663 - The Day After the Insurrection

Program Notes §

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Date this live salon was held: January 7, 2021
Guest speakers:
Various

Today’s podcast features a recording of the live salon that was held on the day after Trump’s Insurrection. Only a few hours had passed since the middle of the night Congressional approval of Joe Biden becoming the 46th President of the United States. At the time of this recording, however, there was a great deal of uncertainty about were we would be heading in the days ahead. So that you don’t forget your own feelings at this precipitous moment in time, I’m playing this recording of what some of our fellow saloners were thinking then.

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Transcript §

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Greetings from cyberdelic space.

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This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

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And unless you’ve been joining our two live salons every week, you may think that I’m on vacation.

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But actually, it’s just the opposite.

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You see, the first few years of the Psychedelic Salon actually took place before podcasting was invented.

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During those years, the salon was always live.

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It was only in 2005 that I began podcasting, and now,

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with the pandemic, I’ve come full circle and I’m back to doing primarily live salons. You see,

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before the pandemic began, I’d already been doing these live salons once a week, but after the

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lockdowns, I started doing four live salons every week. There were two on Mondays and two on

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started doing four live salons every week. There were two on Mondays and two on Thursdays, both at 10 30 in the morning and 6 30 in the evening. By summer, we all had kind of burned out with so much

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zooming. I think you probably know what I mean. So we are now getting together in live salons at 6 30

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p.m pacific time on Mondays and at 11 30 in the morning on Thursdays, 11 30 pacific time. That

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makes it in the evening for

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our European salonners. As it happened, one of our Thursday morning salons took place on the day

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after the Trump insurrection. At the time, of course, nobody knew what was going to happen next.

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Well, so much has happened during the short time that’s passed since then that it’s easy to forget

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what a mess we were in. Now that the change of administration has peacefully taken place,

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I think it’s still worthwhile to recall how unmoored we all were during those two weeks.

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Our nation has just undergone a severe trauma, and whether we realize it or not,

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most of us are still somewhat dazed by the wild events of this month.

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So next week I will be podcasting

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a recording of our live salon that took place on the day after the inauguration, and I think you

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might be surprised at what we talked about on that wonderful day. However, today I think it might be

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good for us to remember where our minds were just a few hours after Congress declared Joe Biden the

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winner of the presidential election.

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We’ve all heard a lot of talking heads on television giving their opinions about the

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events of January 6th. Well now, here’s a discussion that took place among us ordinary people

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on the day after the attempted coup. And my guess is that you were thinking some of the same things that we were. Rio, I had hoped you’d be here, you and Ildiko,

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because you are our overseas eyes and ears of what you think is going on.

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Incredible.

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We’ve been reading.

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We were just listening to who was it um christopher yeah christopher from the

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hey charles uh from the new york times and um we’ve been reading for two days everything we

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could just read on new york times b BBC, and we’ve been just blown away.

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It’s such an incredible crisis.

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I mean, it’s really generationally defining.

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Yeah.

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Unfortunately.

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I’m sorry.

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Yeah, go ahead.

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A historical moment of American democracy.

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As far as historical crises in the United States during

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my lifetime,

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the four I would list are

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Pearl Harbor, and I was in utero

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so I wouldn’t walk around, but Pearl Harbor,

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Kennedy assassination, 9-11,

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and yesterday. Those are really

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defining moments in U.S.

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history.

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They really are.

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In modern times, yeah.

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Rio and Ildiko,

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what did the international coverage look like?

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I’ve gotten a little bit off of BBC

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and a little bit off of Bloomberg Business,

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but what’s it look like from your vantage point?

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It looks like it’s condemning Trump

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as a terrorist attack on American democracy.

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And every leader of Western Europe so far, except Russia or Eastern European countries,

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have not said anything.

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But the rest of the Western European countries condemn the whole Trump actions as a terrorist,

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that are awful things on democracy and everyone called out to he should be removed.

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They don’t understand why we are keeping such president? Why don’t we remove him immediately, such a dangerous

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president

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who is

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in attack on our democracy?

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We’ve been

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wondering that for four years.

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Yeah.

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Merkel in Germany, you know,

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was angry

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and saddened.

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Boris Johnson against him that we’ve read but the Russians are

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particularly silent of course

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and like you said I haven’t seen anything come out of Eastern Europe

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that doesn’t mean it isn’t there we look at BBC

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a lot.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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But that was from the morning on.

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In fact, BBC had quite good coverage

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on it.

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You know, early, what would

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be early in the morning your time

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when we got up and started

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looking.

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Yeah, World Service has been doing their usual World Service good job.

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I’ve listened to them too.

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Christoph, by the way, we were just listening to him,

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the columnist in the New York Times.

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And he said he thought it was very unlikely that they would invoke the 25th Amendment.

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And unfortunately, McConnell’s wife, who was, I guess, transportation secretary, just resigned.

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She was somebody who voted to get rid of Trump so he said

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he was concerned that so many

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people were

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resigning

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because that leaves

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a vacuum

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and he recalled back

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to the days of Nixon

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when he was toward the end

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and they were afraid that

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he would try to launch

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a nuclear attack on somebody.

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So, you know, it’s making things

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actually worse that these people

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are suddenly, you know,

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resigning to show their morals.

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The ones that seem to be sticking

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because of that reason of they’re worried about

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their replacement in 13 days here for the next 13 days are a lot of the national security staff.

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I think Elaine Chao is the first cabinet member to resign. And yeah, the 25th amendment, you know,

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with 13 days, the only reason they’re really talking about another impeachment, which maybe can even take place after he’s out, is that if he’s impeached, actually impeached, he can’t run for any office in the United States again.

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So that’s why they’re talking about that with only 13 days left.

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Yeah.

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He’s removed by the Senate because he’s already been impeached.

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He has to be convicted. He has to be convicted.

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He has to be convicted.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Just to clarify that.

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Go ahead, Charlie.

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The other thing about the 25th Amendment is the timeline.

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It takes a minimum of eight days, and it might even increase the volatility if he’s got the bunker mentality that he’s reported to have.

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And then his cabinet is saying he’s unfit for office.

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He’s got four days to prove.

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I think they have four days to bring their case.

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He’s got four days to rebut it or something of that nature.

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He’s got four days to defend and they’ve got four days to rebut, something like that.

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So you basically run out the clock in that scenario while increasing the volatility. So

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it’s a cathartic idea, but really the only thing that’s going to work is impeachment. And with

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McConnell sending everybody home, that’s pretty much off the table, which I thought was really

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discouraging. But there was one really good sign during the day. You know, the reason that the

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National Guard didn’t get called out is because the D.C. National Guard is under the president, not under the mayor of D.C. And he refused to call him out.

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And so she finally got through to Pence, who got the acting secretary of defense on the line,

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and the two of them got the National Guard called out. So even though Trump was refusing to let the

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National Guard be called out, people in, you know, reasonable, responsible people did kind of take charge.

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So I’m worried about the next 13 days,

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but I think there are some people who are in charge that are even more worried than me.

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Go ahead, Darrell.

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It raises a fascinating precedent question that we’ve never dealt with before.

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Like the 25th Amendment is for mental or physical incapacity,

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but it’s not about dereliction of duty.

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And what Trump did, I mean, let’s take the most charitable, you know,

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interpretation that he didn’t knowingly incite, which I think is hog shit.

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But let’s say, you know, he has the situation.

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He refuses to call out the National Guard.

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He refuses to actively, you to actively put this thing down.

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That’s dereliction of duty at a decision-making level that we’ve never seen in the United States.

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And all of the reporting I read yesterday credited Pence with the decision-making of the executive branch of government.

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So Trump is de facto not behaving as president.

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I have no idea what that means in terms of him being removed. Perhaps he’s already boxed in, but it’s a really bizarre and unprecedented set of facts.

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Speaker Pelosi said the Democrats were prepared to impeach Trump again if his cabinet did not remove him using the 25th Amendment.

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What’s your timeline?

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I don’t have the whole article here.

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Yeah, I hope that that’s like, you know, by sundown, you know, but they rarely have that kind of courage.

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Right.

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Because it is urgent.

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It’s like literally every hour makes a difference.

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Yeah.

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We have no idea what this guy could do.

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You were talking about how it was treated worldwide. Here are the headlines in some of the papers. There’s the Ottawa Sun, the Guardian. They all have pictures of the breach of the

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capitals, and it’s the front page of every paper. Last Days of Trump, Arab news, you know, everywhere.

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This is all over the world, front page.

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And yesterday I was watching what, like everybody was, what actually in my life unfolded yesterday.

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In the morning, Charles and I were exchanging ideas about what to talk about today. And he came up with a good suggestion of how does the psychedelic community deal with the

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massive change going on.

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And I’m sitting there thinking about that.

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And I realized that Trump was about to give his last speech, you know, the last major speech.

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So I decided to watch it.

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And about a half hour, 45 minutes into it, he’s telling the crowd that there are 250,000 people there.

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And he is going to lead them up Pennsylvania Avenue to storm the Capitol.

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I mean, he actually said that.

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I heard him saying that.

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And the minute he said that, you know, I’ve been struggling with the word change that we’ve been talking about.

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And I’m like, that’s not change.

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This is fucking chaos.

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And so I just stopped what I was doing.

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That’s when I sent out the announcement for today’s talk.

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And that was before they got to the Capitol.

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It was quite obvious that he was calling

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for a coup. This was a coup, and the fact that he didn’t let the National Guard be called in

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reinforces that. It was the D.C. Metro Police who finally got control of the situation, so

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bravo to them, and they let everybody go, and this is really being called out as a racist incident because while they breached the national capital, 68 people got arrested. up for, you know, being black, we, you know, the racism was really evident yesterday.

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And that’s something that has to be talked about.

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It’s not just armed people.

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It’s it’s armed white people waving Confederate flags and with white power insignia on their stuff.

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Some of those flags, a friend of mine works, used to work for the SPLC and you know, he’s like,

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that flag is as a hate group in Montana. And this, this guy is the,

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these guys are Michigan and that’s a Georgia thing,

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all these crazy hate groups.

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And it just shows like what you would have to do. I mean,

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to imagine if black lives matter had, had attempted that, and then imagine if

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they were online beforehand talking about what weapons they were going to bring to the rally.

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And it’s just, there’s no, you can’t say that there’s not structural racism looking at this.

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There’s a couple things there too. Number one, you can’t imagine Black Lives Matter doing something like this because their goals are so explicitly stated that this would just be completely beyond the pale. that occurred after 6 p.m. I think there was like 14, something under 20 arrests made

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for the actual siege of the Capitol,

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which is an extraordinary failure on several levels.

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And again, you do have to look at complicity.

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And then I saw a bunch of hot take tweets of like,

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see, this shows that police know

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how to respond differently against mob insurrection than they did in the civil rights protests.

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So Lorenzo is absolutely right. There’s an extraordinary amount of institutional racism here.

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But this actually provides a helpful counterpoint in the argument in structural police reform to articulate how come this is

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treated this way over here and not this way over here and the fact pattern over here is that much

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worse now is there courage within the incoming administration and within state houses to

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execute that you know that’s an open question but the facts are there how many of these guys who were on the steps of the capitol for blm

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dressed in you know full jackboot thuggery how many of those guys are like you know i’m gonna

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take the day off so i can go to this trump rally well there’s that and also there’s there’s all of

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the cosplay that goes on on either the white supremacist side or the police side and you know

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ever since the surplus that came out

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of the Gulf War started getting filtered into police departments across the United States,

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there’s this hideous, you know, militant cosplay that is, you know, fueled by a toxic culture that

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it’s like, oh, hey, the protesters are coming to town. I get to dress up like the Punisher with my

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death’s head skull and an american flag

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with my you know a semi-automatic weapon but you know all of a sudden the people are coming you

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know in in their um west coast avengers cosplay from yesterday and uh we’re going to leave them

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alone it’s it’s it’s definitely a disparity that’s that’s a problem did you say the conspiritualist Kenya? That’s excellent. videotape the police actually removing barricades to let them in so you know what will come out in

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the next few days will be very interesting as they analyze the camera footage absolutely a lot of

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people going to get fired well and and another thing about the footage is some of the most

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iconic footage that emerged yesterday were people breaking glass outside the Capitol balcony and

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inside the Capitol with a riot shield. Where’d they get the fucking riot shield? You know,

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yeah, yeah, yeah. Watch, watch some of the glass breaking footage and you’ll see that. And

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so either, you know, some cop, you know, was so afraid of y’allcata that they just dropped their riot shield and ran away.

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But I find that incredibly unlikely given the response in the civil rights protests.

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It’s a quagmire.

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I think that – oh, go ahead.

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Go ahead, Kenya.

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Go ahead, Kenya.

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I was just going to say there’s some of them were taking selfies with them

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yeah

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I saw that

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I’m pretty sure that just like

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even in the part

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where that lady gets shot

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you can see that they’re in there

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with them in the crowd

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it’s not show them

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trying to help them get through to the other side

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but they just like kind of

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walk out and leave

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them there

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right I was listening

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to Laura Ingraham last night because given the choice

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between listening to her bloviate and Lawrence O’Donnell

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bloviate at least I was going to learn something from

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how the other side was bloviating

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and she was interviewing some fool

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that was recording footage of

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the incident that led to the rioter getting shot.

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And it was astonishing.

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Some dumb 26-year-old kid with a cell phone that positioned himself as a citizen journalist was saying, well, she wasn’t doing anything.

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She was just standing there.

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And this went unchallenged by the Fox News host.

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And it’s like you dummies were committing a crime by simply being in there.

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I’m sorry. Go ahead, Kenya.

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They were all like pushing her up so she could get through the window.

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Yeah, it’s just, you know, and you want to say, oh, we weren’t doing anything.

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We were just having a laugh. Well, that is white supremacy in action, number one. And number two, the fact that this ding-dong Fox News host wouldn’t challenge – you were breaking the law. You were rioting inside of the Capitol. It’s sad that your friend got shot, but these are the consequences. It shows that there’s still an awfully long way to go.

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I, I, I spent a lot of time. First of all, Charles,

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I told you you’d be good today. Second of all,

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I spent a lot of time thinking about John Brown’s raid on Harper’s

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Ferry because that was faith-based because I do believe the Trump people,

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this is faith-based. Because I do believe the Trump people, this is faith-based.

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The reason why, they may not be as stupid as we all think.

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They just think that a storm is coming.

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And so therefore, they’re going to be fine because Trump’s about to take over the government.

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There was definitely that there was definitely an expectation that why weren’t we met as saviors when we walked into the capital um i did i did hear that in in a few

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of the interviews there is a bizarre phase i mean the flags were i mean you know in in 15 years or

00:20:40 ► §

something when we can look at this without it being so raw or at the way we process information

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in three years when they make the netflix miniseries of this you know all of the

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flags you know are going to be astonishing to watch i mean all of this like jesus and trump

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and trump is rambo and q and so it is faith-based but it’s this weird the closest i’ve come to it

00:21:00 ► §

in fiction is neil stevenson’s tactical j tactical Jesus in, in fall or dodge and hell.

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It’s like this weird hybrid of militarism,

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Q conspiracy theory and Jesus, you know,

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with a little bit of mushrooms, like, you know,

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bet Williams posted this thing about the Q shaman running around and she goes 50,

00:21:25 ► §

50, this guy was on shrooms. And I think he probably was high.

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I don’t know what he was on. So, I mean, I mean,

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that was like one of the most psychedelic displays we’ve ever seen in our

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lifetimes. And it was sickening,

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but all of this does kind of create this toxic faith that’s motivating the

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behavior. And it’s going to require, you know, at every level of society that

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we actually get our shit together and act like grownups. And the one positive thing, and we’ll

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see if it happens, I’m not holding my breath is nobody scares more easily than a politician,

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except perhaps a newborn kitten. And, um, they were scared yesterday, you know, and rightfully

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so. So perhaps this will provide the pivot point that’s necessary.

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But, you know, there’s a lot of accountability that has to happen between now and then.

00:22:12 ► §

And I’m very, very, very, very disturbed not to see that accountability discussion more advanced than it is.

00:22:20 ► §

But, you know, maybe we’ve just gotten used to being impatient.

00:22:22 ► §

And these guys need to shake off the human trauma first.

00:22:24 ► §

But, you know, maybe we’ve just gotten used to being impatient. These guys need to shake off the human trauma first.

00:22:34 ► §

My wife and I flipped on CNN and caught Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor finally talking sense.

00:22:43 ► §

And if that was your first ever time of hearing Mitch McConnell, you would think like, OK, well, I was in support of the president exhausting his legal options. And we now have to get with the program.

00:22:46 ► §

And otherwise, democracy enters a death spiral.

00:22:49 ► §

And I looked at her and she looked at me.

00:22:51 ► §

We’re like, this guy sounds reasonable for the first time in my lifetime.

00:22:55 ► §

And then we had dinner and watched some crap and then turned it back on.

00:22:58 ► §

And there’s people rioting in the Capitol.

00:22:59 ► §

It’s like too little, too late.

00:23:02 ► §

Come on.

00:23:04 ► §

And then, you know, watch doom scrolling on right-wing media

00:23:08 ► §

so apparently the the antifa sent uh false flag actors with the trump flags to make q anon look

00:23:17 ► §

bad and you’re just like man people will believe that too and oh yeah that was all over Fox. That’s the only offense they have.

00:23:25 ► §

Yeah, that won’t withstand scrutiny once people start getting arrested for the selfies that they were taking.

00:23:33 ► §

Question, Charles, does Trump pardon all the protesters who get arrested on that day?

00:23:38 ► §

Did anybody watch The Shield, which was this cop show?

00:23:43 ► §

All right, well, in the the very end this guy does terrible

00:23:45 ► §

terrible things he designs a immunity for himself and doesn’t design immunity for other people

00:23:52 ► §

and that’s what trump does he designs whatever immunity he can for himself i don’t think he

00:23:56 ► §

gives a shit about anybody else and i don’t know necessarily that law enforcement is going to move

00:24:00 ► §

quickly enough to um apprehend the folks that are involved here.

00:24:06 ► §

So I think the clock might run out before Trump can pardon it.

00:24:10 ► §

So the answer to your question, 50-50, but my sense is that he’s so selfish

00:24:14 ► §

that he’s only going to care about himself and his daughter-wife.

00:24:18 ► §

But the lines are being crossed.

00:24:21 ► §

Lines are being crossed that are unfathomable.

00:24:25 ► §

I mean, I used to just think he was a con man who’s stumbled into power.

00:24:29 ► §

And now this, you know, he’s found his base and he’s, you know, obviously the base is apparently riled up now.

00:24:34 ► §

But when he starts executing people who are on federal, you know, federal inmates who are on death row, you’re like, you’ve escalated into murder at this point.

00:24:43 ► §

You don’t know who these people are. You’re just like, oh, the militia groups will like me if I kill these 12 people. So let’s roll up the

00:24:48 ► §

executions for the first time in 17 years. You’re like, you’ve escalated. You’re a fucking murderer

00:24:53 ► §

now. There’s no, the sociopathy knows no bounds. It’s the people who are calling for impeachment

00:24:58 ► §

and stuff. He has the nuclear codes. Now maybe he can’t use them but what can he do what missile can he fire to to get

00:25:05 ► §

you know to rile up his base for the whole it’s really a terrifying exercise there there’s there’s

00:25:11 ► §

some historical precedent that uh i think michael beschloss was talking about yesterday that um

00:25:17 ► §

during the last the waning days of nixon the defense secretary created a protocol where any military strike option had to be

00:25:28 ► §

co-signed, I think, by a member of the Joint Chiefs or something or by himself or something

00:25:32 ► §

like that.

00:25:32 ► §

So I would have to anticipate that reading between the lines of all of the statements

00:25:38 ► §

that came out yesterday that credited Senate leadership and Mike Pence with the decision-making that, and the, the,

00:25:45 ► §

the retired sec def letter that Dick Cheney of all fucking people organized

00:25:51 ► §

that said, you know, the military has no role in this.

00:25:54 ► §

I would have to imagine that the military has developed some kind of safeguard

00:25:58 ► §

in that capacity, but you’re right.

00:26:00 ► §

This is the right thing to be contemplating in a, in a,

00:26:04 ► §

in a fearful fashion. It doesn right thing to be contemplating in a in a in a fearful fashion

00:26:05 ► §

it doesn’t have to be nuclear it can be no i understand it can be anything it can be anything

00:26:11 ► §

conventional that escalates the situation in a burn it all down epre et pre-mois the deluge

00:26:17 ► §

strategy which appears to be what he is intuitively doing because i don’t think that he’s smart enough

00:26:23 ► §

to actually know how to pronounce what i just said and what I mispronounced for that matter.

00:26:28 ► §

Yeah. I mean, a war would be his ideal gambit here.

00:26:34 ► §

I didn’t say empowered somehow.

00:26:37 ► §

Yeah. I mean, the thing that’s, and I’m talking too much.

00:26:41 ► §

No, I think he’s late to the game on that. I was thinking, well,

00:26:43 ► §

when are we going to go to war again? You know,

00:26:45 ► §

start some proxy war or start fucking with North Korea or even China or

00:26:50 ► §

whatever. Don’t switch horses in midstream. I’m a wartime president.

00:26:54 ► §

I mean, I was, the fact that he’s, it’s too,

00:26:56 ► §

I feel like it’s too late to play that card at this stage,

00:27:00 ► §

but I’m really glad that it didn’t come to that. Cause for a while there,

00:27:03 ► §

it sure felt like, you know, the arm skirmish, tail wags the dog kind of thing.

00:27:08 ► §

Right. Absolutely. He wants to retire. Go ahead.

00:27:12 ► §

I was just going to say that just to put put the thing on a little lighter note for just a moment.

00:27:18 ► §

You know, there were a lot of people in that attack on the Capitol and they didn’t get arrested. But, you know, they all had their

00:27:25 ► §

pictures taken. So what the FBI is doing, I haven’t seen this come true yet, but I’ve read

00:27:30 ► §

several reports that the FBI is going to put every one of those pictures on this website.

00:27:37 ► §

And the first person to identify the picture of the person and the person gets arrested,

00:27:42 ► §

you’re getting $1,000 for every ID.

00:27:45 ► §

Does anybody put in Trump?

00:27:48 ► §

I don’t know.

00:27:50 ► §

It’s the FBI website. You can’t

00:27:51 ► §

put anybody in there. You have to identify people

00:27:53 ► §

they put up there.

00:27:55 ► §

That’s a stimulus box.

00:27:58 ► §

So there’s a way that some of those

00:28:00 ► §

good old boys can make a little money, you know?

00:28:02 ► §

Go ahead, Kenya.

00:28:03 ► §

Go, Kenya.

00:28:12 ► §

I was watching CNN earlier, and I think it was either a senator or a rep tweeted after the FBI said that and posted Trump’s picture.

00:28:15 ► §

Oh, really?

00:28:18 ► §

It’s the weirdest.

00:28:19 ► §

I mean, you know, that’s like the ultimate in tag your friends.

00:28:23 ► §

Hey.

00:28:27 ► §

Just a way to save money on the stimulus.

00:28:30 ► §

Just give less thousand dollar checks.

00:28:34 ► §

Well, this comes out of the black budget, Evan.

00:28:38 ► §

Well, the good news, of course, was that the Democrats actually got the Senate.

00:28:44 ► §

Yeah.

00:28:45 ► §

That would have been the big news of the day.

00:28:48 ► §

Yes.

00:28:49 ► §

Great.

00:28:49 ► §

We can now spend four years squabbling over transgender bathrooms.

00:28:55 ► §

I mean, it’s just like, I’m really glad that now there’s, you know,

00:29:01 ► §

the people who are less bad are on the same, you know, the House, the Senate, the executive branch.

00:29:08 ► §

Sure, the courts are the courts have been messed with and executive privilege has been greatly expanded.

00:29:13 ► §

But the internecine squabbling of the Democratic Party, please get something done.

00:29:19 ► §

Here’s where psychedelics come in, Lorenzo.

00:29:21 ► §

We’ve got all the all the gears are in place. How do we get everybody on the same page to actually move forward on issues that

00:29:28 ► §

can, that people can agree on?

00:29:32 ► §

Yesterday might’ve been it, dude.

00:29:34 ► §

Yesterday might’ve been the squid at the end of Watchmen because that was,

00:29:38 ► §

that was the first time that, you know, in, in, in the last 10 or 15, well, since 9-11, that we’ve actually seen a bipartisan

00:29:47 ► §

unity of tone about how we need to conduct our government. Now, we’ll see if it lasts the 19 days,

00:29:56 ► §

but, you know, clearly, clearly the Democrats have a mandate not to, not on the social issues,

00:30:03 ► §

but they have a mandate to bring government into

00:30:07 ► §

a state of boring maturity. And they have a mandate to bring government to a state of

00:30:12 ► §

professionalism and to solve some of the structural decay. So I think I agree with you on the squabbling.

00:30:18 ► §

I choose not to focus on it and instead to focus on to what extent can Biden and his administration

00:30:28 ► §

use this as an opportunity to create, you know, some unity towards mature, responsible government.

00:30:35 ► §

And we’ll find out real fast. Like you’ve said, Charles, like the journey from A to B is long

00:30:44 ► §

and torturous and moves very slowly.

00:30:46 ► §

And a lot of the progressive candidates, well, I completely agree 100% on things like the Green New Deal or just changing the way we get energy.

00:30:55 ► §

It’s my dream of getting, you know, something in the schools where 14-year-olds go into the woods and take mushrooms.

00:31:01 ► §

We’re a long way from there.

00:31:04 ► §

And, you know, this may be

00:31:05 ► §

generational, but we, on the other side, we don’t seem to have time. If the coronavirus is the pause

00:31:13 ► §

that the planet needed so that carbon, you know, carbon emissions didn’t tip us into some sort of

00:31:19 ► §

feedback loop where all the glaciers suddenly melt in two weeks, that it gave the planet a pause

00:31:25 ► §

to breathe. We have it, we have it, there’s these, I see it as competing impulses. It very much

00:31:32 ► §

reminds me of Earth First, when they used to spike the redwood trees with quartz, and Q-U-A-R-T-Z,

00:31:39 ► §

great Scrabble word, but they wouldn’t get picked up by the x-ray machines, and they would bust the

00:31:43 ► §

mills. And you would say, well, you can’t do that because, you know,

00:31:47 ► §

the loggers and people at the sawmills they’re getting, you know,

00:31:50 ► §

the blades can fly apart. We’ve had casualties.

00:31:52 ► §

You can’t go around spiking trees.

00:31:54 ► §

You have to change the forest policy so that with legislation.

00:31:59 ► §

So over time you can’t, they can’t, you know, you protect the forest,

00:32:03 ► §

but what ends up happening, you know, their argument is, yeah is yeah by the time we get there these forests right here are gone

00:32:09 ► §

so yeah i mean those are those are very january 5th ways of looking at it how dare you and and i

00:32:18 ► §

think and i think that the real question is how does january 21st government behave when there is a mandate towards bipartisan,

00:32:29 ► §

mature, and functional government? And yeah, we’re going to get back to all of these arguments about

00:32:35 ► §

what is too much and too little regulation. And Trump has really rolled back regulation in a

00:32:40 ► §

fashion that might actually impact positively the stuff that you’re describing, Ian.

00:32:49 ► §

But, you know, I think that the real question in front of us right now is,

00:32:53 ► §

do we act like adults and solve problems or do we continue to squabble?

00:32:56 ► §

I think that’s really the only thing that’s on the table for the next three weeks.

00:33:15 ► §

Well, the other big thing that’s on the table, and it seems to me in the Gaian philosophy of COVID is an immune response by Gaia that for whatever reason, this disease seems to uniquely target America. The amount of times that over the summer and into the winter and all this, that the main headline has shifted in the United States.

00:33:24 ► §

There’s the election. Then this that the main headline has shifted in the united states there’s

00:33:25 ► §

the election then there’s the recount now there’s these you know black lives matter all these things

00:33:30 ► §

some you know a lot of it’s worthy causes worthy news headlines but you’re like dude there’s 3,000

00:33:35 ► §

people dying a day there’s new strains there’s no there’s there’s no distribution network

00:33:40 ► §

oh no i’m just i’m just saying that, and now this, where you have this enormous riot that spills, or excuse me, rally, sorry, rally, riot.

00:33:51 ► §

This enormous rally that spills over into a riot on the state building where hundreds of people go into an indoor space without masks and scream.

00:34:00 ► §

And you’re like, this is, do you not see the numbers?

00:34:06 ► §

scream. And you’re like, this is, do you not see the numbers? I’m speaking right now,

00:34:11 ► §

first of all, with a nice herb tea, dry January, everybody. Too much detail, too much detail. So where are you going with this? No, no, no. Where I’m going with it is, there’s, we’re at a stage

00:34:19 ► §

right now where, no, go ahead, Charles, take it. I don’t have anything to say. I want to hear where you’re going with it, though.

00:34:30 ► §

My train of thought is far too soft. You’re talking about America and the headlines, basically.

00:34:32 ► §

Oh, right.

00:34:33 ► §

Yes, thank you.

00:34:34 ► §

So right now, I’m speaking from the most infected place on the planet.

00:34:41 ► §

Right now, London has the worst infection rate anywhere in the world. London,

00:34:47 ► §

this city, they say in my borough, one in 60. And that’s, if you look at the rate, look at the rate

00:34:53 ► §

of England, and you’ll see the kind of the March, the November, and the now. And the now is out of

00:35:00 ► §

control. We’re filling up, we’re having 800 cases a day in the UK. That’s one of our

00:35:05 ► §

biggest hospitals filling up every single day with coronavirus patients and all the staff that

00:35:12 ► §

that entails. The London is two weeks from having no beds at current rate. And we’ve got this new

00:35:18 ► §

strain. And I’m looking over at America, which just about logged 4,000 deaths yesterday going,

00:35:27 ► §

looking over at America, which just about logged 4,000 deaths yesterday, going, hey, all this is great, but this is coming your way.

00:35:28 ► §

It’s actually there. It’s here.

00:35:29 ► §

It’s here.

00:35:29 ► §

Los Angeles is now requiring that ambulance technicians make a determination that if a patient is unlikely to survive, they are not to be brought to the hospital.

00:35:44 ► §

Los Angeles is running out of oxygen.

00:35:47 ► §

And no question that what we saw yesterday is going to be a super spreader event of extraordinary scale.

00:35:56 ► §

And it’s going to tax hospital capacity when all of those people go home because they weren’t apprehended and or it’s going to tax

00:36:06 ► §

the prison system’s capacity to deal with infections. No question about it that this

00:36:11 ► §

is definitely the next stage in the Trump death cult coronavirus advancement.

00:36:17 ► §

But what the mandate is right now on the ground, you want to talk about January 21st,

00:36:23 ► §

is to get a hold of this. Because what you don’t, what we have here.

00:36:26 ► §

I think that’s happening.

00:36:27 ► §

I think that, I think Biden’s already kind of got that underway.

00:36:31 ► §

There’s, here’s what’s, I don’t want to be doom and gloom.

00:36:33 ► §

So here’s what’s possible.

00:36:35 ► §

Whatever you say, I mean, the fact that we’re the most, we clearly aren’t doing something

00:36:39 ► §

right.

00:36:39 ► §

But there is a top-down mandate.

00:36:41 ► §

When Boris Johnson comes on the TV, everyone goes, all right, the schools are closed.

00:36:46 ► §

Oh, yeah. This is this is happening. Biden’s already setting up the infrastructure to do, I think, a million shots a day.

00:36:52 ► §

And let me let me jump in for a minute.

00:36:55 ► §

Very quickly, Lorenzo, 60 percent of the population says no, thank you on the vaccine.

00:37:01 ► §

And here in Southern California, the rate is one in twenty five. It it’s not 1 in 60 it’s much worse than it even

00:37:07 ► §

is in london we on january 5th we had like three percent hospital uh beds left in southern

00:37:14 ► §

california i’m talking about la down in mexico uh it’s just as bad here as it is there it’s this is

00:37:19 ► §

everywhere and and it’s getting worse there’s a lot of hospitals collapse here in the southern california

00:37:25 ► §

in the next two weeks but yeah it’s worse than l it statistically la is the worst there is uh

00:37:32 ► §

as far as we can tell but uh but it is cold in new york so there’s that it’s a very weird scene

00:37:39 ► §

right now it’s not quite the tension of March where people are making raids on the,

00:37:47 ► §

on the grocery stores and such.

00:37:50 ► §

There’s a real sense of fatigue and,

00:37:53 ► §

but this new variant and this new is,

00:37:55 ► §

is it’s incredible the,

00:37:59 ► §

the way and people are describing really strange symptoms.

00:38:03 ► §

Facial rashes and stuff like that.

00:38:05 ► §

And it just shows the virus is mutating.

00:38:07 ► §

It’s trying to figure us out.

00:38:08 ► §

It wants to be herpes.

00:38:11 ► §

It wants to live in your system and spread.

00:38:13 ► §

But right now, as it figures things out,

00:38:14 ► §

it’s killing a lot of people.

00:38:17 ► §

But as long as it keeps spreading at the rate it is,

00:38:19 ► §

it’s going to keep mutating into spinning out different variants.

00:38:22 ► §

I don’t know.

00:38:24 ► §

It’s not the United States of America.

00:38:26 ► §

I mean, this election in Georgia, for however hard it was fought, it was 50-50, just about 50-50.

00:38:33 ► §

It’s a coin toss.

00:38:35 ► §

And I don’t see how the real struggle is.

00:38:39 ► §

I think you’re right, Charles.

00:38:40 ► §

I think what you’ve said is, like, people need to expect more from government.

00:38:43 ► §

And if they hate everything, we just need to give them education and give them UBI and make their

00:38:48 ► §

lives appreciably better. And then it doesn’t matter what their policies are or what their

00:38:52 ► §

politics are. How do you get that to the, because we’re strapped. How do you need people?

00:38:58 ► §

Dude, we are right now in the scenario of the airplane is crashing and you got to put on your air mask first and so

00:39:06 ► §

i don’t think we have the luxury of necessarily worrying about how we get to the ubi thing

00:39:11 ► §

but we will get to the ubi thing if we all put on our goddamn air mask and start acting like adults

00:39:17 ► §

and i think that’s what this moment um potentially represents is an opportunity to recenter our government behavior

00:39:26 ► §

and also our citizen behavior on just growing the fuck up,

00:39:31 ► §

acting like adults,

00:39:32 ► §

treating each other with dignity and treating outliers like outliers.

00:39:39 ► §

Irresponsible human beings is what you’re saying, which is, yeah,

00:39:42 ► §

that’s, that’s all it takes, but. But it’s hard to get. I mean, I don’t know that. I mean, yes, it’s hard to happen all that time. But the thing is, at this point in history, it’s going to happen. There’s, you know, Republicans can’t continue talking the way they are on January 21.

00:40:01 ► §

on January 21st. And between now and the,

00:40:03 ► §

in the inauguration,

00:40:04 ► §

there’s going to be a lot of soul searching and a lot of people and a lot

00:40:09 ► §

of change.

00:40:09 ► §

I think the,

00:40:10 ► §

the whole head state of not only us,

00:40:13 ► §

America,

00:40:14 ► §

but humanity is changing substantially.

00:40:19 ► §

100% right.

00:40:20 ► §

And,

00:40:21 ► §

and everybody’s going to have to behave differently and no question.

00:40:24 ► §

No,

00:40:24 ► §

there’s no equivalency here.

00:40:25 ► §

Like the Republican side of the aisle has trafficked in more destructive rhetoric and action than the Democratic side.

00:40:33 ► §

Hands down. On the other hand, everybody needs to level up their game. Everybody needs to start.

00:40:42 ► §

Charles, does a national mask mandate, does it work and does it fly?

00:40:49 ► §

We don’t have one.

00:40:50 ► §

No, but if Biden says, okay, everybody in your mask for two months.

00:40:53 ► §

Yeah, I think it does.

00:40:54 ► §

I think there will be outliers, but I think by and large,

00:40:57 ► §

we’re going to be so overwhelmed with horror by the next four weeks of hospitalizations

00:41:06 ► §

and hospital failures and death and the super spreader that comes back from Washington that I think everybody’s going to

00:41:10 ► §

be humbled and you know it’s going to be the morning after the riot when people go oh my god

00:41:15 ► §

that was fun but I burnt my house down what have I done you know one of the things we’re talking

00:41:20 ► §

here what the the leaders in congress should do, but what do we do on the

00:41:26 ► §

street level? You know, us guys that we’re all pretty much on the same page here in this salon

00:41:32 ► §

right now, but I’ve got friends who will not ever admit that Trump lost the election. I mean,

00:41:38 ► §

this had no effect on them other than to cement their position that they are not going to give up.

00:41:45 ► §

Now, how do I deal with those people? You know, I used to have work for a guy that says you’re

00:41:49 ► §

either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem. I’ve had to like disengage from all my

00:41:55 ► §

high school classmates because, you know, I just can’t, my head’s going to explode around them

00:42:01 ► §

and my mouth opens up and then they get pissed off at me and and that i get pissed off at myself for not saying really what i thought so you know how do we deal

00:42:09 ► §

with this we’re all in this same situation we all have some friends who are not going to come around

00:42:14 ► §

like we’d like to see yeah go ahead sorry go ahead rio well i just agree with you lorenzo i mean i

00:42:23 ► §

think you know when you’re saying that charles, I would love to believe it. But, you know, there just are people who believe in this guy, Trump. And like you were saying that this was what, tenths of a percent that made the difference in these elections in Georgia.

00:42:42 ► §

the difference in these elections in Georgia.

00:42:49 ► §

There is so much, America anyway, is so divided.

00:42:53 ► §

You know, I hope things will flip.

00:42:57 ► §

We all do, but I wouldn’t count on it.

00:43:01 ► §

Well, I think the problem is that we’re all acting like pundits rather than citizens.

00:43:06 ► §

And yes, I understand when you read the news and you see the trends, it’s very easy to go, well, I’m not going to put my neck out and behave,

00:43:11 ► §

you know, differently, more generously, more, more X, Y, or Z, because it’s clear from the

00:43:17 ► §

numbers that other people aren’t going to act that way either. And that might well be true.

00:43:22 ► §

However, insulating yourself from disappointment by not altering your behavior to be more civically engaged, you know, we’ve just all kind of

00:43:46 ► §

got to move forward. And in response to Lorenzo’s point about the people that live in an alternate

00:43:52 ► §

reality, I don’t know that retrospective discussion is going to be at all helpful. I think all we

00:43:58 ► §

really need to do, or all we really can do, is root ourselves in pragmatic forward progress.

00:44:05 ► §

And if it doesn’t serve pragmatic forward progress,

00:44:08 ► §

then don’t spend any energy on it.

00:44:10 ► §

I think there have always been people that didn’t believe in whatever it was.

00:44:15 ► §

Lorenzo, you’ve got to remember signs on the side of the highway saying,

00:44:18 ► §

Peace, Pearl, and Warren.

00:44:21 ► §

I sure do.

00:44:23 ► §

So that was a John Birch society

00:44:25 ► §

they didn’t accept anything

00:44:26 ► §

and at the end of the day

00:44:29 ► §

they were irrelevant

00:44:31 ► §

Ankur

00:44:33 ► §

I saw you were trying to get in

00:44:34 ► §

yeah

00:44:36 ► §

I was just like

00:44:39 ► §

overhearing the discussion on

00:44:41 ► §

change and what we can do

00:44:43 ► §

at the street level

00:44:44 ► §

and how we all have friends or

00:44:47 ► §

we know people who completely don’t get it and they seem to be on a polar opposite side of things

00:44:53 ► §

i was discussing with my friend yesterday about everything that was going down at capitol hill

00:44:57 ► §

and the scene looks like there there’s i mean, we were saying that that’s irrational.

00:45:05 ► §

That just doesn’t make sense. There’s no logic.

00:45:08 ► §

And then it occurred that, well, obviously it’s not going to seem rational,

00:45:12 ► §

whatever is going on, because the people who are engaging in that behavior

00:45:16 ► §

do not respect reason, do not respect logic, do not respect any kind of thought process that has some kind of an enlightenment value,

00:45:27 ► §

just in reference to the European history, I would say.

00:45:31 ► §

But what this comes down to is that it seems there are two camps of people in terms of their thinking style.

00:45:54 ► §

Ones who want to only perpetuate old conservative, imaginary, traditional, ideological, fundamentalist kind of political force. And then there are those who are trying to refine their logic and reasoning skills and try to envision a world which is more in line with such thinking.

00:46:08 ► §

And it’s almost like there’s a tension between these two kinds of personalities

00:46:14 ► §

that kind of gets distributed into left, right, Republicans and Democrats.

00:46:19 ► §

And then it keeps branching out and branching out.

00:46:23 ► §

And then it keeps branching out and branching out.

00:46:30 ► §

And at some level, we as individuals kind of experience it as this frustrating dialogue with this other person.

00:46:33 ► §

What? I mean, do you not see this?

00:46:34 ► §

You know, that kind of thing.

00:46:41 ► §

But it almost seems like it’s a population level phenomenon that is unfolding. And of course, it’s natural to have this urge to think of

00:46:45 ► §

how can we respond to it in a more wiser way.

00:46:51 ► §

You said, you know, it’s time for us to grow up

00:46:53 ► §

and act like adults.

00:46:54 ► §

It seems like, what does that mean?

00:46:57 ► §

You know, that’s something that we need to,

00:47:00 ► §

for most of us who know what that means, that’s easy.

00:47:02 ► §

But how do we convey that to people

00:47:04 ► §

who seem to be caught up in some kind of a sophomoric adolescent drive to just be violent and just think in templates that have been inherited by outdated historical influences?

00:47:18 ► §

I think we’ve got the lesson.

00:47:20 ► §

I think a lot of people who are turned on paying attention there.

00:47:24 ► §

I know I feel it. This frustration of like, I get the lesson. I see a lot of people who are turned on paying attention there. I know I feel it,

00:47:25 ► §

this frustration of like, I get the lesson. I see we have to change. Let’s do it. Let’s be more

00:47:31 ► §

loving to each other. Let’s use less. Let’s aspire to less. But the reality is, is we, this is,

00:47:38 ► §

we’re still in the classroom. We haven’t graduated. We have senioritis maybe, but we got a long way to

00:47:43 ► §

get through before graduation and we can move on to the next phase.

00:47:47 ► §

So right now is really very much about like gathering all your knowledge, finding your community, loving your neighbor, whether they voted for Trump or not, just whatever.

00:47:58 ► §

If they need if they need help, you help them out. But it’s also right now, be inside, wear your mask, don’t travel. I’m going

00:48:06 ► §

to post this link right here. Part of what we can do right now for ourselves is to follow basic

00:48:12 ► §

guidelines of just being, you know, being sensible. I put up a piece a little while ago of like,

00:48:19 ► §

what would you, you’re person X to almost everybody else. And what do you want person X to do?

00:48:26 ► §

You want person X not to mingle, to stay home, to, you know, follow the guidelines, to take the vaccine when they get it.

00:48:33 ► §

And everybody’s trying to cut corners.

00:48:35 ► §

Well, I don’t want person X to go and meet their 10 friends in the backyard because technically they can.

00:48:41 ► §

I don’t want person X to go to a, person X doesn’t want me to fly to

00:48:45 ► §

California to go to my father’s funeral. Like person X doesn’t want you to think of it, to think

00:48:51 ► §

of it that way. And that brings the communal spirit. The mask doesn’t, isn’t really going to

00:48:57 ► §

work outdoors or doesn’t, isn’t necessary when, but it models something. It says, I’m in it with,

00:49:02 ► §

I’m in it for you guys. Person X wants me to wear this mask. I don’t know who the fuck you are,

00:49:06 ► §

person X, but I love you in,

00:49:09 ► §

at least to the point where I don’t want you to die.

00:49:12 ► §

Two things there, Ian. One, we don’t need to love our neighbors.

00:49:15 ► §

We just need to respect them. I think that’s, I think,

00:49:18 ► §

I think that’s actually an easier bar for us to sell people. Like you,

00:49:21 ► §

you don’t need to love, you know, the Trump voter across the street.

00:49:25 ► §

I get it. I’m just, I mean, as a’t need to love, you know, the Trump voter across the street. I get it.

00:49:26 ► §

I’m just, I mean,

00:49:27 ► §

as a rhetorical strategy.

00:49:28 ► §

And number two,

00:49:29 ► §

let’s not lose sight of the fact

00:49:31 ► §

that things actually are changing.

00:49:32 ► §

Like, let’s not lose sight

00:49:33 ► §

of the fact that even

00:49:34 ► §

if it was 50-50,

00:49:35 ► §

Georgia still flipped,

00:49:37 ► §

you know?

00:49:38 ► §

And so we’ve got to acknowledge

00:49:39 ► §

that things are moving,

00:49:41 ► §

you know, in a different direction.

00:49:44 ► §

It’s a matter of perspective, whether it’s positive or not,

00:49:46 ► §

but things are changing.

00:49:49 ► §

And so we can build upon those changes and respect our neighbor.

00:49:51 ► §

And you’re absolutely right, Ian, to point out,

00:49:54 ► §

we have a survival crisis with the disease and we need to rise to it.

00:49:59 ► §

And you really should read Ian’s piece that he described.

00:50:03 ► §

It’s really quite good.

00:50:07 ► §

And let me also add to that,

00:50:13 ► §

in that, in a positive note, that as fragile as a democracy is, let’s call it what it was, it was a coup attempt, and it was sedition on Trump’s part to incite a riot. But all that aside,

00:50:21 ► §

the Trump, the Congress got done what they were going to get done.

00:50:26 ► §

They certified the election.

00:50:29 ► §

They certified Biden as the next president.

00:50:31 ► §

And the democracy actually survived.

00:50:34 ► §

It was hanging by a thread, but it did survive.

00:50:37 ► §

I’m not saying it’s going to survive the rest of this day.

00:50:39 ► §

But at least we should celebrate the little victory in the middle of last night.

00:50:45 ► §

Yeah, and Congress actually remembered what the hell they were there for.

00:50:48 ► §

I mean, you know, the great image of last night was the withering contempt with which Mitt Romney was looking at – what’s the name of that twerp?

00:51:01 ► §

Josh Hawley.

00:51:03 ► §

Josh Hawley.

00:51:04 ► §

You know, he was just like looking just deep contempt at Hawley while Hawley you know he was just like looking just deep

00:51:06 ► §

contempt at Hawley while Hawley was delivering

00:51:08 ► §

his objections and it was clear like

00:51:10 ► §

you know you guys are playing out the role that you

00:51:12 ► §

assigned yourselves but you have no

00:51:14 ► §

you have no friends and so that’s good

00:51:16 ► §

they remembered why they’re there

00:51:18 ► §

yeah

00:51:19 ► §

bring that Ted Cruz

00:51:22 ► §

this is what you’ve gotten at some point

00:51:24 ► §

when during the mob action.

00:51:27 ► §

So, you know, they’re starting to reel, you know,

00:51:30 ► §

there’s some interaction going on with them, whether they can, to me,

00:51:33 ► §

this looks like the end, you know, the final death throes of the party.

00:51:37 ► §

We’ll see if it completely dies out or change.

00:51:40 ► §

It obviously needs to change in terms of Lorenorenzo what we so you know we’re watching

00:51:45 ► §

all these big things unfold you want to have a big effect but then you mainly have to work at

00:51:50 ► §

you know some lower personal level especially when everyone’s in quarantine so what i do lorenzo is i

00:51:57 ► §

post uh links to psychedelic salon podcasts especially those with ter Terrence McKenna. I may put, you know,

00:52:05 ► §

some of your comments in or ones that I’ve heard. And that just makes me feel better about spreading

00:52:11 ► §

the psychedelic message and especially the thinking of this, you know, deep philosopher

00:52:16 ► §

that was with us, you know, decades ago. And then the second thing is like, well,

00:52:21 ► §

then what can we do personally? Andody bought me a uh a box of

00:52:25 ► §

mushrooms on amazon they’re oyster mushrooms but i’m learning we’re learning how to grow mushrooms

00:52:31 ► §

and in four days we have all this uh all these little baby mushrooms coming out it’s good

00:52:36 ► §

knowledge to have i think most assuredly expanding our mushroom variety soon.

00:52:47 ► §

I like where Mike’s going with that.

00:52:52 ► §

I think Charles has been kind of getting at it this whole time too, which is like we need practices and just things in our everyday life

00:52:58 ► §

that move us forward together to kind of address like Lorenzo’s question,

00:53:04 ► §

which is like how do I talk to people about this?

00:53:08 ► §

It’s like, maybe you don’t, you know,

00:53:10 ► §

like we almost have to let the, the ghost fester or I don’t know.

00:53:18 ► §

It’s, it’s just, it’s interesting. And forgive me for speaking on emotion.

00:53:24 ► §

Cause I don’t typically do this.

00:53:26 ► §

But, like, first off, I’m super grateful that this is even here.

00:53:32 ► §

Like, Lorenzo has created a great thing and you guys are all awesome.

00:53:36 ► §

But I do find it troubling compared to what my – before I joined the these private salons I do find it fascinating that

00:53:48 ► §

we’re drawn so often into political discourse because I really do think that we need to be

00:53:57 ► §

more open-minded like a lot of us in here in that discourse are even talking like the left way is the right way or

00:54:07 ► §

something you know like and I really don’t think either side has it and that’s why what Mike said

00:54:14 ► §

just I really like that because he’s like what can we do he’s like I share good and good ideas

00:54:20 ► §

that I like and I’m trying to learn how to grow mushrooms it’s like what else can you do

00:54:23 ► §

and I think there’s a beauty to that to To speak directly to that. And thank you for bringing

00:54:29 ► §

some emotion into it because it’s, and Lorenzo, the answer to what you say to people is actually

00:54:38 ► §

kind of a psychedelic answer because in psychedelic space, there is no language. On DMT, I suddenly was like, oh, shit, I have no words to describe this.

00:54:47 ► §

And I felt like I had a, it’s like pin the tail on the donkey,

00:54:51 ► §

like a little pouch at my waist.

00:54:53 ► §

And I was like, that’s the moon.

00:54:55 ► §

And those are the pyramids.

00:54:58 ► §

But tons of other things are going, this is a mandala.

00:55:01 ► §

And I think that when we’re talking about what we can do,

00:55:05 ► §

it’s actually not a block of text. It’s not a speech bubble. Sometimes it’s just a look in your

00:55:11 ► §

eye. I feel like sometimes the mask, it forces you to say as much as possible by looking at someone’s

00:55:18 ► §

eyes to express, you know, as a spoken word guy, I use facial expressions and I pull all kinds of

00:55:24 ► §

funny faces or whatever. And I use that as a way of communicating. But with the mask, I, you know, as a spoken word guy, I use facial expressions, and I pull all kinds of funny

00:55:25 ► §

faces, or whatever, and I use that as a way of communicating, but with the mask, I have to try to

00:55:30 ► §

speak through my eyes, and there’s, you know, love to communicate that with, you don’t have to look

00:55:37 ► §

at your neighbor with anything, but like real peace, and, and not just respect, Charles, but love, the,

00:55:42 ► §

the idea of like, hey, we’re in this together, we’re on the

00:55:45 ► §

street, we’re in this store, and I’m going to smile at you with my eyes, and I’m not going to hate you

00:55:50 ► §

regardless of your beliefs. I like that. Sorry if I can jump in just quickly. And this is also

00:55:57 ► §

in relationship to the previous comment about the distinctions between left and right that we do.

00:56:02 ► §

about the distinctions between left and right that we do.

00:56:09 ► §

I think the point is that we all inside us carry a dualism and we all have these internal dialogues

00:56:15 ► §

that define our own personality.

00:56:17 ► §

I mean, none of us can claim

00:56:19 ► §

to be a perfect logical thinking being

00:56:22 ► §

because we are influenced by our intuition,

00:56:24 ► §

by our intuition by

00:56:25 ► §

our emotions by prejudices that we haven’t probably figured out and we are

00:56:29 ► §

all on a journey to kind of reprogram unprogrammed debug our own minds so the

00:56:36 ► §

the the journey towards compassion for the other I think begins with our own

00:56:42 ► §

acceptance of our internal contradictions, of examining more closely what we hold in our own minds that seems to sometimes play the trick on us.

00:56:53 ► §

Sometimes we feel, oh, this is who I am and this is all going, you know, I’m a peace loving person.

00:56:59 ► §

But at the same time, suddenly there’s this trigger that incites something that we don’t like in ourselves.

00:57:05 ► §

And this internal resolution process with our personalities and personas

00:57:11 ► §

is probably part of the work of being,

00:57:15 ► §

or some of the things that I’m hearing over here,

00:57:17 ► §

the psychological project of being that we seem to all work with.

00:57:22 ► §

And of course, these tools, the psychedelic tools and philosophical literature,

00:57:26 ► §

all of that is a great repository of knowledge

00:57:31 ► §

and technology for helping us

00:57:33 ► §

to do this work of being in some way.

00:57:39 ► §

So it’s like what Karl Marx said,

00:57:42 ► §

the work of the philosophers is to interpret the world,

00:57:45 ► §

but the point is to change it.

00:57:47 ► §

So maybe that,

00:57:48 ► §

that philosophical work and the point of changing probably I mean,

00:57:53 ► §

what we can do is something that we can do within ourselves.

00:57:56 ► §

If not involving any other person,

00:57:59 ► §

we can certainly do that work on our own self.

00:58:02 ► §

We’re in the woodshed.

00:58:03 ► §

We’re in the woodshed.

00:58:06 ► §

This is where we’re working on our instruments stuff we’re in the woodshed we’re in the woodshed this is we’re working on our instruments we’re learning the flute better we’re learning the guitar better

00:58:10 ► §

and we’re frustrated because we want to jam but yeah circumstance has forced us inside

00:58:17 ► §

so just keep practicing go on chris you know just keep practicing doing what you do and when they

00:58:23 ► §

open the doors we can jam and we’ll all be better musicians because those of us who people who are working on it.

00:58:30 ► §

And also, Lorenzo, this is the sad fact. And I’ve had this conversation with other other folks like this is Gaia doing a call and it seems indiscriminate now. The people who are anti-science and science will save us if we apply our better natures to it and don’t develop tools of warfare.

00:58:50 ► §

Like they’re not going to take the vaccine and there’s your call.

00:58:54 ► §

And it’s terrible.

00:58:55 ► §

And we can love them.

00:58:56 ► §

We can say, look, you’re a victim of circumstance or whatever, but it’s better than the indiscriminate shit that’s happening now. The people who actively deny the best scientists on the planet

00:59:05 ► §

who developed a cure for the common cold over a weekend based on research.

00:59:10 ► §

These guys are heroes.

00:59:11 ► §

These guys are moon landers.

00:59:13 ► §

And we’re going to deny the best very quickly.

00:59:16 ► §

We’re going to deny the best of it.

00:59:17 ► §

Those people disproportionately are going to die of this thing.

00:59:24 ► §

Does that not feel like pulling back into political when you bring up like

00:59:29 ► §

the, the COVID deny versus accept and,

00:59:34 ► §

and that’s survival. That’s survival.

00:59:38 ► §

COVID is a political COVID is a moral COVID is an asteroid.

00:59:43 ► §

There’s no negotiating with it. It’s not a

00:59:45 ► §

political argument. It’s like, well, we can take steps A, B, and C, or we fucking die. And we’re

00:59:53 ► §

doing the best we can with the science we have. And we either need to all step up and go, okay,

00:59:59 ► §

we’re on board with Project Humanity, or we go, you know, okay, well, I’m going to go in my

01:00:04 ► §

survivalist cabin in

01:00:05 ► §

the woods, because all society is going to hell, and if you want to live in the zombie apocalypse,

01:00:09 ► §

there’s shows on Nat Geo Wild on exactly how to do that. Actually, if I can go back and address

01:00:17 ► §

something that Evan, I think, is trying to get to, so we live on this island, it’s very uncrowded,

01:00:23 ► §

it’s very easy to go out and walk around.

01:00:25 ► §

We always still put a mask on.

01:00:27 ► §

But, you know, there’s very, it’s easy to avoid contact and still get lots of exercise.

01:00:31 ► §

So yesterday we’re out walking around the island, and I’ve seen more people out on their decks.

01:00:37 ► §

Just, you know, all this stuff was going on on TV.

01:00:40 ► §

You know everyone was watching it.

01:00:42 ► §

And yet so many people were out waving down, saying hi.

01:00:46 ► §

Some of them, we don’t know that many people,

01:00:48 ► §

but one guy I know is pretty conservative and he was screaming about the

01:00:52 ► §

cockroaches crawling all over the Capitol. I used to live there.

01:00:57 ► §

And there was almost like a connection.

01:00:59 ► §

And so Ian was talking about what you can see through the eyes.

01:01:03 ► §

And so, you know, we’re talking to these people and there’s hope even for, you know,

01:01:08 ► §

these people who, you know,

01:01:09 ► §

maybe aren’t in your political stream that maybe they’ll see things

01:01:14 ► §

differently.

01:01:14 ► §

And then there’s other people who just want to come out and interact with

01:01:19 ► §

anyone they see on the street, you know, talk to people on the street.

01:01:23 ► §

And so I think, you know, talk to people on the street. And so I think, you know, yesterday helped

01:01:26 ► §

push people out into the world and just looking for something positive to find. And so all we can

01:01:33 ► §

do, I think, is try and reflect that back to the people through our masks, through our eyes,

01:01:39 ► §

and do our best.

01:01:51 ► §

in defense of politics um you know there’s two parts of the um the psychedelic experience there’s the psychedelic space that the journeyer goes into which permits um self-actualization and

01:01:58 ► §

contact with the other um and then there’s holding the space and holding the space should be as unobjectionable and clean

01:02:07 ► §

and non-interfering as possible so that the journeyer is able to go out into the space of

01:02:15 ► §

transformation and in its ideal state politics particularly in a self-government situation like

01:02:22 ► §

we have here in the United States even though it doesn’t feel like a self-government situation like we have here in the United States, even though it doesn’t feel like a self-government situation, that’s how it was designed.

01:02:28 ► §

Politics is about holding space.

01:02:31 ► §

Politics is about creating the mechanism that enables people to do what Chris is doing

01:02:36 ► §

and start his own nonprofit organization that is creating within his value system the world he wants to create.

01:02:44 ► §

creating within his value system the world he wants to create.

01:02:50 ► §

And that’s why I think, you know, I understand the concern about making these conversations political,

01:02:56 ► §

but the purpose of politics is to make it possible for the citizenry to self-actualize, and it’s worth participating in to a certain extent on that basis.

01:03:09 ► §

basis. I would, I would posit that perhaps that that is not the entire complete extent of the purposes of government. You can’t, you can’t ignore the notions of control. You just, you just,

01:03:18 ► §

you can’t. It’s just, it’s a massive factor. Yeah, control is a flavor that government has chosen to move itself into that

01:03:25 ► §

is definitely over the top and definitely in need of reform. Absolutely. Well, it’s in it’s a system

01:03:32 ► §

that’s in place in order to go to work towards a common goal. We need a system in place where,

01:03:38 ► §

you know, which is democracy and the most votes win and etc. And right now that’s come to a fore

01:03:43 ► §

because, well, it’s election

01:03:45 ► §

season. And this has been one of the craziest is certainly in my lifetime. And the you know,

01:03:51 ► §

the other systems that are in place are global communication, that system is in place, but it’s

01:03:55 ► §

also fucked Facebook and Twitter and whatnot become, you know, these evil spaces of trolls

01:04:01 ► §

and whatnot. But that system needs to be there there so we can all talk to each other.

01:04:05 ► §

And sooner or later, these systems moving slowly are, and psych, I mean, I’m sure a lot of, you

01:04:11 ► §

know, certainly in this space and the psychedelics, not so much as the drug, but as the mindset

01:04:16 ► §

holding the space of like anything is possible of curiosity and laughter and potential and

01:04:22 ► §

possibility. That’s, that’s another element that that’s there, but it’s not in place yet.

01:04:28 ► §

And that’s us.

01:04:31 ► §

It seems like we are the system, right?

01:04:33 ► §

Like we make the system, and as we change, the systems change.

01:04:39 ► §

And the changes that occur in the system depend on what predominant patterns underlying it start evolving or emerging based on whatever natural principles guide these things.

01:04:52 ► §

Do you mean personally?

01:04:54 ► §

Do you mean personally, Ankur?

01:04:57 ► §

I’m sorry, what was that?

01:04:58 ► §

Do you mean personally, like your personal space can change your yes you’re surrounding yes uh i mean there

01:05:08 ► §

are feedback loops right when we talk about systems we are talking about feedback loops

01:05:11 ► §

that are occurring within ourselves and with our relationships with other people and our connection

01:05:16 ► §

with society at large and and so in some ways um i’m thinking of already laying in politics of

01:05:23 ► §

experience and you know in some ways we can’t avoid

01:05:26 ► §

politics because that’s what we are. We are political creatures encoding a political system

01:05:32 ► §

that is exceptionally different from everything else that happens in the rest of the wild, right?

01:05:38 ► §

I mean, the human animal is a very peculiar animal in the way it has evolved, in the way we have created this mass amount of history

01:05:48 ► §

that is influencing us as we proceed further into history

01:05:51 ► §

and how it is communicated, how it is miscommunicated.

01:05:54 ► §

So it’s all probably in some kind of a change

01:05:58 ► §

or in some kind of a process of transition.

01:06:02 ► §

And perhaps opportunities for positive change could probably be just

01:06:08 ► §

around the corner and people who are tuned into these opportunities would probably be

01:06:14 ► §

catalyzing some positive change coming up in the future.

01:06:18 ► §

We can hope for that.

01:06:19 ► §

Of course, there’s always coincidental positorum and there’s always the possibility of a negative thing happening.

01:06:26 ► §

Well, then we’re fucked.

01:06:28 ► §

But we should strive for the positive.

01:06:30 ► §

You’re 100% right.

01:06:31 ► §

Absolutely.

01:06:31 ► §

I think creative spirit is something worth fighting for and something worth putting our bets on rather than a destructive, narrow-minded kind of thing.

01:06:46 ► §

a destructive uh uh narrow-minded uh kind of i mean and i i think we have to at some point take a side uh whether we are on the creative side uh of transforming chaos into something positive or

01:06:53 ► §

are we just going to be resigning to the the you know the whims of faith it’s hard not to incite the parents McKenna birth metaphor that we should be

01:07:06 ► §

the midwives of the new, you know, absolutely. Yeah.

01:07:11 ► §

You do that by getting involved.

01:07:13 ► §

And, and let me re re interest, uh, introduce something here is that,

01:07:18 ► §

you know, we, this is a wonderful, uh, high minded conversation,

01:07:22 ► §

but we still have 13 days of a lunatic president.

01:07:27 ► §

Now, you know that last night in the midst of all this thing,

01:07:30 ► §

he got banned from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

01:07:35 ► §

Facebook and Twitter he’s banned until – or Facebook and Instagram he’s banned

01:07:38 ► §

until after the inauguration.

01:07:40 ► §

Twitter banned him for 12 hours until after he deleted some tweets.

01:07:45 ► §

And let’s not overlook the fact that John Ossoff is Jewish, and he was elected senator in Georgia.

01:07:53 ► §

Yes.

01:07:54 ► §

And his parents are immigrants.

01:07:58 ► §

And the other senator is the pastor of the Baptist Church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached.

01:08:06 ► §

So, you know, that is really pretty revolutionary in a red state.

01:08:12 ► §

Right. And the other piece of all of this, too, in defense of politics is that, you know,

01:08:20 ► §

psychedelics were part of the political agenda in this last election and overwhelmingly were

01:08:28 ► §

brought into being liberalized. So, you know, there’s a place for us all to be getting involved

01:08:34 ► §

to the capacity that we are, you know, best able to participate. And for some people,

01:08:38 ► §

their best ability to participate is smiling at their neighbors. To some people, the best ability

01:08:43 ► §

to participate is through their professional activities. And to some people, it’s canvassing. I mean, I’m not

01:08:48 ► §

making a judgment about how you participate. I’m just suggesting that we should all be

01:08:54 ► §

participating in the direction of, I think Ankur said it best, a creative and positive response

01:09:00 ► §

to chaos as opposed to a resignation to chaos yeah i think your point charles that anything

01:09:07 ► §

that we can do to raise consciousness it’s a positive step now because we need that for people

01:09:15 ► §

to understand ourselves and everybody else and that you know i’ll kind of take back what I said before about the 50-50.

01:09:25 ► §

At least we tipped the scale.

01:09:28 ► §

And just as Trump maybe has made it seem okay to do the type of things that people did yesterday,

01:09:36 ► §

now hopefully other people will think it’s okay to stand up and say, you know, it’s enough.

01:09:42 ► §

We need to go the other direction.

01:09:45 ► §

Yeah.

01:09:46 ► §

Go ahead, Lawrence.

01:09:47 ► §

I was going to say, let me add a word about chaos,

01:09:50 ► §

because I think it’s very important to think of it as chaos.

01:09:55 ► §

In the terms of back in the 70s, I believe it was,

01:09:58 ► §

Ilan Progroshen got the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on chaos.

01:10:02 ► §

And what he discovered was that in a really complex chemical reaction

01:10:09 ► §

where you have a lot of chemicals,

01:10:11 ► §

but the end result is something that’s synergistic,

01:10:14 ► §

that moves to a significantly higher level.

01:10:17 ► §

And what his Nobel Prize was for is to show that the instant before it

01:10:21 ► §

snapped to that higher level,

01:10:23 ► §

it was complete chaos with no hope of,

01:10:26 ► §

and it could go either way. And since then, of course, this has been applied to societies or

01:10:30 ► §

books, there’s papers, there’s whole departments on this. But basically the thing to recognize

01:10:37 ► §

about chaos is while yes, it could fall apart, but it has the opportunity to synergize to something

01:10:44 ► §

significantly better

01:10:46 ► §

to come out of the chaos. And that’s the direction I think that we’re going to go.

01:10:49 ► §

I really believe that. As much of a convention as I am, I’m still an incurable optimist.

01:10:56 ► §

The evidence is definitely suggesting that 2020 ended yesterday and 2021 began yesterday.

01:11:07 ► §

And the people that voted 50-50 in Georgia were voting in 2020.

01:11:12 ► §

But now that the balance is tipped, we’re in 2021,

01:11:15 ► §

and let’s see what we do with it.

01:11:16 ► §

And we can take the most hopeful view, or we can take the most resigned view.

01:11:20 ► §

I like the saying out of Chaos Cosmos.

01:11:29 ► §

That is a good saying at one point and besides smiling at my neighbors i did call ted cruz’s office yesterday couldn’t get through but after enough

01:11:34 ► §

times i finally did and got an answering machine i do contact uh our local uh congress congressional

01:11:42 ► §

people down here and encourage them to impeach Trump. And I have been involved

01:11:48 ► §

in introducing components of psychedelic medicine into medical school curriculum,

01:11:55 ► §

third year medical students grand rounds and things like that. So certainly we should use

01:12:02 ► §

our professional connections to try and promote that.

01:12:07 ► §

And so it is working at all levels, government, our professional levels, but also I think our

01:12:13 ► §

personal levels, just to give us some feeling of satisfaction is important. Right now my wife is

01:12:20 ► §

taking a Buddhist meditation course for the month of January. So, I don’t know, it’s an hour and a half, four times a day,

01:12:27 ► §

and she goes in and they have teachings, and then there’s chanting,

01:12:31 ► §

and then there’s meditation.

01:12:32 ► §

And, like, it just feels more chill in here.

01:12:36 ► §

And, you know, devoting your attention to the enlightenment

01:12:40 ► §

and, you know, the higher rebirth of all sentient beings

01:12:44 ► §

is a positive uh thought

01:12:47 ► §

pattern you know we tend our inner dialogue tends to you know of complaining and and and wish that

01:12:53 ► §

wishing things could be better and doom scrolling you those are ruts you create in your brain going

01:12:58 ► §

over and over and instead to change that narrative of a chant, into a mantra.

01:13:12 ► §

And whenever there’s conflict, she steps in and she’s vibrating like a guitar string.

01:13:15 ► §

And you can’t help but feel that vibration.

01:13:19 ► §

And I keep telling her, this is what you get. I’m as good as I’m going to get for now.

01:13:22 ► §

I’m not suddenly going to start to be able to fix cars or anything like

01:13:26 ► §

that, but it’s, you know,

01:13:28 ► §

it’s inspirational to just devote a little time to your data,

01:13:31 ► §

changing your internal dialogue so that the way you’re vibrating,

01:13:34 ► §

when you interact with people, they can’t help.

01:13:37 ► §

They can’t help but smile. They can’t help, but feel a little better.

01:13:40 ► §

And yeah, that’s, that’s she is definitely my better half.

01:13:47 ► §

And there’s a good lesson there too, that we’re all connected to it.

01:13:52 ► §

We’re all connected to it.

01:13:53 ► §

We can feel like we’re separate from the political system and the chaos,

01:13:57 ► §

but we’re all connected to it. And, you know,

01:14:01 ► §

you get to choose how you use that connection.

01:14:04 ► §

Will Fredo, i have to ask

01:14:07 ► §

i’m gonna ask every week you got a trip report for us buddy not yet not yet okay

01:14:15 ► §

such peer pressure i’m interested i’m curious take your time people will come out when they’re ready to come out about it.

01:14:26 ► §

I don’t want to put pressure on anybody.

01:14:27 ► §

Hey, he told the forum.

01:14:33 ► §

Hey, Lorenzo, did you get around to revisiting the limits to growth?

01:14:39 ► §

Not yet, to tell you the truth.

01:14:41 ► §

I had actually planned on doing that yesterday.

01:14:45 ► §

Same here.

01:14:45 ► §

I kind of got sidetracked.

01:14:47 ► §

I was going to do that, and I was going to podcast our last salon before this,

01:14:50 ► §

but I haven’t been able to refocus yet, so I don’t know if I will.

01:14:55 ► §

We should make that, like, sometime this month,

01:14:58 ► §

we should make that a Thursday topic

01:14:59 ► §

so everybody gets an opportunity to read it and have a grounding.

01:15:03 ► §

I was going to read it yesterday, too, but other things interven intervened i kind of got it on my notepad there i kind of had the

01:15:10 ► §

assumption when i when i signed on this morning that this entire day was probably going to be

01:15:15 ► §

largely about what was happening yesterday and that absolutely makes sense this is a safe space

01:15:21 ► §

a safe space to you know express deep feelings about the subject and

01:15:25 ► §

like i i totally get that yeah yeah let’s i i would love to do that conversation at some point

01:15:31 ► §

oh we will i’m sure yeah i think that’s a great idea i think everything is teetering

01:15:36 ► §

and uh and obviously could go either way but i think that uh i think that uh the right-wing trumpets people are not feeling defeated

01:15:46 ► §

uh they’ve got a martyr uh you know uh horse vessel when he was killed in the beer hall pooch

01:15:55 ► §

they wrote a song about him and that became the nazi national anthem i’m not saying that that’s

01:16:00 ► §

going to happen but just because they got scattered and a bunch of them are going to get

01:16:06 ► §

arrested they’re going to be martyrs and they’re going to have trials and they’re going to do crazy

01:16:13 ► §

things at their trial and uh we’re not out of the woods on this yet not at all you know what

01:16:19 ► §

this sounds like we’re we’re the the ones that back in the 60s we’re talking about the chicago

01:16:24 ► §

seven and we’re saying yeah we’re going to give them publicity, put them on trial.

01:16:29 ► §

But now it’s all flipped and we’re on the other side.

01:16:34 ► §

Well, John Brown, I’ll go back to John Brown.

01:16:37 ► §

John Brown, it was his trial that made him the folk hero.

01:16:43 ► §

Right.

01:16:43 ► §

And made him even more so.

01:16:46 ► §

And the same thing with Hitler.

01:16:48 ► §

It was,

01:16:48 ► §

it was his trial for treason and he got off,

01:16:52 ► §

you know,

01:16:53 ► §

with two years,

01:16:54 ► §

but,

01:16:54 ► §

but he put the Weimar Republic on trial and it worked because membership rose. And I, i think that you know we’re just i think we’re

01:17:09 ► §

just high-fiving a little bit too soon i don’t hear anybody high-fiving i think i think i i think

01:17:15 ► §

that we’re we’re anticipating how we’re going to respond but you’re right i mean it’s definitely

01:17:21 ► §

we’re not out of the woods. There is a toxic ideology.

01:17:35 ► §

And the challenge, of course, is that what we saw yesterday is just because they are foolish doesn’t mean that they don’t pose a threat.

01:17:42 ► §

Right. Yeah. And and it’s all going to be resolved one way or the other because they keep saying it, you know, in the state legislature. And the state legislatures are filled with QAnon people.

01:17:47 ► §

Not filled.

01:17:48 ► §

But, you know, there’s a bunch in every state.

01:17:51 ► §

And, you know, it’s just we’ll have to see.

01:17:56 ► §

But you’re right, Charles.

01:17:57 ► §

We all have to do what we think is right and go ahead.

01:18:01 ► §

Oh, my God, that was David Crockett’s motto.

01:18:04 ► §

You know, I think we

01:18:05 ► §

need to be careful about thinking that it’s

01:18:07 ► §

50-50 because I don’t really think it’s that

01:18:10 ► §

close. I think it’s more like 60-40,

01:18:11 ► §

something like that. First of all,

01:18:13 ► §

one half of the people in this country didn’t vote

01:18:16 ► §

in the last election. So, you know, there’s

01:18:17 ► §

that unknown as well.

01:18:19 ► §

And so I don’t think we need to look at this

01:18:21 ► §

country as being so divided. I think

01:18:23 ► §

there is division, obviously, but I don’t think it’s 50-50.

01:18:28 ► §

I think that there’s a lot more unity on some common issues than we are led to believe,

01:18:35 ► §

and it could be 70-30.

01:18:38 ► §

When you come to attacking the Capitol and breaking into the Capitol,

01:18:42 ► §

I think it’s maybe like 80-20 or something.

01:18:45 ► §

It’s not 50-50, I don’t believe.

01:18:46 ► §

The best thing that can happen, I saw like the tail end of Sarah Palin on Fox yesterday,

01:18:52 ► §

and I’d forgotten she existed, so that was a very upsetting thing to witness.

01:18:55 ► §

And she said something to the effect of, you know, well, just floating it,

01:19:01 ► §

but maybe it’s time for a third know, a third party to emerge to

01:19:05 ► §

really lead the revolution that changes this country. Please, please, please, please, please,

01:19:10 ► §

please take fucking Ted Cruz, take Josh Hawley, take all of these Q morons, because I think that

01:19:16 ► §

does get to Lorenzo’s point where it’s like, you know, they might have a disproportionate influence

01:19:21 ► §

upon the Republican Party now because those people are uncourageous and pander to their perceived base.

01:19:27 ► §

But if they create their own party, then, you know,

01:19:30 ► §

you’ve got a split and the Republicans can return to just simply being

01:19:33 ► §

obstructionist to, you know, any kind of progress,

01:19:37 ► §

but not insane obstructionist to any kind of progress to reflect my bias.

01:19:42 ► §

Sorry.

01:19:42 ► §

Don’t stress Evan. It it’s it’s election season

01:19:45 ► §

there seems like a i can see the logic in in trying to promote like the survival of the

01:19:54 ► §

notion of conservatism like can we save conservatism from fanaticism yes yeah and

01:20:01 ► §

that’s what the lincoln project’s about although i I can’t be a fan of the Lincoln Project.

01:20:06 ► §

Why not?

01:20:08 ► §

You don’t want to – I just – I find all of those people to be hacks, and I find their rhetoric to be unhelpful.

01:20:14 ► §

They’re just – yeah, I agree. I mean I think – I thought that their stuff was funny at first, but I’m not sure what they even exist for now, except that I think that they’re trying to be the center of the revised Republican Party.

01:20:29 ► §

And honestly, yesterday, Mitt Romney, with his speech, took a big step towards 2024 compared to these other guys.

01:20:39 ► §

Yeah, I agree.

01:20:41 ► §

I agree.

01:20:52 ► §

But also a lot of Trump supporters, a lot of it, you know, again, this bring up this friend who worked for the SPLC and, you know, is on the ground.

01:20:58 ► §

He infiltrated hate groups and got a picture of himself arm in arm with Frank Metzger.

01:21:08 ► §

And he’s got a Nazi tattoo under his arm. So you can, that’s, if you don’t want to have the facial swastika, you’ve got this symbol that you put here. So on a short sleeve, you can just raise your arm and it’s a little, a follow wolf from a, one of the SS things. So he’s kind of on the ball on this.

01:21:13 ► §

And I’m like, where are these people coming from in Georgia actually? And he says, they,

01:21:20 ► §

you know, they hate being mocked on mainstream news. They hate seeing Trevor Noah get up and

01:21:26 ► §

just beat him like a pinata. You know, they hate being treated like they’re stupid. And because

01:21:31 ► §

they feel like, you know, this is our lot in life and we’re not, we’re, you know, and if we are,

01:21:35 ► §

well, that’s, you know, well, we don’t care. We’ll turn over the apple cart. Nobody likes to be

01:21:40 ► §

mocked. And what you get is someone like Donald Trump, who’s just been, you know, he’s so thin

01:21:45 ► §

skinned. He can’t imagine all those people who are also thin skinned, who can’t take a joke,

01:21:52 ► §

who go to the press correspondence dinner and get, you know, roasted by Obama, and the entire

01:21:56 ► §

room turns and laughs. How much of that informs how much he hates the world? And if you look at,

01:22:02 ► §

you know, there has to be some way that we can you

01:22:05 ► §

know in the lincoln project as well you look over and you go okay that was kind of a good one but

01:22:09 ► §

it’s is it like you said charles is it helpful and this is a this is a point where humor can

01:22:16 ► §

you know is a dangerous road to tread because sometimes you know you got to punch up, I guess, is what it is. You don’t overcome the bully by behaving like the bully.

01:22:30 ► §

So this is the first time I’ve been speaking up on one of these meetings.

01:22:36 ► §

So thanks, Lorenzo.

01:22:38 ► §

And I’m showing you my face.

01:22:40 ► §

But I did want to say on kind of a positive note about this whole political business.

01:22:44 ► §

But I did want to say on kind of a positive note about this whole political business.

01:22:52 ► §

I live in Oregon and, you know, we passed the psilocybin therapeutic use initiative.

01:23:03 ► §

And this week was the deadline to apply for the like the board that’s going to lay out the regulations for that in detail.

01:23:07 ► §

And and I applied for that. And we’ll see if I get on there or not. But anyway, that’s my little 10 cents of like being politically active for this year.

01:23:14 ► §

Yeah. And hey, thank you for stepping up to the plate. You know that I was worried that

01:23:18 ► §

there’s going to be a bunch of pharmaceutical guys got involved in that. So it’s nice to know

01:23:21 ► §

that some real people are there too. Yeah, well, I’m worried about that too.

01:23:26 ► §

Hey Ed, what’s your motivation? What’s your agenda? What do you want to bring to the board?

01:23:31 ► §

Well, so I’m a parent of two teenagers

01:23:35 ► §

and my main motivation

01:23:40 ► §

is to help guide the regulation

01:23:44 ► §

in a way that avoids all the negative consequences of most of our previous drug laws

01:23:51 ► §

in terms of either not being based on factual information or taking too strong of an agenda

01:23:59 ► §

about what the content of the psychedelic experience is and how it should be limited or structured in this

01:24:06 ► §

therapeutic model. So my agenda actually is twofold, I guess. One is to make sure that the

01:24:13 ► §

regulations are clear and fact-based, but also that they don’t promote too much of a cognitive,

01:24:25 ► §

like a limited cognitive frame

01:24:27 ► §

for talking about the psychedelic experience.

01:24:32 ► §

So I have a couple different concerns about it.

01:24:37 ► §

One is that the regulations might impede

01:24:40 ► §

the ability of people to grow their own mushrooms

01:24:43 ► §

and somehow regulate that in new or

01:24:47 ► §

surprising ways. I’m also concerned that it might establish such a set of like therapeutic

01:24:53 ► §

guidelines around it that it sort of changes the nature of how we look at psychedelics as a tool

01:25:00 ► §

for just personal exploration or all the other ways that they can be used aside from

01:25:05 ► §

the therapeutic context so um so that’s basically it i mean it’s mostly i’m just interested in it

01:25:11 ► §

as a long time kind of hobbyist in that area at what age are you going to turn your kids on

01:25:19 ► §

are you going to let them find it themselves well that, that’s a good question. They have to find it themselves,

01:25:25 ► §

of course, but I haven’t been shy about telling them my thoughts and experiences.

01:25:31 ► §

Great. You’re turning them into Republicans. Well, it seems to be for my son, yeah, or worse.

01:25:39 ► §

You know what, Ed? The question I posed when I launched this thing yesterday was,

01:25:47 ► §

what can the psychedelic community do to become active in this age of chaos?

01:25:54 ► §

And we’ve been here almost an hour and a half,

01:25:56 ► §

and you’re the first person who’s actually come up with something positive about the whole thing

01:26:01 ► §

because, you know, getting involved on the local level in issues like this is something the psychedelic community can do.

01:26:08 ► §

And it’s just like Mike posts things to social media or whatever.

01:26:13 ► §

Getting the discussion out there, you’ve done something that’s way over and above what I would consider getting really, involved. And so I appreciate you doing it and telling us about it, because I think that

01:26:25 ► §

perfectly is a perfect example of what we’re trying to get to. How can we help is what we’re

01:26:32 ► §

all saying, I think. Yeah, well, thanks, Lorenzo. I mean, I honestly feel the same thing about you

01:26:37 ► §

in terms of running the psychedelic salon for so long. And you know, my personal temperament is to be kind of a loner and not really

01:26:45 ► §

step up in these circumstances. But it’s really just becoming clear to me, you know, that community

01:26:53 ► §

is what you make it in. And it takes a time and investment to participate and, you know, get to

01:26:59 ► §

know people, accept the situation as it is, and just, you know, contribute to it in whatever way

01:27:05 ► §

makes sense. So that’s my, kind of my feeling about it, that it’s like, it’s an interest area

01:27:11 ► §

of mine, and, you know, I have a little more free time now than when my kids were younger, so.

01:27:17 ► §

Perfect. Love it.

01:27:23 ► §

One reason I did want to chime up today was um i had been in one of these uh

01:27:28 ► §

zoom calls before and i think somebody here mentioned they were from oregon

01:27:31 ► §

is that anybody else here oh okay so several of you oh great yeah chris and charles are both

01:27:37 ► §

from oregon so uh and we’ve had several other people here from o as well. Charles is in Oregon. He’s from the Bloody Valley.

01:27:48 ► §

Hey, dude, I vote here, so that’s

01:27:50 ► §

all that matters. Anyway, where were you going with that, Ed?

01:27:53 ► §

Just that I

01:27:54 ► §

well,

01:27:56 ► §

I guess one place I was going is if

01:27:58 ► §

anybody else here was interested in that

01:28:00 ► §

the measure that was passed

01:28:01 ► §

at more than just a theoretical

01:28:04 ► §

level, but was involved as either a practitioner or a mushroom grower or a pharmaceutical person interested in that stuff.

01:28:16 ► §

And also just wanted to kind of put the names to the faces and see if there would be some way to meet in person at some point as this unfolds.

01:28:26 ► §

Sure.

01:28:27 ► §

Where in Oregon are you?

01:28:28 ► §

I live in northeast Portland.

01:28:31 ► §

Yeah, I’m in Woodstock.

01:28:33 ► §

Yeah, I’m up by St. John’s.

01:28:35 ► §

Uh-huh.

01:28:36 ► §

Yeah, well, great.

01:28:38 ► §

When it gets warmer, we can find a park.

01:28:40 ► §

Yeah, it is like a triangle.

01:28:41 ► §

When it gets warmer, we can find a park in the middle and microdose or something.

01:28:49 ► §

Build a big bonfire with your drums and run around it like my scene in the

01:28:55 ► §

Fuck It, I Quit scene in Genesis Generation.

01:29:01 ► §

Yeah.

01:29:02 ► §

Well, anyway, I just wanted to say hi.

01:29:03 ► §

And since the topic was politics uh politics thought i’d chime up

01:29:06 ► §

i’m gonna mute myself and uh save my bandwidth for my kids who are online thank you man looking

01:29:14 ► §

forward to meeting you so uh anything else uh on the tap today or have we kind of talked this out

01:29:19 ► §

for a little while it’s been really good for me to uh get some of this off my chest i haven’t been able to until

01:29:25 ► §

now so it’s a great to be among friends and uh and hear your views too and see what’s going on

01:29:31 ► §

and know that i’m not the only one that thinks this is a pretty exceptional time

01:29:36 ► §

i think one of the things that’s really come through is to stay engaged and uh it’s good to hear people are doing that and to not

01:29:48 ► §

that to realize that actually it matters it makes a difference i think one of the ways that we got

01:29:55 ► §

here was that you know we got discouraged we got jaded whatever and you know a lot of people dropped being engaged and we need to do that

01:30:07 ► §

you know it was a time in the earth no just to speak to that uh uh lorenzo was talking about

01:30:16 ► §

chaos i i know for from personal experience i was pretty frustrated with the way things were going. And COVID is an absolutely horrifying

01:30:26 ► §

event for humanity, but it’s brought chaos and from chaos provide, you know, there’s sadness,

01:30:35 ► §

but there’s also opportunity. And I think a lot of people are sniffing that going, ooh,

01:30:39 ► §

we could actually, the system’s crumbling, we can rebuild it. How am I going to do that?

01:30:45 ► §

And right now the frustration for some is like, well, let’s open it up so we can start.

01:30:51 ► §

But I very much feel like guys going, no, no, no, you got to do your senior year these next few months.

01:30:59 ► §

Andrew, go ahead.

01:31:01 ► §

I was just going to say that, you know, I’m not somebody who likes to join committees.

01:31:07 ► §

You know, the kinds of kinds of activities I find myself involved in.

01:31:12 ► §

It’s it’s not useful to have your name on the rolls of political action committees or lists like that.

01:31:18 ► §

So, you know, I you know, I tend to seek a kind of like,

01:31:36 ► §

that’s a beautiful dog, by the way.

01:31:40 ► §

It reminds me of my, my old Rottweiler who I inherited.

01:31:43 ► §

His name was Igor. And for about four years,

01:31:45 ► §

he was my only companion and best friend.

01:31:48 ► §

So you can’t beat a dog.

01:31:52 ► §

And while we’re waiting for the dog to settle down there,

01:31:59 ► §

I read an article this morning that there’s several new studies that seem to have confirmed that some birds are self-aware.

01:32:03 ► §

And it seems like if a bird can be self-aware, a dog can be self-aware.

01:32:07 ► §

I think most animals probably are too.

01:32:10 ► §

Maybe not the same way we think of it, but I’m sure they are.

01:32:13 ► §

Oh, yeah.

01:32:15 ► §

I find it odd that this is news.

01:32:20 ► §

Well, it’s just that the science has finally caught up.

01:32:22 ► §

Go ahead, Ildiko.

01:32:22 ► §

Sorry.

01:32:23 ► §

I just wanted to pitch in about birds and dogs and cats.

01:32:28 ► §

And we have all here where we live.

01:32:31 ► §

And we have a peacock who decided to live in our little courtyard.

01:32:38 ► §

And then we have a black cat who joined us.

01:32:41 ► §

And we have four dogs coming around and everybody’s looking for food and

01:32:48 ► §

companion and coming in for a warm weather and it feels so good it feels home without

01:32:55 ► §

animals will be empty or without kids but we are now grown up so we have all these lovely animals coming and visiting and staying in and it’s just

01:33:08 ► §

been beautiful that’s really important i think an additional comment to that about birds being

01:33:14 ► §

self-aware um two nights ago we lost the partner of one of our parrots and he and the remaining bird,

01:33:28 ► §

Diopo, who’s now sick himself,

01:33:30 ► §

we think probably they got a cold or some other infection and she went very

01:33:36 ► §

quickly and he’s trying to hold on.

01:33:38 ► §

But we had quite a connection going during the course of the year. I brought the female back and put her in the cage, and we sat for a long time.

01:33:53 ► §

And I signaled to him in various ways that I was finally going to remove her at a time that Ildiko and I felt was appropriate.

01:34:03 ► §

And he looked at me and gave me a silent chirp

01:34:08 ► §

and indicating, at least as far as I perceived,

01:34:14 ► §

that it was okay now to take her away,

01:34:18 ► §

that he had finished saying goodbye.

01:34:21 ► §

And it was quite remarkable.

01:34:23 ► §

So I would totally agree yeah

01:34:26 ► §

when i was growing up our family had uh for a few years uh we had a a golden crested cockatoo

01:34:36 ► §

that lived in a big cage in our backyard it was it was like a grass hut that had been converted

01:34:42 ► §

into a bird cage so it was like a lot of space. But this particular bird had been injured by kids when it was little.

01:34:49 ► §

And so it couldn’t fly.

01:34:50 ► §

It had a bad wing.

01:34:52 ► §

And my dad and I used to go and like spend time with this bird and cuddle it.

01:34:56 ► §

And it would crawl up on our shoulder and like cuddle into our neck.

01:34:59 ► §

And we would like scratch its neck and pet it.

01:35:02 ► §

And it would do this kind of low rumbling chirping purr sound and

01:35:07 ► §

it was just adorable but apart from the two of us it like it pretty much like tried to bite anyone

01:35:13 ► §

who got close to it and um i left there you know when i was 18 and it was 14 years before i ended

01:35:21 ► §

up going back to visit and the bird was still alive and it had been living in somebody else’s backyard for the intervening

01:35:28 ► §

years, but we were walking past the house where it was living.

01:35:31 ► §

And I saw it in the backyard in a cage and I was like,

01:35:33 ► §

is that our bird and went up to it. And like, I,

01:35:37 ► §

I have no way to describe it that feels honest,

01:35:40 ► §

except to say that it seemed like the bird recognized me instantly.

01:35:46 ► §

I don’t, and I don’t know whether it would be on a smell level or what but it was cuddling and i scratched its

01:35:52 ► §

neck and it was just it was just an overwhelmingly bizarre experience to have because i was not used

01:35:59 ► §

to attributing that kind of intelligence to a bird. Beautiful experience.

01:36:06 ► §

What I was saying before, just before the dogs interrupted,

01:36:10 ► §

was that, you know, when I live with a certain faith

01:36:15 ► §

that in a world like we live in, there is still space

01:36:20 ► §

for like the kooky shaman or shamaness to live in the little hide

01:36:24 ► §

at the edge of the village and

01:36:25 ► §

grow their strange plants and I live with a certain faith that if I commit myself to that

01:36:33 ► §

and maintain connections with people who are out in the world on political action committees that

01:36:38 ► §

I can sort of be an informing voice for the people who are out there writing the rules

01:36:46 ► §

voice for the people who are out there writing the rules. And I don’t know, that’s given me a certain calm during this year when there just wasn’t a lot that I wanted to be involved in,

01:36:53 ► §

in the organized political sense. And I had to sort of say to myself, well, I’m here,

01:37:00 ► §

I’m growing my plants, I’m communicating love and compassion to all the people that I touch in the

01:37:06 ► §

world around me. And, you know, at the moment that’s really like, that’s,

01:37:11 ► §

that’s what I can do.

01:37:12 ► §

Well said. Well said.

01:37:16 ► §

In fact, that might be a perfect place to leave it. Go ahead, Rio.

01:37:20 ► §

I just went on this kind of topic.

01:37:22 ► §

I just wanted on this kind of topic

01:37:24 ► §

relate we lost

01:37:26 ► §

another bird

01:37:28 ► §

a month ago maybe now

01:37:30 ► §

and

01:37:33 ► §

through some action

01:37:36 ► §

I did giving him

01:37:38 ► §

some avocado please don’t

01:37:40 ► §

do that if you have birds

01:37:42 ► §

and

01:37:44 ► §

I was really beating myself up about it.

01:37:48 ► §

I just felt horrible.

01:37:51 ► §

And I didn’t know it, you know, at the time.

01:37:55 ► §

You shouldn’t do that.

01:37:56 ► §

And it was the next morning, and I was making breakfast in our kitchen,

01:38:04 ► §

which because of the way the place we were living in was actually

01:38:07 ► §

outdoors and I was physically suffering I truly was it wasn’t just psychological I was physically

01:38:15 ► §

suffering and as I was cooking there in the kitchen a bird flew in because we had a lot of birds that would come in and out of the courtyard.

01:38:27 ► §

A bird flew in, landed on my left shoulder for a few moments. And all of that mourning,

01:38:37 ► §

all of that sadness, everything just went right out of my body and completely changed me and my state.

01:38:48 ► §

And it was the first experience I’ve had that I believe there truly is, for want of a better term, a biospheric consciousness of life.

01:39:01 ► §

And, you know, that bird, the thought that came to my mind when that bird landed on my shoulder

01:39:05 ► §

was it said you know it’s

01:39:08 ► §

okay it’s okay

01:39:09 ► §

and it

01:39:11 ► §

was such a radical physical

01:39:14 ► §

change that

01:39:15 ► §

in my

01:39:17 ► §

that experience to me was so

01:39:19 ► §

real

01:39:20 ► §

yeah

01:39:23 ► §

that makes Gaia very real for me the concept of guy and intelligence uh you know

01:39:33 ► §

that that wasn’t an accident that wasn’t uh uh you know coincidence or something that that was

01:39:39 ► §

intelligence acting yes yes have you ever had a bird land a wild bird land on your shoulder before

01:39:48 ► §

no yeah you know that’s that’s that’s an awesome story amazing story

01:39:54 ► §

now that you got me already to cry i think we better better call this a day, you guys.

01:40:10 ► §

Now you got me thinking about my dog, Igor, who I had to put to sleep, you know.

01:40:15 ► §

But in any event, listen, y’all, I’m going to have a little talk right now. And I hope the rest of you keep the old faith and stay high until the next time we get together.

01:40:21 ► §

Be well, my friends.

01:40:22 ► §

Thanks, Lorenzo. Bye, everybody.

01:40:24 ► §

Bye, everybody.

01:40:28 ► §

And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space. Namaste, my friends.