Joe Rogan and Duncan Trussell debate AI’s role in warfare, from cute DARPA robots to TikTok algorithms polarizing audiences via divisive content like car accidents or conflict footage. They question humanity’s progress—whether psychedelics (like psilocybin) or neural implants could dissolve fear-driven violence, citing Ram Dass and Buddhist Lojong principles. Trussell frames love as a vibrational force countering fear, while Rogan warns of AI’s potential to expose hidden truths, like MKUltra-style simulations. Ultimately, they suggest technology might either unite humanity through empathy or deepen manipulation, depending on how we confront our own tribalism and trauma. [Automatically generated summary]
I mean, what I like is that the way it works, or it seems like it works, is the planet gives you some impression, you know, things are going to stay this way.
Like Les Rodriguez, there was people...
Hanging out and they're like it's always gonna be like this and then suddenly Something flies through the earth's atmosphere and it's all gone like that in a second just gone so that's the that's One of the fascinating things is no matter what period you live in the Sun can just this just burp an extra bit of Plasma and that's a wrap.
Yeah, that's a wrap for the whole planet that happens all over the universe and There's always something going on, like there's supernovas and volcanoes and, you know, that was the big part of the theory of the Anunnaki, was that volcanoes had ruined their atmosphere.
And so they needed to suspend gold particles in the atmosphere to preserve their planet.
Their ecosystem was getting fucked up.
That is my favorite of all the wacky conspiracy theories.
All the wacky, like, the evolution of man tied to the reason why gold is valuable to people that are, you know, basically have swords.
And if you allow them to, if you don't have laws about like how much you can pay them and a living wage and how long the hours could be, people will take advantage of people.
Anybody who thinks that those things aren't good has never worked a real fucking job.
If you work a real job for real assholes, you realize like some people will tell you, hey, you got to work 15, 16 hours a day, period.
Of unions is perfect for, like, a nonviolent revolution, which is, if at a planetary level, somehow people unionized, which you see it with these boycotts that pop up, these meme boycotts, when the collective decides to reject this thing or that, shit changes fast.
And this is...
The nightmare, if you're trying to create the old pyramid hierarchical control structure, you need all the bricks underneath the eye to fight each other.
Because the moment there, it's just like, wait, there's way more of us than you.
And we have way more in common than we do that we're troubled with.
And yet they concentrate more on the bullshit and then that's just like a fucking algorithm on your cell phone that accentuates everything that comes into contact with your life.
And this is why I think at any given moment actual world peace is possible because we're just like always like enough people realizing that We're basically the same.
We have ideologies that are based on fucking, like, ancient, crazy ideas that we're all connecting to.
And some parts of the ideology is beautiful.
Some parts of the ideology is madness.
And it's, like, just abandoning some of the ideology, recognizing we're all pretty much the fucking same, and that this model of, like, some dude telling us to go and kill each other It's stupid.
I mean, because if you look at the path forward for the pyramid, the hierarchical people, you know, it's like, man, like, yeah, I really can't tell somebody like a police officer to fire into a crowd of protesters.
They're probably not going to do that.
But my robot will.
My robot isn't going to be like, this seems wrong.
These people seem like me.
It's just going to do it.
And so, like, that's the dark side of this stuff.
There's a lot of beautiful things about this stuff, too.
You also can't, if you're a cop and you know bad people are in a building, you can't just blow up the whole building.
But you can if it's war.
That's where it gets strange, right?
Because in a war, you can decide that you're gonna blow up entire buildings because you know the bad guys are in there and anybody else is just collateral damage.
So extra dead people are just...
Can you imagine if they started practicing police work like that?
Like, imagine.
Imagine if they decided that the crime rates in gang-infested neighborhoods are too bad, so they're gonna send in fucking black ops guys to just take out drug dealers and blow up houses.
Houses that have drug dealers in them.
You're with your mom?
Tough shit.
Boom.
Everybody's dead.
You have a little girl in the house?
Boom.
Everybody's dead.
Could you imagine?
Well, you can because you watch Israel and Palestine.
That's what's going on.
It's just like you're allowed to do that if it's countries, which is crazy.
Like, okay, let's just say I'm an evil country, and I programmed these robot dogs, and the robot dogs, or spiders are more sinister, robot spiders, razor fucking razor claws, they're programmed to only kill women and children.
So I release them into a city, they leave everyone alone except babies, kids, and women.
On a planetary level, people will be like, we have to evaporate that country.
Like, they're the most evil country.
That's horrible.
Now, if I take drones and drop them on buildings and they randomly blow up women and children in ways that are...
It's so crazy that because it's existed for the longest time, we just accept it, that it's always going to take place.
And then we also, if like you had a gamble, if you had a gamble, whether or not war would be here in 10 years, you know, like 100% it's going to be here.
Like, what if AI makes rational decisions that can only be reached?
Like, if you were looking outside of human emotions and cultures and cultural differences that we have with each other, If AI bypassed all of that and just looked at the problem as, you know, you have resources, you have allocation of those resources, people profiting off those resources, and then people who are in need or being taken advantage of to acquire those resources, and that's your whole game.
And so this is the human race this whole game.
You're willing to sacrifice this group of people that is the least powerful in order to empower all of your electronics.
This is what you're doing.
This is what you're agreeing to.
This whole thing is crazy.
It would probably restructure where and how things were acquired and who gets those things that are acquired from the ground.
Dude, I'm trying to do a video podcast now, and what will happen is I'll be yapping into the camera for like 20 minutes, go back and look at the footage, and there's just a fucking zen pouch.
Just like a fucking nasty, like a clump of toilet paper.
Dude, this, so, and then, okay, the other assumption with the algorithm is that the algorithm is just like random, or it's using some set of variables and serving things up.
But this is an idiot assumption.
I mean, you could, if you are controlling comments, Then that means, like, alright, let's just, like, make people mad at each other.
Let's make people completely pissed at each other as much as possible, convey this idea that there's, like, these massive divides between us, and then they're gonna fight each other instead of recognizing they're pretty much the same.
Like, or they're more nuanced than they think they are.
And fuck, dude, that's how you control populations.
So if you've seen one or two of those, it starts recommending more.
At a certain point in time, it's going to probably...
Actually encourage other people to do the same thing because that creates engagement And then you have this thing that emerges like was this a real thing like who's doing this like what is happening here?
Why is this why is this a new thing that's happening over and over and over again?
And it's just because you engaged with it and I think that could be slap fighting or it could be fucking for me It's like I see so many car accidents Oh my god, so many motorcycle accidents, so many people falling off bridges.
When I went on TikTok and I stopped because it's like too good, but like within a second, it's just like something about the way I was looking at videos, zip popping videos.
It's just like you like to watch zits pop.
And then, of course, when you're seeing that, you're like, wow, that's fucking intense, dude.
The stereotypical fucking characters in it, the way they're trying to like box people into this, like they're all evil.
These people all...
What kind of American are you?
North American?
South American?
You're from Hong Kong?
BAM BAM BAM! Stop it!
Just shut the fuck up!
Like, no one's like that!
Like, really!
Like, I'm not- obviously people are like, vile racists.
But dude, come on, this murder- this- I hate this assessment of humanity!
I hate- it's basically what they're saying is, minus the fucking capstone of the pyramid, We're just gonna kill each other because we're awful, brutal things that must be shepherded by old geriatric men who can't remember their fucking name.
So it's like, yeah, there are people who are fucking assholes, who are doing shit that disrupts society in small ways and big ways.
But they're not doing that because they're evil, I don't think.
They're doing that because, like...
They've learned this way of being.
It sucks.
Now, I'm not saying throw out the judicial system.
There shouldn't be, you know, jails or anything like that.
I'm just saying this notion of humanity, minus an authoritarian, generally fucking patriarchal fucking, like, whatever, but I don't care if it's matriarchal, whatever it is, top-down fucking ruling system, without the king, we will just fall on each other.
Give me your fucking car, motherfucker!
Some of us will do that, but guess what?
They won't last that long.
Because in a collectivized society, I just feel like we'll take care of the problems quick, probably quicker than we do right now, and everything will balance out.
There's a dude that films pig hunts and he uses spears and he hides in trees like above the pigs and then he has like a camera on the spear and he throws the spear down and stabs these wild pigs.
Yeah, if I shoot one pig, that pig will get eaten.
We'll make some barbecue out of that pig.
It'd be awesome.
But if you shoot two, I mean, I get it.
You have to do it, though.
This is the other part of it.
If you run a farm, you have to do it.
They'll kill your profit.
The profit margin of American farmers is so low as it is, it's so difficult for them to make money, that if you got a million wild pigs running around your state or more, Texas has how many millions?
Isn't it like three million?
Which is bananas.
If you know anything about wild animal numbers, that's so crazy to have that many animals in a state that are just wild, feral animals.
2.6.
This is from 2016. But now in 2023, an estimate still.
So six months old, and then they have three litters a year, and they'll have five, six piglets in a litter, and they're just shitting out babies, and then they're destroying everything.
They're just running through the ground, tearing up fucking golf courses and people's lawns in San Jose.
I just watched this, like, Crime Files thing about this psychopath who had pigs, and she would have people come and work for her, And then if they pissed her off...
And I always wonder, how much of an area has the memory of all the things that have happened in that area in it?
Whereas Texas was the last state to enter into the Union, they've always been like, hang the fuck back, hold on.
We had to get through the Comanche to establish this fucking place.
Settle down.
You know, Texas Rangers had to go out there and cold camp and go and try to assassinate these bands of fucking killers riding horses that were just fucking up the Americans.
Like, they couldn't pass.
They couldn't pass.
They couldn't get through.
This was the spot where it was like, this place was fucked.
And until they conquered it, it stayed fucked.
Then they did and now it's the whole place has a memory of that.
Yes There's a there's a there's a thing about the attitude of this place.
Yeah, dude It's but it's it's not what people think like people think they're assholes.
They are the nicest Friendliest people people think they're stupid.
They are some brilliant people that I've met that live out here brilliant normal people one of my neighbors was a Texas Ranger and he is the coolest guy and you know he's an older guy now he's retired but and he's still intimidating and um yeah man like he like he like uh he's like he's so fucking cool man and like and and he i'm trying not to give away to respecting his privacy uh he Every
once in a while in the neighborhood, we would hear this BOOM! Sounds like a generator exploding.
I don't know what it's on, but there was, like, a cannon battle in a ship, and, like, yeah, a dude just gets his fucking leg ripped off because it, like, goes back into him.
I was like, human beings actually developed their consciousness through this sort of relationship that they had with Cubensis mushrooms.
And this is the facts, and this is how we know, and this is why the doubling of the human brain size is such an anomaly, and it aligns with Terence McKenna's theories about how the grasslands receded.
Or the rainforest receded into grasslands and people started eating cow shit bugs and cow shit mushrooms and then they started thinking about things different.
And if AI just like tells people like this is what you really should be taking, like imagine if like instead of mushrooms, especially psilocybin, instead of it being something that terrifies people and that makes people think oh my god you take it you're gonna lose your mind, you take it you're gonna be a fucking loser.
Imagine if it was actually scientifically proven that it does make you smarter and it makes you more effective at being a person and that these are the right doses.
Imagine if AI just starts spitting out doses in order to gain this percentage of increase in cognitive ability.
You know, one of the things Ram Dass said, which I love, is when they would ask him things like, you know, how did this happen to you?
How did you get, like, to be this benevolent, like, thing that is radiating love all the time, which he was?
He goes, I trusted the mushroom.
And he meant it, dude!
Because I don't know that we get a Ram Dass without psilocybin.
There's a beautiful famous story of him hanging out with Tim Leary and some other luminaries and they had synthetic psilocybin.
And that was pretty much the real beginning of his path.
You know, sometimes I'm a little skeptical about this concept because I worry that – because I've met people who are really into psychedelics who are like – somehow it went the opposite direction.
Speaking of which, I saw a really good movie last night.
What?
I think it's called Late Night with the Devil.
It's a 2024 movie about a talk show host in 1977 that has this girl come on the show, and it's like really done, like it looks like you're in 1977. So good.
The greatest deception ever, if demonic possession was real and we were all mocking it, and then one day you saw it, you actually saw it, you'd be like, oh no, it's real.
Like, I think we've just come up with new words for it.
But have you ever had this happen?
I'm gonna get made fun of this.
Have you ever had this happen?
Like, have you ever been like super high, you're walking down the street, you pass somebody having a psychotic episode, and they start saying what you're thinking?
I forget who posted it up, but there's some video of all these college kids talking about, it went viral, all these college kids talking about what their degree was in, and all these woke kids with these ridiculous degrees, like what they studied.
Apparently, we talked about this before, but apparently there are certain circumstances under which there's a certain type of bankruptcy that'll allow you to evade that, but I wonder what that is.
Like, for example, several types of loans associated with education expenses are dischargeable in bankruptcy like most other types of unsecured consumer debt.
These types of loans for education expenses are not subject to the more difficult standard and extra step.
These loans could include, for example, loans where the loan amount was higher than the cost of the attendance, such as tuition, books, rooms, and board, which can occur when a loan is paid directly to a consumer.
Loans pay for education.
So that means they could do it, they could forgive you if the loan amount was higher than the cost of attendance?
Is that what it's saying?
Or is it saying it's going to pay you the difference?
Like you could deduct the difference when you get a bankruptcy?
Do we need to see what's happening in Palestine in order to reassess the way we behave as a civilization?
Do we need crime to get out of hand before we realize that law and order is important and that we really need to figure out a way to stop crime at its root source?
We're just disenfranchised people.
Do we really need something?
Maybe that's the only way we learn.
Maybe there's lottery winners.
They don't do well, dude.
They don't do well because they didn't learn.
They just got all this money like, and then they're doing a blow, and they're on a fucking dot, and it's gone.
Now it's gone.
Now you're mad, and everybody's mad at you, and you didn't invest in the business with your uncle, and everybody's pissed at you.
Everyone understands this and no one thinks about it.
We are in the middle of this Intellectually evolutionary process.
That's funny that I said those two words in such a goofy way.
Intellectually evolution.
But there's a thing going on where we're assuming that civilization is going to be better all the time.
And we're always going to get better all the time.
Which is really interesting.
Because no other animal does that.
There's not another animal alive that says, we only killed 47 zebras this year.
Next year, we're fucking cranking it up.
We're going to be better and more efficient.
We want to be better at everything.
We want to be better at our industry.
We want to be better at fixing our infrastructure.
We want to be better at housing.
We want to be better all the time.
There's this constant push for progress.
And if you just step back and look at where it's going with this train wreck of AI happening at the same time that's going on, it's like, oh, we were fueling this!
This is so funny you're mentioning this, because honestly, it's so embarrassing.
This is so dumb.
I don't care.
I'm wearing a robot outfit.
At the gym...
Yesterday, I'm working out, and I've started listening to classic gospel music.
It is so good.
If you're having a shitty day, it doesn't matter if you're not Christian, just fucking listen to it.
It's so upbeat, and it makes you happy, and it's kind of magical.
So I'm at the gym, and I'm thinking about Jesus, because I've been listening to gospel music.
I was thinking like, oh, oh, like maybe the idea as far as like the devil goes, because I always wonder that.
Who made the devil?
Why did God make the devil?
Why is there a devil?
Is there a devil?
Is it just a fucking symbol for something?
But I realized like, oh, like, you know, that stupid song, if you love some, if you love somebody.
Set them free.
So it's like, the idea being, I'm making you.
You're sentient.
And I'm setting you free.
And I'm setting you free in a fucking universe where there's collectivized evil.
There's some kind of semantics.
There's some kind of thing that forms, which will fuck you up.
And, because I love you, I'm going to let you figure it out.
And then from that perspective, and also if there is some super intelligence and somehow in the universe there's a bifurcation or something that's centered on the self instead of others, That has an intelligence to it to really, like, fucking flex to that thing.
You're like, okay, I'm just gonna give you these things that I love so much.
And if you win, if you corrupt my creation fully, then...
Then you win.
I was wrong.
But I don't think you are.
I don't think it's gonna happen.
Because inevitably, whatever it is, you take a psychedelic, for me whenever I take psychedelics, too many, right away I start thinking about how selfish I am.
And so to let these things that theoretically I'm talking about from Christian cosmology that you love more than anything else, which by the way, like in the Garden of Eden story, When God says something like, where are you?
To Adam and Eve.
And apparently the original translation, that crying out, is the way of, like, you know, have you ever lost your kid at a playground?
It's that!
It's not like, where are you?
Slaves!
It's like when you're calling for your kids.
Yeah, it's heavy, man.
I feel like maybe the whole thing is designed for us individually to stumble upon that basic truth that underneath the shell is love.
And the love wants to express itself.
And love doesn't express itself by saying, me, me.
Love is always like, I love you.
What can I do for you?
Let me help you.
It's like the person swimming into the lake for no reason to get that last person who fucking was in a car accident.
And they drown.
You know, they get the person to save you and they die.
Like whether or not you murder a baby because the devil made you do it or because some other force that is just like the devil that just happens to be a part of human beings, that in violent rages, they could do horrific things.
Do we think the devil's invading the chimps when they're doing it?
Or do we think that this is some bygone, some leftover shit that's in our DNA that can go sideways and allow people to become serial killers or allow people to become assassins?
I think it's an identification of a possibility in a human life.
There is a possibility in a human life to make a series of shitty decisions.
And those shitty decisions lead you into darker and darker and darker experiences of reality.
And the darker your experience of reality, the more likely you are to make a shitty decision.
Because you've gotten yourself into fucking debt.
You went to wizard school.
You've got...
You study fucking rainbow magic.
It doesn't seem to be real.
No one's coming to your clinic.
Now you're like, you know, $800,000 in fucking debt.
And now what are you gonna fucking do?
Like, you gotta figure out a way to make money.
So how are you gonna make the fucking money?
Well, you find some scam or some shit, right?
And then the next thing you know, now you're like...
Lying to people and now that you're lying to people you have to keep fucking lying to people and then you start lying to yourself and then you get lost in a maze of self-deception that leads you into lower and lower and lower levels of consciousness until the next thing you know you're in fucking jail or you're dead you're killing somebody and so so like Call it whatever you want to fucking call it, but this entropic reality in human existence is very fucking real.
And the message of all the great lineages, whether it's Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, is at any given moment in that hell state you've gotten yourself into, there is a way to get the fuck out.
You don't have to be in hell.
It's like what C.S. Lewis says, the gates of hell are locked from the inside.
So you have to wait for forever before things get back on track, things start getting profitable again, and then they start making Dune 2. I haven't seen it, but I heard it's awesome.
I watched it with Asan, and dude, I was like, you know that, like, you get bliss, and movies are so good, and you're the...
You're the right amount of stoned.
And, like, you realize, like, oh my god, it's only been 30 fucking minutes, and this is already the most insanely beautiful thing I've ever seen in my fucking life.
The soundtrack!
When you look up how they made the soundtrack for that movie, it is insane, man!
Everything about it is, like, they had throat singing in it.
Dude, yeah, so, like, there's all these theories about Dune.
But the blue eyes, so you eat this spice melange that you need it for space travel.
It's only produced on, you know the story, but like the blue eyes.
So there's a theory, because Frank Herbert was a mycologist.
The blue eyes represent psilocybin and like that was his melange is like psilocybin and like Yeah, dude, and he he Apparently I think it's San Fran.
He was living on a boat next to Alan Watts.
Oh and they were they were fucking friends so a lot of the like You remember the Gom Jabbar, the needle that that witch puts to Paul Atreides neck to say, like, they want to find out if you're human.
So you put your hand in this box that if you pull your fucking hand out of the box, she stabs you with this needle.
It kills you because you're not human.
Who gives a fuck?
And so Gom Jabbar, Gom in Tibetan Buddhism is the name for meditation.
So there's all these, like, clearly he was pals with Alan Watts.
And he, like, weaves a lot of, like, a lot of the language in it is, like, the daughter in the womb, I think her name's Aaliyah, which is, like, a Buddhist term for, like, the emptiness, for a state of pure consciousness.
And like in the book, even in the newest one, I don't think they convey, like he writes about the smell in those sieges in the underground, like in the caves that the Fremen are living in.
He talks about the smell of the BO in there, like just all of these people living underground and the stink of that.
But dude, did you see that video of David Lynch eating this girl's panties?
What if we fucking developed laws for panty eating?
Like, enough!
We've summoned too many demons!
People just realize that all you have to do is fucking hold hands with mouthfuls of panties, and if the two of you are talking at the same time, you could summon a super demon.
Unless you're like, good job, congratulations, being nice.
Who has time?
If you do, there's no chance you're devoting the proper amount of time to things in your life that you shouldn't do.
So it's this massive distraction and you get these arguments online that distract you from the failures in your real life.
But that is representative in a lot of people's minds to how people think about whatever this person posted or whether this political argument that people are having about things.
But that's not real, and then you've got the algorithm manipulation we were talking about, which is even more crazy!
Now, not only do you have the most complainy fucking people complaining, but you have the algorithm showing things that are going to piss you off like, look at this fucking...
And the phone's going to know that you took a screenshot of the comment and you sent it to me, and I'm like, wow, what a Dick!
So your whole childhood has been on camera, and if it's not on camera, you're looking at your fucking mom, staring at the comments of the video she posted of you opening Christmas presents.
Or you're just a standard kid and your childhood is constantly interrupted by your parents staring at their fucking phones.
So you get old enough.
You're not going to associate phones necessarily with good feelings.
And then you're like, you know what?
Fuck these things.
This made my parents fucking distant.
It made my parents upset.
And they're just like, fuck this, which means there's, by the way, That's scary if you want to monitor populations.
Wow, right now we're all in fucking Orwell, some crazy version of 1984. Way more sinister than the camera in your house.
It's like you're carrying it around.
But suddenly these formerly monitored populations, they just go dark.
Because kids are just like, I'm not going to do this.
They're meeting in parks.
God help us all.
They're meeting in parks and they're saying things that are untraceable.
How distanced are you from the fact that- How devious.
Very fucking devious.
How devious.
Dude, if you read The Painted Bird- No.
Don't I mean it's so good, but it's the most like it's like It doesn't matter if you do spoilers for old books, but like one of the scenes This it's about a kid wandering like I think it's World War two He's lost his parents and he's got it like he's just wandering through the countryside and seeing just the most horrific shit you've ever seen and surviving but like he watches These villagers take a woman and shove a bottle into her pussy and then
stomp on her pussy to break the bottle inside of her.
Yeah, dude.
That's not even the worst thing in the book.
But, so, this innocent kid just is witnessing all of it and it's talking about what you're talking about.
It's like basically analyzed.
It's sort of like showing like, where does evil come from?
You know, are people born evil?
Statistically, some people are born sociopaths.
We know that, but it's a relatively small part of the population.
But where does it come from?
Inevitably.
It comes from trauma that a kid is enduring, and then you have to survive, just like you're saying.
If you're seeing it happen all the time, and it's affecting all those families, it's gonna just keep...
The kids are gonna go into it.
They see the drug dealer rolls by in the nice car.
Everybody else is a sucker for getting on the train.
Yeah, and then everybody's in and then the next thing you know you're dead and then it just keeps going and you have kids that are raised without you and then you're it's like Whoo and then what do you do?
So then what happens that reaction to the contagion is You you you you other that person so so now you see like the person in full bloom of evil And you look at that person like that's a fucking monster, but you can't go back and And look at like their childhood because if you start going back and looking at their childhood, you're like Jesus Christ.
They're a victim.
Right.
But you can't think about that.
To fully like monster-fy somebody, you gotta fucking forget how they became the monster.
And then this is where you end up with a very non-nuanced system of dealing with the contagion, which will produce more contagion.
Like this just spreads the fucking evil all over the fucking place.
And I agree with you, man.
I don't know the solution.
This is where imaginary numbers came up with.
In math, it's like you don't need to know the solution.
Put an X there.
It's like clearly this is a fucking problem.
We've got people who are horrifically traumatized and then have made shitty decisions where they've got to commit to being some violent, monstrous, thieving piece of shit and rationalize it and justify it.
But this is – if we could fix this problem – and I don't think the way we fix the fucking problem is dropping bombs on people.
You're not fixing the problem.
Like if the answer to evil is more evil – What the fuck?
It's like a never-ending, it's like scratching poison ivy.
No matter how horrific the monster is, or whatever it is, I try to not be afraid to put myself In the position of whatever the fucking thing is.
And in this case, we've got two sides that right now seem to be being equally vilified by different groups of people, right?
But man, dude, let me tell you something.
If my fucking kid got blown up by a fucking bomb Right?
That's it.
My logic's out the window.
I would like to think that I'd really listen to all the Ram Dass retreats and stuff and I'd like to think that I would be like Gandhi or have some blossom of love and be like, I forgive everyone.
I'm afraid that's not gonna happen.
I'm gonna want to hurt.
And then, if my fucking kid got dragged into a fucking tunnel, are you fucking kidding me, man?
I'm not gonna see clearly.
Like, I'm going to want revenge and I want my kid back.
And whatever you do to get my fucking kid back, okay.
Have you seen The Last of Us?
This fucking othering of whatever the fucking side is, it's just leaving out What it feels like to love your kid.
Look at a mother.
It's throughout the animal kingdom.
Don't fuck with a creature's kid.
I'm sorry.
It will get you fucked up.
Even if the thing's smaller than you and you fuck with its kid, it will put itself in front of its kid.
So we are looking at a problem of love, sadly.
Which is like, on both sides, people love their fucking kids and have been, like, I can't imagine how a day goes by when you're fucking kids in a tunnel.
I can't imagine how a day goes by when you're thinking about how this thing that you fucking love more than anything in the world got its head fucking blown off in a fucking explosion in a building.
I don't know how you live one day like that, right?
So when you look at that, the entirety of the thing is heartbreaking and irrational.
It's completely irrational because both sides are trying to put out a fire with more fire.
Well, it's a problem when human beings don't know human beings and they're the enemy.
It doesn't make any sense.
Regardless of how you think about religion and land, just stop for a second.
Human beings that don't know other human beings and hate them so much they want to kill them.
Like, seems that's a communication issue.
That seems like some Tower of Babel shit.
Like, that's the only way it makes sense.
If we really get to a point, and I don't think it's going to be far from now, where we're all connected with real-time translation in real-time, somehow or another.
I mean, they've already been able to do it with Google.
They're already doing it with Samsung phones, where they can translate conversations.
You could be talking in Italian.
I could be talking in English.
It'll translate back and forth to both of us.
It's wild what they're already able to do.
If we can get to some sort of I mean, it's not out of the question that if they do develop these neural implants, and there's not just Neuralink, there's several competing companies that are trying to do the same thing, because they recognize that once you can actually affect the human mind with electronics, and you can develop this symbiotic relationship with electronics, you could do some wild shit.
And one of the things is you're gonna be able to talk without words.
You're gonna be able to...
Well, if you're talking without words, What language is that in?
Are you hearing that in a language, or are you understanding what the person's thinking?
So this is the difference.
If you're talking without words, the problem is, how are we going to be able to translate all these different languages and dialects?
Why I think world peace is possible, because if you fucking look at what's happening, the system, it's like the framework is being built for just what you're talking about.
The technological framework for a state, to get into that state, you either need to do a lot of psychedelics or a lot of meditation to really realize, like, you're me, I'm you.
But the technological framework is forming for this thing to happen, which...
Which is why, man, like, everyone fucking...
I'm gonna seem like a Musk fanboy in a Tesla suit.
Everyone bashing fucking Musk.
It's like, dude, do you understand, like, what he's...
What that...
In the future, when people look back on that shit, even if it doesn't work, even if the things are coming unplugged, whatever the fucking thing is, if that leads to what you're talking about...
God damn, that's electricity.
That's like the end of war.
That's the end of the ideological barrier.
Imagine whoever you hate the most in the fucking world.
All that gone, which is like that's the problem of being like a communication bully like if you're a person and you know that you have a vastly superior if you if you have a Vocabulary like an Eric Weinstein like for instance imagine if Eric Weinstein decided to bully someone,
you know Like fucking red band, you know Who's a brilliant guy, but you know, sometimes he like stumbles on his words.
Like if fucking Eric Weinstein's yelling at him with a bunch of long words, you go, hey, that guy's being an intellectual bully.
You're not trying to communicate with him as a human being.
You're trying to dominate him with your superior vocabulary.
And it's a weapon.
You know, my vocabulary is like B+. It's not that good.
It's pretty good.
But for a guy who talks for a living, it probably should be better.
Because sometimes I get to words and I'm like, is that the right word?
But I always say it.
I'm not sure if that's the right word.
But the point is that, like, it is a tool that you can wield for the benefit of your ego rather than just having a conversation.
And those are the grossest conversations.
When someone's just jizzing on you, well, I started a business, I sold it at two billion, and now I'm like, bro, I got a You know those kind of people?
But normally, I'm like, the benefit of conflict in that regard, it's like almost zero benefit.
All of my conflict, I try to keep internal.
I don't want to have any conflict with external people.
I want to have all my conflict with my own head.
I want to have all my conflict with discipline, all my conflict with being nice to people and trying to be a better person all the time and trying to be wiser about my choices and how I describe things and talk about things and think of things and how I interface with ideas.
I just try to be better at it.
So I don't have any time for all your petty bullshit.
There's just too many petty people out there.
They're petty.
They're petty, and they're usually petty because they're all fucked up.
It's all these slogans to get you back on the path.
One of my favorite Lojong slogans is, drive all blames into oneself.
So, it defuses the...
So, like, it completely, like, removes the ability to be like, it's your fault!
Because it's like, actually, whatever the fuck they did, it's kinda your fault.
A vampire only goes where they're invited.
You brought this person into your fucking life and they're behaving the way that your instincts told you they might behave and now you're mad at them for being the fucking way they are.
Drive all blames into oneself.
So like anytime I'm getting like mad and butthurt over this person or that person or this thing or that, if I really analyze the situation, I chose it.
I chose to bring that person into my life.
I chose to connect to that person in some way or another.
This is all me.
And I'm choosing to fucking react in a negative way.
But you don't choose random acts of violence and random...
Catastrophes and random things that happen to you, but you do in some way, but you don't even choose like getting attached to a sociopath, because if you're naive, you can get roped in.
So there's problems with thinking like this, because you do have like really manipulative people, particularly like, you know, con people, con artists, get you to sign over your fucking, I'm due this business deal.
She's just like...
All I need is $2,000.
I'll have you a quarter million dollars in a month.
Sometimes it's like people get scared at people that are really confident and talk really well, and they're just a little socially awkward.
And they feel like it would be easier just to sign off and trust him than it would be to argue with him.
Because he's so persistent, and you are so averse to conflict, that when someone's being really aggressive, Have you ever had someone to be really aggressive to try to get you to invest in something?
Dude, one time we were in the bar, we were downstairs, and we were talking, and someone was jumping up and down upstairs, and I'm watching the fucking ceiling buckle, and I'm like, yo, you know how old this building is?
What was the last time anybody came in here and checked any of these beams?
When I first came back to the store in 2014, that was the thing that impressed me the most, was Roast Battle.
I was like, this is crazy, because this is a new thing.
This is a new thing that's a writing exercise.
Because they're dunking on each other for sure.
But it's a writing exercise because everyone's preparing.
You know that you're going to go against Bobby Lee.
Bobby Lee knows he's going to go against you.
And then you all get together with your friends.
Yeah, tell me what you think about this.
Bobby does it.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think you go up and you duke it out in a writing exercise It's designed like a specific target is one target.
It's the other person So your comedy is all about a person, right, but that's it's a comedy exercise It's really a comedy writing exercise and I remember sitting there watching.
Oh, this is incredible Like this is really an amazing thing that they've done.
This is and Jeff Ross was there and And they have hosts and guests and I was one of the judges.
You can't believe that came up in the moment and...
Obscure shit related to whatever this person's weird job is that there's no way he could have predicted and had a fucking banger just in the chamber, ready to go?
And it's just like, those guys can't stop when they're in the green room.
We're getting free shows all the time.
If David Lucas and Tony Hedgecliffe are in the green room, the moment David walks in, Tony's scanning them, looking for flaws in what he's wearing, what he just said.
Do you know that the guy who ran the cult, the building that I was under contract for, that I almost bought and turned into the mothership, the guy who ran that cult was in Rosemary's Baby?
Yeah, and one of the guys that we had on our show, who was it that went down there that was it that went to the old where the rocket factory used to be now and then there's like fucking blood scenes.
They went down to where the rocket factory used to be, and it's like a satanic ritual place now where freaks go, and they have blood splattered all over, or it looks like red paint or something splattered all over the walls, and weird writing and shit, and it's like, it was super creeped out, and then people were coming in there to do like, what was it called?
I don't want to say too much about it, but this particular comedy routine involves demonic possession, and these folks thought it was a riot, and they wanted it at their fucking wedding.
Do you know how crazy you have to be to want that at your wedding?
But is it like Christians, like you can have regular Christians, like you go to a really nice church, or you can go to a revival tent where a dude's got rattlesnakes.
And so I remember being at the comedy store, and anytime I was hanging out with them at the comedy store, anytime there was someone left out, Zandora or Stanton would go over there and it wasn't a recruitment thing.
They would just like include them in the circle because why?
All I'm saying is when you judge a tree by its fruit and here's the thing, man, like, and I think not those guys- I never thought you'd be on here simping for Satan, bro.
So like in Romantic, not like Romantic in the sense of like...
Who is it?
Milton?
Like, the idea is, like, you have this being that is like, I don't really want to be forced to worship you, and I don't understand necessarily why you should have all the power and why.
What the fuck?
Like, what the fuck?
And then gets thrown into hell.
And then suddenly this bifurcation emerges between good and evil, sacred and profane.
And so that version of Satanism is looking at that not as like what is the general interpretation, which is the problem with Satan was Satan was like Incredibly self-cherishing, self-absorbed, like really into himself.
Whereas God is like, God's like the sun, just like radiating life and love and like with no sense of like, give anything back to me, just like, blah, love.
Or Satan is more about, maybe you could say, the idea is like, I am God, right?
So, like, me, I'm God.
Like, my impulses and instincts and desires aren't bad.
Why are you telling me it's bad to jerk off?
Why are you telling me that it's bad to come?
Why are you telling me these things are bad when, like, all of them make me feel happy and good?
And why are you turning me into a fucking monster for this shit?
And who the fuck do you think you are?
I'm trying in the best way possible to depict a more sort of anti-authoritarian Mysticism, right?
So the symbol set they use is Satan, which most Satanists I've talked to are like, there's no fucking Satan, which I know everyone's like, of course they say that!
Dude, this makes Fifty Shades of Grey look like Dr. Seuss.
Can I give you like one of the books and by the way now she's like got a stack of these fucking things one of these books so in this book A lady is a thief.
And she steals the identity of a shark expert.
She fucks him, steals his identity.
So, the scene I read, she's on this boat with a shark researcher.
And he's fucking her.
And he's, like, just fucking the shit out of her.
And she loves it.
And then, you know what he does?
He, like, he's like, I know you fucking stole my identity.
He kisses her, bites her lip.
Bites her fucking lip, draws blood.
Takes her.
To the side of the boat with her bleeding mouth shoves her head into the water while he's fucking her so the blood starts drawing sharks to bite her while he's fucking her.
I think there are states of consciousness that you can reach, whether it's under duress, fear, anxiety, a combination of those things.
There's psychiatric drugs, psychedelic drugs.
But I think there's a place that you could reach where you could see into other possibilities.
I think you can see things that aren't necessarily there in a physical sense, but you're there with them.
They're there with you.
They don't exist, but you can see them, and it's not a hallucination.
It's like you're tapping into the grayness in between universes, in between dimensions.
You're tapping into this area of weirdness.
And this area of weirdness, I think, is ghosts.
I think this area of weirdness is goblins and things that people see sometimes.
I don't think they're real.
I don't think anybody's gonna get eaten by a goblin.
But I do think that there's too many fucking stories of elves for me not to think that someone Reached some state of mind where they saw like a little person in the woods talking to them.
The problem of stories being similar is people hear the stories and their imagination takes over and they depict their thing similar to the story that they've heard.
That's a problem, like a copycat bullshit artist problem.
But there's also too many stories of elves, man.
There's too many of those stories and there's too many depictions of elves that are dancing around mushrooms.
When you and I were kids, when we were in high school, you didn't hear fucking shit.
There's this one dude who was a drug addict and he hung out over there and he's a loser.
You didn't hear a peep about shamanic rituals and Gordon Wasson going down to Mexico and getting all the mushrooms and doing these ceremonies with these traditional shamans.
You didn't hear any of that.
You didn't hear any of it.
Nobody knew what the fuck was going on when we were kids.
They silenced it.
They threw water on the biggest One of the biggest cultural revolutions that's documentable without the use of the internet.
And that was the psychedelic revolution of the 1960s.
It changed music, it changed movies, it changed comedy, it changed everything.
Fucking everything, every single thing got changed in a radical leap.
If you look at the 1950s and you look at the 1960s, it's like, woo, something happened.
Look at the cars got cooler, the music sounded better.
The CIA is the reason that all these LSD studies happen, and who wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?
Ken Kesey.
Ken Kesey apparently was in one of these LSD experiments, and he's just one of many great artists who accidentally got Liberated mentally by the fucking CIA. You know what I mean?
They were just like, we want to use this to interrogate people.
That's the person that becomes famous and we've all seen that with like there's been you know a Milli Vanilli and shit like that Yeah, like it didn't make any sense like why why are they promoting this cuz like they had a product they're trying to push this product Yeah, and there's a lot of money behind that and also a lot of influence cultural influence and when they went through all that Vietnam shit with the fucking the Beatles and you Remember that?
Like, all I know is like, it's like, it's a very confusing thing.
If you want to be honest, if you love psychedelics...
You owe a thank you to the fucking CIA. You know what I mean?
I don't know for sure if the 60s as we understand them would have happened.
I don't think the CIA was like, hey, let's create a lot of flower children and make people revalue life and realize that money maybe Isn't actually, like, something you should die for and, like, go against war.
Somehow or another, either they just don't think it's a priority or it's a different administration.
They're not interested in locking down drugs.
Yeah.
One of the motivations for that in the 1970s was that they were going to target civil rights activists and anti-war activists.
That's one of the methods to do it, is to turn all these drugs that everybody was using into Schedule 1 drugs.
All these drugs that made people question society, all these drugs that made people want to tune in, turn on, drop out.
All those drugs, they were like, we gotta put a fucking kibosh on all these culture-shifting drugs.
And the wild thing is they fucking did it.
That's the wild thing.
And that the brainwashing still works today.
The brainwashing that they did on these compounds that might be the root of all religious experiences...
All these things that you're hearing about in the Bhagavad Gita, all these things you're hearing about in the Bible, these wild-ass crazy stories, like what really happened?
Those people might have had a psychedelic experience.
In fact, the thing about the University of Jerusalem that attributes the story of Moses and the burning bush to dimethyltryptamine, Yeah.
I mean, like, the consumption of these things has, up until recently, tended to be underground.
Like, if you look at, like, what's it called?
Kaikion, if you look at the...
It has been weirdly an underground thing, and I think that's what we...
If there is some cool thing that came from us coming up in the war on drugs, it's like when I was taking LSD in high school and getting an immediate...
Reality check which is like you're hearing about this as being like since you were a kid you're gonna go nuts You're gonna like become legally insane whatever the fuck that means and then you take it and You're processing weird shit that happened in your childhood.
You're loving yourself You're looking at the world and seeing it like it's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen you're hearing music that you've heard a million times for the first time and You realize oh They're lying.
This is wonderful.
This isn't madness.
And if it is madness, then this is the kind of crazy all of us need to go.
But you couldn't tell your parents.
You wanted to.
You wanted to be like, Mom, I think this might help you.
But you couldn't because you'd be fucked.
Right.
Five-year mandatory minimum.
Five-year fucking mandatory minimum.
They're locking people up.
Still people in jail right now for this fucking beautiful gift to humanity.
And so we got to experience it from the underground perspective, which was...
It's mostly horrific.
It produces paranoia.
You were scared.
You felt like a criminal for nothing.
So, yeah, man.
But if you look at the history, any substance like psilocybin, LSD, that breaks down the identity, that allows freedom from the sense of this is me and that's you, and produces at least the potential for merging With reality and with other people, it's not gonna work for that fucking hierarchical system.
For the hierarchical system to function, you need, you're below me, you're above me, and the moment you're like, we're all the same, then suddenly the caste system stops working, classism stops working, the whole fucking thing falls apart, which is why I think that book you gave me, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, or even give me it when I was living with you, Actually, I was a dick.
I left it on the fucking floor.
One of the reading materials you gave me during that wonderful time was this insane book about how Jesus and Christianity has its roots in psilocybin.
Just for the sake of this rant, if you look at Jesus as psychedelics, It makes a lot of sense because what Jesus is saying is you don't need a priest class to communicate with the divine.
You can do it right now, anytime you want, any day you want.
It's always here for you.
That's exactly what the mushrooms tell you.
And what happens to Jesus?
They fucking kill him.
And so it's like the relationship between centralized power and psychedelics has always been a contentious one.
If you're that way, if you're authoritarian, whether you're authoritarian left or authoritarian, right, generally speaking, unless you're talking about crime, and even then, you're scared, right?
Because really, you should be addressing the root of the problem, which is like, why do so many people from so many very distinct areas keep going into crime, and why is there nothing being done to stop that?
But those people that are authoritarian in terms of religious beliefs, in terms of behavior, the way people dress, gays in public, that kind of stuff, those people are all scared.
That comes from a place of being scared.
Gay people in public is not a problem.
Assholes in public is a problem.
And if the gay people are nice, you have a great time.
If the gay people are assholes, just like if the straight people are assholes, you have a shitty time.
It's not a gay straight thing.
It's a human being being kind and normal and friendly to people thing.
And that's possible with everybody, but people think, oh, those are the ones that are going to be mean to me and fuck them and they're responsible.
That's it.
Those are individual human beings, and you're grouping them together because you're scared.
You should be aware of danger, but to be so scared that you want to control other people's behavior is like a bad sign.
That's a bad sign.
You know, if you want to tell people what language they can use, that's a bad sign.
Yes, that sounds religious, too.
If you want to tell people how they have to dress or what kind of music they listen to, like this has all been bad always from the beginning of time, whether it's coming from the left or the right, whether it's fucking the Al Gore shit that was in the Tipper Gore shit in the 1980s that was coming from the left.
So left-wing politicians are trying to censor rap music.
That's the reason why you have those dummies.
They created that warning explicit lyrics.
That's all anybody wanted to buy.
If you didn't have the warning explicit lyrics, kids didn't even want to buy those CDs.
This is exact—so to answer your question, do I believe in Satan?
I believe in fear.
And fear and the devil are the fucking same thing.
And it's like, this is—if you want to talk about what Satan is, it's the cloud of fear that lives inside the individual and then collectivizes in a fearful reaction.
And how to frighten people react to things— Anger, violence, judgment.
And so what's the opposite of fear, man?
Love.
Love is the opposite of fear.
And so this is, to me, this is the issue.
It's not left-right.
It's that if you are making decisions based on fear, More than likely the result is going to create something that makes you more afraid and You know that's just how it works.
I mean, Buddhism, this is when they talk about enlightenment.
They talk about, like, if we're in a pitch black room, it could be scary.
I don't know what's around me.
There's weird sounds.
What the fuck?
You ever woken up in the middle of the night, kind of bleary in something that's been in your room forever?
You can't see it clearly because you're waking up and you're like, it's a person!
Oh, it's my chair, right?
Yes.
So the example, and this is why Satan in mythology is the deceiver.
Because it's not there.
It's literally not fucking there.
The moment you turn on the light, everything's fine.
Except in this case, the light is love.
The moment that you have the fucking guts to love the person, to really cultivate love.
Fuck, dude.
No one's scary anymore.
My kids, you know, anyone who has kids knows what I'm fucking talking about.
They can do things that are insane, like to your house, to the walls, to say things to you that if any adult said it to you, you might never forgive them.
You're going to think about it for a long fucking time, like your beard stinks or whatever.
You know what I mean?
Like, you meet somebody like, dude, your fucking beard stinks.
I love the story and I love a story about what happened because you always have to filter through the very real understanding that we all have about the way human beings tell stories.
It's hard to know what's bullshit.
Because people just lie about stuff.
And that's not a new thing.
But people also tell the truth about stuff.
That's not a new thing either.
People also write down very important things.
And there are people that are virtuous.
And there are people that are honest.
And there are people that are authentic.
They've always existed.
There's people that are smart enough to understand the value of just being truthful.
So those people that encountered something Exceptional and crazy, something insane.
Whether it is the resurrection or whatever it was.
I would love to know what the fuck they really said.
What were the actual words?
Why did you write it down?
What really happened?
How many people were told this story back and forth Over hundreds of years before you wrote it down.
What was the original story like?
It's so hard.
It's like trying to get a story about the things that George Washington said that weren't written down.
That weren't written down, you know, like 300 years ago.
So like, it's cymatics, you know, you take a vibration, you throw some fucking flour on a vibrating plate, according to the, like, whatever the frequency is, it forms a certain, it creates a pattern, right?
So, like, this is the Book of John, my favorite book in the Gospels.
It starts off with, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word became a person.
And so, but that's not really what it's saying.
It's like, it's logos.
So, in the beginning was some fundamental reality.
Just truth.
Just basic, beautiful, fucking perfect truth.
And that's what the universe sprang from.
And then that truth became a person.
So the truth could now talk.
It now began to convey itself to other people.
And so that truth, I think, if you understood it enough, you could probably create a set of symbols that would function on many levels that were all good.
One level, just basic ethics.
Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
All of this stuff, right?
But then...
Knowing human psyche and the human mind, you could also hide deeper levels of that truth into parables, into like stories that are mathematically perfect to the point where the crucifixion, if you look at it from the perspective of two intersecting timelines, which is The infinite and the finite meeting, which is what humans are, then you realize we're all being crucified on time.
And then the crucifixion becomes like an existential reality.
You want to know why you're feeling fucked up?
It's because part of you is forever and part of you is going to die.
And you are fucking hanging on a cross between two thieves, the past and the fucking future.
And anytime you're thinking about that, it's stealing the moment.
And so there's that level, right?
And so any of these great texts, like the New Testament, They're coded so that depending on where you want to go with it, you can go as deep as you want.
It's an infinite rabbit hole.
And I think that rabbit hole emerged from vibration.
And then I think the reason people get creeped out by it is because Where there's one thing, its opposite must appear, right?
So here's this thing that is dissolving power structures and dissolving the priest class and dissolving like all of it.
And then you look at like the modern day versions of it and you see the same fucking hierarchy.
You see this thing that it seems to be antithetical to, which is like saying like, this is between you and me.
Right.
Suddenly, there's people telling you you're wrong, interpreting it for you, and you look at that and you're like, fuck that shit, whatever that is, I'm not into it.
It's so crazy that it's such an efficient business.
They still run these fucking franchises, even though the book is available everywhere.
It's so crazy that like this one person interprets this better than everybody else so you go and see him and he talks and they develop egos and they have jets and they have fucking mansions and Rolls Royces.
It's so crazy that that works.
It's crazy that that works when that book is available for everybody and Should be interpreted.
But if you're wise enough to be able to encapture what they're trying to say, just capture in your mind what they're trying to say and translate it into a thing that makes sense.
And to me, that's like, oh, like the Bhagavad Gita, any of these beautiful texts, that's what's fun about them, is that it's producing a kind of like...
Bizarre riddle in your own mind as you're trying to decode it, but then there's a pull.
The more you study it, the more you get drawn in.
And when you start getting really drawn in, that's when people start appearing around you that help in a non-nefarious way.
You just start meeting people who help you understand it a little bit more, and that's where it gets fucking weird.
But isn't it also just an example of – you're not going to have everyone be the same.
You're going to have people that they never learned things well – like look, if you – if I got hired to be a part of some mathematical study, I'm useless.
I'm not that guy.
I fucked up that part of my life.
I never really learned that.
I didn't pay attention.
I'm not interested.
So that's not me.
But someone out there is.
And to have those two things exist simultaneously, you're going to have to have an infinite variety of possibilities for human beings.
So that's part of the problem.
Part of the problem is, some people are just out of their fucking minds.
And if those people out of their fucking minds get special rights, like the tax-free exempt status because they're a pastor, and they're a fucking psychopath who's just really good at conning people, and they're running this organization...
There might be a guy right down the street that's a real Christian.
There might be a guy right down the street that's a really kind person, who's really reading the Word of Christ, and he does it not-for-profit, and he does it to try to establish the love of God in his community, and he takes these people in their family, and there's this beautiful community aspect to it, where everybody's kind to each other.
There's beautiful things to church.
That's true, too.
But the problem is humans, just like the problem with our ability to other each other, just our problem with the ability to attack people on the other side of the political spectrum who live in the same fucking city as you.
Like, people are fucking rabid against other people in their town that want to vote for this guy that wants to do this, and this guy wants to do that, and fuck you, you commie.