 Awesome. Welcome. Caleb Moppen. Thanks for joining us. Sure. Glad to be here. Super excited for this. It was great to talk to your colleague from CPI, Ryan Cotton, and then have him recommend you coming on the show. Yeah. Ryan's pretty cool. Heck yes. Yeah. And we'll be unpacking a lot more of CPI at the Center for Political Innovation, the four-point plan. We'll be talking about Caleb's background and how he got to being interested in what he's doing today. So let's start with that, Caleb. Give us a bit on your background and trajectory and how you got interested in what you're doing today. Well, I'm from a small town in Ohio. I grew up in a little tiny town called Orville, Ohio. It's where Smucker's Jelly is manufactured. It's maybe two hours south of Cleveland. It's a rural town. Like my graduating class was a little over 100 people, 115. And, you know, I remember, you know, from an early age, I was interested in radical movements and such. I remember that, you know, my mother was a librarian in Stark County. And she and the other librarians, they were members of the SEIU, the Service Employees International Union, and they went on strike when I was in fourth grade. So I think the first political thing I ever did was, as a fourth grader, I walked the picket lines with my mom. That was pretty neat. And, well, you know, the Iraq War happened, and I was very opposed to it, but my town was very conservative and very supportive of it. We had to do all kinds of pro-war stuff in school. You know, we had to make these like candy packets for the troops every morning and stuff. And I was kind of alienated from that, so that, you know, forced me to argue with a lot of people. And so I had to learn a lot about, you know, the world and that really opened my eyes. I got to visit Ecuador when I was 12 years old with my father, who was, you know, he had kind of a side gig leading nature tours in the Guapagos Islands. So I got to go to Ecuador with my dad when he was there, and it was in the middle of a crisis, neoliberalism. I mean, I remember getting off the airplane. There was just crowds of starving people outside the airport. I'd never seen that level of extreme poverty before. 1999 was the year I was there, the country was just in turmoil, you know, brought in by the IMF and the World Bank. And so as I got into college, I started doing activism. I got involved with some radical groups. I started doing radical, you know, studies and classes and reading groups. But I also got involved in protests against police brutality in Cleveland. I actually video-recorded. There was a walkout at a high school in Cleveland at Collinwood High School, and I video-recorded the walkout. I heard about it on Facebook, which was like 2010. And I heard about this walkout, and luckily I was there with my camera because the police were very violent to two young women, just, you know, just attacked them. And I videoed it, and my video got one of them acquitted in juvenile court, so that was pretty exciting. And, you know, I went to court with some police brutality victims and such. And, you know, around the time of 2011, I moved to New York City. And when I was in New York City, it was around the time of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. And so I was participating in the Occupy Wall Street Movement. I was working in an insurance firm. I had a full-time job at the time, but I would go every day after work and on the weekends to go support Occupy Wall Street. And I was working with the International Action Center, which was a nonprofit started by Ramsey Clark, who was the former U.S. Attorney General, who ever since, you know, Nixon fired him from being a real radical voice against war. And, you know, he represented Saddam Hussein when he was on trial in Iraq. He represented Milosevic. And, you know, he would represent in international court, you know, people the U.S. was going after. And, you know, he went to Cuba a number of times, went to Vietnam a number of times. And, you know, he was very much a progressive. And he ran this activist nonprofit called the International Action Center. And so I was working with them during the Occupy Wall Street protests. And I started representing them on international television. Eventually, I started working with a TV network called Press TV, which is from Iran. And I started doing reports from the U.N. I became their U.N. correspondent. And then I started working with RT. And I've spoken at a number of international conferences in Venezuela, in Brazil, in Ecuador, in Iran, and in Russia. And, you know, now I've moved ahead. I want to start a think tank dedicated to anti-imperialism and socialism. And so that's what the Center for Political Innovation is. It's about, you know, spreading a message of constructive, optimistic socialism in these dark times and trying to build a world where we can all come together to raise living standards and poverty, et cetera. Yeah, there was a lot there in the trajectory that, yeah, that kind of pressure cooked you to be what you represent today. So if you take us back, there are these situations where, in a sense, the essence of those situations was seeing radical amounts of inequity and of basic needs not being met. People unable to actualize their fullest potential. Yeah. And lots of also kind of perverse hierarchical dynamics, like extractive dynamics of those that are in positions of power. So would you say that that would be like the amalgamation of perversities that was at play that kind of triggered your interest in a meeting of needs? I'm always somebody who's wanted to investigate things. You know, my mother was a librarian. And, you know, before the internet was a big thing, you know, we always had a world book encyclopedia in our house, you know, all the, you know, volume encyclopedia. And we'd be talking about something at dinner time and we went and got the encyclopedia and you looked it up. You know, and I was always taught to do research and to investigate and to learn more. And so I always wanted to learn more. And, you know, I think when the Iraq war broke out and we were being told that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were best pals and had pulled off 9-11 together and that there were weapons of mass destruction and we were under attack. You know, I investigated. I learned more about it and I learned that that was not the case. And then I think when I went to Ecuador as a kid and saw so much poverty and I had never seen that level of suffering, I wanted to know why it was. You know, I remember there was somebody who told me at the time they said, well, the reason that people are poor in Ecuador is because business meetings don't start on time is what I was told. I was told that, well, you know, in the West we start our, you know, in the United States in Europe we start our business meetings on time. You know, meeting is 11, it starts at 11, but in Ecuador they start a half hour late and hour late. So that's why they're poor over there is they're not as efficient. Well, that didn't make sense to me. You know, I mean, that wasn't the truth. And the more I looked into these things, the more I learned what was really going on. And it seemed like there was, you know, a huge effort to, you know, kind of lie and manipulate people. And the more I learned about communism, it seemed like I was thinking of this stuff on my own. I thought about healthcare and how politicians are always talking about healthcare. And I said, well, why don't we just make sure that everyone has healthcare? Why don't we just, you know, like just like the government makes sure there's roads and the government makes sure there's a post office. And then we run the hospitals. And we just, you know, we pay the doctors out of our tax money. Everyone needs to go to the doctor. They go to the doctor. And I would say that people say, that's communism. I'd be like, it's communism. I didn't know what communism was, but it seemed like, you know, you know, I'd see, you know, there was unemployment as a problem. Why don't we just make sure everyone's hired and, you know, put them to work doing useful things for the good of the country. That's communism. I constantly told, he told that's communism. So that got me to go look into what communism actually was and read the communist manifesto and learn about it. And the more I learned about it, the more interesting it was to me. And I will never forget this experience because everyone, whenever they told me about communism, but always tell me that communism was this evil ideology. It's failed everywhere. It's ever been tried and it just, it makes countries poorer and it doesn't work and all of this. So I'll never forget, you know, I went to the library and I was wanting to learn about communism, but I knew that you couldn't be like Stalin or you couldn't be like Lenin or Fidel Castro or these were brutal authoritarians, right? So I got a book called The Revolution, the Trade by Leon Trotsky. And it was a book that was, you know, I mean, it's called The Revolution, the Trade. I figured it's about why, you know, the Soviet Union was not really socialist, why Trotsky's teachings would be better or something like that. And the first chapter of that book is called What Has Been Achieved? And I opened the first chapter of Leon Trotsky and Enemy of the Soviet Union, a guy that Stalin killed. The first chapter is What Has Been Achieved and it was all just economic data, statistics about steel manufacturing, statistics about coal production and just, I was reading this and I was just like, this can't be true because everyone told me that everywhere communism has failed and I'm reading, he's describing how the Soviet Union is becoming an industrial superpower, the biggest steel manufacturing in the world, the biggest manufacturing, I mean, all these people wiping out illiteracy, raising, I'm reading this and I thought, this can't be true, this has to just be propaganda because everybody knows that communism failed everywhere it's ever been tried. So then I went and I got the encyclopedia and I read the section on the Soviet Union about economics and there was like a small paragraph and it said, Soviet Union achieved rapid industrialization, modernized the country and I'm like, wait, that's not what I've been told and the more I dug into it, the more I learned that, wow, there were tremendous economic successes in socialist countries. If you compare the life expectancy of Cuba with the life expectancy of most countries in Latin America, they're doing pretty well. China under the leadership of the Communist Party has gone from being one of the poorest countries in the world to being the second largest economy on earth and an economic superpower and it's so much of what I was told about communism, this idea that economically it just doesn't work, it's never worked anywhere. That was just malarkey as Joe Biden would say, it was just false and there are just many examples of socialism and centrally planned economies leading to great economic successes and so as I discovered that, I thought, wow, the fact that we've been lied to so much about communism means that communism probably has something to offer, the same people that lied to us about weapons of mass destruction and lied to us about Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden being buddies, they're lying to us about communism. So maybe we ought to look into this and the central, that was always the central thing I was told about communism, no economic successes ever and that is just such utter falsehood, right? I mean you could talk human rights, you could talk about other issues, there are certainly criticisms of what went on in the 20th century, but lack of economic success is not one of them and the fact that we're lied to so much really indicated that this was something to look into, so there you go. I will also say that, and for me one moment that was very big in my life was when I went to Iran for the first time in 2014, the Islamic Republic of Iran, I was actually quite afraid when I was going there, I'd been heard this is a strict religious dictatorship and I was deleting every file from my computer afraid I might have something that would go against the government and I'd get arrested and I was being told to be very careful and I got to Iran, I found a country that is yes, I mean there's posters everywhere, political posters, there's pictures of the Supreme Leader everywhere and the military is a big part of the country but I found a country full of very friendly people that have different perspectives about things and then I returned to Iran in 2015 and I actually got to accompany the Red Crescent Society of Iran to go to Yemen, to go to deliver humanitarian aid to Yemen and I spent 13 days on a ship headed for Yemen with all kinds of medical supplies and food on behalf of the UN recognized Red Crescent Society and we were on our way to Yemen and then the port that we were scheduled to dock in was bombed eight times by Saudi Arabia, they bombed it eight times in a single day to keep us from docking in that port and I saw the warplanes flying overhead and I heard all kinds of reports in international media claiming that we had weapons on our ship and this was a smuggling, a weapon smuggling operation which it was not and that was definitely a very spiritual experience for me to spend 13 days on that ship and then ultimately go to Djibouti because we couldn't dock in Yemen and have the ship unloaded by UN relief workers who saw that it was a big lie, we weren't carrying any weapons to Iran or to Yemen, that wasn't the case it was purely a humanitarian mission that was a life-changing experience that I will never forget and seeing that and such so yeah, I mean there's been a lot of interesting moments on my journey through life I guess you could say Whoa Yeah, there's always room for improving the planetary architectures that meet basic needs and then enable everyone to be actualized to just say that there's a static system that is working for everybody no matter what is, it's not dynamic that's not flexible and so we're right now we're seeing that there's these decentralized universalization style architectures the fractional ownership and inclusive stakeholder which we'll talk about in a bit I want to visit what you were mentioning also a moment ago about there are these across the planet we have we haven't really understood yet what oneness is or what unity is and you talk about it like a spiritual experience because you know when you really begin to not just go along with the spiritual platitude that we're brothers and sisters you know even biologically 99.9% genetically similar and 0.1% genetically different which is why you look the way you do and I look the appearance of form is the only small tiny differential but everything comes from that a biogenesis on the planet everything comes from the cosmogenesis everything is that one intelligence and so when we sort of begin getting that then you don't have this you don't have this malevolence of bombing and of scarcity mindset rather than abundance mindset and so this is this sort of consciousness awakening is it goes right there hand in hand with spirituality with meeting basic needs with seeing everything as one and so those types of stories we're going to come to the end of those as we recognize more and more of the oneness and so that was also coming up and one other thing that came up that I thought was really relevant was as you were going to Iran and having this experience of so much fear dogma being peddled to you to visit in 2019 I also went to China for partnership interviews with Beijing University and Westlake University in Beijing and Hangzhou and I was also just peddled so much fear and dogma and it was so great when people were like don't take your computer all this type of stuff and I was just right past that and I made these incredible friendships and connections just an incredible country that has so much awesome hospitality awesome technology, awesome culture and it was so welcoming and it's really important to make friendships in Iran, to make friendships in China, in Saudi Arabia, in Russia in whatever countries around the world because we want our friends and families to come together because that has nothing to do with what mainstream media is promulgating with fear narratives and so that seems to be another critical thing is don't go listening to fear peddled media that's feeding these limbic infrastructures that's making us more and more fearful of the oneness but rather go directly to the friendships with people in different places in the world and recognize right there when people invite you into their home have some tea, have some food enjoy some music together go and sight see, go to the local museum play some sport that's how we foster this oneness and this love and so that was also coming up to have you also noticed as we get into the other topics have you also noticed that that being a critical pillar globally is both really flowering and blossoming these relationships between families and friends across the planet but also that sense of unity in that sense of oneness when you talk about that sense of oneness I'm forced to think of the book Civilization by Sigmund Freud which is one of Freud's most important essays and in it Freud talks about psychoanalysis he's interviewing his clients and a number of his clients who are religious have told him that they have this feeling of oneness with the universe this universal feeling and it's that feeling alone that gives them the feeling of being religious and Sigmund Freud can't relate to this at all he says I don't know what they're talking about I don't feel this at all he doesn't know what it is but in the book he talks about this a lot and that's a big point of the book is him trying to make sense of this feeling of oneness that his clients experience and you know I think that's interesting because I can relate to that you know I feel like that feeling of oneness is a big part of my life and striving for that feeling of connection with other people and with the entire universe itself I struggled to do quite a bit and what I think is interesting is you know in my book on Kamala Harris I wrote a book called Kamala Harris and the future of America it was reviewed pretty widely there's not many books about Kamala Harris I quoted from that and I talk about what it means to be a leftist or what it means to be left-wing in that book because Kamala Harris she was a vicious prosecutor in California jailed all kinds of people for smoking marijuana and then laughed about it when asked if she'd ever done it Kamala Harris is a pretty kind of a sadistic person but she grew up as a leftist her parents were both left-wing activists and such and I argue in that book that left-wing politics has two sides to it on the one hand left-wing politics is about striving for that feeling of oneness and of community on the greed and individualism and selfishness that kind of comes between us but on the other side of it there is kind of a destructive side of left-wing politics which can just be kind of giving people permission to release their impulses right and that as the left is kind of time out lifting social restraints and giving people permission to be angry giving people permission to be less controlling of their own behaviors and I argue that in the history of communism as we've seen we can see both of those things that I would argue like the French Revolution and the great terror and the cultural revolution in China these events were very much about giving people permission to unleash their rage and destructive impulses whereas the strength when I talk about the Soviet Union rapidly industrializing when you talk about China becoming a superpower when you talk about Cuba's healthcare system the strength of socialist countries has been not their ability to engage in anger but rather their ability to strive for that feeling of oneness and community and what I think is also interesting is that the socialist movement in the 20th century was very much an atheist movement because religion was identified with the ruling class religion was identified with feudalism and the feudal structures that they were dismantling but nowadays that seems to have really changed the leader of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro is Roman Catholic his predecessor Hugo Chavez was also Roman Catholic Fidel Castro converted to Christianity during the 1990s and had confession with the Pope Nicaragua the slogan of the government is Christianity, socialism and solidarity and in the Middle East the both socialist movements that was Syria and Iraq they gave Islam a special recognition in their constitutions even though they were secular governments Gaddafi was very much a Muslim and in Iran they insist their system is not socialism or capitalism they call it not capitalism but Islam that's what they refer to their system as but it is very much a system where the state controls the means of production and operates them for the benefit of society they have these local councils and every neighborhood called Bastige and you know I mean they don't call it socialism but it's very much not a capitalist country and not a capitalist system but spirituality is a big part of it and I think that's very interesting and I know even now in China there's a lot of communism and the Confucian tradition during the Cultural Revolution Mao very much played up the idea that Confucius was the old society and they were getting rid of it but now in modern China Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party argued that kind of Confucius and Mao kind of walk together in part of what makes China unique and kind of China's unique identity that's separate from the West so I think that we're seeing kind of a shift in how imperialists relate to issues of religion and spirituality and we're kind of realizing that that destructive impulse that desire to tear things down and unleash your rage while that may have been useful to communists in the 20th century to come to power that may have been useful in the time of Karl Marx when they were fighting against feudalism and the remnants of feudalism and the tradition of the French Revolution but now those destructive impulses are hijacked by imperialism and hijacked by the Western capitalists and very much social media and a lot of the forces coming out of the West are very much about trying to unleash people's destructive impulses to create chaos and instability to incite people against each other so that we can all be ruled over by Wall Street in London and the emerging financial order Silicon Valley etc. So really the socialist movement is changing how it operates psychologically that feeling of oneness is becoming central and those destructive impulses are becoming something that is being recognized to be problematic and my book City Builders and Vandals in Our Age that's a point that I made throughout that book was that it was kind of me analyzing this and figuring out where are we in the 20th century because the Cold War is over the Soviet Union's gone the old school Marxism-Leninism is not really a big force in the world but there is very clearly a difference between the East and the West there is very clearly a contradiction between Western Capitalism and the people of the world that are striving against it so what is the new difference about and I argue this is City Builders and Vandals and that this is the city building tendency the constructive side of the human species striving for that feeling of oneness and creativity and the destructive side of the human species that was kind of hijacked by the Roman Empire and then later by the British Empire and the human soul facing off with each other as we kind of are hitting a turning point created by the computer revolution and technological progress now we are hitting a turning point where Capitalism is not a sustainable system any longer millions of people no longer have a place at the assembly line we have to change our mode of production to survive and so now we are seeing these two sides of the human psychology coming out and kind of playing out on the global stage and clashing with each other like a there is a chunk of civilization that has at least had a taste of unity outside of like their nuclear family that is usually where people begin getting this taste is like when you have a child you become automatically a little bit more selfless and so then there is that feeling and then usually you have like a friend and then your friend goes through something that is emotionally catastrophic and then you hold space for them and you empathize and you have that sympathetic well-being that you are helping them go through the process and so you slowly become more and more awakened to how humans are sharing an entire civilization and planet and how we are sharing it with 10 million other species and that we are breathing in the same oxygen that phytoplankton and trees are enabling us in the photosynthesis process to inhale and so there is there is so many interdependencies in that oneness web that exist that people slowly wake up to them and then it is not only people like grassroots doing it but also people in positions of leadership around the planet waking up to that and like you are saying there is all these different unique tastes they are like different combinatorics where you have one like that is China, one that looks like Russia one that looks like Saudi Arabia one that looks like the US but then like you were saying in your book that you will always have people that are interested in oneness and engineering and prosperity and that type of stuff and you will always have some other people that maybe are a little bit less awake and more egocentric and that think that by going out and vandalizing things they can have a bigger megaphone in sharing their messages and ideas but really if they were to create architectural changes and go through these more oneness states of awakening then they could make much greater impact and so because ultimately it is a dialectic where it will have this conservative and liberal in a dialectic and it will constantly be fluxing or the individualism and collectivism fluxing in ascension or the US and China science and spirituality and so to sort of take the best of both and merge them and uplift them is really what we talked about that in chapter 7 of one of the visual books that we wrote called high level perception it was called the sorting algorithm it covered this exact topic so it's actually important for viewers as they're watching this video to look inward and look at what's going on inside where am I feeling any hatred or ill will or malevolence towards people that don't have the same beliefs or ideas and how can I feel more whole and feel more one with people that may have a different set of ideas than I do and how can we equanimously, calmly lovingly even sit down and just have a conversation about what are some of the good things that we can maybe take from both of the viewpoints and see what kind of a project we could put forth into the world so there's a much more if you look at two kids playing the little kid from China or Iran or Argentina or the US whatever that these kids when they're playing that there's no there's no concepts and ideas that are like twisting and distorting their lens of perception they still feel like innocent playful children on planet earth as one and so a lot of it the journey also to one this as an adult is to to become more innocent and to become more open to a planetary harmony but in order to do that like we're talking about we need to hone in on the basic needs being met around the planet people can't be starving and not have access to clean water and not have fractional ownership in the companies means that they're actually building as employees but that they're getting no fractional ownership of the company and so there's a that could be a good way for us to venture so this seems to be a main tenant we could say potentially of of CPI in general so here's the the center for political innovation and so when you guys go to this page links in the bio CPI USA.org and we also talked about this quite a bit on the show with Ryan cotton you can look at this four-point plan to rescue the country and that you have mass mobilization of rebuild the country so public ownership of natural resources public control of banking economic bill of rights and so what you'll see here you know you see a pretty continuous theme you know this public ownership public control and so this would probably be a good way to talk to Caleb about this is that it seems like the idea of a logical archetype really when you look at the way that fungal networks talk to trees underground in a two-way resource exchange or how the internet evolved or how decentralization and cryptocurrencies are evolving that it's very decentralized very universalized and there's more and more desire now across the planet for people to have fractional ownership like Andy Bittner was just on the show and so he has the actual architectures that enable people to contribute funds towards their cities regenerative energy infrastructures and then they become fractional owners they get dividends all this type of good stuff and so there's a whole new suite of ideas that are very oriented in our biology that are up and coming and it seems like that seems to be a core aspect of CPI is public ownership everybody getting a share of the pie, not like and we also I think you're familiar with this we brought this up on the show with Ryan as well the WTF happened in 1971.com this is the bifurcation of median male income with real GDP per capita in 1971 and so we're this one is a pretty good visualization of it and so there's we're shifting away from this where more and more people are flatlining very very few people are reaping the vast majority of fruits so would you say that that's a core essence of CPI that style of architecture Sure well I think that the issue again with when it comes to the issue of natural resources right you know the way the country's natural resources are operated has a very big impact on the environment it has an impact on communities and on top of that it's one of the main sources of wealth oil, natural gas, coal, timber this is how people make their money and all throughout the United States you will find communities in Pennsylvania and Ohio Oklahoma and Alabama where the people are just getting poorer and poorer and poorer but fracking companies and natural gas corporations and oil companies are getting wealthier and wealthier and wealthier and why is it that the communities where these resources come from are being economically devastated but yet they're generating more wealth than ever before why is this happening well it's because this natural wealth I mean it's just in the soil of the United States or grown this wealth is in the hands of private owners and so the communities all around can get impoverished but the people they're not getting any benefit from the natural resources this is all over the world too Nigeria is a very wealthy country it is the top oil exporter in Africa but if you look at Nigeria especially the Niger Delta region where most of Nigeria's oil is extracted the people there live in just utter poverty because that oil belongs to ExxonMobil Shell and Chevron it doesn't belong to Nigeria and the profits from that oil and the management of that oil is all being done for the benefit of these corporations and so the idea is that as our country is getting poorer and living standards are dropping etc that maybe this should be changed and maybe the way the oil natural gas and coal and timber the country is operated should be strategically planned out by the community for what's in the interest of the community the profits generated from selling our natural resources should go to the community rather than to these private owners who are operating them only in their interest and when it comes to banking it's a similar thing every major religion, Christianity Islam, Judaism has forbid the lending of money at interest and there's a reason for that because the lending of money at interest leads to a group of people who make money by having money they have money and then they lend some money to get more money, they didn't do anything nothing got created in the process they make money by having money and pretty soon they become exponentially wealthier than everybody else and governments are in debt to them and the whole economy is centered around these people that make money by having money and it's something you don't want to have in your society so I would argue that credit should be centralized in the hands of the community whether it be the local community, the state community or the federal community that take out a loan to get a house will they make the case to their community that it would be better if they had a home they want to start a business well they make the case to their community that my business will benefit the community and when they pay back their loan then the interest instead of going into the hands of a private owner goes into the public budget and it takes the tax burden off of the community and we can use that money to build more schools and hospitals and such and it's about having an economy organized for the community for public ownership rather than for a small group of private owners who can continue to enrich themselves while society falls apart if the lending of money and the control of natural resources were done collectively with understanding that we need to benefit all of society I think we would have a much better economic result than simply letting the chaos of the market the anarchy of production handle these things that's such a good example with natural resources across the planet giving the example in Africa there's many other examples like this where you just you need people to have their basic needs being met and the resources are coming from those areas anyway yes yes there is a upfront investment from a wealthier part of the world that comes and so they get a fraction of the pie as well but to take the vast majority of the fraction and give nearly scraps breadcrumbs to the region is absurd and it's so again when you recognize that you can take rather than $100 billion over 10 years instead you only take $25 billion over 10 years and that other $25 billion would go into the local economy because again that's not different than you you've only assumed that those people other people are different than you are but you're not because you've assumed yourself to be separate from this one intelligence that everything is and so that's really important to remember for all of our especially wealthy people around the world is that that is you that extra meeting basic needs is literally going to you actualizing your fullest potential in that part of the world sure I mean I think that the health of one is the health of all and this pandemic has really proved that right I mean if the government had responded to this pandemic by saying you're on your own folks we would have a little bit of a problem wouldn't we? of one is the health of all and when when people in a society are unhealthy the whole society around them gets unhealthy and we human beings are collective creatures we work together in groups you know we were tribal at one point we built civilization since then you know I mean we've always been collective creatures and I would argue that individual mental health is very much tied in to how you relate to other people you know you know people that suffer from schizophrenia you talk to them and probably the main issue that they have going on is their ability to communicate with other people has been kind of destroyed I mean they you know they're not able to communicate with other people effectively they kind of exist more and more and more in their own kind of isolation where they start to develop delusions and such and that a lot of mental health is problems that people have in their relationship with other people you look at the personality disorders you talk about someone being a narcissist you talk about someone being histrionic sort of again these people it's not they have a problem with themselves that you know if they were alone on a desert island they would have the problem the problem is the way they relate to other people is tainted and often that can be from trauma or bad experiences that they had or you know they had parents that brought them up to see the world in a certain way but you know but mental health is very much tied into other people and if you look at since the pandemic as we've had the lockdowns and all that the rate of depression and anxiety we are having four times the depression and anxiety we had before well why is that? because people have been social distancing they've been isolating from each other and the more people are separated from each other the more that they're cut off and the more they're just kind of left alone the more unhealthy they're going to be the more you can connect with other people the more you can be part of a group that you're able to have empathy and share other people's interests the healthier you're going to be understanding a mental health I think is very important and then increasingly we've been talked to view mental health from a biological standpoint right? you know if this person is depressed or anxious they just have a chemical imbalance well if you look at the number of people that are taking antidepressants in our society right now this is not simply a chemical problem this is a society wide problem I think that the rugged individualism of western society is believed that you know everyone's on their own you know you know pull yourself up by your bootstraps this has taken a toll on us as a country psychologically I think it has hurt us as a society it's had a very negative negative impact human beings are collected in nature and now we're at the point where we can't even really mobilize to address society wide problems right? I mean you know all the different capitalists are trying to make profits for themselves and all the different government officials that are tied to different factions that have different agendas and you get a situation like the pandemic you get a situation like the country's crumbling infrastructure something needs to be done but no one can bring themselves to do it because again we're all kind of doing this individualism thing you know and individualism isn't inherently bad we needed a kind of a wave of individualism I think to bring down the feudal you know hierarchies that existed you know in medieval Europe right to have a new level of freedom as a new level of economic development you know created a situation where it was possible to have freedom of speech and freedom of assembly that yes it was necessary to push for a new level of individualism you know in response to the oppressive feudal systems that were holding back social progress but now we better to stage where this radical individualism and the philosophy of individualism liberalism which is the politics of individualism and I don't mean like Democrats like liberals I mean you know philosophical liberalism economic liberalism is free markets you know social liberalism is freedom for the individual but both of them emphasize individualism above all else and it's kind of a rejection of collectivism liberalism is kind of out of control and we've forgotten that we are one human species and that that you know the future of all mankind is tied up together and the world is more connected economically speaking than ever before we're tied into each other you're on one end of the country I'm on another but we're talking to each other right now the potential for us to be more connected to each other and tied in with each other and to really care for each other and really work together to achieve everyone's potential is higher than ever before but we're being held back I think by the economic base which is profits and command capitalism and I think that's holding us back and I think we need to move beyond it and have a more collective economic system that can then allow the human species to become more creative and solve problems as we never have before yeah so well said there's a one of the core things that you brought up right there that I think is instrumental is that you have what appears to be so many different individualistic interests that are blossoming where it's completely different where two or three or four people want to create different music or science or whatever people want to do but when you have like you were describing Fortune 500 CEOs and congresspeople and that are wondering well how do I extract for myself that's a completely different expression than is how do I make some great music or some great engineering or whatever and so we that whole extractive cadence or rhythm that we've been kind of flowing with has been it's really come to this point of just a big pressure cooker to snap us out of that style of relating with each other in a way that is okay this is a separate person I'm talking to a separate person right now and my objective my goal is to extract as much as I can for myself in this situation and that is like that's insanity and then you take that and you port that over into two countries talking across the planet and that's even more insanity and so now the conversation is more about you have that as you're in that convo it's this is one engaging with itself and because I know that we will come to an understanding where both of us can have our basic needs being met where both of us in our countries as well around the world can have the natural resources that we have in those countries be serving our local basic needs and also be have fractional ownership so that the whole pie can blossom that the whole flower can blossom beautifully where in ten years we should hear about Djibouti and their incredible art and their incredible science their incredible prosperity and that's really caring about the brothers and sisters across the world that when you know that you want that story so badly that you're willing to sacrifice like we gave in that example your 75 billion extra that you to instead take 25 billion and give the other 75 to that local area and let them prosper let them actualize CPI is a great way to do that because it basically it basically takes the everything that we're talking about right now and puts it into practical architectural implementations would you say that that's about it that's the idea there's so much left wing material purely focuses on what people are against I'm against this I'm against that well my vision for CPI is rather than focusing on what we're against focusing on what we're for putting forward concrete proposals to address the problems facing the country and getting people beyond just this kind of angry we need a revolution we need to tear things down aren't you mad I'm mad too I'm mad together but rather what concrete proposals can we put forward and bring to our elected officials and people in our community and say this is what we're for this is what we need and it's not just those four points we're also in favor of fusion energy right the climate crisis makes it clear fossil fuels are not the future of the world but fossil fuels the reason that the fossil fuel economy is still in effect the world economy is centered around Wall Street in London Wall Street banks and London Stock Exchange entities are tied in with the global oil markets if you get on an airplane that's oil you get in a car that's oil anything plastic in your home that's oil the whole global economy runs on oil and the oil markets are dominated by four corporations Exxon, Mobile, BP, Shell and Chevron and if you include the French company Total the French Oil Company you're talking about 80% of the world's oil production right there you want to talk about an ultra monopoly those five corporations are 80% of the world's oil supply so that's an ultra monopoly and they don't want to give up that ultra monopoly they're at the top of the world right if anyone wants oil they got to go through them pretty much and that's not a good setup and fossil fuels are not good for the environment it's not good for the world but what is their solution is they have all the wealth so they get to pay for the environmental movement and they say oh we'll just go backwards we need to reduce consumption all these people around the world they got to be poorer hey this country in Africa they want to build a coal power plant well that's not good for the environment so you can't do that you just got to keep without electricity because it's for the environment folks they stop environmental projects and power plants being constructed and such and South Africa and many places I would argue the solution to climate change is moving forward what we need is to get beyond fossil fuels to fusion energy right the fusion energy look China they are huge supporters of fusion energy Russia even though it's a natural gas an oil based economy they still they strongly call for global cooperation around fusion energy Iran is working on fusion energy we've got some scientists here in the United States like Dr. Eric Lerner in New Jersey and there's you know there's facilities in Massachusetts and elsewhere who are working on it we say that fusion energy should be a united global effort right all the different people working on it should we should have a new like UN type territory at the UN you go to the UN it's international territory the UN it's like right over there it's like three blocks away from where I'm at now but it's not part of the United States I have to show a passport if I want to get in there because it's an international territory well we need to build a kind of a fusion energy United Nations in the center of the American Heartland in Kansas or Iowa I think we need to just carve out some territory and then have a united global effort every country that is working on fusion energy flying all their scientists we supply them with all the resources we need to work day and night to get fusion energy it's an emergency we need to get off of fossil fuels the only way we're going to get off of it is to get to a higher higher fuel source that can generate energy more efficiently we're not going to you know windmills are nice I'm not against windmills I'm not against solar panels but they're not going to solve the problem only fusion energy really is beyond fossil fuels is stronger than fossil fuels that is going to solve the problem and we need to have it be a global effort we can't have it be a competition where China is competing with us and we're competing with it it needs to be a united effort so that when fusion energy is achieved it results in all of humanity sharing and the benefit so that it doesn't become that one country has fusion energy is it to dominate other countries right rather it should be one cut one you know human community developing fusion energy and as a species we come together and get beyond fossil fuels that's what needs to happen and it's going to happen I mean we are going to get fusion energy sooner or later but it needs to happen as soon as possible in order to alleviate the suffering that we're seeing around the world in order to get off of the outdated outmoded fossil fuel based global order we need to get beyond that and we need to have a unified vision for humanity fusion energy is a big part of it so the construction of what we call fusion city this vision of fusion city we call it we call for the creation of fusion city in the center of the United States an international joint Manhattan project not to build a bomb but instead to you know rescue humanity from fossil fuels that's one of our central beliefs is we need to build fusion city and that's a solution it's not a problem you know what I mean and that's that it's a solution to a problem and we can now go around to different politicians and different elected officials and different people that are talking about climate change and say what about fusion city are you for fusion city or are you against it and if you're against this tell us how could you possibly be against this project you know that's what needs to be done we need to raise the alarm about the need for fusion city and again by putting forward what we're for now we're against what we're for that's a way of bringing people together that I think is very effective yes exactly what we're for we're for meeting basic needs across the planet everyone having access to clean air water food shelter electricity healthcare education and we're for fusion technology we're for shifting away from increasing the parts per million of CO2 we're against ocean acidification again we're for fusion and that automatically makes us pro oceans as well which is great I love that and a pro environment pro keeping our trees so again pro forests not anti deforestation but pro forests you know so there's all these different ways to also structure this in story that helps people get it and I love I love the idea of having a UN style international global effort on fusion and plopping that down in Kansas or Iowa bringing in some of the best from around the world actually remember how I mentioned Westlake University in China in Hongzhou that's basically what they did there they made this private public partnership there in China and they brought some of the greatest scientists from around the world there to start their labs and really interestingly rather than some of the other universities around the world where if you make some sort of great innovation the university keeps it that Westlake they have agreements like a 5050 ownership if you make a great innovation or advancement so that would be another big core thing at the fusion city facility yeah is something like that to incentivize the scientists and engineers and researchers and technologists to gain a greater amount of ownership in what is created as well and then for for that technology to then go and empower all of the car flight cargo ships trading across the oceans all of the different use that we use today like you were also mentioning plastics is another big one and so because you see all these different indigenous communities around the planet that are basically saying guys what are you doing like don't you get what's happening don't you see feel it don't you recognize that you can't everything so deeply interdependent the hydrological cycle is cyclic and interdependent you can't just take a poop and then expect it to not come back and rain on top of your house you know you gotta you can't just make a pacific garbage patch in the ocean and not expect it all this type of stuff to feed back into you know we're having these parts per trillion of these pharmaceuticals being discovered in our water supplies now there's all these different types of things that we just can't filter out through sanitation right now and so we need all these like basically X prizes in a sense right so we need the CPI's four point plan we need a crowdsource innovation for that we need the X prize style dynamics across the planet the style of global coherence around these big initiatives yeah this is great and I love also the practicality of someone that that currently is wondering okay well how do I get involved in CPI how do I get involved in fractional ownership how do I go from somebody that is barely making my basic needs be met what would you suggest well I mean you can sign up on the website you just go to CPIUSA.org we have a form if you want to get involved and we will plug you in I think you can just go to you know join CPI and there you go and right now you just fill that form out and we'll get back to you and we have around the country in many parts of the country people have formed groups around our textbook this is our textbook we are city builders the Center for Political Innovation Educational Manual and you know it's available and you can get them in bulk and people have been reading this book and discussing it people have been doing zoom discussions of it there's people in Australia discussing it there's a Chicago reading group of it that just started there's a group of people in San Angelo, Texas they call themselves San Angelo Solidarity there are a group of activists, Latino and white and they gather once a week and they read from the manual and you know there's also a reading group here in New York City there's a reading group in Los Angeles that's just starting people are coming together to discuss this book and to kind of use it as the basis for trying to put the vision of the Center for Political Innovation into effect and the reading groups around this it gets people talking the point of this book is to get people talking you know after every section there's questions and the book you know it's not simply there's an essay by me about city builders and vandals but there's also a speech by Roosevelt in the book there's a speech by Henry Wallace who was the Vice President at one point and ran on a peace platform 48 years Harry Truman you know there's stuff from Mao Tse Tong the founder of China in it there's an essay by Edward Bellamy who wrote the science fiction novel Looking Backward which is like a best seller in the 1880s which was about like a futuristic socialist America and what it might be like and we have one of his essays called the parable of the water tank in the book that's included and we have Albert Einstein's essay which is also included in the book and the book is designed to get people talking about these ideas that the Center for Political Innovation puts forward and people are reading it and discussing it and some people are doing it online some people are having meetups and that's one thing that you know if you want to get involved with the Center for Political Innovation it's one thing we can definitely help you to start do is start having reading groups around this book but we're also having educational seminars around the country that we're starting to do but we did one in Pennsylvania that was very successful that was at the end of June and we're about to do one in California you know it's already pretty much full at this point which is exciting because you know I mean but it's happening and as things open up and we can start having using big spaces and big auditoriums and such we want to start doing them all across the country some people want me to go to Ann Arbor, Michigan people want me to go to Chicago we're making this happen we have a team of people that are on the streets of New York City every day they're called the John Brown Volunteers named after the great anti-slavery fighter John Brown who kind of gave his life in the struggle to abolish slavery you know they're out every day on the streets of New York we have buttons that they're distributing that say cancel student debt that say end the wars and bring the troops home and we have you know palm cards about the Center for Political Innovation and they're out on the streets every single day they're in the parks here in New York City they're on the subways and they're out there doing it and they are eventually going to start moving to different cities around the country as we have different events right now they're based in New York because that's where most of our resources and our organization is headquartered but this is a team you know this John Brown Volunteers Group these are full-time people this is their primary job you know I mean they might do another job on the side but they live together collectively and they are dedicated to this vision of building America where working people's needs come first and not the profits of a few and really putting our vision into perspective so this is very exciting I mean this is a very very exciting moment and I feel like I'm at the beginning of something very very exciting you know years ago people asked me when I first started moving toward building the Center for Political Innovation the Center for Political Innovation people asked me why I didn't form a new party why didn't you just you know we got the communist party we got the socialist party why don't you form a new party and I decided not to do that because most of these parties are very very irrelevant and there's way too many of them and they're competing with each other and they don't like each other and they've been kind of doing the same thing for a while and I've said to socialists in the United States we need to get out of the movement and to the masses right we need to get to average Americans who've never met a socialist before never met a Marxist or a leftist before and find out you know find out what they believe engage with them and put forward policy solutions and win them over and we need to get out of this little circle of leftists who've all known each other for years and have their long grievances against each other are you a Trotskyite are you a Maoist are you a follower of Enver Hozier are you an anarchist you know get out of that and get to average Americans with a real program that could actually be implemented I can see Fusion City being built I can see our four point plan being enacted these are things that if you tell people you're for them people can see them happening and I think that in order to enact them you know you'd have to really challenge the power of big business and in doing so I mean yes it would lead to a transformation of society but these are real concrete demands they're not abstract philosophies abstract notions these are real policy solutions and I think that is the way you know if you go to other countries this is how you know communist parties tend to operate is they have their program they have what they're for they don't like what we're advocating jobs programs meeting people's basic needs construction etc that's how they operate here in the United States communist groups will give you this big answer about we need a revolution to tear down the old system or something that's not real politics you know and we need to get serious right I mean that's why I wear a suit for goodness sakes people say that me wearing a suit and you know when I was working with a labor union years ago they oriented their labor union organizers to wear suits because you know to show that they're serious right and that we need to you know less and less sound like you know hippies that are screaming against the man and more and more sound like we're going to be running the country someday because I believe we will be I think that people running the country will be influenced by the center for political innovation we're not a political party we're not running for office like that but I think that our ideas will be taken seriously by politicians I think we will have an impact and I think that we need to act like it we need to act like we want to be taken seriously cool the sounds like there's actually a pretty good amount of access points that are really fundamental like we are city builders is a great one and then also just getting involved in those like smaller knit communities in the different cities and then getting involved with joining CPI as well and then coming together I think Ryan was mentioning that you guys have an upcoming in Santa Barbara conference and that's the one that's already full yeah it's pretty full I mean limited space and with the pandemic restrictions and stuff but we want to start eventually you know just having big auditoriums you know I mean why not right I mean we have this team to go out and promote it that's kind of the idea right there's so much interest in what we have to say I mean the amount of interest that we generated just in we've been operating for about a year I think we've been having weekly zoom calls the amount of interest we've generated the amount of fascination with what we're about and interest and the amount of people who contacted us and wanted to get involved is not a small number people are hungry for this right I mean this is this is Marxism sure this is socialism this is you know these ideas are not necessarily new but we're doing it in a new way people in the U.S.A. haven't been doing it this way for a long time you know I like to think we come from the tradition of Eugene Debs Gus Hall and William C. Foster and you know the Black Panthers and you know other other leaders W.E.B. Du Bois we're from that tradition but we're applying it in a unique way in our unique times and I think that that's very exciting I mean we have an optimistic vision you know socialism is fundamentally an optimistic philosophy says we can get to a better society we can move ahead and we're trying to bring optimism and constructive thinking back to socialism and then when when someone is yeah in practical technological advances like fusion city and like this fractional ownership and all this good stuff when somebody in the city is given the little pin and whatnot when it's talking about ending wars and about bringing troops home and about meeting basic needs is the action point for them is then to get signed up read we are city builders go through the zoom calls on the weeks and then also begin sort of putting out these octopus tentacles into the different projects for meeting the basic needs locally in their cities and that type of stuff absolutely that is the idea you know and you know we collected a number of emails you know we've handed out at least at this point at least 2000 palm cards have been handed out on the street about you know and they say we are city builders we need a government of action to fight for working families and we have collected lots of emails and talked to lots of people you know and and that slogan that's kind of you know you saw the four point plan but the slogan that we have used is we need a government of action to fight for working families because we've been you know we've had it pumped into our heads that the government is best that governs least right that the government should just keep its hands off let the economy you know take care of itself well we argue that no that the state and the government does have an obligation to the people we need a government of action that will take action to protect working families you know if a parent you know you know is sending their kid to school without proper clothing in the winter time and they're cold they can be arrested that's called criminal neglect well I think the government of the United States has committed criminal neglect so many people in this country are hungry so many people are without healthcare without education the roads are falling apart the water is not being properly purified all of this indicates to me that that our government is in dereliction of duty and we need a government that will step up to the plate and if you can go back to go back to long before anything in the 20th century you go back to the 1400s you go back to the dark ages during the dark ages the reason it was a dark age it's remembered as a bad time is because there was this notion that basically people existed only to serve those who were above them if you were a peasant you existed to serve the noble if you were a slave you existed to serve your owner if you were a commoner you existed to serve the king things started to change with the introduction of the notion that it went both ways modern state craft you read the Treaty of Westphalia it talks about how the sovereign has an obligation to the people and you got some forward thinking monarchs who said we really ought to start educating our population we really ought to start building infrastructure we really ought to start funding and it was through governments that said actually we do have an obligation to serve our people that's where we got the music of Bach and Beethoven and that's where we got the work of Leonardo da Vinci and that's where we got the work of Shakespeare Shakespeare's theater troupe, what were they called they were the kings men it was the government said we want to make our people better so we're going to start having plays performed and suddenly there became this notion that the job of the government was not just to have people serve it but it went the other way around the government had no obligation to serve the people and that's what really got the ball rolling with human history the fall of the Roman Empire was very devastating it took Europe 1100 years to recover in terms of population from the fall of the Roman Empire and really what was kind of the turning point that got us out of the chaos and confusion and demoralization and capitalism that came from the fall of the Roman Empire and got us back on the road to city building and construction was a change in consciousness this idea that there was an obligation to serve the people and part of that was that among the elite there was some secret societies, there was some whispering and the teachings of Plato were being studied and the Platonic school of thought was being studied and you had chemistry and science being taught behind the scenes and finally you had Copernicus who was brave enough to come forward and say based on my research the earth is not the center of the universe the sun is actually the center of the universe and he risked being burned at the stake for saying that because the church said the earth was the center of the universe but he, with his primitive telescope and his mathematical calculations discovered that no, the earth is not the center of the universe and in fact the earth is revolving around the sun and that was a huge breakthrough but he wouldn't have been able to do that if there hadn't been an effort behind the scenes by people who were knowledgeable and skilled to kind of whisper in each other's ear and support each other and gradually get the ear of some powerful people like monarchs and start to change things around and get out of the dark ages mindset and that's how things started to change and I think we need to get back to the notion of serving the people we need to demand that our government serve the people and part of the neoliberal ideology part of the economics of Adam Smith and Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek and Alan Greenspan and Eingrand part of their thinking is the government should just keep its hands off well I think that's fundamentally wrong the government shouldn't keep its hands off the state has always played a role in pushing pushing society forward and the artist I would say has an extremely important role you know the problems that we have in our society now is that art is commercialized and when art is commercial it doesn't want to take risks if you're an artist if you're making movies or you're making music and all of that you need to be able to try to do things that no one's ever done before part of art is you have to do something new but the problem is that a capitalist always wants to return on their investment and sometimes when you do something as an artist as a painter, as a poet, as a musician sometimes you're going to take a risk and it's not going to work and so if it's purely about making money the problem is that you're not going to get the funding the person funding is going to say no I need to make sure I get my money back on this so no you cannot take that risk and it used to be that the role of the artist was to try and make society better the artist's job was to make you smarter with the art, they were teaching you they were engaging you, they were forcing your mind to go to places it had never gone before etc but now art does the opposite in order to guarantee that it will sell it kind of takes things to the lowest common denominator and that's the opposite of what art is supposed to do I've talked many times about how I feel like grotesqueness has taken the place of creativity in so many areas nowadays so many movies instead of coming up with a comedy it's just brilliantly funny and makes you laugh they gross you out and you kind of laugh because you're grossed out instead of coming up with a horror movie it's very scary and suspenseful instead they make a movie full of blood and gore that grosses you out and then you're grossed out so you're kind of scared instead of making an action movie it's so exciting and all of that they just gross you out with a lot of violence and you're kind of grossed out and they've kind of discovered it shocking you can take the place of what good art has been doing for thousands of years and it takes the work out of it too because it's like an easy filler and that's a problem and I think that we need to get back to the notion that the artist has an important role in society in order to TV what goes on television should be done in a way of trying to make the country better not trying to make profits for advertisers and the same for the music and the same for the poetry and the same for theater and the same for art art has a very important role in teaching you how to think and I'm a little bit critical I've been to a few Wagner operas and I like Wagner's music but I recognize that Wagnerian music is very much about emotional manipulation it's about emotional manipulation he's emotionally manipulating you but if you listen to Bach and Beethoven it's a little bit better because they're not emotionally manipulating you they're forcing you to kind of pay attention to the patterns that they're making in the music and it can have an emotional impact but it's a much deeper one because you're intellectualizing it first it's not simply like hitting you on the gut level it's hitting you on an intellectual level the pattern of the notes and what are they going to do next hits you on an intellectual level and then through the intellectual process you're then at that point you're then responding to what you've learned from the music in an emotional way and it has a much better impact on you and I think that's an important thing as well that when we talk about art being pornographic I mean it's not literally like naked people but it's appealing to you simply in a climactic sexual way just driving emotions into you and that can be a little bit problematic you want art to appeal to you in an intellectual way that stimulates you, makes you think and then gives you an emotional response this is the beauty of meeting basic needs is that then you get an explosion in art and also when we get people like the 2,200 billionaires across the planet that wake up more and more to the oneness you get great things like what the Medici family like you listed did with you have Michelangelo and Botticelli and Da Vinci and Galileo and you get that big explosion of renaissance and we want more artistic scientific spiritual renaissance to happen and the only way to really truly do that is to just look at how like my co-risal networks work how do fungi and trees do a two way resource exchange underground because they know it's one intelligence it 95% of plants work with fungus underground and so similarly that's what we're talking about with this wealth being able to in a sense create of more of a fractional meeting basic needs and creating the fractional ownership within the social contract so that like these smaller seedlings in the understory they have these mother trees that then this is great work by Suzanne Simard that they send the extra that they get from from photosynthesis they make extra sugar is sending it to and sending carbon to the extra seedlings and smaller trees in the understory and that's that's a great way to visualize what could be the the meeting more basic needs and getting more of the renaissance to be activated and it's exciting like feeling into what will be possible artistically scientifically as that happens and like use that as good fuel for yourselves I love that and this is probably a good place to also ask you about on our way out just to ask you about you do you see because Ryan and I spent some time talking about this on the show as well and I wanted to mention this with you so so science and spirituality or another way to view it is like materialism and consciousness that they are two sides of the same coin they're not actually inseparable things this is how curious to hear your take on this that they play into one another where basically especially given what we're talking about with CPI and stuff you need the external architectures to be met like your basic needs in order for you to actually be able to have met a cognition and some space to actually think about your thinking and stuff like that but you also in a sense a need to turn inward towards your consciousness and become more aware of oneness and become more aware of that so that then that can play into your architecture of the material world do you see those two interplaying like that well I think what you're saying is that when you give people when people are able to have their basic needs met that gives them more to then start to look inward and that's absolutely true in my own life my own life experience I mean there were times in my life where I was struggling to get by economically selling my blood plasma working at gas stations barely making enough and just you know at that point was I was I doing deep inner work and thinking about what my motivations are no I was just trying to get by and it wasn't until things in my life got a little more stable and all that that I was actually able to do some you know reflection and look inward I also want to say when you talk about you know spiritual and materialism you know it is interesting because you know I mean when I first got involved in leftist and communist groups you know they are very they tend to be very atheist oriented right and that the Marxist philosophy is dialectical materialism all that exists in the in the universe is matter but that matter is constantly in a state of motion and you know there are some Marxists that even go as far as criticizing Einstein in physics and saying that Einstein says matter and energy are separate and that's spiritual conception all that matter is just energy and this is a big part of the Marxian philosophy but it was really when I went to Iran and I went on that ship to Yemen that I had a spiritual awakening because I realized you know I was on that ship for 13 days and we talked about religion a lot you know and those folks are Shia Muslims and I'm from a Christian background it was when I realized at that point that you know I wouldn't have been on that ship if it hadn't been for growing up as a child and every Sunday going to a church and hearing about Jesus and hearing about Jesus Christ and how he laid his life down for his beliefs and how he called on his followers to make a life of sacrifice and if it hadn't been for my Christian background I never would have become a leftist I never would have become a socialist and in fact I remember when I was in college there was a librarian at my college was kind of an older guy he spoke Chinese fluently and he had a wife from Vietnam and he was an older guy and I remember he used to say to me and say you know he said you sound like a communist he says but I think deep down you're still a Christian and I would say that's crazy what are you talking about he said no I said I hear Christianity in you and I didn't know what he meant until I was in Iran years later a decade later I was in Iran and I realized that here I am and that so much of my life is rooted in Jesus Christ's teachings and my belief that there is something bigger than myself I was just in this for my own personal gain I started a company that makes porn websites or selling opium or something I mean it's like I'm clearly motivated by something higher that I do have a spiritual drive behind a lot of what I do and that forced me to realize that that seems to be one of the problems that the Soviet Union had and that a lot of these communist countries that were led by atheistic government had is that by rejecting religion by seeing everything in this purely dogmatically materialist lens by doing that they were kind of not understanding that people are motivated by something higher and if you even think about the great communists in history why did Che Guevara do what he did and take all those risks and give up everything why did he do that he didn't have to do that it wasn't in his material interest to do it but you know but he did it because he felt driven by some kind of higher power of some kind of inner spiritual force right and he probably was an atheist and if you just said to him oh god is inspiring you to do this he would have said that's crazy but I think there is an inner spiritual drive and that there are higher higher motivations people can have throughout history and I even reflect on my own life some of the decisions I've made in life that have been very very good decisions have been ones I didn't think about I just didn't you know what I mean and then I think about that and I think well how did I do that right well it's like and I think all of us they talk about I think Quakers they talk about the light within I think all of us have access to some kind of higher spiritual energy but all of us also have our bodily crass human desires and that in a lot of ways it's a question of listening to our higher spiritual side or listening to our lower crass human desires and figuring out who we are and listening to the light within learning to listen to the light within you you know one of the most beautiful pieces that I've ever read is the the phado by Socrates and this is the dialogue that Socrates gave when he was facing death you know when he found out he was being executed he was going to be executed he was going to have to drink drink hemlock and it's the conversation it's just a transcript of what Socrates told his followers while he's waiting to be executed and he's sitting with his followers and he's doing like one last study session with his followers before he gets you know he gets the death penalty and he's sitting there and he engages with them and the first line of it is so beautiful he says when he found out he was going to be killed he said the same dream came to him sometimes in one form and sometimes in another but it always had the same message go forth and make music and he interpreted that to be do as much teaching as you finally can before you you leave this world you know and it's really beautiful and you read it and he's getting his students to understand that we human beings we have our animalistic bodily desires but we also have a soul we have a higher part of ourselves and that what he was trying to get his students to do as a philosopher was to listen to their inner light this is beautiful stuff and this is really a big part of how I've come to understand my life and where I've gotten and how I got from where I from Ohio to Occupy Wall Street from Occupy Wall Street to Iran from Iran back to the United States to setting up a think tank you know it's been reading that that dialogue has been very important to me and helped me again do some reflection but I would argue that the more you know yourself the more you can know the people around you right that some people think well this is all just inner reflection no the more you know yourself the more you can then help yourself to relate to people around you that there's a connection right that these things are connected so there you go that's my answer to that yeah that's great the inner light is a great way to see it because when you when you see the inner light as what is underneath of all of our costumes that's another great way to get to this feeling of oneness and that's what we share you know when you talk about just awareness or consciousness itself pure bare empty that is what we share like this is consciousness talking to consciousness awareness talking to awareness and so the intelligence talking to the intelligence life talking to life reality talking to reality light talking to light and so when you really tune inward and and feel this as well you you get that this light is going to reflect the more that you touch this light within it's going to reflect in the external architectures and the more that the external architectures become meeting basic needs the more people can turn inward toward the inner light and I love that feedback loop that it has and that's why that's why we had this show it was so important to feature you and to talk about CPI and to implement the four point plan and to actualize it and to get more and more of America and the world engaged in unity and in the basic needs architectures amen. Alright, thank you very much it's really been a pleasure to come on your program and this was a very fruitful discussion we went some very interesting places. Good brother so glad to hear that and by the way everyone we love you very much thank you for tuning in we're so grateful we've been watching the live chat you guys have been having a great conversation in there we would we would love to hear your thoughts in the comments also below so drop us a comment and let us know how you feel about the video you like the video for brought you value subscribe to the channel if you haven't yet share the video with other people with your friends family get them inspired as well and all the links in the bio we have also we have Caleb's YouTube channel he's actually quite often we doing streams on the channel as well and talking to America on the streets at the State Department briefings and this is some of your work with RT as well yeah cool and then talks presentations interviews and so you can find this link in the bio below you can also find Caleb on Twitter and that links in the bio below as well and then also his author page on Amazon you can find that link in the bio below and CPI for getting signed up checking out the four-point plan here and also going to join in the top corner and so that that covers that covers it yeah that covers it absolutely it was fun I wish you the best and this is a great channel you're doing great work here Atlas so thank you very much thanks Caleb yeah I'll go ahead and I'll wrap the studio and then we'll stay in the studio and talk I'll click and stream here in a sec thanks again everyone for being in infinite love talk to you soon