Program Notes
Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com
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Guest speakers: Patreon Saloners
Today’s podcast features a recording of a live salon that began with us sharing trip stories and eventually led into a discussion of Vedic astrology as well as right speech, right action, and right thinking. Along the way, we heard a wonderful story about the unintended consequences of missionaries thinking that they were doing good but inadvertently almost destroyed the social order of a small community.
Links from this Live Salon
Cannabinoids Block Cellular Entry of SARS-CoV-2 and the Emerging Variants
Biphasic Sleep: What It Is And How It Works
Master Your Sleep & Be More Alert When Awake
Using Cortisol & Adrenaline to Boost Our Energy & Immune System Function
Everybody Knows - Leonard Cohen
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676 - Leonard Pickard’s Rose of Paracelsus Ch 5
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Three-dimensional, transforming, musical, linguistic objects.
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Alpha and Omega.
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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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This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
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And today I’m going to play a recording of our recent live salon to give a better idea of what some of our conversations are like when we don’t have a featured guest.
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In other words, it’s just some people who have become good friends during the course of the pandemic and who enjoy getting together once a week on Zoom.
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Now, those are the regulars, of course. We also have new people drop
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by each week, mostly to lurk, but from time to time they also sometimes become a regular visitor
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to the salon. I began hosting these live salons once a week in 2018, but since the beginning of
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the pandemic, we’ve been having two sessions a week. These are held on Monday evenings at 6.30 p.m. Pacific Time
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and at 11.30 a.m. on Thursdays.
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That earlier time was set to make it easier for salonners in Europe to join us.
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Originally, these live salons were for my supporters on Patreon,
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but when the pandemic hit and some of my supporters lost their jobs,
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I began posting the link to each live salon
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on our discord server so you can get to us there as well. Just go to psychedelicsalon.com and at
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the top of the page is a link to our discord server. There’s no charge for this and you don’t
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even have to provide your email address, so please feel free to join us sometime. As you’re about to
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hear, I’ve enlisted Charles as my co-host
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because he does a much better job than me at keeping our more loquacious hunters
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from letting the rest of us get a word in edgewise.
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And I say that with a smile on my face because over the years,
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well, we’ve all become really good friends,
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good enough to be able to tease one another without anyone’s feelings being hurt.
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So please keep in mind that we’re all smiling a lot during these conversations.
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And by the way, I have now posted over 100 of these recordings of live salons on our Patreon
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page if you want to hear more of these sessions. Now for the session that I’m about to play for
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you, as usual, when I post the announcement for the live salons, I suggest a topic.
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And every once in a while, we do actually get to the suggested topic, but not always.
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Now, the topic for this salon was the Great Resignation, which I thought would be interesting,
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because the age ranges of our salonners is, well, from the 20-somethings to the late 70s.
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Usually we talk for an hour or so and then the conversation begins to slide into stories about
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unusual drug experiences and things like that. However this one went backwards. For the first
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20 minutes or so we were sharing some really funny and some recent stories about drug experiences that,
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well, have gone slightly awry.
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Those stories, however, I’ve taken out of this podcast.
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You’ll have to listen to the raw recording of this salon that I posted on Patreon last week
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if you want to hear the edgy trip reports.
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But as we were joking, something prompted Ian to describe reaching a state of enlightenment after ingesting some powerful edibles.
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He was then asked a question which eventually led us into a fascinating discussion of various paths to enlightenment.
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Now, don’t expect to hear any new answers here today,
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but I thought that you may find it interesting to learn about what some of your fellow psychedelic explorers are talking about during the pandemic. Next week, I’ll podcast a recording from a Monday live salon to give you
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a better idea of the direction the conversations take on different days. So now let’s sit in on
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a conversation a few of us were having on the one-year anniversary of the failed coup attempt
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in Washington.
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How do you get started on a journey with that much focus to concretely get out of samsara?
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The Dalai Lama was once, and this is the best thing I’ve ever heard
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of the Dalai Lama, was he was giving a talk in LA
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and a guy put up his hand and said,
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what is the fastest way to enlightenment? Like what, what’s the,
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and he just started crying. He just started crying.
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It’s the starting, the starting point is, is, is sort of, it’s, it’s right now.
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It’s the, as far as I can tell,
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cause I’m not a religious figure as much as Lorenzo would like to tell you otherwise, it seems to me that there’s a path.
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And when we talk about a path, when we talk about people, friends of ours or people we know, we say, yeah, they’re on the path.
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Well, what is that path?
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We all know what I’m talking about. And I think the best I can articulate it, and I’d love people to chime in, but it’s to be a better
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person, to be a better, every day, just to be a better person. And it’s right action, right?
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You don’t, the guy in front of you in line who’s pissing you off you don’t punch him
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right you don’t go hey motherfucker i was here and get in their face because that’s bad
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that’s bad speech right so right right action right speech and then right thought and that’s
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where the real battle is because you can stop yourself from punching them you don’t want to
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make a scene especially if you’re living in england but the thoughts in your mind of like how many different ways that person
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in front of you is terrible and what they’re wearing and who they are and oh my god and
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they’re on the phone and they just said library you know like there’s there’s to stop that chatter
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and one of the last things that Kat let go when she was,
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you know,
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early on,
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because it’s a path,
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it’s just a constant honing of everything you do and everything you think to
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be a better person and not to ride yourself too hard to have forgiveness.
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But the general trend is toward,
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is toward embeddement.
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And at the end of that,
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the end of that path is Buddhahood where you just transcend the whole thing and you just, oh, right, I get it. And I’m one with it. And the Buddha is the one who, as the carousel goes around, instead of getting off the ride, grabs the brass ring for another incarnation, saying, I could have gotten off, but I’m going to go back and help people.
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But I’m going to go back and help people.
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And those are the ones that choose to be reborn when they could have been enlightened.
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Those are the enlightened religious figures throughout history.
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That’s how that would be.
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And a lot of them, names we never knew, who lived in villages we never heard of, in lands that are now under the sea or, you know, gone and gone in history because if you have to because if you have to make a decision if you have to
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make an affirmative decision and the and the negative decision is in your head then you’re
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fucked because you don’t get points for making the right decision if your thought has the wrong
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decision seems to be what you’re articulating i don’t know that’s an interesting um that’s an
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interesting that’s an interesting angle on it. So having the wrong thoughts.
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So you’re saying that’s a law of unintended.
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I’m saying, well, what you’re articulating is that there’s right thought is a real key piece of it.
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Like right speech is easy.
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You don’t say motherfucker.
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Right action is easy.
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You don’t punch that person, well, tough shit for you because you still thought that those are things that you might do.
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You still entertain those ideas.
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So right thought was the battle.
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So the fact that that even enters your process of thinking disqualifies you from right thought.
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So the key is that it has to occur automatically.
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You have to be so in alignment in terms of your behavior that these things just don’t even occur to you.
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You become to a certain, as invisible as a bubble
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moving through the world. And this is a Ken Kesey remark that I’m going to mangle to a certain
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extent. He said, the path to enlightenment isn’t about getting out of life. It’s about getting
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into life. And I think that’s what you articulated with this idea that you get the brass ring and you
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decide, no, I’m going to pass on it, you know, and come back and try to help people. That’s the
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getting in. So which suggests to me that Kathy is as high vibration as she is, is fucked because
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if she’s looking to get out, if she’s looking to be on this path and choosing the path of
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sacred withdrawal so that she doesn’t come back, that suggests to
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me that there’s an element of right thought that’s not in alignment because she’s making a decision
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in the negative rather than the affirmative. She’s not making a decision in the negative.
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She’s making an aspiration in the negative. I don’t want to come back.
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I think that, well, that’s my fault in articulating that particular position, and she would absolutely put it in different words and a different thing and shame me for some reason.
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Okay, but this is consistent. I don’t want to get too much into you and me squabbling, but this is consistently how you’ve described this to me over the last year.
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this to me over the last year. No, I think that her baseline prayer is for the higher rebirth of all sentient beings and the ease of suffering of all sentient beings. So that’s the baseline.
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That’s the base of the pyramid. The base of the pyramid is all of us are going up. I’m praying
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for myself. I’m tuning myself to where I’m moving upward toward that along the path. I’m praying for my, I’m tuning myself to where I’m, I’m moving upward toward that along the path.
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I’m moving up.
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I would love to get there.
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I probably won’t for seven lifetimes.
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And I’m not actually aspiring to it because that would imply, that would imply such a titanic ego that like, I don’t want any part in it.
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But I, that’s kind of the path for me goes there and I’ll get as far or might fall, but I’ll be careful with myself.
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One of the, but, but it’s, I’m bringing everybody along. I’m bringing everybody along. The course correction
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I get from my behavior is so minute. It’s just insane. Like I say one, I have one sort of wrong
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speech, right? Cause she’ll call me on it. Like, why do you have to blame someone? Why does that
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person have, you know, the there and it’s, it’s an, it’s, it’s an
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interesting dynamic. It’s an interesting push pull. There was a moment, I think one of the,
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when I first met her, she had just an absolutely cutting sense of humor in where she could just
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take people down in that beautiful English way where one, you know, I walked into the restaurant
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one day and her head maitre d’ looked, wore, wore a collared shirt. And he said, Ian, I didn’t know you bold. And that was it. I can never wear that shirt.
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He just turned it like and that was the environment she was in, this rapier wit.
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And slowly she let backed up on it because there was a cruelty to it in cutting someone down.
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There’s a cruelty to making fun of people. There’s a cruelty to, you know, looking down on people for whatever they’re without considering all the things that had brought them to that moment in the Waffle House.
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particular incident she couldn’t get over large women wearing uh skin colored stretch pants she just it would just something would trick it was like what is that person doing like can’t she
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doesn’t she know that it looks like she’s not only enormous but naked and enormous and nobody
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wants to see that even in a mcdonald’s like that was the the tick she just couldn’t not comment
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not like oh my god until she realized like okay i have to like i have to not i can’t like just
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have that one thing and so instead of saying anything i was like okay that’s something i can
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do because we all kind of judge people on their clothes or whatever that, you know, or, you know, that sort of gratuitous.
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Bring it home, Ian.
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Bring it home. Yes. And bringing it home. She,
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we would look at each other and notice it and then,
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and then say noted. So instead of articulating it,
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one of us would just,
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we both sort of see someone on the subway and then turn to go noted.
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And then we just, then that became kind of a nod and then it became we don’t even really read and now it’s
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almost like it you don’t see it and that’s the right thought right that you’re talking about
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charles where you’re you’re right you’re it’s happening immediately you’re not having the
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thought and then discounting it for right okay let who thought. Right. Okay, let’s pause there and let Chris in.
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I just wanted to hit on something that Ian had said about the struggle between – I mean the thing that you helped flesh out as well about right thought and about how if you have self-consciousness about your thought process, what’s the line between authenticity and knowing that you’re capable of evil?
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I think this is what the curse of the garden is, is the knowledge of good and evil.
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You know that you can do bad, and so then you’re burdened with the duty to choose good.
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And I think that there’s something.
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I’m sorry.
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I’m about to see a dog walk out in the street.
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I’ll talk in a second.
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I think what you’re.
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Briefly.
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Throw in a couple of things.
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Go ahead.
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Go ahead, Rio.
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What?
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Go ahead. Oh, okay Rio. What? Go ahead.
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Oh, okay. A couple just comments.
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My understanding is
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somebody who does choose to come
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back is known as a bodhisattva
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in this condition.
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And it’s occurring
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to me
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a story, a Sufi
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story I once read
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that goes toward this right action idea, because I think the right action that in the West we tend to think about is the Judeo-Christian idea of right and wrong and good and bad.
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was to just hit the nutshell of it, was that the Sufi went in and killed somebody.
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And all of the disciples around him said, oh, my God, what are you doing?
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That’s horrible, blah, blah, blah. And he said, no, it isn’t, because this man is going to reign terror on humanity in 10 years if I don’t get rid of him.
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humanity in 10 years if I don’t get rid of him. So right action, I don’t think always needs to be looked at in terms of Judeo-Christian right and wrong. And the final point I was going to say,
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based on the experience Ildiko and I had in Morocco, with browning mixes, don’t assume
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that it’s consistent. uh strength is consistent through
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the whole mix chris i see you’re back do you want to go back into your point yeah uh i just wanted
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to touch on the phrase from the i think it’s golden dawn, um, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of
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the law. I don’t really know too much about like the depths of, of the meaning behind it, but like
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what it’s always meant to me is something closer to what payment children would talk about with
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like noticing the reaction that you’re going to have anyway, but just trying to pause for a split second before you have the reaction and notice that it’s coming. Like instead of being subject
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to your reactions, you can observe them as they’re about to happen. And as they’re happening
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and recognize that since there’s a, since there’s a gap between you and your reaction,
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it’s not really something that’s inherent to you it’s something that you’re able to observe
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so like there must be there must be some space there and so that’s an extraordinary interpretation
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of alistair crowley well i understand but i’m gonna i’m gonna link them up i think that because
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because it’s love on love is the law love under will will, right? I think that each individual, due to their conditioning, comes out with certain patterns and desires, and that trying to suppress those only reinforces and strengthens them.
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patterns and find a loving place in your heart for your shadow gives you the space to see that inclination without being subject to being owned by it. Did that track? It’s an extraordinary
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interpretation. I don’t know enough about Crowley to say whether you’re onto something or not onto
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something. I just know I’ve never heard that philosophy described in that way. I think that the Judeo-Christian judgment, which causes you to
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sever all parts of yourself you judge to be evil from your self-concept, is a very damaging
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psychic phenomenon over the last thousand years. And I think that we’re just recovering from it over the last couple of
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hundred and we kind of have to figure out systems.
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And like,
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I think that’s what Crowley was doing was reacting to the collapse of the
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social order under Christianity and trying to help reclaim some of the
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psychic damage that was done by that.
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Here, I think it’s where language comes in because I, I,
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I agree with Rio that the, you know,
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the concept of evil is a Judeo Christian concept.
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And I think Ann Shulgin’s concept of not saying you’re part evil,
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she says, he talks about your shadow.
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And I think that is a more productive way to look at these things.
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Yeah, and that’s Jungian.
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That comes from Jungian analysis.
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Chris, what I’m reading in Crowley’s notion is the idea that you can align your behavior with an external model of what you’re supposed to do, what behavior constitutes right according to
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a cultural belief system, or you can only engage in behavior that draws a direct line between a genuine desire within you and an action you want out in the world.
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And that you don’t go through an external model in order to verify whether this is something that is worth your engagement in the world.
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You go straight from, you know.
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engagement in the world you go exactly straight from you know and so there’s no point in engaging in a in an act of love that does not come directly from a desire within you to to sort of manifest
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something in the world right don’t do service because you think it’s what a good person would do
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but like if you if you don’t want to look at that within yourself and don’t do it, but if you, your true will is behind many layers of false self-understanding.
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Would you rather have the good deeds done though? Would you rather have the good deeds done by people with like, you you know with the wrong coming from the wrong space
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but the i’m going to try to describe a kind of person who you might know who is probably a woman
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and is very considerate and thoughtful about all the people in her life and never forgets a birthday and like is always considering other people’s feelings.
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But then it’s also has an edge of resentment because nobody spends that much time, effort,
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energy and attention on them. And it’s not that those behaviors of givingness are inappropriate,
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but when not combined with appropriate boundaries,
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a person can have the tendency to give too much of themselves.
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Does that track?
00:20:51 ►
Yeah, that tracks.
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But the antidote of – go ahead.
00:21:18 ►
I think that especially women in our society are socialized to give more than is appropriate sometimes and more than is what they would authentically want to give if they were paying enough attention to caring for themselves.
00:21:22 ►
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So go ahead, Ian.
00:21:25 ►
No, I was just going to say I may be related to that person.
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We all know that person. We all know that person. We’ve all got, you know, at least one of them in our life.
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So I would rather tell my mom, oops, I’d rather tell her that I’d rather she not give that service if it’s not authentically coming from her desire to give it.
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Like I don’t want her to do it because she’s feeling obligated.
00:22:00 ►
But the problem is saying that to somebody absolves you of your issue.
00:22:10 ►
And I’m not saying you in particular, but it’s like I don’t think it’s a solution to say well if you’re not getting the response that you want don’t do it you know because they’re doing it from wherever they’re coming from and um you know i i think what they want is is um is more empathy
00:22:17 ►
well i’m thinking about digging wells in Africa is generally done by Christian volunteer organizations historically.
00:22:27 ►
Now, do you want those wells there because they’re trying to convert everyone to, you know, to Christianity?
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Or would you rather that people came from who were coming from a neutral space or just health and hygiene came in who weren’t Christians who put those wells there?
00:22:50 ►
put those wells there and do you really want to leave leave the cash on the table that like american church teenagers have access to through their communities like do you want to take that
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and put it towards like building some wells even if even if along the way there’s some
00:23:01 ►
like spiritual tourism going on like are the wells useful enough like it’s a
00:23:06 ►
it’s a complex equation but oh yeah you know these kids have access to money this goes back to the
00:23:12 ►
point rio made where which is like the the idea of right and wrong and right you know leading to
00:23:17 ►
right speech and right action right thought that maybe that’s not that the terminology is more, I guess, towards compassion.
00:23:28 ►
That’s where the distinction lies.
00:23:32 ►
Not so much good and evil as kindness and cruelty, love and fear.
00:23:39 ►
One thing my therapist friend likes to talk about rather than good and bad is how effective is this at
00:23:46 ►
getting the outcome that you want so what are you trying to achieve with right action i like rio said
00:23:53 ►
trying not to view it through the like morally good or bad lens but through the what is this
00:23:59 ►
behavior going to achieve like is this the right thing to get the outcome that I desire? And in the real world,
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like, I mean, I spent a lot of time with like service organizations and NGOs, grant writing,
00:24:14 ►
that kind of thing. And there’s sort of like two components of it. There’s, there’s what you can
00:24:20 ►
write on paper, like, we’re going to go to this place, we’re going to dig a well. And then when
00:24:24 ►
we leave, the people that live there are going to dig a well. And then when we leave,
00:24:27 ►
the people that live there are going to have access to a water source, you know, that is a lot closer and more convenient than the, you know,
00:24:32 ►
spring they had to walk to now, like my favorite anecdotal, you know,
00:24:37 ►
spinoff of that dynamic is a story that I heard of a Peace Corps group that
00:24:42 ►
went to, I think it was Ghana and they went out to a remote location and they built a well for a village and then they left.
00:24:48 ►
And somebody came back to check on the project a year later and the well was covered over with cement.
00:24:56 ►
And they asked around what happened.
00:24:59 ►
Nobody really wanted to talk about it.
00:25:00 ►
And they finally find some kookity at the edge of the village who’s willing to fess up and said that, well, the way it had worked in the past was the kids would
00:25:10 ►
get sent during the day down to the spring to fetch water. And it will usually take them about
00:25:17 ►
an hour and a half to two hours to get back. And so that’s when the parents would make love.
00:25:22 ►
And with this new well in the village like they were like well
00:25:26 ►
shit what are we gonna do and so they they just made a decision as a group they were going to
00:25:30 ►
cover over the well and go back to the old spring um because the social cohesion of the relationships
00:25:36 ►
in that network were more important than you know so like you just described the history of christian
00:25:43 ►
colonization in the most effective anecdote I can imagine.
00:25:47 ►
Oh, yes.
00:25:48 ►
It’s a sharp critique.
00:25:52 ►
But, yeah, I mean, the point I was trying to make was that you can write up certain on-the-ground consequences that you expect to be, you know, outcomes of a project. But the way in which
00:26:08 ►
those experiences teach compassion to all those involved in sort of this mixing of cultures
00:26:15 ►
that happens when people from one part of the world come, and there’s dynamics of people serving
00:26:21 ►
and being served, there’s dynamics of gift giving and receiving. And
00:26:25 ►
those experiences take a really long time to like unpack in a person’s life into an awareness of
00:26:33 ►
like, oh, I was there as a white knight. And that’s not really a helpful dynamic for me to
00:26:39 ►
engage people with. So I need to, but that takes 10 years before you sort of unpack that.
00:26:44 ►
So I need to, but that takes 10 years before you sort of unpack that.
00:26:56 ►
And so these are things that you sort of have to spread a lot of seeds we’re talking about is that this ability to kind of
00:27:05 ►
water your spiritual self is a luxury problem in the light of being a member of society and the
00:27:14 ►
kind of do-it-thou-wilt moral relativism, you know, I’m not going to say it leads directly to
00:27:20 ►
what we’re commemorating the one-year anniversary of, but it certainly is a symptom of the kind of lack of cohesion that we’re living through that’s leading to the topic of today’s
00:27:30 ►
discussion of the great resignation, the great sense of disenchantment with society and in
00:27:41 ►
participating in the project of society. And it’s complicated. It’s difficult.
00:27:46 ►
It’s a lot easier to articulate, you know, I’m going to drop out and not look at the news and
00:27:53 ►
meditate or take acid or, you know, whatever, and not be a part of engaging. Because certainly,
00:28:02 ►
then you only have yourself to disappoint. But it doesn’t really,
00:28:06 ►
you know, bring us to the kind of cohesion that keeps society, you know, moving in a way that
00:28:12 ►
we’re taking care of each other. Here’s where we need to really just define, I think, what we mean
00:28:19 ►
by the great resignation. Because there’s a big difference between resigning from the corporate world
00:28:27 ►
of large corporations and resigning from society itself and culture. For example,
00:28:34 ►
on July 31st of 1999, I took a leave of absence from the best corporate job, highest paying,
00:28:43 ►
freest to do things with, great budget,
00:28:45 ►
all kinds of travel perks.
00:28:47 ►
And I walked away from it all.
00:28:50 ►
It was my, I never came back.
00:28:51 ►
It’s essentially my great resignation
00:28:53 ►
from the corporate world,
00:28:54 ►
but I have not at all disengaged
00:28:57 ►
from the rest of the world.
00:28:59 ►
In fact, I’ve engaged more fully in the rest of the world
00:29:01 ►
because I don’t have to give 10, 12 hours a day
00:29:04 ►
to some corporation to help benefit their shareholders.
00:29:08 ►
So, you know, that’s the great resignation that I see.
00:29:12 ►
And I do understand, though, that there are a lot of people that are just dropping out
00:29:17 ►
of society.
00:29:18 ►
And then there are the Trumpistas who are resigning from this country and, you know, trying to foment a new
00:29:27 ►
civil war and they’re getting very successful at it. So, you know, there’s a lot of things going
00:29:32 ►
on, you know, there’s so many moving parts. But the part that I was fascinated about is the
00:29:40 ►
article I saw where last November, four and a half million people quit their jobs.
00:29:46 ►
Just they didn’t get fired. They didn’t get laid off. They just actually just resigned and quit.
00:29:52 ►
And and my guess is a significant number are the fast food workers and people who just, you know,
00:29:59 ►
they’re getting paid, you know, crap wages and they’re out and getting abused by the public.
00:30:03 ►
And, you know, I know I have I have a daughter and granddaughter who worked in the restaurant industry and they’re getting yelled
00:30:08 ►
at all the time and they’re not getting great wages. So I think that’s a lot of it. It’s a
00:30:13 ►
resignation from a way that they were living before, you know, essentially paycheck to paycheck.
00:30:19 ►
I don’t think it’s a resignation from society, but, you know, I could be wrong there. So,
00:30:24 ►
I don’t think it’s a resignation from society, but, you know, I could be wrong there. So, you know, feel free to discuss it in all these different forms.
00:30:28 ►
But the one that I was really referring to was a resignation from the grind of a paycheck to paycheck life and finding a better way to feed yourself and your family.
00:30:41 ►
Well, I think it’s complex.
00:30:43 ►
And I just want to briefly jump in on a point, which is I
00:30:46 ►
don’t think it was the fast food workers. I don’t think those people have enough of a cushion
00:30:51 ►
economically to just walk away from it. I think it was corporate middle management and millennial
00:30:58 ►
middle management. I’m going to put a article in the chat that I read this morning articulating the millennial great resignation that CNET wrote recently, kind of articulating this sense of the cult of work and the cult of office life was dealt a blow by this notion that you can work from home and, you know, just kind of the underlying sense of,
00:31:26 ►
well, why was I giving, you know, 17 of my 24 hours to, you know, this environment? But,
00:31:33 ►
you know, it was people that had enough of a cushion or enough mobility that they weren’t
00:31:36 ►
necessarily living paycheck to paycheck. I think, you know, there are a lot of people that were in
00:31:41 ►
that essential worker category that just didn’t have that luxury. Yeah. And they’re the ones, I guess, that are unemployed.
00:31:46 ►
I think you’re exactly right.
00:31:47 ►
The great resignation is the middle management, the people who maybe already have their college kids college paid for and got it settled out.
00:31:58 ►
Or they’ve already got student debt and they’re just so deep in debt.
00:32:05 ►
just so deep in debt and you know i got this master’s degree so that i can be an adjunct professor at the same school that fleeced me you know and be an indentured servant you know in the
00:32:11 ►
knowledge profession um you know i think it’s a lot of those people yeah like what are you going
00:32:16 ►
to do you’ve i’m already i’m already overburdened with debt so you used to just be able to go to
00:32:20 ►
the hills and grow weed but now even that’s even there’s a cue for that right
00:32:25 ►
i would hate to have i mean back then it was there was a there was legal entanglements and
00:32:32 ►
all that but you know the profits were good and you can go you know whatever it was for
00:32:36 ►
for for a year or six months and that but now it’s a as i understand what’s going on
00:32:43 ►
northern california that’s not a fun place to be.
00:32:47 ►
Is there anywhere that’s fun to be?
00:32:48 ►
I’m not sure that there’s anywhere that’s fun to be.
00:32:51 ►
Well, if you take fun as an acronym, then every place is fun to be.
00:32:58 ►
Because when I was in the corporate world, fun meant fucked up nightmare.
00:33:02 ►
Right.
00:33:03 ►
Mike, do you want to set off with this article as you put in?
00:33:06 ►
Yeah, this guy’s named David Dayen. He’s the editor for something called the American Prospect.
00:33:13 ►
He thinks quite deeply about economics. And, you know, it’s just another opinion to look at for what caused this great resignation.
00:33:23 ►
to look after what caused this great resignation.
00:33:27 ►
And so, I mean, I read it a while ago.
00:33:30 ►
I’m one of those people that, as you know,
00:33:33 ►
is kind of dropping out as best as I can.
00:33:35 ►
I still read articles like this.
00:33:36 ►
It isn’t like I’ve dropped out completely, but you just may want to look it over
00:33:38 ►
and see if you agree or disagree.
00:33:41 ►
Can you summarize the nut of it?
00:33:42 ►
I can’t.
00:33:43 ►
I read it a while
00:33:46 ►
ago and I thought he was pretty much spot on on why people were quitting. And it’s what one of
00:33:52 ►
you just said something about, you know, a lot of the low paying jobs, people are just tired of it.
00:33:59 ►
And it seemed like a good time to get out. And Mike, for what it’s worth, I never thought you dropped out.
00:34:07 ►
I just figured that you’re on a sabbatical.
00:34:12 ►
Yeah.
00:34:12 ►
So I can tell you that I’m really, I mean, it’s weird.
00:34:16 ►
I would have never enjoyed today’s conversation a year ago.
00:34:20 ►
And right now it is resonating so much.
00:34:24 ►
I think it’s because i’m involved with this base
00:34:26 ►
course there’s a i’m dealing talking with a lot of other people that are involved with i mean they
00:34:32 ►
know about buddhism hinduism there’s and i used to to study this when i was a little kid about 10 or
00:34:40 ►
15 years old or so and i haven’t thought much about it since then.
00:34:48 ►
What about being a better person?
00:34:51 ►
Yeah, yeah, kind of.
00:34:54 ►
You know, I used to worry about it back then or, you know, about ending the cycles of reincarnation
00:34:58 ►
and that sort of conversation.
00:35:01 ►
But it’s starting to resonate a lot now.
00:35:07 ►
And part of it’s this course. And part of it is I just feel like I’m getting healthier. And I’m going back to thinking how I used to think
00:35:13 ►
when I was younger. And so I think, I think it’s important that we’re, we treat ourselves well,
00:35:20 ►
you know, stay healthy, so we can think and address you know the problems in society the best the best
00:35:27 ►
we know how and uh so i don’t know there’s just so many comments even even you ian was like uh
00:35:35 ►
i was impressed today with some of your comments so oh yeah i your wife that you’re describing her
00:35:42 ►
reminds me of um i don’t know it’s reminding me of a lot of different people.
00:35:47 ►
And I don’t know them anymore.
00:35:49 ►
You’re pretty lucky to have that in your household.
00:35:53 ►
I get asked a lot, what are you trying to achieve?
00:35:59 ►
And sometimes just trying to get into the cookie jar, but other times it’s, it’s like, right, what am I, by talking to this person or by contacting or writing this letter or, or even,
00:36:12 ►
even just making an offhand comment, like, what are you, what are you actually trying to,
00:36:17 ►
what are you trying to achieve? And it can be something that’s minute, you know, like, huh,
00:36:23 ►
I guess, I guess we’re no longer putting the scissors where
00:36:26 ►
we said we were going to put the scissors. Like what, what, what is the, what are you trying to
00:36:30 ►
achieve? You would, you’re trying to get the scissors always in that drawer. Hey, could you
00:36:34 ►
please keep the scissors in this drawer? Great. That’s all you can, it’s all you can do. But to
00:36:39 ►
put that, so it puts blame a little bit on another, like, and it can be done with humor. And in the right company, you can push that bound, those bounds quite far.
00:36:48 ►
But the reality of,
00:36:50 ►
especially if you don’t know the person that you’re encountering on the street
00:36:53 ►
or in the store or whatever, what is your,
00:36:56 ►
what is your general forgiving attitude for, for that person’s,
00:37:01 ►
for that person’s day? And it seems obvious,
00:37:03 ►
but like so few people are having this conversation.
00:37:06 ►
Like God bless you, everybody. I I’m glad to be here.
00:37:09 ►
I’m glad there’s this room and I’m glad for my wife and I’m glad for all of
00:37:13 ►
your friends and all of their friends, probably.
00:37:15 ►
God bless us everyone.
00:37:17 ►
Yeah, exactly. Because there’s this conversation is just not being had.
00:37:22 ►
I mean, it’s really, are we sure about that? No, I mean,
00:37:26 ►
it’s just not by all right, no, but it’s not being had by any grand proportion.
00:37:32 ►
And this conversation is being had by a group of 200 people that I’m interacting with on on this
00:37:40 ►
course. And so so it is happening in places, We just need to go and find where those places are. And then,
00:37:48 ►
and then both you, you, so you just said, what are we trying to achieve?
00:37:51 ►
And I think Chris said what we’re trying to achieve. You know,
00:37:55 ►
I don’t even think about what it is I’m trying to achieve nowadays. I just,
00:37:59 ►
I just, I just go into action.
00:38:02 ►
I don’t think about where it’s going or what’s going on. I just go into action. You’re not trying to become a better person. I don’t think about where it’s going or what’s going on.
00:38:06 ►
I just act.
00:38:08 ►
You’re not trying to walk the path to enlightenment.
00:38:10 ►
You’re just trying to get through the day.
00:38:13 ►
I act thinking that I can help.
00:38:16 ►
I think my path is service.
00:38:21 ►
And it isn’t because I feel like someone was mentioning, they feel like they have
00:38:25 ►
to serve. I think it just comes naturally. And so that’s what I’m doing without thinking much
00:38:30 ►
about it. I’m interacting now with tons of people. And luckily, they all have drugs. So, you know,
00:38:37 ►
that’s going to work out well. I think that there’s an element here that’s worth interjecting that corresponds to Lorenzo describing, you know, his leave of
00:38:47 ►
absence when he was 56, 57 years old. And, you know, where you are, Mike, which is,
00:38:54 ►
we don’t put a lot of value in society on rites of passage between one phase of life and another.
00:39:02 ►
But, you know, you basically entered a new phase
00:39:05 ►
of life in the last year or two, where you stepped away from the grind of the academic job. And now
00:39:13 ►
you’re finding, you know, your new footing. And I like to think of this, that there’s your learning
00:39:19 ►
phase and or your learning profession. There’s your service phase and or your service profession,
00:39:26 ►
which is the midlife where you’re contributing to whatever it is that you’re contributing to.
00:39:31 ►
And then there should be the wisdom phase or your wisdom profession where you take
00:39:36 ►
what you gathered in your learning and service aspects of life and you put it back into the
00:39:42 ►
world. And it sounds like you’re at the very beginning of that.
00:39:46 ►
Lorenzo certainly has taken what he learned from his, you know, Conan-like existence of having,
00:39:53 ►
you know, 100 different jobs and 100 different adventures as a young and middle-aged man. And
00:39:58 ►
he put that into the salon, you know, from a wisdom profession point of view. And it’s useful to kind of think
00:40:05 ►
of, it’s not this nomenclature, at least that there are different phases within one’s life
00:40:10 ►
that one finds themselves. And so how do you best interact with that phase? And so it sounds like
00:40:17 ►
you’re at the beginning of your wisdom, you know, phase. Yeah, it’s, it’s a good place to be. I,
00:40:23 ►
you know, so I, maybe I mentioned this at the last salon, but in the last year, the reintroduction to psychedelics, I feel like I’m right back to where I was at 18, where years of work will tie in. I, I think I did have some service to students
00:40:46 ►
and, and in a way that’s continuing. So I’m, I’m still all excited.
00:40:53 ►
It sounds like you’re, it sounds like you’re finding the courage of the convictions you held
00:40:57 ►
when you were coming of age. Yeah, that’s right.
00:41:02 ►
And freedom. Yeah.
00:41:04 ►
And freedom. I. And freedom.
00:41:05 ►
I mean, this is what retirement is supposed to be, that you’ve basically satisfied your material needs, and so you can focus on things other than the material needs.
00:41:16 ►
This is very Vedic astrology, Saturn return.
00:41:20 ►
Right. return um right the for for those who don’t the earth takes 365 days to go around the sun
00:41:29 ►
we call that a year everybody with me great saturn takes 28 years to go around the sun so in 28 years
00:41:38 ►
saturn will be in the place it was in in your star sign when you were born and that and so that that 28 year cycle return
00:41:47 ►
so what were you what point were you going to make with that okay so the saturn the first saturn
00:41:52 ►
return the first the first stage of that journey is gathering blocks think of it like lego things
00:41:57 ►
that you’re good at things you you can um if things we gotta keep going people you get people
00:42:03 ►
you get on with you’re figuring you’re gathering all the blocks.
00:42:06 ►
And then at 28, you you enter the homeowner phase of your of your existence and you start putting those blocks into things.
00:42:14 ►
You you build the plane, you build the hospital, you build the you build the new life.
00:42:19 ►
You find the person that you’re with. You build the life out of those things and then when saturn comes around again at around the age of 56 you know you sweep the fucking blocks off the table let
00:42:30 ►
them shatter on the floor put on your robe and walk the earth like kane and kung fu right and
00:42:38 ►
the contract is being violated and that’s why there’s this sense of um people stepping off or
00:42:44 ►
becoming disillusioned with the treadmill,
00:42:45 ►
because the middle part, the service part, you’re not actually amassing anything that’s going to
00:42:51 ►
get you to the wisdom part. You’re in a prolonged period of serfdom where either you’re on the
00:42:58 ►
hand-to-mouth, working in the service industry aspect of life, or you’re in the, I’ve got a lot of debt
00:43:07 ►
and I’m an adjunct professor for the rest of my life and I’m never going to own a house. And if
00:43:11 ►
I’m lucky, you know, maybe I’ll get a job with insurance and pay off my bills by the time I’m 56,
00:43:17 ►
you know, or you’re in the never ending grind of either the gig economy or the corporate middle management, you know, hustle.
00:43:27 ►
And so there’s that middle section that you’re describing where you take the Legos from your
00:43:32 ►
first 28 years and you build the house and you create some level of stability so you can get to
00:43:38 ►
56 to 69 and decide, okay, I’ve done my bit and now now I’m going to spend the rest of my life getting rid of what I’ve acquired.
00:43:50 ►
Nobody’s acquired in that middle period, so the contract is broken.
00:43:54 ►
And that broken contract –
00:43:56 ►
No one looks after you at the 56-year mark.
00:43:57 ►
I’m sorry?
00:43:58 ►
No one looks after you at the 56-year mark.
00:44:00 ►
No one looks after you ever.
00:44:03 ►
No one looks after you ever.
00:44:04 ►
No one looks after you at 22. No one looks after you at 62. No one looks after you ever. No one looks after you ever. No one looks after you at 22.
00:44:06 ►
No one looks after you at 62.
00:44:07 ►
No one looks after you at 82.
00:44:09 ►
This is what people are reacting to right now.
00:44:12 ►
If I can throw a little vector in,
00:44:15 ►
Ian,
00:44:15 ►
what you’re describing in some ways has been the Hindu tradition.
00:44:22 ►
You know,
00:44:22 ►
yes.
00:44:23 ►
One goes through those stages and then says, okay, I’m done doing my thing for my family, for society, and I go off and seek enlightenment.
00:44:34 ►
But what I think has happened, and Charles is addressing this, is that we’ve been taken over by the world market. And the world market doesn’t really give a shit about your life.
00:44:46 ►
It just wants you to produce, produce, produce until you fall dead.
00:44:51 ►
The world market is a post-human intelligence that runs on cycles that are not humane.
00:44:57 ►
So it just feeds and thrives on all of us and all of our energy
00:45:02 ►
and is able to exist on vast cycles that we’re unable to
00:45:06 ►
contemplate and so we work and work until we drop dead in the service of that market or in the
00:45:12 ►
service of you know probably a better post-human intelligence you can wrap your arms around because
00:45:17 ►
it actually is allowed to have political opinions is the corporation you know which is a living entity, which does feed on the lifeblood of human energy and sustains itself over human generations.
00:45:31 ►
And so the contract has been broken where we feed our energy into these post-human entities, but the contract that we get taken care of and get to live through these life cycles has been broken.
00:45:44 ►
I spoke longer. I wanted to, Rio. Please go back into where you were going.
00:45:49 ►
Well, one other thought did occur to me earlier, which is a little bit tangential at this point,
00:45:55 ►
but that I’m recalling that the Tibetans talked about when, you know, especially Tibet was just essentially destroyed. It’s tried to rebuild
00:46:07 ►
Tibetan culture in India, but that they considered the planet to be in a big problem because
00:46:15 ►
those people who were there in Lhasa and living in Tibet were producing conscious energy for humanity. And so I was kind of taking
00:46:28 ►
note of the comment you made, I think it was Ian, that just getting through your day
00:46:33 ►
isn’t enough. But, you know, depending on how you get through your day,
00:46:38 ►
and one of the things that maybe we do in this salon and in other activities that we engage in is to try to produce
00:46:47 ►
more conscious energy because that task really has moved to the west so it’s not necessarily
00:46:54 ►
i guess what i’m trying to draw attention to is that what humans are capable of doing which is
00:47:01 ►
transforming energies to make them higher, as opposed to,
00:47:06 ►
and life does that, as opposed to thermodynamics, which says that everything runs downhill,
00:47:13 ►
it may not be on the surface apparent what our benefit that we can bring to life is and at least the way that was formulated that i understood from the tibetans
00:47:27 ►
was an increase in conscious energy i will he is very much in need of i will ask i will ask cat to
00:47:37 ►
chip in and maybe stop by oh well she’s on this course but after she’s done because it’s tibetan
00:47:42 ►
uh it’s a tibetan monk that she follows and she’s since i’ve been’s Tibetan, it’s a Tibetan monk that she follows. And she’s,
00:47:46 ►
since I’ve been, and I don’t mean following in the kind of guru sense, it’s just like,
00:47:50 ►
he seems to teach this course best. The thing, the thing about what you’re saying, Rio, and I,
00:47:55 ►
and I agree with you that there’s an element of, of conscious energy and consciousness energy that we can and should be producing is that comes after needs are met. And I think one
00:48:09 ►
of the biggest problems that we’re facing, at least in the West, although I suspect everywhere,
00:48:15 ►
is that everybody’s under-resourced unless you’re fantastically over-resourced. And there’s really
00:48:21 ►
not a lot of ground in between. So contributing and building the conscious energy
00:48:25 ►
is very difficult to do
00:48:27 ►
when you’re chronically under-resourced
00:48:30 ►
and everybody in your structure
00:48:32 ►
is chronically under-resourced.
00:48:34 ►
And under-resourced in terms of time as well.
00:48:37 ►
Every way that you can interpret under-resourced.
00:48:39 ►
Go ahead, Rio.
00:48:40 ►
I will say though that I think,
00:48:42 ►
and Yildikov can address her point of view on this, but our experience in Morocco does certain level of energy despite that,
00:49:06 ►
and attitude and interest in life and caring, you know, everything.
00:49:14 ►
They have families.
00:49:15 ►
And they have a family structure.
00:49:18 ►
They have a community structure.
00:49:19 ►
Right.
00:49:20 ►
Which Harari talks about.
00:49:21 ►
He talks about the two big things,
00:49:38 ►
Which Harari talks about, he talks about the two big things, at least two big things that have destroyed civilization, especially in the West, is the loss of community and the taking over of our lives by the market. Yeah, the granular individuality and the cult of individuality leads to this chronic under-resourced sensibility.
00:49:46 ►
One of the articles I put into the chat is a recent Time magazine report on how for the first time in who knows how long contributing to certain adverse consequences in society.
00:50:11 ►
And I think, you know, without getting into, you know, family values and traditionalism,
00:50:16 ►
whatever you call your unit of support, whether it’s family, whether it’s marriage,
00:50:22 ►
whether it’s community, fewer and fewer people, at least in the West, have those traditional support structures,
00:50:29 ►
which is leading to this chronic sense of being under-resourced and this chronic sense of
00:50:34 ►
complete competition and every person for themselves, which is really serving nobody
00:50:41 ►
except the extractive post-human intelligence that are intelligences
00:50:45 ►
that are monetizing our labor well if you want to chase it all the way back to psychedelics then
00:50:53 ►
really the the the missing ingredient is is tribe which includes family uh and that has been broken
00:51:00 ►
for that has been broken for you know a good while. I’m uncomfortable when white people talk about tribes because there’s a level of appropriation that comes in and idealization that comes in that can distract from what we’re really talking about is people knitting together.
00:51:21 ►
I’m talking about the 30 people to 60 people that are around you to support your shit.
00:51:26 ►
That could just as easily be your congregation.
00:51:28 ►
I mean this is the thing.
00:51:30 ►
It’s not limited to – I understand what you’re saying with tribe, but I think that it’s broader than that.
00:51:37 ►
It’s about the units of human community that are supporting each other, and that could be any number of things.
00:51:42 ►
Well, tribe is also connected to land it’s also
00:51:46 ►
connected to what your immediate surrounds and connected to language what was that and connected
00:51:52 ►
to language and it i mean it depends too because it sounds like from my understanding when you say
00:51:59 ►
tribe more technically what you’re talking about is clan, which would be family groups and also different skill sets like clans or groups of people would have a similar trade or a similar function in the societal context.
00:52:14 ►
So, yeah, it’s like Charles is saying, it’s not necessarily what we as Western or white people would think when we hear tribe.
00:52:24 ►
white people would think when we hear tribe but it’s yeah it’s that number of people that those common ties and common purpose being yeah being i would think in middle age
00:52:32 ►
i would think village then it takes anyway let’s not get distracted by nomenclature it doesn’t
00:52:38 ►
matter what matters what matters is the erosion of human support networks, whatever you call them.
00:52:47 ►
Yeah, I’ll go there.
00:53:07 ►
part of the market that you can replace your organic family-based tribe-based clan-based systems of support and orientation in the world with the value symbols of the marketplace of
00:53:15 ►
of this sort of consumer capital so and we’re getting to the point where we’re we’re seeing that
00:53:21 ►
for a family to be disconnected from those organic systems, like, geez, there are consequences down the road.
00:53:28 ►
And it manifests as individual alienation because that promise that the marketplace could replace what mom did for you, like, it was a lie.
00:53:39 ►
And we’re seeing that now. So we are in a situation of our own making where we’ve unplugged a certain part of our human family from these ancient systems of value and personal orientation.
00:53:54 ►
And, you know, it’s kind of up to us who find ourselves in that situation to sort of navigate a way back or build systems that, you know, that replace it. And we’re at this point where we’re sort of
00:54:06 ►
stretched to an extreme and we’re seeing whether the system will break and we’ll have people
00:54:12 ►
fragmenting off and, you know, being sort of Mad Max warriors who just kill each other,
00:54:17 ►
you know, and, you know, and that the people who never strayed from the old cultural models,
00:54:39 ►
And that the people who never strayed from the old cultural models will clan up again and survive. We don’t know how it’s going to go down and I think a lot of people that, that it’s,
00:54:45 ►
what you’re talking about is accelerating. There’s been a drift. There’s been a slow drift.
00:54:49 ►
If you want to go back to, you know, Katal, who you look and people having, you know,
00:54:54 ►
psilocybin orgies, slow drift from 5,000 years ago. Yeah, exactly. It’s been, it’s been a slow
00:54:59 ►
drift only now it’s rocket ship accelerating aided by technology. I heard today that YouTube has a – people are watching a billion hours a day or one point, whatever.
00:55:13 ►
But what that translated to was 116,000 years strung hour to hour, and that’s what humanity is watching every fucking day.
00:55:22 ►
And you think there’s the wedge driving people apart.
00:55:25 ►
Like those are,
00:55:26 ►
or those are,
00:55:27 ►
well,
00:55:27 ►
there,
00:55:27 ►
there,
00:55:28 ►
there’s the window.
00:55:29 ►
There’s the window into post humanity is that,
00:55:31 ►
you know,
00:55:32 ►
we’re,
00:55:32 ►
we’re measuring the,
00:55:33 ►
the organizational success of YouTube on this,
00:55:37 ►
this scale of metrics that is not consumable by a human life that is not
00:55:42 ►
measurable in a single human life.
00:55:46 ►
Unreal. And to build on something andrew said about the um the marketplace atomizing the family and stepping in
00:55:53 ►
to you know provide some of those roles of the family i find it very interesting with um people
00:55:58 ►
that are producing content in youtube and instagram environments that that the way they address their fan base is fam.
00:56:08 ►
Hey, fam.
00:56:09 ►
And that means something in this context as well.
00:56:15 ►
That drives me crazy.
00:56:17 ►
Well, it’s interesting that for this generation, addressing followers as fans.
00:56:24 ►
Fam.
00:56:24 ►
F-A-M.
00:56:26 ►
Addressing them as family doesn’t
00:56:28 ►
push a button that
00:56:30 ►
people react like, well, I already have a family.
00:56:33 ►
That’s an open circuit.
00:56:34 ►
People don’t have a whole lot crowding.
00:56:38 ►
Let’s let Larry in.
00:56:39 ►
Go ahead, Larry.
00:56:40 ►
That’s all I was going to say. When people say that,
00:56:42 ►
it drives me crazy because
00:56:44 ►
I am not your family.
00:56:46 ►
I am just somebody that interacts with you on the Internet and might make you laugh, and you might make me laugh.
00:56:54 ►
But Jesus Christ, you’re not going to help me move my records.
00:56:57 ►
This is just they’re not family.
00:57:01 ►
Larry, if you live nearby, I’d help you move your goddamn records.
00:57:04 ►
I don’t have any records anymore.
00:57:05 ►
But I always use that as an example of family or friends.
00:57:10 ►
Correct.
00:57:11 ►
And that’s the thing is that there’s these unfair and unrealistic expectations or value exchanges that are being used and or the complete devaluation of what this concept means and i’m
00:57:30 ►
putting my chips on the ladder is that we’re completely devaluating whatever family means
00:57:35 ►
in this and i don’t think anybody’s doing it malevolently but this is the drift that the
00:57:41 ►
culture is in yeah i think that’s right and And fam at this point is interchangeable with friends.
00:57:50 ►
It’s interchangeable with consumer of my intellectual property.
00:57:54 ►
Is it though?
00:57:55 ►
Okay.
00:57:56 ►
How many of us speaking right now, though, actually identify with this concept in any complex way?
00:58:01 ►
I think we can do a lot of speculating, but I think there probably are people that would help each other out.
00:58:06 ►
And I think to a certain degree
00:58:07 ►
for young people that are in
00:58:08 ►
maybe like extremely rural areas
00:58:11 ►
where they don’t have anyone
00:58:12 ►
that even exists with the kind of thoughts
00:58:14 ►
or ideations that they have
00:58:16 ►
to have this digital resource to them,
00:58:18 ►
that is as essential as family.
00:58:20 ►
And I don’t, it just doesn’t sound like
00:58:22 ►
from what we’re saying
00:58:22 ►
that we actually have the knowledge
00:58:24 ►
to speak to that from our own experience.
00:58:26 ►
Well, I can say that people that I know that say that live in Ireland and
00:58:33 ►
Russia and, you know, Florida. And I, you know,
00:58:38 ►
we’re never going to meet.
00:58:41 ►
We’re never going to really do anything for each other. We just,
00:58:44 ►
like Charles said, we, we for each other. We just, like Charles
00:58:45 ►
said, we consume each other’s intellectual property. I thought that was really well put,
00:58:50 ►
Charles. Go ahead, Isaac, if you want to. Another way to look at that is that that’s
00:58:56 ►
filling also a vacuum where people have become disconnected or their families don’t really function anymore.
00:59:07 ►
Even thinking recently, I got a request from a friend who’s somewhere in Indonesia, I think it
00:59:12 ►
was, for a crowdfunder to help the family he’s associated with rebuild their house.
00:59:21 ►
So it’s a way to reach out and try and create that. I’m not saying in all cases, but I
00:59:27 ►
think there is something where, you know, a vacuum is being filled or attempted to be filled.
00:59:34 ►
And that’s kind of what I’m pointing at, you know, is like, it may not be the ideal situation,
00:59:38 ►
but if we’re mourning this 5,000 year drift, and we might not like the taste of how people are
00:59:43 ►
trying to renegotiate the situation.
00:59:46 ►
Like someone’s trying to fill the vacuum with something and like, I don’t know what we’re
00:59:50 ►
trying to fill it with, but I think an attempt is beautiful. Well, I think it depends on who
00:59:55 ►
benefits from the attempt and look very critically at the attempt. If the attempt to fill the void
01:00:02 ►
of communities and family units that have been destabilized by the market
01:00:07 ►
with crowdfunders where the market benefits by taking a percentage of the charity that you’re
01:00:15 ►
giving to build this house that Rio is talking about, then no, I don’t think that that is
01:00:20 ►
necessarily a beneficial filling of the void. Would you rather not have the house or would you rather have the house?
01:00:27 ►
I think that that’s a simplistic thing that you’re describing because, again, you’ve got to look at the structures that are underlying it and articulate.
01:00:33 ►
Would you rather – well, yeah, we’re not going to destroy those structures in 30 days.
01:00:38 ►
But if we can build a house in 30 days for some real people that don’t have a house, and right now we don’t have a better option for toppling the system, I don’t know what we’re complaining about.
01:00:46 ►
I don’t believe that we’re complaining. I believe that we’re interrogating the root causes of the situation that has got us to a place where individuals being asked to round up their change at Whole Foods is in some way absolving Amazon of its corporate responsibility.
01:01:04 ►
Whole Foods is in some way absolving Amazon of its corporate responsibility.
01:01:06 ►
I’m not talking about Amazon.
01:01:12 ►
I’m talking about people on the internet referring to each other as family and trying to help each other out over geographical distance.
01:01:13 ►
I’m not talking about Amazon.
01:01:18 ►
Well, I think that you’re putting – I think that you’re actually putting two concepts together that don’t belong together. People referring to each other as family is one idea on the internet.
01:01:22 ►
People trying to help each other over distances is another idea on the internet. People trying to help each other over distances is
01:01:25 ►
another idea on the internet, and they actually do not necessarily combine with each other.
01:01:32 ►
Fam is in many ways being used as a nomenclature to describe one’s consumer base as opposed to a
01:01:41 ►
family, thereby undermining the concept of family in the first place.
01:01:45 ►
But I guess I don’t understand how the concepts don’t go together if people are putting them
01:01:50 ►
together. Whether we like it or not, they’re together now.
01:01:53 ►
Not in all instances. Go ahead.
01:01:55 ►
Oh, no. I think maybe what the circle you’re trying to square is, Charles, you’re saying that you object to large corporations shaving their percentage off what is legitimate charitable action, where Isaac is saying, yes, but without that action, we wouldn’t have the wells in Africa.
01:02:25 ►
It may come down the wrong pipe, but it gets there in the end.
01:02:27 ►
And yes, it’s a plaster.
01:02:29 ►
Yes, it’s a Band-Aid.
01:02:33 ►
But that’s what we need because we’re bleeding until we actually change the system to build the hospital.
01:02:42 ►
Just to throw another vector in, I read an article yesterday, a opinion piece in the New York Times, may have been either Krugman or Friedman, who said that
01:02:47 ►
addressing what you touched on, Charles, it’s really the responsibility and the potential
01:02:54 ►
of the corporations to make a change here. And he was referring specifically to this
01:03:02 ►
struggle that’s going on politically in America. And he made the
01:03:08 ►
point that, you know, that corporations may have the ability to stop the Trump movement. And his
01:03:17 ►
point was that if they would see that it’d just be good for business, then they would act more
01:03:23 ►
forthright. And his fear was that they were
01:03:26 ►
still supporting them while they’re supporting the Democrats trying to play both sides,
01:03:32 ►
you know, to hedge their bets. So, you know, we’re kind of in this situation, we’re not going to
01:03:39 ►
easily get out of it. And I also agree with you. We’re not trying to solve a problem here when we’re trying
01:03:45 ►
to understand the situation. Isaac, do you want to jump in? No, that all makes total sense. I think
01:03:54 ►
Ian’s analogy was spot on. Well, since we’ve reached a little bit of a lull here. I’d like to say that I have been really fascinated with this conversation today.
01:04:07 ►
And if I cut out all of the early conversations that we had about the fun we were having with drugs in our youth and so forth, if I cut all of that out, does anybody have any objections to me podcasting this conversation today?
01:04:22 ►
No, please do yeah i think it should be shared with a wider
01:04:26 ►
audience because uh everybody has you know i’ve actually begun to think that i need to start
01:04:32 ►
changing some of my opinions about uh uh enlightenment and transitions and stuff like
01:04:38 ►
that that i haven’t re-examined in many years and so so if it can move me that much, then I think that it might
01:04:45 ►
be worthwhile to share our ideas with some other people. So I really appreciate everybody’s
01:04:51 ►
conversation and ideas today. I think it’s been fantastic. So I have been talking. Does anybody
01:04:57 ►
have any objections? If so, vote now or ever hold your peace.
01:05:02 ►
I would like to object to Charles calling me
01:05:07 ►
a white man
01:05:08 ►
even though it’s totally accurate
01:05:10 ►
you seem more beige to me
01:05:14 ►
I wouldn’t call you a white man
01:05:16 ►
I don’t know, you look more like an octopus to me
01:05:21 ►
there we go
01:05:22 ►
the camouflage is flickering my my uh
01:05:26 ►
stealth mode on the internet there’s a filter for anything
01:05:29 ►
remember the old cartoon that nobody knows you’re a dog on the internet
01:05:35 ►
not many people nobody knows you’re a human on the internet anymore that’s the problem
01:05:42 ►
no there you go nobody knows you’re a person well listen we we it’s interesting we went we back to this conversation because usually at
01:05:51 ►
this point is when we’re making silly uh jokes and stuff and we began this conversation that way
01:05:57 ►
uh so i’ll leave some of the humor in but i’ll take all the drug talk out because i don’t want
01:06:01 ►
anybody to be exposed here uh even though the statute of limitation is obviously passed long ago on everything. But your grandchildren might
01:06:10 ►
want to not know about this. In any event, everybody, hey, this has been a great way to
01:06:16 ►
start off this year and a wonderful way to spend what is possibly one of the worst days ever in
01:06:21 ►
the history of the United States. And you guys have all contributed a lot of positive consciousness to the day that I think is dearly needed.
01:06:29 ►
And so I appreciate that very much.
01:06:31 ►
And until next time, keep the old faith and definitely stay high.
01:06:39 ►
And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from cyberdelic space.
01:06:44 ►
Namaste, my friends.