Transcript
Speaker: Hey everybody, welcome to the Exit Podcast.
Speaker: This is Dr. Bennett.
Speaker: I'm joined here by Owen Cyclops.
Speaker: Owen is an artist beloved on our corner of Twitter.
Speaker: He recently released his new coffee table book, Channel One, which just hit number three in graphic novel anthologies on Amazon.
Speaker: Really excited to see a friend up there with Gary Larson and Bill Watterson.
Speaker: So welcome to the podcast.
Speaker: Thanks, man.
Speaker: I'm really happy to be here.
Speaker: So in the beginning of your book and your introduction, you put forward two really interesting ideas, which is one, the obsessive consumption of forbidden knowledge and the fantasy you had of creating a piece of art that would drive someone insane.
Speaker: Can you, and these are like, those questions make it seem like this book has a much darker tone than maybe it does.
Speaker: I do want to talk about that.
Speaker: But tell me about, tell me about creating a piece of art that would drive someone insane.
Speaker: Yeah, so in the intro for the book, it's actually funny you said it kind of makes the book seem like it has a darker tone than it does because I really agonized over the writing in the book.
Speaker: I'm an artist, obviously, and then writing is just tangentially related to what I do.
Speaker: So I actually wrote all the text and then sat on it for months thinking I would rewrite it or change it.
Speaker: And then I went back to it and I finally just pulled the trigger.
Speaker: So it's funny.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The text maybe has like a little bit of a different tone than the images.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So in the intro, I talk about these two themes that I've always run through my work.
Speaker: And one of those is the idea of making in the intro, I phrase it as making a piece of art that would make someone go insane.
Speaker: That was kind of the impetus for it, but it's really the power of art and art.
Speaker: things like that to change someone's mind or alter someone's mind the idea of making an image or a set of images or a book or something where someone would read it and then be unable to resist its power to transform them i got from this old play called the king in yellow that's what the story is about and it really just consumed me obsessively i thought that that has to be the highest
Speaker: one of the highest, most powerful things an artist could do.
Speaker: If they could make something where no matter what, if you took that piece of art in, it would permanently change you.
Speaker: I mean, to me, what could be more powerful as a creator than that?
Speaker: There's been this meme that's gone around about how you leave the theater and for like an hour and a half, you're embodying the character, the protagonist.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, uh, I, that actually like is so true.
Speaker: And, and, and I have done that, you know, hundreds of times walking out of movies.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: It's kind of embarrassing to admit, but I feel like everybody does it.
Speaker: And, and what is, it's actually like really disturbing if you think about it, like the power that particularly movies have to, um, like root your consciousness and like change who you are, even to,
Speaker: Like there's gotta be a long tail, right?
Speaker: Like people think like, oh yeah, I put on that costume for an hour after the movie's over and then I drop it and it goes away.
Speaker: And like, there's an extent to which that's true, but I think there's also this like long tail of it fades away.
Speaker: It doesn't cut off.
Speaker: And if you are constantly consuming content,
Speaker: then that those effects build and compound.
Speaker: And then you have experiences where you are, you build memories where you were being that character and they changed the course of your life in maybe subtle ways, maybe not subtle ways.
Speaker: And then it really becomes permanently a part of you.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: It's yeah.
Speaker: It's actually funny.
Speaker: You mentioned film, especially because,
Speaker: When you're really, really into something creatively, just in general, like for me, my practice of making images, it's totally inseparable from my life.
Speaker: Those two things are like the same thing.
Speaker: And for a long time, I still have it now, but for a long time, it was almost like to a slightly insane degree.
Speaker: I really didn't like watching movies because of that.
Speaker: power that was like one factor and i honestly really really did not like it if i was with people and they were saying oh let's watch a movie i would get this like almost sense of dread because i could really sense the director had this insane power it's like you're letting someone just jack like a guitar plug directly into your brain and it almost is impossible to resist i mean if you're watching a movie in a sense what's on the screen is happening to you i mean of course it's not
Speaker: really happening to you, but to part of your brain, it is.
Speaker: And what are you going to do?
Speaker: Close your eyes?
Speaker: So I definitely became very attuned to that power very early.
Speaker: And even now, I mean, I bet I could sit down and write down all the movies I've ever watched.
Speaker: I really haven't gravitated towards that art form, partially for that reason.
Speaker: Yeah, I think there's also an extent to which not only are we hijacked by these particular narratives presented in these movies, I think we're also...
Speaker: and maybe in a deeper sense, hijacked by the whole concept of the way these narratives are structured.
Speaker: I think about this because I'm a hypochondriac.
Speaker: I always have cancer, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the way that...
Speaker: the way that I get help on that is I call my dad and my dad tells me about like, Oh yeah, let me tell you about the time I beat brain cancer and testicular cancer and stomach cancer and lung cancer.
Speaker: Because he's the same kind of way.
Speaker: And he just, you know, it, it, it happened and it freaked him out and then it was nothing.
Speaker: And then he was like, you know, I'm a, I'm a cancer survivor.
Speaker: And, and that helps me to, to get over it.
Speaker: But I think the root of that fear and anxiety is,
Speaker: is actually that my brain is so coiled around story structure.
Speaker: And if you are watching a movie or reading a book and let's say somebody coughs and there's blood on the Kleenex,
Speaker: that person's dead in like 30 minutes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's like that, that's, you know, some, it's Chekhov's gun.
Speaker: Something is going to happen with that because there's, there's this, there's this dramatic economy where they, they don't present irrelevant detail to you or they try not to.
Speaker: And so because everything has meaning in your, in your media diet and your media diet is such a huge portion of your experience, um,
Speaker: Like prior to the age of novels, people's lived experience was very much in line with like the statistical likelihood of what's going to happen in the future.
Speaker: But if you grew up watching all of these movies that are like the distillation of like the most intense experiences someone's ever going to have, whether that's violence in a war or falling in love for the first time or whatever it is,
Speaker: your expectations for life are so like, you're looking for this very like cram tight thing.
Speaker: And sometimes that can lead to like ennui where you're like, nothing ever happens.
Speaker: Nothing's interesting.
Speaker: Real life is boring.
Speaker: But it can also be like, oh, I have a bump on my skin.
Speaker: And if that happened in a movie, that person, like that's gonna become what the movie's about.
Speaker: And anyway, yeah, I think it's not just like this deliberate, like someone trying to feed you a particular narrative.
Speaker: It's that so much of your life and so much of your memory is mediated through fiction.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, that's really true.
Speaker: I have really thought about that a lot.
Speaker: I've often wondered
Speaker: I guess when I was toying around a little bit more with just a totally like blank slate conception of the universe, I even wondered a lot about even just perceiving things as always needing to have a beginning, middle and end and how much that was conditioned by,
Speaker: you know, like you said, the story and novel format being so default in our culture.
Speaker: Like if you were to imagine someone who just grew up almost like never hearing stories, if they would perceive their life in this kind of story format, which is kind of a trip to think about.
Speaker: I'm a little bit more downstream of that now because I do think that
Speaker: gets kind of heady, I guess.
Speaker: But I do think the universe has a kind of like inherently like semiotic and like narrative nature to it, which kind of flips the whole thing on its head.
Speaker: But yeah, man, it is really interesting.
Speaker: And then also you kind of touched on it, but we identify with the media we consume both like internally, but then also externally.
Speaker: Like a lot of times that that's part of how people will present their outward facing identity.
Speaker: And then that also makes it more complicated because then you're
Speaker: literally like weaving this basket where it's part of these stories and part of yourself.
Speaker: And yeah, man, it gets pretty it gets pretty wild.
Speaker: So I would say I would say for me.
Speaker: The most powerful fiction I ever consumed in that sense, where it makes you crazy or it's like a drug.
Speaker: It's probably they're, they're both Cormac McCarthy.
Speaker: Um, the road, I, I think, I think most people who read the road experience like depression that, uh, that like a clinician would recognize for like, for like a solid 96 hours thereafter.
Speaker: And I don't know, I don't know if it's, I don't know if anybody doesn't have that experience reading the road.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And then the other one is Blood Meridian, which is not depressive, but it's psychedelic.
Speaker: It's like the colors are brighter and everything.
Speaker: It's just way more vivid and way more... It's a totally alien head state to be in.
Speaker: Okay, also Bronze Age Mindset.
Speaker: Honestly, Bronze Age Mindset was a very alien headspace to be in.
Speaker: Yeah, well, yeah, it's funny you say headspace because one of the, like, sort of mini projects that, like, you can see the incubation of in the book and then that I always wanted to return to is...
Speaker: There's a comic in there where a guy basically is hanging out with the ghosts of these like dead historical people.
Speaker: And I feel like I made that sort of extended, I guess you could call it a metaphor because of what you just said, the mindset thing.
Speaker: Like if you're reading a book, it kind of is like you're hanging out with that person.
Speaker: I was just talking with someone else and I used the example of Ellen White.
Speaker: I was reading The Great Controversy.
Speaker: She's like the Seventh-day Adventist founder kind of.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's a really long book.
Speaker: Not really, but it feels like it is.
Speaker: And it's kind of like you're hanging, I'm hanging out with her, you know, I'm walking around and looking at this thing and I kind of feel like I know what she would say about it.
Speaker: And now I've moved on to a different book and I, it's kind of like I'm hanging out with that guy.
Speaker: So it kind of is like, you get ushered into that, uh, sort of mindset as you were talking, I was thinking for me, what would be the most like mind twisting, I guess you could say.
Speaker: Okay, cool.
Speaker: Work of fiction.
Speaker: Well,
Speaker: It's funny, oddly, I mean, this definitely isn't it, but I just feel like it's a funny note.
Speaker: I read A Farewell to Arms when I was pretty young, I think way too young to understand it, which is a Hemingway novel.
Speaker: And I was pretty much just at the age where I could like kind of understand it, but like not really.
Speaker: And I guess I'm going to ruin the ending.
Speaker: So if anyone is about to read it, it's pretty old.
Speaker: If you're about to read it, just, you know, mute the next like 10 seconds, but basically gets to the end.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And his wife is pregnant or something like this.
Speaker: I read it a long time ago and his wife just kind of like dies in the hospital and then the kid dies.
Speaker: And then he like walks home in the rain.
Speaker: And at that age, that's literally all I took away from it.
Speaker: I was like, wow, it's like a 300 page book.
Speaker: And at the end, everyone just dies and this guy walks home in the rain.
Speaker: So like, I feel like that made a huge impression on me in terms of narrative, because what I took away from it as the artistic element was, wow, I just read this whole book for no reason.
Speaker: And then boom, at the end, everyone just dies.
Speaker: I'm sure that's not what I would take away from it now, but that's what I took away from it then.
Speaker: So maybe that kind of warped my perception of narrative structures.
Speaker: Oddly, I mean, I would usually be nicer and not call it straight fiction.
Speaker: It doesn't belong in fiction.
Speaker: It's truly not a fiction book.
Speaker: But I feel like the Lotus Sutra, which is a Buddhist work, probably had the most like mind twisty, turny, grabbing the knobs in there and stuff.
Speaker: It is a narrative, but so much of the book is dedicated to like messing with how you think of things like the whole book is written
Speaker: almost with these huge metaphors.
Speaker: Like whenever anyone's talking, they're like, this took so much time.
Speaker: It's the amount of time that if you took a sparrow and tied a ribbon to the sparrow's tail of silk and let the sparrow fly up next to a mountain and the ribbon was touching the mountain, it's the amount of time it would take to wear down the mountain from the friction of the ribbon.
Speaker: Or, you know, it's so much time that if you took, if you took literally, I guess the, one of the best ones that I always think about, it's like, if you took the whole universe and crushed it up into sand and then turn that sand into ink and gave the ink to a horse rider and he was riding and every million miles he rode, he dropped one drop of ink.
Speaker: It's the amount of time it would take for him to get rid of all the ink.
Speaker: You know, it's always like hitting you with these crazy metaphors or spatially, you know, like
Speaker: Like you'll be reading like 20 pages of the book and like 10 of it will say, you know, in the Northwest direction, there was a palace and the priest did this stuff.
Speaker: And then in the North direction, there was in the South direction or like, you know, it's kind of washes over you.
Speaker: So I feel like that really had a certain effect on my perception of things and my engagement with the
Speaker: words as art and narrative art in that way, because you know, of how it just washes over you.
Speaker: And like you said, the mindset you start to, you know, you're looking at a mirror and you're like, Whoa, what if the mirror like goes on forever and stuff?
Speaker: It really, uh, that was like the book you kind of described it where I finished it and I put it down and I was like, wow, I'm kind of tripping out just like looking at my bedroom right now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I, uh, okay.
Speaker: A couple of things on that.
Speaker: I don't want to forget them first.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: I have no, I noticed as a thread throughout your book that
Speaker: very often the bad guys win or if the protagonist wins, it's tinged with some kind of darkness.
Speaker: It's a partial victory or a Pyrrhic victory.
Speaker: And so it's interesting that you said that like the Hemingway novel felt like a waste of time.
Speaker: And I mean, it's obviously different in a comic book format because someone took 10 seconds to consume it.
Speaker: But I do find that you like default to like,
Speaker: the twilight zone type twist where he's locked in the box for eternity or you know what i'm saying like yeah yeah yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't say it's a waste of time i know maybe i maybe i casually said that but it's more like that was part of the artistic experience for me was it's like you're following this rope and then you know yeah you get to the end and it's like boom that's what the whole rope was about surprise uh so yeah maybe maybe that did have a bigger effect on me than i thought uh
Speaker: I would say it was a very noticeable theme.
Speaker: And the other thing about the Lotus Sutra, that immediately made me think of the Bitcoin, your Bitcoin explainer.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, there probably is some interesting parallel there.
Speaker: Well, you know, it's interesting.
Speaker: You said, I guess it's different for a comic because it is kind of like ABC.
Speaker: It's obviously way shorter than a novel.
Speaker: I think that...
Speaker: A part of what I do just in general is just kind of no unpretentious way to phrase this, but it is sort of the meta creative aspect.
Speaker: It's like thinking about creativity itself.
Speaker: And as I've spoken with more and more people, I really noticed that
Speaker: the different art forms really have so many different interesting implications and ways that artistry manifests.
Speaker: And the more and more I go down the hole of thinking about that, the more I'm like, wow, I really am like a painter deep down.
Speaker: I'm not a writer.
Speaker: I'm not a filmmaker.
Speaker: I'm not a, you know, whatever theater person.
Speaker: I'm really a painter.
Speaker: And I think when I poured over to other mediums, I bring that
Speaker: mindset and mentality because that's what I do basically.
Speaker: So for writing in time,
Speaker: it's something that's really, really, really difficult for me.
Speaker: And I think that when I get the narratives for the comics, it's kind of like I see them as a painting.
Speaker: It's like I see them, here's the thread running through it, it's still, boom.
Speaker: I really don't have whatever the gene is that novelists have, where they set up a little character and can push them on through a little world.
Speaker: For me, it's just still images.
Speaker: And I think that's also part of why the comics, if you were to sum them up,
Speaker: It's almost like you're describing a little situation because that's how they come into my mind.
Speaker: Like a full on painting.
Speaker: That's the situation.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So I very much identify with that actually.
Speaker: And I have always thought of myself as much more of a writer than a visual artist.
Speaker: But the reason one of the, my favorite things to write is,
Speaker: are Twitter microfiction.
Speaker: So I did this, um, I did this thread where I said, you know, uh, retweet this and I'll tell you your post-apocalyptic destiny.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: And so I gave everybody like a little fortune and like, uh, one of the guys was a big guy and I was like, you know, in the first six months, you're going to cut all the weight and you're going to become a warlord and you're going to, you know, um,
Speaker: Whatever.
Speaker: And so like, you know, who's going to be?
Speaker: Oh, one of the guys is like a right wing bodybuilder type.
Speaker: Very like thin cut, like that type.
Speaker: And I said that like you and your little war band are gonna be set for everything except steroids.
Speaker: And you're gonna have to go find a shaman, a drug guy, a chemist to make you the steroids.
Speaker: And then he's gonna drive you all crazy by giving you bad drugs.
Speaker: And then he's gonna take over the cult.
Speaker: And I loved that I didn't have to fill it with anything.
Speaker: I could just like deliver just the twist.
Speaker: Just a little, you know, and so I feel like the comic medium affords you the same possibility.
Speaker: There's this massive economy to it where because you don't have a lot of time to tell the story, you're not expected to fill in all the gaps.
Speaker: And that's partly, I think, why I love Twitter so much is because...
Speaker: when I, when I made the transition back to blogging from Twitter, I found that like the amount of like explaining myself felt really gay.
Speaker: Like, like I should not have to explain myself.
Speaker: Like if you can't figure it out, screw you, which is definitely like the vibe on Twitter.
Speaker: Um, yeah.
Speaker: And it's almost like the, the format, um,
Speaker: You know, it's kind of like, what do they say about goldfish?
Speaker: Like the goldfish will grow to fit the size of the container.
Speaker: It's almost like what you're doing will expand to fit the size of it.
Speaker: I really like musical analogies for some reason.
Speaker: I almost like always return to that.
Speaker: And actually, I met a guy at a party recently and he collects like toy musical instruments, like little tiny, I don't want to say dinky, but like literally like mini, mini, mini musical instruments.
Speaker: And we got to talking and I feel like he gravitated towards that for the same reason.
Speaker: It's like, if you sit down at like a grand piano, people are expecting something relatively large.
Speaker: But if you take out a little, you know, tiny melodica with five keys, if you can do anything on it, people are pretty impressed.
Speaker: I feel like there's also that aspect of it for me.
Speaker: I used to do, I usually don't talk about my like previous art life, I guess, but for a while I used to make really big, like heavily varnished, like dark, um,
Speaker: images and they would be in my apartment and they were, they were pretty big and like pretty, uh, visually consuming.
Speaker: But I kind of felt like people, their reaction to it was always conditioned by what it was, if that makes sense.
Speaker: Like if someone shows you a six by six foot oil painting, I mean, you're, then you're competing with like Da Vinci, right?
Speaker: Then you're competing with like all the oil paintings they've ever seen.
Speaker: But if you take a napkin and you draw a little funny thing on it, they're like, Whoa, that's really cool.
Speaker: So somehow I feel like I've met the world halfway or, you know, something about that exact situation of the napkin versus the oil painting.
Speaker: I didn't intend to, but somehow I drove my car really far down that road.
Speaker: And I guess that's part of why I'm here now.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, and you have such a distinct visual style that I think has now spawned imitators.
Speaker: I don't think, I know it has.
Speaker: And it's interesting to me how much you can sneak under the radar with a medium like comics because
Speaker: you're just goofing.
Speaker: It's like Stone Toss, kind of.
Speaker: Stone Toss is able to say so many things that you can't say, and he's been able to hang on online for so long because he's not writing manifestos.
Speaker: He's writing little two-panel, four-panel goofs.
Speaker: And I think there's definitely, you know, it's not news to anybody that our type of guy uses irony and comedy to say things he's not allowed to say.
Speaker: But I think comics in particular are a deeper exploration of that tool.
Speaker: Yeah, no, for sure.
Speaker: Thanks for saying I have a distinct visual style, by the way.
Speaker: But yeah, that's definitely the case, man.
Speaker: And I mean, for me, that goes all the way back.
Speaker: I mean, that's part of like the jester archetype in general, like by being kind of an idiot who like farts and like throws balls around.
Speaker: He's also the one who's able to...
Speaker: say these things and then you know exactly what you just said he's not getting beheaded because he's just like some idiot prancing around um yeah i really could not identify more with that archetype and it's interesting because obviously you know one thing about art that i i took away from someone is you know you're always part of your time period so in our time period you know of course things manifest in a certain way you know certain cultural trends push one way or the other and you know one minute this person's needing to fly under the radar the next minute you know
Speaker: But it really is totally across the board because I could point to things like Goya.
Speaker: Goya is like one of the most famous Spanish painters in case people don't know.
Speaker: And he had a lot to say that was anti-religion.
Speaker: I guess you could say it was anti-Catholic, but it was really just anti-religion in general.
Speaker: which is not where I'm coming from, but he had the same problem, just inverse.
Speaker: He wanted to make stuff about how religion's bad.
Speaker: You couldn't really do that at that time.
Speaker: So he made a series of etchings called the Capriccios.
Speaker: And then etchings, in case people don't know, etchings is like you carve into a plate and you make prints of it.
Speaker: It's kind of like as close as you could get to like a comic-y thing.
Speaker: They even have like captions.
Speaker: It's almost like political cartoons, kind of.
Speaker: And by doing that, he was able to...
Speaker: you know, get that message out at a time where otherwise you would have gotten, you know, thrown in the gallows or something.
Speaker: Oddly, in case anyone wants a lesson to take away, I don't know what the lesson of this is, but in order to preserve the Capriccio's plates, just an interesting note, he actually ended up giving them to the king as like a gift.
Speaker: And that's how they survive not being destroyed.
Speaker: I've always tried to take a lesson from that and be like, yeah, I should, but I don't know.
Speaker: So I'm throwing it out there in case anyone else can figure that out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Get Biden to tweet at you.
Speaker: Hey, Owen, cool comic book.
Speaker: You want to bring it to the White House?
Speaker: Yeah, get the Biden follow.
Speaker: So you introduced this idea of the loneliness of your journey because you are so drawn to the mystical and the esoteric and the weird...
Speaker: And like, it's interesting, the dichotomy between if the weird that you're talking about is like ayahuasca and Buddhism, people, women particularly, respond to that and they're super into it.
Speaker: And if the weirdness that you're talking about is how did WTC7 fall?
Speaker: Weather modification is often like the safe one that I go to.
Speaker: Yeah, weather modification.
Speaker: That was it.
Speaker: So like that's all real.
Speaker: And you come into this wall of like nobody's willing to talk about that, like period.
Speaker: And it's not even that they're like –
Speaker: afraid of it or or they actually have engaged with the facts in any meaningful way.
Speaker: It's almost like it smells bad to them.
Speaker: Yeah, like I just and like I wonder if you have any thoughts about
Speaker: as you made that transition from like a punk, like drugs and Buddhism type where that, where that actually played socially to whatever thing we're doing now that doesn't play socially, what do you think defines that change?
Speaker: Dude, honestly, I have spent literally so much time thinking about that.
Speaker: It's probably like diagnosable.
Speaker: Yeah, so there's a comic in there.
Speaker: It's like the second set.
Speaker: It's like the second comic in the book.
Speaker: Yeah, man.
Speaker: I mean, on the one hand, I...
Speaker: It touches like a few different things.
Speaker: On the one hand, I think that that is a big part of like why I started like doing my thing online and why I started kind of just talking about stuff online because I guess you could say I needed an outlet, but also...
Speaker: I think it's a big part of why a lot of people gravitate towards weird spheres online because at a certain point you have to ask yourself like, all right, everyone's doing it.
Speaker: Why do we all have our phones and we're all like poking into it just to see what like other people are saying?
Speaker: Like everyone's doing it, I do it.
Speaker: Like I think a big part of it is like that feeling of, oh yeah, I'm not like totally insane.
Speaker: And that's a huge part of it.
Speaker: Aside from the amusement and people are funny and make cool stuff.
Speaker: Like you literally need a reminder sometimes of, oh yeah, I'm not the deranged crazy one here.
Speaker: Probably.
Speaker: It's really hard.
Speaker: It's really hard for my wife.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because she gets like, she gets like a contact red pill.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: From just stuff that I talk about.
Speaker: Yeah, dude.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But all her friends are just totally regular, normal people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so she and she hates Twitter because everybody's mean.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And she's like, why are you mean?
Speaker: I don't understand this.
Speaker: And.
Speaker: I have struggled and failed to explain that we're mean because it's fun to be mean.
Speaker: Well, it's like a male.
Speaker: It's like a male.
Speaker: It's like a male style space is normally how I describe it.
Speaker: Twitter is like a male style space.
Speaker: Instagram is kind of like a female style space.
Speaker: We could go into that.
Speaker: But I don't want to lose track of the question you asked me because it was like, what's basically, what's the deal with that conditioning on the one hand?
Speaker: I kind of, on the one hand, honestly, I still kind of don't really get it, which is the vexing part.
Speaker: I still feel like at the end of the day, I can rationalize it out and explain it and get the whiteboard and draw charts.
Speaker: And I can like lay all the theories out, like over socialization, I think is probably one of the most compelling explanations for
Speaker: which we could talk about.
Speaker: But at the end of the day, I kind of still end up in this place where I'm like, honestly, I still kind of don't really get it.
Speaker: And it's really hard for me to put myself in that headspace.
Speaker: Part of it, I think, is just mental and like intellectual styles because you're probably the same kind of person.
Speaker: But like,
Speaker: For me, I really truly don't have that.
Speaker: Like if a guy came over to my house, we're talking, let's say my friend's boyfriend came over and he's like, hey, I read this thing, you know, about how like the prime minister of New Zealand is really like a robot and she's literally this like cyborg they trot out and she's not even real.
Speaker: I would be like, oh, tell me about it.
Speaker: You know, I wouldn't like recoil.
Speaker: And even if, and even if he showed me all the evidence and I was like, I don't know, man, I'll think about it.
Speaker: And I thought it wasn't real.
Speaker: I wouldn't like recoil in horror from him, like as an individual.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's the kind of part that I don't really get deep down.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So I have a thought on this because I have a relative who, um, was very early to a lot of things.
Speaker: like he was doing rents.com and Alex Jones way back when Alex Jones was kind of like the time cube guy.
Speaker: Like if you were aware of him at all, it was only like to think it was funny.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's okay.
Speaker: So that's, that maybe outs me for like what tier of normie that I am because for a long time I was aware of Alex Jones and just thought he was completely silly, which I think is most people.
Speaker: But I will tell you, I found that guy fascinating for like the first three hours.
Speaker: And then there's a certain type of guy who's like that, a certain type of conspiracy guy.
Speaker: And we still have him today.
Speaker: Who like...
Speaker: His thing is so deeply a part of him that you like, he will interpret it as a personal rejection or a personal slight if you don't go along.
Speaker: And I don't think that's what you did at all with your, cause you don't throw off that vibe at all.
Speaker: But I think that's what people are recoiling from and what they're trying to avoid.
Speaker: They're trying to avoid this like imposition on their time.
Speaker: like if i if i open this door you're never gonna shut up and you're gonna make me like sign on the dotted line that like this is true uh-huh and i don't want to be put in that situation so i'm just not going to talk about it it's i mean it's it's sort of sort of like getting into it with someone who's very aggressively evangelical
Speaker: Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: And I think we do that with almost any deep conviction.
Speaker: And that's probably something that I think that's conditioning.
Speaker: The conditioning piece of it is anyone who believes very deeply in something.
Speaker: is a pain in the ass.
Speaker: Well, so yeah, so actually that kind of touches on like the main model that I use for explaining it now because I have arranged my life in such a way that I have to engage with that as little as possible.
Speaker: I was in the total opposite situation.
Speaker: The comic kind of like drops off before it really got extra crazy.
Speaker: But I was basically in a situation where like literally every single minute of every day, I was like being the black sheep and scapegoat and saying something and catching heat for it or not saying anything and then feeling like a weak, like loser about it.
Speaker: So I really have like rearranged my life so that I experienced that as little as possible.
Speaker: And just in case anyone has that right now, just so you know,
Speaker: when you stop having that in your life, when it comes back, you're like, oh, I totally forgot about that.
Speaker: And this sucks.
Speaker: Like now it happens maybe like once or twice a year.
Speaker: And whenever it does, I'm like, wow, I completely forgot that I had to do that for like multiple years.
Speaker: So just so you know, it is possible to like get outside of it.
Speaker: But one of the things that I really found like a very useful model for explaining it is like
Speaker: you kind of sparked it in my mind because you're talking about like worldviews, like, oh, this person's evangelical or let's say, you know, that's a perfect example, really.
Speaker: It's like a worldview, but it's a lot more difficult to pin down what the worldview is for the archetype of person we're describing because the label like conspiracy theorists really evaporates if you try and grip it really hard, especially if you know, like X event didn't really happen or this person really said this or, hey, this isn't a conspiracy theory.
Speaker: Like, look at this document.
Speaker: That's like the stereotype, right?
Speaker: So it kind of becomes hard to pin down what the worldview is.
Speaker: I guess it's like questioning things, which sounds really pretentious, but that kind of is accurate.
Speaker: But what I think is... Yeah, I mean, and there's definitely... The reason it sounds pretentious is because there is... Arrogance is maybe the wrong word, but there's a deep self-assurance in somebody who says...
Speaker: everybody's wrong.
Speaker: Everybody's wrong.
Speaker: And I think, okay, so I think the times are changing here too.
Speaker: It's kind of like dudes with anime avatars.
Speaker: Like those dudes used to be super weird.
Speaker: And the super weird guys are still there, but there's also a huge swath of less weird guys who are in that scene now and maybe screwing it up.
Speaker: So it could go both ways.
Speaker: But in the sort of conspiracy Alex Jones type of space, and that's the only thing I can think of.
Speaker: I realize I hear the question you're asking, which is like, what does that even mean?
Speaker: How does someone get into that space?
Speaker: as a worldview.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, the thing is actually you're, you're really close to exactly where I kind of landed on it because I think that what it is actually is being designated as the anathema out group without feeling like that is a just designation.
Speaker: And I feel like that's actually what,
Speaker: what the badge that you would wear is if you had to wear one or put it into a folder.
Speaker: And as for like the less weirdening of it, like you're kind of describing, I think that because that's the case, it's kind of just in general society now, even offline, it has made, I've noticed, kind of like a coalition of the fringes kind of thing.
Speaker: Because normally, so I was in Colorado recently.
Speaker: I was talking to this woman and, you know, let's say she's a totally normal person, but she feels really strongly about like, let's say random medical stuff that's been happening.
Speaker: Normally that would just be like, oh, well I'm on the out group because of that.
Speaker: But now it's like, because the get in the boat or you're not part of the team aspect has been driven up to a thousand.
Speaker: It's like almost now it's like, she almost has something in common with like a guy who would be like a quote unquote, like gun nut.
Speaker: And they almost have something in common with someone who's like really into like 9-11 or flat earth.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like all of a sudden, all these people that would never be in the same basket are kind of realizing, I think, that they are in the same basket because the basket is people who are the problem, quote unquote, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's, it's the, as that designator expands to encompass such a wide swath of people, it becomes less of a problem to be in that basket.
Speaker: Socially, I think that in the large sense, it's also interesting because I feel like it's really different talking about like large social trends versus like individual stuff.
Speaker: And that was a big part of like, frankly, like the painful aspect of it for me, because it's one thing to like go on Twitter and see all these accounts and stuff who are like, oh my God, I can't believe these people are like so evil.
Speaker: And you're like, oh, they're talking about me, but like they don't get it, whatever.
Speaker: But it was totally different for me to go home and like get it from like my mom or like
Speaker: people I cared about.
Speaker: And for me, like part of that, like, to be honest with you, like part of like the pain of that, I feel like is part of why I started talking about it because I think that no one is actually immune from that.
Speaker: And our sphere is kind of interesting because, um,
Speaker: you know, our sphere being just like general, people always ask me like what the, what the whole situation is.
Speaker: I feel like it's just like general people who realize something is kind of not going the best in society and like the broadest possible sense.
Speaker: But I feel like getting that sting and getting that wall from like people you love and care about, it kind of goes against the whole like, Oh, like we're masculine tough guys, which is valid.
Speaker: Like I'm down, but I think that that pain and like dealing with it is like a big part of,
Speaker: what got me started in a way because it really took me off the rails and then dealing with it and kind of figuring out what the story was in terms of just before we totally like keep going in terms of the worldview thing.
Speaker: I really started to think of it like worldviews has kind of become something that's like a predominant theme in my like thinking and everything I do now.
Speaker: And I think it's part of because that's how I started to explain it.
Speaker: I would almost do like field experiments with people, which I'm sure was like really annoying, but I like had to figure it out.
Speaker: Where like I'd go home to like, let's say my like hyper liberal
Speaker: place where I'm from, you know, and let's say I'm talking to someone and they're like, man, you know, all these people that are like against abortion, you know, they just hate women.
Speaker: They really just hate women.
Speaker: And in their mind, I used to be like that, by the way, in case people don't know me, I used to be like in part of that bubble, a hundred percent.
Speaker: And I'd really try so hard to get them to just undo one of those threads.
Speaker: I'd be like, you know, maybe you're totally right.
Speaker: And, and people should be able to get abortions and they're not babies and you're totally right.
Speaker: And maybe those people are totally wrong, but like,
Speaker: it's not because they hate women.
Speaker: They just think that a five-month-old baby is a baby.
Speaker: So even if they're wrong, it's not because they hate women.
Speaker: And dude, I couldn't get anyone to be like, yeah, you're right.
Speaker: Even if I'm showing them data, I'm literally that guy at the table like,
Speaker: Look at this chart, like the same number of men and women are pro and anti-abortion.
Speaker: Like, and dude, they literally can't do it.
Speaker: And I realized that it's because a worldview is a tapestry.
Speaker: It's a tessellation, which is like a checkerboard.
Speaker: It's all the shapes together.
Speaker: And if you take one and turn it, if you take a checkerboard and turn one square 20 degrees, it messes up the whole checkerboard.
Speaker: And I realized that that's what I was trying to... Not that I was actively trying to be it, just for the record.
Speaker: Like I wasn't trying to convince anyone of anything.
Speaker: But by being a square that was turned 20 degrees, it's like at the end of the day, people had to say, well, when I was talking to Owen, I mean, he didn't seem that crazy.
Speaker: But I mean, I guess he's just crazy.
Speaker: That's the only way I can fit this into the tapestry.
Speaker: And that was like one of the main explanations I came up with to make a long walk from your question.
Speaker: But that was kind of like where I landed on it.
Speaker: I couldn't ask people to...
Speaker: incorporate this, you know, impossible object into their three-dimensional space because it would mess up everything else.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think, uh, in our, in our sphere, we are a very heavily selected group of people who are super comfortable with weird ideas.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: I don't see.
Speaker: Here's the thing.
Speaker: Like, I feel like I have a coherent and relatively totalizing worldview myself.
Speaker: And like having people disagree with it doesn't doesn't hurt me, really.
Speaker: And I'm trying to figure out like what it is, because I get I get from on the surface level why screwing with somebody's worldview, you know, could potentially cause this like identity collapse.
Speaker: Well, I think that that's part of why when I think about this, I usually lead off with that abortion example because I don't think it's that this person doesn't agree with me.
Speaker: It's the mechanism by which you explain that disagreement.
Speaker: So like, for example, like if you're a Christian and someone else is not Christian,
Speaker: you can actually explain that within your worldview.
Speaker: You know, maybe they didn't get the gospel or someone didn't explain it to them, or maybe they're an extreme case and they're like deceived by demons or something.
Speaker: You can explain that.
Speaker: And it fits in your worldview, even though they aren't part of the worldview, if that makes sense.
Speaker: But if you explain the difference by appealing to a pathology, once you admit that the pathology doesn't necessarily explain it, that's when the whole tapestry comes apart.
Speaker: So like another example that I often go to is like immigration.
Speaker: So like when immigration was like the hot topic within that bubble of people back where I'm from, in their mind, the only reason that you could be against immigration is because you're racist.
Speaker: It's literally like a one-two connection.
Speaker: So if you made them admit that you, even if you were wrong, if you made them admit that you could be against immigration without being racist,
Speaker: their whole explanation would fall apart because then they would, it would just, it would just mess up everything.
Speaker: It would be like if you drop something and instead of going down and went up that appeal to pathology makes it so the pathology is the pillar that everything is sitting on.
Speaker: And then when you come to push it over and you're like, Hey, I'm your friend, you've known me for 10 years.
Speaker: I don't have that pathology.
Speaker: They can't move that pillar.
Speaker: It's holding everything up.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think in the Relatable Guy comics and a couple of the things that you do, there is a latent rage at the normie.
Speaker: And your vibe in the comics is very gentle and whimsical.
Speaker: and your vibe here is very friendly and approachable but there's clearly a part of you that's like i hate these people so much yeah well it's interesting i mean i would i definitely wouldn't phrase it that way um i always think of something this guy said to me once where he's like you know if you're doing anything like this you kind of like are doing it
Speaker: for normal people at the end of the day, like the X percent, the tiny percent of people that aren't hooked into like the hive mind.
Speaker: I mean, they already get it or they're going to, you know, so I kind of do like keep that in mind.
Speaker: But it's so interesting, man, because it's like engaging with someone versus their like cultural programming.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And whether that's like an intrinsic part of them or not.
Speaker: And then and then they identify with it almost more than you do.
Speaker: Like that was the weird thing, too, is like you want to say, like, well, you know, you feel this way and I feel that way.
Speaker: But, you know, I'm not going to view that as like part of you.
Speaker: And then the next sentence, they're like, I would literally die for this.
Speaker: Like, this is me.
Speaker: This is me, period.
Speaker: So I don't know, man.
Speaker: It's hard.
Speaker: Let me phrase it this way.
Speaker: I definitely would not say that it's like hatred at all, but I definitely would say that it's resentment.
Speaker: Okay, yeah, you're right.
Speaker: That's a better word.
Speaker: You go somewhere and like, this was like my life for a long time.
Speaker: You go somewhere, someone says something and you're like, okay, either I'm going to lie right now or I'm going to be honest.
Speaker: And maybe there's a situation, maybe whatever.
Speaker: But at the end of the day, for me, I would be like in the shower and like, I'd be like, I didn't do anything wrong.
Speaker: I haven't done anything wrong.
Speaker: And your whole life gets rearranged or you become this black sheep or whatever.
Speaker: But at the end of the day, like, because we're moral creatures,
Speaker: I just spent, I was really vexed.
Speaker: Vexed is really the perfect word.
Speaker: Now I'm kind of like over it.
Speaker: But at the time the vexation was very intense.
Speaker: And yeah, I literally would just go over like playing out conversations and what I said.
Speaker: And I'd be like, I didn't do anything wrong.
Speaker: And you're surveying this, you're surveying this like elephant's graveyard of relationships, like people you're related to or people that you're close to.
Speaker: Like that's how it played out for me.
Speaker: And I'm looking at all these like dead bodies in this field and I'm like,
Speaker: honestly, I feel like I didn't do this.
Speaker: I feel like I didn't do anything wrong.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: And that's like the weirdest feeling, man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think I came from a more sort of traditional context.
Speaker: So the social consequences of me being doxxed were much less serious in terms of, you know, losing friends.
Speaker: But of the handful that I did lose, my resentment was based in like, this person runs their mouth about everything they think all of the time.
Speaker: Yeah, dude.
Speaker: And they do not give a rat's ass if I'm offended.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And like it's, or if it's hurtful or if it's like, if it's a reflection on me, like they don't care.
Speaker: They'll say whatever.
Speaker: And it's totally fine with everybody.
Speaker: And that, yeah, I think, and the Relatable Guy comics, what spoke to me about that is like,
Speaker: not only are you free to say whatever you think, but the things that you think are so banal and so just stupid.
Speaker: It's really frustrating to not be able to pick at this decrepit, stupid thing that you could knock over with a puff of wind.
Speaker: because it needs to be protected.
Speaker: Like that, that's very, I guess I'm okay.
Speaker: I'm talking about me now.
Speaker: I'm not talking.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: Honestly, I could not relate more to what you're saying because like, it really feels like, I mean, you know, people are probably listening, you know, they have their own like areas that they focus on and things like that, but whatever it is, it starts to feel like you're standing there and someone's like, the sky is red and you're literally standing there and you're like, dude, I'm looking at it right now.
Speaker: yeah and at a certain point you're like bro it's not though and then that's when it goes crazy you know and i had that a lot um i had a lot of various jobs like certain jobs that would start to integrate like certain ideas like not even trying to cause like a ruckus because for about half of them i like really respected the people like running the company that i worked for the other half were kind of just random jobs
Speaker: But it's like, yeah, you feel like there's these threads there and you could just tug one and be like, dude, this makes no sense.
Speaker: Like, what are you guys talking about, dude?
Speaker: Like, you know, I used to work in the arts, right?
Speaker: And... Yeah, I can only imagine.
Speaker: Dude, it's crazy, man.
Speaker: And I was somewhere, this actually wasn't for a job.
Speaker: I was somewhere, I was kind of at this like dinner-y event.
Speaker: Sounds a lot cooler than it was.
Speaker: And someone was saying, you know, the Brooklyn Museum
Speaker: at the time, had just hired... It was something like this.
Speaker: They had just hired someone to curate the African Arts Department, but it was a white person.
Speaker: It was a white person.
Speaker: And everyone was talking about it like, oh my God, I literally can't believe this is in Brooklyn.
Speaker: They couldn't find a black person to do it.
Speaker: This is nutso.
Speaker: What...
Speaker: And I kind of was like, yo, what are you guys saying?
Speaker: Like to assume that a black guy in Brooklyn has a special expertise about African art when he grew up in like Crown Heights, like, isn't that actually racist?
Speaker: Like if I found a guy, I was like, hey, you're black.
Speaker: Like, you know about Ethiopian art, right?
Speaker: Like what the heck?
Speaker: And then like I took it further with them because I was like, you know, at the time I was really obsessed with Asian art.
Speaker: And I was like, should I not be into Asian art because I'm white?
Speaker: Like, should I specialize in European art because I'm white?
Speaker: Like, that's kind of what you're saying, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then you go specialize in European art and they get mad about that.
Speaker: Yeah, and then you're like, and if you were like, well, and then if I was kind of, I kind of could take it either way.
Speaker: And I was like, well, what if I say that I like European art and it's probably because I'm white, then wouldn't I be like some freaking crazy, like white supremacist?
Speaker: Like what, dude?
Speaker: And people just look at you there, you know, you tug at the,
Speaker: it's not even to prove a point.
Speaker: You're literally just like, bro, I have to feel like there's some level of sanity here.
Speaker: And that's just one example of many.
Speaker: And yeah, man, that was a huge part of like my, I guess you could say Genesis because I was like, dude, this is going off the rails, man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, and,
Speaker: Sometimes I wonder if like, and this is like a, a Dems are the real racists take, but I wonder sometimes if it, should it make us upset to be, because like there's, there's things going around that are, and I think that's part of what's happening on Twitter is people are like, I'm tired of, I'm tired of being a civil about like piss Christ.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Like, I'm tired of being civil about because there's no reciprocity whatsoever.
Speaker: And so, like, I'm going to go ahead and say what I think about what you're doing.
Speaker: Okay, so that leads into another point, which is your vibe online when I first started following you was...
Speaker: more aggressively political.
Speaker: It was more like right-wing account type of Twitter account.
Speaker: And now it's almost totally not.
Speaker: You can still see it in your comics
Speaker: But your like presence is very much about like, hey, look at this cool comic that I did.
Speaker: And it's not, it's like, it's very like friendly and not hostile.
Speaker: And so is that a transformation in optics?
Speaker: Is that a transformation in the way that you actually feel?
Speaker: Is it just because you got away from all the people who were pissing you off and now you just don't have that venom inside you anymore?
Speaker: Like what happened?
Speaker: Well, it's really interesting.
Speaker: It's kind of complicated, but I am very happy to talk about it.
Speaker: Yeah, it's interesting because it's like if you were there the whole time, it's kind of like you're on like season four of Owen Cyclops.
Speaker: And like if you were there the whole time, it makes total sense.
Speaker: But if you came in at season four, you're kind of like, wait, what?
Speaker: And I do.
Speaker: That does happen sometimes.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: There's a few interesting factors there.
Speaker: I mean, a big part of it is the part of the reason why I started going online and posting in the first place at all, even just like why I got a Twitter account, like why I bothered just stepping into the arena at all, was that
Speaker: I started to see, so like what we've been talking about so far, like those things affect me.
Speaker: So it's like, I go to work, I'm made uncomfortable, or I go to work and people get in my face about X, Y, and Z, or I go home and people are saying, but like all that is like happening to me.
Speaker: So it's like, at the end of the day, I could just ignore it or deal with it or drink about it at the time.
Speaker: or whatever.
Speaker: And you could say that like, if I had a problem with it, you could almost say it's like motivated by like self-interest, I guess, if you were being like uncharitable.
Speaker: But part of the reason why I wanted to step into like the public talking about it situation was that I really started to see that like, there was this razor thin path through all the craziness that was actually like totally sane that I felt like wasn't getting airtime
Speaker: because to push back against the stuff that we're talking about, it's almost like the knee jerk reaction.
Speaker: Like I should pick one of the examples.
Speaker: Like, okay, what we're talking about, perfect example.
Speaker: Like with the African art and the hiring a person who's black and you're like, wait, isn't that racist?
Speaker: Like it's almost like the knee jerk reaction is to be like, okay, yeah, well I'm racist then.
Speaker: Like if you're saying that, like I'm just gonna be the other team.
Speaker: And if you're a red team, I'm gonna be blue team.
Speaker: If you're a gray team, I'm,
Speaker: Great team.
Speaker: If you're a silver team, I'm going to be gold team, whatever.
Speaker: Like I'm going to be the other team.
Speaker: I'm going to be the boogeyman that you want and like deal with it.
Speaker: And like, I'm going to make you cry and like feel uncomfortable.
Speaker: Um, I feel like that's a very like knee jerk reaction.
Speaker: And especially at the time that was definitely what was like getting pumped the most, uh, whether or not you could say people were being funny or being serious or whatever, it doesn't really matter.
Speaker: But I started to realize that this kind of cultural schizophrenia that is perfectly illustrated by the story I just told about that art hiring situation, I felt like I was seeing that type of cultural schizophrenia take root, but more importantly, start to really wreak havoc at such an insane pace that I really felt the need to be like,
Speaker: this isn't serving anyone.
Speaker: Like just to be totally clear, like it's not helping anybody because
Speaker: At that, I'm just going to keep jumping off that example because it's literally too perfect.
Speaker: In that situation, if those white people that were at the art dinner are like, okay, we should hire a black person.
Speaker: And then you hire them and they're like, yeah, we hired you because they're black.
Speaker: Dude, I mean, it's so stereotypical, but they're not going to be like, oh, great, thanks.
Speaker: They're going to be like, oh, what, you just gave me, you know?
Speaker: And it's like things like that where I was like, this isn't helping anyone.
Speaker: There's one example in particular that I think is really...
Speaker: illustrative of the spot that I found myself in.
Speaker: And I think that people could really sympathize at least no matter how they feel, because again, it's just one of those perfect little situations like the universe gives you, but I happen to be working at this job and it happened to be the case that
Speaker: I would be closing at night.
Speaker: So I'd be working like the late night shift with a bunch of people who were all black and who were all varying degrees of involved with, I guess you could say like the political aspects of being black, if that makes sense.
Speaker: That was like some of their interests.
Speaker: Black activism.
Speaker: Yeah, to varying degrees.
Speaker: Some being like, yeah, it's cool.
Speaker: Some being like, yo, I'm like really all about it.
Speaker: And at the same time, I was living in an apartment with a bunch of white people who were all like punks and artists and things like that.
Speaker: And I had this really interesting experience where it was like when I would be around the white punks and stuff, if I just talked sanely, they would kind of act like I was racist.
Speaker: But then I would go say the same things with the people I was working with who were black.
Speaker: And they'd be like, well, yeah, of course that's the case.
Speaker: A perfect example of being.
Speaker: So there's this thing in New York City.
Speaker: I don't know if they still have it, but they had at the time.
Speaker: It's called Afro Punk.
Speaker: And exactly what it sounds like.
Speaker: It's a black punk concert thing.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I never went, but it's like explicitly, Hey, this is like the black punk concert, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And in my apartment, one of my friends was like, yo, we're going to go like, we should go to Afro Punk.
Speaker: And in my head, I was kind of like, well, I mean, it's kind of like a black thing.
Speaker: I mean, I don't have a problem with it.
Speaker: Like good for them.
Speaker: But like, why am I going to go out of my way to go to like the black punk music concert?
Speaker: You know, but I didn't say anything.
Speaker: Yeah, their thing.
Speaker: Yeah, I didn't say anything.
Speaker: I was like, all right, whatever.
Speaker: And then I went to work and like the same day, someone I work with was like, I hate when I go to Afropunk and I see large groups of white people because I'm like, bro, this is like literally the one black punk thing.
Speaker: Like, do you really all have to come here?
Speaker: Like, come on.
Speaker: And I told her that I was like, yo, you know, it's crazy because honestly, I like kind of agree with you.
Speaker: But when I tell my friends that they act like I'm racist or crazy.
Speaker: And she was just like, yeah, like that's how white people are, dude.
Speaker: Like they don't get it.
Speaker: And no, I have long felt that most of what's going on is middle class and upper middle class white people versus rich white people.
Speaker: And like, it's very much like, I just don't feel that like, I don't, I don't feel any animosity or hostility toward that.
Speaker: um blm per se like in itself it's more like that seems fake and it seems run by like i mean you get you get that picture of uh what's her name ida bay wells you know with the shell logo right over her head because she's sponsored by shell oil yeah and you know like that's the stuff that irritates me and and it's it's
Speaker: it's funny to have that construed as racist.
Speaker: Cause it's like, I don't know, but no, yeah, totally.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's, it's, and I agree with you that it's, it's not helpful to, to play the heel necessarily.
Speaker: I think, I think there is value in refusing to apologize.
Speaker: If you didn't do anything wrong,
Speaker: And I mean, it's definitely been my experience that the people, as I'm watching my friends get doxxed, the ones who ran and hid or who apologized got the worst of it.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, dude, for sure.
Speaker: I mean, if anyone listening doesn't know that, I mean, yeah, for sure.
Speaker: I mean, what is it like in the...
Speaker: It's in the Tao Te Ching.
Speaker: It says, if you don't wrangle, you won't be blamed.
Speaker: That's like an iron law of the universe.
Speaker: You have to, if you didn't do anything wrong, you can't act like you did anything wrong.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: But yeah, as for that situation, just to like, I don't know if we're going to wrap it up or go more into it, but just to like the tail end of that anecdote is that, yeah.
Speaker: So then when I stepped into the online space,
Speaker: It was kind of like I very, I guess you could say naively thought that I could be like perceived in a vacuum almost.
Speaker: It was like a combination of that plus – it was a combination of three things.
Speaker: It was a combination of like I can be perceived in a vacuum and like people will actually give me a fair hearing plus –
Speaker: you know, like, I feel like a lot of guys imagine there's this like platonic ideal of like a judge and jury somewhere who are like totally fair.
Speaker: And it's like, at the end of the day, I'll end up in front of this, like totally fair hearing and people will hear me out and realize like, oh, we had the wrong idea about this guy, which never happens, obviously.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then the other thing was like, only at the feet of Jesus, my friend.
Speaker: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker: Actually, that's pretty much it.
Speaker: That's really true.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The other thing was like a certain naivete that I would almost call like the obsessive epiphany.
Speaker: It's kind of like, you know, Timothy Leary took acid and thought, oh, if we get everyone to take acid, they'll get it.
Speaker: It's kind of like that where you're like, oh, well, everyone's kind of going completely and totally insane.
Speaker: But if they just had this explained to them, they would realize that, that, that, you know, they're kind of going off the rails and my viewpoint is totally reasonable, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So yeah, that's part of why it was more political.
Speaker: I also, there's a more subtle, uh,
Speaker: not really more subtle, but just a different shift.
Speaker: Maybe it's kind of the same, maybe it's different.
Speaker: I can't tell if it's in the same like folder or not, but long story short, I initially thought like the problem was like a Western civilization thing.
Speaker: And that's part of why I was like, oh, it's like a Western civilization thing, which is like social and political.
Speaker: That makes perfect sense.
Speaker: But actually then I started to realize it was like a spiritual issue.
Speaker: And I think that that frames the whole change in a very like honest way.
Speaker: Because at the end of the day, I literally was sitting on my couch in my apartment.
Speaker: And I was like, you know, I'm not the one who's going to tell people like what, like go read like Aristotle.
Speaker: And that's how we're going to like fix this problem.
Speaker: Like I'm not like a, I'm not like a Western civilization promoter.
Speaker: Not that I have like a problem with that or not that I'm just not that guy.
Speaker: Like I'm not going to LARP and like go read, you know, some philosopher I don't know anything about and then be like, this is the key to our problems because it's Western civilization.
Speaker: My natural, um,
Speaker: nature my natural nature is spiritual and i feel like it's more like it's like a little bell curve or like a little roller coaster and when the politics nature was at its peak that's when i got online and when i got back to the spiritual aspect of it that was actually just a regression to the mean of my naturally spiritual nature like even my girlfriend who's my wife now
Speaker: she was kind of like, you know, she's kind of wondering, she was like, so you're getting really into like the politics and social stuff.
Speaker: Like, is this going to reset and you're going to go back to being like trippy religion guy?
Speaker: Or is this like the road that we're going down?
Speaker: At the time I was like, I don't know.
Speaker: I'm not really sure, but it did reset in a different way because my natural domain has always been, yeah.
Speaker: I think everyone, when they encounter radically upsetting people,
Speaker: And by upsetting, I mean it upsets your worldview.
Speaker: Radically disruptive is a better word.
Speaker: Information.
Speaker: There is a phase of like, this is the key I have to tell everybody.
Speaker: And then you realize that what you have to sort of deconstruct what you believed before and then reconstruct it with the new information.
Speaker: And I definitely had that experience with politics.
Speaker: I mean, I came into Twitter having basically just voted for Evan McMullen.
Speaker: And I was very much like a normie conservative, the type of guy that I would make fun of right now, absolutely.
Speaker: And which, okay, so my understanding of that
Speaker: makes me go a little bit easier on those guys because I'm like they're not stupid necessarily, not all of them, and they're not weak.
Speaker: In my experience, it was, you know, you can think of yourself as smart,
Speaker: But there's a whole lot of questions that you are taking somebody else's word on and you have not investigated personally because you can't, there's too many, there's too many dimensions to life for you to investigate all of them.
Speaker: And so, you know, part of, part of growing up is to a embrace that you have to do that.
Speaker: And then B, make decisions about how you're gonna triage that.
Speaker: Like, which of these seem important enough that I need to dig in and find the answers?
Speaker: And that changes over time.
Speaker: But like, I definitely had that transformation and then became, I did get comfortable with playing the heel for a minute.
Speaker: And I think what I realized or how it developed was that I had to reintegrate back to like, okay, well, so here's what it was fundamentally for me.
Speaker: It was the Sermon on the Mount.
Speaker: Like everybody grows up with the Sermon on the Mount, even if they're not Christian.
Speaker: Like the fact that people can be manipulated politically with like turn the other cheek and, you know, take the beam out of your own eye, et cetera.
Speaker: That's because that's the like spiritual software that we still run on is like the Sermon on the Mount.
Speaker: And I realized that if you take what Jesus said in there, and you take the way that we popularly understand it, and then you look at the way that Jesus himself and all of the apostles treated everybody in the scriptures, it's like, well...
Speaker: They didn't treat them that way.
Speaker: Like Jesus did not agree with his enemy quickly in every instance.
Speaker: Like he picked fights and he stuck his finger in people's eyes and he made trouble.
Speaker: And he was not particularly like, he wasn't even like polite in his tone.
Speaker: Like he called people names.
Speaker: And so like you have to confront that
Speaker: and decide what you think about that.
Speaker: But then you have to come back around to like, but he also did say, turn the other cheek.
Speaker: And what does that mean?
Speaker: Like it, you can't, I guess what I'm saying is I had to deconstruct the stupid version of my understanding of the Sermon on the Mount
Speaker: And, and have for a period focus on, you know, the, the exceptions in the periphery.
Speaker: And then I had to bring all that information back and say, okay, but he still said that, how does it integrate?
Speaker: and uh so that was that i think that was maybe a a microcosm of the whole like political awakening i had to come back around to like okay but i still need to be nice to my aunt if she's you know being dumb about politics like yeah yeah no for sure yeah um
Speaker: Yeah, I had a similar thing.
Speaker: It's a little different for me because I didn't grow up in that environment.
Speaker: I mean, I know like everyone grows up with it in like a cultural sense in a way, but like if there is like an anti that environment, that's like what I grew up the most in.
Speaker: But in a way, it's interesting because part of my other answer was going to say, you know, like people use the word like right wing.
Speaker: But like not to like woke centrist out, but I'm like a – I know what those terms mean obviously and I'm not like someone who plays dumb being like, well, what does it really mean like liberal and conservative?
Speaker: Like I know they mean something, but in a way –
Speaker: Uh, if, if you grant me that and like, that I'm not being like, you know, a woke centrist trying to like chicken out of something, I started to see how those things manifest provisionally in certain ways based on other qualities that started to also like cloud the waters for me a little bit.
Speaker: Um, like part of, like part of what I do sometimes is I listen to, I like try and convince myself of, uh,
Speaker: worldviews that are antithetical to mine.
Speaker: So I'll literally listen to like, here's how you become a Jehovah's witness.
Speaker: Like, let's listen to this like Maoist communist podcast.
Speaker: Like I actually do that, like in my free time, I'm like kind of a weirdo, I guess.
Speaker: And I was listening to this, like it was, it was literally like a Maoist podcast.
Speaker: Cause I was like, bro, what is this?
Speaker: I have to check this out.
Speaker: And this woman was talking, she was like a Native American.
Speaker: And she was talking and talking.
Speaker: And she was like, you know, yeah, I kind of just like care about my people and like standing up for my people and like securing land for us, you know.
Speaker: And I was like, you're in a future for our children.
Speaker: No, literally.
Speaker: And I was like, bro, it's so funny because you're like in your mind, maybe it's real, but in your mind, you're like the maximum level of left wing.
Speaker: But if you were white and saying that, you'd be a hardcore right-wing person.
Speaker: And then certain things like that started to manifest in a weird way.
Speaker: Like, you know, if you're Tibetan and you're standing up for your people, part of that involves like the ethnic displacement of Tibetans.
Speaker: But if you're Han Chinese and you're standing up for your people, they're not facing that problem.
Speaker: Their problems are more economic.
Speaker: So then maybe you're going to be X, Y, and Z type of person.
Speaker: And that really started to like mess with my head a lot.
Speaker: And then you're not a woke centrist.
Speaker: You're like a horseshoe centrist.
Speaker: Well, I think that... Brown-Red Alliance.
Speaker: Yeah, dude.
Speaker: It's called proletarian nationalism, actually.
Speaker: It's what they have in North Korea.
Speaker: No, I'm just playing.
Speaker: That's a deep cut for anyone who's a lefty.
Speaker: But anyway...
Speaker: Yeah, with the politics and religion thing, it's interesting too, because we could probably talk about it forever.
Speaker: But I think that also getting obsessed with politics kind of often leads to religion in a way, because you're wrestling with like, what do I do about this?
Speaker: I know this is like evil or something.
Speaker: What do I do about it?
Speaker: Why is this happening?
Speaker: And I think that that can naturally lead to
Speaker: religion because if you're asking those questions that's one place you can end up of like why is this evil stuff happening and what do i do about it i mean that's kind of the substance of religion in some ways yeah i mean uh there's so many things about what we're seeing that are hard to explain from just like straightforward greed or self-interest
Speaker: Like it's, it's like weirdly nihilistic and weirdly interested in tearing things down and weirdly, um, cruel and hypocritical.
Speaker: And like, I, I think, um, that hideous strength is a really good book if you haven't read it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Someone's trying to send that to me right now, actually.
Speaker: So I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll let them give it to me as a gift after this podcast.
Speaker: I've been meaning to check it out for a while.
Speaker: pick it up, pick it up because the main character who's sort of tainted by, well, I don't want to spoil it for you, but it's a very old book.
Speaker: But the guy who, the protagonist who's sort of tainted by collaboration with the evil conspiracy, his realization, his turnaround is based on like,
Speaker: why do you want me to do this weird ritual thing?
Speaker: Like if we're just scientists and we're just, you know, I mean, I like, he's at a point where he's like, I know we're bad scientists.
Speaker: I know we're like, but like, why, why a crucifix?
Speaker: And like, why, you know, like, Oh my God, dude, I, I literally need to read that so badly because part of the whole story is that I became Christian, like during that time and around that time.
Speaker: And I feel like that was also a big factor because we kind of touched on it before, but like in that bubble, I mean, literally without exaggeration, I could be like, I'm into Hinduism.
Speaker: I'm going this Tibetan Buddhist retreat.
Speaker: I'm doing ayahuasca.
Speaker: I'm reading about Jainism.
Speaker: I'm Shinto.
Speaker: I'm reading about.
Speaker: And then the second that I was like, yeah, I'm reading like the Bible.
Speaker: People were literally like, bro, what?
Speaker: Like they were like, like, I'm not exaggerating.
Speaker: Like it literally was like, you know, why are you reading that?
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: what is going on?
Speaker: It was, and, and like little things like that, little signals where it's exactly what you just described, where you're like, wait, what?
Speaker: Like, why is that the stopping point or something?
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: And I started to pick up signals like that.
Speaker: And that was, I mean, that wasn't the whole story obviously, but that was definitely like one or two notes in like the symphony of it all happening.
Speaker: Yeah, so that book's going to light you up.
Speaker: You're going to like that book, I am confident.
Speaker: And I wrote a little treatment of it in the sub stack that I'll send you after you're done reading it because I'm interested to get your take.
Speaker: Okay, so I want to cover some of the little topics that you... Well, okay, before we do that, like a lot of us, you and I are both...
Speaker: a little bit fuzzy, a little bit tongue in cheek about how seriously we take the schizo stuff.
Speaker: And I'm interested to know, like, are there cases where that's defensive irony?
Speaker: Like, I really believe this, but I'm going to goof about it so that you don't think I'm crazy.
Speaker: Is it something where you're like,
Speaker: It's symbolically true, even if it's not like a Jordan Peterson type of thing.
Speaker: And so I want to explore, like, what's the thing that you believe the most strongly and unironically and genuinely that would be, like, the hardest sell for regular people?
Speaker: Dude, it's so funny because it's so funny because I think I've done a few podcasts for the book and everyone has asked me that.
Speaker: It's so funny.
Speaker: For real?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: They've asked me like what, well, you phrased it in a different way.
Speaker: Another guy asked me like, what's one conspiracy theory you think is like 100% real?
Speaker: And I was like,
Speaker: bro how much time do you have like all all of them um so it's funny i guess i i guess i give off that vibe intentionally and then when people get me like you know at the table they're like okay so let's what's going on here yeah but um uh i kind of gave them like kind of like cagey answers about like sciences and cosmology and stuff but the way you phrased it is interesting because you asked me um
Speaker: What's the thing that you believe that would be the toughest sell for normal people?
Speaker: The most out there, yeah.
Speaker: Well, it's really interesting because... Okay, I think that part of why there's like a joking...
Speaker: aspect to it aside from like a million other reasons and that I like doing it and that I think it's like really really really funny honestly I think it's I think it's so funny dude um is because it's almost like part of the most heretical thing I don't know if this is it but this is what's coming to my mind right now it probably is is like being agnostic about certain things is almost the craziest thing possible like if you talk to someone and you're like
Speaker: And they're like, I'm a flat earth person.
Speaker: I looked at this data and I am 100% sure that the earth is flat.
Speaker: It's like that's on one tier.
Speaker: But if you were like, yeah, I'm just not really sure what to think about all that.
Speaker: I'm kind of like agnostic about it.
Speaker: It's almost like that's like an extra level of crazy because...
Speaker: You're showing that you're not just like, it goes back to the appeal to pathology thing that we talked about before.
Speaker: It shows that like all the normal attacks about it of like, oh, you just want to feel cool and special like you figured it out or like, oh, you just can't read the charts and data.
Speaker: Like it kind of all falls away because I'm like, I don't really know what to think about certain cosmological things like that.
Speaker: And I feel like if that came up in a conversation, that is the most probably like head turning, like yo, what kind of thing.
Speaker: I have to qualify it a little bit because it's kind of like,
Speaker: Once I leave a certain level of empirical observation of reality, I would say I'm agnostic to a degree that most people would find unreasonable.
Speaker: So things like NASA and photos of planets and all that stuff, like, I don't know if that's real or not in my world.
Speaker: I don't say it's fake.
Speaker: I'm not going to run around being like, it's a hundred percent fake.
Speaker: But like when I see that stuff,
Speaker: it goes in the folder of like, I don't know if this is real.
Speaker: How would I know that?
Speaker: Okay, yes.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: I guess that's kind of tame, but then...
Speaker: I think that it goes a little bit further because, you know, there's that perfect.
Speaker: This is perfect.
Speaker: You know, there's that like playing card game people post online all the time where it's like Illuminati playing cards and it's all these different images with descriptions.
Speaker: And sometimes they seem like kind of prophetic.
Speaker: You know what I'm talking about?
Speaker: If you saw the images, you would know.
Speaker: It doesn't matter.
Speaker: You're talking about tarot?
Speaker: No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker: There's like this Illuminati playing card game that people always post in weird political circles.
Speaker: And there's cards like – if you saw the – I'm describing it poorly.
Speaker: If you saw it, you'd be like, oh, I know what you're talking about.
Speaker: Like there's cards like media attack or like Wall Street crashing.
Speaker: I'll show you later and you'll be like, oh, that's what you meant.
Speaker: It doesn't matter.
Speaker: The point is that one of the cards says –
Speaker: They're based on the Illuminatus trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson.
Speaker: One of the cards is Flat Earthers and it says the Flat Earthers aren't right, but they know something dot, dot, dot.
Speaker: And it's funny because my like non-cagy answer, if I'm not putting up like a smoke screen, I did like hang out in that world for a while as like a very interested observer, just online.
Speaker: I didn't like go to a convention or something.
Speaker: But I was very intrigued by it for some reason, probably because of everything we talked about before where I was like, wow, people are really arguing about the earth is flat online.
Speaker: I'm definitely gonna go check that out, like obviously.
Speaker: And by virtue of what I do visually, I often have extremely large amounts of time where I can listen to stuff.
Speaker: So like if I'm working, I could listen to like a four and a half hour flat earth debate and I'm working and I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.
Speaker: Whereas for most people that would be like a heinous time investment.
Speaker: So it's easy for me to just burn through like crazy amounts of information.
Speaker: And it was really interesting because I kind of ended up in this place where I kind of, for a while I was like, wow, I kind of feel like I could argue for either side, which makes me feel totally insane.
Speaker: And I was like, I'm doing a lot of drugs right now.
Speaker: Like maybe I did make myself like an idiot.
Speaker: But after like it set in and like a few years went by, it's more just like there's a lot of weird things about cosmology in general that make me agnostic.
Speaker: If there was like a, like I would never say I'm a flat earth person.
Speaker: And if you ask me, I don't think I live on like a flat earth, like in my mind.
Speaker: Like I definitely don't think that.
Speaker: But there's all these just weird things about cosmology in general that make it so like pretty much outside of like what I can see literally, like I really don't know.
Speaker: yeah what the cosmological situation is and i think that that is almost like the craziest thing of all because people think you're really nuts if you start being like i don't know i mean i'm looking at the sky like you think if i went up there it would really be like a black vacuum i don't know maybe people are like bro are you an idiot like what but i don't know i'm not really sure honestly what it exposes
Speaker: for them is that they are willing to accept expertise.
Speaker: And there is a, people want to believe that their knowledge is real.
Speaker: They want to believe that it's their knowledge.
Speaker: And when you invite them to consider the possibility that no, you're just believing what somebody else told you and you haven't
Speaker: seriously investigated it yourself.
Speaker: You just were told that in school and you believed it.
Speaker: That, that, so for the record, I think that should be okay.
Speaker: I think it has to be okay.
Speaker: I think it should be okay to accept that.
Speaker: things that are investigated by other people.
Speaker: Because otherwise you would know so little.
Speaker: You'd be capable of knowing so little.
Speaker: But I think the appropriate closeness with which you hold that knowledge should decrease exponentially as you get farther away from your own experience.
Speaker: Yeah, totally.
Speaker: And so what happens is, I get into this debate with religion.
Speaker: Because it's like, well, you, you know, you shouldn't trust the vision that you had.
Speaker: You should trust 19th century historiography.
Speaker: Like, you should trust what people say about, like, the...
Speaker: the buoyancy of Noah's Ark or whatever.
Speaker: And that to me seems like not only wrong, but like absurd.
Speaker: Like, no, I'm going to believe what I am experiencing.
Speaker: And, you know, to some extent, that's just temperamental.
Speaker: Like people are different in the way they're wired and the way they process information.
Speaker: But like,
Speaker: For me, yeah.
Speaker: So I was talking to a friend actually just earlier today about ayahuasca.
Speaker: And he's saying like...
Speaker: People have these beliefs about it's demonic and Hillary Clinton does ayahuasca and she's really a reptile.
Speaker: He was sort of piling on lots of different theories because we were talking about the sort of demonic theory of hallucinogens, right?
Speaker: And what I said to him was like,
Speaker: you and I, our opinions about cosmology and about politics and about like the wider world
Speaker: the odds that those are gonna have any ramifications for us in our personal lives or on the world is zero, effectively, for most of us.
Speaker: But your opinions about pornography and fornication and child rearing and dating, those are immensely important.
Speaker: And it's super important to get those right.
Speaker: And so I was saying like, like with hallucinogens, I knew a lot of missionaries in Latin America and there was a very common thread of experience to see traditions where hallucinogens were explicitly used and intended to invite spirits into your body to lend you powers.
Speaker: And like, that's not a...
Speaker: That's not a folklore thing.
Speaker: Like you can read about that in anthropological texts.
Speaker: That's what those traditions believe about those drugs.
Speaker: And so for me, it's like the Alex Jones thing.
Speaker: Like, is it super important –
Speaker: that I be sure whether or not, um, you know, high level political figures are like kidnapping kids and drinking their blood.
Speaker: Uh, not in a practical sense.
Speaker: I, I can hold that really loosely and it's fine.
Speaker: It's not, it's not going to matter either way.
Speaker: But if my beliefs about that are,
Speaker: lead me to be more careful about what I expose my kids to as far as media, what I consume, even in terms of like food.
Speaker: Like my voyage through this like weird, you know, sketchy conspiracy land,
Speaker: basically the way it all cashes out is I'm more conscientious.
Speaker: I'm more careful about what I eat and what I watch and what I let my kids watch and what I expose them to.
Speaker: And it's like unambiguously healthy.
Speaker: And so my attitude is if I stick to what I know and what I experience,
Speaker: then I can let all the other stuff float around and be interesting and who cares, right?
Speaker: And I think that's definitely true.
Speaker: And I basically was talking about experiences with the various hallucinogens and I was like, look, think about the people you know who have done this.
Speaker: I know they will tell you that it was life-changing and I'm sure it was in a sense
Speaker: but did they have a transformative experience?
Speaker: Are they different now?
Speaker: Are they different in a good way?
Speaker: And he didn't have a really good answer for that question.
Speaker: I think that's where I come down to, it's like, how does this cash out?
Speaker: What does it mean?
Speaker: So yeah, that's, that's, that's probably my, you know, if I was to answer that question of like, how, what's the, what's the weirdest conspiracy theory that I believe more or less unironically, it would be that, that hallucinogens are probably linked to a lot of the cultural changes of the last century.
Speaker: And that it's a, it's a element of spiritual warfare.
Speaker: Oh, dude.
Speaker: I mean, that's like a fact.
Speaker: Like, hello.
Speaker: Not hello to you, but like for everyone else.
Speaker: I mean, that's like, I mean, that's more real to me than like the shape of the earth, dude.
Speaker: Like for sure, man.
Speaker: But yeah, I mean, how it cashes out is really interesting.
Speaker: I think that's also part of why you mentioned like why I like joking about it.
Speaker: I think that it's because there's that extreme tension there where like, for me on my end, like one of the examples that I like bringing up with people, if it comes up, I kind of don't really do it much anymore.
Speaker: But like, if it comes up is like,
Speaker: how far away the sun is, you know, whatever it is, let's say it's like 9 million miles away.
Speaker: Like, how do I know that?
Speaker: Like, I really don't know that.
Speaker: Like, I don't.
Speaker: Someone else says they know it and maybe they're right.
Speaker: I have no idea, but I don't actually know that.
Speaker: And I think that bringing up something like that makes people really, really, really mad because it is
Speaker: At the end of the day, you have to say, I know that because someone else told me.
Speaker: And if someone like me pushes you and is like, what part of the scientific method is that?
Speaker: What part of the scientific method is some guy tells me and I believe him?
Speaker: It's not there.
Speaker: And like, of course, you could deconstruct what I'm saying and say I'm like just being intentionally obtuse or whatever.
Speaker: But I think it makes me a little bit.
Speaker: Well, the part of it that you're, the thread that you're really pulling on is not like, ha ha, you believe something just because somebody told you what an asshole.
Speaker: The thread that you're pulling on is like, why do you feel the need to like synthesize all your opinions from stellar hydrogen and feel like they're yours?
Speaker: Feel like you did that.
Speaker: Like, it's okay.
Speaker: It's okay.
Speaker: But because we live in this like post-enlightenment materialist society, everybody wants to believe that they've done their own thinking.
Speaker: even if like they're not equipped to do their own thinking and like never will be.
Speaker: And like, that's fine.
Speaker: That's like, that's okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's what's offensive about it.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: It touches on a lot of things, a lot of like third rail things.
Speaker: I mean, one of my other favorite, like, I guess you could say like ideas that I kick around and like work with is like science as a religion now, which is kind of like obvious for most people at this point.
Speaker: But I think it also like touches a nerve there.
Speaker: Like I was in some Twitter discussion with someone.
Speaker: I do that if like I'm stuck in the car, I'll sometimes like, you know, if someone replies and they try and bait me, I'll like bait them back, you know?
Speaker: And, uh,
Speaker: they were like explaining science to me, you know?
Speaker: And I was like, oh, wow, that's so nice.
Speaker: We have like this class of people that just tell us what's real and we believe them.
Speaker: Like that's so convenient, you know?
Speaker: Like this sounds great, you know?
Speaker: And then you're like, well, have they ever made mistakes?
Speaker: You know, which is a whole other like thing to open up.
Speaker: And eventually they're just like, oh, you're being stupid, like blocked, you know?
Speaker: But I think it actually touches on something very like crucial.
Speaker: And I think that's part of why like, you know, not to come back to it because I'm really not like a flat earth person again, but I think that's part of why that blew up in the media so much because, you know,
Speaker: You know, there's a reason for that.
Speaker: There's a reason also like normies love when people think dinosaurs are fake.
Speaker: They think it's like the funniest thing ever.
Speaker: And it's like out of all the things, I think it's because it touches that nerve of like,
Speaker: oh, you're not like believing the experts or you're not taking the evidence or like you think you're an expert.
Speaker: It's just there's something really, really interesting about that, especially given like the last like two years or whatever.
Speaker: It dovetails with religion in an interesting way.
Speaker: I think people are trying to get like metaphysical and ethical information out of science, which is like impossible.
Speaker: I think that's also part of why they get mad about it.
Speaker: But yeah, that's like one thing that's super fascinating to me for sure.
Speaker: Okay, so I want to move into another piece of,
Speaker: This quantum soteriology.
Speaker: Oh, cool.
Speaker: Dexter Young.
Speaker: First of all, I Googled Dexter Young.
Speaker: Did you make Dexter Young up?
Speaker: Yeah, someone had DM me on Instagram and they were like, is this real?
Speaker: And I was like, no, it's not real.
Speaker: So yeah, in case anyone, imagine someone hasn't bought the book at this point in the podcast, but that's one that I really liked a lot.
Speaker: And partially for that reason, I kept it only in the book, so I've never posted it online except on Patreon.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But yeah, it's kind of cool because it's like only people have only read that if they're on the Patreon or if they got the book.
Speaker: But we can talk about it, obviously.
Speaker: But I'm just saying, well, plug.
Speaker: OK, so that the format of that one where it's like factual and it's it's almost like a it's like a comic strip as documentary.
Speaker: Have you ever read The Big Book of Conspiracies?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Okay, this book, it might be really stupid.
Speaker: I bought this book when I was like, well, my mom bought this book when I was like 12.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: And it is all of, it's a graphic novel.
Speaker: But it just goes, it's just this like compendium of conspiracies and it does reptiles and it does reptilians and it does a bunch of different like JFK conspiracies, including like some goofy ones.
Speaker: Like he has the same number of letters and his name is Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker: And they like all these different synchronicities between the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations.
Speaker: But it's pretty beautiful in terms of like the visual style and it's,
Speaker: It's a fun one, so you should check it out.
Speaker: But your format on that one reminded me of that book.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: But what you were talking about was the idea of order as God and chaos as the fall.
Speaker: And so the fact that there is quantum chaos, randomness, is an element of the fall has infected the foundation of reality.
Speaker: And that spills over into the macro scale.
Speaker: And what I thought about that was, when I think about what I feel about order versus chaos, I think Jordan Peterson is basically right, that the right place to be is in the liminal space, pressing the frontier.
Speaker: You are expanding order into chaos.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it really, that strip really spoke to me because this is a question that I've thought of over and over and rolled it around in my head, which is if the final victory is total order and everything's as it should be, like, how am I gonna feel about that?
Speaker: Is that gonna feel good?
Speaker: Am I gonna be bored with that?
Speaker: Actually, when I was, I remember very clearly, I couldn't have been older than like six years old
Speaker: I went into my mom's room and I said, I'm scared of heaven.
Speaker: And she was like, are you, are you scared to die?
Speaker: And I was like, well, yes, I'm, I'm scared to die, but what if I don't die?
Speaker: And I just go on and on and on and on forever.
Speaker: That's pretty scary too.
Speaker: Like I just, my brain couldn't process that.
Speaker: And I can't recapture the fear that I felt when I was six, but I still have this like, man, what's that gonna be like?
Speaker: How do you deal with like when you've won?
Speaker: Then what?
Speaker: Yeah, dude.
Speaker: And I guess you guys weren't, I mean, you guys weren't Mormon at that time, right?
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: I didn't join until high school.
Speaker: My grandparents, my mom's parents are, were, but.
Speaker: Oh, well, that's so interesting, dude.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, well, it's interesting, man, because it touches on like so many things.
Speaker: Like there, it's interesting because that, so that strip,
Speaker: part of it is what you're saying right now.
Speaker: Like there's that whole aspect to it.
Speaker: But then there's also part of the, like part of the story of like being like a weird thinker in that situation and thinking about that and that making you like a heretic basically.
Speaker: But yeah, man, I mean, it's interesting because I feel like that was born, that was kind of born out of,
Speaker: a lot of like theological like wrestling while at the same time I have a background in obviously visual art.
Speaker: But then I definitely just to be clear would not say I have a background in it, but I did do like the quantum physics thing for like a little bit in terms of being a young person who's just reading about it.
Speaker: I wasn't like colliding, you know, particles or whatever, but it made a really big impression on my thinking because
Speaker: I got really, really into physics in high school and I ended up taking like physics courses and stuff.
Speaker: And I thought it was really interesting and it definitely shaped how I think about everything, even like questions like we're talking about now, because
Speaker: You do physics, right?
Speaker: This is why I think every young man should be like forced to do physics actually, because you do physics and the whole time it's like, you know, force equals mass times acceleration.
Speaker: If we drop this ball, it's 20 pounds.
Speaker: Add the six, that's how hard it's going to hit the floor.
Speaker: You know, you're working like hard ass numbers basically.
Speaker: And then you get to the end and things start to unravel.
Speaker: And then all of a sudden Max Planck is finding like coins of energy and you're like,
Speaker: wait, what?
Speaker: Like I thought, and then you end up at quantum physics, which is basically like philosophy and theology.
Speaker: So it's really weird.
Speaker: Cause it's like by pursuing physics and by doing this study of like the hard physical material, it literally is like a bus and you get out at the last stop and it's like, yeah, welcome to like philosophy and religion.
Speaker: Like, I know you didn't think that was the bus that you were on, but it is actually.
Speaker: Um, and that's really the experience that I had and it really like messed with my head.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So there's that aspect of it.
Speaker: There is like the weird, like chaotic element.
Speaker: We could go in a lot of directions with that, man.
Speaker: I mean, like there's the visual aspect of it because visual art like has the chaos versus order tension that kind of speaks to the theological element that you're describing.
Speaker: Like if you have a work of art and it's 100% totally order,
Speaker: What would that be like a checkerboard?
Speaker: I mean, who's trying to like, look at that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It kind of is this weird thing where you, you want to be like, you just said on that front of like, I often use the term like nature versus order.
Speaker: I know that's like unideal because it's like philosophical, like is nature disorderly, but yeah.
Speaker: I have that in my own work, like if I'm using ink, you know, you can start to feel when you incorporate like spilling the ink versus like control with your hand.
Speaker: On my painting show, I've often described the tools that I use on a spectrum of like order, like some of them are like sniper rifles.
Speaker: It's always a hundred percent order all the time.
Speaker: Some of them are more like flamethrowers.
Speaker: You're just like generally kind of controlling the situation.
Speaker: But theologically, it's also really interesting.
Speaker: I mean, I can't help but tie it into what I've been thinking about a lot for a really long time, which is like those big theological questions and how they play out for normal people, like that six-year-old that's you, obviously, in that story.
Speaker: Like I kind of had this crazy moment of like,
Speaker: you know, I've been doing all this hard theology about like, you know, the papal supremacy and the schism and absolute divine simplicity and all this stuff.
Speaker: And it's like, it's kind of like the bus analogy with the physics where eventually I was like, yo, actually like, what does all this stuff say about like literally what happens like after we die?
Speaker: Like literally, like what am I actually gonna be doing?
Speaker: Like every day, like what am I gonna be doing every day?
Speaker: And I had this weird moment where I was like, yeah, it's weird.
Speaker: Like, I feel like if I asked like a hundred Christian people,
Speaker: I would get like a hundred different answers.
Speaker: Like, am I literally going to be sitting like on a cloud, like playing the harp forever?
Speaker: Is that like the ultimate idea of order?
Speaker: And sometimes you talk to certain people and I'm definitely not like disparaging this, but they kind of make it seem like it's like, I'm just going to be sitting on a cloud, like staring at this bright light, like singing about how great and awesome the bright light is.
Speaker: Maybe that's how it all ends up.
Speaker: So which like you can imagine, like, so in, in, uh, I don't know if you read any slate star codex, uh, or whatever it's called now, but, but, um, he's actually a really interesting writer on, on subjects like that.
Speaker: And, um, yeah, he, he talks about the concept of wire heading, which is basically like, what if they invented a perfect drug that made you feel everything that you crave to feel in, including like,
Speaker: the erotic and the sense of accomplishment and the feeling of victory and the, you know, like all of the good feelings all at once, all the time, forever.
Speaker: And he was like, you know, you could, you could paint two pictures of that experience.
Speaker: And one of those pictures is like the Buddha in the Lotus, just comprehending reality and experiencing transcendent joy forever.
Speaker: And then the other picture you could paint is a junkie in a dingy bathroom, you know, with a needle hanging out of his arm, having that experience.
Speaker: And it's like, is it real?
Speaker: Like, does it matter if it's real?
Speaker: And yeah, I think when you talk about like playing the harp and looking into the cloud and looking into the light, like I think in many ways, our theology is sort of a rejection of that.
Speaker: It's like, no, we're going to be doing stuff.
Speaker: We're going to be, there's more adventure on the other side.
Speaker: And also in the sense of like the final victory is infinite or fractal, if that makes sense.
Speaker: Like it doesn't, there's not a beginning and an end necessarily.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's super interesting.
Speaker: Um, well, I mean, maybe, you know, I used to be really into Buddhism.
Speaker: I would say that I used to identify as Buddhist with the caveat that like in the like white guy doing like a lot of drugs way, but I definitely was like living in that world in my mind for a while.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: It's interesting because I never really thought about it in terms of order versus chaos, but I guess pain and suffering kind of feel like they go on the chaos side intuitively.
Speaker: And it's a whole nother long story, but part of why I kind of stopped identifying with that worldview and more accurately, like why I stopped finding it useful was that I started to feel like it's characterization of pain was inaccurate.
Speaker: Cause like Buddha's whole life story is the story of a man trying to avoid pain.
Speaker: experiencing pain and suffering literally like that's not even a biased view of it he literally learns that pain and suffering exists and then tries to figure out how he can not have that and that's what buddhism is literally and i started to feel like that was not the way to go necessarily kind of like it's kind of a weird parallel with like the junkie buddha uh analogy you ended your story with yeah
Speaker: But also there's this weird thing where like, in terms of like, what does the eschaton look like?
Speaker: Like eschatology and like what the final stage is.
Speaker: I'm kind of in this weird zone, man.
Speaker: And I feel like that's also why I made that comic.
Speaker: Cause like, I really identify with a guy like that where he's like, dang, I just don't like fit in anywhere.
Speaker: Like I'm really just this weirdo.
Speaker: It's kind of like part of the subtext, I guess, because I'm thinking about this stuff and coming to like weird conclusions about it.
Speaker: But I'm kind of in this stage where I'm like unpacking a lot of these like philosophical presuppositions about things like that.
Speaker: And like, I almost feel like I flipped this switch in my brain.
Speaker: where I can't tell if I got a lot smarter or a lot dumber relating back to everything we've talked about so far, because there's all these weird presuppositions.
Speaker: Like you were just saying like, well, you know, if I was going to exaggerate part of what you just said, like, well, yeah, we get to the end and then God has his final victory.
Speaker: And then it's kind of like the implication is like, well, if everything's good and orderly, then we're all like frozen almost like everything's static because we have this like weird philosophical presupposition, I guess, that like,
Speaker: motion is like chaotic, I guess, or like perfection somehow equals like not moving or not changing.
Speaker: But when you start to dig in there, you're like, well, maybe that's true, but I could, I could kind of pitch it the other way too.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I mean, like a musician,
Speaker: performs perfectly.
Speaker: They're performing.
Speaker: It's perfect.
Speaker: You know, I guess I do have this tether between perfection and static that I could throw away right now, maybe.
Speaker: And I've just been like going so hard into digging into that world that it's been really interesting.
Speaker: Honestly, it's been really, really interesting.
Speaker: And you hit a lot of really weird, deep aspects of like thinking about religion and stuff like that.
Speaker: Like one thing that I thought of while you were talking, I think it was origin, heretical thinker alert.
Speaker: I think it was origin.
Speaker: it was either origin or someone refuting origin doesn't really matter for this purpose.
Speaker: But someone said that they were like, Oh, well, I guess when we get to heaven, like we don't have free will anymore because we get to heaven and everything's good.
Speaker: So we can only do good.
Speaker: So we don't have free will anymore.
Speaker: And another guy comes along and says, well, no, because if everything's good, you can still choose between two forms of goodness.
Speaker: Then you still have free will.
Speaker: And it's like weird little, like,
Speaker: getting really into the nuts and bolts but also it's not really esoteric it has to do with like what i'm gonna do when i die isn't that like kind of important so it's been it's been weird man i feel like that's part of why i made that comic i was like he's just like me it's like it's like literally me kind of yeah well well okay so i got i got one more uh thing i want to throw at you
Speaker: So I was fascinated by your Halloween strips and I couldn't, that's another one where I couldn't tell how much it was ironic and how much it was sincere, but I,
Speaker: I actually have come around to a belief that Halloween is a profoundly spiritual holiday and it should be.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Because, and I sort of draw, I have a tether in my mind between Halloween, Christmas and Easter.
Speaker: And, you know, Easter is the final triumph over the winter and the death.
Speaker: It's the resurrection.
Speaker: Everything comes back.
Speaker: Christmas is the turning of the tide.
Speaker: That's the days are going to get longer from here on out.
Speaker: It's going to get better.
Speaker: Jesus is here.
Speaker: Like the, the savior has arrived and it's not, everything's not fine right now.
Speaker: And it's going to get worse for a minute because, you know, he's going to get killed, but he's going to come back.
Speaker: And then, so it's the celebration of, of the potentiality of that turning point.
Speaker: And then Halloween is you're walking into the dark.
Speaker: You are getting ready to face the long night.
Speaker: And so the reason that it's skeletons and ghosts and the macabre is because you are A, opening your eyes to it.
Speaker: You are saying, yes, I'm gonna suffer, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna be afraid.
Speaker: And you are embracing that and embodying it and accepting it.
Speaker: And there's a piece of it that is sort of laughing at the devil.
Speaker: Like, I'm not going to be afraid of you.
Speaker: I'm going to show all your tools.
Speaker: And I'm going to show you that I see this and I don't care.
Speaker: Or I'm not worried.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: There's like a
Speaker: There's like a courage or a bravery about Halloween that I really like.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I often joke about the white people who make Halloween their Christmas, basically, who are usually atheists and really into horror movies.
Speaker: I think that's part of why maybe there's a little bit of a sting about it for some people.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: We're taking it back.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I mean, yeah, that comic in the book is totally genuine, for sure.
Speaker: I do really like it.
Speaker: I'm sure some people take it overboard with the horror movie aspect of it.
Speaker: But as for what you said, yeah, man, I totally agree.
Speaker: I mean...
Speaker: Part of where I come from spiritually and same deal with my wife, which is only relevant because we have a kid now.
Speaker: So we're locked in and rearing a kid into this strange world.
Speaker: But it's kind of where we started.
Speaker: But I think there is like a semiotic and like symbolic nature of the universe.
Speaker: Semiotic just being a pretentious word for like symbolic, basically, in case people don't know.
Speaker: It means like it signifies something.
Speaker: But yeah, I really do think that's real.
Speaker: And I think that our relationship with that in terms of like the seasons and stuff often gets pegged as like very pagan, maybe because that's the way people think of paganism today.
Speaker: But I definitely think that there is like a, yeah, I definitely think there is like a kind of like wisdom inherent to relating your life to the seasons.
Speaker: And then that kind of spills out into larger things
Speaker: themes i mean you literally watch the earth like die and get better and then it dies again you know i go on the dog walk and i see one tree and it's full and green and then it's yellow and then it's red and then it's empty and it's dead and then it's covered in snow and then the next year it's the same you know so i really do feel like there is like a kind of mystical and like spiritual aspect to it um that comic actually just in case you want the deep lore is i really got inspired by rumi
Speaker: way early on in my artistic career.
Speaker: Rumi's like a Sufi.
Speaker: That means like mystical Islamic poet.
Speaker: I think it's like the 1200s.
Speaker: And he has a lot of poems like that where it's like,
Speaker: I'm drinking tea from this cup, but like, you know, the cup is like God and like, I'm the tea and he's like the only thing holding me together.
Speaker: And like a lot of stuff like that.
Speaker: And I feel like that made a big impression on me.
Speaker: And it kind of fits like, you know, are you joking?
Speaker: Like, is this serious?
Speaker: But like, I really do feel that way.
Speaker: Honestly, like most of the time, like I really am.
Speaker: naturally like a more mystically inclined person, not like, I wouldn't say I'm like a mystic cause that implies like some level of knowledge that I definitely don't have, but sort of like, I mean, that's why my bio and Twitter says mystical idiot.
Speaker: Like, honestly, that's just really like what I am.
Speaker: And I really am like looking at the candy corn in Walmart and I'm like, wow, like God made a crazy universe.
Speaker: And like, I'm in aisle 10 at Walmart and like, it's just nuts down here, bro.
Speaker: And yeah, I do feel like that's part of my vibe.
Speaker: And yeah, that's kind of like what I tried to capture there, I guess.
Speaker: Yeah, it spoke to me.
Speaker: Talking about your kid, man.
Speaker: So part of what disciplined me in terms of schizo posting, like I'm still okay with throwing around whatever ideas.
Speaker: Like that's, you know, I'm not gonna stop doing that.
Speaker: But the reality check for me has been
Speaker: okay, I'm toying with all of these really socially dangerous ideas, like ideas that could get me in trouble, could get my kids in trouble.
Speaker: And so if I'm going to transmit any of this to my six-year-old
Speaker: I need to be dead sure that it's the truth.
Speaker: Oh dude.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so, and so like, yeah, I, I, I find that my, as my, as my daughter gets older, I have five kids, but my daughter's the oldest.
Speaker: And as, as my daughter gets older and she starts to ask these questions about like, why is the world the way that it is?
Speaker: There's in my mind, there's like the, there's like the normie answer and there's the Twitter answer in a lot of cases.
Speaker: And I'm like, oh, I really don't know which one to give you.
Speaker: Because I haven't done the work to nail down what I actually believe.
Speaker: I just sort of juggle these opinions for fun online and to make people think and get a rise out of people or whatever.
Speaker: And so what's that experience?
Speaker: I mean, your kid's still a baby, right?
Speaker: Yep, he is baby mode.
Speaker: Baby mode.
Speaker: But how has being a dad colored your artistic sensibilities and your take on all this stuff?
Speaker: Well, there's a lot of stuff there, man.
Speaker: I mean, on the surface level, it's funny because it kind of perfectly ties in with the space cosmology stuff before because that was my version of that where it's like,
Speaker: you know, what am I going to tell my kid?
Speaker: Am I going to be like, yo, that's fake?
Speaker: Or am I going to say, you know, yeah, that's totally real and just kind of play along.
Speaker: It's interesting because where I landed for a lot of that stuff is that I feel like I'm going to tell him it's okay to like look into it and make his own mind up about it.
Speaker: Honestly, it kind of is like a cop out in some ways.
Speaker: I feel like for non moral issues, it's not a cop out, but for moral issues, it would be a cop out.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I feel so.
Speaker: There's some things like that.
Speaker: There's some fun ones.
Speaker: Like it was kind of a joke, but not really.
Speaker: I told people not to get my kid anything with like dinosaurs on it because I didn't want to like implant like what I feel like the worldview inherent to that is.
Speaker: And they did.
Speaker: And then I was at this party and I was like, I'm just gonna tell them these are these are dragons, honestly, which is which I might do.
Speaker: But anyway, so there's like the fun, there's like fun aspects of it like that, you know?
Speaker: So we were, we were taking a walk around our subdivision and there's this like kind of craggy like ditch on the side of the subdivision that at night is a little spooky.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And my daughter asked me if there were fairies there.
Speaker: Whoa.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I, and, and that, that was, that was probably the most dramatic example of me being like, Oh no, what do I say?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cause I'm not going to tell her they're not real.
Speaker: And I'm also not going to tell her that they're like Tinkerbell.
Speaker: You know, like, what am I going to do here?
Speaker: Yeah, well, I think I defaulted to agnosticism there, too.
Speaker: I think what I told her was like, I don't know.
Speaker: They probably don't look like in the movies, I think is what I told her.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a good answer.
Speaker: Well, it's interesting.
Speaker: My wife and I have an interesting kind of male-female dichotomy there because, like, if my kid is like, Mom, our gnome's real, she's going to be like, yeah.
Speaker: They're, they're, they're literally like, she's literally going to be like, yeah.
Speaker: And that's, yeah, that's the, that's, I mean, you can ask me, you can ask me more questions, but yeah.
Speaker: Whereas in that situation, I would be like, I don't know.
Speaker: I mean, may, I mean, you know, maybe probably it kind of feels like they're real, but I don't know.
Speaker: So we have like an interesting like dichotomy there.
Speaker: Um, it's interesting too, man, because I, I did, I just, for the record, I did tell her I have never personally seen a fairy.
Speaker: So nice.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: I had to be honest.
Speaker: Well, it's also interesting.
Speaker: I mean, I used to work with kids in a really weird situation where there was lots of like statues of mythological stuff around.
Speaker: It was in this like park.
Speaker: Basically, it's a really like weird thing.
Speaker: But they would ask me, they'd be like, oh, you know, is this like Greek God real?
Speaker: You know, it's like, what's this statue?
Speaker: Like, oh, it's a statue of Bacchus.
Speaker: Like, oh, is that real?
Speaker: And I'm talking to someone else's like six year old.
Speaker: And now I have to be like, well, in a Jungian sense, like, you know what I mean?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I have a lot of experience with that, oddly, in a lot of different situations.
Speaker: And I often have been like, well, you know, a lot of people think it's real.
Speaker: I'm not really sure.
Speaker: Or I think it's real.
Speaker: Maybe I'd be honest, but some people don't, you know.
Speaker: But then with your kid, it's a little bit different, obviously.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's interesting too, man, because for me, what it really makes me think of is like, you know, like, is your daughter going to get like damaged or not by the fairy answer?
Speaker: Like, probably not.
Speaker: Like, it seems like a pretty safe like realm.
Speaker: But for me, it's interesting with like the theological and religious stuff, because that's where I feel like I have a responsibility that is like no longer like joking around.
Speaker: Like, I feel like I am going to have to like answer for that more than.
Speaker: if Owen Jr. thinks gnomes are real when he's seven, like I feel like I am going to have to answer for that more.
Speaker: And it's really been like another thing that's kind of been like vexing in a way because, um,
Speaker: I am very American.
Speaker: So there was a meme going around recently where it was like Baptist.
Speaker: I'm not Baptist just in case anyone doesn't know me, but it was like Baptist parents when they're rooting for football.
Speaker: And it was like, my kid's going to root for Alabama or he's not going to sleep in my house.
Speaker: And then it was like Baptist parents at church.
Speaker: And it was like, I can't tell you if my kid's Christian or not.
Speaker: I mean, he'll have to make that decision on his own.
Speaker: On his own.
Speaker: And it's really funny, but that's actually like really true.
Speaker: And it's funny, but I think it points to like something interesting where I can kind of be like, well, I don't know, man.
Speaker: Like it's so interesting because obviously I'm going to raise him like in a certain context, but I feel like I'm playing with certain fireballs of like, well, he's going to like be rebellious.
Speaker: And like, I don't want to force him into X, Y, and Z. Yeah.
Speaker: But at the same time, obviously being raised in a milieu and worldview is indistinguishable for being forced into it in some ways.
Speaker: Like was I forced into being an atheist?
Speaker: No, but I was raised that way.
Speaker: So that's what happened.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's interesting.
Speaker: There's not a...
Speaker: You don't get to give someone like a default software.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I was reading some of the Puritan stuff recently and they have the whole vibe of like, look, like the kid's going to, they don't say this explicitly, but it's basically like, you know, the kid's going to make their decision and that's between like them and God.
Speaker: Obviously they're not stupid.
Speaker: They think they have like a responsibility also, but yeah.
Speaker: I've been thinking about that a lot.
Speaker: I basically just kind of set the metric of like, I really don't want to end up at a point where he's like, oh yeah, like all that stuff, like that's something my dad's into.
Speaker: Like, I don't really care.
Speaker: I feel like as long as I don't get on that square,
Speaker: I'll be cool with it, but it is something I've been thinking about a lot because then, you know, like we were just talking about heaven and stuff.
Speaker: Of course he's going to ask me and I don't want to be like, well, I don't know, but I don't.
Speaker: So, you know, there's that whole weird aspect to it.
Speaker: We could go more into that.
Speaker: How it's affected my art has also been interesting.
Speaker: That was like the second part of what you asked me.
Speaker: It kind of ties into like the politics thing a little bit, even though of course now we're like way downstream of that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because ultimately the thing is like,
Speaker: Usually I think people perceive my vibe change over time as like a gear shift or like a right turn or like a, you know, different road, but it's really not like that.
Speaker: It's more like a kind of like in a non-aggrandizing way, a sort of like apotheosis or like butterfly from caterpillar transformation, because the things that like were really concerning and vexing me the most, like the opiate crisis and things like that, it's probably still my main, like,
Speaker: red light issue.
Speaker: It's like, this is like a spiritual illness.
Speaker: And somehow I've ended up at this point where I have all these skills and tools and this weird brain that's like almost perfectly designed to make like uplifting, nice things.
Speaker: and not but it's not like a trivial way it's not like a martha stewart like table being nice like there's a kind of spiritual positivity and niceness that in a way kind of reaches around the back door and touches that like darkness that has been my primary aim in vexation and it's kind of interesting like yeah i feel like in a way i'm making more like wholesome stuff like everything i do is way more wholesome and like whether that's in a religious and theological sense or if it's just like a weird cue drawing of my dog
Speaker: But it's not like I de-tethered from those demons that I'm trying to fight.
Speaker: It's like, oh, now I'm meeting you on my own turf where you can't even come close to competing.
Speaker: Now I'm really making specialized weaponry that only I can make.
Speaker: that is addressing this in a way that only i can and it relates to the kid because it's like i want him to grow up in that world and now when you have a kid you know it feels different like arguing with someone on twitter it's like i don't i don't want someone to leave my operation like feeling bad unless they were like stone cold wrong about something but like in general i don't want them to be like oh yeah when i see owen cyclops like he makes me feel bad like i don't want that it's more like the opposite of like we can all kind of like we're
Speaker: we're all going to make it together but like kind of actually um it's kind of a roundabout way of answering that yeah yeah when you when you talk about sneaking things under the radar in this sort of unserious medium there's also an element of injecting light into the darkness because you do you have these um you have these dark um
Speaker: topics and tone to a lot of these.
Speaker: And the whimsy of the art, I guess it goes both ways.
Speaker: I think it's I think it's it gives you freedom to raise these dark and serious topics because it's just a comic and you're just having a goof.
Speaker: But also because you're able to address those, you're able to bring the wholesomeness and light into that situation.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker: And it kind of like fractals out from there in terms of like being like a positive person and the radiational radiating effects that that has.
Speaker: It's kind of like what you mentioned before, like, you know, what do you think about like, is there a hexagon on Saturn and how does that relate to like sacred geometry isn't going to affect you as much as like if you stop jerking off.
Speaker: you know?
Speaker: And it's kind of like, I have that effect also, like by being a positive person and putting out positive things, it's very like live, laugh, love.
Speaker: But like, I feel like that actually does kind of address these things in a way that is unique.
Speaker: Like in a way me doing that is directly related to like the opiate crisis and like
Speaker: you know, freaking out about hearing about people dying of heroin, like one county over, like in a way it's almost more related than going online and posting about like, you know, gun rights or something, not which I think some people should be doing, but it's not like my specialty.
Speaker: I am like a pawn to do this like other thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think so much of, so much of like satisfaction in life can be found by people
Speaker: not necessarily like the the effective altruist thing of like i'm gonna identify the single most important problem but like identifying the problem that you are the best suited to make the most difference and and to to chip away at it in in a humble way where you're not you know
Speaker: you're doing what you can do as a man.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's also really funny with the art too, just because like, you know, Providence is obviously probably a theme in both of our worldviews.
Speaker: But like when I was younger, especially when I was like in my twenties and like in a punk band and stuff and everything, I really was like, dude, why are my drawings like kind of cute sometimes?
Speaker: Like, what is the deal here?
Speaker: Like what's going on, man?
Speaker: Like, I really was like, I feel like something's wrong or whatever, but in a way I kind of feel like
Speaker: it all led up to me, like, you know, like I just said, like you just said also, like being that specialized pawn.
Speaker: And it's like, oh, that's why I picked up that, you know, grenade like three miles back.
Speaker: That's why I picked up that, you know, weird woodworking tool three miles back.
Speaker: Like I need it now.
Speaker: And it feels like there is some like providential element to it.
Speaker: Not in like a- The thought of you, the thought of you being this like punk artist and like not being hard enough, not gangsta enough is very funny to me.
Speaker: Yeah, dude.
Speaker: Yeah, that really- I think that should be some kind of a strip somewhere.
Speaker: It really happened.
Speaker: It really happened, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh man.
Speaker: Well, listen, Hey, it's been, been awesome talking to you, dude.
Speaker: Um, great to, great to catch up.
Speaker: And, um, so for the folks back home, channel one, number three on Amazon, uh, check it out and then, and then buy it for yourself.
Speaker: And, uh, good coffee table read.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: It looks very aesthetic on the shelf.
Speaker: And then,
Speaker: If you made it this far, in case anyone wants to know, Twitter's my main hub.
Speaker: It's at Owen Broadcast.
Speaker: I'm also on Instagram and Tumblr, Oli and Gab.
Speaker: I'm on like every platform kind of.
Speaker: But Twitter's the main hub.
Speaker: And then I sell shirts and prints and stuff like that.
Speaker: But I'm mostly pumping the book.
Speaker: And yeah, man, this was super fun, dude.
Speaker: I had a really good time.
Speaker: Thanks a lot for having me on and everything.
Speaker: This was a really good time.
Speaker: Thanks a lot, man.
Speaker: Great talking to you.
