 Welcome back to the 21 convention. I hope everybody enjoyed their lunch as much as I did our next speaker up He's a huge in the paleo diet blogging and as well as nutrition He runs his own website free the animal calm I'd like for you to check it out as soon as you get a chance and without further ado I'd like to welcome Richard Nicolai to the stage Thanks How's everyone doing everybody having a good time this convention is? Any any ideal men out there yet, or is it a process? That's why they do these things, huh? It's a process it never ends right so My like he said my blog is free the animal calm and if I ask you if I ask you How many of yourselves? regard yourselves as an animal human animal Like on the prowl for a pickup or maybe even in the bedroom, you know bonus points if you're Told you're an animal, but do you take it fully? Do you take it fully to heart in all of its facets in everything you do in society in your in other? Relationships in in business the way you interact with people Do you literally or figurative for example do you literally or figuratively? You know confess your sins to some big guy in the sky Do you feel guilty and shame about yourself as a human being by your very nature? Do you for instance? you know ring your hands and agitate and Look forward to stepping into that booth so you can vote your one in three hundred millionth say in your own affairs Are you anxious? Concerned do you argue with other people about who should rule you next? Do you eat like a human garbage can in your waking hours? Can you go more than two or three hours without? Putting something down your face. I Came to give you a perspective on being a human animal in all of those things I just talked about and in my looking at you know kind of I didn't know much about the 21 convention and I you know Did my research on it looked at some of the videos and I see that there's that how it kind of originally started And I actually interviewed Anthony way back. There's a I think video on his website as well as mine and You can see that The way it was formed originally has become different now you have things like money management and you know entrepreneurship and all of these other aspects other than just man-woman relationships and So I'm here to kind of expand that hopefully expand that a little bit more Give you some more things to think about about how you can carry this kind of rational Being the ideal man To other areas of your life other than just what's already been covered. So hopefully hopefully I'll touch on some new ground So I'm here to talk about diet and and generally stated individualism But I want to do it from a framework that unites these topics and Gets into some things like I just like I mentioned in these questions about you know a little bit of religion philosophy social interaction social philosophy Politics government the state So a Good way to look at this is that most of you out there are you know young 20s I see and so this is a good time because you have an opportunity To avoid some of the mistakes that I made and I didn't make them all but I made if I made a few of them and So it's a good time now so that you don't end up You know becoming some if you want it's your choice I mean you can always you know get married have two and a half kids become a Democrat or Republican go vote go To church do all these things if that's the life you want You're welcome to it, but I don't think it's a life fit for an Animal I don't think it's a life fit for a free animal and I'm gonna talk about that So I'd like you to consider That if you are this human animal I talk about What how is how is that constructed in society in your life today? I like to use the phrase Zoo human or human zoo see I don't I don't consider I don't consider the the society in which we live anything like What you might term as a wild human animal and by wild I don't mean You know out there You know using other people to your to your means or using force or anything like that I'm just talking about living naturally So so I think there's a there's this concept of this human zoo and That we're actually more domesticated as animals than we are Free animals so now who am I and why am I here? He said he talked about the blow. I want to give you a little bit of background And and I also noticed you know, I actually considered You know doing a whole different speech all together once I saw all the people in vibrams here This this morning, so I thought I'd talk to you for an hour about just going to the next step and just going barefoot So you're welcome to join me by the way. I do a lot of barefoot. I used to I have vibrams But I I actually do a lot of a lot of barefoot walking I walk it pretty much every day I walk the dogs around the neighborhood barefoot so you know people see me walking around and it's like whoa It's crazy so So principally the reason I'm here is because I used to weigh like about 240 pounds that was 60 pounds ago There are I emailed Anthony about three photos of what I what I looked like in that sorry state about four or five years ago and And So they'll be on a computer if you want to ask Anthony or you can go to my website free the animal calm and on the right side bar There's a picture and it's there's a link to latest Vote and it's a whole series of posts about you know the progress of losing weight along the along the way So you could check that out if you want to so that's my you know claim to to fame I guess you could say so it was sure it was it was that whole thing I you know I got fat of course because of not managing my diet properly But it was really more than that because why would you allow yourself to get that way? You know Sure, it's the food, but that's not the that's not really The fundamental cause that's not what it's work. It's something dysfunctional in the way you think because You don't see fat animals in the wild do you? Do you? How often have you seen a fat animal in the wild unless they're designed to be that way such as such Well, yeah, it's it's it's that's the way it is by nature. You don't see any skinny hippopotamus See there's no they're all the same, right? You have a bear gets fat and then he goes to sleep for five months, you know So, you know if humans hibernate it I suppose it would be appropriate to get into the state that I got in and and many people do and What's really important to consider at your age those of you who are young 20s is that you can most of you Can get away with it now you can get away with eating Garbage and crap and it doesn't start catching up with you You know when I was when I was young 29 eat what I want, you know, Pete's a beer Fast food whatever of course, it's gotten worse because it's so intensely marketed right now. I'll get into that a little bit more but so just a little bit of background on me I had a Religious upbringing from about the age of 10 my parents found the whole fundamental Born-again thing Got put into a small private school You know religious oriented then went off went off to college At a place in Tennessee a religious school Bible school And That was for a year and then that that's at the age of about 19 or I guess Due to some experiences there I started to wise up a little bit and started to so I left there Went into a state school You know studied math and science and and computers and and business and stuff and then when I graduated in 84 I Went off and lived and worked in Japan for five years. I worked there until 80 end of 89 that was quite an experience and then I went from there and lived in France and worked in France for two years and Then I came back to the US in 92 Deciding to be an entrepreneur and and start my own company and over the next year and a half I got a whole nother education about business by by Starting and failing and not one not two, but three businesses and The fourth time it worked and it worked very fast and it worked so fast that you know This really works. That's a 92. I I built that company to as many as 30 employees It's and it's still around. I haven't been involved in the day-to-day operations for a number of years But still going and you know When those when the when the when I could no longer, you know, what when I got older, you know into my Mid 30s, I suppose is about when it's when the when the things started to change in terms of of metabolism or you know, how your body responds to non-optimal food I started to pour on the the pounce, you know and Then it was about Five years ago. I'm fifth. I turned 50 in January. Do I look it? So I I At the age of 45, I said man, I wasn't even weighing myself at that point and So it was I know it was over 240. That's the last number. I remember And I I've taken off about 60 pounds, you know, I'm pretty comfortable where I am I could probably shed a few more but You know, it's not it's not important how Absolutely lean you are what's important is that you look pretty much normal in your in your clothes your clothes fit, right? And I started blogging about it. I I Already blogged I blogged since 2003 on these sorts of Political and social and philosophical issues and so I started doing but I started adding to that the you know blogging about what I was doing in terms of diet and fitness and so on and Just you know because of my style, I guess I went from having you know a couple thousand readers to where you know I get you know a hundred fifth hundred to a hundred fifty thousand visits a month 200 to 300 thousand page views So it's pretty it's it's it's gone. It's gone quite a ways and for the last couple years I've done done the diet and and fitness pretty much exclusively with Occasional forays into into other things, you know personal things and so and some of the social things so It's speaking at the introduction about free the animal we talked about how we live in a zoo how I see Humanity now as a mass of domesticated animals come you ever heard of a CAFO Concentrated animal feeding operation You know where they bring the cattle in after they've been roaming on the grass for most of their life And in the last I don't know a few months or so of their existence They fatten them up. They put them all together feed them crap and They fatten them all up. That is to me such a such a metaphor for For how I view much of what goes on in in society nowadays But you know what the cool thing is you don't have to eat unnaturally You don't have to move unnaturally. You don't have to sit on your ass all day long in front of a computer I Did yes, you don't Yeah, in fact in fact just an aside on that I would recommend that everybody Get themselves a stand-up desk. You don't have to do all of your Work standing up But if you if you do writing or working on the computer instead of I think you will be amazed At how it increases your productivity and how it makes you think differently Sitting there going like this all day long is just not natural You don't have to have unnatural relationships with women and I know You all know a lot about that probably more than I do actually because at least in terms of what the 21 convention is all about and You don't have to worship mind-created fantasies either You know you can you can but you don't have to You don't have to regard the state and government or politicians with anything but Utter contempt you don't have to you can if you want, but you don't have to so If you if you think of it in terms of being an animal, why would you do anything any of these things? Unnaturally, you know, why would you eat? Unnaturally why would you have a natural relationships relationships that aren't appropriate relationships that you didn't evolve Over eons of time through natural selection and social orders voluntary social orders We are social animals But by social animal when you think of when you think of humans as a social and I you I like to use I like to say that that that Humans evolved to account for the values and actions of about six thirty to sixty other people And when you have a group of thirty to sixty other people Every member of that group has a real potential of Influencing the behavior of every other group. We did not evolve to live in In in in essentially the equivalent of an anthill or a beehive with a queen or a king Ruling us and to whom we sacrifice our lives for I think I got my just a quick second here Sorry, I got my page out of order. So Let's get into the let's get into the diet and the diet part It really comes down to something as simple as a concept of eating real food, you all know it y'all recognize it so you can call it the The paleo diet the primal diet caveman diet, I think Mark Sisson spoke here last Last year if you were here, he went through his whole thing and and what's really good of it about and I Advocate marks mark as a friend of mine. I advocate his approach Not only not only his specific Recommendations, but also he has this thing he calls the 80-20 rule. So, you know, we I'm not an advocate of any sort of religion and Particularly dietary religion. So this is take these things as very as tools you can use It's not something it's not something that you have to be Dogmatic and religious about you can be flexible about it But I tell you what if you get to 80% of what I'm talking about If you do already have a problem with weight management It will make an amazing improvement and it will do it fast If you don't then you never will and why would you want to get there and have to do go through what? I did so Basically, let's cover what not to eat A great start is grain products grains grains weren't really in our diet until the Advent of agriculture and the very simple reason why is that it's an it's not it's not a nutrient dense food and It would have taken way too much labor and effort to gather them until there was some sort of being able to Cultivate these and in lots and farm them, right? So no grains no and and and pretty much everything has grains in all that all the process all the all the crap in a box All the crap in a bag all that stuff down all those aisles of cereal boxes and everything Pretty much all of them are grain-based and sugar-based. So that's the other thing is, you know sugar and most particularly Drinking calories, you know these sugar drinks It's it's it's an enormous load on your system And it will over time for most people and you just look around now at what's what's going on You know, I was thinking about it the other day. I was it I just joined this club Swim and racket club over in the Los Gatos, California, which is kind of a upscale area, you know and It you know three swimming pools 13 Tennis courts nice workout room and everything and I was over there just a couple days ago Lounge and around getting some vitamin D naturally and I was just looking around. I'm like There is only I can only I could only point to one single Woman who should have been subject to a law against wearing a bikini. Yeah, I do I do I think there's some laws are appropriate Only one and I'm like man This is like this is like I remember it back in the 80s because you just don't see that Hardly anywhere anymore, you know, you go around you look through the malls and you'd like my god What has happened? It's insane so No grains no sugar Processed foods crap in a bat bag. That's the don't eat. That's the stay away from what what so let's do the other side of it What do you eat then? Well, I like I always say meat fish fowl Vegetables and fruit meat fish fowl vegetable fruit if you if you if you tolerate dairy a little bit of that's fine, you know nuts Fine I Nuts are pretty calorie dense. I tend to to limit them, you know, I I don't I try not to eat too much cheese or nuts A lot of people blow their progress with that, but you know some of it's fine and guys, I Cannot emphasize this enough Learn how to be a competent good cook and I don't just mean grilling burgers and steaks This will not only impress a woman But you'll be proud of yourself as well if you do it, right? Do some sophisticated stuff and and pride is a virtue by the way in my book in my world so Just really you know if you don't already if you can't already if you go to my blog for example Free the animal comm and look at the category called food porn. You'll see what I mean I there's you know, I'm not the best cook in the world, but I do pretty good. I put a lot of photos up I Don't really go into detailed recipes because I don't cook that way. I just I do stuff You know and it's just over experience over the time because in my household Between my wife and I I'm the cook I always have been just because I've always cooked I was I was on my own for so many years and and I Did a lot of cooking and so I just really encourage you that's so so that we've gone over what don't eat What do eat, but also you got to learn to cook you got to be able to cook and impress yourself Be proud of it. You'll impress other people It'll be made it'll really help your progress along right so you know is get lazy and then the other thing is that you know the In terms of this whole progression Part of part of the don't don't don't be the kind of guy who you know Goes out and spends on a lot of nice a lot of money on a nice car You spend a lot of money on a nice car You go and get yourself some nice expensive clothes and shoes maybe a really expensive watch and You get in your car and the place you visit most frequently is some Drive-through of a fast-food restaurant Does that make any sense? spending all this money on all these nice things to go on your body and around your body and Then you use it to go put crap in your body Doesn't make any sense or You go have a you go get yourself a nice bachelor pad and the most frequent visitor is the pizza delivery guy You know how about you know grocery delivery and you cook your own food much better strategy There's a there's a that you some of you who might know something about the paleo primal evolutionary diet might have Might have certain assumptions about carbohydrate level and because we say you know eliminate the grains Sugars and stuff. That's cutting out mostly carbohydrates. So it seems like intuitively It's a low carbohydrate diet and So that's why when you tell people that you know, I don't eat bread and I don't eat pasta They'll say oh it's Atkins The you know the famous low carbohydrate diet. Well, you know Admittedly admittedly most of my weight loss was on a on a low and very low carbohydrate path that way But I don't think it's I don't think it's it's absolutely necessary for everybody It's a it's highly an individual thing I found over time because I have so many readers and different people have Have piped in and many of them You know eat potatoes summing some I eat potatoes yams things like that squashes and Even even one one grain probably if in terms of grains the one grain that's probably the most innocuous is plain old white rice It's just basically glucose and not brown rice because brown right that all the bad stuff is in the brand lectins fitic acid fitic acid Inhibits not only the absorption of minerals in the rice, but anything else that you're eating with minerals So you want to stay away from the brown if you eat some rice, but We're still talking Moderate carb because even if you already eat three cups of rice a cup with breakfast lunch and dinner You're still only at 130 grams of carbohydrate. You know you eat a couple potatoes a day You're still in that hundred to hundred fifty Gram-a-day range, you know, and I think I'm not I'm not I'm not certain, but I think the Average carb consumption in the US is somewhere around 350 400 grams a day which is quite a lot so It's not necessarily low carb It's either low carb or moderate carb pretty much There are there are there are populations like The Katowans for example, which is a population of hunter-yatherers who have very high levels of carbohydrates You know, but they've never eaten a french fry in their life Never eaten a slice of pizza never eaten a burger You know So they eat tubers grains stuff a little bit of a little bit of protein from fish Works for them. They're very lean Have great blood work So it's not it's not black and white on this issue But here in America protect particularly if you're 80 20 and you're you know, you you do You know have your your little treats and junk every now and then, you know You might want to think about keeping the carbohydrate pretty pretty reasonable, you know 50 to 150 and you got to find out what works for you individually, you know If and if you're if you don't if you're young and you don't have Any of these weight issues yet Then you probably if you're eating real food almost all the time you probably have you probably have no issue with it whatsoever Okay, so let's talk about some myths about going hungry I Never skip breakfast heard that one hear it all the time nutritionists right never skip breakfast Which I always makes me ask what so I'm supposed to eat when I'm not hungry I don't know. Maybe you're always hungry at breakfast. I'm not and I'll tell you why I'm not in a little bit Keep your metabolism running high It's bullshit even if you even if you Do even in mass over-eating experiments where they've had people eat for a month at Double their caloric their normal caloric intake doesn't increase their metabolism at all, right? Eat six small meals per day Same basic thing it does all you're doing then all you're doing then is never letting your Blood glucose come down, you know very much You're training yourself to as soon as soon as you get a little bit of a drop in blood glucose eat again eat again So you're constantly like this constantly like this, you know Just pounding your blood glucose all the time and the insulin response Don't go on a starvation diet. Well, you know last I checked Last I checked animals who are predatory who hunt Don't hunt on full bellies They do they go eat and then say okay time to go hunt It would better eat before we go out and hunt No, they hunt as a response to hunger because they don't eat all the time I have two small dogs and they have four one is one just turned six and the others twelve and and terrier dogs and For the last at least five years they have been on a grain free Diet that's sometimes partially raw food and sometimes a product called Evo That's no grains and very high protein. So it's it's more appropriate to the physiology of a carnivore And as soon as we started feeding them like this We noticed something very interesting. They started eating a lot less and and sometimes, you know, you think okay They get fed in the morning it get fed in the evening. They don't think that way Because they don't eat when they're not hungry, you know, so you lay down the bowl of food They'll take two bites walk away. They won't take a bite at all or they'll Eat it down and then try to get at the others before they before they eat it. So it's very it's it's a very It's a very variable intermittent Sort of eating and fasting that's in response to hunger and a natural physiology so Do you how many know who know what glycogen is, you know, it's just it's the it's the way that Carbohydrate is stored it gets stored in your muscles. It gets stored in your liver Under conditions of like extreme exercise you have a few hours at most worth of glycogen reserves It doesn't get depleted Entirely, but enough of it gets depleted to where your body naturally goes to fat burning Maybe you've may have heard of hitting the wall, you know for runners or cyclists and and stuff like that And that's that's that point at which your body has to shift from burning Accessing glycogen stores into burning fat. Well So you have a few hours of this left, but how many did you know that the average person has three months? worth of energy from their own fat stores three months if you almost everybody and could just Do nothing but drink water for the next three months and you wouldn't really harm yourself at all You'd lose a little bit of a little bit of lean tissue and incidentally the record So I think was set back in The 60s or 70s under a doctor supervision With only water and supplemental vitamins and minerals Guy who weighed over 400 pounds went a year and two weeks without anything else a Year in two weeks. That's how powerful of an energy source fat is he lost over 200 pounds That's the record, you know so I I started what we call intermittent fasting very shortly after the After I started this whole process and there's there's various ways to do it Mine was a 24 to 30 hour Water only That I did one or once to twice a week normally normally twice sometimes once and Then I would always work out do my workout. I did two workouts a week about a half an hour intensity Stuff, you know, like Doug McGuff talked about last year and Skyler Tanner and Keith Norris talked about today And I would always work out like about, you know anywhere from 20 to 26 hours You know 20 hours in if I was a 24-hour fast, you know 26 hours in if I was a 30-hour fast and then I would eat and So I got in the habit then of I I can't do a workout if if I've eaten Within like at least six or eight hours. It just doesn't feel right, you know again do animals hunt I mean so the workout simulates the kind of Natural sort of movement that you would do out in nature if you had to hunt for your own food You'd be doing that on an empty stomach So you can actually get used to to to doing very intense exercise with heavy weight resistance training which I recommend on a on a without having eaten in 24 I've even done it as much as 30, you know worked out at 36 hour point, you know And it's very very Interesting how you can play with it because you're by that time you're you're well into fat burning So you're having to burn fat to fuel your muscles and everything So when you do some of the bigger moves like leg movements with your big muscles and lift heavy weights You can actually do it in a way that will make that will all of a sudden you'll just feel yourself get really hungry You know and then you back off on the intensity and 30 seconds later the hunger goes away then you go intense again and it brings it back and goes you play with that and then you start to You start to realize how Hunger works with your with your body. It's very enlightening and almost nobody Gets any experience like that because people are feeding their faces all the time, you know three times a day Don't go it's a starvation diet. If you don't do it now that said when you're not fasting You should be eating good. You should be you should be eating hefty, you know It's like just if you were out in the wild and you killed that deer And you don't have a refrigerator or anything, you know, you're gonna chow down So don't don't think that it you don't want to get into a chronic state with it So another fasting strategy is the eating window strategy So that can that's typically like eight hours eating not constantly Two or three meals in that eight hours and then 16 hours off. I I've done that for a while Just went back to the old way. I like it better actually But this was something this is something you would do every day So for example, you eat your first meal at noon Stop eating at eight in the evening. Don't eat again till noon It's very easy to do once you've done it a couple times So you could try either way you like you'd like, you know, and it's Everybody can do it because everybody had to do it. We evolved having periods of time Where we didn't eat. It's just that we're so conditioned to You know really Deplore hunger and think as soon as you get hungry. I gotta eat I gotta eat you don't It's nice to be hungry now There's some now. There's some there's some also some other benefits to fasting You how many people have heard of a cleansing diet? It always it always struck me as odd that you would say, okay What should I eat to cleanse? Well, the ultimate cleansing diet is to not eat because what happens you cleanse at a cellular level You you all of your cells in your body get little Little mid-o chondrial breakdowns of protein So when you go into a fast the first thing your body does is it starts recycling those broken proteins into new proteins? You can Google autophagy a u t o p h a g y a o t a Hope you got that autophagy Google that you see what I mean There's also Google, you know fasting for as a as a therapy for cancer and it happens in two ways cancer cells unlike normal cells Can only feed on glucose. They can't use ketones ketones as a byproduct of fat metabolism So if you are not if you are not eating Then you're burning fat. You're starving cancer cells because two things they only They only feed feed on glucose number one and number two is there about 30 times less efficient Than the normal cells so they really have to have a lot of glucose So, you know, you can actually you can actually find articles on the internet that are named things like sugar feeds cancer and so on so there's there's there's been some some progress in in very in treating various cancers by by employing fasting as a therapy the other method is that Interestingly enough when you go when you fast for three to five days in advance of chemotherapy It puts your cells into your normal cells not your cancer cells into a highly protective Self-protective state so chemotherapy is like a it's like a war of attrition, you know You're just killing cells and you hope you kill the cancer before you kill the kill the host But in that they've done this in rats and they've done it in vitro with humans cancer cells and regular cells and They attend you attain up to 20 21 kill ratio of cancer cells over regular cells, but it has to be a pretty significant fast It has to be on the order of three to five days from the research I've read So that's another thing you can check out on the on the web So there's there's reason what I'm getting at is there's reasons why? Fasting intermittent fasting is a good strategy That has nothing to do with the weight loss or weight maintenance It's more like body weight maintenance because we evolved in a state where we didn't have food at our you know Beck and call 7 so by eating all the time and never giving your system a rest You know, you're not really living in a natural way one more thing is your gut bacteria you have ten times as Many bacteria in your digestive tract than cells in your body ten times So by fasting You give your system a chance to rest Yeah, and there's oftentimes good bacteria and bad bacteria things like things that cause diarrhea and stuff like that Or just discomfort, you know heard of irritable bowel syndrome and these sorts of things So fasting is a good strategy to let those that bacterial flora readjust to its natural levels, right? So you don't really I don't think I don't think you really have to worry about the probiotics and the Prebiotics and so on just you know go a day without eating once a week once every couple weeks probably would be enough You know everything will even out okay, so now the Now the exercise portion, which is very quick and short exercise like Skyler Tanner and Keith Norris told you to do it's really good stuff they both been friends of mine for a long time and They're just great. They've got some got some good videos that you can watch on on Keith Norris's website, so check it out all right, so that's the diet and Diet nutrition fasting part of it in terms of your animal nature So now let's move on to the society stuff I Don't know I just I don't know why people are so enamored with government, you know That it never worked You know it's it's The the it reminds me it's I I See this massive people with everybody Clamoring to live at the expense of everyone else. It's kind of like this big weird fantasy that that somehow You know you can be guaranteed or assured a life That's not by producing your own values and trading them with other people, you know Everybody's trying to live at the expense of everybody else it's it's actually a sophisticated form of a Protection racket if you understand how government got going in the first place There was no such thing as government back in the hunter-yather days It could not have happened Until the advent of agriculture for a very simple reason. There was nothing to steal so Envision this You know over time, you know agriculture didn't just happen in ten thousand years ago It's a long process probably five to seven thousand years of you know gradually, you know cultivating grains and and domesticating animals To be used both for for you know dairy as well as for work in in harvesting grains So once you once you now have these plots of land where you're growing grains you have You have Wealth being generated you have you have the grains itself which they which can be stored And you have the capital that's required to you know plant and then harvest it and store it so now there's all of a sudden assets right and So some group of Some band of marauders says hey, I've got an idea You know there's these villages cropping up where they're you know doing all this stuff and they've got all this stuff And they've got food got animals, you know, we can just you know ride from one to the next and You know make our living that way stealing their stuff, you know We've got force, you know, we're trained so they do that But then more and more of these bands of marauders get the same ideas a good idea, right? so then what you have is you know band of marauders comes up to the village to to to to steal What they can only to find out that another band had already just been there a while ago So there's nothing left to steal so What what's the natural ideas like well, huh? What if we just stay here and We'll just steal a little bit over time and protect them from the other bands of marauders That's actually how government got started in the first place thieves And hasn't changed You know I have I have family members. It's funny. I was telling someone on the plane last night It says, you know, it's so hilarious to me that You know you have a guy as president who is who has a r after his name or is it before I don't know and You know this guy this Republican does a B and C well it so happens that my wife's side of the family are all liberal Democrats My side of the family is all conservative Republicans. So when Republican president does a B and C It's it's the worst thing in the world for my wife's side of the family and my side of the family has every possible reason to justify it A few years later you have a guy in office with a D He does the exact same a B and C And it's reversed now It's the worst thing in the world from the perspective of my side of the family And there's all kinds of reasons to justify it for my wife's side of the family. So you know The agitation level that people go through that just waste their lives Thinking about this, you know working. I'm going home every day, you know TV Fox News CNN, you know MSNBC Whatever talking head shows back and forth, you know soundbites talking over each other arguing endlessly endlessly endlessly never getting anywhere, you know To what end it's just to keep you riled up. I I read a book Several years back by a guy named Nicholas and Naseem Nicholas Taleb And it's called fooled by randomness. He also wrote another book called the black swan. I recommend fooled by randomness it's he was a he was an options trader and And He he he was he's made a lot of money. He's one of the guys that That made a lot of money back. I think in 87 black Monday. He was right That things were going to collapse and he made tons But it's basically a book about how you know all these little Events that happen and it's part it's particularly true in the political sphere Where people just get all up in arms all the time agitated they think that they know exactly what's going to have You know the sky is falling this sort of thing just because of random events So he proposed he said he proposed that you do an experiment. He said it was it was basically, you know stop Taking in all sources of news no newspapers no news magazines no cable news channels, you know no talk radio all this stuff and See if anything happens, you know If something is important an important news event it'll find its way to you, you know But this whole idea of being you know news junkies every day news junkie slash political junkie It just gets you nowhere. It's unnatural. You're better off spending time in your relationships your education your knowledge You know entrepreneurship if you have an idea for a business venture I don't vote Not in many many many many years. It's pointless One in three hundred million say in your own affairs. What a smoking deal is that and if you vote You have no right to complain Everybody switches that around right? What what that makes no sense and I've been saying this a long time before George Carlin said it if you go to YouTube and Search George Carlin doesn't vote. It's very nice three-minute rant in there about voting. He doesn't vote either but It makes no sense if you vote You're simply participating in this big game scheme with rules Da-da-da-da-da if it goes crap on you you have no it would you sit down in a board game when you lose Complain about the rules No But if someone comes to you and say hey we played this game We decided we're gonna do this to you you have every right to complain So if you want a right to complain stop voting it's pointless. It only encourages them When people ask me why I don't vote I said because I'd never do that to you you know, why do you what what interest do you have? What interest do you have in going to try and impose your will your sense of values on everybody else What gives you the right to do that? Just because just because you have a bigger mob than the other guy That makes it right shameful, I don't know about you but I see myself as morally superior and Far more competent Than any politician you can name And you should too When someone when they say they say you know that had never worked That had never worked. It means it means that it means that man. I don't have I It won't give me a guarantee It won't give me an assurance. That's really what they mean. It means that if I somehow can't manage to see to my own values that It's gonna happen anyway That's what it means now you want to live that way I guess that's fine, but I prefer I just prefer to take my chances again wild animal Is there any assurances any guarantees, you know, so what? Life is a risk and the and the sooner the sooner you start thinking of yourself as An animal in a risky environment number one you're gonna make better choices You know, if you're not counting on the social safety net so on, you know, so I'm gonna So I posed a question I can't remember whether it was on Facebook or Twitter the other day said, you know If you have the right to make me pay for your health care, how come you don't have the right to make me pick your cotton? You want to be a slave go ahead? and incidentally if you individually or If you can gather a group of people together in Such as like a charitable, you know group of people and you want to offer Guarantees or assurances to other people who might be less fortunate or might have had misfortunes in their lives Tell you something. Nobody is gonna stop you Nobody's gonna stop you the whole aim of practical politics Is to keep the populace alarmed and Hence clamorous to be led first to safety by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins all of them imaginary Anyone know who wrote that? H.L. Menken you've ever heard of him? Very a cervic journalist back in the 30s words of wisdom One more thing about the state. It's only the largest mass murderer in history Estimates competent estimates range from 160 million to over 300 million in the 20th century alone Google it death by government by I forget his first name Romel It's the book is actually online. You can read it online. You can see the sources how it's calculated guilt and shame guilt and shame guilt and shame guilt and shame So we've covered the we've covered the political side of it, you know, you're selfish You don't want to help the less fortunate just looking out for yourself You know There's nothing wrong with guilt and shame, you know, I remember when I shop lifted a wallet from a department store when I was six years old and my mom found it in my Pocket when she did the laundry You know, I felt I felt appropriate guilt and shame and It motivates you to action And that action was that the next day she marched me over to the department store Where and where she asked to see the manager and I had to go into the his office Explain what I did and pay for the wallet Appropriate guilt and shame guilt and shame right but When professional politicians use guilt and shame, you know, you're not sacrificing enough Everybody needs to give a little more everybody's gonna have to sacrifice or when You know representatives of a higher cause use it You're guilty by nature. You're very nature Just the way you think is sinful Or your physical urges Guess you know what I'm talking about there when you when you when you make someone feel guilt and shame Inappropriately by which I mean you are you were shaming them and guilting them on their own nature As a human animal that is simply a mechanism for control if you and it happens in relationships, too Doesn't it you know ever been with a woman? Who Found ways to make you feel guilt or shame but in unearned what something you did you didn't do anything wrong It was just the way you were or she expected something from you that you didn't have her That that she didn't have a right to expect from you There you go, it's happened to everybody You know You always you always People use guilt and shame to to motivate you to action and when they motivate you to action They're controlling you and this happens on all levels of inappropriate authority government religion various coercive sort of societies So, you know, I know I'm not I'm not Let me let me make something clear about the whole religion. I am I'm an atheist I have been for 20 years It was really about it was really realizing that I didn't have any fear of a supreme being If I don't have any fear over some supreme being why would I waste my time with it? Makes no sense. It's only if you have fear My eye, you know, I told you about growing up in the fundamentalist thing Thankfully in Year years late, you know, it was my parents that were involved with that my other brothers So thankfully over a period of years. I was able to get them Completely away from that and usually they don't even go to church anymore But they could never make that next step to say that's all a bunch of bullshit Because there's this fear there. It's fear, you know What can you do? By the same token, I have no problem. I have no problem with a Kind of a Spiritualism or something if you will to for lack of a better term, you know, it's not my cup of tea But you know, I'm not talking about just some sort of sense of that that there's something special about us And and that we should be charitable and people of good will and so on I don't think you need to believe in anything like that to do that But if that's your if that's your thing, you know, and there's it's also so wrapped up in, you know traditions family traditions and and things like that and and if you're gonna raise kids, you know, if it's, you know If that's what you want to do, but try to stay away from the literalism, you know Like there's some big guy with a white beard in a chair somewhere, you know You know or there's actually 72 virgins, you know all these forms of literalism Just look at it practically doesn't it doesn't work for you. I mean When I quit When I dumped all that stuff and just quit believing it entirely my life improved immensely and immediately it's it's it's kind of just look at it as an exercise in Recognizing reality cold hard reality and When you do that then you start to make proper decisions in business You start to make proper decisions in relationships because you're unwilling to fool yourself You're unwilling to entertain a delusion Yeah, so To wrap things up I I wanted to give Without actually knowing that much about the whole pickup community and and all those things I wanted to give my You know free the animal perspective on men women relationships And this is incidentally one of the things that I actually ended up Totally by accident doing right in my 20s. I My first, you know serious You know sexual relationship was when I was in college there was long term it lasted about a year and a half and In the entire year and a half it was non-exclusive Not by my choice But I learned to accept it she had a a a You know love of her life thing that was he was off at college in another state and He wasn't back very much You know I think once or twice the whole year and a half But when he was she was with him and when he wasn't I was like The physical friend as she called it this was before the concept of friends with benefits came out I guess and It was hard to accept at first, but I grew to accept it and Believe it to be a more natural way of living and I went on to do the same thing over and over and over again until I was 35 I had many many very short-term Relationships, but I had three three other Serious long-term relationships one that spans seven years over three continents You know and she was always with someone else But we had a relationship and you know what? I'm really proud of it that I did it that way because I learned to just Not be not worry about exclusivity at all. It really worked out nicely for me What well with the exception of the crazy bitch in France, but Yeah, she she totaled my 87 Corvette I was at sea was on a ship at sea and she found the keys to my 87 Corvette that I'd shipped over there and Totaled it in accent Provence 3 a.m. In the morning with another guy in it So that didn't make me too happy Then that was I almost I almost got that was the one I almost married So it's I was fortunate that that happened So To to to make a long story short I got married for my very first time When I was 40 years old to a woman who was also getting married for her very first time at 41 We've been together for five years So, you know the way it worked out for me is just by happenstance that I ended up being in lots of a Bunch of relationships that I really cherish but were non-exclusive on either of our parts you know And I did that till I was 35 a bunch of smaller relation such that by the time I was 35 I was ready to settle down my My wife and I have been together now for 15 years ten of them married and It has been exclusive, but I I was ready for it at that point in time I've gotten all that stuff out of my system. So that's my perspective on it. I don't know whether that's your value, but That's my perspective on it. So That's it questions Would you say you consider yourself an anarchist? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, long time Yeah, so then why would you complain about having one in 300 million say Isn't that better than no say at all It's just it's a waste of time. It's it's in my view. It's simply a waste of time Why would I how long it doesn't why how long does it take? Too much of my time and it's not just it's not just going the act of voting. It's participating in the whole process You have to think about it. I don't even think about it. I don't care who's running. I don't care what their policies are It's just I'm way too selfish to to do that and plus I wouldn't do that to you I wouldn't even I wouldn't even try to Force you with one and three hundred millionth of my say to do what you didn't want to do, but I wanted you to do It's it's morally wrong that I think voting is immoral There you have it The question would be heard of maybe pinpoint we're talking about I think your problem that I'm identifying is that your problem with voting Is that you hate voting for anything? That's not optional Well, I actually I actually actually there is one instance where I where where I think voting is appropriate And that's when it's 100% unanimous If it's 100% unanimous, nobody's being forced to do anything, right? But there there is there is no there is I cannot see any moral ethical resolution to the idea that just because You have a bigger Group a bigger mob That you get to force other people to do what you want instead of what they want Curious would you are there any presidential candidates running that you would make an exception to this rule for? With that exception proving a rule. Are there any presidential candidates? I don't know. Well, you know, I mean, certainly there's degrees I mean I I I Was I was interested to follow Ron Paul's Campaign last time and his ability to raise funds, but I knew it would never go anywhere. Anyway, you know I have to say I really agree with a lot of the things you're saying about religion and how I think Fundamentalist rose like fundamentalist Christianity or fundamentalist Islam really have a negative effect on many aspects of human life But I guess both thing I'm wondering is what if say you're interested in a certain religious or spiritual tradition? Because I'm interested in Buddhism and Taoism Do you think those philosophy are entirely bad because they're not so much about trying to convert other? There's there's some exceptions there so they call them in a religion, but it's nearly different because Buddhism Taoism and stuff like that don't believe in some supreme being they don't even even in many cases in many of these Eastern traditions don't even believe in an afterlife, you know and in fact in original Judaism They didn't believe in an afterlife, you know, yeah, you're exactly right The concept of life don't really appear until the New Testament So so yeah that it's it's kind of that's why that's why you know I'm speaking very generally and basically what I'm speaking to is literalism, you know, in other words in other words you are taking your life and and spending it on Literal beliefs in magical things that have no basis in reality Or can be proven and you're you're spending your life's capital on it. You're making decisions Based on things that you know that just aren't true, right? So but it's but in terms of the of the feel-good part in the community the family stuff and everything In some of the more liberal kinds of traditions, you know, I went I recently a good friend of mine died a few months back and I went to her her her and her partner were members of the of the What is it? Unitarian Universalist Church, and so we went to my wife and I went to the to the service and was extremely impressed with basically Basically the way the service went is it was it was ancestor worship This is an interesting concept from from the eye from the standpoint of the paleo and and the way we regard hunter-gatherers and Stuff like that, but it was quite interesting. So it was not at all focused on some literal Being was focused on the ancestors and and actually the the minister of that church Nancy is also a friend of mine She lived in our same complex of lofts and I'd spoken with her many times about it and and she she Perfectly accepted the fact that I was a non-believer So I was talking with her after the service and I said, you know, it was very interesting I pointed out what I just did to you and and and the harpist was there, too And they both smiled and they said, you know what? It's because we just don't know Now that's something that's something I can I can accept, you know, you you go and you have your thing But but but this bit this bit this rock solid, you know rock solid certainty about You know certainty and literalism is is where I think it's a problem now. It's a problem for me I should point out mostly philosophically and If that's not where you are then what I would say is then look at it practically How's it working for you? So you could start there and Then consider and then if you say wow wow, you know, I know I don't think about this at all I don't worry about it, you know, I'm just I'm pretending as though I don't believe acting as though I don't and then you see Improvements in your life then maybe you go the next step, but it's it's you know, it's not mandatory. That's me I'm just giving you my perspective on things With regards to voting. What do you think about the whole notion of lesser of two evils? I Don't evil's evil, you know, thanks for pointing it out. Okay. All right I try to live pretty principallyed Pretty principled a pretty principled life as much as I can So I'm not big on I'm not big on on Utility, you know, I even talked to that in in my in my presentation about people say well, that'll never work And I'm I always my aunt my aunt my aunt my answer to that is work for whom Well, that'll never work work for whom is that it? Okay, thanks everybody fun