[music] Hey fellow G&T Do selector of spirituality with twist. So we are in the midst of like well 2025 and we're doing our what the hell is going on in America series which has been like us trying to explore different ways of just trying to make sense uh of what's going on in the world. uh the what the hell America series and uh again just trying to give different perspectives and different ideas on what the hell and uh so what we decided to do this gave us an opportunity to discuss a little thing from the famous psychologist at least semi-famous psychologist Wilhelm Reich and his notion of the emotional plague and with this episode we're going to get back to something we promised to do which was also introduce some of our own expertise into the discussion of this concept of the emotional plague EP um in kind of what I I think is kind of a unique way. But a little context, you know, I just think it's nice to talk about this emotional plague idea just a little bit before we get into the the full of it. So, we'll talk a little plague. We'll talk a little bit about I'm doing it.

Okay. Okay. Well,

you talk about a little about traditional Chinese medicine, how it relates to this emotional plague, especially

body mind connection. All right.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

First though, if uh you could do the thing that everyone asks you to do with every podcast, like, subscribe, share, write a review if you can. Helps everybody out as everyone keeps saying over and over again. Uh so if you can do that for us, that would be appreciated. Labor of love for us. Really trying to spread uh like useful stuff, educational podcast, trying to spend spread useful things and try to make sense out of this bucket to the world. So

um emotional plague. So the basic idea is that I think there's like two big ideas that we'll be hitting on in this one for one is the concept that there are just toxic socioultural ideas that get transmitted within a society kind of like a contagion. People pass it around to one another and you can get kind of infected with it. And the other big idea of this is that this can be not only a thing that's psychological like being you know psychologist person but also has its physical side too that these two sides kind of mirror each other and that's going to give us a chance to talk about the traditional Chinese medical side of this. Now what I always find really interesting about this Daniel to me is that from a certain tantric point of view or dowist point of view there's always sort of an emotional play going on the toxic parts of the cultures in which a person lives that will kind of hold individual people back with sort of toxic socioultural ideas. I am a big proponent of that notion and that's always going on all the time and people have to transcend those things. That's true on an individual level, but then at other times the plague goes truly acute and crazy. We've talked about this a little bit over the last couple of episodes with this and all of a sudden you get real flaring of like massive toxicity. Will Helm Reich for his part wrote a book called the mass psychology of fascism trying to describe these things blowing up you know in his time in places like Germany and Italy. and you know, we're going through something like one of those times. So, this is our G&T way of trying to talk about these ideas. Anything you want to add to that before we get to the TCM side of things?

No, we're good.

Okay. Um, the TCM thing hit me personally on retreat, my last big retreat I did, where I just started thinking, you know, Americans are like physically unhealthy as well as psychologically unhealthy. And that's

well Eric and just before you go. Yeah. TCM just you know because traditional chi I think I I thought I said it but maybe if I didn't traditional Chinese medicine.

So that's Daniel Daniel and I's day jobs. We work as acupuncturists and herbalists in the traditional Chinese medical world. Right.

That's one of the things we try to bring into these podcasts.

Um the that that medical take on things mixed up with the psychology and the spirituality. We don't do as much of the traditional Chinese medical stuff, but this is one where we're going to talk about those things.

Yeah. Yeah. And um so you know this notion of uh again what hit me was just thinking about you know the that connection that Reich makes between the body and the mind right and when one or the other side is in the thraw of the emotional plague or there's things going wrong with it. Even if you don't want to use that language uh when you have psychological problems you're going to have corresponding physical problems and they're going to mirror each other. So that got to the idea of thinking from a TCM point of view certainly true and we'll try to explore that with y'all. And then the other thing that's kind of interesting when you look at the psychology of traditional Chinese medicine is you can get when you have this problem of like the physical and the emotional being affected in this combined way. You're going to get certain negative emotional states are going to come up a lot more easily. And then you're also going to lose access to like certain virtues. I think they you know we call them in the dowist world that would more naturally be there for you and you'd have an ability to express yourself express those you know and uh yeah that struck me as really fascinating to try to talk about so that's where we're at with this right anything more on that Daniel before we dive in system by system. It's not something that people talk about all the time, but I think it's uh

this is a this is a rare G&T special because most people don't talk this way.

It's going to be our own jam.

Trying to give some help with this. So I think the one that struck me as the first one to talk about was the one that kind of inspired this and me curious to hear your opinion about this too which would be Chinese medicine talks about the digestive system and its relationship to uh on the negative side states of like worry and mental anxiety and rumination and then on the positive side positive side being cut off from states that are more compassionate. Yeah. More like giving, you know.

I mean, I'm used I mean, maybe you have a different way of thinking of those virtues. I just used the word compassion. You got another way of talking about that.

Yeah. I think like um think of it like I guess in like the esoteric or kind of hippie sense like mother earth give, you know, giving, you know, producing fruits and vegetables. You know, it would be as if the earth no longer wanted to give as much. you know, the crops were not as uh bountiful as years past or something like this or grandma's not feeling well, so she's not making her uh you know, dish that everybody loves to eat at grandma.

The favorite uh the favorite sweet potato salad or something. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

So, this is kind of like the poetry of this in Chinese medical culture. They'll talk about like the digestive system, but then they'll usually use some kind of uh poetry imagery for this. So the imagery for the digestive system comes from the earth,

right?

So the earth is trash. You don't get the natural bounty of the earth if you want to speak in the political in that way, right?

Yeah.

And even if and there's always there's always a balance of opposites in TCM and Dowism just in general. And like on one hand the the digestive system is in charge of like rotting decomposing you know uh and the opposite of decomposing is starting from nothing and coming to life.

Mhm.

And so in this way like if you think of uh composting is one way but planting a seed in the earth is the opposite to that.

You need both sides of those things or to grow the seed or something like that.

Correct. But this idea of uh nourishment, right?

So when you get to like the clinical side of this, just from our like medical perspective, how many Americans have like really lousy GI tracks, shitty GI tracks? Tons and tons and tons. And that's what hit me in the retreat. I was thinking about that and I was going, okay, well, on the negative side, we're used to people being just like full of all these mental anxieties and worries and ruminations, you know, like it that's just so prevalent in the culture

and we can talk about it from that point of view, which we'll keep fleshing this one out.

Yeah.

But from the other side, like there's just a distinct lack of compassion in the culture. It's like shocking.

Yes.

Right. I wrote these notes weeks ago, you know, my side of these notes and that was before the murder of one Charlie Kirk, but it's no doubt like I you could see it from that side, you know, and I did jot these in the notes because I was trying to think about all the different ways that people talk about this. And in that sort of like Christian nationalist worldview, that side of the culture, uh, they have this idea of like toxic empathy and compassion that actually showing empathy and compassion is toxic. And yet they're Christians, which is a hard thing to get one's mind around. That seems quite strange, right? That you have a bunch of Christian people saying that empathy and compassion is toxic.

That doesn't really like match with the Jesus that I grew up with. But okay, so they have that side going on, right? And you know, part of their way of talking about this, you know, is like being soft deprivives the sinners of getting forced into non-sering behavior.

So if you're harsher with people, you kind of force them to do what in these people's minds would be the right thing. So there's a rationalization behind it which I guess is a way of like talking yourself into something using the energies of the earth to rationalize something out. Uh but in any case you know that whole idea. Have you familiar with that thing in that subculture of like toxic empathy? I've been doing more research into the Christian nationalist thing. I've been trying to do that for the pod so you don't have to. I've been doing it. So I've been listening to a lot of people who are were in that sort of Christian nationalist cult. You know, we've been talking about cults a lot.

That side of like I don't have a problem calling it toxic Christianity, toxic American Christianity.

And so maybe for future episodes, but I've been listening to people who are like, "Yeah, I was in that and I got out and they, you know, they have these terms that they use." So I've been listening to like one of the people I've been trying to use as a source for this for our little episode is a woman named April of Joy. And she wrote this book called Star Spangled Jesus. And then one of the chapters she this whole thing comes up and I've heard it before, but she really went through it. You're going, "Okay, yeah, there's a there's like this whole school of thought there that you say empathy is toxic." And uh again, I got I started thinking, okay, like why would you why would that idea even occur to you or why would that catch on? And I started saying, "Okay, well, these people like are, you know, like throughout American culture, there's this whole problem of the GI tract, being crappy, and then just not being able to have the natural connection to these more virtuous states, you know, that will more spontaneous spontaneously appear.

When these systems are more healthy, you'll just naturally be able to find yourself more in that head space." So, I was looking at it from that side, right? Um, but I mean I don't want to even do I'm not a both sidism person. I keep saying like I think there's a real problem with Trumpism and MAGA and Christian nationalism. I think those are all toxic things. But I can't say it's like only a one side thing also.

It's not

because there's like toxicity across the culture overall in on this point. And I remember listening to something a couple years ago um and just you know the the change in how people think. It was like a NPR thing. National Public Radio now whacked by the Trump administration gone. [...] them. But the idea that uh they were doing this thing and they were just talking about uh it's so hard like there's almost a virtue now of not forgiving people or something like that. There's a hardness in people and the the the thing they were showing was some guy who was obviously an [...] You know, he was uh a very controlling sort of almost like incel type person who uh had all kinds of toxicity about how he thought about relationships and women. And eventually he got into a relationship with this woman after being an involuntary celibate, an incel. And then the relationship ended up breaking up and he kind of turned on her was really mean to her. And as he grew as as a person, he started saying I was wrong and he started going I I he grew and realized that he what he had done was bad. So it was sort of a weird episode. It was the producer of the show who wanted to talk about this as being something that showed progress and improvement that we should have compassion for this person because they used to be kind of a an [...] and now they progressed forward. And she was talking with her co-producer on the show as they were playing the episode and the co-producer just said, "No, I'm not going to show compassion for this person or empathy. No." And the producer of the show just realized like, "Wow, man, there's really a hardness in the culture now." Uhhuh.

People are really hard. And so they decided to do the episode of the show just on like that issue. And they were kind of debating back and forth like is it right to show compassion and empathy? The people are not. And the one co-producers's position was no.

And probably if you l did it politically, she was more on the left side of the aisle rather than the right.

But anyways, it's like it's a ubiquitous problem. Yeah, I think so. Especially as we move especially as we move along and there's more and more uh animosity, you know, there is no real middle. That's why it's hard to do both sides as MLS is pretty blatant in general. uh there's certain because even though we're playing it seeming it seems from like opposite sides of the spectrum there is a spectrum and that spectrum is still held within society is still held within culture you know what I'm saying like generally speaking nobody on the left or or the right is advocating for helping out uh feeding hungry children with people's house cats you you know what I'm saying like no like this would be this would be really a progressive idea, right? You know what I'm saying? Like that's really this is far out.

She's saying that they're not willing to sacrifice their the house cats to feed their brethren.

Right. Right. Well, because I'm just saying like it's they're still we're still playing within a spectrum of, you know, conservative progressive. We're still playing within this generalized spectrum. Not one side, one side, whatever. You you go more extreme over here, you go more extreme over here. you're just moving closer to the ends of this same pole, but that poll is held within society as it is currently, you know, and there's not a whole lot of things that come up that are outside of this spectrum. So it just when things come up they do ricochet you know certain things come up because people's psychology even though their choices are different and how they think are different the I don't know what you want to call them archetypes or tendencies that we have we've talked about this many times are still similar because people are 99 what what did 23 and me say 99.6% 6% identical all across the board, you know. So, like for every, you know, every purple-haired, hemp necklacewearing, you know, whatever college person people like to uh, you know, objectify. Yeah. Stereotype. There's the same like uh American flag flannel button-down wearing uh cowboy hat, you know, pickup driver, you know, pickup truck person. you know, on the other like they're just they're stereotypes of things that you've seen, but their minds are operating in a very similar way. It seems like they're different from the outside because of what they choose to affiliate themselves with, what what enrages them, what turns them on, yada yada, but the way in which they get to those decisions, the rationale is going to look pretty similar. It really is. People are not that different. They're just they're not. So, the question is, how do you find ways to unify people? Then how do you find and when what we're doing is trying to find what are the similarities what are this or what we're find what we're calling basically is the plague the illnesses that are affecting people to take away essentially this particular thing right here compassion and empathy because without compassion and empathy you could do anything to anyone without feeling guilty about it but I'll tell you one thing for damn sure anybody who's seen trauma knows when somebody wants compassion, there is nothing else that they would they would give up anything for assistance at that moment. You know, and having coldness is very easy to do because we people live a fake life via, you know, social media and in large groups of their people who believe similarly similarly to them. But when you see somebody in in person, much more difficult, much more difficult, almost impossible. you know, you you got to be a real sick per like for real sick, you know, to not want to lend a helping hand to somebody who was who is in real need. There's something wrong with that person, you know. And I don't say I don't say that very lightly because I I think that somebody say, "Oh, this person is sick, you know, or they're whatever uh on the spectrum or some kind of shit." I don't I don't use those kind of that kind of terminology very regularly, but you are [...] up if you can walk by or step over somebody who is in real need and not have it bother you and you just let that [...] go. I to me those are the sickest people in society. Those are more sick than the people who are hearing voices in their head because this [...] is hearing a real voice that says, "Fuck that person. Keep going." You know, this person injured. This person's starving. this person needs assistance and I don't give a [...] Well, you know who needs assistance? The person who's walking away. You know what I mean? To me, to me, that's the real plague. It's the one who's put together and looks shiny on the outside, but on the inside is absolutely rotten. You know,

all all I can really say about it is when I was listening to this thing where it's these two adult people debating whether or not someone who seems to be apologetic and really wants to change and go forward. I mean, that was the NBR thing

and having debating whether someone who is apologetic and wants to change. The way I heard the episode, you know, and their discussion of this and this changing of understanding of what is empathy and compassion for people, them debating whether that should even be a thing that you would show empathy, forgiveness, and compassion for someone who seems to be sincerely wanting to change and whether that's right or wrong is bizarre to me. And it struck me and I've actually obviously I've had that in my head since then thinking, so what's happening? Because as a psychological person, right, you know, like one of the cornerstones of psychology is to show uh understanding, empathy, and uh honesty. Those are like the three cornerstones that you have. Going back to one of our favorite psychologists, Carl Rogers. And I was like, "Wow, they're knocking the empathy thing. They're knocking the empathy leg right off the table."

And the two-legged two-legged table doesn't stand.

Does not stand. So I was like, okay, this is shocking on some level to me that this would be like a debate, you know, and the one person was really vehement of like, no, people shouldn't be forgiven even if they're truly, you know, uh, showing a true desire to, you know, apologize and change. And I was like, okay, that was shocking to me. But then again, as I go forward and I'm not a I'm not we can we can both handle these things both in our own ways. I'm not a both sides person. This [...] Trumpism, this shit's dangerous. This is some dangerous [...] [...] Trump MAGA, that shit's dangerous. So, I'm not like gonna mince words on that. Yeah. At the same time, I could recognize that, you know, throughout the culture based on what we're talking about, there's a real problem of like what would be this TCM thing? If you're going to have people who have bad digestive systems, they're going to ruminate and they're going to worry and they're going to overthink in a Raikian sense, right? Looking at the body and the mind. And then there's also going to be problems of like generating compassion. It just won't happen. And that's Daoism, right? You know, the Dowist aspect of Chinese medicine. It's just not going to happen.

So, anyways, I find it to be kind of I mean, it was an epiphous thing for me. And I'll tell you real quick, sorry, Daniel, I don't want to cut you off, but I was presenting this idea to a group of like traditional Chinese medical students. You know, I teach you part of part gigs, right, for people who maybe haven't listened to us before. And so I was, you know, presenting this to some students who are a little bit more advanced in one of the traditional Chinese medicine programs where I teach. And one of the women, like you could see it really hit her and she said, you know, that's true. That's really true. The digestive symptoms are bad. And then people are lacking these fundamental virtues that Dowism says should naturally be there being if you're operating from a healthy state. So, and like it was one of those nice moments as a teacher, you know what I mean? Where you could see it really click for the person and she just kind of blurted out in the class, you know, that's true. And I was like, Eureka, you know, anyways, I just wanted to share that real quick. Okay. Sorry about that.

Yeah. No, you're good. So, I was at the uh the Bahigh Temple, which is like, you know, the Bahigh faith is uh I don't know, kind of like a Unitarian sort of faith blended of a number number of different faiths. And there's a number of these Bahigh temples around the world. They're very beautiful. There happens to be one just outside of Chicago in a suburb called WT and it's a and anybody can go there. Not at any time they have some services but anybody can walk in pretty much whenever they're open. They don't have services and it's just silence. It's a very beautiful building. Super high ceilings, very ornate drawings, you know, very kind of spiritual statements along written along the wall, but it's a very serene, quiet place. And the the the grounds around the building are very pretty. It's right across from the water, beaches across the street. So, it's a nice place to go. And I was sitting there and I won't go into the entire meditation that I had. But I was thinking about blood sacrifice and how that was so prevalent in so many religions. And very likely one day they stopped

and the day that they stopped they would say, "How could people do that?" even though they had just done one probably the day before or the week before that. You know, it's like those barbarians, they can't do that anymore. My god. They were like, "Sir, you just you did you did one yet yesterday, but we won't talk about that anymore." No, that's you know, and so I just it hit me. I was like, "Wait a minute. I can put myself in the position. I tried to put myself in the position of okay, what would it be like to give to sacrifice to say the life that is on this earth, I'm going to release it back and to to be absorbed back to the ether and do this as an act of reverence for whatever it is that I am carrying around. You know, I'm going to take this thing. And I was like, "Okay, so I understand that as a as an act of reverence for the divine, as an act of, you know, worship, if you will." I said, "Okay, is there anything that we could do that would be more divine than that?" I'm like, "Well, yes, the total [...] opposite, which is to save lives and to help." And again, you have one of those epiphous moments. And this to me that's certainly not some kind of like wild revelation straight from the right hand of God to my mind. And yet it just was like it just to me in my brain it just shits on anything and anyone who says otherwise. It there it's not you don't need rationality. What's more close to the thing that gives life protecting the life that was given? saving the lives that are already here. So then I think about people who again to your point are doing the opposite of this. Many of which are twisting religion all over the world. Numerous religions. [...] this culture. This is in many cultures, you know. I'm like, it is literally the opposite of the teaching. Forget what teaching it is. It's the opposite because all of them have not all of them but the majority of them are monotheistic and they are honoring the the god they think that gave them their breath and the breath of everything else. How is honoring that idea that being if you will by taking and making creating misery and helping to aid in the discomfort and suffering of other beings to me it's insane. Now maybe I'm crazy. I could certainly say it. Yeah, you know, whatever. But to me, it that nothing makes more in my mind, literally nothing makes more sense than that. Nothing makes more sense than that. You want to help your parents out, so you're an older brother, you watch your younger brother or your younger sister while they come home from work. When they're gone for work, you don't kill your younger brother or younger sister then say, "Aha, I'm the best sibling ever." You know, I'm the one that should be praised. Praise. I Mom, I know you're stressed out today. Don't worry about baby Jenny. I put a plastic bag over her head, took her out. She's out. So, you're good now. Don't worry about No, your mother would be upset if for those who love to amorphosize God, what you think he's happy or she's happy or better yet, they're happy, you know? Like, no, it's [...] crazy, dude. It's crazy. So the thing that's like I think striking about you're talking about it in the Bahigh temple. What hits me is there's something it's powerful in its like transparency. It's powerful in its like clarity. I don't want to say obviousness because it like that makes it seem like it's not important or something. But it's almost the obviousness of it that gives us its power. It's like well of course you know

approaching the world from a position of like let's go through and like give and and you know as Reich was talking about himself to more naturally love other people

you know it's an act of like wanting to do those earthy things giving compassion and so on right

and like when I was listening to you talk the thing that hits me is

I think with the again this is a Dowist thing you know Dowoism and Chinese culture and Chinese medicine are kind of like entwined mind, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

But like it's the naturalness of it that has a power too that goes along with the idea of the clarity, transparency, and obviousness of something like that,

you know, which makes it powerful. Like just naturally, shouldn't that be the thing you would do,

right?

Which raises an interesting question of like if you want to get really daist and really traditional really Chinese medicine, like why isn't that happening, right? Why isn't that obvious expression of that, you know, that virtue that can naturally appear when things are good? It's not happening, right?

And you're like, okay, well, part of Chinese med medical theory would be beyond whatever might be the psychological things that are holding people back would be like the physical system isn't working right. So, those natural states aren't going to come out, right? So yeah, because there's a there's a there's [clears throat] an obvious nationalness to it.

So maybe one of the things we can do, [clears throat] you know, we're going to do like different systems in different episodes, but maybe it would be good that we talk through a little bit of like what makes this system so bad, like what are the ideologies that burn it out just to give people some things to think about.

Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I wanted to point out that like a lot of, you know, usually in Chinese medicine, you'll say things get damaged by negative emotional states. So, it's kind of a two-way street. If the system gets damaged, those emotions will appear. More of those negative emotional psychological states will appear. But on the other hand, those negative psychological states can be damaging. And this is sort of this idea of like the constant ruminating and overthinking damaging the system, right? And like weighing it down and exhausting it. I think the metaphor for this is um the same energy that the system uses to process things that you take in food and drink is the same energies that are used to sort of process your thoughts.

And sometimes we talk about the idea that like I need to digest that idea. We use that even in in English, right? So, okay, give me give me a chance food for thought. Give me a chance to digest that a little bit more.

So, that's what we're talking about. So, if you look at like the culture, there's obviously an ideological factor, a cause of a problem medically, right? By people constantly ruminating and constantly, you know, in these like doom spirals of like negative thinking that's going on all the time, right? You agree with that? I'm sure you got a take on that you want to share too

what's standing out for me so for people who you know don't know um there's all these like acupuncture points all over the body meridians how what do you want to call lines you know uh what do you want to call it like fiber optic lines all over you know

and there's a beginning and ending point for for everything and so we're right now we're talking about you know like this stomach and digestion kind of thing. Uh Eric, you know the answer to this, but audience, without googling it or using chat GPT, does anybody know where the first point on the stomach is? Where's stomach one? The first point on the stomach channel,

people are just going to be googling,

right? Yeah. Well, don't look it up, but it's right by your eyes because this is the first place that we're digesting is with our eyes. We see everything first. Of course, if you're blind, different story, but for most, you know, normal functioning people, this is where we break things down first is visually because we'll often see it before we hear it or whatever the case is. So, yeah, what you're what you're saying is is true in that like what we show ourselves, you know, you talk about doom spiral. When you think doom spiral, I think doom scroll.

I was also going that way, too. So, both of those things are kind of entwined, right? The doom scrolling and spiraling. And what do you do is you're just you're looking at you're looking at [...] basically. And so what are you digesting? You're trying to find nourishment at the, you know, at the at the dumpster essentially. You're not going to find nourishment at the dumpster. You're going to find nourishment at the, you know, at the buffet or something like this. So it just depends on like what are you what are you putting in front of yourself because it's affecting the way in which you you take things in because you have to break everything down. Even if you feel like you're letting it go or whatever, it still has to go through this the you know the process of being processed.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there's like uh yeah the way that you take in information I guess people are also doing like tons and tons of more mental work too

within the context of that as well. All right. So we got that one. One of the other parts is infectious disease

or Chinese medicine they call external invasions. So in a lot of the old Chinese classic text, they'll make this observation that even if the illness doesn't immediately affect the digestive system, part of the digestive systems role is to kind of build up the resources that support immunity, right? And those are the kind of things that protect the lung from things like respiratory infections and all that kind of stuff. And so maybe not even sometimes we get sick with like a stomach flu, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, those things that happens to people, but even when that's not the the main system immediately being affected, it can also can happen kind of indirectly when there's other kinds of infectious disease problems and that will kind of exhaust the exhaust the earth too. And maybe in that sense, it's not an accident that like a lot of this stuff is happening in the aftermath of like a co right. I think one of the things I didn't get

when I was looking and saying, "How bad is this,

Eric? Actually, that's a low-key that's a low-key like high-end observation."

Oh, yeah. There's something in that. Yeah.

I hope people hope people caught that,

you know. I don't know if they did, but I definitely did.

Yeah. In the aftermath, you get a you get a a pandemic that runs through and people are depleted,

right? that you're t you begin to tap into the first layer of reserves which is in the in the digestive system again in Chinese medicine.

Yeah. And so you know respiratory infections and those things eventually Chinese medical theory will damage the GI tract especially you get them over and over again.

So maybe it's another reason why I'm sorry go ahead. Yeah. No, no. For people who are thinking this is like uh allergies, food allergies,

you know, or you can think like or like leaky gut, you know, because you have you take something into your system, gets into your bloodstream, then you have an allergy to it. But and it we have allergies basically almost exclusively through of course pollen and everything else, but like in your digestive system, there's far more allergies to food than there is, you know, major allergies, you know, it always comes through your digestive tract. And when you want to work on allergies, you get you have to work through your diet. You have to work through your your eating most often.

Well, I mean, you look at it like, how many [...] people have food allergies now?

Crazy.

So, you know, the whole system isn't working the way it's supposed to. And if you get the neorikian thing in your mind, you're like, well, then you can't Reich's point is like when you're in a healthy space physically and psychologically, you can more naturally show love, seeking knowledge, and creativity. He's tying those two things together. We're doing something similar, right?

Mhm. we're in a good headsp space, the system is working right, more naturally can we have compassion, more naturally can we overcome these things. So if everybody has food allergies and everything is trashed, you know, and maybe it's not like in that sense we were talking earlier, maybe it's not in that sense that these things are happening in an aftermath of a pandemic. Now we could say one of the things I think I underestimated was like and I wasn't purposely trying to under underestimate it. I just didn't realize the full magnitude. When I would talk with people about how dark are the politics going to get, you know, in like a Trump 2.0 2.0, I was like, well, I don't know, you know, should be a survivable thing. Fingers crossed, right?

But, you know, the pandemic was psychologically shocking for people. I don't think I fully got the strength of the psychological shock of that.

So, maybe that was something I underestimated. But the other side of it is uh you know like we're we're getting through for our our episode here that if the system is physically damaged Dist philosophy you can't project those positive qualities. I think that's important right

that speak that speaks to you too. We're in the same head space with that.

You got more on that one before I talk about diet? No, I think basically just briefly this when we when you say the system for people who are still with us and congratulations if you are because you're getting a far deeper perspective on society than you're going to find on uh some [...] comedians podcast but you know no no shots fired here just gentle flares shot in the air. Um the system is the uh is the is the entirety of the culture. So when we're talking we're talking individually but then we're talking culturally we're talking the culture as a basically just imagine like a larger person and each of us are a little person in this person it's a holograph

um

you know what I'm saying so like the cultures digestive system has been interrupted by the phenomenon of COVID

and therefore the cultures uh sensitivity for compassion is decreased Because the culture's ability to digest has been so shocked and now we're living in a postshocked culture whose ability to digest and therefore their ability to have compassion is decreased because of what happened and that then gets shared by everybody else who makes up that culture. So it's gross and individual simultaneously. I just wanted to make that point.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a physical plague, the pandemic, and now there's the subsequent flaring of an emotional plague,

right? Yeah. Um, well, I think there's like two other ones that are kind of good just to share with people because we can all look at our own health. We can do it kind of quickly, but obviously the American diet is

very, very bad,

right? Very, very bad. And that's kind of bad across multiple ways. So I think if you're thinking about this from like a personal psychosspiritual point of view, you can do things to like clean up the diet and then see whether or not you're just going to feel better,

right?

But then you know Dowist medical theory would be you'll you'll more naturally get into the some of these more positive mental states, right?

Yeah. And usually with students I say well part of this is quantity probably people eat too much so one Q quality is poor right and it's hard and we all can have compassion on this too in the sense that like

Yeah. Yeah.

You know money it's hard to buy those more expensive foods that are a little bit better you know

it's hard to buy even cheaper foods now. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. I mean, like I heard the other day, I think it was the people of McDonald's saying that a lot of Americans are just like skipping meals, so they're early morning McMuffin scale sales are going down.

Oh,

their interpretation is like people are too poor to afford breakfast, so they just skip it.

Starbucks is closing many locations. They they got rid of like 900 workers at their corporate office because people are do are they're doing this thing exactly right here. They are they're saying, "Well, we live most people live paycheck to paycheck." So, it's like, "Okay, do I need to spend 1011 on a cup of coffee every day? That adds up very quickly. Five days a week, you know, 200 50 bucks a month, 200 bucks a month. That's an easy one.

I had heard that about the Starbucks thing. I mean, that's interesting."

Yeah.

Um I mean, since you bring that up, you can talk about quality of diet. The coffee thing not good for the GI tract either ultimately either right irritates the stomach purges the bowels Chinese medical thought right and just true right so that part of you know how we self-medicate

but

does damage in different ways I don't know we're not going to do all you could talk for an hour on coffee easy [laughter]

but anyways those are negative sides of that um I usually try to point out that the diet is sort of like uh imbalanced you know you don't like have really proper distribution of things you know Chinese medicine has its own philosophy of how you distribute those foods but you know most of us can like or a lot of us can look at our diets most of us a lot of us look at our diets and go ah [...] man this could be better arranged right so that's something to work on too um and then you know uh some of the people in the Chinese medical world will talk about like all the weird weird erratic scheduling we have around dietary things in America, right? We're kind of all over the place. And I know that's true for me, too. You know, the whole Chinese medical theories of the justice system wants regularity.

And I mean, I'm I'm honest about this, too. My dietary schedule is like all over the place. I don't live the life of a nice Mediterranean person. Italians, time out. This is my time to eat. You know, everything shuts down. I'm making my food. You know, that's, you know, some Italians, they look at us like we're crazy. What the [...] are you doing? This is the time you shut down. It's noon. Time out. You know, we all eat, you know. No,

take it. Take it easy, guys.

It's a protein bar over here. And then you like run for a while and then another day, you know, you don't eat it all. And I am all over the [...] place with this too, to be honest. So, anyways, scheduling, eating too fast, eating well, involved in like mental work, all considered no bueno. These are all factors. And you know, you can trace this back to what you were bringing up earlier, Daniel, with leaky butt and the mic leaky butt. [laughter] That's also happens too broad and slip, leaky gut, [laughter] which is like damage to the GI tract, right?

And uh you know, the the real popular way of talking about this now is to talk about the microbiome, right? The damage to the intestinal flora. So all this is screwed up. And the one last thing you'd mentioned with this one is probably what we fancy talk call iotrogenesis medications that damage the GI tract especially things like antibiotics. So anyways there's your list of things to look at like how do we get to this place?

Well all of this is [...] up. The GI tracts are damaged. Think about it for yourself. But what you can get is like a lot of people who are going to be really worried and mentally ruminating because those more toxic negative states are going to be there as part of the emotional plague like what you were saying Daniel everyone in the culture is doing it and every individual the culture overall and then it seeps out and everyone's doing it you know it's like you can diagnose it as like a public health problem right and then uh and then the lack of compassion. Yeah. And like this is a weird closer, but I was listening to a couple of these, you know, people who got out of this Christian nationalist cult, uh, April Joy, Star Spangle, Jesus, and I can't remember the name of her partner when they do their podcast, Tim something. They do a thing called the new evangelicals, and their idea is like, we want to teach people about Christian nationalism. So, I was driving back into the city from the Chicago proper from one of my teaching gigs and uh I was listening to her episode talking about the funeral of one Charlie Kirk and it was Charlie Kirk's wife and she very gave this I thought it was moving you know she said basically I'm trying to forgive the person who shot my husband and I was like wow this is moving you know and maybe some people don't like them for political reasons I don't like their politics either you know but I was like it was I thought it was powerful Actually, you know, I was driving in the car and I, well, that's deep, you know, and it was all about forgiveness and, you know, the aspect of Christianity and I bought it. I thought that was real, you know, uh, you could watch it for yourself and see what you what you think. And then they also played one Steven Miller and it was like like it was like listening to like a Joseph Gerbal's Nazi propaganda speech. It was so bizarre and full of so much vitriol and toxicity. And I was like, there's the contrast right there to my mind.

You know, the one person

doing her best under horrific circumstances. I didn't like Charlie Kirk's politics, but you know, doesn't deserve to be shot. And you feel compassion for the people who are

the victims of violence, you know, political or otherwise. And I thought, I mean, I was a little bit tearary listening to her talk about it because she you have to really try to do that. You know, it didn't didn't seem fake to me, you know,

or performative. I thought, you know, there was aspects that were performative of the whole show. I mean, obviously it's a show. You know, it looked like some parts look like a a WWE event or something with fireworks and all this [...] propaganda, but I thought that seemed sincere to me. And I was like, that's pretty powerful. And that's Christianity [clears throat] at its finest, I suppose, right? And spirituality coming from a good place. And then this [...] vitriolic [...] you know, just like uh spewing all this hateful toxicity. And I was like, "Okay, there's a contrast." So, I know if you want to check it out for yourself, you can like compare and contrast. You know, there's a person doing her best to try to be a Christian and uh you know, doing something that's very difficult. That kind of forgiveness

obviously painful and difficult. And then this toxic emotional plague political propagandist figure and maybe one of the most powerful people in the country and one of the most therefore powerful people in the world just spewing hatred. You know, it's it's really really striking. So maybe check it out for yourself and see what you think and I'll give like a true study in contrast. That's all I got.

Well, we could I'm happy that we can agree that uh people dying is bad. I think we should all be able to go. Yeah, you can have some compassion or something.

You know, and violence of any type.

That's correct.

And uh that it's moving when someone does their best to try to forgive the perpetrator of those actions.

It makes that public statement. At least that was the part that I saw. Yeah.

Yeah. That's the part that probably that's probably maybe the part the part was worst worth watching the most. And maybe the rest you could just delete.

Exactly.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for uh for rocking audience. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for listening. Uh send us an email. Jyn and Tantra atgmail.com. Hop on the podcast on the uh Instagram. The Jin and Tantra podcast. Leave a comment. Subscribe. Whatever. Don't you know? Do your thing. Thanks for listening. Uh for Eric, this is Daniel. We'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.