Hey fellow G and here's those of us like our spirituality with a twist. So we are talking about CO. It's a passion topic of Daniels to revisit CO a little bit every year around what we might call what co birthday time co anniversary time.

Yeah.

Coverversary.

Yeah. Yeah. Coined the phrase. It's going to catch on like hotcakes. Um, so, uh, and it could seem funny to be talking about events from years ago when the US is so like [...] up in the present, specifically on the eve when we're recording this of what could be a disastrous ground war with Iran that would look Vietnam look awesome. But the point and I think this is a deep point that you have within the heart of this Daniel is that these current events that that we're in are entwined with the sort of PTSD COVID kind of thing. This sort of unresolved like trauma around these events. So last week we kind of introduced the subject. We talked about certain aspects of this and this week I think Daniel from your side you really want to focus on kind of two big ideas and wherever else the conversation takes us. But especially this notion of like decentralization and what happened with this

and then also kind of like the difference between being in a MI state and a Wii state as a you know kind of that that notion right are we in a a me time or a Wii time and what's going to happen with that? So I'll throw the mic over to you. I'm curious to hear what you got in terms of these and

yeah, thanks for sharing it.

Yeah. No, of course. Thanks. And and audience audience, thanks so much for for tuning in. You know, we we appreciate it. Um you know, smash that like button, hit the like button if it's available for you, you know, subscribe, all that other kind of stuff. Uh you know, our work is is free, so we just we we like audience interaction and we like, you know, people uh sharing things and whatever. So, comment, you know, send us a question or, you know, comment all that. uh it it helps the show grow and for other people to see it and hear it as well. So uh thank you so much ahead of time uh without further delay. So yeah, Eric brought this idea up of decentralization and and we're going to talk about that in a in a number of different fashion uh facets as what occurred essentially during co but you know one of the things that I want to clarify is that like that that time period co did not necessarily cause it. I think co accelerated what was already kind of happening and like anything in life you're going to get a boomerang effect. So that's where we'll end up talking about this like me and we scenario. So, okay. So, we're talking about decentralization then where what what avenues of life became decentralized and there's a couple ones here and Eric feel free to jump in at any point right work people doing remote work um and not just like remote working out of the office but like really remote like moving away living in you know there's a lot of people if you remember during co were like getting these vans and like living in the middle of nowhere and and you know working from satellite and on you know so that was like that was one of the things but then the boomerang effect to that is that then it was like oh no everybody's coming back to work that that online [...] is dead you're not we're not doing that anymore or if we are we're doing it one day and it became a much uh larger control over it whereas before people were were talking about 4 day work weeks actually for quite some time you know in terms of commuting and and things like this it's just more effective to work four 10hour days than 5 eight hour days those conversations are not occurring anymore. I think the two words that jump out to me in that was like the word control that there was sort of a reasserting of control, right? Mhm.

So like in some ways control kind of like uh I don't want to say totally faltered but slightly faltered lost some things went kind of out of control

and then uh uh and then it was like well no

no we're reasserting that and then I think on that part there was a big debate about like productivity right wait a minute we're really super productive what the [...] you know we don't have to work as much we don't have to do this as much and then and then like that got to be that got to be a risky proposition too because the next thing you know once you have to acknowledge that well maybe I should only have to work this number of hours a week you know look at my productivity and uh the control mechanism is uh no uh we're not going to let you do get away with that either

correct

let alone that you might ask for some more money the answer is no

and things went back to like full-on grind in the aftermath of that actually that's a kind of a big ricochet in the way that you're framing it was No, we're not doing that.

And we're not even going to acknowledge that that that's even a thing yet.

No, no, we're letting that go.

Um, and so we talked a little bit then about the the sort of geographical decentralization. People, a lot of people left large cities because they could be remote and enjoyed that. You know, you had like uh the move to the suburbs which hadffecting on on house housing housing prices and stuff like this. Um, and then the movement of people to other cities, right, that that weren't necessarily as popular before all of a sudden became super popular. So in Montana like Billings and Bosezeman, um, other places, you know, like you can call them blue cities and red states, right? So, Austin, Nashville, you know, these places where people like, "Oh, I want a different kind of environment, you know, but then other suburbs around those areas too that that were not maybe as popular before all of a sudden now had this like influx of people that weren't there previously." Um, another another aspect of this is like the the decentralization of information. We touched on this a little bit last week, actually quite a bit. And so I'm not going to talk too much about it now other than to just highlight that the decentralization of information really is a a movement away towards like uh traditional news programs, you know, they call like linear TV. So in the beginning of co you had maybe Netflix and by the end of it there's like uh as the the the Bay Area word hella you had hella uh streaming pop options for yourself to the point where like streaming if you have all the streaming options your bill is going to be way more than cable ever was.

Yeah. Everyone's Everyone's debating that. I want to watch this one thing

that's going to cost me $15 a month or something like that to do it,

right?

I gotta watch We talked about a little bit off mic. This is like this the the light conversation of the thing, but I got to watch the second season of Daredevil Born Again. Is that what it is?

Yes. And again, our reviews first season that that it's reasons, but anyways, um I'm recatching a little bits of the first season, watch the second season, and yeah, you're like, how much is this Disney going to cost me show?

Yeah, but I think during co it was like, you know, I never watched any of that stuff, but like people you don't want to just sit around and watch like Lizard King. Wasn't that Wasn't that a thing?

Uh Tiger King.

Oh, Tiger Oh, Tiger King. Lizard King is the Orson from the Dorks. No one gives a [...] about that.

Tiger King, that was the one. And there was other [...] like that that was like completely COVID time stuff. I guess when they do the

20 years from now when all the Gen Zers want to watch nostalgic [...] about this,

right?

They can watch that. Um I guess you know like just I'll go back and give some feedback on some of the stuff you shared too. The city thing is kind of interesting. I guess we'll get to it, but I was listening to Robert Pap who's a University of Chicago professor and an expert on like military things and political things because I'm keeping track of the war stuff.

And uh interesting with your decentralization, he's talking like I guess he's writing a whole book about it, but fragmentation.

Yeah.

That thing's fragmented. So that's another way of putting similar vocab. Yeah.

Yeah.

Fragmentation even a little bit more ominous sounding or something

probably.

Yeah. And with the idea that like even in these areas that would have otherwise be like red states, if you start getting a bunch of blue people in these red states, there's tension, right? There's real tension over that.

So, you know, anyways, it just hit me from what you were talking about.

Yeah. And so this the decentralization of information is that people then going to podcasts and online sources and you know various news outlets that before had a following but then all of a sudden they can break off and create their own media you know so you had like you know on the on the you know Ben Shapiro became infinitely more popular and look at Tucker Carlson left Fox News got his own thing Candace Owens got her own thing uh Medie Hassan started Zateo and you had uh Kyle and Crystal and Sager left the Hill and went and started Breaking Point. So, you know, you have a bunch of different people that left what you would consider larger things and started their own thing and did well and like quickly. It wasn't it didn't take like years like how it used to take years to build a following. You built, you know, you went viral a couple times and all of a sudden, you know, you have a half a million subscribers and now you're you're on your way to really doing it. So, and they they're garnering views. These are people who are not on quote unquote TV. They're on YouTube and they're on, you know, whatever, maybe Substack or Rumble or whatever it is that they're they're doing their thing on. But people go lots of people view their stuff and that's their source of information. So, information now is no longer, you know, primarily sourced on on traditional television. And it's definitely far more independent or decentralized as I'm you know the word that I'm using here is that

I think that was like I think you're right in the time frame on that if I get a little autobiographic maybe

because I think like at some point during Trump one

there got to be this weird effect like I better get like some different perspectives on what's going on here

and things begin to kind of like spread out. You can tell like

as I guess it runs through the toxicity in the culture was already sort of there like fermenting and fermenting. I guess those could be the two words you could use. And then it like exploded during this crisis.

But you know the seeds were already kind of planted and I know if I look back at my own way I was like taking in things all of a sudden everything got much more broad because I needed other ways of seeing the world. like what was happening from standard sources just didn't seem sufficient anymore. So anyways, probably all of us have our own

autobiographical tales around that. But yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And then uh the last kind of part before we do the other side would be like education. You have tons and tons of people who are, you know, what you consider influencers, right? That are selling you supplements or selling you coaching or selling you, you know, and coaching is like that's education online. They call it coaching, right? But it could be business coaching, health coaching, life coaching, any kind of co, you know, spiritual coaching, astrological, all sorts of stuff. Like that whole industry exploded, exploded with experts. And these people are not traditionally trained. They don't have like a classic education in X Y or Z. They're sort of people with experience, self-proclaimed experts. And then once you have a large enough following, then you have uh market share. That's kind of how you you know and that people spend money and time on this kind of a thing and they look to it as it's entrepreneurial for sure. So I I'm not if it sounds like I'm bashing it, I'm not. I'm just saying that did not exist in the same way that it did before where people would go and seek and spend 8 10 15 20,000 and these are regular people on different kinds of, you know, what I'm calling coaching, but really we could say is education, you know, um that wasn't present in the in the way that it was prior to the the really the more permanent move online, right? our our lives permanently moved online during this time and this was definitely one of the things that came out of it.

Yeah, I guess that's true. I mean like my son's like a little he's a little chess player. I guess you'd say he's a little chess prodigy. I know of like something like that,

you know. I got like a little chess thing in his room behind me where I do this pod. And a lot of that became like online chess education stuff was such a big thing, you know, for like the little

the little rugrats who were learning their things during that time period because he was like second grader or something in that window of time, right?

And like I guess what you're saying is like education in some ways and that information around that kind of decentralized.

Yeah. Um, well, I guess some commentary on that since we're doing like a back and forth on it. I'll get I'll throw some things out and you can give me what you think about this. But I think that's part of like Maha, isn't it? Didn't that translate into the Maha thing? And that's the mixed bag of this, I suppose, right? On the one hand, you can get like new sources of things that can be inspiring or interesting or things you wouldn't otherwise have access to. On the other side, you can get a whole bunch of like quack quackery level [...] out that can flood out. And I guess I mean if you want to look at the positive and the negatives I guess that would be Maha and Maha like probably no bueno probably bad right?

And so you get like those kinds of problems that come out of that which was like based in a kind of a entrepreneurialism. You're framing the positive side of it. I'll frame I guess the negative side of it on some level because the minute you get into that kind of stuff you get a lot of quack [...] out.

Yeah. And it's like there's a real problem with like quackery.

It's the um distrust of institutional knowledge, the distrust of dis institutional information. And it's highlighted most uh poignantly with like this education and healthcare piece because during that period was you know all these experts and everybody who went to school and and should know about you know um not epistemology but veriology and public health and soology.

Yeah. Epistemology. Yeah. like we should know about this and yet they were wrong or intentionally hiding or you know people realize that experts are human beings and that they make they make mistakes as well and so they

extraordinary circumstances where there was like you know that's a weird situ I didn't talk I'm sorry but that's a weird situation isn't it right we're medical people all of a sudden like man this is [...] up what are we going to do yet you still have to project some kind of confidence that you don't really have the right to claim it was totally [...] up agreed

right but people who might hear this who are, you know, more on the conspiratorial side, which we are, um, might say, well, that's you're we're covering for people who are trying to lead society in a certain way. I am not necessarily doing that. I'm just saying people make mistakes and, you know, you you're under a lot of, like you said, you're under a lot of pressure. Those people were under a lot of pressure and they were and who knows what the pressure where the pressure was coming from, what the pressure was on to try and move uh, the public health in a certain way. I'm not sure. Uh I'm just saying that I'm not here to give a judgment on it. I'm here to just to call what what occurred and the fragmentation of that as you used earlier definitely occurred

or like a weird mix. Some people were honest actors who were under duress trying to do the best they can under extraordinary medical circumstances and some of those people were sneaky [...]

Yes.

Who were like doing things that were questionable and it it stretches across like a wide gamut of people, right? I mean, we talked about that in the last episode. Some of that stuff around

COVID information control of what would be sources that you might say were more on the left and we tried to be fair, right?

And Trump,

there's no doubt. I'm not going to pretend that I'm not, but I'll also call things on both sides when it's wrong. And there was some devious stuff around some of those actors like an Anthony Fouchy if you want to like look at it objectively, you know. Yeah,

it was weird because he like flashing back to co times, there was a bakery up the street where they were doing like Anthony Fouchy themed cupcakes and stuff trying to like get people to like be positive towards him. And at the time it seemed funny and cool or whatever. And you look back at that and you're like, you want to spit out your Anthony Fouchy cupcake because it turned out that he was a fraud in many ways. And we can we can self-ressearch this.

Yeah. Yeah. But there were some devious things going on before we totally give up the quackery thing. Okay, I'm give hot take. You might not like this take, Daniel. We'll see. But like it's like the Professor Jeang world, too. Uh oh, I'm going there. I'm going to say it. He's kind of quacky, right?

And uh I it's a very painful thing on some level because I admire his story. If you don't know him, he's like superstar exploding. He's kind of like the Jordan Peterson of the moment or something.

Totally. Yeah,

like a grand rocket ship.

Yeah.

You know, there's like some news shows I listen to like a breaking points you mentioned earlier, you know, with uh Crystal Ball Saga and Jetty and other people.

Ryan Grim also really awesome on that thing. So, yeah, I think a kind of a nice new show with a diversity of opinion on it.

Um, and I think their episode with Professor Jeang like exploded to like 10 million views or something.

Yes, that's their most that's their that's their highest uh view interview ever. And there's so I decided to listen and again I find his story very moving. He was a guy who was Chinese descent ended up growing up in Canada faced a lot of like hostility as kind of a Chinese kid growing up in Canada kind of poor eventually got into Yale and I was like oh this is a nice story. I kind of resonate with that part and then

and he he has his predictive stuff and you know whatever you know he tries to do these predictive history things and some of it's really [...] quacky. So anyways, hot take for what it's worth, but you're like, man, this is some quacky ass [...] you know, because it'll get to the point where he's like,

uh, uh, oh god, the Rosaian and the belie in a secret society that are going to try to take over the world. You're like, dude, come on.

Well, he believe he believes in

Yeah,

he believes in the occult,

you know. He still does. But anyways anyways, I disagree. We're moving on. Um,

no. I got to do ONE MORE THING BECAUSE THEN HE'S ON TUCKER Carlson and he's going on about like the great replacement theory.

I'm going to call it. We can drop it then, Daniel.

Yeah. Yeah.

He's doing Great Replacement on Tucker. I'm calling it Jordan Peterson. H called. Anyways, we'll let it go.

Yeah. Yeah. He's not white, but he, you know, he's Chinese.

He's going to call that like Western culture is replacing itself. That's his call on Tucker Carlson. Check it out for yourself, dear listeners. Yeah. I mean, you can see he's a

I've I've listened to like probably 20 hours of his lectures, so I you know, I feel pretty confident in in my view of him, but we're not going there. Um anyways, uh I I I I personally think that anytime you're going to make

I've done I've done the listen to now, so I caught up not 20 hours, but I've caught up.

Yeah, I was in many lectures. I mean, anytime you're going to do predictive stuff, you're going to be right on some you're going to be wrong a lot, but he tends to be right on on a lot of different things. And I think that

I will make predict predictive history as we go forward. It'll get more and more devious and you'll like it less and less. That's my prediction.

That's fair. That's fair.

Professor Eric made a prediction.

That's fair.

It'll get creepier and creepier as it goes. But okay.

Okay. So, so the boomerang the boomerang then the the opposite of this stuff of the of the decentralization where you know we could say might have some positive attributes. the the kind of like the societal response, the structural response, the institutional response is control and the the the control comes in in a few forms. Uh but one of which is like the really the dominance of tech and if you look at this even from like an S&P perspective, I mean the market is only up because of like the Magnificent 7. Other than that, 1%. I mean, it was before the war up like 1% year-over-year. That's nothing. So, you're talking 490 companies uh an increase of 1% year-over-year, right? So, that dominance is not only in the financial sector, but it's in the the use case sector of normal citizens, right? So our reliance on these platforms has gone up dramatically has gone up you know you know to the where to the point where they're almost like institutions like Amazon is almost an institution you know they they do so much commerce like you almost have to use them in order to compete at this point so whereas

in the world almost right you almost can't live without it kind of right

yes well if you're trying to sell you know

yeah okay you're going from that point of view too but even as a consumer it's hard to get around it on some level right Sure.

And and so what it is essentially is like it's a middleman

and the middlemen now have like inserted themselves into what it is that we are trying to do live and consume and and whatever that case is. So and that where that once was like a luxury like you said it's become far more of almost like a necessity

that is like kind of a paradox of centralization decentralization because they're kind of centralizing power. So you're getting kind of a paradoxical effect here.

Yes. That's the boomerang. Okay, that's the boomerang. Oh, gotcha.

That's exactly what happened. And the idea that that was going on beforehand, but now it's like accelerated.

Totally.

Due to the chaos of that time and how much people had to rely on these these tools, right? Everything got taught. Okay, I get it.

You You got it. Okay, good. Now you're smelling me now. Yeah. Um and then obviously government expansion. So, you know, you had like the mask mandates and all those other kind of like controls that were implemented and then were were moved away. But at the same time, the this kind of like I mean, hell, we don't got to we don't got to be [...] Like there's there's people on the streets, you know, stealing other human beings and putting them in in camps and those camps are owned by jail people. They're owned by prison the prison lobby. I like that's the that's the other side of it, you know, the other side. This is this is the other thing, right? And and it's

and that's part of your boomerang idea that there was idea that all of a sudden there we're going to clamp down control.

We're going to clamp down.

So things got it's almost like um I was thinking about earlier. It's almost like the snow globe got shook. Everything got like up in the air and all this is like nope nope nope. We're going to push everything back under

some more control.

Yeah. And then and if you if you kind of mix that in with the business sector with corporations, you know, you look at and and tying this back with the tech piece, you know, there's the the the implementation of AI, what's the big scare about it, right? Is surveillance and data, right? and the the profiling of the citizens who live here to be controlled so that they know who their opposition is and what they're saying, what they're doing, if there's any kind of, you know, movement or anything else against the against the regime. You know, this is this is the total opposite of freedom. This is the complete and utter uh revolution against that anti-revolution if you want to call it.

Yeah. It was sort of like again as like someone who lived in Chicago uh over 2025 and if you haven't been in the city where this has happened yet once you got all the ICE authorities that like invaded in Chicago I remember like talking with friends going there's helicopters here constantly y'all

all the time they're flying over my neighborhood all the time as we you know I live in a decently bougie neighborhood but they were like flying like incessantly. And I remember talking with people who lived like not in the city proper but out in the suburbs and I was going like I can't tell you how many helicopters are flying over my neighborhood and I be talking to a friend on the phone and there'd be like three or four of them.

I got one friend who's really into the whole tech world as part of his professional life and he was like you know they're just surveilling you. That's

all they're doing. They're just collecting information and surveilling you so they'll know where they're pinging everybody's phones so they want to know where people are and it's all just sort of that Oracle

or who what's the palunteer? Ah Palunteer,

you know those surveillance and you know companies that are like tied into the federal government. Yeah.

Yeah. So that and so basically and then the last kind of other one we talked about the decentralization of media but the opposite to that is that you have essentially you know one person now or one conglomerate that owns you know they're buying Warner Brothers they own Paramount they own Tik Tok that you know it's one that's a monopoly that's all one that's all one entity that owns all of those things. Yes, that's not everything.

Not disentangled from the state.

No, not disentangled at all. So this is So on one hand, people are going away from these things, but then on the other hand, these things are consolidating and they're trying to infiltrate downwards, you know, to try and capture more attention, which as I've said before is the most valuable commodity today by a long shot. Not Bitcoin, not uh Dogecoin, your attention. So anyway, so that's the that's the kind of that's the boomerang effect. That's like that's what's occurred. That's why we that's why we are where we are.

For people who don't know that whole thing of like CBS and who else is it? Paramount's under that umbrella. They're acquiring Warner Brothers, right?

Paramount. Yes.

Is all under that. And that's like that's like being owned under this kind of very right-wing kind of ownership. If you don't know the backstory, you can do a little research for yourself there. Yeah.

Uh listener, but you can go further and you can kind of see how that happened, right?

With a lot of this sort of consolidation. I That's a very interesting question. Like in a fragmented world, how much how much benefit will you get out of doing that to like try to like I don't know what I think about that. Influence and manipulate people. If you own CBS, does anyone care anymore? Can you influence people through that or not? It's not like we were talking a little bit maybe Nam Chosky stuff earlier. again kind of a character that's a little bit harder to talk about now because of his connection to the Epstein files,

right?

But, you know, still like obviously you can't discredit everything the guy did because of you know uh that part though I don't know how serious that part is. we could but in any case there were things he produced that did have value right

and uh you know the whole manufacturing consent idea is the tension right so this is a very famous book

and you know his whole point was that when you get these cultural centralized institutions they'll try to force and manufacture consent

you know kind of get everyone's like you're saying the the most valuable commodity is your mind right

correct

try to get the mind and we'll try to force that all going in some direction that's his famous concept So, it's a kind of there's a weird tension there, isn't there? And I don't know how this fits into your framing of it, but like exactly there's dispersed opportunities to hear different things and then there's this massive kind of thing of trying to like reconsolidate and force and it's very bizarre times for that reason, right?

And that brings us to our uh our article from the Harvard Gazette

written by uh Brett Milano in February of 2021. And this is um this is a discussion on this we talked about this at the beginning of the show this movement from me to we or we to me. So if if we think about this from a societal perspective right we're talking about these forces of like divergence and convergence. Okay. So if we think about post World War II it's the New Deal. It's an expansion of the suburbs and people who want to procreate and communities are suburbs like everybody comes back and they want to like live and build and do stuff. Very community focused.

That kind of thing that started in the 30s going to the 40s and afterwards this idea of like this is a time of like shared collective action on some level. Correct.

Correct. And you can include this you can include the civil rights movement in that as well.

Eventually it stretches forward. Right.

Yeah. And then, you know, this article probably says it starts to shift in like the 80s and more towards uh more towards me. And then especially when we start get in we start getting into the 90s with technology with cell phones and then eventually the internet and you start moving more into the 2000s. Then then it just accelerates now because you have a place to be platformed essentially, you know, and then really like that that this article talks about the crash of 2008 is like that's the foot on the pedal. That's your cell phone. That's everything. It's all about, you know, because you can't trust the institutions to to run themselves, right? We had seen at that point a number of um really highprofile thievery essentially from people's 401ks. Enron being one of them. Uh who was it? What's the other guy? Bernie Maid off, right? So you

Maid Off is like a little bit earlier in time, but you know the corruption in the business world, right?

Yes. And so you're not

like depends on your age range, but Ena Enron crashed you out financially if you happen to be alive during that time period, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Real. Enron was real. And then by the time 2008 happened, that was obviously the most real of reals. We'll see what 2026 27 is.

Yeah.

But yeah, sometimes when you really can be shaken because you realize how fragile the economic underpinning is and

Right. And so it became far more individualistic then at that point, you know, and moving forward. And so the the idea is that we are in the sort of apex now of this MI time with again the the decentralization or the acceleration of the fragmentation postco moved us into this place again where you're thinking about yourself and Eric we had kind of talked about this before we started recording but the sort of individualistic idea on an existential crisis meaning COVID in particular that people were starting to rethink things but they were rethinking things for themselves. So we had a brief moment of wei during co where people were living in like or trying to exist in pods right people you were sort of exposed to right

it was kind of like you know this is kind of interesting to use the phrase but it was sort of like a little bit of a rally around the flag for a little window of time right

know like I remember watching there if we go through our our co nostalgia or something if we can say such a thing but I remember seeing I can't remember maybe it was in Italy or something everyone was under lockdown and all the people got on their balconies, you know, in the courtyards and they all started like singing together like the same

and it was kind of touching on some level, right?

Yeah.

Where there was this little thing of like a potential bonding.

Yeah.

I can say we're honest. I can say I'd say it's because we had such a divisive person at the top of our hierarchy. DJT is so [...] divisive, like purposely so.

Yeah.

That you couldn't rally. there was no possibility to rally because he was going to make everything divisive in the end anyways. He's just a divisive person, right, as a strategy. It's his whole mind is like that. He's demented obviously,

but like it was like you couldn't hold on to it on some level, but there was that feeling,

you know, and then it got like the pol the political momentum, as you would say, fragmented or decentralized or whatever you want to say.

All sudden all this oppositional stuff became like standard, you know, everything had to be pitted against one another in that.

Or maybe if you had like a an FDR type character, you went back to the New Deal, maybe things would have been different. It's possible, right? a uniter of people as opposed to a divider.

But at least as far as the experience here was and I remember thinking this at the time, okay,

this should be a time when people should be rallying together, right?

Yeah.

Like even like W rallied people together after 911.

Yeah.

Right. He rallied people,

you know, as a kind of a leader that we would say is a very questionable figure now.

Um but you know, at least he was trying to rally people, you know, but there wasn't really that wasn't going to happen. And I know have been different, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. You had President Bernie.

Oh, well. Yeah.

Would have been different. And that's I guess I find interesting your idea too, the tension of that because you could see people will sometimes be trying to surge towards a we thing

even in a me time. I mean, I remember a lot of students I was talking to during the Bernie times,

right? Bernie Sanders, right? and people were trying to like rally around this collective idea, you know, with him being sort of a figurehead representing. Does that make sense to you, Daniel? You get that, right?

Yeah.

So, a tension between the centralization, decentralization, and the tension between the miis and the we of things, right?

Because even in like that was a I mean, I think I can't remember were were we on campus together during that time? I know some people were friends with were there because I remember specifically those conversations.

Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't there. Yeah, you were already gone and done. Yeah,

I'm getting my timeline. But there's another person I remember talking about this who we both know,

right?

And I feel No, there was a lot of that thing of people trying to say, "Okay, let's fight against this and let's get collective again."

Yeah.

Or Occupy Wall Street was like that, too. Anyways. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, part of that that kind of ties in with what I'm saying. I feel like times of economic prosperity on the whole end up creating me civiliza me cultures. Times of economic uh discomfort create we because of the necessity for other people. And you know we do have to do a bit of our uh spirituality twist on things uh because this is that this is a you know kind of a philosophical psychological psychosspiritual you know podcast that uh reliance on other people is a very natural state in my in my opinion. I mean, I think that's how we survived and evolved as as a species is by relying on each other. And then this illusion of independence really is an illusion because as we've talked about many many many times before, things go in cycles. Everything comes to an end. Something starts a new and that thing comes to an end. And as this phase of you know individualism you know seems to be coming to an end just given the uncertainty of what's coming you know with all the various factors on on the war front and the economic front and with AI I mean people are still here they're not going anywhere and it's you know it might end up getting a little bit more difficult for people to survive. So, we really do need each other, you know, and how societyy's going to look coming up pretty soon, I have no idea. Nobody ever really knows. I'm not going to make any uh predictive history type of uh you know, declarations.

Good. You're going to avoid quackery. Good. I tease.

Um but I can say that we are always always always stronger together. Always in every scenario, you know, in every scenario that's the case. And the understanding of that throughout this, you know, is I think an important takeaway.

Well, you know, it's like part of like Buddhist wisdom, right? Or, you know, Dowist wisdom. You know, we kind of like frame it in two ways. I don't always feel as close to the evoc. But you could say evolutionarily involving or we know there's all those exercises meditatively as we get to the end of this podcast, we'll try to pull it into something spiritual. You're right. But you do these exercises of imagining like connecting your heart or you know what you call your heart chakra or something right but that feeling you have you know of the center of your chest you know this emotional point of connection you try to imagine connecting with all the other beings around you and it's an imagination but it's also trying to uncover you know a spiritual truth right which is you are interconnected with all the other beings around you right

and when you don't think of that interconnectivity

you're in a position of ignorance Yes.

It's part of the fundamental spiritual ignorance that like you see in the great spiritual teachings they keep trying to point out. You're not an isolated entity. You're entwined.

Yes.

With the rest of things around you.

And it's it is really interesting, you know, you frame this in all these interesting ways. Thanks, Daniel. You know, when you look at that, you know, if you if you think of things not being interconnected and you go stumbling around the world around you, it's damaging because you're you're operating from a fundamental place of ignorance, right?

Yes.

And you don't see the intricate activity of the things that you're doing. I mean, we don't want to dwell on it because it's not the point of the episode, but even if you're going to start a war and you don't see what the downstream effects of those things are going to be, you're in a point of ignorance. Well, also

the interconnectivity of how all those events are going to entwin with other things and other people and other impacts, right?

Also, don't do it by yourself.

It's illusury. Yeah.

Surprise.

You know, I mean, like if you want to go beat somebody up, better to do it with your buddies than to do it on your own.

Yeah. Any buddies left.

Well, yeah, that's

hard enough to realize that you need some buddies.

You need buddies.

Yeah. To realize that there's interconnectivity. But it's a kind of amazing thing to watch this. And I guess it it can apply to any of the processes that you've been sharing this time. But when you stumble through

from this point of ignorance, you're going to make a mess of all kinds of things because you just don't see the interconnectivity around you.

Yeah.

That's a profound point, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. And even if you think you can recentralize control over everyone, can you really do that? You know, can you recentralize control in such a like inclusive way that you're going to like dominate over this whole other interconnected collective? That doesn't seem very wise.

No,

it seems like you're you're operating from a place of ignorance, right?

Freedom and control stand on opposite ends of the spectrum to each other.

Yeah, I think that's right. That was the I mean, I mentioned this Robert Kagan guy last episode. I'm kind of wrapping up his book. He calls it liberalism versus anti-liberalism. It becomes a certain point where you realize you could put different phrases into these things and capture the same concept. Right.

But I do find this concept like fascinating what you're saying, you know, freedom and control.

Yeah.

And freedom from what you're saying me and we doesn't mean that it it means that I'm not not interconnected with the things around me. That's not freedom either, right? So both of the concepts are really interesting, right?

Yes. Yeah,

like part of my freedom is also recognizing like okay, I have to express my own authenticity. I have to pursue my spiritual path and develop myself, but that also is going to have a reverberating impact on others around me because I'm not an independent entity.

And my being able to like express my own whatever you want to call it, authenticity and more true spirit or something like that.

We've said it many times.

Yeah. Is going to have this impact on others.

Yeah. Yeah, I love the term that uh Llama Glenn uses and I don't know if he coined it or not, but it's great. Localized phenomenon. We are uh individual localized phenomenon. I just find that to be the best description for someone and their identity.

Yeah. This is like uh Glenn Hmalan Llama Glenn, one of our beloved like uh Buddhist tantric teachers, right?

Yeah. And this idea of uh well, you know, like like he'll he'll drop the Einstein quote too. Optical illusion.

Yes.

The optical illusion of thinking that you're separate from the the things around you

even on that very basic like physics level of things is an optical you know. So of course all this stuff is illusury. Yeah.

Yeah. And so there's a yeah

there's a cohesive force you know there's there's a there's tension between these two things right between freedom independence uh decentralization and then the controlling aspects and the the dominance and the things that desire your dependency upon them. There's they're on opposite sides but then there's the people who who combine it together because without us the institutions are nothing. There is no there's no such thing as an institution without people who work in it, you know, and there is there is not a freedom is a is a concept without the being that is attempting to attain it, you know, or or strive towards it.

Yeah. Freedom like, you know, is an abstract idea doesn't that's a Zen almost thing, right? Okay. If you just have a concept, it doesn't mean that much. If you can't embody it, right?

It has to be embodied in some way. I guess, you know, as we get to the end of the episode, I'm willing to be, this is the little gnostic piece of me. I'm willing to be suspicious of centralized forces because most of the time they're not working for your individual best interests or the individ. They're working for their own best interest.

And that's the that's the uh you know the whole gnostic concept, right? The archon.

Yeah.

Right. That's sort of in a way kind of parasitic and predatory. Yeah.

Or like what you said a couple of episodes ago when we were talking this through the Epstein class concept, right?

Predatory and parasitic, right?

Which is a position of spiritual ignorance because ultimately, you know, if you want to follow these things through, it might seem like it's working well for you for a certain amount of time, but ultimately it won't. But obviously, for a time being, you can try to create dominance over others. It's just it's ignorant, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,

interesting episode. Yeah, thanks Daniel.

Yeah, I mean we you know I there's I feel the drive inside of me to say something of value at the end in summation but actually there is nothing in summation. It's just it's a not just but this is an observation of things moving back and forth in flow with each other you know one side the other side tension relaxation and then trying to find that binding force in the middle and I think people have to decide for them for themselves how they see things and maybe you agree with the way that I frame things maybe you disagree with the way that I frame things but the the larger point is to find out what it is that you Think about these things because these things are happening. They're happening on a multitude of scales as we've talked about both individually and you know collectively, society, institutionally, however you want to call it. And you really have to kind of decide for yourself where do you what you know what is it that you want to be influenced by? What don't you want to be influenced by? Where do you feel like you have more freedom? Where do you feel like you don't? Are you moving in which direction are you moving in? like you have to be intentional about things because there's plenty of other people and forces that are definitely being intentional around you. So, you know, take some uh take some ownership or at least as much as you can with the choices that you do have available for yourself.

And maybe like that, you know, the podcast point would be something like we're trying to be educational. That's like our intention, right?

Yeah.

And uh you know, like the more you learn, the more you know. Is that the old thing?

That's it. Now, the more you know, the more you're able to be empowered to make these decisions in a conscious and thoughtful way. And maybe the the other way of saying what you're saying is if you don't make these decisions in a thoughtful and conscious way, other people will make these decisions for you.

They already are.

Yep. They definitely trying. Yeah.

Yep. Yeah. For sure.

All right. Thanks so much, Daniel.

Yeah. You know, as always, thanks for uh for rocking. Audience, thanks for tuning in if you made it to this point of the episode. You're amazing. That's it. Uh, please feel free to, uh, send us an email at jynantraaggmail.com. Hit us up on the gram, the Jinatra podcast. Leave a comment, like, subscribe, share an episode, do all the things for Eric. This is Daniel. We'll catch you guys at the next one. Peace.