marxism. | ||
| The Marxist theory of the way that he criticized and broke down capitalism, how it operates. | ||
| He wasn't just talking about the economics, although Marx was a great economist. | ||
| He goes, capitalism will lead to individuals feeling worthless and meaningless because they'll just be cogs in a machine. | ||
| It will break people's spirits. | ||
| And that is what's happened. | ||
| But it's not the only thing that's happened. | ||
|
unidentified
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Go on. | |
| It's also created incredible technology, medical innovation, all sorts of different ways that we can make the world easier. | ||
| Do you think we could keep those things without the cheese grater soulmate? | ||
| Because I think we could. | ||
| I think we could. | ||
| We've got the stuff now. | ||
| We could progress with it. | ||
| We could have different, fairer ways of doing that. | ||
| And I think people kill that conversation too early because it's working for enough people. | ||
| Yeah, they're throwing out the baby with the bathwater. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| Yeah, that's what the whole thing of Marxism is, is the abandonment of capitalism. | ||
| It's like, let's go this way. | ||
| But, you know, you look at what happened when people adopted Marxism. | ||
| It led to the death of millions and millions of people, as has capitalism in a lot of places. | ||
| Well, yeah, more deaths, but it's not reported in the same way. | ||
| But I'm not saying that we all want to live in communist, you know, or the Soviet Union or China. | ||
| Terrible, terrible things happen there. | ||
| But that's what we always revert to. | ||
| You know, we say, well, is it not possible that we could, for a start, they didn't do it properly. | ||
| They ignored it. | ||
| That's what everybody says, but no one's ever done it properly. | ||
| I mean, we have more freedom today. | ||
| Human beings have more freedom. | ||
| More freedom to behave, more freedom to communicate, more freedom to excel with this capitalist society that we're criticizing today than any human beings that have ever lived ever. | ||
| There's a lot of negative about it, 100%. | ||
| But it's also, there's a lot of benefits and positive about it. | ||
| There are a lot of soulless people that are just counting numbers and throwing them on a hard drive somewhere and buying yachts. | ||
| That's true, too. | ||
| But that doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to evolve and aspire. | ||
| I don't think evolution is finished. | ||
| I know there's loads of good things about capitalism, but I think let's carry on. | ||
| Let's see what we can do. | ||
| Could we be doing this better? | ||
| I believe that we could. | ||
| I believe that this has taken us about as far as it could go because of certain ecological imperatives and the spiritual thing that you deftly mentioned. | ||
| That it's destroying the souls of a lot of people. | ||
| And it's not necessary. | ||
| When is that? | ||
| You know, the war we were promised in the 50s and the technological revolution will mean your work half an hour a day. | ||
| You know, like no one delivered on that. | ||
| People just went, oh, actually, you carry on fucking working and we'll siphon the profit uphill. | ||
| And we could have leisure based societies. | ||
| But I think that as long as there is a form of centralized power, people at the center of that power will not share it. | ||
| I think you have to go, alright, this community is going to be run by those people. | ||
| This community is going to be run by those people. | ||
| And that also solves a lot of the other problems that are defining our times. | ||
| People seem to want different things. | ||
| Some people want to say, absolutely no homosexuality. | ||
| Some people say, we want total sexual freedom. | ||
| Some people want, we want to live in what would be called a religious extreme way. | ||
| Some people say, atheist. | ||
| Well, that can't exist under one banner, I don't know. | ||
| Yeah, but the problem with people saying no homosexuality is that they're deciding about freedom, other people's freedoms to exist, other people's freedoms to behave and to express themselves the way they want to. | ||
| And the real problem with that is a lot of the people that want to control other people's freedom, they're really, the reason why they're doing it is they're trying to suppress their own urges and desires. | ||
| You're completely right. | ||
| One of the things I'm most interested in is how much of our activity is unconscious activity. | ||
| Oh, so much. | ||
| We're doing things, we don't know why we're doing it. | ||
| The book here that I'm promoting, Recovery, I've written this book, it's my version of The Twelve Steps. | ||
| I read some of it last night. | ||
| You're in it? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The Twelve Steps is a journey from unconsciousness to consciousness. | ||
| That's what it essentially is. | ||
| You'd unconsciously pursue pleasure, you unconsciously It is possible to be contented. | ||
| Move towards nature. | ||
| You are yourself doing it. | ||
| You're going, right, this is what I'm good at. | ||
| This is what I'm doing. | ||
| I know the way you run your life. | ||
| You don't want no one telling you what to do. | ||
| You don't want to compromise. | ||
| You want to learn all of this fascinating stuff and fulfill yourself. | ||
| You've created a road for yourself to do that. | ||
| But not everybody can and more people could. | ||
| And I think there'll always be resistance, there'll always be corruption, because it's in me. | ||
| I shouldn't spend another second condemning Donald Trump, because I've got an arsehole in me. | ||
| I'm a greedy person that wants attention and wants people to love me and buy my book and take care of my interests. | ||
| But your introspective thinking has led you to stop that path. | ||
| I mean, that's essentially, you saw the flaws in hedonistic behavior, and you hit the pause button. | ||
| And you're thinking about it, and that's very attractive to people, because we all see that in ourselves. | ||
| And when you talk about what I do and what I've done, the most important thing that I've ever done is surround myself with people that I love. | ||
| I have a really good group of friends and interesting people, and that leads to more. | ||
| They find more interesting people. | ||
| It branches out and spreads out. | ||
| And then people listening to this, they become like-minded. | ||
| They pursue their happiness. | ||
| They pursue their actual desires. | ||
| What interests them? | ||
| What they would like to do for their career, for their life, for their craft. | ||
| What do you enjoy? | ||
| Find that thing. | ||
| Surround yourself with like-minded people. | ||
| And I think we all get fuel from the people that we're around. | ||
| And it's one of the most underrated aspects of being a person in a community. | ||
| If you're around a bunch of ambitious people who are creative, who are open-minded and honest, you are inspired by that. | ||
| And you seek to have like-minded thoughts. | ||
| Yeah, you're right about that. | ||
| I think that's another one in the against column for disappearing into the cave and being a hermit or a monk or whatever. | ||
| Because I heard someone say, we exist in dialectic, which means we exist in relationship and conversation with one another. | ||
| Who are you without other people? | ||
| You're nobody in an aluminium capsule floating through space. | ||
| What does your personality matter? | ||
| You're nothing. | ||
| So you're right about that, that we exist in these relationships with one another. | ||
| And I suppose what I have sought out is to connect with people on the level of the damage, on the level of the wound, on the level of the vulnerability. | ||
| Not in a pessimistic, let's wring ourselves out into the gutter way. | ||
| No, let's recognise that we're flawed, but that together we can create supportive, compassionate, loving communities. | ||
| And for me, the starting point for that is a life that is... | ||
| Predicated on spirituality as opposed to materialism. | ||
| It's predicated on what my consciousness does when I stop thinking, what my consciousness does when I meditate. | ||
| Now, I don't have the advantage of the DMT experience in the Ayahuasca. | ||
| I'm fascinated by it, listen to it a lot. | ||
| Well, why don't you try Kundalini? | ||
| I do do that. | ||
| Well, have you ever had any sort of psychedelic experience through doing Kundalini? | ||
| Because the people that I know that are really into it, they say that they can achieve... | ||
| People that I know that have done DMT... I'll say they can achieve the same sort of states. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| With Kundalini. | ||
| Well, they're doing it well. | ||
| Kundalini's one of the things, I believe, in this particular tattoo up my finger by Mark Mahoney of Shamrock Tattoos Los Angeles is the Kundalini Serpent as drawn by Carl Jung, one of the great early figures of psychoanalysis that the... | ||
| Fire in the belly, the animal energy of survival, the energy of creativity, the serpent energy, the reptile energy that's deep in our DNA when we were lizards, when we were creatures that crawled on our belly and lives in us still, can be coronated. | ||
| The serpent, the snake within can become crowned. | ||
| It can become royal. | ||
| Your animal desires can become royal. | ||
| And I think that the Kundalini, as I understand it, is about harnessing those energies, bringing it up. | ||
| I do like yoga, and I do have pretty tripped out experiences where I feel like, oh my God, I'm awake, but I am not me. | ||
| I am not my thoughts. | ||
| I feel this sense of transcendence. | ||
| And I only feel them retrospectively, you know, in the moment. | ||
| There's no me to register it. | ||
| It's only afterwards I think, wow, I lost myself there. | ||
| That was beautiful. | ||
| Do you feel weird when you finger people with that finger? | ||
| Because it seems like counterproductive. | ||
| It does. | ||
| Don't send that snake in. | ||
| LAUGHTER And to be honest, fingerings become a less significant part of my life. | ||
| Fingerings are very weird. | ||
| It seems so rude. | ||
| The expression, fingering. | ||
| It's a dirty business. | ||
| It's not functional. | ||
| There's no need for it in the adult world. | ||
| People like it. | ||
| A lot of people love it. | ||
| If people ask for it, I say do it. | ||
| Yeah, let's not deny people fingering. | ||
| Give them the snake. | ||
| Hand that reptile right over. | ||
| Open the chakras. | ||
| Is this the right moment to tell you I dreamt about you last night? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Knowing it's a risk always to tell someone that you dreamt about them, because once it's out there, it's out there. | ||
| So, and particularly, you know, check it out. | ||
| So, we were in this dream. | ||
| We were in some sort of semi-organic forest-type world, but they had an industrial component, somewhat labyrinthian. | ||
| Make of that what you will. | ||
| What's the industrial component? | ||
| You know, like the Ewoks, how they've made the most of the woods, you know, they've built little huts and stuff, and maybe they'd have little, I don't know if the Ewoks had another couple of thousand years, maybe they'd have built little Ewok trains. | ||
| I don't know what they would have done. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| They were lovely, cuddly little guys. | ||
| So anyway, there was a sort of small industrial component to it. | ||
| We were somewhere within that world. | ||
| And we were doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. | ||
| Let's use the word rolling. | ||
| Now, there was a sort of... | ||
| This is how we know it was a dream, because there was a moment where I had you in side control. | ||
| Now, from that moment, I moved towards a choke, and you did something where you arched and flipped over very acrobatically and very elegantly. | ||
| I don't even know if it's an actual move or not. | ||
| It was very, very beautiful, and I thought, ah, right, yeah, it's going quite well, this rolling, but it seems that Joe Rogan is better at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu than me. | ||
| But even in the dream world, that seemed like something I had an understanding of. | ||
| Well, jujitsu, what's brilliant about it and what's interesting about it is that the more time you put into it, the more you understand the moves, the more moves you acquire, the more moves you drill, the better you get at it. | ||
| It's literally like a language. | ||
| It is. | ||
| As your vocabulary increases and your ability to... | ||
| Like, even if your vocabulary is very broad, if you don't talk a lot, you'd probably have stumbling conversations, right? | ||
| But if you get used to talking all the time and you're having a conversation with someone and the words kind of flow. | ||
| But if you're talking to someone and they're weird and they bark out things and they talk over you, it's awkward and herky-jerky, much like jujitsu. | ||
| Jiu-jitsu is almost like a kinetic language. | ||
| Brilliant. | ||
| But there's a puzzle that's being solved, right? | ||
| And there's a problem, right? | ||
| The problem is this person is trying to apply all these different techniques, whether they're chokes or joint locks, on you. | ||
| And you are trying to both defend that and then put yours on them. | ||
| It's beautiful. | ||
| I've heard you say before, high-pressure problem-solving or something. | ||
| MMA, I always describe as high-level problem-solving with dire physical consequences. | ||
| Dire physical consequences. | ||
| Because MMA is the most high-level of all the problem-solving because the consequences are so grave. | ||
| Getting kicked in the head, getting elbowed and kneed. | ||
| Those things are so... | ||
| Jiu-jitsu, I think, is better for you, for sure, physically, because the consequences are not nearly as great. | ||
| If you get choked out, you're fine. | ||
| You get your arm, you know, you tap out. | ||
| As long as you're willing to tap out, you have to be willing to tap out, you'll get through it okay. | ||
| And if you get injured, you just get it fixed and take six months off, you'll be back. | ||
| I like that kinetic language thing you said. | ||
| That really makes sense to me, because I feel like when I'm doing it, I'm like a person that's going, Hello, could you show me the way to the train station? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hodor! | |
| Yeah, I'm so slow, like, and other people are like, well, sir, I'll point you in the right direction, you could go a thousand ways, why I couldn't do it! | ||
| Exactly! | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Do you watch Jiu-Jitsu at all online? | ||
| No, I don't watch loads of it. | ||
| Sometimes I look at videos of them Gracies or something and marvel at their effortless capacities and charisma. | ||
| You should watch, just because you're enjoying it, watch current top of the food chain jiu-jitsu guys like Hoffa Mendez, watch some Marcelo Garcia, watch some of the young guys coming up, Gary Tonin. | ||
| It's fascinating to watch them apply these new strategies to this old language, because that's really essentially what it is. | ||
| What you're seeing is these new approaches. | ||
| Jiu-jitsu is this never-ending thing. | ||
| I mean, it really just doesn't... | ||
| Like, boxing, although it's very complex and it doesn't seem as complex to someone on the outside, but when you watch a guy like Floyd Mayweather or Sugar Ray Leonard or someone who's just a master at their craft, you see how complex it truly is. | ||
| You see all the different nuances to it. | ||
| But it's still punching, right? | ||
| It's just still too punching. | ||
| Whereas jujitsu is this fucking tangle of bodies and possibilities and potential. | ||
| There's so many different ways to approach it. | ||
| There's people that are chokers, there's people that are arm lock guys, there's people that like to get you with their legs, they're triangle people, and they all have their own little way of approaching this conversation. | ||
| So you've learned a few sort of grammatical pathways through that kinetic language and think, right, I'm going to master that particular area. | ||
| So watching videos online is like watching a video of Alan Watts talking. | ||
| You go, oh, Okay. | ||
| Or Terence McKenna or Timothy Leary or whoever it is that you think is fascinating. | ||
| You hear them talk and it develops new pathways and possibilities for your own thinking. | ||
| It's one of the things I was going to say earlier. | ||
| When I was thinking while we were having this conversation about the future and about possibilities and about civilization, with all due respect, what you and I are doing, both of us, this is a very rudimentary way of trying to figure this out. | ||
| I think we're clubbing at it. | ||
| People are listening to this that will do a far better job than us in the future. | ||
| And I think that that's important. | ||
| And I think that we're doing our best. | ||
| We're taking our steps. | ||
| But when Henry Ford created the Model T, he didn't intend it to race against a LaFerrari. | ||
| He didn't know what the fuck a LaFerrari was. | ||
| But if he didn't make that Model T, the LaFerrari wouldn't have been possible. | ||
| But you can't go back and go, Henry Ford fucking sucked, dude. | ||
| Ride this piece of shit with its leaf springs and its stupid tires, you know, and then get in a 2017 Corvette ZR1 and you go, oh, okay, this is where it's at. | ||
| No, it's like all these things have to be in place for the next evolution of it to advance. | ||
| And I think... | ||
| What we're looking at today with our society is we're hoping that there's a solution out there. | ||
| But there's a solution, but it's goddamn slow, just like all evolution. | ||
| It's goddamn slow. | ||
| It's faster than single-celled organisms to a giraffe, but it's still fucking slow. | ||
| And we're a part of it. | ||
| All of us. | ||
| Not just you and I, but the people that are listening to this, and the people that are having their own podcasts, their own conversations, and doing TED Talks, and writing books. | ||
| We're all a part of thinking this out. | ||
| And these little pieces All fit together slowly but surely and create this mosaic of ideas and potential. | ||
| And what we're experiencing now is just what we can experience in this realm, like in this world, with this life that we are currently stuck in. | ||
| And then someone, 50 years from now, will be looking back at our stumbling conversation, trying to figure out a way to engineer society correctly, and they'll have a much better way of doing it. | ||
| I think that's a very beautiful, progressive argument. | ||
| I agree with much of what you've said, except to some degree, Joe, even things I've heard on this podcast, say when you have Graham Hancock, I particularly enjoyed it when you got the more sanctioned academic guy on there and Graham felt like, you know, you bastards, you're the people that say my shit ain't real. | ||
| Well, Graham's such a rebel, you know, it's fascinating to see these people, you know, attacking him for his ideas and his research, but now having less and less ground to stand on. | ||
| You know, Graham's ideas have been more proven in the last 10, 20 years than ever before. | ||
| They keep finding these new civilizations and finding this new evidence that human beings have existed on this continent far longer and that they're traveling all over the world for far longer and the civilization is probably quite a bit older than we thought. | ||
| That's right, and so we don't therefore know that this idea of continual progression, linear progression, is the only one. | ||
| It is possible that when it comes to the realm of consciousness, ancient people knew something that we are struggling to understand. | ||
| And I recognise that your Model T to Ferrari metaphor is a good one. | ||
| And actually, speaking to young people now, I do feel that they're kind of more switched on. | ||
| Jeez, look at a baby with an iPad. | ||
| It seems like they know already. | ||
| But what I feel is, and this might just be my personal narcissism, but I like to think of myself as the pinnacle of consciousness, that there isn't some other realm, even though, God, I want that DMT so bad. | ||
| Why are you afraid of that? | ||
| Because it's not an intoxicant. | ||
| Because I'm a 12-step guy and I'm a sobriety. | ||
| That's awful shit. | ||
| Stop all that 12-step. | ||
| You're not going to fall back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hold on, man. | |
| I've just read a fucking book about that. | ||
| That's a whole book. | ||
| You're not going to fuck that book. | ||
| You're not going to fall back into addiction. | ||
| It's a masterpiece. | ||
| This idea that you're going to fall apart and become a junkie again, it's not going to happen, man. | ||
| You're past that. | ||
| You can say that, Joe, but also an integral part of my recovery is the idea of surrender, and I think that's an integral part of a lot of spiritual belief. | ||
| It's an integral part of DMT. Yeah, I bet. | ||
| You have to surrender. | ||
| I feel you, man. | ||
| But to bypass the idea of my egoic authorship. | ||
| My egoic authority of, I am Russell and this is what I believe and this is what I'm gonna do. | ||
| I have surrendered to a way of life. | ||
| I have surrendered. | ||
| If I can find some people with 20, 30 years in recovery, clean time, that go, you're allowed to take DMT, I'm like, fucking hand me the pipe. | ||
| You don't need their advice or their sanctioning. | ||
| Well, in a way I do. | ||
| And by the way, you don't even need DMT. No. | ||
| You don't need it, but you seem like you want it. | ||
| Yeah, because I love the transcendent. | ||
| I love it because I've known and I've always known that this experience of being in a body in the conscious individualistic mind and remember I've taken loads of acid when I was a kid as well. | ||
| I know that this is not all of it. | ||
| This is just we're just reading one bandwidth of data with our sensory instruments that there is limitless consciousness and limitless reality. | ||
| Do you miss that acid experience? | ||
| Yes, I do. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| Is the concern that if you fell into it, like whether it was mushrooms or whatever it was, that if you fell into that experience again, that it would lead you in a downward spiral of addiction? | ||
| In a sense it's that. | ||
| In a sense it's that. | ||
| And the fact is as well that I've I've turned my life around, or my life has been turned around by this program, by this system. | ||
| And like, you know, the 12-step thing, it does have something in it that's quite, what do I want to say, like it's a little bit ascetic. | ||
| It is a little bit, you think like it's about denial, right? | ||
| But the reason that I've written this book is the interpretation of the 12 steps. | ||
| Excuse me. | ||
| It's because I think it's a masterpiece. | ||
| I think it's a masterpiece. | ||
| At a time when people are struggling with ideologies, at a time when people are struggling with religion because the bad things about religion are so obvious, the bigotry and the violence, those things are so clear to us, even though there are many, many beautiful things about Islam and many beautiful things about Christianity, our focus tends to turn on the bigotry and the hatred that is present or used out of those ideologies. | ||
| The 12-step is accessible to anybody. | ||
| And can be used as a code to unravel your connection to your own individual experience, your own self-centeredness, your own self-obsession. | ||
| Now this might not be a problem that you have. | ||
| This might be the line that separates us. | ||
| Me, I'm self-obsessed and I have to... | ||
| Firstly, this is how it works. | ||
| One, you admit there's something you want to change. | ||
| And that could be, I'm a smackhead. | ||
| Pretty obvious then. | ||
| Or you're a sex addict and that's a harder thing to admit because it can be rewarding if you're into adult human females in a culture like I was. | ||
| But if it ultimately leaves you lonely and unable to have a family and you feel like you're having a negative emotional effect on others and yourself, then you need to admit it's a problem. | ||
| The second thing is, could your life be better? | ||
| Of course it could. | ||
| And the third thing is being willing to accept help from others, and whether that's a community or from your understanding of a higher power. | ||
| Now, I happen to have, I believe in God in the sense that I believe that there's limitless consciousness, that my individual consciousness is connected to something that I can't understand, that no one can ever understand. | ||
| And again, as I've heard on one of my own podcasts, as a matter of fact, Yanis Varoufakis, who led this political movement in Greece, he said, we will never know whether consciousness preceded matter or matter preceded consciousness. | ||
| And in a way, it's irrelevant now because spirit, this quality, is here. | ||
| It's here and it's a big part of what human beings are. | ||
| And it isn't dealt with by consumerism and it isn't dealt with by contemporary politics. | ||
| People don't talk about love, kindness, togetherness, but these are the dominant things in our lives. | ||
| That's what's most important to me, the people that I love. | ||
| Like you said, the connections with the people you have that become your reality. | ||
| But a political system that reduces you to a component of an economic machine is never going to fulfil you. | ||
| So what What I now believe is that what I think this book can do is give people a guide to reaching their own spiritual truth because it's completely non-prescriptive. | ||
| It's like your version of God is going to be different from mine. | ||
| Your personal inventory that you draw up will reveal the truths of the way you see the world and the problems you've made. | ||
| The communities that you belong to will support you and you can change your patterns, you can make amends for your past, you can continue to stay present and a vital part of this program It's prayer and meditation, continued connection to the moments you don't lose yourself in your past or the projections of your future. | ||
| Now, whether or not that prohibits me from experimenting with psychedelics in the long term, you know, for me, the jury's out, because I do want to, and Bill Wilson, the guy who founded these fellowships, was fascinated by acid, and even when he was sober, I took a lot of acid, and I think that guy was a prophet. | ||
| He was on a mission. | ||
| He was trying to discover what is truth, what is reality. | ||
| That's not really discussed much in the 12-step program, though, is it? | ||
| Because I think it's, like most things, it becomes orthodox. | ||
| You know, like most religions, most systems, in the end, they become orthodox. | ||
| And it does such a good job at helping with its primary purpose of stopping people being alcoholics, stopping people being drug addicts. | ||
| That's such an amazing job, and it's doing that job, and it should continue to do that job. | ||
| What I feel like I wanted to do is extract the thing that I think is amazing about it, and say, oh my god, anyone could use this. | ||
| You hear this again and again from people that have got a long time clean in these programmes. | ||
| Everyone should work this programme. | ||
| Everyone should know what is the impact because your mum treated you that way or your dad did this or this sort of shit happened to you at school or you were abused. | ||
| You're still carrying it in your consciousness. | ||
| We touched on it a moment ago, Joe. | ||
| I say this, you don't choose between having a program and not having a program. | ||
| You choose between having a conscious program and an unconscious program. | ||
| If you're not working in a conscious program, you are being worked by your unconscious program. | ||
| This is what I do if a man makes me feel intimidated. | ||
| This is what I do if a woman makes me feel like I'm important. | ||
| This is what I do if I have a bad day. | ||
| Program, program, program. | ||
| The program of your class, the program of your school, your family, your culture, your time. | ||
| And this 12-step system can debug you from it, and it's not anybody else telling you what to do, because it's your own version of a higher power, it's your own version of a truth, except it's guided by the idea, become free, connect to who you really are, and become benevolent and loving to others. | ||
| You know what I think is really important that you said earlier about there's no political system or no politicians that are talking about love and values and caring and a sense of community. | ||
| I think that's the solution to what we're fearing about Brexit and Donald Trump and the rise of the Just this turning of the apple cart, this thing that people are seeing right now that they don't like, and the hateful rhetoric that people are most disturbed about, particularly with Brexit, right? | ||
| That's like the big thing that people are really disturbed about, is that it was fueled by this fear of the other. | ||
| Yes, that's right. | ||
| Isn't it possible that if people decide that that didn't work out, whether it's Brexit or Trump, that the response to that would be the rise of this ideology, the rise of someone who's going to talk about love and community, someone who's going to be genuine? | ||
| I mean, we don't have that person now, but it doesn't mean that that person can't exist. | ||
| And we've only had 45 different presidents. | ||
| We haven't had every single version of what's possible For a human being to be interfacing with the entire civilization of the United States of America. | ||
| I think it's pretty clear what that system delivers. | ||
| I think that those power systems are evolving in this direction. | ||
| I think that this is, if not the pinnacle, I think it's possible that there are better versions of a president, but I think that systems that are that centralized will always deliver inequality. | ||
| I think it's impossible for them not to, and I think that they should be evolved, altered, devolved in a sense, broken down. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But I do agree. | ||
| One of the things that I think is positive about cataclysm in politics, something like Brexit, like when Brexit happened and when Trump happened, I felt this sort of, I'm a bit, I'm a trickster, I'm a comic, I live in mischief, I live in the madness that's just behind reality. | ||
| And I thought, in a way, this is good, not for... | ||
| I know people's lives would be negatively effective, and we've seen the rise of divisive politics and quite old-fashioned ideas about ethno-nationalism and that kind of stuff. | ||
| But the good thing is, precisely as you say, Joe, that it does open the conversation up for someone to say, hold on a minute. | ||
| I think we've just left out love, kindness, unity, togetherness. | ||
| These things perhaps people will be open to. | ||
| Whereas I think if we'd stayed in the European Union, if we'd had Hillary Clinton as president, it's a bit more business as usual. | ||
| We're not staring into the face of madness. | ||
| We're not forced to address things are going wrong. | ||
| You know, I talked to my friend Sturgill. | ||
| Do you know Sturgill Simpson, the musician? | ||
| He is a brilliant musician. | ||
| And he sent me this text message of a conversation that he had with Dr. Rick Strassman. | ||
| Dr. Rick Strassman is the guy out of the University of New Mexico who ran those clinical tests on DMT. He wrote the book, DMT, The Spirit Molecule. | ||
| But he was quoting, when he was talking about the times that we live in and how fucked up everything is, he was quoting this... | ||
| I think it was a monk who said this, that we are constantly in a fight between 49.9% and 50.1% good and evil, and that they fluctuate back and forth, and that we feel like... | ||
| We are just like a speck of dust because we are both a speck of dust and the most important thing in the world. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Brilliant. | |
| Because the actions of one individual literally can influence the course of the human race, the course of our civilization. | ||
| And that this period of flux is what creates growth and change. | ||
| And the tipping of the apple cart, and the positive thing about having someone like Donald Trump, and I don't like Donald Trump more than I like Hillary Clinton. | ||
| I didn't like either one of them. | ||
| And what Hillary Clinton represented to me was this lifelong politician who didn't support gay marriage until 2013. What she was to me, what she represented to me, was an obvious magician. | ||
| Someone who I could see them pulling the cards out of their sleeve, and I'm supposed to not pay attention. | ||
| It's bullshit, right? | ||
| And what he represents is the ego, unfettered and flaring out with crazy hair and a fat belly and little hands and the whole deal. | ||
| It's just this chaos ego putting his name on buildings and that we're realizing that both of these are terrible options. | ||
| This system is a terrible system. | ||
| When we have what's essentially a popularity contest to see who controls nuclear weapons, it's insane. | ||
| It's literally insane and that the only way this is gonna change is by having this incredibly upsetting moment for everybody where they're looking around going what the fuck is going on and then new ideas get introduced and I don't know what Those new ideas are going to be or who's going to introduce them or how someone is going to come along within the next three years and Challenge this current system in a way that's appealing not just to the right and to the left But maybe in some | ||
| way to just human beings maybe in some way to human beings they realize like what's what's we're not going to get by in this world by enforcing right-wing politics and ideas and and and This sort of ideology or left-wing ideas in politics or ideology, but freedom and love and community. | ||
| And to be free, to practice your own level of conservatism on your own. | ||
| But the idea that I don't want any gays and I have a little tribe where no gays are allowed, that seems to me to be counterproductive. | ||
| And that seems to be counter-evolutionary. | ||
| You know, all of that idea. | ||
| There's any suppressing of people's individual right to express themselves. | ||
| Sure, I agree with almost everything you said there. | ||
| Since I've been involved in academia, do you know one of the main changes? | ||
| I make notes. | ||
| Ooh, good move. | ||
| Yeah, notes now. | ||
| I never would have dreamt of that when I was a younger man. | ||
| Notes are excellent. | ||
| Near the beginning, you talked about this idea, the percentile of good and evil, the good and evil with both of us. | ||
| Now, this great quote by the Russian author Solzhenitsyn, the line between good and evil runs not between creeds, religions, and empires, but through every human heart. | ||
| It's a nice quote for that, isn't it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I love that quote. | |
| Now, here's a personal theory that the reason that idolatry is bad, like that it comes, like, you know, most religions say don't worship individuals, is precisely because they understand that. | ||
| Don't make one individual have too much power. | ||
| Even now, historically, we know that Gandhi had skeletons in the closet. | ||
| Great, great Gandhi, this wonderful, great hero of bringing down the British Empire, bringing about freedom, you know. | ||
| Although, interestingly, Gandhi said, there's no point us kicking the British out of India and then replicating their systems. | ||
| This is a country of 70,000 villages. | ||
| These 70,000 villages should be autonomous, run on their own craft economies, trade with one another only in excess. | ||
| So he was trying to get important ideas out there. | ||
| But your great civil rights leaders, Malcolm X, These are men that had... | ||
| Malcolm X did prison time for unusual shit. | ||
| Dr. King, you know, extramarital stuff. | ||
| People are not perfect. | ||
| They're great heroes. | ||
| They're pioneers. | ||
| All people are people. | ||
| So we have to change this. | ||
| What I think is that we can't have a popularity contest to decide who's in charge of nuclear weapons. | ||
| These kind of systems need to be devolved... | ||
| Because it's mental. | ||
| I agree with your analysis of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump entirely. | ||
| I think that the reason that you have a mad option like Donald Trump being successful is because people had had enough of those cheap tricks and cards up sleeves and financial corruption. | ||
| So yeah, the apple cart's going over. | ||
| Chaos, too, I agree, is an important part of evolution. | ||
| We rest on chaos. | ||
| These patterns that we observe are just temporary. | ||
| Osho, the sort of cult leader and sort of poetic figure and leader, said, we talk about civilization as if it's this great thing. | ||
| What is civilization? | ||
| A clearing in the forest. | ||
| You know, for a moment we create our cities and the forest closes in and has it again. | ||
| Where all these ancient civilization that Graham Hancock talks about so lucidly, where are they now? | ||
| They're getting swallowed up by the Amazon. | ||
| And this great quote in Herman Melville's Moby Dick that says, you know, Noah's flood is still happening. | ||
| The majority of the earth is still flooded in water. | ||
| We are connected to these events. | ||
| We are out there in that chaos. | ||
| So I suppose... | ||
| Gosh, what I'm trying to say here, Joe, is that when we recognise that we're all flawed, that we're all fallible, we have to sort of think, can we build systems that tend towards the better aspects of our nature, not the worst aspects of our nature? | ||
| Can we recognise that any politician in a position of power for too long will make mistakes, will be flawed, that power has to be spread out as much as possible and as close to the people that it affects as is feasible? | ||
| Yeah, there's always going to be an issue with someone being able to acquire a hundred billion dollars like the Amazon Jeff Bezos guy like that that is going to corrupt people It's gonna it's like why would you first of all? | ||
| Why would you keep working? | ||
| Why would you want that amount of money and what's your plan? | ||
| What's your end game? | ||
| Are you trying to make the world a better place? | ||
| You're gonna try to acquire more brown boxes with your logo on them I mean, what do you what are you doing? | ||
| Where's it going? | ||
| And it seems to me that there's a game, right? | ||
| Everybody plays this game. | ||
| Some people play it for $10 an hour. | ||
| Some people play it for $10 billion a year. | ||
| And that once you make $10 billion a year, you want infinite growth. | ||
| You want $11 next year. | ||
| I would like to tell my stockholders that we have cause to celebrate, and we have a 20% increase in our bottom line this year, and everybody's looking good. | ||
| Let's go to Tahiti! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Woo! | |
| Right? | ||
| And then, like, what are you doing? | ||
| You can't, this is not gonna last. | ||
| You're not gonna live forever. | ||
| Like, what is the endgame? | ||
| Well, there's no endgame. | ||
| You're caught up in the current game. | ||
| In the current game, they are literally, capitalists are literally living in the moment. | ||
| Yeah, you're right. | ||
| They're just stockpiling shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They're not thinking about the overall objective, you know, sky down, looking from the heavens down on Earth. | ||
| Like, what the fuck are we doing? | ||
| They're not thinking about that. | ||
| Nor are they accepting that limitless growth is literally impossible, that we have finite resources on a finite planet. | ||
| Maybe for you, not for me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I got a yacht! | |
| I got a fucking island! | ||
| And I think it's also you get caught up in the momentum of whatever you're doing, you know? | ||
| Whatever you're doing, you just get caught up in it. | ||
| And, you know, if you're doing something and you're trying to get better at it, whether it's make better paintings or acquire more wealth. | ||
| These are quests, and you try to get better at these quests. | ||
| And that's a real issue with human beings. | ||
| And I think it has evolutionary roots. | ||
| I think it has roots in our need and desire to make better structures and shelters, to make better weapons, to make a better civilization so that we can stay alive longer, so that we can ensure that our children will be alive longer. | ||
| I think there's roots in that that are sort of... | ||
| Just sort of bastardized and twisted in this world of ideas where you're talking about like money and stocks and bonds and mutual funds and hedge funds. | ||
| It's like Jesus. | ||
| It's almost like we have these ancient instincts for constant improvement that just these human reward systems, they just get corrupted. | ||
| My theory on this idea is that we have biochemical drives, as you have just described, that compel us to move forward and to survive. | ||
| But we also have a culture that's continually stimulating fear and desire in order to cast us in a particular economic role, that of consumer. | ||
| And the reason that I believe that this program, and indeed this book, Are important is because it is a code to awakening, a code to becoming conscious. | ||
| And once you are conscious, you aren't beholden to the same systems. | ||
| So much of our behavior is a result of what we don't know about ourselves. | ||
| We are motivated. | ||
| We're trying to fulfill ourselves. | ||
| Because there is that biochemical imperative to get more, to survive, which as an addict I experience and have experienced in extreme. | ||
| Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex till there's no more. | ||
| Getting out of my head till it's inconceivable that I could do that anymore without killing myself. | ||
| Wanting status and power and prestige. | ||
| See, the reason that I think this system works outside of addiction as it's currently recognised is I've had to work it in all sorts of ways. | ||
| Once I got rid of drugs, I got obsessed with sex. | ||
| Once I get a hand on sex, I start being obsessed with what other people think of me. | ||
| Power, fame and money. | ||
| And what I'm continually recognising is none of these things can be fulfilling if you're not connected to who you really are. | ||
| That can give you a moment. | ||
| Then you're free to pursue Your art or your creation of structures in a conscious way. | ||
| You're not doing it because you feel unconsciously a bit worthless or a bit crap or like it might fulfill you. | ||
| It becomes pragmatic. | ||
| Do you also feel that like less concentrating on yourself and less being self-obsessed has allowed you to have more open communication with other people and more healthy Back and forth fulfilling communication with other people, which literally makes you happier. | ||
| Whereas you thought that being obsessed with yourself and being obsessed with success and adulation or sex or whatever those other things were that you were obsessed with was going to fulfill those needs and they weren't. | ||
| But that... | ||
| Community. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And bonding. | ||
| I mean, that's a big part of jujitsu as well, man. | ||
| Is it? | ||
| Yeah, big, big, big part of jujitsu. | ||
| It's like, we're a family. | ||
| When you're in there choking each other, as weird as that sounds, there's a bond between those people that are in those classes all over the world. | ||
| They recognize this community in that, as well as it being an extreme pursuit, as well as it being something that is developing your human potential. | ||
| You're also creating this really intense community of like-minded people. | ||
| Comedians feel that. | ||
| I definitely feel that with you. | ||
| I feel that with most comedians that come in here. | ||
| I know. | ||
| We are the same thing in a lot of ways. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| I think that's very important, and in a way, it's a return to what we were saying at the beginning of our conversation. | ||
| That there are certain anthropological requirements that, you know, you need to feel like you're part of a tribe. | ||
| You need to feel connected to one another. | ||
| And in my very limited pop-in-there-once-a-week experiences of BJJ, when I've, like, done classes with other people instead of just the one-on-one with the instructor, because he looks after me, do you know what I mean? | ||
| Delicate because he's brilliant but when it's with like other people that are a similar beginner level there's moments of real intensity within it but afterwards a sense of fraternity and love and closeness and like some stuff that I'm not familiar with not used to being close to men in that kind of way and it's amazing and beautiful and probably very very natural and important and a side of my life that I didn't explore because I did download the myth of our time that you are an individual and And you carve your own | ||
| way in this world. | ||
| And what's important is your power, your ability to affect change on others, your ability to sleep with women, the adulation of others. | ||
| And as I've got older and having experienced a degree of it, I recognize, ah, it's not real, it doesn't work. | ||
| Simple things, connection and community, have become more and more valuable to me. | ||
| But it's an ongoing thing because, as you said, the percentage is so close. | ||
| When I got involved recently in a campaign, I got involved in a campaign to save a housing estate a couple of years back. | ||
| These women asked me to help. | ||
| My estate's going to get turned into commercial flats. | ||
| We're all getting evicted. | ||
| We live here with our families. | ||
| I backed their campaign. | ||
| I got them on the TV. This corporate power backed down. | ||
| And it was amazing because like ordinary people, ordinary families beat, you know, it was like the rebels beating the empire. | ||
| It's like an amazing achievement of those people. | ||
| But my ego liked it. | ||
| I am the power. | ||
| I am the power. | ||
| Fed back into it, you know? | ||
| So, like, I see it as an ongoing thing, that my life now is how can I convey ideas that I think will help people in a way that is accessible? | ||
| How can I be useful? | ||
| And knowing that my role in this is to make sure that I don't slip into the egomania again, because I would love to be a cult leader on some days. | ||
| Thinking about it, though, and being aware of it is one of the most important steps, because we're all a work in progress. | ||
| I mean, there's no perfect person out there. | ||
| They don't exist, and we've already discussed this kind of ad nauseum. | ||
| I mean, I'm a work in progress. | ||
| You're a work in progress. | ||
| I never met anybody who wasn't, and I never met anybody who doesn't vacillate at least a little bit, where some days you're better than other days. | ||
| And those days where you're not as good, you feel uncomfortable about it, and those would lead to better days. | ||
| When you find yourself slipping, those slipping moments are actually critical, because they give you some self-awareness. | ||
| You realize, well, I fucked up, you know? | ||
| I yelled, fuck you out my car window when I shouldn't have, or whatever it was, you know? | ||
| Well, again, this system is what provides you a way out of that. | ||
| Like, you know, the recovery system, this 12-step system, is that you would not rely on one person to be perfect. | ||
| You recognise everyone is fallible, but together as a community, we can start to have better objectives. | ||
| And in an instance, like, I fuck up all the time, but the step nine and step ten are about... | ||
| Making amends when you make a mistake. | ||
| Now I literally do this. | ||
| If there's a moment where I shout fuck you at somebody, or I go shuffling back a day later, go listen to this thing where I said fuck you, that was wrong of me, that must have affected your feelings. | ||
| It's hard to find someone in traffic though, you gotta find that guy that you yell fuck you at. | ||
| Yeah, I'll try and do it real quick. | ||
| You've got to move fast. | ||
| And a lot of my fuckies, maybe it's on a phone call, maybe it's in a shop or whatever. | ||
| I mean, in a way, it's about, I suppose, becoming a benevolent force in this world. | ||
| If I tend towards that better 50.1% as opposed to the 49%, then I'm becoming a progressive agent or a benevolent agent as opposed to another person intoxicating the pool. | ||
| I think it's a microcosm of what we were talking about earlier about society itself, is that one day in the future, look, the way we behave today is light years past the way they behaved during the Inquisition. | ||
| I mean, in the future, I imagine, especially today, because people have so much access to the way other people behaved, we have so much data. | ||
| On just written words, listening to people talk in podcasts and speeches and watching videos, there's so much more data than there ever was available 100, 200, 1000 years ago, that in the future, we're going to have a much better way of communicating based on the learning and growth if we survive, right? | ||
| And I think that's the same thing with you and I and everybody listening to this as a human being. | ||
| If you continue to grow and you don't fall into all these traps, as time goes on, you will be a better version. | ||
| It's slow and it's fucking brutal and it's painful sometimes because it's just... | ||
| You feel like, God, why don't I have my shit together? | ||
| You know? | ||
| I mean, there's... | ||
| I was saying this about Donald Trump. | ||
| Someone was writing off Donald Trump. | ||
| He's never going to learn. | ||
| He's who he is. | ||
| I'm like, do you just stop learning when you're 70? | ||
| That's it. | ||
| It's over. | ||
| There's no more data getting in there. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Maybe Donald Trump could have a revelation one day. | ||
| Maybe Donald Trump could realize the error of his ways and the way he communicates. | ||
| He's causing more problems than he's fixing. | ||
| Maybe he'll be aware. | ||
| Not even to point him out because it's just... | ||
| He's just one of us, right? | ||
| To all of us. | ||
| That I think we're all slowly, brutally piecing this thing together and hopefully we're better at it than we were a week ago. | ||
| And hopefully we're better at it than we were six months ago. | ||
| And that it's going to continue. | ||
| Well, that feels like the general tendency in my own life. | ||
| Does it feel like the general tendency in your life? | ||
| Oh, absolutely. | ||
| And you know, one of the things that's helped tremendously is this podcast. | ||
| Being able to have these long three-hour conversations with people, you sit down and talk to them with no distractions, it doesn't exist anywhere else. | ||
| It doesn't exist in nature. | ||
| Someone said this to me. | ||
| They said, you know, you always say on your podcast that you just try to have a conversation. | ||
| He goes, but who the fuck has these kind of conversations? | ||
| Well, you just sit down and stare at each other and talk for hours at a time. | ||
| I'm like... | ||
| Yeah, you're right. | ||
| I mean, it is just a conversation still, but you're right is that it's sort of an accelerated form of it. | ||
| It's like if you, you know, you could kind of apply it to everything else. | ||
| If you spend enough time doing it, you know, you're just, you're going to get better at it and you're going to, a lot of the podcast is thinking, right? | ||
| And it's examining your own behavior and examining the way you interface with other people. | ||
| And I do more of that than I ever have before. | ||
| What do you want to change about yourself? | ||
| Just keep going the same way I'm going. | ||
| Get better at being nice, get better at being honest, get better at being loving. | ||
| I mean, it sounds all hokey, hippy bullshit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, it sounds good. | |
| This is what it is. | ||
| Yeah, I want to be nicer. | ||
| I want to have better relationships with my friends, better relationships with my family, better relationships with people that I don't even know that I meet. | ||
| I mean, I just want to interface with the world in a more positive way. | ||
| One of the most important things to realize is all the interactions that we have with each other are dependent upon two individuals or more, right? | ||
| But it's you and whoever you encounter. | ||
| And the way you encounter them is going to change the way they behave to you. | ||
| And everybody always wants to put it off on the person who behaved a certain way to them. | ||
| And in some ways, you're right. | ||
| But in other ways, your reaction is completely dependent. | ||
| On your own way of approaching it and your reaction may change the way they react. | ||
| You're completely right. | ||
| Like if throwing a ball against that brick wall, it will bounce back a certain way. | ||
| But if that became a softer surface or indeed a furry wall, to quote one of my own films, then it will bounce back in a different way. | ||
| So this is another thing that's in the program, the necessity for forgiveness. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Instead of blaming your past, blaming other people, you come to a point of forgiveness. | ||
| This creates the nexus for change. | ||
| As long as you're like, oh, that person felt me up when I was a kid, or my stepdad wasn't a loving figure in my life. | ||
| As long as I hold on to that belief, I'm trapped by it. | ||
| The minute I say... | ||
| I relinquish that now. | ||
| It's not happening anymore. | ||
| I'm willing to move forward. | ||
| That's another human being. | ||
| They were doing the best they could. | ||
| Suddenly you're liberated and your path changes. | ||
| Now, Joe, when you were saying just then, mate, about wanting to help more people, do you have any particular projects that are specifically about that? | ||
| Obviously, this podcast is a tool for education, but do you have anything that's specifically like, right, I'm going to do this thing, like, I don't know, taking martial arts into communities type stuff? | ||
| No. | ||
| Well, don't you think you'd be really good at that? | ||
| If I had more time. | ||
| I just don't... | ||
| I don't have enough time to do what I'm already doing. | ||
| You know, I mean, in terms of, like, just sheer numbers of hours in a day. | ||
| And I think, I can't just work. | ||
| Because if I just work, my work won't be any good. | ||
| I mean, you have to live. | ||
| It's one of the most important things about stand-up comedies. | ||
| You can't just do comedy. | ||
| You have to do other things. | ||
| And this is something that took me a long time to figure out. | ||
| Like, you can't... | ||
| Like, you ever see a lot of comics, they just start talking about, like, airline travel and hotel rooms and... | ||
| Because your life is airline travels. | ||
| That's your life. | ||
| And they can relate to it, so that's what they talk about. | ||
| Well, that to me is a failure of gathering research. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| I mean, it's life, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But your life has to, I think, in order to have a continual... | ||
| Body of work. | ||
| You can't just constantly talk about airline travel. | ||
| You've got to have input. | ||
| You've got to have input. | ||
| I'm very conscious that my thing at the beginning of this was about airline travel and the low-frequency anxiety I experienced in airline workers. | ||
| It certainly wasn't a comedic bit, but it was cultural analysis and did to a degree reveal that I'm in the middle of a press junket and that's my life at the moment. | ||
| I could just as easily have told you about bees. | ||
| I'm a beekeeper. | ||
| I've got bees, all right? | ||
| I swim in the river. | ||
| I have experiences. | ||
| Do you have bees? | ||
| Keep one bee and see if it works out. | ||
| Because if one bee doesn't work, you're like, fuck this bee, I'm free! | ||
| That's it, that's that responsibility to deal with. | ||
| 60,000 bees, I'm not taking their honey or anything like that. | ||
| But yeah, you're right, it's giving me insight. | ||
| What's your stand-up comedy then? | ||
| What is it currently, what are your sections, your beats? | ||
| What I'm doing right now is working towards a new Netflix special that I'm going to do in either March or April. | ||
| I have to figure it out. | ||
| I want to do it in Boston, and I don't want to do it when it's too cold. | ||
| Well, that 1,000-seater place in Boston, I think I've heard before. | ||
| Yeah, the Wilbur. | ||
| Yeah, the Wilbur. | ||
| Good place. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's an awesome little theater because it's 900 seats and it's really three 300-seat comedy clubs. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's three stacked on top of each other. | ||
| It's a great venue. | ||
| It's intimate. | ||
| So you're going to do an hour, so you'll probably do it over three nights. | ||
| What have you got, like, three 20-minute areas? | ||
| Do you know what your bits are? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What sort of areas, if you don't mind me? | ||
| I'm just curious. | ||
| Well, it's difficult to talk about it on the podcast without going into actual bits themselves. | ||
| Without doing it. | ||
| But can you tell about the area? | ||
| Alright, I'll tell you about my area to show you that sort of thing. | ||
| I talked about when I got heavily involved in politics and I found myself on TV shows and doing rants on telly and getting into political arguments. | ||
| Those are great, by the way. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I love doing those. | ||
| I love the one you did. | ||
| Was it Fox News that you did one with it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Where you're just breaking down, like, what are we doing here? | ||
| I love doing that. | ||
| I like that because there's a lot of ridicule available once you get into the analysis. | ||
| Also, you're a fucking runaway train. | ||
| Once you start a sentence and you start going, you're very fast and powerful. | ||
| And they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. | ||
| And there's not a lot of ums or uhs. | ||
| There's no room to interject. | ||
| And they're sitting there. | ||
| They're all, you know, first of all, they're a little starry-eyed in the first place. | ||
| And then second of all, the runaway trains happen. | ||
| They're like, uh, uh. | ||
| And then the ride's over. | ||
| Five minutes later, like tin cans are rolling down the aisle. | ||
| And they're like, okay. | ||
| It's a good technique because see there what we were saying about BJJ, like that language I don't know. | ||
| The other language, the language of comedy, it's a language I've worked on. | ||
| So one of my techniques is never create space. | ||
| Give them no room. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No space. | |
| That's Jiu Jitsu by the way. | ||
| That's Jiu Jitsu, no space. | ||
| Jiu Jitsu is no space. | ||
| Smush. | ||
| See, if you take the actual Jiu Jitsu out of it, I'm brilliant at Jiu Jitsu. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| It's just the actual physical contact holds, locks and chokes I struggle with. | ||
| Jiu Jitsu shows itself in all forms. | ||
| It's in everything. | ||
| That is true transcendence, to find one universal language, one universal myth, one mind, one consciousness, one love. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| Know the way broadly and you'll see it in all things. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Miyamoto Musashi. | ||
| That was a pretty good joke. | ||
| Book of Five Rings. | ||
| Just drop that in there, Chinese philosophy or something. | ||
| Japanese, it's my tattoo. | ||
| That's Musashi in my arm. | ||
| What is he, some sort of master? | ||
| He was a samurai. | ||
| He was a ronin. | ||
| He was during the time where these samurais roamed the earth and got into these one-on-one sword fights. | ||
| And he killed 62 men in one-on-one sword fights. | ||
| That's a life, isn't it? | ||
| That's a bad motherfucker. | ||
| He wrote an amazing book on strategy and life. | ||
| And one of the things that he emphasized in that book is that a real warrior must be balanced. | ||
| You must be good at art and calligraphy and poetry. | ||
| That's good. | ||
| You can't have any holes in your game. | ||
| You have to be a balanced person in order to survive in these intense moments of swords flying at your face. | ||
| I heard never teach a man to fight who doesn't know how to dance. | ||
| It's quite good, isn't it? | ||
| Ooh. | ||
| Me neither. | ||
| We'll fight, so pretty safe there. | ||
| But what I've done is I've found things, I've approached it from a different angle of pointing out the things that I did wrong in my political campaigning, where I floored and fell into my ego. | ||
| I do a good long bit about the birth of my daughter, purely from the perspective of watching a birth, like a commentary, a sports commentary. | ||
| Of the baby coming out. | ||
| I don't use the beat, the rhythms of sports commentary, but just actually describing what happened and what it did to my mind to be present at the birth of my daughter, to experience something that's so divine, but so animal, tearing flesh, roaring and all that stuff, but it's like God is in the house, you know. | ||
| So I do a bit on that, but every time I build it up into a point of divinity, I undercut it with, like, you know, how sort of mad it looks and the obvious stuff that I guess you'd go for. | ||
| Yeah, of course, yeah. | ||
| So I do that. | ||
| And the whole show, Rebirth, which I'm doing for Netflix, I believe, at some point soon, is called Rebirth. | ||
| And the point of it is how having the baby is meant I've been reborn to myself. | ||
| But a lot of it's about recognising the limits, because I think I got very narcissistically involved in politics, the same way I'm possibly getting narcissistically involved in spirituality right now. | ||
| Because I still have this yearning, this thing that wants to change other people's lives, change the world, in inverted commas. | ||
| You know, but like the comedy comes from recognizing my own flaws within that. | ||
| Do you do any sort of like really difficult exercise outside of jujitsu? | ||
| Do you ever get involved in, you know, any like yoga, like intense yoga, like long periods of time, like 90 minute hot yoga classes or running or anything where you like really have to push yourself physically? | ||
| Not really push. | ||
| I run, and I listen to your podcast sometimes, and Sam Harris' podcast sometimes, or whatever, and I do do yoga, but it's interesting that you specifically say push yourself to the limit. | ||
| Why do you think that's an important part of it? | ||
| I think there's a freeing aspect in pushing boundaries, and the physical boundaries, because it's exhausting, and not just exhausting physically, but mentally too, because there's a strain on your body's desire to quit. | ||
| Your mind's desire to seek comfort and that in pushing past that you find this freedom and you also find a vulnerability in who you are as a person. | ||
| It's very difficult to think greatly of yourself and to be egotistic when you know that you're so fucking tired you have to put your hands on your knees and you're heaving and you know and then you have to keep going and then don't be a pussy come on keep going and so you don't You realize who you are. | ||
| You feel yourself for who you really are as opposed to like adulation and looking at yourself as this thing that's above it all. | ||
| Like you realize the flaws in your mental process, the flaws in your physical abilities, and I think it's very humbling. | ||
| Yeah, right. | ||
| I can see that doing that in a bodily way would be useful, but to tell you the truth, the trouble for me, and I think a lot of addicts, is not that, like, of course there's self-obsession, but self-obsession isn't usually about, I'm fucking great. | ||
| It's normally, I'm worthless. | ||
| That's what it comes mostly from that position. | ||
| But it's also you're thinking about yourself all the time, right? | ||
| That is the problem. | ||
| That's what needs to be decoded. | ||
| And I think you're right that in physical exercise is really, really important. | ||
| The level to which I do it, I always feel better. | ||
| It's not my, like, I have to work even to bloody do it. | ||
| I'd rather spend all the time thinking or doing something like thinking and fucking. | ||
| But you know the thing, it is thinking. | ||
| That's what's confusing about it to people. | ||
| It's thinking, but it's thinking in a very different way. | ||
| There's thinking when your body's at rest and you're just using your mind, but there's also thinking when your mind is trying to manage your body under extreme stress, and that is also a mental exercise, and that's where people get it wrong. | ||
| People look at people that exercise, and especially people that work out really hard, and they think of them as meatheads or as someone who's base or primal and unevolved. | ||
| But I feel like there's a high level of mental evolution involved in being able to push yourself. | ||
| I really admire people that... | ||
| You'll see a lot of old people that are... | ||
| I see them in yoga class all the time that just never fucking stop. | ||
| They're in there and they don't have extreme physical abilities at all. | ||
| There's nothing athletic about them. | ||
| They're not strong. | ||
| But they're in there grinding. | ||
| And in doing so, you have to... | ||
| I mean, it can't... | ||
| Possibly be comfortable for them, right? | ||
| I'm looking at their saggy arms and their old legs. | ||
| This is not like some graceful person who's able to do this easily. | ||
| This is a person who's really struggling. | ||
| And in real struggle like that, there is a mental energy that's involved in forcing your body to go through these uncomfortable motions that I think is very freeing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think you're right what you said as well about balance and possibly what you're saying is that I'm a person who will benefit from more of that. | ||
| I see a guy in the gym once and he said, don't stop exercising. | ||
| He was old. | ||
| He was like in his 70s. | ||
| He goes, don't stop exercising. | ||
| Don't let your body find out that it's dying. | ||
| I just keep going. | ||
| That's a great way of putting it. | ||
| Don't let your body find out it's dying. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| Yeah, that's pretty cool, isn't it? | ||
| That's great. | ||
| Yeah, but I think that any form of... | ||
| I think that some variety of it. | ||
| I know you do the yoga, you do the Brazilian jiu-jitsu, you do the running. | ||
| I think it's very important to have different forms of exercise, different forms of mental activity, different forms of stimulation to live... | ||
| Because this is what this machine is designed to do. | ||
| And again, I... Return to the problem of capitalism is that it reduces you to your role within an economic system, as opposed to, why not get up, go for a run, do a bit of fishing, wander around, shoot some arrows, do whatever it is you're into, and spend some time meditating, spend some time exercising, spend your time in loving physical combat. | ||
| Well, the reason you can't is because there's no fucking time, because your job is to stand on the line, or in that... | ||
| Damn cheese grater cubicle. | ||
| Get grated. | ||
| Just get your soul ground down. | ||
| Yeah, that's the number one problem. | ||
| It's not necessary anymore. | ||
| It's not necessary. | ||
| It certainly isn't necessary enough to justify spending eight hours plus a day, five days a week, inside some sort of a box. | ||
| It's not. | ||
| A while ago, you said we are both a speck of dust and limitless consciousness, and this I agree with too. | ||
| Limitless expansion. | ||
| Limitless contraction possible within consciousness and what you said, one idea can change the world very quickly and that's why these systems regulate the kind of information that's available and the way that it's transmitted and also the fact that it exists within the same economic model. | ||
| As long as you're making money, as long as the money is getting directed in the right way, people will let us talk about real radical stuff. | ||
| They're quite comfortable. | ||
| It's possible for us to say, hey, you should break down the system, you should devolve. | ||
| I had this good conversation with this guy called Peter Tatchell. | ||
| He's an Australian gay rights activist who lives in the UK. And he said, like, when you're talking, like, this is with no disrespect for the great civil rights heroes and the people who have had civil rights struggles, but he said, in his experience as a gay rights activist, he goes, in the end, they will yield. | ||
| When it's to do with those things. | ||
| Race, sexuality. | ||
| People sort of know. | ||
| But when you... | ||
| The system will yield. | ||
| They'll go, yeah, alright. | ||
| Gay marriage, of course. | ||
| Alright, yeah, we can't fucking have slavery. | ||
| In the end, of course, these are monumental human struggles. | ||
| I'm not diminishing them. | ||
| But if you go near people's financial interests, you are fucked. | ||
| They'll get you there. | ||
| If you start saying, hey, why don't we not pay our mortgages? | ||
| Hey, everyone, let's not pay tax. | ||
| We need to stop using oil. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Fuck it, you're out! | ||
| That's it, sort of straight away. | ||
| So it's sort of like, this is what's interesting to me. | ||
| Like, these are the access points. | ||
| These are the points where there is vulnerability. | ||
| I'm not suggesting that we all organise ourselves into a radical crew of, you know, tax avoiders or mortgage renegers or whatever, but... | ||
| Well, but even though you and I are both doing well, like you said before, we're not in that weird, you know, upper stratosphere where you're living on the Hamptons and some fucking hundred acre ridiculous seaside mansion where you're... | ||
| Helicopter and private jet everywhere, and you're worth $100 million. | ||
| That's a weird world. | ||
| That's a weird world that very few people exist in. | ||
| And once they get there, they don't want to leave. | ||
| Once you start flying private everywhere, you don't want to leave. | ||
| Once you have a mansion, you don't want an apartment. | ||
| Once you have a Bentley, you don't want a Yugo. | ||
| It's like nobody wants to go down. | ||
| You want to keep moving up. | ||
| Yeah, and it's weird because those things happen, they tend to happen in sort of, if they happen in, if you've got that money through entertainment, maybe you're still sort of, you've got some connection to your roots and who you were. | ||
| Or art. | ||
| Yeah, right. | ||
| Entertainment and art, maybe, you know, you're still connected to the source. | ||
| But when it's like, you know, tech and finance, yeah, you've got a vested interest. | ||
| My friend Jason Siegel, the brilliant actor, goes, you know, you think all that stuff's about you, the jets and the billboards and stuff, but it's just the symptoms of other people making money out of you. | ||
| It's not about you at all and you're part of a machine. | ||
| You'll be processed. | ||
| You'll be kicked out. | ||
| It's not a carousel. | ||
| It's a train. | ||
| It will run out of energy and as soon as you're not providing, you're out. | ||
| And I was doing some promo for this book that I'm still trying to subtly, occasionally promote in this freewheeling conversation at Facebook. | ||
| And I thought, fuck me, man. | ||
| This place didn't exist like 15 years ago. | ||
| And look at it now. | ||
| It is a monolith. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Google. | |
| These are the kingdoms now. | ||
| Google's gigantic. | ||
| Amazon. | ||
| All these little ideas that were nowhere. | ||
| Google makes their own phones. | ||
| Fucking hell. | ||
| They just released the newest Google Pixel 2 phone. | ||
| I mean, they make these incredible devices that you can interface into the Google world, and they're optimized for their whole system. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| You know, David Foster Wallace, your great American author, in his book Infinite Jest, postulated a world where all stadiums were named after brands, where countries and regions were named after brands, and it's sort of happening. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's happening. | |
| It's happening. | ||
| The flags of our nations are merely a veil over the true corporate interests. | ||
| The British Empire was always about East India trade and all that kind of crap, and this country now is just a veil over true power. | ||
| I'm going to the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas this weekend for the UFC. Oh yeah, the T-Mobile Arena. | ||
| The T-Mobile Arena. | ||
| That's what it's called now. | ||
| At first, when they started to name football stadiums in our country, you still remembered the name of what it used to be before sponsorship, but we start to forget that it was ever anything else. | ||
| We start to forget we were once warriors, we were once connected to the earth, our gods were once eagles and stags, now our gods are the T-Mobile Arena! | ||
| Take back your freedom! | ||
| It's not the Coliseum, it's the Sony Center. | ||
| Right, where is he? | ||
| The Christians are being thrown to the lions at the Sony Center at 3pm. | ||
| Yeah, wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, well, I mean, you know, they want people to use T-Mobile. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| Put your mind to use it. | ||
| Well, just ask me. | ||
| Give me a deal. | ||
| I'll use it. | ||
| Don't take away my culture. | ||
| I like what you're saying. | ||
| Keep talking. | ||
| Unlimited data. | ||
| It's nice. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Hey, so I learned an important lesson off you, and this was it. | ||
| After I came on last time, you were doing a very big UFC event in, I think, Vegas, and my mates from the gym that I go to, the Genesis Gym, what I've already mentioned, they were coming over for a stag do. | ||
| They didn't ask me, but I thought, oh, listen, I could further inveigle myself into this little crew of martial artists by hooking them up with Joe Rogan tickets. | ||
| And I thought, yeah, Yeah, I'll do that, like ever the politician. | ||
| So I text you, Joe, you hook up my mates with this thing. | ||
| And you went, oh, okay, who are these people? | ||
| Is it important to you? | ||
| And I took a moment, I thought, they are important, I like them, but what's my motivations here? | ||
| They're like, this is a good thing. | ||
| I took a moment to reflect on it. | ||
| I thought, shall I do this? | ||
| Shall I come up with these tickets? | ||
| You know, maybe I'm doing this for the wrong reasons. | ||
| I took a moment of respite, I reflected, I didn't do it. | ||
| It was a little lesson. | ||
| It was a little lesson because you gave me pause for respite. | ||
| I think you were doing a stand-up show, actually, and they already had tickets for your stand-up. | ||
| That's what it was. | ||
| And I was like, can you give me backstage passes? | ||
| And your answer wasn't an immediate bend over, yes, of course, I'll do what you want, Mr. Brand. | ||
| It was a bit more questioning. | ||
| Like, well, really? | ||
| Who are these guys? | ||
| Well, the reason why I ask, I always ask, is because sometimes people say, look, you don't have to do this, but they've been bothering me about it. | ||
| It's a guy I work with. | ||
| I'm like, whew. | ||
| Or people have said, hey, would you do this? | ||
| It's my best friend. | ||
| I love this guy. | ||
| And then I go, okay, yeah. | ||
| Ah, so you give people a little junction because some of those people are a pain in the ass. | ||
| Well, it's because somebody might be a pain in the ass to you and you might just be giving into it. | ||
| And I didn't know you as well, you know, so I'm like, well, I mean, and I really admired the way you handled it. | ||
| You know, I said, do you want to give my number? | ||
| That was the thing. | ||
| And you went, No. | ||
| No, I don't think I'll give him your number. | ||
| It seemed like I might be overkilling it. | ||
| It made me look at my own motivations. | ||
| And I suppose that's a, you know, anything that... | ||
| Carl Jung, the great Carl Jung, the mystic and one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis said, anything that crosses your path that you didn't intend for, that is God, in inverted commas, an opportunity to learn. | ||
| So this is how I try to approach my life now. | ||
| It's like, hmm, I didn't plan for that to happen. | ||
| What's the lesson here? | ||
| What can I learn from this situation? | ||
| So like, you know, I'm sure them guys would have been fantastic, although they did later show me videos of what went on, and I think it was a stag do, and they were carrying on like idiots, crawling up and down corridors, drunk out of their minds, so perhaps it was for the best. | ||
| But generally, I'm sure that nothing would have gone wrong. | ||
| But when I look at my own motivation, ah, what are you doing here? | ||
| Why do you want to do this? | ||
| You're doing it a little bit because you want to look cool? | ||
| Don't bother doing that then. | ||
| You know, that's a small evolution in the way that I walk the path. | ||
| A small amendment. | ||
| Down the line maybe I will ask again, yeah, actually, Joe, could you sort these guys out with tickets for this or that? | ||
| But I'll do it with the right motivation, the right connection. | ||
| Now this, again, as I keep saying, this journey from unconsciousness to consciousness is what has been the myth of my own life. | ||
| I think we have to, whether or not we're in just limitless chaos in an ever-expanding universe without meaning, without point, without love, you know, maybe that is the way, you know, that A lot of people see the world that way. | ||
| It's not how I see the world. | ||
| I see there as being meaning and everything, poetry and everything, beauty and everything. | ||
| And certainly in my own life, I like to find the story. | ||
| What am I meant to learn here? | ||
| What am I meant to do here? | ||
| What did I learn from being a hedonist? | ||
| What did I learn from being promiscuous, from being a drug addict? | ||
| And it all seems to make a kind of sense. | ||
| It all seems to be guiding me towards something. | ||
| And that thing does seem to be love, service, kindness, awareness, not trying to manipulate people, not trying to get shit off people all the time. | ||
| It's a good journey. | ||
| And I feel like it's sad if people don't get to do their own version of that journey because they're on the cheese grater or because they're pursuing some myth, some code from their childhood that they're not good enough or that they don't deserve to be happy or they can't achieve anything. | ||
| Whatever rung they're caught on. | ||
| Whether it's the rung of booze or drugs or the rung of staring at social media the whole time or the rung of hatred of others or the rung of being caught in bad relationships in a crap job. | ||
| For me, I think that we can accelerate that evolution. | ||
| I think that there are codes that can slip through in the same way that an Amazon can spring up in 15 years and be this great economic monolith. | ||
| New ideas, new ideas. | ||
| Faiths, new ideologies can slip into the net. | ||
| Particularly now we have this access to technology. | ||
| You've slipped past the gatekeepers. | ||
| You have your own media empire out of nothing. | ||
| You've limited it because it's built around you as an individual and your perspective, etc. | ||
| But there are ways now of getting information out there that excites me. | ||
| Yeah, and they should. | ||
| You know, and what we were talking about, too, about being a hedonist and doing things wrong and fucking up and what can you learn from them. | ||
| I think every time you fuck something up and every time you do something badly, there's a lesson that you get out of the weird feelings of failure, of discontent, and those lessons are extremely valuable. | ||
| You know, a person who doesn't make mistakes and a person who doesn't do anything wrong, they never learn shit. | ||
| You don't learn anything from doing everything perfectly every time. | ||
| And the more bold and brash you are, and the more you take chances, and the more you put yourself into these weird positions, even in these, like, you know, I'm sure when you were a sex addict, and you're in this hedonistic, you know, whirlwind experience, you're still, you're taking in all this data, and you're taking all this, and the hollow feeling that you had that you didn't like it is what propelled you to your new stage of consciousness once you emerged from it. | ||
| Yeah, that's right. | ||
| Every so often, like, because it's, like, pleasure-laden, an orgy, I mean, that's the point of it, I mean, there's flesh everywhere, there's bits of it that are brilliant, I was noting, hold on a minute, this isn't working, and this is a thing that I thought would really, really work. | ||
| You know, like, sometimes, the great gift of promiscuity is you get to experience all the intimacy with all of these strangers, and it seems exciting, and the type of sexuality that I've always had is more about worship than any kind of domination. | ||
| I adore. | ||
| I adore. | ||
| You know, so it's not about, like, I want to control you. | ||
| So, like, but, like, you know, so all these wonderful experiences and encounters, but within it, this kind of ongoing seam of loneliness, unignorable, and also, this is the thing, when you get the things your culture tells you you should be doing and you experience them, now you know. | ||
| Now you know you can stop chasing the carrot because you've had a bite out of it and it's like, hold on a minute, it's bullshit. | ||
| Like, you know, It's a hard one to learn because anything that's got an orgasm at the end of it, there's a degree of pleasure to be had. | ||
| But it takes a while to recognise the emotional cost on me, the spiritual cost on other people, the fact that it's preventing me from becoming a father, from becoming a husband, from settling, from becoming rooted, from becoming actually whole, from becoming a man, from becoming connected. | ||
| It takes a while to spot that. | ||
| I think a lot of people don't get the opportunity to break out that pattern. | ||
| I would never have spotted it had I not first been a heroin addict and gone, hold on a minute, you're doing that thing again. | ||
| Same with fame and celebrity. | ||
| Well, toxic. | ||
| Well, toxic. | ||
| Exciting and brilliant. | ||
| And loads of lovely people in there. | ||
| And I still, like, you know, I might make another film. | ||
| I don't know what will happen. | ||
| But, like, it's... | ||
| Because I'd had the template and the experiences of, oh, this is addiction. | ||
| You're expecting this thing to make you feel better. | ||
| Now what's happening is I am... | ||
| As a baseline, disabused of the idea that the material world will give me anything, that it will ever fulfil me, that I am responsible for my own connection, and that my role here is to serve other people and help them. | ||
| If my objective in life is, what can I do to augment myself, to make myself better? | ||
| Even self-improvement, I agree with all of that. | ||
| I agree with it entirely. | ||
| It's a brilliant, brilliant thing, and it's necessary, I think. | ||
| But, like... | ||
| In order that I may be of service to others rather than, because then I'll just look great in this armchair. | ||
| Yeah, the self-improvement is about being better at what fulfills you the most, which is almost always establishing community. | ||
| So don't you think then, Joe, that we could do something that's a bit more explicitly that, You already have this huge community around the Joe Rogan experience. | ||
| Is there something in it that would bother you? | ||
| Couldn't there be something that wouldn't cost you that much that might be sort of wonderful? | ||
| Do these things not float into your world? | ||
| Aren't people going, you're an influential figure, you're unusual. | ||
| You have this strong male energy, but you're very open to learning. | ||
| And you're very open to... | ||
| And you're broad-minded. | ||
| I agree with you. | ||
| Left-wing categories, right-wing categories. | ||
| That shit's all got to go. | ||
| But I think that there's a real opportunity for you to have a huge impact on communities that are very neglected. | ||
| Young males, for example, not knowing how to use their bodies. | ||
| Young males that violence is becoming a problem for. | ||
| There's not that many people that are in... | ||
| As powerful position as you to sort of direct them in a different way. | ||
| Is that something that you know about? | ||
| Is that something that's come into your orbit? | ||
| Well, you're doing it right now. | ||
| I mean you're doing it right now by communicating in a way that you're going to get to way more people than you're going to do it in a physical sense. | ||
| You know, by spreading these ideas and communicating online in a podcast and allowing people to download it for free and getting into your phone and your head and, you know, you're jogging and you're driving your car, you're getting ideas into way more people's heads than you ever would by physically being there. | ||
| Physically being there is very retro. | ||
| You know? | ||
| It really is. | ||
| I mean, you can only be there for so many people. | ||
| What are you going to do? | ||
| I mean, I do comedy shows for a lot of people, but I mean, physically being there and doing something and organizing some sort of thing, that's where you venture into some weird cult thing. | ||
| Don't go into the cult thing. | ||
| That's where shit gets slippery. | ||
| Everybody's covered in baby oil and you're just fucking trying to grip nothing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| We're in a jungle now. | ||
| Blood everywhere. | ||
| Mass suicides. | ||
| No, you're right. | ||
| Maybe you're right, Joe, but I think it's an interesting thing to observe. | ||
| I do think that's right, and I do meet a lot of people in England that go, yeah, yeah, I heard you on Joe Rogan, or I listen to Joe Rogan. | ||
| People talk about it, and it's interesting because it's accessing information that people would not otherwise. | ||
| People come for the fight stuff or come for the entertainers, but then they're getting hit with Graham Hancock or some neurologist or whatever that you're getting, or some behaviouralist or whatever. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's a good thing. | ||
| Well, I think the wide variety of guests is very important, too. | ||
| For me, personally, because otherwise I'd get bored. | ||
| If I only talked to comedians or only talked to MMA fighters or whatever, or even only talked to scientists, I'd get bored. | ||
| You know, I like talking to a bunch of different people. | ||
| You know, I mean, I didn't plan any of this, so the way that sort of un... | ||
| Unfolded is is been pretty organic to use an overused word Tell me please just briefly is there something about the phenomena of Conor McGregor that is unique? | ||
| What is it that is happening? | ||
| What has happened with him? | ||
| What does he mean? | ||
| What does he mean into UFC? What happens to him now that our post Mayweather fight or What is he an example of? | ||
| Is he sort of an outlier, a pioneer? | ||
| How will he be regarded? | ||
| What does he represent? | ||
| Is he an entertainment product? | ||
| Is he a great athlete? | ||
| Is he a combination of all those things? | ||
| What does he mean for the sport of UFC? And what do you think will happen in mixed martial arts and boxing? | ||
| Do you think we'll see more of those kind of events? | ||
| Well, you're never going to see another one like him, right? | ||
| Because he's a unique person. | ||
| He's literally being himself. | ||
| You're going to see a bunch of people try to mimic that. | ||
| And in a sense, he sort of mimicked the people that came before him, like the Chael Sonnens and the Muhammad Ali's and the people that were really good at talking shit. | ||
| The difference is... | ||
| That what Conor's been able to do, he's the first guy in the UFC that's been able to do that that's had spectacular results. | ||
| And also showed his real character in losing and then coming back and winning very quickly afterwards with the same guy. | ||
| Like the Nate Diaz fight. | ||
| I think that was a very important character-exposing fight because he lost a fight, he got humbled, and then he jumped right back on the horse and then wound up winning, and then he comes back and blows Eddie Alvarez out of the water to become the first two-division concurrent champion in the sport. | ||
| I think he's a unique guy. | ||
| It's almost like we don't have a word strong enough. | ||
| Unique is not really a strong enough word. | ||
| So it is founded on ability in a very basic way. | ||
| He's got brilliant ability. | ||
| Brilliant ability. | ||
| Massive... | ||
| He's incredibly smart. | ||
| And very... | ||
| He's very innovative in his techniques and his approaches. | ||
| And I think... | ||
| He has phenomenal coaching as well. | ||
| All that animal movement stuff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| What the fuck is that walk? | ||
| Well, he's just getting... | ||
| What is that? | ||
| That thing that he does where he throws his arms around. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| Who does that? | ||
| What does it mean? | ||
| It doesn't mean anything. | ||
| It just blows my mind. | ||
| Being loose. | ||
| I've started doing it. | ||
| Peacocking a little bit too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
On me own. | |
| I do it when I come out on stage sometimes. | ||
| It's such an amazing thing to do with the body. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Peacocking, you say. | ||
| He's peacocking a little. | ||
| Because it looks like, oh my god, this guy's fucking out there. | ||
| Look at what he's doing. | ||
| He's letting the other guy know that he's so loose he can kind of strut with his arms like rubber bands flopping around. | ||
| But, I mean, he's a combination of a lot of things. | ||
| He has a brilliant team. | ||
| John Cavanaugh, his coach, is a brilliant coach. | ||
| He's got amazing jujitsu coaching and striking coaching in his mind. | ||
| He understands how to apply these things. | ||
| And his ability to perform under pressure is fantastic. | ||
| You saw that in the Mayweather fight. | ||
| I mean, even though he lost that fight, he hit Mayweather with some pretty good shots. | ||
| And he won the first three rounds against the greatest boxer of all time. | ||
| So that's extraordinary. | ||
| Extraordinary. | ||
| I mean, you can say easily that Mayweather was taking those rounds off, and I agree he was. | ||
| And you could say that Mayweather was bringing him to deep water because he knew he would exhaust him, because he didn't give him enough time to train for it, because he really only gave him two months. | ||
| It was very brilliant on Mayweather's part. | ||
| He knew that he wouldn't be efficient, he would tire, all those... | ||
| Kinetic, big, explosive movements that Conor likes to do. | ||
| They're very taxing. | ||
| And he knew that he was not going to have the efficiency to go 12 hard rounds with a master defensive fighter like Mayweather. | ||
| And Mayweather was right. | ||
| But he didn't want to get hit with that uppercut that he got cracked with in the first round. | ||
| He didn't want to... | ||
| Conor's movement was very unusual. | ||
| It took Floyd a while to decipher it. | ||
| Way better for him if he just blew Conor out of the water from one round on and just completely outclassed him. | ||
| But he didn't. | ||
| And one of the reasons why he didn't is because Conor's an extraordinary person. | ||
| He has greatness. | ||
| Yes, he has greatness. | ||
| I mean, he didn't really have the proper opportunity. | ||
| In only being able to prepare for two months and only having this one professional boxing match, there was a lot of things stacked against him. | ||
| And yet, I feel, although he clearly lost, he performed admirably. | ||
| I don't think it hurts his stock in any way. | ||
| I think it elevates him. | ||
| And I think his next fight in the UFC, whoever it will be, will be probably the biggest fight in UFC history. | ||
| If they can do it correctly, depending upon who it is. | ||
| Especially if it's Nate Diaz. | ||
| Because Nate Diaz is a huge name. | ||
| And if Nate Diaz and him decide to do it one more time, I think that would be the biggest fight ever in the history of the sport. | ||
| Because I think Conor has eclipsed the sport, largely. | ||
| And maybe for now, maybe someone else will come along in the next year or two that does it. | ||
| I mean, look, Conor's only been around for a few years. | ||
| I tweeted to him in 2013 or 14, I forget what it was, when he had won a big fight in the UK. And I said, you know, congratulations on an amazing performance. | ||
| I really hope to see you in the UFC someday. | ||
| That was like... | ||
| Four years ago. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| At the most. | ||
| So in four years, he's gone from being this unknown fighter that only the really hardcore fanatics, like myself, knew about, to him being this worldwide phenomenon. | ||
| He's the biggest combat sport athlete, not just of today, ever. | ||
| There's no one like him. | ||
| No one like him. | ||
| No one has the kind of popularity that he has. | ||
| I mean, this fucking guy has thousands and thousands of people fly from Ireland to Vegas every time he fights. | ||
| The weigh-ins, it seems like you're in Dublin. | ||
| I mean, it's fucking crazy, man. | ||
| When you look out, when I interview him at the weigh-ins, In the UFC in Vegas, you look out, you see nothing but Irish flags. | ||
| You see people screaming and cheering and singing. | ||
| Mandalay Bay during the fucking Floyd Mayweather fight, which is not even the venue where the fight was being held, Mandalay Bay was packed bumper to bumper with Irishmen walking down the hallway cheering and singing songs in sync. | ||
| It was insane. | ||
| Brilliant. | ||
| There's no one like him in that regard. | ||
| So first of all, you have to have the greatness. | ||
| Without the greatness, who gives a fuck? | ||
| It's just another person. | ||
| Like a Dennis Hopper said about Van Gogh, you know, like, you know, who gives a fuck if you cut your ear off if your paintings are shit? | ||
| Paintings have got to be good. | ||
| So his game is good. | ||
| But then, like, there are Often great geniuses in sport, but to have that, like you say, he used romantic ideas of Ireland and his own Irishness, that became an important part of his perception, but it's obviously resonating in a very, very powerful way to have that kind of devotion. | ||
| Well, Ireland's very important. | ||
| Ireland's a very important part of the equation as well, because their appreciation and love and support of him is unprecedented. | ||
| I mean, I've seen Brazilian fans that love Jose Aldo, and I've seen Brazilian fans that love Anderson Silva, and they're worshipped by their countrymen. | ||
| But it pales in comparison to the amount of love that Conor McGregor gets. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| Their myth aligns with his myth. | ||
| The myth of the Irish people as being oppressed by British colonialism and having to fight for their freedom. | ||
| It resonates with what this man represents. | ||
| And perhaps this is always what happens with figures of greatness, whether it's within the realm of sport or within the realm of politics. | ||
| Temporarily, a person sort of Captures a particular mood, a particular energy. | ||
| And this is what I think, again, is to do with unconsciousness. | ||
| I don't think people are aware of these kind of feelings. | ||
| I think it's stimulated on a level that's not about thought. | ||
| This is one of the things I'm very interested in. | ||
| What lies beyond the rational? | ||
| We can equate, we can work out, we can judge, but there seems to be some ingredient, even in Conor McGregor, that you can't quite pin down. | ||
| Yes, there's the greatness as a boxer, yes, the Irish people, but there's also some flavour is being caught. | ||
| I wonder if you can ever pre-empt or understand these things. | ||
| I wonder if you can ever drill down. | ||
| But the work of Joseph Campbell, the work of Carl Jung, the work of these people that say, there are unconscious archetypes, there are unconscious themes, there are stories that are running below the surface, patterns, coordinates that can be connected to... | ||
| Some people, well, notably the profession of marketing, know how to harness these energies. | ||
| If you have enough people feeling they're not good enough, they will spend money trying to feel better, whether it's the purchase of a car or a coffee or whatever it is. | ||
| One of the key ingredients is make people feel not good enough. | ||
| If you can re-harness and redirect people's sexual energy so that their sexual energy is directed at products and consumerism, then you will sell your product. | ||
| But for me it seems like... | ||
| Such a shame to waste this force, to waste this knowledge, to waste this energy just to turn people into consumers, just to turn everything on this planet into a commodity, when what we could be doing is using this energy to imagine new worlds, to imagine new systems, to use our greatness, to use our greatness to, I don't know, Joe, love one another, to create new tribes. | ||
| I mean, I don't know if you, boy, you tied a lot of things together there. | ||
| It was good, wasn't it? | ||
| It was a pretty good ranch. | ||
| That coffee's really kicked in, actually. | ||
| That's caveman coffee. | ||
| No joke, man. | ||
| It's serious. | ||
| I think I could do another one. | ||
| I think I can fucking handle it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| It's 250 milligrams. | ||
| I'll mainline this shit. | ||
| 270. I'll pour it in my eye. | ||
| You want another one? | ||
| I do like it, Joe. | ||
| But I do have a terrible drug problem. | ||
| Caffeine is a drug. | ||
| Caffeine is a drug. | ||
| I mean, what you're saying about Connor is, I think, undeniable. | ||
| He's a hero. | ||
| And he dares to be great. | ||
| I mean, he dares to be great in a way that very few people do. | ||
| And he stands in front of the opponent and looks at the entire crowd and goes... | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And goes like that and puts his hands up like that. | ||
| I mean, he literally is like some archetypal fixture from the past. | ||
| Beautiful! | ||
| And he's also, by doing that, he's letting the opponent realize you're in there with greatness. | ||
| You're in there with someone who's incredibly comfortable in the moment and someone who truly believes that he's great. | ||
| And the results that he's had Like, you can't deny that they have a factor in his future success and in the way people love him. | ||
| The way he knocked out Aldo with one punch to win the title. | ||
| I mean, this giant build-up over this long period of time, and then he just fucking starches him with one shot, 13 seconds of the fight. | ||
| And the deafening roar of the Irish in that arena when that happened, it was fucking insane. | ||
| He's like a hero, like a mythical creature. | ||
| I suppose the role of the hero is to embody and represent something... | ||
| To inspire. | ||
| To inspire the crowd. | ||
| To put breath into. | ||
| All those people, those 15,000 plus people that saw that fight, who knows how much energy that gave them to then go forth and pursue their own dreams. | ||
| Because that's a big part of what heroes represent. | ||
| What a big part of someone who's accomplishing anything spectacular. | ||
| It's not just that people get to watch it and get this thrill of watching this experience, but also that you get energized to go and pursue your own ideas. | ||
| Yes, this is true. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| But I think an integral component of the mythic figure of the hero is sacrifice. | ||
| I'm in no position of bloody world judge Conor McGregor at any stage from any angle because people that are brave enough to do that is fucking unbelievable. | ||
| But what I've felt, while it resonates with us when someone is willing to sacrifice themselves, is because it temporarily makes us recognise, when someone's willing to die for what they believe in, whether that is these civil rights leaders we mentioned before, Malcolm X knew he was going to die for doing that, and he did it anyway. | ||
| Gandhi had a good sense that he was going to die, he did it anyway, because what he believed in was more important than what he was as an individual. | ||
| And I think that when that happens, it reminds us, ah, there's something, like you say, inspire. | ||
| It puts breath into us. | ||
| It reminds us we have the capacity for greatness, and we are not just contained by our body. | ||
| We are these streams of energy. | ||
| In that moment, perhaps there is no disconnection between Conor McGregor and that crowd. | ||
| There is a oneness, a purpose in that single punch, punching for all of them in that moment. | ||
| The only thing that saddens me is that it is ultimately, maybe not ultimately, but at least seemingly housed by an economic idea. | ||
| That's the ultimate thing that sort of contains it. | ||
| Do you know what I mean? | ||
| How so? | ||
| You've got to pay money to go there. | ||
| Ultimately, it's a commodified thing. | ||
| Conor McGregor will be a commodity. | ||
| Yeah, but that also energizes it all. | ||
| That makes people aware of the stakes that are at hand, that makes people aware of the magnitude of the event. | ||
| If you can pack 22,000 people into an arena like that, it makes people aware of the magnitude of it all. | ||
| If it just happens on a soccer field and no one's watching, it's not the same thing. | ||
| No, you're quite right. | ||
| I'm not criticising the crowd, because the crowd is important. | ||
| That's what it's doing. | ||
| It's representing something bigger. | ||
| But I feel like it's a shame. | ||
| Say when you take it into the arts, because there's more sensitivity, it's more cerebral, and it's less embodied. | ||
| Kurt Cobain is like someone in the Matrix waking up in their pod. | ||
| He woke up in the pod and thought, oh, fuck. | ||
| He knew he was a genius. | ||
| He knew that he was connecting with people. | ||
| He knew he was representing something. | ||
| And also, he was mentally ill and a drug addict, and he killed himself. | ||
| But I think that there is a sort of a comparison there. | ||
| That he knew that he was becoming commodified. | ||
| He was being reduced to a commodity. | ||
| He woke up in the pod and thought, oh fuck, all of these things that are coming from my heart, this truth, isolation, alienation, the kind of things that he was singing about, that in itself became a product. | ||
| The machine can handle it. | ||
| The machine can take people talking about that, connecting to people's deepest fears of inadequacy and worthlessness, and it can turn that into a product and sell it back to them. | ||
| I think you're getting caught up in money as always being a negative. | ||
| And I think Connor has actually embraced the money as a part of the narrative. | ||
| And I think, you know, another person who's done that without bragging about that is Manny Pacquiao. | ||
| And Manny Pacquiao, who's made hundreds of millions of dollars in the same form, has actually used that to spread wealth throughout the Philippines and hands out money to people. | ||
| And he's famously generous in that regard. | ||
| And I think what Conor's done is it's part of his hero mythology. | ||
| He's sitting on a throne on a pile of gold. | ||
| It's really a part of it all. | ||
| Yeah, he is a king. | ||
| He is a hero. | ||
| It's part of the story. | ||
| I'm not criticizing him as an individual and saying Conor McGregor should do this. | ||
| You're criticizing the money. | ||
| Yes, I'm criticizing the city. | ||
| The money is a part of the story. | ||
| It's not necessarily negative, and I don't think it is negative at all. | ||
| But Joe, money is literally a symbol. | ||
| It is nothing but that represents something. | ||
| I promise to pay the bearer. | ||
| We believe this is one dollar. | ||
| You're getting caught up in semantics, because he can definitely go out and buy a house with that money. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| It is real as fuck. | ||
| Like, he can go out and buy mansions and cars. | ||
| It's real as fuck. | ||
| The idea that it represents, like, I... Promise to give you this. | ||
| Yes, it's a promissory note, but it's fucking real. | ||
| You know, he has all that. | ||
| He has a hundred million dollars. | ||
| It is a part of the story. | ||
| He is sitting on a throne on a pile of gold. | ||
| He does have a crown. | ||
| He has a crown on his fucking neck. | ||
| I mean, it's real. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I don't see Conor McGregor as the terminus of this point. | ||
| I see this as an opportunity to critique what the culture is telling us and what the culture is doing to us there. | ||
| I understand that with money you can acquire goods and services, but what I'm saying is that out The ultimate system for evaluating worth has become about commodities instead of, perhaps, about beauty or about love. | ||
| I'm not saying that Conor McGregor should give away all his money and start marching around and be the new Jesus of Ireland, although that would be fucking fascinating to watch unfold. | ||
| I'm saying that isn't it a disgust, question, is it not a little unfortunate that greatness is ultimately given to us as a product, that that is how it is received, that's how it's understood? | ||
| Is it possible that there will be other ways of demonstrating greatness, as he does when he's fighting, or as Kurt Cobain did when he was playing, but ultimately the dominant thing, the dominant puppet ear, the thing pulling the strings, is the dollar. | ||
| I don't think it is. | ||
| I think it's a part of the story, much like, you know, your clothes are a part of, you know, what you look like. | ||
| I don't think it's the dominant thing. | ||
| I think it's a big part of how you sell it. | ||
| Like, this is going to be the biggest fight ever. | ||
| He's going to make, you know, X million dollars. | ||
| And the way... | ||
| I mean, but Connor uses it as a part of his narrative. | ||
| Well, he drives around in a, you know, drop-top Bentley. | ||
| And he's, you know, he's got beautiful watches and suits that say, fuck you, and pinstriping. | ||
| I mean, it's part of what he's done by... | ||
| By creating this incredible mythology. | ||
| I mean, I don't think it's necessarily in any way, shape, or form negative. | ||
| I think it's a part of the story. | ||
| Say with hip-hop, right? | ||
| This is possibly a similar way of looking at the same idea. | ||
| And this isn't something I know the answer to, do you know what I mean, Joe? | ||
| I'm not like, oh, I've worked this thing out, and I want to teach you it. | ||
| I'm like, I'm trying to fucking work it out myself. | ||
| Say with hip-hop. | ||
| Hip-hop first, when it comes out, it comes out as this angry roar of oppressed people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, not really. | |
| Originally, it came out as like a happy rhyme. | ||
| A hip... | ||
| All right, there's a jolly bit with African Bambaataa at the beginning. | ||
| And then, like, it becomes a social tool. | ||
| Yeah, Sugar Hill and Bambaataa and, yes, early hip-hop pioneers. | ||
| And then we go through the sort of the phase of... | ||
| Yeah, you're right. | ||
| It goes through the early part of it, jolly and jaunty. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I like that. | |
| That's the rap. | ||
| Gangsta rap. | ||
| L.A. L.A. comes into the picture. | ||
| Terrifying anger of we are going to have a voice. | ||
| Straight out of Compton. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| And then that in itself becomes about what is the subsequent mutations of hip-hop as it becomes sort of claimed by a dominant system. | ||
| It becomes about jewellery, bling, particular attitudes. | ||
| Do you not see what I'm saying that there's a sort of almost like a trend things get pulled into a Certain strand a certain way of being it does but it doesn't have to like it didn't with some guys like the really like here's a perfect example one of the best rappers ever Nas Nas never fell into that Nas remains one of the best lyricists of all time remains brilliant all of his rap has meaning it's creative it's interesting and He doesn't fall into all the bullshit and the bling, | ||
| although he has plenty of money, and he has all the trappings. | ||
| He's got this sort of style about him where, I mean, I believe his father was a jazz musician, and he grew up with art in his family. | ||
| And he's an artist, first and foremost. | ||
| Although he's a brilliant rapper, he's my favorite rapper. | ||
| I think that he's never really fallen into all the bullshit, bling, mansions, all that stuff, like the display of it all. | ||
| I mean, he has these things, but it's not the primary display when you're talking about Nas as an artist, as a magician. | ||
| And because, again, I suppose what I'm interested in is how cultural movements start off, it seems, by saying something that's important and powerful, whether it's punk or hip-hop, becomes a voice to the disembodied or a way of conveying, not disembodied, disenfranchised, becomes a voice for them. | ||
| Or a similar thing with punk. | ||
| punk very observably because it was a relatively short-term movement. | ||
| You know, bands like the Pistols and the Clash and all this stuff, these bands come out of England and quickly became sort of commodified and sold back to people. | ||
| What I'm saying is that this could be a result of this... | ||
| I'm now starting to drink the second can of that caveman coffee and it's getting deep, deep into my mind. | ||
|
unidentified
|
500 milligrams. | |
| This is too much for one man. | ||
| I think it's 540 for the two cans. | ||
| That's fucking crazy. | ||
| Things start with this original germ. | ||
| Greatness, beauty, glory, heroism. | ||
| Hunger. | ||
| There's an external system, though, Joe, that can turn it into a product and sell it to people. | ||
| And I think that that does strip it of its real value. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you're saying, I suppose, no, it doesn't matter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It doesn't matter. | |
| That can just be the architecture of it or the aesthetics of it. | ||
| And I'm saying, as long as we have a system that is ultimately about making money and turning everything into profit, and I'm not saying this about any of the individual artists. | ||
| In fact, that's the point I'm making. | ||
| He is great. | ||
| Nas is great. | ||
| Kurt Cobain, great, great, great, great, great. | ||
| But ultimately, you, great. | ||
| Me, great. | ||
| Please, God. | ||
| Everyone's pulled in the direction of profit. | ||
| It's a thing you've got to swim through. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| How is it we become free? | ||
| Is there something different that could be done here? | ||
| Can something truly glorious be done here? | ||
| Like, when you describe that moment of Vegas temporarily being overwhelmed, not as it has been in recent days, by tragedy, death and blood, but in a glorious spirit of Ireland and a hero, that isn't it unfortunate that that energy can't be literally used to create... | ||
| Better worlds, better systems, better lives. | ||
| All that really happens is a load of people make a bunch of money. | ||
| And probably, and I don't necessarily mean the fucking protagonists, you know what I mean? | ||
| Like, people talk a lot about, oh, athletes earn too much money. | ||
| I don't agree with that. | ||
| It's one of the few ways that fucking ordinary working class people can make a lot of money. | ||
| But there are people at the top of that chain that are siphoning a significant amount of money out of all of those little industries. | ||
| Yeah, but those people are responsible for making it happen in the first place. | ||
| I mean, you can't leave it up to the athletes to put something like that together. | ||
| You need a Dana White. | ||
| You need a Floyd Mayweather and the Money Team productions. | ||
| You need people to promote it. | ||
| You need people to put together a press junket and a world tour. | ||
| And then you need people to organize the pay-per-view. | ||
| And then, the real ultimate result is the inspiration that all the people that watch it get. | ||
| The inspiration, the entertainment, and it's completely up to the individual whether or not they pursue greatness or whether they just pursue money. | ||
| And it's a trap. | ||
| There's trappings in both ways. | ||
| It's the trappings of greatness with no money. | ||
| There's the sadness of someone who dies great but penniless and homeless. | ||
| And then there's the guy who just threw it all away for money and never realized his full potential, which is equally sad. | ||
| But I think that in that, is it like that... | ||
| We are showing a particular aspect of our own conditioning there in believing in the myth of the individual, that the individual will always triumph. | ||
| If you have greatness, you know, but like, no, you did say, like, the great person that dies penniless. | ||
| You know, it's a kind of a shame that we don't create benevolent systems that are helpful to the vulnerable. | ||
| Right, but you're talking about sport, right? | ||
| If you're talking about sport, it is completely... | ||
| I mean, look, there has to be some sort of a support team behind the individual. | ||
| But it's completely dependent upon the individual. | ||
| If you don't have John Kavanaugh, you don't have the straight blast gym, you don't have Ido Portal and Dylan Dennis and all the different people that train Conor, you don't have Conor. | ||
| If you have all those things, it's entirely dependent upon the one individual that takes that knowledge and goes in there and performs. | ||
| That's what's so scary about it, and that's what's so rewarding to people that watch it, because they know it's so dangerous. | ||
| It's so crazy, it's so fraught with peril to be the one that so much lies upon. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The weight on his shoulders is massive and that's one of the most substantial things and the most impressive things about Connor is the way he handles the weight of the pressure. | ||
| That he goes in there and does this in the giant big moment. | ||
| That he stands there in front of everybody and throws his arms out like he's the king. | ||
| And then everybody goes fucking crazy. | ||
| That is glorious. | ||
| Yes, it's glorious. | ||
| It has nothing to do with money. | ||
| It seems like it does, but money is a part of it all. | ||
| It's greatness. | ||
| Greatness is the thing. | ||
| The money is a side effect of greatness. | ||
| That's shit, when he does that. | ||
| I don't mean he is beautiful. | ||
| I don't ever want Conor McGregor to listen to this and think like, Falk and Russell Brands criticizing me if I ever see my elbow his head off. | ||
| Fucking shoulders on that son of a bitch. | ||
| My point is... | ||
| Especially that left. | ||
| No wonder why he knocks people dead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look at that fucking shoulder. | |
| The left is a bit bigger. | ||
| It's hard to tell from the angle, but it's big. | ||
| He fucks people up with that left hand, boy. | ||
| This is not a critique of any individual. | ||
| This is my... | ||
| I'm trying to understand how systems work. | ||
| That's why I'm trying to understand. | ||
| And I'm suggesting that there are fairer ways of doing things. | ||
| Even then when you said... | ||
| But let me say this. | ||
| The system doesn't mean jack shit if someone can't rise. | ||
| This guy is different, okay? | ||
| The system exists all day long, 24-7, 365. The system's going on this weekend in Vegas. | ||
| There's going to be two world title fights. | ||
| There's not nearly the amount of attention being paid to these two world title fights this weekend as Conor McGregor pulling his dick out and taking a piss in a punch bowl. | ||
| He could do that on pay-per-view and more people would watch it. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because he's done so much in the past as an individual, the greatness that he has shown. | ||
| It's more than just money. | ||
| It's more than just a system. | ||
| The system exists. | ||
| It's a matter of one person figuring out the frequency that this system operates on and showing this unbelievable performance inside that system. | ||
| That's the individual. | ||
| And that individual is... | ||
| When you talk about his past, when he was... | ||
| He was working as a construction worker or as a plumber or some shit, and he'd done some amateur boxing and some MMA fights. | ||
| He was a regular guy. | ||
| He grew up in a working-class neighborhood. | ||
| He wasn't rich. | ||
| There was nothing substantial about him. | ||
| Even his own parents say they never thought that he was going to be this guy. | ||
| He figured out a way through it. | ||
| He wasn't born the king. | ||
| He wasn't some person who, for whatever reason, was gifted with this existence. | ||
| He worked his way through it, figured it out, and once he got to the greatest stage in the world, when the pressure was at its highest, he's shown like the brightest star in the universe. | ||
| And that's what's so exciting about him. | ||
| Yes, I think he's beautiful and fascinating. | ||
| But my question is about commodification. | ||
| You're a fucking money freak. | ||
| You're freaked out about money. | ||
| I'm not freaked out about it. | ||
| Now, hold on. | ||
| But when you say something, you take a lot of DMT, right? | ||
| No, I take a lot. | ||
| I've taken a few... | ||
| I've taken it... | ||
| Nine times? | ||
| When you have them experiences, when you come back from it, what is it that you feel about the way that systems are organised? | ||
| Do you come back from it quite fatalistic? | ||
| Like, oh yeah, that's just the way the world is. | ||
| Or do you think, hold on a minute, it's fucking mental. | ||
| There's so much stuff going on, things could be different. | ||
| I don't think about it the way that you think about it. | ||
| I don't think about these systems. | ||
| I think you spend a lot of time thinking about the elites and the 1% and the systems. | ||
| I don't think about that stuff very much. | ||
| Nor do I actually. | ||
| I think mostly about what I'm interested in is God and oneness. | ||
| And I think that greatness is a representation of God. | ||
| I think that what is coming through Conor McGregor or Kurt Cobain or Jimi Hendrix or Dorothy Parker is some kind of beauty that that person is the perfect vessel for. | ||
| That's what iconography is. | ||
| The realization of greatness or the realization of God, in inverted commas, given that this is the age that we're living. | ||
| Jimi Hendrix playing the Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock. | ||
| Unbelievable. | ||
| Here is some moment that pulls us all together. | ||
| Now what my curiosity is about DMT is that does DMT make you experience that oneness or that loss of self in a way that's kind of religious or spiritual? | ||
| What does it do to your head? | ||
| Intense loss. | ||
| I mean, as intense as anything. | ||
| There's no comparison. | ||
| I shouldn't say as intense as anything, because there's not a word that I could say that's going to come out of my mouth that's going to do it justice. | ||
| The words haven't been invented. | ||
| They don't exist. | ||
| All words that we have created, they represent things that we can reference in the material world. | ||
| Yes, yes, yes. | ||
| When you have a DMT experience, you're literally having a conversation with God. | ||
| You're experiencing something that's everything and something that's infinitely powerful and infinitely wise. | ||
| The way I've described it is like you're seeing this insane Infinite world of complex geometric patterns that are made out of love and understanding. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| Fucking hell. | ||
| There's things in there. | ||
| They're made out of, yeah right, there's entities you feel. | ||
| There's something in there that knows you. | ||
| And I don't know if it's you that knows you. | ||
| It's like you that gets free of all your bullshit. | ||
| I bet them separations dissolve. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| My suspicion is that there is no subject-object. | ||
| There is only oneness. | ||
| Now, you yourself just said it starts to feel like it's about loving and oneness, Joe. | ||
| So that level of consciousness exists. | ||
| So my belief is that our systems, whether it's our athletic systems, our entertainment systems, and certainly our economic, political, and social systems, should be as close as possible to To that feeling, that that feeling should be our guiding light. | ||
| So I'm not criticising Conor McGregor, the great genius, like I'm fascinated by and adore, or Kurt Cobain or anyone. | ||
| I'm just saying, isn't it odd that you have personally experienced in your way through DMT, and I have through yoga and meditation and all the shit I'd done when I was a kid. | ||
| This sense of oneness, this love that seems to transcend my personal form and everything I believe in. | ||
| And yet when it comes to our systems for organizing this plane that we live on, the material plane, the choices we make are not about that love and understanding. | ||
| They're about the kind of... | ||
| About resources and elitism, you know? | ||
| So I'm not interested in the 1% and all that stuff. | ||
| I am a bit interested. | ||
| But what I'm more interested in is why are our systems not more representative of the divine, pure truth that we can access through spirituality? | ||
| Well, I think our systems are based on the monkey need for survival and this sort of... | ||
| That's not good, is it? | ||
| We should get beyond that. | ||
| Well, I think we will. | ||
| But I think it takes a long fucking time, just like we were talking about before. | ||
| I mean, unless you want to get the world to do DMT tomorrow. | ||
| I mean, if we had a DMT day, boy, that would change a lot of shit. | ||
| I'm very interested in that. | ||
| I mean, I think that's the role of the shaman, the role of the artist, I think, and the role of the comic. | ||
| Even the role of the shaman, I mean, that's an important point. | ||
| That gets distorted. | ||
| There's a lot of people that go down to South America because they have this romantic vision of what a shaman is going to do to them and that they're going to go and experience. | ||
| And then they encounter some shyster who really just learned how to make ayahuasca to prey on gringos. | ||
| I mean, that's a big part of the narrative that a lot of people experience when they go down and do that with the wrong people. | ||
| And that happens, may I say, because of systems of commodification, materialism and profiteering. | ||
| It does, but it also happens because people are just looking at an opportunity. | ||
| They're opportunistic. | ||
| They're desperate. | ||
| Maybe they've been mistreated. | ||
| Maybe they don't have a particularly healthy view of human beings. | ||
| What I reckon is this. | ||
| It's starting to foment in my mind just over the course of this conversation. | ||
| It's like, like you said earlier, there's the potential for good and the potential for bad in all of us. | ||
| But I see our culture as a magnet, and the magnet is pulling out the worst stuff. | ||
| And what I think is it would be possible to have a magnet that was pulling out the best stuff. | ||
| But it has some of the best stuff too, like what happened in Houston. | ||
| They have this giant hurricane that comes down in Houston. | ||
| My friend John Dudley went down there and brought supplies and was feeding people and organized a bunch of other people to help and do the same thing. | ||
| And there was a ton of people that were doing the same. | ||
| A ton of people that were donating their time and their money and they were using their boats to help get people out of their homes. | ||
| And there's a video that I saw that was an amazing video, these two guys talking after, they didn't even know each other, and they were being interviewed, and they were saying that the love that they experienced helping all these people, pulling them out of the wreckage of this horrible natural disaster, that it was like nothing they'd ever felt, that this love was amazing, that all these people were being completely altruistic, they were being completely generous, and just helping, and just, I think, in times of crisis. | ||
| Are you familiar with Sebastian Junger? | ||
| Sebastian Junger is an amazing war journalist and he wrote a great book called Tribe. | ||
| And his book is essentially all about how human beings really only feel at their best and their happiest when they're coming together to overcome something. | ||
| And so that in this moment of overcoming this incredible natural disaster, blame it on industrial capitalism and global warming, blame all that on the fucking hurricane. | ||
| At the end of the day, it's a force of nature that no one saw coming. | ||
| There's no one that pulled that trigger, right? | ||
| There's a guy in Vegas that pulled that trigger. | ||
| But there's no one that pulled the trigger on that hurricane. | ||
| It was collective. | ||
| It was a thing of nature. | ||
| But I may say, Joe, that is beautiful. | ||
| I obviously agree that anything where human beings come together like that is glorious. | ||
| But both of those examples that you're using, as you yourself alluded to, you know, you can look at what conditions create hurricanes. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| Possibly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Maybe. | |
| you know it could have that hurricane has hurricanes have happened forever but that's only 50% of my point that's only 50% point the other 50% of my point is that that guy pulling the trigger isn't just an individual he is like you said when I was like touching you on the fucking shaman thing maybe that shaman had a bad day and that's why he's become a slippery shaman well no doubt slippery shaman Slippery shaman. | ||
| So this guy, so the shooter, of course we all have individual culpability, but similarly he is a product of our culture, he is a product of this, again, system. | ||
| So there is one form of analysis that says there are meteorological disasters that are detached from reality, and of course meteorology is its own fucking thing. | ||
| And individual free will, there are some neurologists, I'm sure you know, say that doesn't even fucking exist. | ||
| Our inner nature, our inner meteorology, the biochemistry of our system is governing everything. | ||
| But certainly there are connections between each of us that create the way that we behave. | ||
| You know, if I have an experience in here where I walk out feeling intimidated, maybe I'll be less kind to the people I work with. | ||
| That's a less extreme example of a brutal murder and the more obvious examples. | ||
| We're aware of it, which is one of the reasons why altruistic behavior, kind behavior, loving community, all these things are rewarded because we do understand that those do enforce a better way of people behaving and that real determinism, like people, like, if you really truly don't have free will, Well, we know that we would like people to behave kinder because whatever factors that play into people going out and behaving in a nicer, kinder way, they're a part of that. | ||
| We know that that's the fuel of that. | ||
| So isn't then... | ||
| The role of us as individuals finding our own Conor McGregor, our own greatness, our own heroism, to create as much as possible a space for that altruism, a space for that philanthropy, a space for that togetherness. | ||
| To create those moments, like you said, with that hurricane. | ||
| And we've all experienced it. | ||
| I know when I do something nice for other people, I start to feel like, oh, this is who I'm meant to be. | ||
| This is what I'm meant to be doing. | ||
| But I, in my own personal life, get sidetracked by, oh, fuck, I've got these economic imperatives. | ||
| I want to... | ||
| I don't fucking feel great about myself because of other people's applause or verification. | ||
| Like, because we are all flawed, because we are continually going to battle between the monkey in us, the primal little creature in us, and the great angel within us, what if we have an agreement on a social level that what we're aiming towards is the most benevolent, the most beautiful, and on an individual level we try and do it, and communally we encourage and on an individual level we try and do it, and communally we encourage each other towards it, knowing that we're going to fuck up and fail all the time, but that we're heading | ||
| Instead of what we have, which is a system that's about make as much fucking money as you can and get out, you're only here for 100 years, line up the blowjobs, that is the system that we have. | ||
| That is capitalist consumerism. | ||
| That's what it's based on. | ||
| This is a machine. | ||
| The machine makes money. | ||
| It's got to have infinite expanse and infinite growth. | ||
| That is the system. | ||
| I'm not saying that it's... | ||
| That's a very fatalistic way of looking at it. | ||
| I don't look at it as fatalistic, because I think we can change the world, Joe. | ||
| But you are doing it, and you're not living that way. | ||
| So the system that you're talking about, it's escapable. | ||
| You've escaped it. | ||
| Yes, and we must. | ||
| And we're talking about it. | ||
| And there's no, like, Willy Wonka golden ticket that's going to get you out of the system. | ||
| I don't trust fucking Willy Wonka as far as I can throw him. | ||
| Who are those fucking Oompa Loompas? | ||
| Where'd he get them? | ||
| I don't think they should even be working there. | ||
| What's in the chocolate? | ||
| What's in that chocolate? | ||
| That poor boy drowning in there. | ||
| Why is Johnny Depp behaving like a young girl? | ||
| Why is Johnny Depp behaving like a young girl? | ||
| What's going on in that fucking movie, man? | ||
| What's his weird way of talking? | ||
| A lot of questions. | ||
| I think it was about Michael Jackson. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think he was like, okay, come to my chocolate factory. | |
| Everything's beautiful. | ||
| Yeah, he's doing a Peter Pan type deal. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| I don't want to grow up. | ||
| Come here, you. | ||
| I think, to go back to it, there he is. | ||
| It's beautiful. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's beautiful. | |
| Chocolate factory. | ||
| Johnny, look at my wand. | ||
| I think this fatalistic thing that it's just designed to... | ||
| I don't think it's designed to do anything. | ||
| I just think it is. | ||
| It is. | ||
| I sort of even agree with that. | ||
| I even agree with that. | ||
| I think that what we live in is the manifestation of our most primal desires. | ||
| Greed, or not even necessarily greed, survival. | ||
| And I think that if you extrapolate on that system, you end up with what we've got. | ||
| But I think an alternative way of being, something that might be a corrective path for us, is to look at those feelings that you describe of the altruism in that hurricane, the feeling of greatness in an individual and the way an individual can pull communities together, It's not a binary choice. | ||
| I know the world's more complicated than that, Joe. | ||
| But I suppose my quest, and indeed, fuck me, my book, is about how I individually have got my head and I wrench myself away from selfishness and greed and pride on a daily basis and pull myself towards altruism and love and self-betterment, a part of it. | ||
| Keep myself fit mentally, spiritually, so I can be a better part of this... | ||
| Excuse me, system, and perhaps through my self-improvement, create better systems. | ||
| Because there is all this energy, there's all this power, and I think it's a shame that it gets siphoned in a particular direction. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, that feeling you express, and as you express it and express it honestly, that resonates with people. | ||
| And I think this, what we're talking about, is the 49.9% and 50.1% that Rick Strassman was describing. | ||
| It is this constant battle, and this is not an easy path. | ||
| I don't think the system operates at the 50-49 level. | ||
| I think the system's way, way towards the negative. | ||
| The system, meaning... | ||
| Like a cultural system. | ||
| The economic system. | ||
| The system of human beings in this world? | ||
| Say capitalism. | ||
| Country, or where? | ||
| Let's say, I don't know enough about what goes down in China. | ||
| So I'll say, like, sort of global capitalism, say. | ||
| And again, I'm not a fucking economist. | ||
| I'm just picking up shit from listening to your podcast and other podcasts. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| That's where I'm getting educated. | ||
| I've luckily turned up at university lately. | ||
| I'm tripping down that fucking coffee man. | ||
| Man, crazy shit, right? | ||
| It's going deep. | ||
| Can I go to the toilet? | ||
| Maybe even do a poo? | ||
| How long have I been in here? | ||
| Do you feel like I've done enough about my book? | ||
| We've done two hours and 20 minutes. | ||
| We could wrap this up. | ||
| You've fucking got a clock there. | ||
| You've got all these advantages. | ||
| There's Buddha's in every direction and only one clock. | ||
| I didn't know what the time is. | ||
| There's a clock there. | ||
| There's a clock there. | ||
| There's a clock over there. | ||
| Yeah, but they're all facing you, Rogan. | ||
| The clocks are all facing your direction. | ||
| I don't want anybody who's a guest to think about time. | ||
| This is, tune in what? | ||
| This is the fucking system. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want you to tune in. | |
| I do this shit every day. | ||
| Yeah, I'm just some Johnny-come-lately kid from England with a dream. | ||
| With a dream, I come over here into the lair. | ||
| A dream to sell books. | ||
| I'm just a kid who wants to. | ||
| Hey man, fuck the system, but buy my book. | ||
| You're out of order. | ||
| You're out of order to point out that obvious hypocrisy. | ||
| How dare you point out that obvious hypocrisy? | ||
| Can I do a wee? | ||
| Go ahead, go ahead. | ||
| Hold on a minute, I don't want to end on that. | ||
| Yeah, you're good. | ||
| Don't worry about it, man. | ||
| You're good. | ||
| Take a leak. | ||
| We'll open that door and the first door on the right. | ||
| Yeah, it seems weird. | ||
| I've got Nah, man. | ||
| It's beautiful. | ||
| Don't worry about it. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| You're good, man. | ||
| Don't worry. | ||
| You're good. | ||
| Told you that caveman coffee was gonna get him. | ||
| You were gonna pull something up about Nas, I think. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah, yeah. | |
| I had something. | ||
| I didn't know if you knew he was a venture capitalist. | ||
| He has been for a while. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| I know he opens up restaurants. | ||
| He's opened up that sweet chick place. | ||
| Potentially, if his company sells soon, I don't know how that happens, or if he comes public, he could be what they're saying is hip-hop's first true billionaire. | ||
| Oh, shit, guys! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Woo! | |
| Woo! | ||
| His net worth that says that celebrity net worth is like $17 million, but that doesn't include all the companies he owns and has been investing in for a long time. | ||
| No, I didn't know about that. | ||
| I knew about his restaurant because I'm friends with Everlast, and Everlast goes to that sweet chick. | ||
| I think Everlast has a piece of that, too. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Maybe he doesn't. | ||
| But he took me to it in New York, and... | ||
| Took me to it in LA once. | ||
| We went there, but they were playing music that was so loud it was literally hurting my ears. | ||
| Nas is like half-man, half-venture capitalist. | ||
| Look at that beautiful suit he's got on. | ||
| He's got a pocket square and like a little small chain. | ||
| Have you ever seen the small chain? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Yeah, a lot of those motherfuckers make a shit ton of money. | ||
| Smart. | ||
| Why not, you know? | ||
| I mean, it shows you that they can figure out a way through just their art to get to this weird position where, I mean, if Nas really does make a billion dollars, like, fuck. | ||
| Still makes amazing music, though. | ||
| That's my point. | ||
| My point is that his music never went commercial. | ||
| His music's fucking fantastic. | ||
| Someone was saying, I was reading some stuff that he supposedly tried. | ||
| Remember he had a rap battle of beef? | ||
| He had a couple beefs publicly with Puff Daddy, the Hate Me Now thing. | ||
| Oh, yeah? | ||
| He also wrote, Ghost wrote for Will Smith. | ||
| I don't know if that really means he's sold out, but... | ||
| That's not selling out. | ||
| That's just writing for a friend. | ||
| But the rap battles, I think, is more just ego things. | ||
| Someone talks shit about him, he talks shit about them. | ||
| You know? | ||
| You alright, brother? | ||
| You alright? | ||
| You gotta copy your book. | ||
| You're not fucking around. | ||
| You brought a copy back now. | ||
| You wanna show everybody? | ||
| Here, give it to me. | ||
| I'll hold it up so you don't feel bad. | ||
| I'll be like Vanna White. | ||
| Joe Rogan. | ||
| I'm on the Joe Rogan experience. | ||
| Freedom from our addictions. | ||
| Russell Brand, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| Let's wrap this thing up, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What are you talking about? | |
| I mean, that was 2 hours and 20 minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fuck yeah. | |
| It's good. | ||
| It's beautiful. | ||
| You kicked it into the fucking orbit. | ||
| I did change the bit that I wrote about you, as a matter of fact, because... | ||
| I didn't know you wrote about me in there. | ||
| Yeah, oh yeah, now you're fucking interested. | ||
| Oh, man, I'm feeling good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm excited. | |
| It was slightly... | ||
| Because what it was, I realized... | ||
| I asked them to put in the word seemingly, because I thought that I'd been too reductive. | ||
| About you, and you know me. | ||
| I'm having this experience where I'm sort of... | ||
| Part of the book is about trying to explain how, in the addict's mind, you're trapped in this constant cyclone of self-obsessive thought, and the outside world seems to somehow distance you, and you can't connect to it, right? | ||
| So as well as explain how to go through the steps, I talk through, like, this is what it's like to be in my fucking head. | ||
| So I'm like, this is me out of my dog, and my dog causes all these problems all the time, and I run into these people... | ||
| And I say, all I know, like, you know, and I run into them, and I start, I don't want to go and talk to them, because I feel sort of self-conscious, because they look kind of, like, cool, and I think, oh no, I've got to go over there and talk to these people, I'm going to feel inadequate. | ||
| All I know is how I feel, and that's all I'll ever know, unless I learn, I can learn a new system for being. | ||
| Bill, this guy, comes over and says hello, while I stand now on the goose shit, we're on this sort of riverbank, vaguely embarrassed by Bear, my dog. | ||
| It bears looping enthusiasm. | ||
| I heard you on Joe Rogan, he says. | ||
| Joe Rogan, a former mixed martial artist, commentator, comedian and host of the world's most downloaded podcast, is himself an interesting example of new emerging models of masculinity, a fusion of right-wing individualism and new age tolerance, a fierce autodidact. | ||
| He has become a champion of American libertarianism and is to me fascinating because he's clever and a good fighter. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| There's me mentioning you in passing. | ||
| Now, when I rewrote it, I said, you better put in seemingly, because I think I've been reductive there, saying right-wing individualism. | ||
| But what do you think about that, Joe? | ||
| There you are. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know how much right-wing I have in me. | ||
| I'm more libertarian than anything. | ||
| But the right-wing stuff is probably, if you talk to a real right-winger, they'd go, what the fuck are you talking about? | ||
| Yeah, I think you're right. | ||
| I mean, I think libertarianism would have covered it better, but this was written at a point where I hadn't listened to as much stuff. | ||
| So I've changed it. | ||
| Listen, man, you can come on here anytime you want. | ||
| I love talking to you. | ||
| You're awesome. | ||
| Do you think so? | ||
| We have a great time. | ||
| We do have a great time, don't we? | ||
| I'm looking forward to coming back to your new studio that sounds like your own version of a Willy Wonka podcast land. | ||
| It's gonna be crazy. | ||
| The thing is, you know, like, this is why I don't take drugs, is because I've drunk quite a lot of caffeine there, and I'm sort of slightly scared of going back to, like, my normal life, you know, parachuting back into that. | ||
| But I've got a fucking baby. | ||
| Russell Brand, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Joe Rogan, thank you. | |
| Go buy the book. | ||
| Download your podcast. | ||
| What is it called? | ||
| Under the Skin with Russell Brand. | ||
| Under the Skin with Russell Brand. |
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