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Unplug Technology & Reconnect with What Matters | Special Guest Anya Pechko
129 Plays2 years ago
It's no secret that technology has overtaken the lives of most people in modern society, but is this really the best path forward for humanity?
Does it enrich communities and cultures, or does it erode them?
As technologay continues to advance, do humans advance as well, or are we left in a neglected, apathetic state?
Is it optimal, or even healthy, for children to grow up technology addiction?
Guardian Grange is all about reconnecting as humans within our highest natural state, and in this episode founder, Mark "Matz" Matzeldelaflor, chats with Anya Pechko of Project Be to discuss community, social cohesion, and going back to our natural roots with a nurturing mindset and collective entreprenuership.
There is a big part of our society that is struggling, and humanity needs to be nurture at the moment. Anya and Mark's visions align in that they both feel its part of our human duties to help when we identify ways to be of service.
We all could use more connection...
We should work to improve ourselves and set good examples for younger generations who are learning how to be in this world.
The media is sick and filled with divisive content and corporate propaganda, and nothing seems to be changing for the better from within the system. Therefore it is up to us to step up and build parallel structures that focus on the nourishment of family, community and living in balance with the natural blessings of this earth.
We cover a lot in this conversation, but it can all be summed up with shifting the focus of humanity to get back to reality and value nature.
Find more information about PROJECT BE below:
But first, thank you for listening to the Guardian Grange podcast. We are a grass roots movement sowing the seeds for a soil-based economy. Please find us on social media and join our email list to stay updated with our projects as we grow. Feedback is always welcome and encouraged!
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Learn more about PROJECT BE below:
Between then and now we lost sight of what it means to just…BE.
Project BE raises awareness about the growing dangers of media (influence & addiction) and inspires others to shift their habits to live happier, healthier lives.
Project Be is raising awareness by leveraging expertise, evidence-based science, and current events to reveal the complexities occurring beneath the surface of daily life.
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Transcript
Introduction to Guardian Grange Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
What's up, friends and fellow humans? Mark Matzel De La Floor here with another Guardian Grange podcast. This one is going to be speaking with founder of Project B, Anya Pechko.
The Irony of Detaching from Technology
00:00:17
Speaker
And we talk about some of her work, which is helping people detach from technology and getting back to our real lives, which is
00:00:30
Speaker
Someone ironic scenes are pushing this stuff out over technology platforms and social media but we're dealing with the modern world and we're using these tools.
00:00:44
Speaker
to put out good information at the end of the day. So it's going to be an interesting episode. Talk about the effects of screen time on child's eyes and mind, fast talking, narcissistic values versus community values, isolation versus teamwork, Twitter mentality, psychoactive therapy, time blocking, and on and on. So before I keep rambling,
00:01:13
Speaker
We're just going to go ahead and get into it.
Sponsor Highlight: Dr. Bronners
00:01:16
Speaker
But before we do that, I just want to give a shout out to the sponsor of this episode, Dr. Bronners, the purest, all fair trade ingredients, regeneratively organic certified soap and natural products. So go check them out, drbronners.com and let's get it.
Anya Pechko's Background and Project B Mission
00:01:42
Speaker
Welcome.
00:01:43
Speaker
Anya Pechko, am I saying that right? Yes, you are. Awesome. And where is that name from? From Russia. Okay, that's nice. Yeah, that seems like a strong, elegant Russian name. Thank you. I was raised in Russia and I came here, but I just love it. You came here for me. Oh wow.
00:02:10
Speaker
So how did you come to arrive here? My grandparents immigrated. I was created in 1978, and then we joined them in 1988. So we were, my parents wanted freedom, and we were Jewish. Freedom of speech, freedom of choice, and freedom of religion.
00:02:44
Speaker
Maybe we'll do another one on that. People tend to lose sight of the values of freedom, even though I'm not saying everything's perfect anywhere, but there's definitely a lot of benefit to be where we are. What this is about is we're always trying to make life better.
00:03:10
Speaker
through conscious conversation and just being real about stuff. So when you came here in, when you're 11, what set you on the path that you came to be where you're now the founder of Project B and why don't you tell us like what Project B is about and how you came to found that?
00:03:38
Speaker
You know, I think my childhood puts me in position to really reflect on how I grew up versus how I see the other generation is going up and even here's my, I'm going to do an excerpt. So even, you know, when I think you're, I think we're the same. Yes, and we're right around that age. We're the same.
00:04:08
Speaker
I think there's a huge disconnect that we're experiencing right now. I launched my platform to raise awareness about the importance of real social connection and the importance of time. How much time we lose, how much of our lives we use technology. I launched Project B in
00:04:34
Speaker
In March of 2020, and then about four weeks later, we're going to lock down. So it was very hard to tell people to stay off technology, but that was the only option, to stay connected. And in some senses, I really feel that the technology helped us to stay as sane as we did because people were so used to being isolated away.
00:05:00
Speaker
didn't know that, but by 2020, I know all of us, each and every one of us has already lost two or three hours lost in our phones. So, someone's 2020 happened, it was really horrible, but we had these tools that became very important and I think this, you know, on Zoom and just able to connect and have that type of connection was really great.
Technology Addiction and Social Connection
00:05:28
Speaker
So what I've spent in the last 10 and a half years is, you know, this is what I've been kind of reading, all these books. And a lot of them, like those two mint shells.
00:05:41
Speaker
It's all about dopamine and what I call technology addiction. It's very, people in my space, people in digital wellness don't like to use these words. But that's what it is, right? We're addicted to the technology. We're also addicted to the dopamine. And I think we're also addicted
00:06:07
Speaker
are very disillusioned in our real life by how fast everything is in our home, and how slow everything is in real life. There's a big disconnect, how everything is really fast on the phone, just access to information, wanting to go somewhere, wanting to check something. And life is just not like that. And so that's one of the things that I've saw since the pandemic. And then another really big thing obviously is
00:06:37
Speaker
our social relationships, our real social relationships, how much they have suffered because it involves, because it is connected, because of the pandemic. Yeah, I mean, that's, I'm on board with that. Definitely the speed of information and also like highly emotionally charged things, whether that's just like marketing to get someone to like seek some pleasurable response or like news where it's just all super negative. And like, there's these swings that happen.
00:07:07
Speaker
in rapid succession over technology and just information overload and what I've noticed is similar where people check out a real life and they're checked into whatever the technology platform is. It really doesn't matter. It's all the same stuff and it's the content even has become
00:07:30
Speaker
shorter and shorter and shorter. Like now it's, you know, if you're not capturing someone's attention in like 30 seconds or even last like a TikTok or something, they're just consuming stuff. And it's creating like a fragmentation of sorts because there's no cohesive conversation. Whereas if you sit like we're using technology right now, but it is a double-edged sword, like it can be used for good or just like any tool. You definitely have an addiction
00:08:00
Speaker
As a, I mean, I wouldn't say society, but like the world for the most, a lot of the world is addicted to technology because what it offers does offer like the ability to connect. But it, we're not used to having, it's like fast food for conversation. So you can get a lot of it. You can eat a lot of it. You can consume a lot of it. You can get like halfway kind of fulfilled, but then you always need more and more. So then you're going back to,
00:08:29
Speaker
scrolling through feeds or posting rants. It's like the Times Square kind of effect has been going on for quite a while where people talk a lot about what they're being fed from the technology. And at the end of the day, the local community connections, which is what Guardian Brain is all about, is getting divided and dissolved. And there's less and less and less of it.
00:09:00
Speaker
Anytime I'm around like a fire or something with friends, the point always comes up like, man, this is so relaxing and cool and we should do more of this. And every single human being has bloodlines that go back to people sitting around the fire. And it's been replaced from the TV to the computer to the digital phones, like this little light that's artificial and fake, but it gives you all these stories.
00:09:28
Speaker
And the contrast there of sitting around the fire telling stories is so much more wholesome, holistic. You can, people's traumas can be expressed and worked through in that setting, whereas it's really difficult or impossible when someone's isolated. They're just basically talking out to, they're alone, but they're talking to everyone. It's a weird dichotomy there.
00:09:58
Speaker
So yeah, I really enjoyed that. I'm really happy you brought that up because one of the things that I've been meditating kind of thinking about is
00:10:09
Speaker
I think we really, I think people are kind of a little bit lost in this narcissistic, I'm such an individual and I'm so unique state that we have forgotten where we come from and what our basic needs are. And it's far here, right? It's like we need to get food, you know, basically not popular food. We need to have warmth, we need to have security and we need each other. And I,
00:10:38
Speaker
solitary confinement is the worst punishment for men. And I think we've isolated ourselves in many, many ways. And it's not just, it's not just the phones anymore. Now it's our learned and taught behavior, be multitask,
00:10:55
Speaker
So our brains are not meant to multitask at all.
Critique of Multitasking and Brain Development
00:11:00
Speaker
So the only thing we can multitask at are biological functions. So right now I'm speaking and I'm breathing and making my eyes at the same time. And I can also walk right now and talk to you. Although some people can't, right? It'll be harder for them.
00:11:13
Speaker
But we now are so overwhelmed, and so we talk to people, even in person, the distracted minds, right? Because our attention span is really shrank. That's why the commercials you were talking about. You have to catch somebody in 30 seconds because we're not, because our critical and cognitive thinking has really been impacted by the computer and its speed, and our ability to
00:11:41
Speaker
to be mindful and slow enough to get the data by ourselves now. So it's an issue and it's a bigger issue with children because children's brains don't, you know, your frontal cortex doesn't really mature in heart and certainly during time, right? That's right. Young boys that play for bother, you know, no point in measuring.
00:12:07
Speaker
And so when you and I look at that screen, our eyes kind of hold like this. You know, it's like we're looking at the shape and the surrounding, but we're looking at the screen. Children, you know, their eyes kind of like dart around because there's so much happening on the screen. So there's movement and there's sound and there's depth and, you know, so it's just, they're too dark.
00:12:34
Speaker
And the brain thinks really fast. I mean, that's the most basic way I can describe it. And it's a lot of dopamine. And so now we're seeing a rise in AT&T. And by the way, the reason I'm talking so strongly is because that's another thing that people do. I've done a bunch of podcasts.
00:12:55
Speaker
I don't know why. We now have to speak so fast and then, right, could you say something? Whoever's responding, they have to jump right away. There's gotta be a moment where we think about what we're gonna say next, right?
00:13:09
Speaker
And so, and then when we express ourselves, the person we're talking to has to be able to understand the information, process it, and respond. So there's like this whole way in which we are slowly not functioning the way we used to. And I think that is a really big piece.
00:13:30
Speaker
with what is happening to our mental health. Aside from, you know, it's like the perfect storm, there are other things. And so one of the ways I try to personally address this, and one of the reasons I can't think enough is because you are as well, right? Like we talk about the problem, but basically what do we do? People love hacks because nobody wants to read or kind of listen to a two and a half hour podcast and just like, okay, what can I do really fast?
00:13:57
Speaker
And so I think that we can really pivot the world, like, you know, really, at least make me feel confident if we help our own communities, in our own communities, where we can literally reach and touch our neighbor and say, listen, this is where I'm working on. Do you have four people that are interested? And they'll have four people, and those people will know some people. That is the best way with what I did.
00:14:23
Speaker
people can start helping. I'm on LinkedIn a lot and I see these rants that people go on. Where is that on LinkedIn? And so I post, you know, there are communities right now in every city, every secondary, everywhere across America that need help.
00:14:50
Speaker
There are children that don't leave in our communities. There are veterans that need help. There are disabled people. There are people that have been isolated for the past two and a half years. And so we can collectively really make an impact. And as far as the technology, you know, I think important people are, important things to do is try to disconnect with how much time is spent on our phones, right? So I'm, like right now, as I'm talking to you, I don't know where my phone is.
00:15:22
Speaker
I really try to use the phone mindfully. I do Audible, I do podcasting, I have a camera, which is why I use my phone a lot, and I talk in the phone, so I do seem to connect with friends. I think not taking a phone to the bathroom is really important, and I think people will find that really surprising how much time on day they can see, how much time off the phone they can say the day they don't drive their phone to the bathroom.
00:15:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's great advice. I'm definitely guilty of taking my phone into the bathroom, you know? And that's like you said, that's like the signs that you have some kind of addiction to something, right? It'd be like if you're taking a beer into the bathroom or something similar because it is a tool and mindful use of that tool is important because it is, it does have an empowering, can have an empowering effect, but how
00:16:20
Speaker
we've been seeing it used is a disempower really. It's been disempowering our draining energy away from people used to like market and like even the most advanced ways, which, you know, there's a pro and con there, but the science of marketing has gotten so crazy, like precise that people really don't have a chance if they don't know
00:16:48
Speaker
what's going on when they're consuming your piece of content and how they're getting sucked in and fragmented away. And I think you talked about the fast talk and space in talking. Um, it is, I would, I would guess cause I don't have any data to go off of, but I would definitely guess that it's because so much information is flying by. And so you're trying to like get your information in on that, on that
00:17:16
Speaker
screen or that recording and so everyone feels like they're in the rush and you also mentioned the children's eyes on the mind screen and our daughter is just 12 weeks old you know this week and since day one she's been guarding you know very observant soaking up all the all the uh the visual stimulus around and even if there's not much going on in the room there's a lot of stuff to look at shapes colors um and
00:17:43
Speaker
naturally, right? And I think it's so interesting. So I'm so I'm Albert Einstein has this incredible quote from a big book person, and it says, you want your children to be intelligent, even fairy tales. If you want them to want children to be very intelligent, even more fairy tales. And
00:18:09
Speaker
So I was trying to figure out how Spongebob and, you know, these cartoons that here I see on TV now, although I don't really know what, but in the connection how that related to me. And so I think the content that, it's what you were saying, right? The content which we now give to people is to
00:18:36
Speaker
I think it's to minimize their experience. It's not to optimize anything about our human condition.
00:18:48
Speaker
People themselves have to find a way out of here because the marketing firms and the technology and the VR that's coming and Metaverse, where a lot of people are going to live, not all of us, but there's a huge population that is going to live in the Metaverse with Uber Eats, Amazon delivery and work from home and maybe include their shares in four years, literally.
00:19:12
Speaker
And we see that, like, there's children right now, a lot of kids, a lot of young boys have issues with their eyes, their muscles, and the back of their eyes haven't developed because when you stare like this into the screen, when you're playing video games, the back of your eye muscle doesn't fall. You just use where you push anything properly, and you have to do safety EKMR therapy where your eyes start back.
00:19:39
Speaker
I mean, this is really, really crazy stuff. And so I think that the people I work with, I have an approach in practice. I help people decide from technology and I give them back their time in ways that they can engage in, in things that they love. You know, there's this great book.
00:19:57
Speaker
out of older, irreversible, irresistible. And in that book, this was written pre-pandemic, key quotes is, we spend quarter of our lives on our phones. That's pre-pandemic, that's quarter of our lives. That's really, that's an insane amount of time to be, you know, spent on tech. And so, a lot of the work I do, I work with parents who really care about their children. And so, it really helps to have that, because then we're getting back there,
00:20:28
Speaker
for me to be able to help the parents to change their behavior. Because I think ultimately children learn by watching and observing. They will do and they will act how you act. And so, you know, that's kind of some of the stuff that I'm talking about. Yeah, that's awesome. I think that's extremely important work and definitely counter to like where
00:20:58
Speaker
humans are being pushed and driven towards by marketing firms. A lot of the energy because it's very profitable for people to push content through digital media. It's a bit of an irony, but not really, that we're using technology to get the information out there. I like how you're guiding people
00:21:28
Speaker
away from technology and back into, I just call it getting back to reality. And it's, it's very difficult, especially like for myself running an organization and you have to reach through the noise to like, it feels like reaching into the matrix to pull people out back to look at reality, but you have to step in there to begin with. So it's, um, it's a lot, it's a, it's a big chaotic, um,
00:22:00
Speaker
It's a lot because it's not healthy, it's not a natural way for human beings to connect and we have certain biological, we're a really advanced biological system and we know what we need. We need food, we need sleep, we need shelter and we need other human beings.
00:22:20
Speaker
You know, I read something the other day and I think it's so profound. I don't know where I read it. It's just in my mind now. This student asked an evolutionary, I don't know, evolutionary biologist, when did humans become civilized?
00:22:36
Speaker
Was it religion or history? And that's kind of what this student said. And the evolutionary biologist said no. The first time the world, when we know that the world has become civilized, when we're finding people with huge tumors, right? So if you were alone before,
00:23:02
Speaker
We were without a tribe and we broke the femur and we would die because you can't get anywhere. You can't get water, you can't get food animals come, you can't run away. And so when we started seeing femurs heal, that's when we realized that I broke my femur, you're gonna come, you're gonna pick me up, take me to a shelter, give me water, give me food.
00:23:28
Speaker
That's where we need to go. That's where we belong, right? We need each other. We need humans, other humans to be healthy and how we used to raise our children and our families. It was all through, you know, it takes a village, right? It was, you know, we had very traditional roles against like a separate podcast. But really, if you think about it, it was very traditional. Men were out cutting and women were in the village collectively, you know, raising
00:23:57
Speaker
raising the kids and weaving the social fabric of society. I mean, even now, you know, traditionally, and I'm a traditionalist, by the way, so I don't know, that's kind of, I'm very proud of it, I love that type of ying and yang. And so, men were the hunter-gatherers.
00:24:22
Speaker
And so within that, there was this kind of system that worked. But that system was connected by social tribes. We had elder people passing on the knowledge and wiseness in the years that they had acquired to become a generation. And we had very traditional ways in which we lived. And we didn't care about elders. We respected them.
00:24:49
Speaker
There's a system, it's visualization, it's how we have evolved human beings. And that system is now it's factored and I think the way to fix it
00:25:01
Speaker
in ways that is attainable is for people to kind of go back into this basic mode of, you know, connection. And so it becomes less about marketing, less about Instagram, less about being caught up in all of that and more about cooking your own food. I mean, you know this, right? You know, making your own food and
00:25:20
Speaker
having your hands in the soil, because that's really healthy. It's incredibly nurturing for our system, right? Because we know, and I think I told you, right? So this is, I read a lot. This is, this is probably definitely the best book I read this year, and I read a lot of books, this book in Inner Engineering by Sue Burrow.
00:25:41
Speaker
Oh my God, he talks about soil, right? He talks about, we know the difference between dead soil, you know, like with, you know, right? It's like all brown and dry, you know, green soil when it's like all get into your crevices and nails and all.
00:26:01
Speaker
And so it's important, you know, it's important to make your own food. So, you know, if you can't grow it, buy it. How do farmers market, buy it, cut it, spice it, you know, salt it, put basil on it, smell it, taste it, sit and, you know, eat it. You know, I tell people all the time now, everything is so expensive. Go to a restaurant that's so expensive. Sit and enjoy your meal. Don't be on the phone.
00:26:25
Speaker
You're spending, you know, you're paying $30 for bread and cheese right now. It's like it's called grilled cheese. It's so, it's, I enjoy it. It's this dinner is costing so much money. And so, and when I, when I speak to people, when I see all these little things, it seems to resonate with them.
00:26:46
Speaker
You know, like, and so, um, you know, it's, what I'm doing has become a lot easier in the last six months than it has in the last year and a half, because again, it was very hard to tell people, um, you know, disconnect and send your kids outside to play with other kids during COVID. Um, a little bit less where I am now, which is in South Carolina, um, but I moved to York in July of 2020.
00:27:12
Speaker
And, you know, everywhere I think in America, they closed parks, they took out basketball hoops, you know, beaches were closed. Yeah. It was pretty, it was pretty insane. Like they tried to shut down literally nature in the world, the outside. Yeah. Oh yeah. Absolutely. From the stress, sunlight, wind, like all the holistic actual components of health that were just shut off. And then
00:27:40
Speaker
created a more sedentary existence, which wouldn't help anything. Going into the woods, being a polar bear and getting vitamin D from the sun and putting your feet in the sand and laughing. And you don't know when you rub sand on your body and it exfoliates. It's like there's so much healing in that. But that's not where, you know,
00:28:11
Speaker
That's not where something wants us to be right now. Yeah, we can just say the industrialized system does not like free things. And nature is a very giving, beautiful biological technology, if you even want to call it technology, because I like to use that contrast because it's better than any technology that exists. But because no one can...
00:28:40
Speaker
So it can control it and put a patent on it. I mean, they do in so many ways, but they really can't. And because they can't do it, then they try to separate and then give us an artificial kind of version. And that's what I look at. Even like the word civilization, like to me, civilization is the extraction of community and rebranding of it and saying, oh, well, we're all this one civilization. Well, that discounts and diminishes.
00:29:07
Speaker
the communities and the individuals who have actual physical bonds and relationships. And I think, you know, the ideal size for a village, they say is about 150 people where you could actually know everyone of those people. And outside of that, you're getting to, you don't have the relationships as strong in the
00:29:34
Speaker
It's a big problem because people have their kind of communities extended where maybe they're with like-minded people, but they're very far away. So in their local lives, for a lot of people, other than like social interactions that maybe, well, bars, I don't know, I haven't gone to bars since before COVID, but if people are doing that or whatever interaction they're engaging with going out to a restaurant, there's no actual community there. Or if people are going to like,
00:30:03
Speaker
a town hall or some kind of political event. The community aspect is hijacked by some other agenda that has nothing to do with anyone. It's hijacked by tech. So we've got to rebuild the community. And so we have to rebuild the community in our own backyards, over food, over fire chats, over music, over connection.
00:30:27
Speaker
And that's kind of what I'm feeling. I mean, I had a brunch here on Sunday. I had kind of 15, 17 people here. I only allowed these people to be home to my house. And if you want to check your texts from your kids, whatever, that's fine. But I get pretty upset. And so there's just one person who kind of kept on being on the phone. And they say there's not going to happen right there. And they just don't have to be right back with that.
00:30:55
Speaker
About 12, people came at 12.30, and left at 6.30. And we ate, we listened to music, we kind of had some drinks and we circled around and just talked, and it was amazing. And we ate really good food, and it's really beautiful, I think. It's really beautiful atmosphere, right? Because I think you have to engage people to
00:31:20
Speaker
and really bring their senses. And so I think the only real diversion from technology is to create a better life experience. And so I think being interesting is really important. And I think being interested in today's art because we know it because the information we consume is in 150 letters. I don't know. I'm not. I got the problem.
00:31:44
Speaker
It's a terrible platform. I think it's amazing how I'm feeling. First of all, I can't speak in seven words. I don't really know. That's not how I read and I really love making my dream stronger and more knowledgeable. And so I like to conversate with people that are like, I didn't do that. They're passionate and they know stuff and they're interested.
00:32:10
Speaker
And a lot of people aren't, so the best way to do that is to help control the comment. I love Joe Bogan's podcast, I love Joe Bogan. Everybody who has on is really interesting, and most people who see it as his hat on, I read their books. They read it very full-time, and the takeout, the book's name is still in there, which is incredible. You know, it's all style and stuff.
00:32:43
Speaker
And I think podcasts is really great. I think movement is really important for people who live and I think physical.
00:32:53
Speaker
people have to physically start to prepare themselves. I think we've done enough of sitting at home to learn computers. I think people have to go back to work. I think this work from home stuff has got to go away because I think that's also very, and you know, I really understand, I really understand all the people that have to commute and how they spend more time. Like I get that, but we are not in a pandemic anymore and we can't live our lives as if we are. And I think that we have a younger generation
00:33:22
Speaker
of these interns who just showed up in all these companies and there's nobody in them. And I don't, you know, we haven't talked about your background, background or my background, but I really wouldn't know how to do anything at all if I had to learn it from people that were better, smarter, wiser, or older, more knowledgeable. And so I think we have to plug that in into society and communities.
00:33:53
Speaker
You know, that's kind of, it's like very, it's very basic stuff. It's nothing that I talk about. It's like, wow, that's, I've never heard of that before. You know, tap in the morning, make your bed, walk your dog, take a shower, go outside, talk to your neighbors, be of help while I'm sitting here. One of the things I've been, I don't take my phone enough from stores or anything. And I always have interactions with people. You know, the other day I saw a woman with her baby,
00:34:22
Speaker
like eight months old and four kids in town, and I asked if I can help her unpack her car to Trader Joe's. And she didn't, she was just so surprised that I said that. And because I don't think we noticed these things anymore. I think if I was walking with my phone to my car, I wouldn't be able to see her. So there's this whole disconnect that we now have because of our phones.
00:34:50
Speaker
I drove to a pharmacy the other day and I just picked something up and I saw an older couple in a convertible looking for parking. And I scream at them and I said, hey, I'm going to be a minute. You can park in my spot. And they're like, wow, thank you so much. But if I was with my phone, I wouldn't have seen that. And so if you go to the CDS, if you're leaving your car in your truck with the CDS and you're walking in, leave the phone in the car for five minutes.
Impact of Globalization on Community Values
00:35:17
Speaker
And so it's these little things, baby steps that just like a little disconnect. Yep, it is. You're 100% right on and it's part of the process is just getting people to see it because there's a distraction going on. So people are
00:35:39
Speaker
their focus is elsewhere or their focus is divided and taken away. And that's why I like to call it a distraction or even the concept of like a globalized world or globalization is really, you know, it's presented as some kind of answer solution. Like, oh, we're all coming together to work for the world. But what that does is diminish the individual and the community and create this kind of so-called greater good.
00:36:10
Speaker
that is no one's really actually associated with beyond a very small number of people who are creating the messaging and selling it to everyone in a package. It creates a very materialist, hopeless, fearful, greedy energy that people are in. The only cure to that, I say, or the antidote to that is localism, extreme
00:36:39
Speaker
localized, focused, paying attention to, yeah, how healthy is your soil? What's your environment doing? Who are your neighbors and how are they doing? Not what's going on in some place across the world that you've never been or you wouldn't know about if it wasn't put in front of your face and that is what's really pulling this apart because now people are arguing about things that have nothing to do with
00:37:04
Speaker
where we are at or what we're doing. So the conversations we get into the Twitter bites like that. It's like the human being is reduced down to one sentence as if there's nothing else to say beyond a little snippet and then that's your whole value and they promote that and people get all these likes and followers for these little snippets that don't really say much of anything or don't like plumb the depths of
00:37:33
Speaker
the nuanced reality that people are trying to grasp and remedy in so many ways. I think a lot of people are trying... It's all attempts to heal for the most part from something, but a lot of people can't put their finger on exactly what the issue is. And so when something's presented as, oh, here's the issue over here, then they just
00:38:00
Speaker
fan the flames and people cheer it because it's like the whole mob mentality. You get up the pitchforks and the torches. That's the, that's the person, that's the thing, that's the thought, that's the energy, that's the word that needs to be removed, silenced or transitioned, transferred, whatever, corrupted. And it's not a, it's a very chaotic way to go through life. And it makes sense why anxiety medications and
00:38:29
Speaker
depression and all these things are at an all-time high. I mean, if that system of helping people really worked, then since their inception, there would be less of that. So something else is very clearly off. If there's so many people who are doing certain kind of substances or whatever, it's not working.
00:38:59
Speaker
And before those things came onto the scene and before technology came onto the scene, families, communities were generally healthier. Some of those communities don't even exist to this day because they were so diluted and dissolved and wiped out. Some are hanging on by a thread and others are, you know, fighting just to remain how they've been for hundreds, thousands or more years.
00:39:28
Speaker
And this kind of machinery has no compassion for any of it because it's not even, it's not, it's not bringing focus or attention or compassion or care to the community or to the individual. It's saying a lot of words like going back to the globalized world, like, oh, we're going to save the whole planet by ignoring every individual in every community and falling in line with like,
00:39:56
Speaker
one message that comes from one group, which is controlling the narrative. It's always dangerous because that one group, even with the best of intentions, doesn't know what's best for a community. If you're in your town, no one in Indiana or something, no one in Washington is going to
00:40:22
Speaker
tell you what needs to happen in that town like you already know is supposed to happen. And so it all comes down to us. We're the ones who have to awaken within our own community to do the work that needs to be done and not outsource it and depend on a politician or an Instagram influencer or something like that. And that's why what I'm pushing is empowering of the
00:40:51
Speaker
people and local communities, individuals and local communities to say that the leaders aren't out there. You're not going to vote for them. The leaders are yourself standing out and doing little tasks, like getting your hands dirty in a good way, growing some food, cooking some meals, having conversations, helping. All the things we've been talking about, those little acts are actually heroic acts and the very propagandized
00:41:20
Speaker
very well marketed storylines of like, here's this one person and all these people are following along with what this person has to say and acting as minions and therefore they're the hero. But what's going on is people are following idols at the end of the day, instead of taking ownership and accountability and responsibility to realize who we are and what we're doing here. And I like to say this all the time, like a bear.
00:41:50
Speaker
has its function in the wild, just like a fox does, and the bird does, and the bear isn't, you know, in Russia, thinking about what the bears in, you know, New Hampshire are doing, because it has no effect on them. The bear knows is very wise, and all the animals are, because they're paying attention to their local environment and their community. And that's how humans should be as well. It's how we're naturally
00:42:20
Speaker
designed to be in our role in nature is to be good stewards of the land to see like, oh, there's a, there's maybe a catastrophe or deficiency and we can move some soil over here and we can maybe help, you know, move some animals in this direction and build up that soil health to become very rich and nourishing. Like you walk into any forest floor and you pull up some dirt and it's moist, dense with life and
00:42:48
Speaker
things are growing from it, as opposed to you going to a tilled top school environment and it's dead? You know, I don't know. I was at a girlfriend's house yesterday. She just bought a house. It's a nice house, but the backyard is insane. And I went yesterday and she had landscaping people there. And I bought my dog. She has a dog.
00:43:13
Speaker
And she had mentioned that there were bogs, there were mosquitoes, whatever. So she mentioned they were going to spray every day. And I said to her, I said, oh, I wouldn't spray her because you're a doll.
00:43:26
Speaker
Right? And so I'm sitting there and I see it all the time. I don't pay for it, but I know my neighbors have cleaning crews that have to smooth the leaves, leaves for some reason, have to go somewhere. But why? Why do the leaves have to go somewhere? Why can't it be fertilizer for the soil that from the tree that they fall off? That's how it functions, right? But listen, I told them, you know, it's like, that's the dark side of capitalism.
00:43:54
Speaker
I'm from a system, I was raised in a system where there was no, there were no commercial because there was no marketplace, nothing was being sold. So I grew up for 11 years in my life. We didn't.
00:44:08
Speaker
I've never seen that before. I've never, you know, and I'm from St. Peter's Park, but I've lived there through, you know, through pines, through storage of toilet paper, and we went through school six days a week, and we were uniform. And, you know, I talk about that a lot in my facilitations, you know, the importance of wearing a uniform. So here's what that, here's the fact, you would think, what's the big deal? Like, who cares what people wear?
00:44:36
Speaker
When you're a young impressionable child and you go to first, second grade, whatever you're in, how old, six, seven, eight years old, and when you have to see the other kid and you have to say, dad, how come they're wearing, they look at your hat, they look at your shirt, they look at your wash, they look at your pants, they look at your backpack, they look at the shoes you drive. That's where we live.
00:44:58
Speaker
versus you are in a uniform. And I'm looking at you, right? Because we're in the same roles. And so that is a small thing. So the system that we're in and what we value is just very, you know, it's become this really crazy thing. Like we have commercials with four year olds now, right? Because during cartoons, in the middle of those cartoons, there are commercials to buy them shit, which they don't need.
00:45:26
Speaker
You know, kids don't need, kids need like the shapes choice, right? It's very important for them in all of this, when you put the square and the triangle and it doesn't work. It's very important for kids to have, to physically have these things, not click on them on the iPad.
00:45:44
Speaker
But that's how, you know, that's another separate, you know, there's this, you know, in a way he talks about, he's a, he's a psychiatric psychologist, he's very old, he's, you know, he's like 80s. And so he talks about the eradication of clay among American children in the past 50 years.
00:46:02
Speaker
And so children are being developed properly. They're not socializing with each other. They're not learning social cues and cues in an early age and self-development, self-management, which other children teach them. So there is this whole system which is set up for our, you know, not our optimization, you know, whatever call, you know, our disney or, you know, whatever you want to call it. And so I think, you know, I don't know. I'm not looking right now.
00:46:32
Speaker
I don't have a lot of faith in our leadership right now at the moment. And so people have to take their matters into, you know, be a good leadership in some parts of our country. I'll say that. And a lot of others, it's just like enormous. And I moved here from New York City, you know, because I grabbed me on the street and I thought it was gonna really hurt me. And I had lived in New York at that point for 21 years. And that has never happened to me.
00:46:59
Speaker
So, this was in de Blasio, COVID, New York. And so, we can't look at our, you know, the help is not coming from there. The help is not coming from pharmaceutical companies. The help is not coming from all the marketing companies. It's just not coming. If people want help,
00:47:19
Speaker
and they want something to change, they themselves, you know, Leo Tosto is a Russian writer, he has this great quote, you know, everybody wants to change the world, but nobody wants to change themselves.
Community Involvement and Volunteering
00:47:30
Speaker
And people want to make the world a better place right now, starting tomorrow.
00:47:35
Speaker
Go into Google and find volunteering, and I assure you, there's volunteer opportunities. I'm going to go this afternoon. I'm going to go to an organization called Be a Mentor. It's a local organization where we need for kids that are illiterate. They're in first, second, and third grade. They're really impoverished communities that are, you know, it's really, really, really serious stuff. I've never seen anything like that before.
00:48:06
Speaker
And so that's how people can help. And then people can help on that level. I think people can help with their own families by turning all the technology. One of the things I talk about with couples, not to text your spouse throughout the day with mindless information, but to talk about it at dinner. Because we've forgotten how to do that. We've forgotten how to tell stories and have these
00:48:32
Speaker
moments of gratitude for what we have, right? For our food, for our homes, for ability to, you know, like gratitude. It's a very powerful tool that I use. And so we're kind of forgotten, you know, there's life that's happening around us. And I lost a friend on Saturday.
00:48:54
Speaker
When I understand it was cancer and thinking about this for days because I'm not sure and I just hope it was cancer. I hope it wasn't so hard.
00:49:08
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm hearing this stuff, right? Like this is not, like people are really hurting right now. I think there's collective pain, I think over left a lot of people in a really traumatized state. And I think those of us that can, should be, you know, should, are responsible for lifting
00:49:38
Speaker
you know, the other people up. And I think social connection is, you know, the reason I set up Project B is it's a platform to raise awareness about the importance of social connection. And I say that because I've been so lonely here. And I'm also, you know, like something also shifted because, you know, a lot of times I'm alone and I'm built in community.
00:50:06
Speaker
because it's really hard and it's not good. Yeah, I agree. Well, when we were talking about the traumatized state that everyone's living in right now, what's that? Listen, that's a tough one. I think the system is set like, you know, this,
00:50:30
Speaker
I think what's happening right now is just traumatizing people. So I think it's almost we're supposed to be it. I don't know how we're not. And so I think that, you know, I talk about again, I just I have tools that I can give to people. I think
00:50:49
Speaker
Disconnecting from technology is very important. That's my one. Although I think most people will say that sleep is very important. This is an excellent book by the state Matthew Walker. But the reason we're not getting good sleep right now is because we're on technology. So I think the technology, the addition to technology becomes really important because
00:51:10
Speaker
We have to kind of disconnect because I think the technology is affecting our circadian rhythm and because the circadian rhythm is affected and interrupted, I think we're not eating right, I think we're tired, I think we're not moving, exercising. I'm not talking people have to go and exercise an hour and a half a day and go to a fancy gym and find my own embers. Go for a walk.
00:51:35
Speaker
You know, 15 to 20 minute early morning walk, especially, you know, when it's a little cooler, it's 105 to 70 degrees right now, it's all right. Oh, yeah, there's so a lot over. It's pretty hot here too. The mornings are beautiful and less like chaotic activity. I love their hurry commons read.
00:51:57
Speaker
I think it's, you know, listen, I think that I am, you know, I've become a lot busy in the last couple of months because I think I offer people tools that are so available and they're free. And, you know, I think Plato said, led the food to die medicine, right? The healing is these incredible amount of healing in nature.
00:52:20
Speaker
The woods, the desert, the beach, a grass, a field, a tree, a park, birds.
00:52:31
Speaker
You know, there's a lot of healing and so I recommend people do that. I recommend people sleep better. I recommend people not be as connected to the news right now. I think it's really hard. You know, I'm Russian. My stepfather is from Ukraine and my mom is
00:52:52
Speaker
You know, he's obviously been so affected. I've been affected. Everybody has been affected, right? I'm against war. When I lived in Russia, Ukraine was called Russia. I'm obviously not from Putin's Russia. I'm from the Soviet Union. So what's happening is really heartbreaking, but it's affecting my stepfather in such a way that he's consuming a lot of his information in the morning. And so it sets him in a certain space for the rest of the day. And so I think
00:53:21
Speaker
what, when, and how we are consuming information is really important. And I equate that to what we eat. It's the same way we watch what we put in our bodies. We don't want us to be full of junk. We don't want, and I think you touched upon this before, we don't want our minds to become full of this.
00:53:43
Speaker
useless content. I think Project B, and what I do is place awareness. A little piece of information I just found out, which I think is insane. I heard it on Joe Rogan. He read the user terms of TikTok. I don't have TikTok.
00:54:01
Speaker
that he really used the term TikTok. TikTok is a Chinese app and the way it's used in China, it's very different than it is in America. In China, it's a propaganda, it's a state-owned app. It's a propaganda channel. They have news and
00:54:20
Speaker
some kind of propaganda content, and that's it. You can only access TikTok from 8am to 9pm. There's no children's content on TikTok. There's no dance-off. There's no challenges. That's for us, the Americans. So American kids right now, American population, TikTok has become much more popular than Instagram.
00:54:44
Speaker
And so Instagram is trying to create their platform. That's why the first tab on Instagram now is wheels as opposed to balls. When you download TikTok app on your phone,
00:54:56
Speaker
That app has access to all your phones, all your photos, your contacts, but also the microphone. And then, just further than that, it collects every keystroke that you make on your computer or your phone. I don't know what that information is for, but the Chinese have it.
00:55:17
Speaker
Last Sunday, Apple issued an emergency message that everybody's going to update the iOS to the next version because there's a virus or something. I and millions of other people ran to update their phones.
00:55:34
Speaker
And he's not updating my phone. I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, you know, all these people are updating the phone because they don't want to get the virus, whatever virus this is. But they all have TikTok on their phone.
00:55:50
Speaker
And so I think, and what Joe Rogan said, he said one of his daughter's friends said to his daughter, I hate your dad because my mom was listening to his podcast and came home and deleted my TikTok.
00:56:07
Speaker
Because this is really, and so I think for people to know, what I think I do best is I arm people with this information, and then if they want, I give them tools to find that. I haven't said anything so far, I don't know how long I've been talking, I haven't said one thing, this is what you need to buy.
00:56:31
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You don't need to consume another product, buy something, use a technology, go ask an expert. Yeah. The board, right? I've been talking about boredom since I started. I think, I don't know if it's on my website. It's on my website. It's one of the, you know, fulfillers that I think we
00:56:57
Speaker
Creativity comes, creativity lives in empty space. You can be creative while the mind is occupied with 70 things, help and windows, right? Creativity comes when you're sitting there and you're just like, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it. And then, well, you know, and so I think that's really important. I think monopoly is really important. I think theory puzzle is important. I think writing, I really,
00:57:28
Speaker
really, really, it's the right word, suggests that parents help their children learn about writing cursive because studies show that writing cursive really helps you to be
00:57:47
Speaker
focused and concentrate on things. And, you know, penmanship is very important. Our mind, you know, so these things that we have forgotten, most people in their 30s do not know how to write cursive. And so when I write them here, no, they can't read it. And I find it, I find it fascinating. And they say, well, what do I need to read? You know, everything is, and so it's these basic things and to engage people into real life world cities.
00:58:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny. I think they took cursive out of school a lot. I'm pretty sure they did. I had it when I was in. It's definitely interesting to see what they've taken out of schools, especially when you get into mechanics, wood shops, home economics, cooking, things that have even art and music in a lot of cases, things that have a creative
00:58:47
Speaker
It's a creative learning, creation and learning at the same time, which is a whole different type of education than getting told a certain way and regurgitating multiple choice answers. That's not where intelligence comes from if you want to use that word or wisdom as I like to contrast it with. It's just you're creating a machinery. And again, going back to the Twitter
00:59:15
Speaker
little snippets. The machine wants more machines at the end of the day. Are you on Twitter? No. I've had one, but I've never used it really. I think mine says I'm the twittiest Twitter in Twitter town and I've never made a tweet. I think most people that have it all together are not on Twitter.
00:59:45
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. I think Twitter has become, and it will become an absolute platform. Everybody is. I'm so attached to that world. Yeah, I know you really got into it. Like you said, you mentioned the space or the B-board.
Creativity from Boredom and Healing
01:00:06
Speaker
I, you know, I never get bored just because I'm all like when there's nothing to do, it's just creativity flows. Like if I wake up at 3am, there's usually something that's flowing out or if I'm walking, you know, you're absorbing the beauty of nature. And then yeah, it's like turning on a faucet where creativity just flows out, at least for me. And I really enjoy those times. And then of course, I'm in this probably using enemy technology because I'm like,
01:00:33
Speaker
building this thing and understanding that I have to use technology to some degree. And, you know, I find myself having to learn different technologies and navigate them just to get the message out to pull people back from it, which is, I guess, one of the burdens and the blessings of, for me, you know, so I try to put everything in that perspective, like a burden is a blessing too,
01:01:03
Speaker
you know, it allows you a perspective to be more present and to recognize the sacrifice being made and sacrifice is very important to understand because if you're not suffering intentionally or consciously, you're suffering unconsciously and we can just look around and see that is the case. You know, if you put yourself like with
01:01:32
Speaker
use sweat lodges and that's like a conscious version of suffering. It's good, it's healthy, but it's still like there's a, you're taking a pain and it's helping you become very present. And when you do that, you're less likely to go out and seek your suffering unconsciously in other ways because you've already went through it and now you have that gratitude
01:01:58
Speaker
perspective, it's kind of like you crawl through the valley to get to the top of a peak and now you get an awesome view. But if people just kind of lived on a plateau and never kind of explored the other terrain, I've noticed that it creates an environment where people lack, they start lacking gratitude and they start taking things for granted.
01:02:27
Speaker
I'm just thinking about what you just said. I've never thought this way, but I think that's so powerful. When people go to a sweat lodge, you know, sauna, right, they feel the pain. So I like automatically what resonated with me, sauna, which is Russian banya, right? Banya is Russian sauna. It's really popular. It's a
01:02:51
Speaker
um healing mechanism because you go into this hot sauna room and you're beaten with the verges of the trees right because the trees have all this
01:03:03
Speaker
And then in Russia, we run in the snow and we drop into the snow, which lowers your body temperature right away, right? And then you run back into the Vanya to get the heat. And so that is really uncomfortable, right? Because you're from hot to cold, from hot to cold, between the two. But it's also very healing because it gets rid of all the toxins and kind of your heart start beating, whatever.
01:03:30
Speaker
I think what, so I am, I don't know, I mean, we can talk about so many things for so long, but I am a very big supporter of psychoactive therapy. I'm merely ketamine therapy.
01:03:46
Speaker
One of the things that I've noticed is that I think people have forgotten that true healing, that healing is painful, right? So let's say you have shoulder surgery tomorrow. While your shoulder will heal for weeks on, you're going to be in pain, right? Because that's the process of healing. And I think we are so used to and we're so
01:04:18
Speaker
addicted to either medicines or alcohol or substances or technology because our world is really hard, right? Like I think these addictions are worms and I understand them. And I understand them because, you know, like before, before COVID, so I never, so I myself personally never dealt with any issues where I needed to communicate it. And then
01:04:45
Speaker
you know, whatever, just after COVID and some of the stuff that had happened in my life, I needed help and I turned to getting in therapy and so I did, you know, so I did get in therapy last year and I've watched what's happened to me in the last year and how
01:05:02
Speaker
It helped me reset my system, but it also made me lose other's suffering in a very different way. So I understand what loneliness does to people, and I understand why somebody would drink, not to feel that pain. And so when I think about that, and I think about the healing aspect, not in a way of other ways to a dick, right?
01:05:28
Speaker
recovery through mindfulness, through nature, through connection, and through really making different life choices. And that's painful, right? To make a choice that you aren't going to take your body and your mind and your health into your own hands and do these things.
01:05:56
Speaker
It's really, really hard and it's really uncomfortable. And that's why not a lot of people do it. And I think the reason people aren't able to do it now more than they have even before is because of this way of COVID, right? So we have, it's like the perfect storm, you know? Not a lot of people show up, especially when they're walking into uncomfortability and, you know, we do, with Church of the People for Creative Mother Earth, we do
01:06:25
Speaker
ceremonies and traditional wampish for the high on the gym, the people of the West. We use mushrooms in there sometimes and very large doses and that is definitely can get uncomfortable, you know, because you're in the depths of your own self and you're facing
01:06:55
Speaker
everything seeing stuff, you know, so all of everything gets very loud in there and clear and that process is healing just as if you had, you know, if you had a wound on your leg and that was causing you harm, if you never looked at it and you just let it be, it's going to fester and turn into something worse. Whereas if you actually face it, maybe you got to scrub it and you got to clean that wound out, then it can actually heal. And that is, that is the process of healing. Healing is
01:07:24
Speaker
painful and that's why the quote medicines that they offer a lot just mask the symptoms and create the illusion of healing because now you're no longer feeling the pain. But by not feeling the pain, you're also not going through the healing process and then you're stuck in this loop where you're just masking symptoms and that's for psychological, emotional, spiritual, physical traumas. This tends to be like what Western allopathic medicines
01:07:55
Speaker
offers to people is like, Oh, you're feeling uncomfortable. We need to get you to feel comfortable as opposed to like, you know, the homeopathic approaches. Well, if you're feeling uncomfortable, we need to push through to get that energy moved out. Whether that's a splinter in your hand, you need to get it out instead of keeping it in and hiding it. Or if that's an emotional trauma,
01:08:15
Speaker
Like the other statement is, if you're going through hell, keep on going. You know, keep on going. If you stop or turn around, you're going to be in hell a lot longer. So there is a redemption. There is another side, but it does take work, honesty, humility, integrity to show up and to be present and to face, you know, yourself.
01:08:45
Speaker
And to actually recognize like, oh, you know what? I need to improve this portion of my life. Maybe I haven't been taking care of myself so well. Maybe I haven't, maybe I've been a little bit too short with people. Maybe, you know, maybe I get in road rage on the highway and I shouldn't, that's not a healthy thing. You know, I used to like years and years ago, I used to have road rage and I one day just became like aware of it after the fact. And I literally just said to myself, I'm like,
01:09:11
Speaker
Why am I mad at these people? It's just really dumb. There's no point in being mad at them because it doesn't change anything. And then I'm just worked up. And so I just stopped. I changed my perspective when I went on the road to expect that people would do things that would trigger me into being mad. And then by being aware of it, when it happened, I was expecting it. And so it didn't trigger me into being mad or when I was able to, it didn't consume me.
01:09:40
Speaker
And I did the same thing with news. And then I'm way out of the curve on that one. This is back in 2007 or before when I was watching the news, it was on the TV. And I was just like, fuck this shit. I'm over it. I could just turn it off and I never turned it back on.
01:09:59
Speaker
You just want to slice your wrist after reading. Listen, I used to read the New York Post, it's my favorite. I loved reading it when I lived in York and I would, you know, right before having a train, I'd read the post. I read the post now. It's like, I just want to slice my wrist. It's a horrific nightmare. You know, I don't know. I'm, you know, I try to be an optimist, I think, without hopefully having a future.
01:10:29
Speaker
And I'm really, you know, I've done so much ketamine. I really feel that I've spent hours to help people, meeting incredible people that are going through very hard things and they're really fighting, they're finding new ways. Psychedelics has been a good answer, a novel answer because I think the traditional medicine, I love what you said about A-Qing.
01:11:00
Speaker
And you know, but that's the world we live in, right? We live in this Instagram feed where I'm like, oh my God, hashtag blessed while my life is falling apart, right? And so that's kind of the world we live in. That seems the norm. And so I think we have to look for things that are real. And I think the system is broken. You know, I think the medicines are not working because
01:11:27
Speaker
You know, if you were drinking, I don't know if you listen to Dan Huberman, he runs a Huberman lab. He's a Stanford neurosciences. And, you know, he talks a lot about, you know, sleep and biology and nutrition. And the other day he had this podcast about drinking. I don't really drink. I don't have an addiction with alcohol. I don't really like the way alcohol tastes. And I don't like the way I feel when I drink.
01:11:51
Speaker
So it's not my kind of control freak, and I like to eat food. That's not a substance. I could have a drink, whatever, no problem. But oh my god, I listened to this podcast the other day. I had no idea what alcohol really was. And it is. It's poison. It's just, that's what it is. And if you drink a lot of it, it's very rude.
01:12:19
Speaker
And so a lot of people, I know that, I know that a lot of people that take antidepressants in traditional parts of the medications also drink. And I don't know a lot of doctors that say, oh, you're a pozak? No problem Mark, I'm really a pozak. Are you drinking? Are you exercising? What did you diet like? Are you getting 67 hours of sleep a night? Who are your friends? How are your relationships? Are you going to work?
01:12:48
Speaker
And if you pass, if all of these things you have and it's like you're trying to, then I think we can talk about the medication, but the traditional medications, I mean, you know that much of them. So the traditional medication, if I'm going to start taking clothes out, if I'm the person suicidal today, it's going to take anywhere between four to six weeks for that medication to get into my system to where I feel better.
01:13:15
Speaker
If you do ketamine therapy, you feel better within 45 minutes. So the difference in how fast your own body can bounce back on psycholat... So ketamine helps your body to naturally start a progression of serotonin, which is what? Which is a neurotransmitter that we lack when we are into depression.
01:13:39
Speaker
And so once that process has began, your body naturally continues to make serotonin. If you go on Prozac and you take Prozac for three months and you're on it and you stop taking it, the serotonin stops, right? So the system, one system is set up to give you fish or to teach you how to fish, the other one is to give you fish, right?
01:14:08
Speaker
The system is not set up for our optimization because the money is in the sickness. It's not a mature. So again, everything I talked about, everything I kind of do and I don't know, I hope you can tell how passionate I am about this. It all comes back to this.
01:14:25
Speaker
It's community, it's food, it's nourishment, it's back to basics. Nothing I'm saying is like, it's this, you know, I revolutionize this new method of, it isn't. It's just being a good human, it's being grateful and being kind, it's teaching our children kindness by showing them kindness.
01:14:45
Speaker
I think it's being kinder to our partners. I think, you know, one of the things I say all the time, you know, for men to buy their wives or girlfriends, so baby mama's flowers, just because, just one flower, just pick it, okay? You know, just recognition, it's just kindness. It's just kindness. It's very hard to do.
01:15:06
Speaker
Because people are, you try to be kind to people today, they're like, you know, they're afraid. Yeah, people think it's strange, definitely. It's almost like they take offense a lot of times, like, why are you being like, what's wrong with this guy? What's wrong with this person? They're being nice. And so that, that creates a trauma that carries over, because then people don't, and they're punished for trying to be nice. And then they stop being nice. And that,
01:15:36
Speaker
that disharmony is frequency takes just sweeps across and now it's like one person's mad so they're mad to someone else or they're they're off and then it just it's a domino effect but this the same the same note if you're you know coming from a harmonious frequency and sharing positivity spreading you know not toxic positivity where it's just unaware of things but
01:16:05
Speaker
true like genuine good nature and goodwill and offering to help or just offering to be or just being present for someone that that itself is healing because then that starts to spread people start to question you know well why is you know this person can be nice I could be nice too or I can be you know honest right honest is you know these these words kind of get tripped up because
01:16:34
Speaker
niceness without honesty isn't actually very nice. But you can do both, you know, you can do both. And part of what I like to say is, if you've got risk among people, respect, humility, gratitude, it's pretty much, you know, you're carrying yourself with honor, that you're going to heal yourself, you're going to reflect positively on yourself and people will
01:17:03
Speaker
We'll see that and experience that and it will, it will spread. And if you have a community, it could be 10 people and everyone's carrying themselves with respect and honor humility and having gratitude. It's going to be a pretty awesome place. You know, even if you're going through some struggles, some trauma, um, because you know that you're doing it together.
01:17:26
Speaker
And that's what I take a lot from, whether it's ceremony, whether it's my time in the teams, we go through, I've been through a lot of suffering, intentional, but I'd call it positive suffering, where you're seeing other people suffering with you and you're just driving forward and staying present. And that helps you when you're in, we could call it like a negative suffering where you didn't want to be there or some, you know, some, some violation happened.
01:17:54
Speaker
against what you were trying to do and how you're dealing with it or a catastrophe, a natural disaster or something, you can then move through that trauma with more presence. And it's not like, you know, in the West, they're trying to like sell desensitization to where like, oh, if you want to feel good, then don't feel bad. As opposed to like, no, if you're feeling bad, then
01:18:21
Speaker
feel bad and recognize why you're feeling bad and acknowledge it, change what you need to change, communicate how you need to communicate, and then move through it. And that's definitely an uncomfortable process, you know, if you haven't done it before. But the more you do it, the more normal it seems. Like the more time you go into icy water, the easier you can like,
01:18:50
Speaker
ease into it or remove the tension and you can start to feel what that energy is. And that's the same for anger, depression, anxiety. These are all normal things to feel in certain states.
01:19:03
Speaker
So I like that you said, we're supposed to feel bad sometimes and there's nothing we can do about it. You know, I lost my friend on Saturday. I've cried every day since, including today. And I'm supposed to like, there's nothing I can do right now to feel bad. I don't want to feel bad. I don't want to lean into it. I wish I wasn't feeling bad, but I do. And I think that's really important for people to kind of
01:19:27
Speaker
That is an unattainable bullshit to where we're supposed to be happy all the time because people are not, it's just not a realistic state.
Pandemic's Influence on Human Connection
01:19:36
Speaker
And another thing I wanted to mention to what we were talking about, like, and I call it the system, we're in the system. Mark, we are not allowed to shake people's hands anymore, right? Because the system, if I'm going to shake your hand, you will die, or I will die. That is, so that's where we live.
01:19:53
Speaker
I met a woman today that was trying to help me and I spoke to her and I wanted to shake her hand and I could see she was uncomfortable. She was standing like this. So the sister told us that if you go outside and if you shoot hooves, you will die because COVID will come get you.
01:20:16
Speaker
It was just so crazy. It was so crazy. You can walk into the restaurant and you have to be in a mask until you sit down at the table or you can take the mask off. So this school did not live like this school did not live where we at this height but it does live at this height.
01:20:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's a it's a it's a traumatic game of Simon Says where people are forced to do things that don't make sense and then pretend that they make sense. So it's a version of I call it Stockholm syndrome. This is really this is a very big collective mind.
01:21:02
Speaker
And where, you know, I see it all the time, you know, it's like it's 87 degrees right now with a thousand percent humidity. Every day there's a guy that walks around the lake by himself in a mask on. He's like, oh, there's nobody around here. It's trees, it's palms, and he sings, and I can turn both, woo! And he's breathing in this recycle.
01:21:30
Speaker
And I just look at him every day, and I try to imagine the space he lives in, and I can't, right? So that's collectively what the system has done. And so we've got to now figure out how to
01:21:51
Speaker
talk to people and show them by not wearing a mask, by feeling safe. Every morning I do this to him. I acknowledge him. He's not acknowledged for once. I gotta remember this. He doesn't make me happy. And I mean it where he's at. That's where he's at. I make no judgments. But I just try to, I'm like, man, I like him being here. Yeah, it's a conscious,
01:22:21
Speaker
creation of solitary confinement. He's moving through the world isolated from it. It's very sad. When I see it, it makes me feel a little bit sad.
01:22:39
Speaker
the level of deception that went on to get people to be that point in their life. And many people are of the mind that they will always do that from now on because they were trained just like a child. If you walk outside without a mask, you will die. And if you go touch other human beings or get too close to them, you will die. So that literally created a conscious, disharmonious thought virus, which is where the real virus is, is in the mind.
01:23:09
Speaker
And people cannot acknowledge another human being for their own fear of dying, which is actually going to this rabbit hole for a while, but fear and greed are actually their partners. They're not really different. If someone is afraid of dying, they're greedy of living, you could say. And that's not to say that you shouldn't be grateful of living, but I've been around death for a long time. Long before this, COVID stuff has happened
01:23:40
Speaker
And I never, just from the nature of the work that I did, you know, and people, you know, veterans would go out or, and even before, even before then, I always had a natural understanding of death where it's a part of life, it's a cycle. So I never, obviously I didn't want to die, but I didn't have like this, exactly, didn't have this, this,
01:24:10
Speaker
fear of when the time comes for me to die, at the time comes for me to die. And I've already accepted that. So we've accepted that, then it's time to, every moment is a blessing. Every moment alive is a beautiful gift. Even the moments that suck really bad. Even the moments where it's like, you know, we've all had, we've all had various moments. I've definitely had hard moments of my life, many of them.
01:24:40
Speaker
And during it, it sucks. After it, I choose to reflect on how grateful I am to have had the experience for the perspective it gives me. So now I can, for instance, relate to someone else in a similar situation when they're going through it. And I can offer, you know, it's like hiking through a trail and you see someone, they're kind of lost and you say like, Hey, you know, if you go left,
01:25:06
Speaker
Here's what you can expect on that road. If you go right, here's what you can expect on that road. Choice is up to you, but you can at least offer a tool for someone to navigate through a point of depression or anxiety or something like that or offer them a tool, whether that tool be psychedelics or what I like to call earth-based sacraments or just community coming together, hiking through a trail.
01:25:32
Speaker
restoring some part of the environment, moving rocks and doing some kind of positive work. Someone said that I like, life is giving. Life gives. And if you're always giving,
01:25:53
Speaker
than you're living. And if you stop giving, that's dying. You're already starting to die. So when you start being really closed off, whether it's covering a mask, hiding, the dying process that people are trying to avoid is already underway.
01:26:16
Speaker
Another way I look at death is like life is moving. It's in motion. Your cells, your body, your lungs, your heart, everything's moving. Death is a cessation of the movement. One of the components of death is like the physical body stops to move. And so moving in motion, breathing, communication, interaction, that is living. You look at a bird and what's the bird doing? Flying around, going to flowers, you know,
01:26:45
Speaker
checking things out, looking around, singing songs. That's what life is. Life is not to isolate, hide in a box, throw a mask on, don't breathe the beautiful fresh air that we have, even though for sure there's a delusion that's going on. That's no secret. But at the end of the day, if you're on nature, you're getting some good medicine from the air.
01:27:08
Speaker
The pollution is the least of our words. We have to, there are incredible opportunities, I think, to, I don't know, I don't know again, you know, I think without holders the future.
01:27:30
Speaker
And I'm worried, you know, I'm not old enough to hear that so many people are dying. And I am kind of, I don't know what happened in the last two weeks. Even since Saturday, I've kind of been talking to a lot of my friends. And since my friend died, and they all know somebody who just died. And I'm not 65, or 55. You know, I'm coming down still. And so,
01:28:00
Speaker
You know, I helped a friend earlier today because, you know, I think he's in a lot of trouble and, you know, it's like he's struggling. And I think, you know, Johan Hari has this incredible quote. He talks a lot about addiction. He has a really great talk.
01:28:23
Speaker
He has this quote that is just incredible. He says, the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is tension. And it's actually based on this experiment called The Rat City. I don't know if you know about this, but they took a rat and put it in a maze in a cage alone and put a croquet drip. And then the rat was alone and it threw so much cocaine and killed itself.
01:28:51
Speaker
And then they built a rat city where there's a lot of rats and that's equal to a drip. And so the rats, we did the drip, but none of the rats killed themselves because they were busy doing stuff and running around. And so I think, you know, I think
01:29:08
Speaker
I think kindness and gratitude are incredibly powerful through tools with nature and real food. That is, for me, it's been incredibly empowering. And so when we connected and asked me what I'd talk to, and I know this conversation has been a little bit about, a little bit, a little bit of the place,
01:29:36
Speaker
So when I do these facilitation, I talk about the importance of these seven basic things like sleep, movement, nutrition, community, we have some technology, purpose and work. And then the second big thing I talk about is the importance of real human connection, much less digital technology, apps, games, anything in the computer, it gives you this sense of
01:30:04
Speaker
everything. So we're not able to live and be a reality and be a reality. It's just not always powerful and fast and pretty. Sometimes, you know, there's just blend moments in our lives, and we just gotta ride it and believe and know that we're learning and healing. You know, there's a, there's something deeply that it leads us, we also have to build it. And people jump into these spaces that
01:30:34
Speaker
we all have, you know, have a system. You know, I think we can really make it fair in our collective well-being. I think it starts with individual communities and raising awareness. You know, when people reach out, it's all that I need to do. You know, I hope I'm going to invent this in a personalized level, and that's how I try to help what I see as the issue.
01:31:03
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think that's, honestly, it's the only way that I see it is people have to get back to community familial connections, heal the individual, you know, to heal the world and focus on local environment, which is why Guardian Bridge is the way that it is set up this way. Because things have, things drifted away from that. Things used to, people used to behave and act
01:31:33
Speaker
in that way locally. We didn't have access to know what's going on all over the place. And we still don't actually, we still don't know what's going on all over the place. We just know what's being told about certain specific places. But there's, as far as the whole world goes, there's a lot of places that no one's paying attention to right now.
01:31:56
Speaker
that diminishes everyone in those places because they're like, oh, they're talking about X, Y and Z place, this topic, that topic, that doesn't relate to me. And it's all blasted over this, whatever, television, news, entertainment. And it's, it's all bullshit at the end of the day. You know, it's not real, it's fake. And everything that I push myself into and the people around me is to be more
01:32:24
Speaker
checked in to reality at the deepest level possible to address the issues that are here, to bring positivity towards transforming those things, but to also be real about like here are these problem issues that need to be addressed by someone who's going to do the work or some people who are going to do
Managing Technology Use and Authentic Connections
01:32:46
Speaker
the work. And it's not the system that has been in existence that has created or facilitated
01:32:54
Speaker
that the outcome that we're experiencing right now. So, yeah, I think it's very important to focus on very simple things like we've been saying over and over again. And it's important to say them over and over again, because it's very easy for people to forget because you believe that this conversation and million messages will be popping up, texts, applications, emails, whatever. I've been
01:33:21
Speaker
notoriously not looking at my email for a long time. So then I miss things and I got to get back. But it's, it's like, I also have the mind of like, well, this is just what I'm like, it's so overwhelming. Just the amount of information where I was like, I need to take time to check out and then I go through and follow up. And it's a lot, it's a lot of, there's a lot of energy spinning in this world. That is that is wanting us to pull away from
01:33:50
Speaker
where we're supposed to be, which is right here where we're at. I think that it's really powerful when I send you my follow-up email most of the time when I send somebody at first email that goes into junk, I don't know why. So when I was following up, I just wanted to make sure it wasn't sitting in junk. I actually, when I work with people and one of the first thing we talk about is, you know, that's what I do is really individualized.
01:34:21
Speaker
the same across the board because everybody has individual job and they have different responsibilities. But I think putting guardrails and a system around your technology use is really important. And I talk a lot about technology use in terms of sex addiction and food addiction, right? Because it's not like alcohol and drug addiction. Drug addiction, your ultimate goal is abstinence. But you can't do that with sex or food.
01:34:49
Speaker
Right, but you can abstain from sex or food. And you don't, you can abstain from technology. And so I think there's a difference if you're drinking two, three drinks a night every night, or you have a glass of wine once in a while. And so the same thing about email or text or whatever, however you use the phone. It's one thing if you get up in the morning and you have a phone food after, you know, five.
01:35:14
Speaker
But it's a completely other thing as you know, you know, depending on what you do, you know, like, so for me, I did the emails in the morning and then, you know, for about 20 minutes, I'll check for everything. And then that's it. I don't kind of sit down behind my computer. All these things before. And so I have these certain window frames. And if there's ever anything urgent, you can always call me, they can dial the phone and you know, so far, nothing really has been urgent.
01:35:45
Speaker
I just don't have an emergency. I know it's different for other people, but I think these are the things. So don't take the phones into the bathroom. Don't take the phones into stores because you don't have an interaction. I go to Trader Joe's a lot. Everybody knows me because I walk around. I'm like, oh, hello, hello, hello.
01:36:07
Speaker
Because during COVID, I was here and I was a Roman and for the first six months, I didn't touch another human being. Everybody was in a pod and I just moved here. So my only interaction with people was sometimes outside working my job and going into stores. And it was really important for me because I moved to New York City surrounded by friends and community and family and life to Charleston and I was just alone.
01:36:37
Speaker
And it really impacted me in a very, very negative way. And that's why my work has just become so important for me to go see what drives me.
01:36:52
Speaker
is because I really feel the loneliness and isolation. And I hate this way of communicating. This is like, you know, now like, you know, blurry. It's like so crazy. But this is, you know, I know this is not normal. This is not FaceTime. This is you and I talking through a computer.
01:37:12
Speaker
When you are facing another human, you need to remember the language that the system is trying to tell us. Social media. Instagram is not social. It's anti-social. There's nothing social about it. It's you sitting in a room by yourself in the dark looking at somebody else's pictures. It's like you can talk. Yeah, that's a good way to reframe it for sure.
01:37:42
Speaker
That is a lot of what it is. And, you know, if society was in a more healthy state, it could be a beautiful thing. I remember when I started on Instagram, all I would do is like take random pictures of, you know, just things like nature leaves, things that had no meaning and then it slowly, or not no meaning, had meaning just by the beauty of witnessing. And then, uh,
01:38:07
Speaker
you know, to now what Instagram has to be telling it went away from sharing photographs, to sharing memes and, um,
01:38:18
Speaker
And suicide in New York, Mexico, India. And killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing.
01:38:42
Speaker
And he was talking about how different the generational gaps between everything is, right? And so what the technology used to be and what it is for now is really different. And it's pushing people, like all these new behaviors, posting, and there's this new phenomenon called white pudding. I don't prefer that.
01:39:09
Speaker
It's you hiring me to be your manager and me going through the whole proof of meeting you, your team members, you're getting the other people, everything me showing up and not liking my first day of work and never coming back again.
01:39:25
Speaker
I have never heard of this bullshit before. What? It's the same thing as ghosting. These are new phenomenons, right? But this is crazy, uncivilized, unhuman, unable to be a normal human being. First of all, I don't know anybody, I've never met anybody who did their jobs the first day. That's a great point.
01:39:52
Speaker
We have what's the point of going in. It's definitely, it's a symptom of sickness because I think a lot of people, number one, aren't pursuing any kind of passion or living with some purpose to their life.
Gratitude and Communication for Societal Growth
01:40:09
Speaker
And so it's become very bland and gray and all the color has been sucked out of like living for a lot of people, which is another reason why people go into certain drugs and drinking
01:40:21
Speaker
to escape reality or to try to escape reality, which I would say, like, you can't escape reality. It's always going to be there when you come down from the high or, you know, reality is always going to be here.
01:40:40
Speaker
I think, you know, I think in America, if I was talking to somebody in another country, so that's the thing, like it's funny that we've come full circle, right? So I was raised in the Soviet system. And I know right now, you know, everybody hates Russian people, which is really hard because I'm not at all responsible for what's going on in Russia right now. But one of the things that I was raised with is tremendous pride in where I was from.
01:41:08
Speaker
And one of the things I really love, and I think my mom was bringing me to America. I love America. I'm a very big patriot, and I'm so grateful to be here. And I think giving gratitude and raising awareness of how great our system country is, it's not like what you said, it's not perfect, it's far from perfect, but it's better than anywhere else. And I think being grateful
01:41:37
Speaker
for, first of all, the service that, you know, there are people that have literally sacrificed their lives so we could live, you know, very much aware of that. And so I think
01:41:50
Speaker
I think that becomes really important. If you live in America right now, anywhere you are at this moment, you can make your experiences better. You can go get a job, you can go get help, you can get into a training program, you can get clothes, you can get help. It's hard and it's not easy.
01:42:13
Speaker
But it's a possibility. You live in other countries. I know places in the world where this doesn't exist, where an option of getting better, just being able to pursue something to help yourself is not possible. And so I think
01:42:41
Speaker
I don't know. For me, I found I find that very powerful. I don't know how much people would have been in trouble. But I don't know. I think in America, you can make your experience better. You just have to work. Absolutely. Yes, it is showing up and doing the work and we are, you know, for all the for all the faults, there's many blessings of being able to
01:43:11
Speaker
Number one, have a voice that doesn't get stomped out immediately or silenced even though this has become more of a thing over the years. But you still have at the end of the day the ability to express yourself freely and communities have the ability to exist and provide the connection that the system or the
01:43:41
Speaker
The civilization, which I like to call uncivilization, has created and set up because the ultimate power of humans is connectivity, the ability to connect and to communicate and to share ideas and to have a conversation and to disagree without, you know, disrupting, devolving into war. I mean, I've been to war, come from a warrior, but I don't.
01:44:10
Speaker
lust it. I don't want it. I don't think that it is a necessary thing. It's a thing that results from egos having a conflict with the nature of reality at the end of the day and wanting to exert control and force over whether that's nature or other human beings, which are also nature. The higher power or this pursuit to be the highest power, which many
01:44:41
Speaker
egomaniacs are pursuing, whether that's through a corporate enterprise or through a government position. The archetype is the same, where it's pursuit of power at all costs or wealth or whatever concept people are chasing that isn't just a humble perspective of reality and the fact that we're one person among many people.
01:45:10
Speaker
And the world isn't revolving around us. You know, we're, we're here to contribute and to make this place as awesome as it can be. And anything that's deviated from that is what I like, I call it just a confusion. Because if someone wants to, you know, create chaos or trauma, then that person, the nicest way I can put it is confused, right? And I think that's honestly the most
01:45:37
Speaker
It's the most true way of putting it is there's a confusion because when you get to the core of any human being, we all know what is right or good versus what is wrong. We know what it's like to harm someone or to be harmed and we don't like to be harmed ourselves. So therefore, if we're doing it to another person, you know what it's like if the shoe is on the other foot.
01:46:07
Speaker
if there was really that, again, respectful, humble, grateful way of existing with honor, then a lot of the traumas would cease. Even someone from a space of severe trauma may want to pass that forward. But in reflection, we can say, no, if I want trauma to end,
01:46:34
Speaker
can now create my own brand of trauma to try to get back at somebody or whatever the group, the thing, whatever it is, we have to live in a positive direction, creating, growing. That's why Guardian Rangers is in the business of growing and nurturing life and community and not attacking or protesting or any of this stuff because people have protested and revolted and
01:47:02
Speaker
done all these things across the entire world for a long time and it always goes in a circle. And the only way to change that is to break the circle and now you're evolving instead of revolving. John Trudell had a good quote about that where it was something to the effect of, you know, there's no revolutionary solutions, only evolutionary solutions. Or Buckminster Fuller was another one who I like, you know, he's like, you don't change the existing paradigm by fighting against it by creating a completely new one.
01:47:32
Speaker
So I think that's really, that's my philosophy at least. And that's where I spend my energy and try to share that, share that story and that vision with others to hopefully resonate, to get massive positive transformation going in my own way. And I know there's other people doing it. You're doing it. A lot of people are doing it. And I think there's this collective conscious evolution that's going on.
01:48:01
Speaker
and people are taking their own perspectives and pushing it forward and that's a beautiful thing to see from all the chaos or amidst all the chaos as there is a clear coherent stream of consciousness that is focused on doing good positive things. So I appreciate it. I think you're finding each other, right? Like, you know, like minded individuals tend to
01:48:32
Speaker
I think that's how the world will become healthier is by this local effort. I agree. I really appreciate the time. I'd like to do another one sometime. We can expand because there's a lot of topics that we covered.
01:48:55
Speaker
collaborate on some kind of project for veterans in the future and yeah, really looking forward to it. I would love to help in any way that I can. It would be my pleasure. I have so much respect. I'm so grateful for the service. I have no idea. If only we could just give more and be more grateful. I think that would really fit it.
01:49:25
Speaker
our existence, if we could be more grateful to people that protect us, so we can do this. So thank you. Thank you.