Ep. 96 - Spiritual Politics with David Silver

[Music] The huge simply kind of avoid when a crisis comes up in your own inviduated incarnational experience gives you a very quick picture of how completely crazy it is to hate people you don't know [Music] Welcome to episode 96 of Synchronicity. My guest this week is Mike Goode. Great, bestest of friends. David Silver. This is David's return. He's been on a previous episode. You can check that one out. I don't know which one it is. It's back there. David's super cool. We usually talk about, I think I pointed this out on the previous episode with David. I'm pretty sure. He's one of the few people I can see on the phone for a very long time without any agitation or I want to get off the phone.

He's just a super cool dude. Seeing him in person is even better. He's got a chance to hang out with David at any point in your life. Take that opportunity. We talk about literally everything. So this episode though is relatively focused. I got to say we were honing in on how to maintain a watchful and mindful eye on situations around you. This episode title is spiritual politics and I use that as kind of a double entendre if I might. One is obviously looking at the political landscape in whatever country you're in globally, whatever you want from a spiritual context. It's something that's really awesome to do. It's a great way to play with the concept of a nation, of a world, of a people, of your individuated consciousness.

There's a tremendous amount of insight that can be gleaned when you look at it from different perspectives. The other part is obviously we get sucked in to the dynamics of these things. We talk about the healthcare bill which at this point when David and I had this conversation, I think it was a couple of days before they actually voted John McCain. It was like a week before. John McCain, we didn't know what was going on with him. He had both, as we know, ultimately voted no and kind of put the kibosh on the Trumpcare repeal and replace. Which would have been devastating. As much as I say that I am not attached to politics, which I feel that I am in most ways, unless it's Jeff Sessions.

Don't come after my We Jeff sessions. Don't do it. But outside of that, truthfully, I don't get too caught up in this stuff, but obviously healthcare is a hugely important thing for so many people, including myself. So basically, that was something that I was tuning into, but I wasn't getting agitated. But I know a lot of people get sucked into that. So we give some perspective on how to deal with that. Now, the other double entendre part of the spiritual politics is that in spirituality, in spiritual groups, in sanghas, satsangs, all of these things, dynamics, politics, political dynamics emerge, which is seemingly inevitable when there is any type of "power structure."

Anytime we're vying for control or superiority and anything like that, it can bring in this very weird political dynamics. And politics is an insane word and term. We go back to the Greeks in terms of the city and how you would govern and rule in a fair and equitable way, which was the goal. And if we look at where we are in the political landscape right now, I think ruling in a fair and equitable way for the people who are actually in politics, those people are probably in the minority. So we get into all of this. Is it possible to live in a post-corporate society? How do we start doing that? Are some of us doing that now? So we are pretty focused in this conversation.

Of course, David has like a million stories about really awesome people. I think everyone on the planet at this point. So it's a great conversation. Now that I've highlighted the entire thing, I don't know why. It's David's my butt. I like recapping stuff with him. I just got back from a two-week vacation, Carolina Beach, North Carolina. I love it there. Like I said in previous episodes, if you can get by a body of water, it's so great. So, so great. I came back to my garden. I've been gardening. And it is fucking awesome. There's cucumbers. There's tomatoes. There's basil. There's green beans. There's peppers. The peppers aren't ready yet.

Tomatoes aren't really ready yet, too, but there's a ton of them. Anyway, I was noticing, and I know a lot of people probably are familiar with this, but it's me as a novice gardener, green thumb. It's so relaxing and meditative to weed, to trim plants that have blight, which is a thing you don't want in your tomatoes, by the way, blight. You don't want it. It's got these spots. See it? Take that off. Got to pull it off. Get light to the bottom tomatoes anyway. It's a good thing to do. Anyway, it's really, really awesome. So if you can, if you're able, if you have land, even if you're inside, you can just grow a basil plant or something.

I highly recommend doing something. I'm a fan of growing things that you can eat. I know a lot of people, you know, like perennials and bushes and flowers and all those things. That's cool. That's really cool. But I like being able to go out and eat a cucumber and a tomato and a green bean. That's like my favorite thing to do. So I really, the meditative qualities of that, I don't know how much it's spoken about. Obviously, people know about it. I'm not the first to discover this. Very awesome. Do it. Okay. I think we'll just get right to the episode there. I've talked about a garden, David. What else do we have? That's it.

Thank you to everyone. The reviews were at the magical number, 108 ratings and reviews for this podcast. That's super cool. Happened all of a sudden. Thank you to all the new listeners who tuned in over the past few weeks. I know we had some crossing of paths between Evan Alexander, Adrian Earhart. There's just been a real tremendous kind of sink. I don't want to say synchronously. This show is called synchronously. But there's been a synchronous, including Thomas Miller. I can't forget him because a lot of people have written to me who followed the subconscious mind mastery podcast. And it's just been a really cool thing. So, welcome to the show. Go dive back into older episodes. We have some cool ones coming up. I'm back from vacation.

I think I'm going to increase output for a little bit, rolling into the fall. So we'll see what happens. But thank you for listening. Without further ado, here is David Silver. Thank you, by the way, for doing this again. Pleasure. So let's talk about, I mean, we'll cover a ton of ground here, but let's talk about our good friend, jump into Trump. What's going on with Trump? Well, by the time anyone hears this, there'll be 19 more. This will be on a weak delay, too. So, yeah. Okay. Okay. So not counting the 19 that are in the weak delay. He gave us a speech to the Boy Scouts last night, which was.

You know, I have a fairly large vocabulary. I'm running out of words, horrendously, Bulgarian is the way I would discuss this. And how could he? It's like when he stood in front of the CIA, a fallen and talked about the crowd size. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the man is clearly out of control. And I have no narcissist in my life. And this is not on typical. The ability to restrain, you know, one's own impulses to blame show tremendous hatred and all those things is not there. And given that his father was a slumlord and a racist and his grandfather was a pimp, I don't know about his mother's or grandmother.

They may be wonderful people. I'm not surprised by this because it's all conditioned and we're all born with the same innocent potential. And I'm trying not to loathe this person, but I'm failing because it's been too long now. It's nine months since he was elected. And it just seems like an eternity if, but because it's synchronicity and it's Noah and me, I would strongly advise people to not let this drown your life. It hasn't drowned mine. It's just happened to be watching CNN just before we got on here and instead of doing my work. And you know, you mentioned to me before we got on the sole distraction and it is, but it's not as if it's sort of scientific distraction.

No, but it doesn't have to be. That's the point, right? I mean, the whole idea of this, like I was saying before, is that one, just like you're saying, he cannot help himself. He is the type of personality who has grown up with immense insulation from any type of critical input. And anyone saying, hey, like, maybe you don't want to act like that. He is allowed to do and just to be clear, validated at almost every turn, right? Except for a few bankruptcy things, which weren't really bankruptcies. It was just him getting out of, you know, potential financial obligations. He really hasn't had any repercussions for acting that way. So that's one. He can't help himself.

But two, whether it's crazy like a fox or just happens to work out that way, it does serve the purpose of distracting from other major initiatives. And things that are going on not only on the political level, but on like a social and cultural level when we're talking about things like health care. So, I mean, the way I look at it is is I don't know. I mean, I'm curious because I know a lot of people who are liberal and, you know, maybe not Democrats per se, but liberal, independent, you know, progressive minded people have a general sense that this is coming to a, to a head, right? This is that Mueller's getting closer. They're honing in. They're closing in. I just wonder, I mean, like, it certainly has felt like that at least three or four times since he's been elected.

And so far, nothing has come of it. What do you, what's your general sense? I mean, do you think in our, in our dramatic play world here that that something is happening? Good question. You know, I felt the same way. There have been quite a few moments that you'd think would ruin him, but he survived them all. And this one is slightly different because it appears now that his Confederates, his gang are getting investigated very carefully because Mueller, you know, is quiet. There's nothing coming out of the Special Counsel's office. No leaks. No anything. And that's what happened in the Watergate thing.

Although, of course, Watergate was both, you know, I mean, there was a constitutional crisis because he fired Nixon fired his Special Counsel. And then that was a constitution crisis. This would be, if he fires more, I'd rather hope he tries because then, you know, there will be incredible problems for Republican Congressmen and Senators. They would, you know, they cannot justify it. Shouldn't there already be is my question. If we're just looking at this from the dualistic perspective here, shouldn't there already be a, I get the logic, the political chess moves of having a Republican president who's unpredictable, but willing to push through certain agendas that the Republicans or the GOP has wanted, like health care and tax reform and all these things that we probably disagree with vehemently.

But at a certain point, I mean, where there's smoke, there's fire, it certainly seems, and I'm willing to admit there's nothing going on. I don't know. I'm not privy to all the information except we'll be getting the media, but it certainly seems like something is going on between this. And it certainly seems like something will come of it, which essentially means that are the countries. And let me ask you this, David, just to get sidetracked a little bit. I find it very funny that so many of us who, you know, probably wouldn't consider ourselves patriots in the conventional sense of the word. You know, we're not out there chanting USA, like we admit the military industrial complex, the imperialism this country has done is harmful in many ways.

But isn't it funny that when we're talking about Russia, who's our main adversary, our main bad guy, so many of us get so jazzed up and are incredulous that we would be, you know, potentially partnering with these people? I wonder what your thoughts are on that, because I certainly find myself getting caught up in that game. Yeah, me too. It's dangerous, of course, because then you get into jingoism and prejudice and massive generalizations about Russia. And Russia is a complex culture, you know, with incredible cultural history and an amazing array of peoples, you know, from way out in the Asian part of it to the almost Western European part of it.

So it's an amazing country, and there are probably millions of terrific people all over that country, so we've just got to avoid that. And, you know, I mean, if Trump as a disruptor was, you know, where we stand, which is closer to pacifism and other things, one would applaud this, because even though obviously Putin is a disreputable character, maybe much worse than much worse adjectives, it doesn't help us to be in a constant state of, you know, antagonism and enemyism with another country. So if Trump were someone else and actually was willing to talk about Putin and his gang in true terms, but also say at the same time, this cannot lead anywhere but bad places, because there are a nuclear power and there are also a power that's taken over two countries in Europe in the last five years, that would be different.

But it does amaze me, actually, and I think this is more to your point, that people who might have been more liberal minded about Russia are now, you know, violently anti-Russian. And, you know, I'm talking about how can we, you know, reconcile whether enemies, who are our friends, but it's all crazy. It's all, you know, what the mind's called the upside down world, where everything is wrong. You know, we're friendly with Saudis, who I read yesterday, are prepared to be head 16-ager girls for dancing at a party and being caught by the thought police or the religious police. We're friendly with them, you know, and yet we're not friendly, really, with France, even though it appears we are, we're not.

And so this is all crazy. And it's the result of a weird, you know, phenomenon that happened really, which is that out of, you know, a kind of public despair of the stagnation of normal politics, conventional politics on both sides, stagnation, where, you know, people like, I guess, like Hillary and others have not really shown much sort of empathy, at least legislate in legislating. For those that are left out of this economy, the richest country in the history of the planet, or at least as far as we know, that caused, you know, an interloper, a disruptor to come in and move things around. You know, it's interesting because if Trump were the person to do that and had humanitarianism in him and some sort of objectivism, or objective, not objectivism, that's another thing, isn't it?

If you had an objective sort of view of things, we'd all love this. We'd love it. But it's just his personality and then, of course, the cabinet, which is full of luddites. You know, they're all luddites, you know, Rick Perry and Price and DeVos and Sessions, and the rest of them are people who want to bring it back to where marijuana was reformateness, where, you know, Black Lives Matter is a fascist organization, where health care should only be for those who are able to afford it. All these things are repressive and regressive. And, you know, we all know it's not healthy to hate. It does not do any harm to anyone except yourself, because even though you might get a kick out of hating Jeff Sessions, he doesn't feel it. You feel it.

And that's what I've been working with, an older member of the community. You know, my family was political in England, and we were very liberal. And, you know, I was never taught not to hate, even though my family were not haters. No one ever said to me, you know, and stop getting angry and full of rage about this. You're letting them rule your life. You're letting them rule your life. And that's really, you know, not going to help you or your children or your pets. So, you know, and I know you well enough to know that we agree upon that. But, you know, it's hard not to get angry when you see people being treated badly. And so, you know, and millions of people being ignored.

When that was his whole lying rationale for his presidency. But who could have believed this crisis on a gold throne comes down a gold escalator in a gold building with a gold wife? Who could ever believe this? It's totally absurd. Yeah, it is absurd. But, you know, we're living in an ill-educated society. I mean, for instance, just to make my point, I think. I was just on Facebook, and I saw a thing from CNET, which was an ecstatic and raptured article about a new $150 trillion aircraft carrier. And I couldn't believe my eyes. And then I looked at some of the 800 comments, and there were a lot of people in those comments who were not jingoistic, who were not militaristic, and who said, "What's going on here?

Why are we extolling the virtues of a killing machine, the like of which we've never had?" You know, and everything's upside down. It's back to the, you know, we're experiencing a kind of amoral, unethical, but definitely amoral, if not immoral, attitude from places and platforms that we can't believe are doing this. And it's because there's a definite move towards chaos. Steve Bannon said, you know, "Let's cause as much chaos as possible today." He loved darkness. He loved Satan. It was not a bogus thing. He wants to disrupt in an anarchic way to move towards a global oligarchy. And, you know, it's not looking good.

Let me out for this as what I think the function of this upside down kind of nightmare world is, is that I think when you're sleeping and everything is comfortable, and let's say you're having a bad dream, but it's not bad enough to wake you up. You're going to be stuck kind of in that state. But when things get really, really bad, right, in your nightmare, and maybe you start like making all these weird sounds, someone might, who if they're around, you might come and wake you up, right? And I think that's kind of what this is. It's getting harder and harder. I don't even view it as getting sucked in. Like we started with the Boy Scouts thing.

It's just such a ridiculous farce of a thing to happen in the world that it makes so many people just look at and go like, "What is really going on here? Like, is this reality as solid and does it work in the logical way we've been told?" And I think more and more people are coming to the conclusion that it doesn't, which is a freeing thing, but also like very terrifying because if you've grown up in a culture or world that everything seems kind of set in place and good to go, and then you've discovered that it's not, that's terrifying. And I mean, this is akin to any transcendental psychedelic meditative experience when your ego starts to fall away.

Yes, it's completely liberating because you don't have this construct kind of dictating your experiences of the world or everything around you, but it's also like, "Holy shit, I don't have any bearings. I don't have anything to hold on to now, so I'm terrified." So I think that's the state a lot of people find themselves in right now, especially related to not just the political spectrum, the environmental spectrum with the, you know, climate change and the imminent disasters if we don't change course, even if we do potentially. And I think the function of it, because I don't think we live in a meaningless, chaotic, horrible universe, I think it's just to kind of wake us up a little bit and see what we can do individually and collectively to make the world a better place.

And I think the other thing you mentioned in there is this idea of anger and not getting sucked in and not hating people. And it becomes obvious for most people over a lifetime or enough people that anger and hating, or hating at least, really doesn't have a good function. Anger can, anger can arouse the fires within you to take action. So there can be a positive benefit, but when that turns into this dark, seeded, deep-seated kind of, you know, lashing out and just, "Oh, fuck this person. Oh, John McCain has brain cancer. Good. I can't wait for him to die. Anyone can't vote on health care." And like, I personally don't feel like that, but I know that there are people who are seeing that because you see him coming back to vote to basically take care, take health care away from like 26 to 32 million people right before he passes away.

It's an amazing kind of, you know, hyper-focused example of what's going on. But my point is that I think if we can get to the point where we can pay attention to this stuff, but not let us overtake us and consume us, it will rouse the kind of compassion or energy to start changing our own lives in a positive direction, which thereby, if we all start doing that individually, and then start linking up, collectively, we can have a greater impact. I don't see this as kind of like age of darkness descending upon the world. I view it as kind of like an eclipse, right? We're about to have an eclipse.

Some people in this part of the country, it's going to be completely dark for, you know, a few minutes, like totally dark, no sun anymore, but it passes. And I think that's where we are. It might be overly optimistic. I am certainly not tuned out to the point where I don't know what is happening. We spoke about it the other day. I mean, I think this is a kleptocracy. I think he's emulating Russia, which is our Putin, which is why he speaks so fondly of him. He's seen a pattern of how you can go and get your hands in all these elements of the government and just make your enrich yourself and the people you want to.

So I think that's what's going on. But that said, I don't think in my life, the government has dictated my choices and actions as much as we're led to believe. So that's a very empowering thought. So that's kind of my take on it right now. Let's see what happens. But, you know, it certainly is also just out and out entertainment, right? This is political theater. This is cultural theater. So I wonder when we can draw the line of like, the parallel I would give is like obsessively checking our phones. Like I've caught myself. I've been on vacation now for like a week and a half. I check my phone so fucking much.

It's ridiculous. I am so locked in and hooked into this information. It's insane. And the other day I was on the beach and I was coming back. I didn't have my phone and I saw this guy like with his dog and I just got a glimpse of what I must look like when I'm out in public or when I'm at home. And I'm like, holy shit, like holy fucking shit. So I think like, yes, we pay attention to this stuff. When it starts kind of dominating our consciousness or our lives, it becomes a very kind of perilous kind of way to tune out from what we really should be looking at. Yeah. And my comment on that is that you should transcribe everything you just said because I'm not sure I've ever heard a more lucid analysis.

Not only what's going on, but attitudinally what might be the better road to take. I really was listening very carefully. And you know, it's all helpful because no matter how old you are, how much you've been through, the mind has a peculiar way of reburthing yourself into either good or bad at any given time. That's right. And I found myself very moody about this. And, you know, in other words, sometimes I really, you know, would prefer to take the highest road, which still remains that of universal compassion no matter what. And then sometimes I found another part of myself saying, well, you know, would you in 1942 or whatever it was, would you have been happy if the von Stauffenberg attempted assassinating Hitler had succeeded?

It's a good question because it posits that there are some exceptions to the rule of universal compassion. Of course there aren't because, you know, you have to look at this in an overarching way. And the fact of the matter is that we all come and go on this planet, and presumably on others. And when you get close to any kind of crisis in your mind's own life, illness or loss of some kind or other, all of this becomes kind of black and white and grey and white and then sepia and then disappears. And the real colors come out in terms of one's own, you know, dealing with a relative or a pet being sick or ill and then all of this stuff is completely irrelevant.

And in your own life, and the seeds of compassion are sown, the clarity that you simply cannot avoid when a crisis comes up in your own, individuated, incarnational experience, gives you a very quick, but good picture of how completely crazy it is to hate people you don't know. However, however, you know, you're admitted that your phone thing and I have similar things, and I live long enough to have seen that so much of what I was completely freaked out by eventually passes. That does not mean there wasn't great suffering, not for me but for others involved in this, on the John McCain thing, you know, a lot of stuff is based upon a visceral mood thing. John McCain's father and grandfather were both admirals.

John F. McCain, I think he was, who was his father, was in charge of the Pacific fleet, not only the fleet, but the entire command that fought in Vietnam and killed two and a half million Vietnamese and Cambodians and low Asians and 56,000 Americans. That was John McCain's father. I didn't know that. Yeah, he was the head of the whole thing. Nixon and he devised the word Vietnamization, which meant killing cooks, geeks or whatever horrible word they used to it. And okay, he's not his father, and he seems to have a more reasonable approach to life, but he comes from a long line of military commandments, not just servicemen, but people who ran the military and therefore had some sense of policy and I don't trust him.

I wish him well because I don't think he's the worst person in the world. I hope by the time this comes out, he's still alive because he seems to be a voice of reason within a mad, a mad, you know, world. But, you know, it's important to know stuff. And yet, and this sounds crazy. It's also important not to know stuff. You know, I know about the McCain's because I was one of, you know, I mean, I protested the war in Vietnam and basically lost my TV series in Boston because of it. I was told that. I was actually told that by the man who was the head of the station, a man I really rather liked and I thought he liked me.

But when I started doing fairly, you know, strong things on my show, that wasn't happening anywhere else. And because it was public television and they were scared stiff of losing their whatever funding they had, they told me, "That's it, Dave. You're gone." And so, you know, I wasn't a hero, but not at all. Well, you take a principal stance. I mean, that's... Yeah, I took a stance and it changed my whole life. And, you know, now I see literally millions of tens of millions of people, much younger than myself, who are doing, you know, centurion work in terms of climate change and fighting the ignorance and trying to come up with brilliant ways of dealing with that. I see that all the time. And it's very encouraging because as much as the 60s and 70s gets a lot of good press, not much was really achieved that wasn't visceral or cultural. Politically, I think it was derelict.

And now, despite Trump and despite a Republican Congress, you said it before, there is a waking up process going on. And I can't imagine monolithic fascism coming to this country because we saw the protests, the women's march, many other marches. Once we don't see any more because they're bored on cable television with people resisting, it's much more fun to talk about Paul Manafort or some other stuff. So, I'm encouraged by people much younger than myself and, you know, people in my own generation too, who are saying, no, there's a clear light here and the light is to have compassion for as many people as possible within your jurisdiction.

A.I.E. governmental policy will help. It will never cause, you know, bring about paradise because that's not what it is here. I mean, just read, you know, Jack Kerouac's Book of the Life of Buddha, that, you know, this is not a place of paradise. Shangri-La was a movie, Lost Horizon was a movie. You know, it's not that. It's a place where suffering has to be dealt with. Ergo, to think that the government is going to change everything, is weird, but I do know this, that my daughter, my lovely younger daughter, who had a tremendous health problem, was helped immeasurably by Romneycare in Massachusetts, which is where she lives.

And despite people's dislike of Mr. Romney, when he was governor of Massachusetts, he brought in a very, very sound and healthy and compassionate health care system, which helped my own daughter. So, you know, I wasn't a fan of his, but at least, at least he made that happen. That's pretty fundamental. So it can help. But, you know, you and I mixed in the same spiritual circles for years. And what I like about your take on things is that you neither, no, you don't submit yourself to spiritual can't, but you also don't submit yourself to political can't. And we have to be free of those things in order to be honest. So when someone says, you know, it's important for me to love, you know, Mike Pence, in an ultimate kind of way it is, but it's also, and you made this distinction 20 minutes ago.

Anger is one thing, rage is another, hatred is another. And if you can keep it at anger so that you will activate whatever you can activate to try and help other people not suffer as much as they might, that anger is a tool is incredibly important. But when it becomes a constituent part of consciousness whereby, you know, I mean, I watched this dreadful movie a couple of days ago with Humphrey Bogart called the Barefoot Contessa. And it's a movie that was applauded at the time, but it's absolutely dreadful movie. And it's based on cynicism, the whole film. And Bogart in his later days, not in his height, not in Casablanca days, or even African Queen days, but Barefoot Contessa days, he plays his director, film director, who's constantly a cynic and has his tone of voice about life.

And it's almost impossible to watch this film, but I actually watched half an hour of it just to see whether I was right the first time. A cynical and hate-based consciousness can ruin you. And what I said before is true, it doesn't ruin anyone else. It doesn't. I mean, well, I will say this. I mean, there's one of the things when you mentioned, you know, not subscribing to a particular perspective when it comes to politics or spirituality and taking the parts that are meaningful and helpful and, you know, practical. I think when we're looking at this type of stuff, it's important to not get too identified with one perspective or another. However, that is not to say that we don't live in a dualistic universe where we have to form opinions at some points.

And yes, we recognize when we form an opinion, we're solidifying this concept known as I, and that is the source of all of our emotional and psychological strife. And I look at it the same way with the political stuff. And I've always felt like this, at least in my life. I have a very clear and direct path spoken to many times on this podcast. Anyone who knows me is true with anger issues. I've used my own anger issues to gain insights into how things farther removed from me function. I also just kind of have this threshold where it's hard for me to get worked up about things that I don't have any fundamental control over, right? I mean, and that could potentially be everything just to be clear.

But at least when it comes to the political spectrum or the spiritual, whatever universe we're talking about, the farther removed it is from me, not the more detached I become to it, but I can actually cultivate non-attachment. So I can see Mike Pence do something horrible. I mean, this is clearly demonstrated just in who I actually care about in the political theater. The only character I really care about right now is Jeff Sessions. The reason I care about Jeff Sessions is he's politically trying to go back to the ages of criminalizing marijuana and cannabis, which I think is just an abomination.

I personally have been held by cannabis. I know so many other people, both psychologically, emotionally, mentally, physically have been helped by this. So the idea of putting people in jail for it is just, you know, I think there's an argument that it should be made free for everyone, grow it in your house. No one has to pay for anything. So the idea of telling people gets me angry, but it doesn't get to the point where I wish him death or, you know, some horrible thing to have from or hate for him because he's farther enough, far enough removed that what you're saying rings true. It doesn't affect him, right? Now, maybe on a karmic, subtle level, since we're all interconnected, that energy does have something.

I mean, I think typically of there was a, I think in the Zavodah books, the Gora books, there's a point where, and I remember this every time I think something horrible or wish something horrible on someone where it says, you know, the worst thing you can do in this life, one of absent, you know, physically murdering, and there's an argument to be made that they're equal, is wishing death or some horrible thing to happen to another being. That's the worst karmic thing you can do because it requires intention, direction, rouse, energy, and it does have an impact. And I unfortunately will cop to the fact that when I get really angry at anything, that's my go-to. That's my go-to.

And I sincerely try to conjure up, like, horrible things. So that, to me, just highlights and underscores the truth of what you're saying, that if you get into the hateful mindset, and that then becomes your default reaction, because that's just to be clear, to give people insight. I started going to a therapist about a month and a half ago, and one of the things I realized is that my default reaction to being hurt, to being upset, to being frustrated, to being overwhelmed is to get angry. And it's been a strategy that I've employed because it gets people to pay attention. When you're angry, it's hard not to pay attention to someone, but it's totally ineffective if that's your reaction to every single issue that happens in your life, in the world, or whatever.

And what you're saying is totally true. It just fucks you over. People aren't feeling that. People aren't aware that you're going through that, nor would they even be able to be, if they were. So I think that's a hugely fundamental thing that is really applicable across every aspect of our lives. So yeah, I'm super happy, you know, we're getting to the meat of it. Well, you know, I mean, I have a story. I had a conversation with the father of a friend of mine some years ago. He's passed now, but he was a scout, I believe a Dunkirk, but he was certainly an army grant in World War II, and in Jewish, and fought against the actual Nazis.

He wasn't in some sort of, you know, secondary thing. He saw that. And one summer day, I believe in 1943, I believe he was in France. He had a little time to himself, and he went for a walk, and there was a lake or a pond, and it was very hot, and he decided he'd like to go for a swim. So he walked closer to the edge of the pond, ran some trees, and then he saw, next to a tree, a Nazi uniform sort of laid out under the tree. And then he obviously sort of stunned him momentarily, and then he walked closer to the lake and saw a man naked, swimming in a sort of state of bliss clearly on a hot day, and it was obviously the Nazi soldier.

And his orders, such as they were in that kind of situation, was, you know, take out your rifle and shoot the guy, and he had his gun with him, and he said he looked at the guy, and he saw the light in his eyes, and he just left. He could not shoot him, and it was push comes to shove, and it just goes to show that when you're fighting in a war, and the bullets are flying at people you don't know, and you're doing your job, you know, the Nazis weren't exactly sweetness and light, let's face that. And he's Jewish, fighting in Europe, American Jewish men. You know, you would engage in that war. People would ask me, you know, would you have fought in Vietnam? No, and I refused to, and I had a tremendous problem with that.

But in World War II, I guess I would. Now, you know, a lot of people in Britain were very angry with Mahatma Gandhi, who was against engaging in World War II. And truth of all, there is a spectrum of philosophy which has all got to be examined as a whole, and it is not situational for a Gandhi or for a Bertrand Russell. That's right. For them, it was the purity of their vision, of their belief system, and Russell was an atheist, obviously Gandhi wasn't, and so there's two entirely different philosophies and ways of looking at the universe, and yet they both had the same attitude. That attitude, where's my friend's father, did not have that kind of attitude, but when he came upon an actual human being, swimming in a lake, he could not bring himself to freedom, and he could have.

He could have killed him instantly, and he didn't because he had this feeling in his heart that this was a living being. Now, some people would say, well, wait a minute, I saw more Nazi, you know, and good German is a dead one, and we've heard those kinds of expressions for years, nothing ever progresses with that attitude. I never want to be in a place where I'm going to have to kill a Russian or a North Korean, and, you know, as much as we know there are some regimes which are anti-human and are, you know, sort of awful. There's still human beings in there, you know, and I would think that in Russia, there are millions of human beings who are perfectly wonderful people, and I'm not being patronising, I'm sure that's the case.

You know, so these antagonisms which are built up by jingoistic paradigms are incredibly dangerous and bring about more wars and more wars and more wars. Now, what can we do to where it ended? I think you put it perfectly. Individually, if you recognise your own dialectic, between anger and love, between hatred and compassion and work on it, we've all got them. You know, even the most devout people will admit, at least yogis and real gurus will admit that we all have the question of what you do with that. It's like when you meditate and all these awful thoughts come in when you would prefer to be thinking about Ramakrishna or about God or the sun or whatever, and suddenly you were thinking about, you know, I would really like to do something horrible to Kelly and Conway.

That comes in. It's not a question of it not coming in. It is going to come in because of our cultural conditioning. The question is what you do with that, and as you said before, when you saw the guy with the dog on the beach, you can see yourself as other people, other people see you sometimes, and that's tremendously amelorative and ultimately will result in a different kind of society, I think, when people, I mean, look, when I was growing up in England, I am not aware of one yoga studio, an entire country. There might have been one, but I wasn't aware of it. If there were any, nobody talked about it.

And yoga itself was a word that you didn't hear because it seemed like it was about some maniacs, thousands of miles away who didn't have running water or flushing toilets. And now you look at America, and despite the Jeff Sessions and these Luddites, I've euphemistically called them that, there are millions and millions of people who are at least trying to form some kind of communal connection, which is real. And even if it's threatened by one's own viscera sometimes, you see Trump talking and he's talking nonsense or just pure lies on television. That's objectively true. You can't say, "Well, he's not lying." That's a lie. It's a lie. So you see that and it boils up in you.

And I'm no different from anyone else. I really get our feeling. The discipline, though, which is valuable and which some politicals and radicals do not understand, I'm sorry to say, is that you must deal with that on the basis of tempering one's own malice. And this woman said she wanted to see John McCain dead. I think you referred to it. When I read it, I was repulsed by it. I'm no fan of his. But that's different. The fact of the matter is, as you said, you got murder and you've got malicious intent and anger and rage bubbling in human beings. And when you read a certain sutra that the Buddha talked to his biggest fan and adherent, Ananda, who he gave a very hard time, he was basically saying, "You've got to be careful about this because your perceptions, your five basic senses can frequently be liars."

And those liars judge everything and can hate everything and can do internalized secret violence to everything. And it's no way to live because I've been there. I have been there. And what happens is you wake up in the morning with a filthy taste in your mouth. And someone who's very sweet talks to you when you snap back at them. And we've all done it in our marriages, et cetera. It's amazing that you can see this little child and you have those who don't know. Noah and Alexis have a young son. Everyone knows about Eli at this point. Oh, okay. I bet it briefly. I've seen the photographs and he's a delightful angel. But when he's 15, and I've had this experience, you know, sometimes you're tempted to say, "You're not doing that and you're a piece of crap and you get out of my study.

I don't want to hear anything." And it's happened to all of us. And, you know, that may work in some form of, I don't know, rather primitive discipline. But ultimately, you know, our lives or our continued lives are often the result of a very dark impressions made upon us by our parents. So this generation, despite people talk about, you know, helicopter parents and all of this, my opinion on this is that the generation that's now between 20 or 25 and 45 is a lot more enlightened about this. And I mean that than we were. Because they have recourse to all kinds of methods of amelioration, of amelioration of psyche and of the transportation of rage trains out of the stockyard as much as is humanly possible.

That doesn't mean, you know, some soft, sort of rather, you know, kind of neutral thing. Not at all. Not at all. Sessions, we talked about Sessions. It's interesting to ironic now that we're sort of supporting him. Stay in, Jeff, so he doesn't put some patsy in there and then firemuller and then causes an immense crisis. I want him to fire Sessions. Even if you put Giuliani in, I just find his aggression towards cannabis to be so on top. It's just like, it's my one-button issue. You know what I mean, man? That's my issue. You know, just a name drop, and I worked with both Peter Tosh and Bob Marley, and both of the music expression, the healing of the nation. And they weren't talking about doctors. They were talking about Lansworth. They were talking about various strains of Jamaican marijuana, which they felt, and I do, could help people immeasurably.

I know this much, and I'm not going to go into details, but I'm in my 51st year of that catalyst and I don't regret a minute of it. And I believe that if I hadn't have crossed paths with it, my life would have been very different and not better. So, yes, I'll fight Sessions in any way I can if he starts doing that. Remember, let's just remember that when medical marijuana and various forms of legalization were being discussed in the 90s, Bill Clinton said that he would federally oppose it and stop it. So, it's not simple as stuff. You think, "Oh, Clinton, by comparison to this." Bill Clinton is like an album or a song you used to like when you were a kid, and then you think it was amazing.

And then you start listening to it when you're an adult and you go, "I like this." Like his policies. I mean, it's hard from the criminal justice system, to his immigration policies, to his tax policies, to his drug policies. I mean, there's a lot not to like looking back with a liberal bent at this point. I mean, it's hard to say because the guy, I mean, I was watching the 90s, this National Geographic. We have TV down here at the beach. We don't normally have TV and I hate to cop to it, but when you don't have TV for a while, it's fucking amazing. Like, there's so many good shows on. And they were going over Clinton and there wasn't partisan bias to this at all, but you can see some of the things he's talking about.

And it's like, "Oh, shit." Like, I don't agree with that at all. That's totally not what I believe in. So this... Well, that's the... Yeah. I think that's the result of the political progression that you just get into politics. It's almost impossible unless you're Nelson Mandela or, you know, I don't know, maybe Jimmy Carter. I mean, let's remember. Jimmy Carter commanded a nuclear submarine and he had enough experience of the military impetus to have some knowledge and some right to talk about reconciliation. And he was dealt a bad hand because of the Iranian hostage situation and by the opposition of the CIA to him. So, generally speaking, he stands out because he seems to be a man of great conscience. And we've seen my card in the 40 years since he was president.

He's done nothing but habitat. And, you know, my girlfriend went to a speech recently. I'm not sure why. It was Barno and Jimmy Carter. And, you know, Barno was humorous and as usual self, but she said, "Carter made people cry, including yourself, that he was so overflowing with a kind of benevolence and benign attitude towards humanity that it was a delight, you know, it was just a delight to be in his presence. You know, it can happen. America's probably the place where it should happen because no matter what, America seems to be some kind of light for the world. I don't believe that's a healthy thing to keep saying because it sort of derogates other countries. And it can problem the national ego, which is not something we need running a market. Yes, exactly. And that's what jingoism is.

It's propping up the fact that you've got a lousy job and you don't want your wife and your car broke down and you can't pay your mortgage. So let's be a patriot." And, of course, that that phrase patriotism is less resort to the scandal is a little harsh because some people are truly patriotic in the sense that they believe in certain principles and therefore they'll fight for them. I mean, I watched Stephen Colbert last night and I actually didn't watch him. I watched him this morning on some kind of feed. And he did a thing which actually, you know, people out there may think this is foolish, but it was very brave.

I mean, he did a rant which was funny and kind of gentle, but pointed out the hypocrisy of various aspects of what's going on. And he didn't used to be like that. I mean, Johnny Carson would make one political joke every five weeks. It wasn't his bailiwick. And now we're in such a time that the comedians that are sort of the stars of media are beginning to break out in a way that George Carlin did a long time ago and Bill Hicks and many other great, great comedic and satiric analysts and performers. It's now happening. And maybe that gets right to what you were talking about earlier now, which is the waking up process is painful because all wakes you up except something that drives you crazy.

And, you know, just think about waking up. I mean, listen, sometimes we get to sleep in. I mean, not if you have a kid, but sometimes you get to sleep in and it's nice and you wake up and you're super happy. And sometimes you still want to get a bed. But other way, if you have to set the alarm for earlier than you want to, it's not a pleasant experience. It's just no one enjoys the process of being woken up, let alone from a nightmare, right? So, I mean, that is something to remember. We talk about waking up like it's this beautiful, wonderful, panacea type experience. And it's just, that's really not how it is. It can be, of course.

But that's usually not what's going to wake you up. Yes. Yes. It's the child crying, or in my case, if you own children, I can't with who's a very wonderful being. But if she does not get fed at the right time and I'm still lying there, she will make an aggressive act on me. And it wakes me out of whatever I was in, and I'm suddenly being scratched. And, you know, it's, "Oh my God, I got to get up." And my impulse is to say, "Hey, get out of here." But I won't do that because she's an innocent being. And I get up, but you're right. The process of waking up is very difficult, particularly if you're a hidebound or enjoying conditioned responses, which a lot of us are. So, the liberals, you know, the liberal class, you know, I'm not going to say that they were responsible for Trump's victory.

But the fact that -- I'll just say this. You and I had dinner at one point, and I said Trump was going to win, and everybody thought dinner looked to me as if I was a worm. And I felt it. You did. You forgot. You did call that. I did. And I kept doing it until you won. But my feeling is that the Democrats -- and this is turning it back into this Monday level -- No, no, of course. I thought the Democrats were unbelievably anemic. Jennifer Palmieri and Robbie Mook and the people who were representing Mrs. Clinton, who I think has got some great qualities as well as lesser great ones. But the people who were representing her were just cliche kings and queens. They just were saying things that had no resonance in my life, and certainly had no relevance to a guy or a woman living in Louisiana who's lost their house to foreclosure, who children go to crappy schools, who can't afford to send a private school, whose car's been taken away from them, whose job has been taken away from them, and they're living and looking at this woman dressed in designer pantsuits and her representatives who are very softly spoken, well-dressed east coast elites, and just going, "No mass. No mass. I don't care if Trump is a fucking child killer. I'm really like this guy." Because these people don't give us, I say, used to say, a tuppany shit.

I think that's what happened. It is what happened. This is what I find, at least when we're zooming back in on the political stuff, is I still feel the liberal, here's the real truth. This is what I really think, and I know there are subtleties to this that I am completely glossing over and overgeneralizing. The corporate takeover of our political system happened a long time ago, right? A long 30 years ago, at least, if not more. It is entrenched now. The problem is, is if we start looking at these things as split, like Republicans and Democrats, yes, Republicans ideologically, typically believe in abortion being illegal and not supporting it financially. They believe in more austerity, which is not what most of their constituents believe in, ironically.

They have also shown a more aggressive penchant for using negative policies and tactics to get elected, such as gerrymandering and all of these things. These are things that I don't identify with at all, and the Democrats, to their credit, haven't really engaged in those same tactics. However, so much of the Democratic Party is infected with the corporate biases and the lobbyists that it's hard to rouse energy and say, this is what's been coming out. The party was rallying behind not Trump. Well, that's a really easy rallying cry, but if you're just not Trump late, that's not really going to get it done. So I am hoping that in the next 20 years, we'll start to see us move past a two-party system and start to move into at least some level of engagement, whether it's at the local community level or it goes up to the presidency, just having two opinions is really akin to having one in this day and age.

We don't have a real choice on most issues, and if you get down into the political demagoguery and the real tactics of this stuff, most of the hot button issues that are used are used to again divert attention from what's really going on. If anyone who's lived around DC, I grew up there. It's not like I was in the political circles, but you know the congressmen who are there, the people who are not from DC, they don't give a shit about any of those things, like maybe a very small percentage. People on a, not in a necessarily unhealthy way all the time, but they're on a power trip game. They're on a look at this, what we're living in. We don't really have any financial worries here. We're in a place that has cultural significance, historical significance, and to think that they're not getting caught up in that as individuals is foolhardy.

Like when I go through my life, when I wake up in the beginning of the day, 95% of the day is spent on my experience of the day, if not more, so to think that other people are devoting the majority of their time to the collective interest at this day and age, I think is just kind of like a, it's a foolish outlook to have. And that is not discounting the many, many, many amazing, wonderful people who are fighting for things. I've just found at least the real groups in DC that are doing positive work are the watchdog organizations, the non-government organizations that are really trying to keep track of important issues, like things that come to mind are like pro publica who are really just at the forefront of getting out like information culturally based, ethical based journalism. That is not partisan, but unfortunately seems to come down pretty hard on the right wing of our country.

But my point is, is that I don't even know what the fuck my point is, to be honest, I got a rant on that. I think your point is very clear, that a post-corporateist attitude is what people are talking about, which is that neoliberalism, if it means anything, means that these guys go to Davos. And when they're in Davos, I happen to know someone who used to go there in a service way, she wasn't part of the politics, but she was there to sort of support people. You know, they go there, and the Clintons did frequently, and Obama may get flagged for this, but I don't think he was that distant from that neoliberal corporatist thing, because he took a hell of a lot of money from corporations to get where he got.

So, he seemed like a decent dude, but he certainly knew how to sing Stevie Wonder songs, but did he know how to, on a daily basis, try and erode the connection between lobbyists, lobbyists. You know, I mean, you know, one of Trump's biggest lies, because he's thinking about the swamp, and the lobbyists, you know, he was exactly diametrical opposite of what he's actually done. And so, you're talking, I mean, it is a neoliberal thing, but it is not the definition of liberalism. I mean, certainly in British history, liberalism as a subject matter, or as a way of describing the way a group of people wanted to run the country, really started in the 1890s.

The 1980s with the Fabian Society, and the beginning of socialism, and all of that, which translated into sort of a welfare state, the earliest welfare state, if you like, in the world, which was David Lloyd George in 1917 during the First World War started, the first beginnings of the National Health Service. So the fact is that that kind of liberalism was a direct reaction to the sort of incredibly corrosive British cloud system, which wasn't corporatist, it was actually genetic. And, you know, if you weren't pointing to a certain class, there were many things you could not do. And so, which is still the case. It is, but the original liberals and the original humanitarians, like George Bernard Shaw and people of that ilk, in this country too, and the suffragettes and all those people wanted equal rights and wanted human rights to be at the forefront of political conversation.

That was great. But then suddenly when America achieved its post World War II prosperity, everything quickly changed when it became obvious that one needed large corporations to service a consumer society, and reached its sort of apotheosis, I think, actually in the 70s. And so, you know, now we're here we are, you know, and here we are with massive pharma, which seems to care a little for anyone, except their profits, with massive propaganda on the media from big pharma. And, you know, we're looking at it and going, "Oh God, this is awful." Well, you can't destroy it, like overnight. And by the way, if we did destroy it overnight and had some kind of anarchic takeover, would the toilets flush?

Would people with diabetes get their diabetes pens? No. So it has to be a very considered and thought out, both political and cultural and social and political strategy, not tactics, strategy. And, you know, I think people are beginning to see this. And to me, it does. That's exactly the antidote. And to me, I think the secret that a lot of people want to overlook when we're talking about these big issues is that it starts with your own self. Because if it doesn't, like when we look at big pharma, it's such an easy thing. It's like Monsanto. It's like, "Oh my God, holy shit, what the fuck are they doing?

They're unleashing an opioid epidemic. They're jacking prices, withholding care essentially from people." Like, "What the fuck?" But there's something in each of those people. And here's the one thing, I guess at this point, I do agree that corporations are people because they have their own ethos. They have their own operating systems. They have their own reactions and likes and dislikes. And it's a weird thing to think of this non-physical entity that is really just the sum of the parts as functioning, but if we can just start looking at corporations and trying to get them to just ethically think from a human personal level.

And this is idealistic. A company like Coca-Cola, as much as I would say, I don't enjoy a Coke from time to time, it's delicious. They're trying now, I just read that they're trying to get them into the weight loss programs federally. It's absurd. I think there is a place for sugary sodas in our life, if that's what you want to indulge in. But when that overtakes the well-being and welfare of the people who are drinking those things, that's when we have to start looking individually at ourselves and saying, "What can we do to make this?" "What can we do to make this better?" I think the trajectory is ultimately a very, very long one, but I think the impacts from starting with yourself can be felt, quite honestly, in a very short period of time.

If you take us like a delic with intention, if you sort of meditation practice or an exercise habit or whatever it is, you start seeing results like truthfully within days. And that's how quickly you can begin to change your kind of universe around you, 5 feet, 10 feet, 15 feet around you. And if everyone just starts there instead of trying to blame other people, and I use this, we've spoken about this, as we've spoken about, I've had a difficult financial period for the past year and a half as my expenses have increased and my finances have gone down. And my first, and still, quite honestly, at various times, my natural tendency is to blame everyone else. But when I start to do that, it just digs me deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper until I finally pop out of Ingo, you know what? Maybe it is other people's problems, the actual practical things that happen, but you're dwelling on them.

You're continuing to make this choice time and time again. And that's on you. That's you serving yourself or not serving yourself. So I think that's constantly why I come back to that as much as possible, because if we use some of the other tools at our disposal, if we cultivate, you know, perspectival views so we can get a sense of what's going on, but really just focus on ourselves and what would make our lives better. And the answer is almost never money. I think sometimes it is. I'd argue in my case right now, money would definitely help, but really, it's much deeper than that. It's how we function in the world. How do we adapt to a shifting landscape where, whether we want to admit it or not, the world we're living in today is dramatically different than the world we were living in a year ago.

People want to say 10 years ago, 15 years ago, a year ago, our world is completely different, and that will continue to happen. And I think the thing for us to latch on to is just work on yourself, whatever that means. It doesn't mean you start with anger, you start with forgiveness, but you start with what your pressing issue is, which I guarantee you, when you start to look at your life and reflect and think about it and intuit it, you know what your issues are. So start there, take baby steps, recognize you also have a community of people, whether you believe it or not, who are so down to help you with all of this stuff at any point, whether it's your friends, your family, social media friends, whatever it is, they're not different.

Anyone who can help you on your path with your things is a friend indeed. So, you know, utilize it. And I think that's, that's kind of the overarching message. I think of this entire conversation we're having, and probably most of our chats, you know, informal and podcast the lake. Yes. Well, you know, these days I look at it as being this sort of strange paradox of the ultimate cottage industry as your family. And to fit that cottage industry into a global village, two cliches together, but there is something about this dynamic which is redemptive. The democratization of communication, if net neutrality is maintained, which is extraordinarily important to the future of the world, if that is maintained, and one can, shall we say, pass on and pass forward individual experience of some kind of progress within one's own small world, be it fair trade, be it the way you've learned how to eat, and you can pass that on to other people.

That means that it's really a miraculous thing, actually, that you don't need to go through a middleman. Someone asked me yesterday what I put in my smoothie every day. And I've only been doing this for about, I don't know, three years now. And previous to that I was a completely silly eater. I didn't, you know, I really didn't give a shit. And then as I got closer to, you know, some kind of disintegration of my body, I began to understand there's some things you can do and started to learn how to take vegetables into my system and fruits and how to mix them and all of this stuff. And someone asked me yesterday what I put in my smoothie, you know. So that was just a phone. That's just a phone.

But nevertheless, it's a communication tool. And I was able to tell that person, and I've been on the receiving end much more than I've been on the other end of this, whereby people said to me, oh, you're still eating that, and you think that's cool. And you exercise and all kinds of simple stuff, which makes people make people more, shall we say, fit into not only your own ideal of what it is to be a thoughtful, compassionate, sensitive human being, and other people. So, you know, we've talked about this a lot. I think the internet and the whole deal of the personalization of communication, obviously, it's dark and light.

I mean, I see people saying things on Facebook, which are just ridiculous or hateful, but I also see people who are saying things that I look at and go, I'll do that. I'm going to do that. That person doesn't know me and never will, but it's kind of a spiritual communique. Let's put it that way. You know, you put it out there because you know it works. And I'm not just talking about putting the latest, you know, Pink Floyd video from 40 years ago, nothing wrong with that. But it's diet. It's the way you order your own life. It's information about child rearing. It's information about the animal population, all of this stuff.

Ah, my goodness. It's a different thing from what existed, you know, not that long ago when you choose a book and you read it, or you do this, you do that. But you weren't choosing a book and reading and then recommending it to millions of people, or potentially a few hundred or a thousand people in your own feed. That is definitely progress. The question is whether it becomes obsessive and whether it becomes just an organ of gossip or disapproval or whatever. It's better. It's a better use to, you know, like I worked a long time ago for a group called the National Coalition to End Homelessness.

And the reason I worked for them for a while, I made films for them, or helped make films for the crew of people, was because what they did was that they found places in the United States who were doing good things for people who, for whatever reasons, lives were broken. And they were living on the streets or whatever. And they found where models, and then they would transmit those models to other cities. And whether they fit, whether it's Seattle, fit in New York, it's questionable. But at least those models were communicated and they had some effect. And, you know, I believe that that was one of the more spiritual things I've ever put Angie into, if you like, because, you know, we made a film about, in fact, about something in the Pacific Northwest at one point, an attitude of a mayor and a city council towards how to end homelessness.

And towns like Phoenix and in the south, all over the country, there are places where politicians and others have found ways to, you know, build tiny houses for practically nothing, build communities. Think about what that community did. I read something a few days ago about, you build stoops in these communities. So there's an obvious way of communicating without awkwardness between people who are being healed because they have a roof over there. Right. And these kinds of paradigms that are being transmitted via incredibly miraculous forms of communication, instantaneous. I can't see anything wrong with that. And I can only see good coming from it. And again, that comes from, you know, our individual ability to see, like for instance, you know, homelessness has increased in New York City, as you probably know.

And I'm constantly trying to find out why. There are certain sort of obvious things, but it's a bit remarkable to me that even during Koch and Giuliani, and certainly Giuliani's no, you know, no icon, there was a decrease in homelessness. And some of it was kind of harsh, but some of it was actually thought out. And now, when I go into Manhattan, it's just ridiculous. I mean, I'm seeing so many more people who are completely broken and are living terrible lives in the streets through summer and winter through the humidity and heat and the icy cold of winter. And why is this happening? You know, why is it happening? And I don't know why. It's got something to do with, you mentioned before, austerity programs and cutting certain government programs.

But it's also something to do with a kind of me toism in major metropolitan areas where the entire of the island of Manhattan is being dominated now by, you know, sort of gentlemen and gentle lady renters and buyers of buildings who live actually, most of the time in Riyadh or Shanghai or St. Petersburg, and by these places, then no one else can afford. You know, we're talking about rents of 15 to 20, $20,000 a month, folks. What kind of people are populating the inner city of New York? David Byrne wrote a brilliant article. He's an idol, sort of an idol of mine. And I've met him or anything, but I did see a lot of him when he was talking hands and other people. And he wrote an article, which is fantastic article about why artists have left the island of Banan.

And he put it quite simply. He said it's because of Latlewood. Prices have gone up and gentrification has created home for people who have other homes and people who used to make music and live in certain parts of the lower side and other parts of town. And no longer there. And are they in Brooklyn? Well, barely. You know, Brooklyn is already, you know, a commercial, you know, sort of, I don't know, a waterfall of money coming to certain people. That's right. And the artists and the people who are stricken with various forms of poverty are driven out. Now, I did they go and live in, I don't know, Australia or Ohio, or they're on the street. I think they have a hundred calories.

I think we have a few things there too. Like one is, I think homelessness is at least why I was living in New York. I lived there for eight, nine years. I saw a dramatic increase, not only in the amount of homeless people, but the age demographic of the homeless people started skewing lower and lower and lower. Everyone knows that if you're around St. Mark's on second Avenue, there's a group of like, you know, young rap scallions who have been there forever. But I think what's happening is, is it's not just in New York City and having been to LA, I mean, compared to how many homeless people are there, it's like nothing.

But I think that this opioid epidemic is we're just beginning to see the effects. And when I say just beginning, I think it's like 50, 60,000 people a year die from opioids. So that's the beginning. And I think this is, I don't think a purposeful eradication, but nevertheless an eradication of a lower class of people who do not have the means to dig themselves out. Listen, let me put it this way. If your family doesn't have money, and you want to go to college, if that's something you want to do, and you want to move up the class chain, it's virtually impossible. When you throw in drugs and addictive drugs that diminish ability, competency, capability, you're pretty much screwed.

You're dealt a losing hand in every single scenario. And I think that starts to trickle into our major metropolitan areas. I mean, the other thing you were mentioning about the creative class is something that I've spoken about, or with all of my creative friends from having gone to a music school to just feeling my classes, the creative class. This is exactly what you're saying is true. Manhattan is almost not for creatives anymore. There are so few places that you can actually live in Manhattan as a creative person without making a significant salary. Brooklyn is essentially just the same now. People will say, "I live here. I live here." Those places that you would be like, "Oh, my God, you live there are now like, "Oh, wow, that's a nice area."

So it's pushing people out. Now, what I have been seeing happen, having moved to upstate New York regularly, is across the river from where we live in Kingston, there's a huge creative class emerging, because instead of rents being $1,500 for a studio, $900 gets you a tube bed. So it starts to become an effective place, and I think this is going to kind of move these creative communities to the places where they can survive. I think it's just like water trickling down a major river into tributaries. The places where it can pool and create an ecosystem, that's what's going to happen now. For those of us who love the culture, and I was too young to really remember it, but the 90s in the New York City and the 80s in the city, these were amazing times where the creative class was taking over Lower Manhattan.

The Lower East Side was just an incredible place for it, and don't get me wrong, there's still galleries down there, there's still tons of people who live. I can do stuff there. It's just becoming harder and harder. I think it just speaks to the shifting sands of our culture. I don't think in any way it diminishes the overall cumulative effect. In some ways, I think it strengthens. I think art is a reflection of our cultural state, and it evokes the real truths and realities that are coming out. It's happening, but again, we're going to have to deal with this. It's one of the things I can say that I'm really happy about moving to a local community is the prospect of being able to make an impact in that community.

Doing things positively locally. It's not a huge place. It's 10,000, 12,000 people right now, which means you really have an ability to strengthen certain things. That, to me, is incredibly encouraging. I'm pretty much up. There's a baby in here. I'll take that as our cue, David. Once that happens, once... No, they rule us. They rule us some babies. They rule us. I think I asked you the last questions last time, but I'll do it again. We'll see if your answers match up. Oh, God. What's your favorite color? This point is changed, because I'm doing a lot of painting now. Oh, cool. Yeah, I've started painting.

Oh, amazing. I've done many. It seems that my favorite color has changed from a kind of navy blue to a dark green. Oh, I love it. I love it. That's the right and the same spectrum there, our word of the cast. What's your favorite number? It remains...well, actually, I think that it's still...it's either 7 or 12. Oh, 12. What's the significance of 12? Well, I don't know. It's a visceral thing. I just, you know, when I see something as the 12th or something, or there's 12 of them, I feel a kind of completion, and, you know, I really don't know why. I certainly...I mean, I know the numbers that are not, and they're basically, you know, odd numbers.

3 doesn't mean much to me, even though it is a Trinity. 5 means zero. 7, I like. 9...no. 11...woo! It puts fear into me. It's the 11th hour. It's the 11th hour. Well, no, I think it's because it's so hard to multiply 11. It's just like, what are, you know, what are 14 11s? Oh, you know, so 12 is easy to very easy to multiply and easy to divide, and 1 and 2 equals 3, which is the Trinity. And, you know, so, yeah, those are my answers to that. What's your favorite animal? Oh, well, at this point, because of my little friend here who's sitting behind my iMac, and sort of listening, it's my cat. But I do...I had occasion to meet a camel not that long ago, and I didn't think I'd ever get near a camel, because I was totally spat and they did all kinds of things. This one didn't do any of that.

And it was very gentle and lovely. But I have to say, it's still the feline tribe. Do you want to pray? I know. I do that. I do that. I do that. I'm thirds and leopards, and my daughter and I, many years ago, went to see the famous rare white snow leopard in the Bronx Zoo, and we couldn't speak. It was just so incredibly beautiful and also fierce, but, you know, unfortunately, that was the one that killed a keeper, because of some mistake that he made, I think. But, you know, one can't blame the animal. I couldn't believe the beauty of this being. It was just astonishing to me. On my trip to Vermont last week, when we were getting into the more into Vermont, we were on a highway, and I saw a baby black bear, a shiny bear, run across very skillfully many lanes of traffic, and run up a bank, a sort of green grassy bank, right next to where we were.

And the way this bear ran up there, it was like a cartoon. I couldn't, you know, it was like looking at adivational acid. It was just so adorable, and so bears have come into my hand. I love it. I love it. You're given the trifecta of animals there. All right, last question. What is a practical tip that if you have learned in your life that you could share with people listening, that has helped you? In a conversation or dialogue, leave a few seconds or microseconds, whatever, before answering anything. Diviolated that. Every single episode of every single podcast I've ever put out. I know, but in my case, I was a debater, you know, a college, and sort of a successful one, if you like.

And I was on the case, you know, and it took me years to get over that, and to not just jump on people, because I so disagreeed, or I so wanted to make my point, or I so wanted, you know, the women in the room to like me. You know, I just have learned to pause a little bit. It's smart. I'm trying to pause. I'm finding it impossible to do, but I'm going to work on that. I'm going to cultivate that conversational space as much as I can. David, thank you for doing this. Enjoy. We'll catch up soon. It's a joy to hear opinions and it's a joy to have this, any kind of dialectic with you. Likewise, man. We'll be in touch soon.

All right, man. Thank you. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Thank you for listening past the music. You're the coolest for doing that. Reminder, if you like the music and want to download anything you hear on this episode or podcast, you can go to patreon.com/synchronicity. Get your spelling hats out. For those of you who don't know how to spell synchronicity, it's easy. Go there. Pledge the $9 reward tier package thing, and you will get instant access to all of my music that you have heard ever on the show, or will hear on the show. It is routinely updated as I put new stuff out.

So, do that. If you're interested, thank you as always to everyone who supports and contributes, rates and reviews, subscribes, all those things really help the show grow. I think I pointed out on social media, Twitter and Facebook. But, you know, the show is closing in on 500,000 downloads. I'm hitting download records every single month. It's really growing at a nice clip, and that's thanks to you, truthfully. So, thank you for doing that. Big shout out to Patrick Nemczyk, who is just the coolest. You can hear me. This guy is the coolest. Just know that. That's it. I will see you next week. The grill is shot. The chairs are held together by optimism.

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