Russell chats to peace-pilgrim, activist and former monk, Satish Kumar about his solution to end to the war in Ukraine, how he's inspired global change and his new book 'Radical Love'.WATCH the full interview, only on Rumble https://bit.ly/3Igbg7Y Find out more about Satish, here https://www.resurgence.org/satish-kumar/ Join the Stay Free Community, here https://russellbrand.locals.com/Come to COMMUNITY 2023 - https://www.russellbrand.com/community-2023/NEW MERCH! https://stuff.russellbrand.com/
Wherever you're watching us now, the full show is available only on Rumble.
That means, Gareth, producer of the show, we've got to get as much into this first 10 minutes.
Let's go.
Before community guidelines kick in, before free speech collapses, before we lose the ability to unite people from across the political spectrum and create new movements, new unity, new acceptance, a new vital political movement, which is surely what the world needs right now.
Biden's State of the Union speech maybe doesn't address the truth of America.
We'll be looking at that.
I've got a fantastic guest coming up, Satish Kumar, a genuine hero, an elder, a true Spiritual, potent voice that can provide the necessary sucker that we require at this time.
He's not a conspiracy theorist, is he?
That conspiracy theorist Satish Kumar when he was meeting those other conspiracy theorists like Martin Luther King Jr.
and Bertrand Russell.
Crackpots of the SDE.
If it's the time.
You've got to watch out for them.
But before we, because we're only going to be on Twitter and YouTube for a little while before we're
on Rumble and the Wild West, so I want to make sure that we get as much across as possible.
And do you know what I want to give people the chance to do? Everyone's worried about the energy crisis,
aren't they? Yep.
Fuel, for some reason, has become very, very expensive and costly, even
though the energy companies like Shell and BP are enjoying their most profitable
years in history, even though they still receive government
subsidies.
But we can't control that.
That system's beyond us.
It's beyond our reach.
But I have got a few little techniques to keep you warm during the winter months if you're experiencing any cold.
We've put together This compilation of shudder moments from Justin Trudeau that'll help you shudder yourself warm.
If you can't afford your energy bills, that don't matter none.
Just watch Justin Trudeau and shudder yourself warm as he embarrasses you into a glow of humiliating heat.
Check him.
Where we can be free and no man owns the fish.
Hello Vladimir.
It's Rishi and Justin.
At least it can warm you.
We've got a fantastic quiz.
We're only going to give you the answer once we click over on to Rumble.
And it warms you up to watch him, oh, oh, oh, when he goes, Waddle me, oh, waddle me, oh.
On the phone.
At least it can warm you.
We've got a fantastic quiz.
We're only going to give you the answer once we click over onto Rumble.
Which country poses as liberal, but as a matter of fact, is a totalitarian type of place?
A mass formation you could say.
A mass formation because we've been discussing mass psyche and mass hypnosis over the course of the week.
We get guests on here that can give us unique insights into the reality behind the systems of domination within which most of us toil and grind.
But now it's our take on the State of the Union Address which is essentially just a propagandist piece isn't it? But like a lot of people think that it was
senseless fatica, sat's imitative information, no real political value to it, just an oratory
exercise with no real truth.
But I think it was pretty valuable and there was some pretty powerful rhetoric in there.
And make no mistake, if you try to increase the price of presidium jobs, I will veto it.
Make no mistake, if you try anything to raise the cost of presidium jobs, I will veto it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah!
That's moving!
That's the world we're living in!
Also, Joe Biden, I think he owes us all an apology for the way that he conducts his trivia quizzes.
Name me a world leader who changed places with Xi Jinping.
Name me one!
Name me one!
All right, mate.
Do you want to calm down?
Justin Trudeau?
Yeah, that's one.
Justin Trudeau, Richard Sunak, maybe, like, all of them, really.
What is that mood?
It's aggressive.
That's aggressive.
Name me one.
I don't like it when he does that.
I worry for him and I worry for us.
When he's, like, he might turn himself into chalk.
Yeah, because it was like it wasn't rhetorical.
It was like he actually wanted an answer.
Oh God, I can't fit.
Jesus, Joe, please calm down.
Let me check Hunter's laptop.
Oh no, where is that damn thing?
And there's this crazy lady, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
I bet loads of you like her.
But what I would say is that she shouldn't wear her buttons as a necklace in the same outfit.
The one thing he did not talk about was the one thing he should have talked about.
He should have apologized to America for the Chinese spy balloon.
Everyone loves that balloon. That balloon has really lit up the political scene because it's
the thing you do with a balloon. Power these days seems so diffuse, untenable, technocratic,
governed by a cadre, technological, inaccessible to most of us who don't understand the complexity
of the way that technology operates, manages demographics and data.
But like when something like old school, like there's a balloon floating in the air, you up there?
Like Joe Budden, he could deal with that with one of his angry fish shakes.
Get down there you varmint!
Shooting it straight out of the sky himself, couldn't he?
Yeah, he could.
One of the things that, of course, we are concerned about, and let me know what you think about this.
If you're watching this on Twitter, do a little tweet about it.
On YouTube, let me know in the comments.
On Rumble, let me know in the chat right now and we'll read it.
If you're a member of our Locals community, that's the stream that I'm watching right there.
For example, hello there, Ashela.
Yeah, it's a new hat.
Listen, we're not trying to bring down the government here.
Don't worry about people's hats.
That's not the issue.
What we're looking at is how the left have fetishised conflict with Russia in order to pursue a unipolar agenda and how the right potentially is looking at exacerbating the conflict that is already an economic one.
I suppose Joe Biden has imposed the most aggressive sanctions yet because of semiconductors.
There's a thing you've never heard of that now you have to learn.
There's semiconductor wars now.
Semiconductor wars?
That's what's happening now, yeah.
Get your hands off my semiconductor!
Yeah, this is how we're going to beat China apparently.
So I suppose this is what we're asking, is that even though the State of the Union address I'm sure was full of the usual platitudinous patriotic claptrap, are we being groomed and prepped for yet more global wars?
I mean, the one thing that was good about the proxy war with Russia, I thought, is it's not China.
Sure, sure.
And now it looks like we're heading that way.
We've already had that Germany say it's going to happen in two years.
Now we've got Biden saying we've got to beat China and that's the way to unite us.
Unite us in a war against an incredibly well-organised and powerful global entity.
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, President Biden took aim at China.
said that winning the competition, it's competition at this point, with Beijing should unite us
all.
It is, well at the moment they're saying competition aren't they?
But then you've got generals saying that there's a war coming and then you've got the thing
with the semi-contract, it is priming us towards aggression with China.
Is anybody in the financial industry saying that a war would be profitable?
That's something to watch out for.
Surely not.
White House-linked venture capital fund boasts China war would be great for business.
Now, we remember this, don't we?
Do you remember when like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, all them dudes told their shareholders we can guarantee profits in the next quarter because this war is going to be dragging on?
Yeah, war with Ukraine is good for business.
I think, let me know if you agree with me in the chat and the comments, that at this point, because of our ability to curate information from a wide variety of sources, if we truly watch the narratives that are usually suppressed, the ones that you won't see discussed on mainstream media, you We might be able to pre-empt where these conflicts are going and even when they might commence.
We're already into the sanctions stage, we're already into the condemnatory bombastic language phase, the economic opportunity of war, China encircled by what John Pilger called a noose of missile bases.
Yeah.
An arc.
Yeah, an arc and a noose.
Yeah, exactly.
I'd rather have an arc.
Sure.
Because an arc, there's positive connotations, like through an arc you pass into spiritual bliss and awakening.
Through a double arc, maybe even a little McDonald's, but a noose, nothing good comes out of that unless, I mean, I don't even want to get into that territory until we're in the Wild West that is around But this is why we shouldn't be tricked by this whole balloon stuff.
It's silly.
I know Marjorie Taylor Greene's kind of using it in a political sense, but it's silly.
It's the kind of perfect little symbol for a government who's trying to start wars and whatever way is they're going to war with China.
Because it's hollow, empty, full of hot air, but easy to identify.
Sure.
I sometimes feel that news narratives require symbols.
I'll handle this as carefully as I possibly can.
Part of the idea that coronavirus originated in a wet market, which still yet may be the truth because there are several theories being discussed and no conclusions have yet been offered, but the wet market was an evocative idea because it plays to the ordinary mistrust that Occidental people may have when contemplating Food sources, different cultural ideas and values.
When you start seeing the different... It's very basic and primal, the food people eat, the way people are, our atavistic suspicion of the other, of people that are from other communities.
These things transcend ethics and morality.
These are about anthropology.
Historically, the most likely way that an infectious disease arrives in your community is a stranger.
That's beyond morals and ethics.
That's not a reason to underwrite racism.
But when a narrative around it came from a wet market, you know that the subtext is they're different than us.
Something like a balloon, it provides a convenient symbol.
It's territorial.
The balloon is literally above America.
Increasingly likely now that it was a weather balloon, at least that's what they're saying.
You'll still see people say, oh no, they could have got down into the air force bases and fired off something from a nuclear fission factory.
Yeah, but even if that is the case, I mean literally when we're talking about this noose and this arc of military bases, perhaps giving the US a front row seat to spy on China.
And then a point that Caitlin Johnson made in one of her brilliant articles as usual this week was, Talking about Edward Snowden, the revelations around spying with that, it's like we get all in this frenzy about this balloon because it eventually leads us towards this narrative about war with China, but when revelations like Edward Snowden come out that America is spying on its own citizens, oh we bang him up and or let him flee off to Russia.
What are you more worried about?
A balloon or your own government spying on you?
Right now, who are you more afraid of?
China or your own government?
Now, your own government, remember, we are interested in presenting you with transcendent narratives and diagnostic tools.
For example, our problem with the Democrat Party isn't, oh, we really like the Republican Party, and we don't care which party you like.
It's irrelevant to us.
We think there needs to be a new populist unifying movement transcendent of those ideals.
When the Democrat Party were campaigning, they didn't say we're going to be waging a new war on drugs.
They talked about the horror of the opioid crisis.
But guess what's happening now?
They are amping up the war on drugs, as you can see from this story.
harsher penalties for fentanyl related substances.
Now if there's one aspect of the drug crisis and mental health crisis in America in the last few years,
it was the disgusting way the pharmaceutical industry induced that crisis.
The profits that were gleaned, and this seldom happens, is an area where I'm something of an expert.
I understand addiction and I understand what psychologically underwrites addiction.
Despair.
Pain.
Loss.
Disconnection.
Loneliness.
Total lack of trust in the system.
So to hear that the war on drugs is back but under the new auspices of liberalism shows you precisely and exactly how hollow this administration is.
As hollow and as empty as a balloon, Gareth, I would say.
Well, yeah, the thing with this is it's being talked about and I think it was in the State of the Union where Biden was talking about the trafficking element of this and that we're cracking down on the trafficking element and that's how we're going to solve the problem of the fentanyl issues.
But it's also that fentanyl, any fentanyl related cases, it's a schedule one drug now.
So it means that like people taking it, you know, so you're going to end up with the same situation where prisons are going to get filled up with more people.
It's exacerbating the problem.
Good for the prison industry.
Well, it could be, yeah.
Good for all those companies that use cheap prison labour.
Right, exactly, and the profits that occurred in relation to that.
And, you know, it's essentially creating a system and a problem that exists already and exacerbating it.
As our great mentor and elder George Carlin used to say, you don't need a conspiracy where interests converge.
Let me know what you think about that quote in the chat.
Let me know what your favourite George Carlin quote is.
Stay free with Russell Brand.
See it first on Rumble.
Gareth, we've got our wonderful guest joining us now.
I'm very excited.
Yep.
Honoured, in fact, to introduce Satish Kumar, who, as well as being a former monk, I wonder how you get out of the monk game?
Is it like being a former gangster?
A lifelong activist, a significant figure, and I have argued consistently that were there to be a global council of elders, or even, you know, don't have to be global, Satish Kumar would be on it.
He's the founder of the Resurgence Trust, that's an educational charity that seeks to inform and inspire a just future for all.
He's the editor of the charity's change-making magazine, Resurgence Anecologist.
Satish Kumar entered first into public consciousness in 1962 when he walked 8,000 miles, a global pilgrimage, over two years.
He started at Mahatma Gandhi's grave and walked to Moscow, Paris, London and the United States where he met Martin Luther King Jr.
and I'm Very proud to call him a teacher.
Satish, thank you very much for joining us on Stay Free today.
Thank you for having me Russell.
Satish, you came to prominence in the 1960s where the counter-cultural movement genuinely seemed like it might change the world before it metastasized into kind of individualism and consumerism that is Still morphing into a tyrannical force, an entirely immersive force across our culture.
During the 60s when you came to prominence people spoke openly about the desire for peace.
In this time that appears to be defined by conflict of different kinds most Obviously, of course, literal war.
Do you feel that when there is conflicts that are necessary for the military-industrial complex, one of the most influential and powerful forces on this planet, while there is a war between Ukraine and Russia, when it feels like there are escalating tensions between the USA and China, that peace ought once again become part of our discourse.
What are your thoughts on these conflicts that are determining and defining our planet right now, sir?
Yes, a very good question.
I'm very saddened to see war in Ukraine.
And as you say, this industrial military complex, which is kind of benefiting maybe, perhaps, but at the cost of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people suffering and destruction.
So I think, but politicians have forgotten how to be a statesman.
The diplomats have forgotten how to practice diplomacy, and religious leaders on all sides have forgotten how to practice religion and love.
This is why I've written this book, Radical Love.
Radical love, Russell, is when you are able to love even those you don't like and you don't agree.
And this is where I think Putin and Biden and Rishi Sunak and Zelensky, they all need to read my book and practice radical love and sit down together.
And I have a good solution for Ukraine situation.
Well, would you tell us it, please?
Because, as you say, it's quite a terrible conflict.
Terrible conflict, and it's benefiting not anybody.
It's just, and it's leading towards possibly a third world war.
Because, I mean, what happened, America could not win in Vietnam.
America could not win in Afghanistan.
Russia could not win in Afghanistan.
Winning these days of war is impossible.
So it will go on destroying, and there's no win.
So what my solution for Ukraine is, being like Switzerland.
Swiss model where Switzerland did not go to First World War, did not go to Second World War, did not join NATO, did not join EU.
Independent, its own currency, its own system and a very neutral and trading with everybody.
So if Ukraine can say to Russia that there's no threat from you, from us, for you, there's no NATO, there's no EU, we are independent, we are neutral, like Switzerland, and Switzerland can be rich because they are neutral.
And Switzerland can be home for everybody.
International organizations.
It's the UN headquarters and many, many World Council of Churches.
Many international organizations go to Switzerland because it's neutral.
So Ukraine can be like Switzerland and be neutral and friend to Russia, friend to Europe, friend to everybody.
Have no enemy.
And I think Russia would like it.
Russia would say, yes, if you are neutral and not a member of NATO and not a member of EU and independent, trading with everybody, that's welcome.
It seems that eventually a solution of that type will have to be reached.
Currently, what appears to be driving the conflict is the set of interests that are most obviously going to benefit From the reconstruction of Ukraine, some of our investigations and investigations of others, which we have curated as part of our team, suggest that, and it's publicly understood, that BlackRock will be participating in the reconstruction of Ukraine.
Ukraine want to be 100% digital after this war.
And assurances that Ukraine could become a place of neutrality surely would make a difference, as well as providing, if there were anything like Switzerland, another potential venue for WEF to host their globalist events.
The problem, Satish, is that it feels like, in reality, the conflict between Ukraine and Russia is about A territorial and economic interests, not all of which are explicit.
And there is an attempt to reduce these conflicts to simple moral stories of Russian criminality and Putin's evil and radical love.
I suppose radical love is your book and you wrote it.
But for me, that suggests an acknowledgement Ultimately, of our fundamental humanism, of our fundamental shared goals, of our fundamental unity.
But those ideas are not profitable.
Yeah, but those ideas have to be made at least popular, if not profitable.
And profitability is not the everything.
Humanity is not just about money and profit.
Humanity is about relationship, friendship, love, poetry, music, art, families, all the many, many other important things which we need.
And therefore, if we end this idea that Russians are our enemies, Chinese are our enemies, And the separation.
We are one humanity.
We live on one planet Earth.
The whole cosmos is our country.
The entire planet is our home.
Nature is our nationality.
And love is our religion.
This is radical love.
Love is our religion.
Before we are Christians, Muslims, Hindus, we are humans.
And before we are Russians and Americans and Chinese, we are members of the planet Earth.
One planet home.
Unless you have this idea, this profitability, money, what has it led to us?
Global warming, climate change, wars, conflict, poverty, homelessness.
Even in America, this profitability of America's number one economy has not solved any human problems.
So realists have failed utterly.
Therefore, give idealists a chance.
And I'm an idealist.
And my radical love book is a book of idealism, but realism is in idealism.
These current conflicts, systems, methods and modalities are, as you say Satish, a denial of our fundamental spiritual nature.
I would agree.
I have heard it said that it is ludicrous to apply these external labels and it becomes clear when looking at a baby that there is something ridiculous in saying that a baby is Chinese or French, that you might as well say this baby is a Tottenham supporter.
A baby in its evident abundance and evident connection defies these external labels.
But increasingly we are governed in technological dictatorship, Satish, and I wonder what People are talking about artificial intelligence.
are on the dehumanizing effect of automation, surveillance, and systems of
control like social credit scores which appear to be increasingly discussed and
more likely to be introduced in the next few years.
You know people are talking about artificial intelligence.
I say to them that human intelligence is not used enough. We have so much
potential to use human intelligence.
Now they are saying that farming will be done without farmers.
Factories and workplaces will be run without workers.
So Humans don't need to produce anything.
They don't need to work.
They need to just consume.
Humans don't need to think because artificial intelligence will think for you.
So production will be made by factories.
Thinking will be done by artificial intelligence.
What is the place of humans?
Humans are irrelevant.
The only place of humans is to consume.
So we are no longer thinkers or activists, makers or artists.
We are just consumers.
And this is a nightmare, Russell.
This is a nightmare.
I would say technology should be in the service of humanity.
Technology should be a tool to help humans, not replace humans.
Not replace human thinking, but aid human thinking.
So technology as a servant of humanity is good.
Technology as a master of humanity and replacing humanity is a disastrous and bad technology.
So I want to challenge all the digital dictators that what are you doing is anti-human and anti-nature.
It's very beautiful and it reminds me of the analysis of the ego, that the ego is a good servant but a terrible master, that when the persona, the set of ideas with which we most strongly identify dominate us, our lives become more materialistic, more wedded to transitory and ultimately temporal things.
It's interesting that you say that.
Satish, how can we ...immediately access a new connection.
What ought we do?
Ultimately, this is what I'm mindful of and this is what gives me most hope.
When we talk about geopolitical ideas, powerful institutions, the march of globalism, corporatism, the military-industrial complex, the vast power of the technological state to spy on us and manipulate us, I sometimes feel a sense of despair.
What can we do to reclaim our humanity today?
What can we do to reclaim our connection to our own spirit right now?
How do you practice this in your own life with a man who has an understanding of these traditions and has lived these traditions?
So they are not traditions, they are living practical modalities.
What can we do right now, sir?
We have to build grassroots movement.
And you are doing good work in that.
We have to say that ignore these kind of big, decentralized and technological big organizations.
Small is beautiful.
Small and elegant and simple is beautiful.
So we should, at the grassroots level, people should come together and say we are going to live a human life.
Technology as a servant, but human life.
And we are going to take a Hippocratic oath, the Hippocratic oath like Dr. State, do no harm, do no harm to nature, do no harm to other people, and do no harm to yourself.
If all of us practice that non-violent Peaceful way of living, the Hippocratic oath, then that Hippocratic oath is oath to loyalty to nature and loyalty to humanity rather than loyalty to business and money and profit and governments and military.
Our loyalty has to shift at a grassroots level.
So let us create a movement of the hypocrite out. Everyone, you are a businessman or
woman or a politician or economist or a scientist, whoever you are, practice non-violence,
practice the hypocrite out, doing no harm. That is radical love.
It's very hard though Satish to live like that. It's very hard to live only in love.
All the great things are hard, Russell.
Climbing Mount Everest is hard.
Going around the world for two and a half years.
I went walking without any money for two and a half years through 15 countries and 8,000 miles, that was hard, but that was the real experience.
So let's not worry about hardness.
What is good, we must practice, even if it is hard.
And we will overcome our difficulties.
Martin Luther King, who I met, went to prison for 29 times in his 10 years in activism.
Nelson Mandela was in jail for 27 years.
Mahatma Gandhi was in prison for 12 years.
So they were hardworking, great visionaries.
So we don't need to worry about hardness and difficulty.
We have to do what the right thing to do, even though we have to sacrifice our some comfort,
but in the interest of humanity and planet, we have to build a grassroots movement.
It'd be no good if Gandhi had said, this is too hard going on this sort march.
It would have been no good if Martin Luther King had said, I can't do this million man march, it's too difficult.
If Malcolm X had said, standing up to the dominated culture is too difficult.
If Nelson Mandela said, I can't stay in this prison, it's too hard.
I'll do whatever you want.
What do I need to say?
You're right.
This is, I suppose, one of the challenges when you lose your connection to spirituality, which involves things like sacrifice, discipline, focus.
When everything becomes tethered to the external, when all of our personal validation, verification is externally sourced, we don't have the cojones no more.
We don't have the spiritual stones, the minerals to sort of go Right, I'm gonna suffer now.
I'm ready to suffer.
I don't like suffering Satish.
It's difficult, but I will do it now that you have commanded it on our show.
I think suffering will make us strong and resilient.
If you take a tree, A tree stands in the winter, in the snow, in the storm, out in the field as a stronger.
If you keep a tree in a greenhouse or in a conservatory all the time, the tree will not be strong.
So resilience comes when we suffer and we make sacrifice and I have suffered and made sacrifice in my life and I am much more strong for that.
So I would not worry about hardship.
What is the right thing to do?
We should do it.
And radical love, it's all about that.
When we practice radical love, then we are prepared to sacrifice because we depend on each other.
We become lovers.
We don't want to have lovers, but we become lovers.
And loving is hard.
Loving is hard.
You want to be loved.
You want somebody to love you.
But you don't want to love.
Loving is hard.
In loving you have to sacrifice your ego.
So we have to move from ego to eco.
Change one letter from G to C. Ego to eco.
And then You will become a lover, and that's a radical love.
I love you, Satish Kumar.
You're a very beautiful man.
Thank you for your time.
Satish's book, Radical Love, is available now.
There's a link in the description so you can get it.
Satish, I want you to come to Community this year, in the middle of July.
Our live festival with Wim Hof, with Vandana Shiva, so people can come together and practice and live these ideas.
If you want to join me, I'll be there.
You should see me.
I'm around everyone, like Willy Wonka.
I'm on it.
Come there.
Satish, will you come?
Will you be free, do you think, to come and join us?
Yes, I would love to come.
Yes, yes, I will look in my diary, but I think I am free, and I would love to come.
That sounds like an excuse.
Change one letter of the word diary, and it's dairy, and down the dairy, you've got to do what I say.
Okay, okay, I will do what you say.
I love you, Russell, and this is a radical love.
Radical love you too.
Satish Kumar.
Radical love is to love without expectations, without criticism, without kind of complaining, without expectation.
Drop all expectations and love and then through participation you change.
Ukraine and wars and all these things, confrontation, you can change that by love.
Putin has to be loved.
Only through love you can transform Putin.
Only through love you can transform Biden.
I know you're right.
I know you're right.
I know that if Gandhi, Malcolm X, if they were around, they'd be like, we're going there.
We'll saw it out.
We're going to cuddle that.
We'll cuddle some sense into him.
We'll cuddle some sense into a lot of them.
One of his own old phones.
Yeah, call him up on one of his old little Putin yellow phones.
Satish, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you for your time.
We will speak again soon.
My pleasure.
My pleasure.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you, sir.
I love you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Satish Kumar there.
Potential guest for Community, our annual festival where we come together to realise these things.
Yeah, the bit where he said, when you love people, you don't have any expectations.
I think what he was saying is, I ain't coming.
I'm not definitely coming.
You can't tie me down.
Satish Kumar.
Yeah, I just don't want a bad vibe in the interview.
It was lovely though, wasn't it?
Really nice.
Gave us a nice telling off towards the end.
It all points to localism, doesn't it?
And independence.
Everything you write about that.
It does.
Localism and democracy.
That's basically what he's saying.
A lot of these people, they were ahead of the game.
They got co-opted, that movement.
Helena Norberg, Hodge, Vandana Shiva.
You should eat food that grows where you are, meet your needs wherever you can.
Gandhi even said that communities should be independent where possible.
All these systems of aggregation, I think are about siphoning off profit.
Once you create agriculture, of course you meet loads of food needs, but we all know about food wastage.
We all know how so many needs go unmet, possibly with the technology we have.
Well, there's an essay that I've got to read, actually.
Daniel Peterbeck's always telling me to read it.
Oscar Wilde's essay, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, that technology could be used to create Utopias, where we have more time for contemplation, art, and leisure.
That all of these tools and technologies, in fact, could be used to create a fairer world, but we'd have to change spiritually.
As long as the most powerful institutions and interests and almost systemic magnetism is directed towards selfish goals, as long as the emotional palette that it's drawn from is greed and selfishness, because a lot of that stuff can be distilled into it, it's unlikely that we'll create the utopias that are possible.
But what he was saying about things being hard as well, I thought it was really interesting, you know, that's what we've been given.
We've been given comfort and convenience over freedom.
That's essentially, that's the bargain that we've made.
We've entered into that and we kind of forget that we have, but it seems on the surface, all things are alright and we can get these things and, but that's what they've, that's what they've done.
It's a terrible bargain.
It's not a good bargain.
It's a terrible bargain that we have undertaken.
And so, you know, you get to a point where, like we were saying the other day about the pandemic and all these 30% of small businesses closing.
It doesn't actually work.
We kind of think it does because we've got this kind of supposed comfort and convenience that even in the pandemic, we could order this food that came in half an hour or whatever.
Yeah, I liked it.
Those businesses that were selling food were not local businesses.
No, they were not local businesses and the people delivering that food were not being paid fairly or correctly.
It's not right.
There is a cost.
One of our, we have a great guest on this show, I can't remember her name, that Amazon lady, James, do you remember her name?
She used to talk about the sort of invisible labour challenge.
Corrie Crider.
Yeah, Corrie Crider.
She was excellent.
She talked about the invisible costs of like big tech, how, in fact, we should get her on again soon, right?
Because she talked about like, You think of all these things as sort of frictionless.
Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon.
But actually, there is labour going on.
There's people toiling down mines.
There's people working in warehouses.
You know, that's why it was good to have Christian Smalls on, wasn't it?
The leader of the Amazon movement from America.
Because ultimately, human beings are going to have to come together, and as you say, localise, collectivise, and that point of sacrifice you said the other day, that you would be willing to change your diet if you knew, or pay more, you know, if you can afford to.
If you know that it's fairly sourced, not in some bullshit kind of, you know, fair trade way.
I think people are at the point now where they see past the convenience of being able to have access to, you know, any food you want at any time of year, because they recognize that the costs that come with that, the cost to themselves, the cost to the people that make it, and I think people are at the point where they'd say, I'll have like a quarter of that stuff, as long as I know it's from local farmers, That people have been paid enough to do it.
And I really believe we're at a point where people would be willing to do that now.
I do.
Certainly enough people.
Certainly a significant number of people.
And we're talking to you.
It's you.
You can change.
We can change ourselves.
And I believe it was Rocky IV who said, if I can change and you can change, maybe the whole damn world can change.
And where did he say that?
Russia!
So let's hope for us all, damn it.
Sign up to our locals community.
Every week me and Gareth do a show, Stay Connected, where we answer your questions.
Also, if you're on locals, your comments I respond to, like Dawn One saying, be here meow.
Bit silly, I'll know that's someone else's name.
Love you, love you, Gareth and Russ, Jack Swiss, IE, me.
Don't be so dirty.
All you guys, we respond to you and we make a show where we show you what we get up to.
As well as weekly meditations.
I'm gonna do, you know, generally I'm gonna do it every week.
I'm gonna do a meditation with someone who needs one.
First, I'm gonna do my friend Mick the Ferret.
Now Mick the Ferret has just had a heart operation.
I'm gonna do a breathing exercise with him.
Then I'm gonna respond to people that are in the locals community,
say, oh, like, you know, I've just had my heart broken.
I'll be on a Zoom call with them and I'll do the meditation with them.
I'll go, right, come on, how are you feeling about your heartbreak?
Do a 10 minute meditation, then we'll release it.
What do you think about that, Gal?
Brilliant.
This ferret, is it, it's got a name, has it?
It's not a real ferret.
It's Mick the ferret.
He has ferrets.
He's not a ferret.
Got it.
He's not doing a meditation with a ferret.
I misunderstood.
Ferrets are, by their nature, jittery.
You can't ever get them to relax.
It's impossible.
All they want to do is go kill a rabbit down a burrow.
It's a niche meditation, I would say.
Okay, you're a predatory little rodent.
Go down that burrow.
See yourself getting the rabbit by its neck and draining the life out of it, you little bastard.
Sign up to our community.
We get weekly meditations just in the manner I've just described.
I meant to tell you that, people in production.
I had that idea, but I've told you now.
And my live stand-up special will be up there soon.
We're editing at the moment.
It's very funny, isn't it?
Yeah, lots of them.
Is it funny enough?
Yeah, it's great.
Could always want to be a bit more funny.
Some jokes for ferrets and stuff.
They'll love it.
Your new market.
Gotta get them little rodents rocking.
Are they rodents?
I'm pretty sure.
Not sure.
Is a ferret a rodent made their teeth keep growing?
I don't know what defines them anymore.
Okay, hey, that's it.
Join the community.
Join us tomorrow.
Not for more of the same, but for more of the different.
