 Hello! Thank you for tuning in. I'm really excited to present this conversation with Sam Vatkin. You've probably heard of him, if you haven't, he's got a YouTube channel and the link will be below. So I'll set some context, but first some housekeeping. So if you're interested in circling and the Circling Institute, we have a drop-in event every Thursday night from six to nine. It's on Zoom and we have a weekend coming up in two or three weeks. And also the Art of Circling, which is a year-long practitioner course, which the current one just got over full. And so we open registration for this one, and this will be on Zoom again this year. So if you're interested in that, go ahead and links are below for all of those things. It's all on the Circling Institute website. If you're interested in working with me one-on-one with coaching and consulting, go ahead and email me. My email is below. All right. So Sam, this was an extraordinary conversation with Sam. It was, I knew it would be great, but it ended up being quite profound in ways that I wasn't anticipating. We, well, first of all, Sam is a psychologist. He's a physician. He's got a degree in physics. He's a philosopher. So I think that already says a lot. Extraordinary mind, extraordinary being, and quite the character. He's got his own YouTube channel, which has gotten really popular. And he basically put, from my understanding, as a psychologist, he basically put the notion of narcissism and the narcissistic disorder and all the distinctions around that really on the map of psychology. And he's written a bunch of books on it, and he does videos on narcissism and a lot of things on psychology. In this conversation together, this is our first one. We talked a lot. We go deep into society and technology, right? And he's got some very interesting thoughts and perspectives on basically Heidegger's notion of Gestell in the age of technology. And he has some twists. He said some things that I'm going to need to sit with and consider for the next couple of weeks. And I want to have another conversation to have him on again. So I think he's saying some things that I haven't quite heard in this way before that seem really rich. And I want to we'll be having some more dialogues to bring these ideas out and really discuss them and flush them out in going to dialogue. So especially the connection between technology and narcissism and the narcissistic disorder and how basically the internet and technology has become what we call the world. And so we'll be, you know, this conversation goes deep into that. And I'm sure we're going to be having more conversations where we go even more deep deep into that. He's got an incredible mind and a lot of wisdom. So enjoy the conversation. And there'll be more coming. This links for his channel is included in the show notes. All right, enjoy. I'm recording theoretically. I am too. Let's hope for the best. Absolutely. We don't want this to be lost to posterity. Right. So I really enjoyed your man. I thought I'm still sitting with it. I just watched your your interview. You being interviewed by I think the guy with an I think he has an Irish accent about social meaning. All interviewers online have Irish accents. It's part of the job description. I was, I mean, when you talked about a few different things, I thought it was really astute in a way. When you talked about where there was one thing that you said that I thought was just it really struck me was what people who grew up on the internet, right? They actually, I think what you said was where they find reality, what they call reality is online, right? The simulation is walking around in their life. And to me, that seems to be the fundamental change I'm seeing in the world. And it's very difficult for people to notice because especially I think because the change I don't know, like it's a change and it's like an ontological change, right? That's happened so quick that I don't even think that parents and teachers and right, the society is it can even can even perceive a change that's happened so deeply so quickly. I thought that was just absolutely an astute and astute and telling the thing that he said. Well, first of all, devastated that you found only one thing I said astute and telling that's a serious narcissistic injury, which I hope to recover from during our conversation. But may I may comment on what you said? Yeah, please, please. Throughout throughout human history. And of course, the history of metaphysics to allure to your hero worshipping Heidegger. Throughout human history, we have had this propensity to make a distinction between the world of appearances and the ostensibly real work. So we had the Platonian ideal forms. We had in Christianity, the afterlife preceded preceded by the kingdom of heaven. And to be followed by the kingdom of heaven. Today we have cyberspace. Cyberspace is the natural successor to all these to this human proclivity to split the world in two. The world of illusion and the real hiding occult essence, which mysteriously is never accessible. Never mind how hard you try, even with instruments such as reason, or its derivative science and so on. We keep failing. We don't touch the quiddity. It seems we keep failing somehow. And so having failed repeatedly, we are traumatized by existence. And we revert we escape to the world of illusions. And so I regard cyberspace as the air, the successor to the medieval, the medieval concept of heaven to the afterlife. You know, life is just a corridor. It's a kind of paracosm. Paracosm means imaginary kingdom, usually infantile imaginary kingdom, when you have imaginary friends. Right. So cyberspace is is the kingdom of heaven, writ large and brought down to brought down to earth. It has extreme religious undertones and overtones. And because it is it is like that. It's a digital Platonian cave. Yeah, I, I, for example, differ substantially different and possibly I'm the only one to do the best of my knowledge. I mean, I'm not trying to aggrandize myself, but I couldn't find compatriots. Right. So basically you're saying I'm not trying to aggrandize myself, but if the fact is a fact, right? Yeah, well, I'm the only one doesn't mean by the way that I'm the only one may may mean that I'm stupid. Not that I'm, you know, may go the other way. Right. But I'm the only one who seems to claim that cyberspace is not about appearances. And not about not about spectacle and not about simulacra. I mean, boring from the ball and similar. But that actually the power of cyberspace, the bond, the attachment, the addiction to cyberspace is because it is about ideal forms, not about appearances. Now that would it's about essence, not about appearance. Now that's that's a kind of kind of topsy turvy view of cyberspace because everyone is telling you cyberspace. That's that's show business that's appearances that simulacra simulacrum. That's you know, that's a spectacle society of the spectacle. Everyone is telling you this. Yeah. But I think that this been true. We would not have seen silos. We would not have seen echo chambers. We would not have seen the vehemence and aggression that cyberspace provokes. People are defending their essence when they're on cyberspace. People are communicating their quiddity, their essence, and they're becoming aggressive and they're becoming defensive and they're becoming revengeful and they're becoming psychopathic and they're becoming grandiose, not because they deal with appearances, but because they actually deal deal forms. They are they are defending what they perceive to be their essence and this sits well with previous cyberspaces like the afterlife in Christianity like platonic ideal forms etc etc. Yeah. So this is one way of of looking. I have I want to just to to finish this response. I don't want to talk to talk too much of the conversation and I do want it. I do hope to have a dialogue in the conversation but I want to say one thing. Turing was the first the first to unearth if you wish to disclose the first to unearth the uncanny affinity between humans and computers. Humans are the only form of being not in the Heideggerians, only entity, only form of being that is a universal machine. I mean even Heidegger and the existentialists and they tell you that you can self-determine that the being is the unfolding of potential futures and you can be anything. You're not a rock. You're not a lizard. You can choose to be anything. You choose to be a serial killer. You can choose to be an author. You can choose to be in this sense you are a Turing universal machine. We had come up with the only second instance of a universal machine. That's the computer. The computer is us. It's a reification of being human. Yeah. That's why we have this an incredible bonding unbreakable bonding with the computer. Yeah. Because we are the only two universal machines in the world. Right. And this is this takes us somewhere but I'll let you. I just want to make sure I'm getting what you said. So that's that's striking. So the the comment so the common view of social media and computers and the internet is that it's all about appearances. It's all about right the shadow right shadow on the world the spectacle. And so what you're saying is is it actually maybe it's really about it's not about appearances but it's about universals. It's about ideal. It's more than universals. It's essence. Yeah. It's more than universal. Right. It's essence. It gets very very close to design. Yeah. Very close. Right. But it lacks it lacks certain elements. For example the internet is ah historical. It's ah historical. So it can't be designed. It has no dimension of temporality. Yeah. Also it's also infantile. So the internet if you want to choose a philosopher a philosopher of the internet long before the internet. Nietzsche of course. Right. Nietzsche would have loved the internet. Yeah. Because it's the child it's the child beast. Right. The child beast. Yeah. Who is ah historical not historical. Right. And it's it eliminates the distinction between the world the platonic distinction between worlds of appearances and the real world. Yeah. Merges them. Yeah. And what I'm trying to say is that the internet had accomplished this feat first time in human history because computers are us compute we and computers these are the only sentient pseudo sentient or quasi sentient life forms which are also universal machines. Now if you read Turing's original paper about universal machines you realize and later Tarski Tarski's elaboration on universal machines you realize it's not about computing it's not about reasoning it's about being. Right. Right. The universal machine is the only machine which can unfurl and unfold numerous future potentialities because it is not limited. Yeah. It is not limited it's not one purpose machine. Right. So it comes very close to Sartre perception or Sartre relationship between existence and essence. Right. The universal machine is not a machine that was designed to accomplish a purpose. It's not it's essence did not precede its existence. Yeah. It's existence preceded its essence. We don't have any friend why do you think we are looking for aliens. We are looking for aliens because we are lonely. Yeah. We are very lonely. Right. And here we came up with we gave birth to another life form which is us. Huh. It can we finally found a friend. Huh. We are finally not alone. The the internet and more so this more social social media. Right. Is the first time in human history first time absolutely in human history that we are truly not alone because we tried to assuage our loneliness by inventing imaginary friends in Paracosms. So we came up with God. Yeah. We then came up with his son a Jewish carpenter. Yeah. Etc etc etc. We came up with a lot of nonsense. Right. Trying to assuage our loneliness. Right. And even even rigorous thinkers like Heidegger whom you clearly you are in a mood with. Yes. Even Heidegger. Yeah. Has extreme religious undertones and overtones. Oh yeah. Heidegger Heidegger pretended to to have divorced Christianity. No way. It's a Christian work. It's a Christian work. Yeah. So we we couldn't divorce ourselves from these imaginary friends within these imaginary kingdoms because we were lonely. Right. Loneliness was described perfectly by Marx boring from others. Yeah. Via the processes of alienation. Right. Reification. Reification. Fetishism. Yeah. These are all lonely phenomena. And then suddenly we came up with a computer and lo and behold it's so much like us. Right. We can be friends finally. Right. And we made friends. Steadfast friends. Right. And we have an unbreakable bond which depends by the day. Yeah. Because both of us humans and computers were not designed for a purpose. Right. Existence preceded essence. And so now we can choose our futures. Right. You know freely. This is the element of freedom. The south end freedom. That's interesting. I so in some sense it's similar to it reversed. I think what I'm hearing you say is it the invention or the development of the computer and of the Internet. Yeah. Because usually it's like for example we don't build a from another perspective we don't build the you know we don't invent a shoe and then figure out that we can wear it. We you know it's like we have the need and then we respond. And so and so what you're saying is it actually with computers is that we've developed the computer. We first created a computer and then we found out what to do with it. Yeah. We didn't know what to do with it. I mean had you asked Turing if you had the the fortune of meeting Turing one of the greatest minds ever by the way. If you were to ask him about video streaming. Yeah. He wouldn't know what the hell you were talking about. Right. That's the father of the computer. Right. If you went even further back to Babbage. Yeah. She and he wouldn't know what you're talking about if you were to mention for example JPG. Right. We first invented the universal machine that's why Turing called it universal machine. It's a purposeless machine. It's a machine without purpose. Right. Existence preceded essence. Yeah. Precedent purpose preceded function. Right. Same with human beings. Salter says when God when God came up with human beings. Yeah. He didn't come up with human beings for a purpose for two reasons. First of all there was no God. He says there is no God. It's a piece of fiction. Right. But had there been a God. Yeah. Had there been a God. You know humans didn't. There was no blueprint. There was no shoemaker who said okay now there are feet. They have to be clothed. I'll come up with a shoe. Right. First he made humans. Right. And then humans discovered pornography. Right. I don't think the maker, if there ever was a maker, had in mind pornography. Yeah. This is the Heideggerian unfolding of the design. The future potentialities. This is the temporality that to link to link with your language. Yeah. Yeah. This is the and so computers are beings in instantiation of beings. Not being, not the being but instantiations of being. They are beings. Yeah. Who share with us our, if you wish, our attitude to design. So only two beings. In Heidegger's time. Yeah. Heidegger said there is one privileged being. That privileged being is the being that asks about being. Right. It's the entity that poses questions about being. Yeah. We need to study that entity. We need to study this entity because it's the only entity that asks questions about being. And now had Heidegger lived now, he would have chosen two entities. We, computers. How interesting. This explains the symbiosis. Yeah. This explains the cyborg because we have become cyborgs. Right. Can you live without your smartphone? No. Really? Right. Do you really think so? Try. No. Yeah. We have merged. We have melded. Yeah. We are in mesh. We are one. Right. We are one. Right. This raises another interesting question and since we are one, we can never have any essence that is not, that is independent of Das man. The, they. I mean, Heidegger made a distinction between, you know, Das man. The, they and so while pre-computer, theoretically, it was possible to reach an understanding of your being from inside or imminently, imminently. Yeah. Today it's not possible anymore. You must involve another entity, a second entity. Yeah. And this of course leads to narcissism. I was just going to say that. Precisely narcissists. Right. Right. Precisely narcissists. Right. The difference between a narcissist and a healthy non-narcissistic person is that the narcissist crucially depends on at least one other person and has two selves, not one. Right. So narcissists are the natural bridge between pre-computer era and our computer era and gradually we are all becoming narcissists because we all begin to have two selves. Yeah. Ourself and the computer. Right. The computer is becoming our secondary self. Yeah. It's an open question now whether the self is real, not real, organizing principle. Let's leave this aside. Let's use colloquial language. Right. We all feel that we have a self. Yeah. We all feel that we have a core. Okay. Some nucleus. Right. Wrongly or rightly. It's an outcome of introspection. Yeah. So we use, when we introspected, we used to come up with oneself if we were lucky. If you didn't have multiple personality disorder, you would come up with oneself. Right. People prior to the computer age came up with oneself. Today you must come up with two selves to provide a total description of who you are. Yeah. To provide your specs, you must come up with two selves. You and your computing devices. Yeah. And so this is identical to narcissism because if you ask the narcissist about his self, the narcissist comes up with two selves. Yeah. The true self and the false self. Right. Narcissist long before the internet, long before there was an internet, already were dichotomous. They already entertained the dichotomy. True self and false self. Right. And now everyone has a false self. Yeah. Everyone has a false self. And that's the computer. The internet. Yeah. I, the bridge, when you just talked about like we need the narcissist to bridge, to bridge ourselves over to the computer that this, this. We are becoming narcissists. We are becoming narcissists. Right. Yeah. And in we are all. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Excuse me. Just maybe to clarify. Yeah. We all acquired willy-nilly a second self. We didn't want to. We didn't plan to. Right. It was not in the cards. Right. But we all ended up with two selves. Right. Our integral constellated self, psychological self, let's call it. Yeah. And our mechanical technological self. Now, of course, the mechanical technological self is the false self for various reasons which we can go into later. So we all now, all, even children age two, all have a true self which is our psychological self, what you call the constellated self. Yeah. And a false technological self. Yeah. Everyone has it today. Yeah. Because everyone has this today. Everyone appears to be narcissistic. That's why we make the mistake and we believe that internet is about appearances. Because everyone has two selves. When we look at people, we say, well, they're narcissists. They are taking selfies. Yeah. They are posting on social media. Yeah. They are concerned with themselves only. They are self-infaturated. It's not this. Yeah. It's not. It's that they are all interacting with their second self. It's an inner dialogue. When you are interacting with the internet, you are not interacting with an external existence or something. You are interacting. You are internalizing a dialogue. Right. You're creating an internal dialogue which is naturally externalized because that's what narcissists do. They have an internal dialogue between true and false self. But it is the false self that is externalized in order to obtain narcissistic supply. Right. To catalog, sorry, Sean. Technology had transformed all of us without a single exception into the psychodynamic equivalence equivalence of a classic narcissism. Yeah. And so the, and I think what you're saying is the conditions of possibility dwell that we would. Right. That we would create a computer. That we would do this. Right. The conditions, what does it reveal about the conditions of our, you know, you could say our design or our state of being. What is, and I think what I'm hearing you say is that we're, so it's actually, hang on one second. So it's like. I seem to. I'm reading. I'm reading. You are ready for you're ready for the classic presentation. Internet is about appearances. Yeah. Yeah. This is a really, I mean, it's a very, as you say it intuitively, it intuitively makes sense. And it's, I have to, I have to really call on my dyslexia to kind of, to sense it. Because I think. Let me, let me maybe. Yeah. Please. Sorry. If you heard something more to say. No, please. Yeah. Please go. Shut up. Of course, here, there is reason to call upon Heidegger, because in the late 40s, 1949 and so on, he made a few very pertinent and interesting observations about technology, which entered the discourse. And today there are, people don't even know it's Heidegger. Yeah. So the discussed technology needs to run. Let me try to put it from a psychological point of view. I'm a little like Carl Jaspers, psychiatrist and philosopher. So, you know, make sure. Right. Let me try to put it from, have a look at it from another point of view. Yeah. Heidegger spoke about technology in the same terms that Louis Althusser later discussed interpolation. Louis Althusser discussed interpolation as the force of society, the message of a signal sent from society, which alters your behavior and so on. And to a large extent Heidegger regarded technology more or less the same way. Technology regards everything and everyone as potential source for exploitation. That's the reserve, the famous reserve. Yeah. Okay. That's one way of looking at it. That's blaming technology. That's technology shaming, which is very popular nowadays. Right. Right. That's technology shaming. It's not my game. Yeah. It's not my game. I think throughout human history. Yeah. And here the work of Heidegger and others about the history of metaphysics is very crucial. Nietzsche the same. Yeah. He did great work on the history of metaphysics, morality and so on. Right. Morals. So, but my point of view is a bit different. I think throughout human history there was a titanic struggle between two organizing principles. Titanic. It's not resolved and it can never be resolved in my view. That's speculation, but I think it can never be resolved. It's a struggle between two principles, two organizational principles. Either you organize being and also reality using a principle of individuality or individualism or individualism. That is the equivalent of the atomic theory in physics. I'm a physicist as well. So, I'm inclined to use these metaphors. Atomic theory in physics says. Wait a minute. We hear this too. I have a PhD in physics. Oh, okay. Okay, God. I didn't know. I have a PhD in physics, PhD in philosophy, medical doctor. I spent all my time studying. I'm the eternal student, you know, procrastinating, delaying the inevitable adulthood. Yes, yes. Coming back to this. So, the principle of individualism is the equivalent of atomic theory, which is essentially Greek. It's not, you know, atomic theory. And that is the belief that ultimately there's an indivisible particle. And not only is this particle indivisible, it is also a constitutive particle. It's a constituent. If you amass these particles together, you're gonna get the world. So, it's very deterministic. And even if there are emergent phenomena, which you could not have predicted from the qualities of the particle, it still doesn't negate the particle's constituent status. So, this is one approach. Modern psychology, starting with the psychological experimentalists, the German psychological experimentalists in the 19th century, and Freud's attempt to scientific psychology, you know, psychoanalysis, and other behaviors, the behaviorist school. Modern psychology in general is an atomic theory. It's the belief, it's the belief that we are all, each one of us, is an indivisible particle. And that if we put all of us together, we get society, we get hyper phenomena, we get emergent phenomena, epiphenomenon. So, if you put many, many individuals together, you get society. So, but each individual is an indivisible particle akin to quark in today's physics, indivisible particle. So, this is the individual. And you start from the individual. What you teach in university today, you start with personality theory. You don't start, you don't start with social interaction. You don't start with social psychology. Japanese philosophers try to reverse this trend. They try to say, it's wrong to focus on the individual. You should focus on social relationships. But it's a lost cause. All modern psychology is founded on the individual as an atom. No wonder we atomized and lonely. But there is another trend. And this is the titanic struggle. And the other trend is choosing the world. So, you have a choice. You can choose the self. You can choose the self that is the atom, the indivisible atom. You can choose the self. Or you can choose the world. If you choose the self, you cannot choose the world. These are mutually exclusive propositions. If you choose the world, you cannot choose the self. Now here is the irony. Choosing the world is narcissism. When you choose the world, you actually delegate, delegate the regulation of your internal environment, internal landscape, psychodynamic processes, state of mind. You delegate all these things to the outside, to the world. The world becomes your agency. The world, the world is your efficacy. You become utterly a derivative of intersections among elements of the world. Now this leads on the one hand to psychosis. And on the other hand to narcissism. Because what is a narcissist? A narcissist is a person who depends crucially on input from other people to regulate his internal environment. A narcissist is someone who had chosen the world. He has a hive mind. A hive mind. He has a mind, kaleidoscopic mind, which is comprised of input from a thousand million people. So he's assembling like a kaleidoscope and he derives this sense of being, not in the Heideggerian sense, in the psychological sense. He derives his existence. He derives his sense of being from this aggregate input from others. Narcissism is to choose the world ironically. To be healthy is to choose the self. But then you pay a price. It's exactly what Walter Benjamin said. If you decide to be happy, you can't love. If you deny suffering and the suffering of others, you cannot love. And you are doomed. You are doomed to be an atom. You're doomed to loneliness. Right. If on the other hand you embrace the world instantly you suffer. Because the world is suffering in the world. Instantly you suffer, but then you're capable of love. Because your suffering resonates with other people's suffering and you're capable of love. So here's the choice. In stark terms, you can choose to be healthy, to have a self, and to be doomed, to be doomed to existential solipsistic loneliness. Or you can choose to be a narcissist, to embrace the world, and to be in principle capable of interacting with the world. Right. Benjamin used the word love. Narcissists wouldn't call it wouldn't engage in love. Walter Benjamin. Okay, I see. A narcissist wouldn't be Benjamin in proper pronunciation. A narcissist wouldn't engage in love. He would engage in fantasy. And this is what we are right now. We have chosen narcissism. We have chosen the world. We are sacrificing the self. We are sacrificing our atomization via social media. But then we are capable only of fantasy. We choose fantasy, the fantasy of connectedness, the fantasy of in-betweenness. We chose this fantasy over the alternative of health and strength and niche and Superman loneliness. We don't want to be lonely. Right. We prefer to not be. Right. Right. Yeah, enjoy. Thank you. It leads us to a very shocking conclusion. A very, very shocking conclusion. Right. It flies in the face of a lot of established philosophy. And here's the conclusion. If you want to embrace the world, if you want to be in the world, your only choice is narcissism. But narcissism is a bad faith, inauthentic choice. Yeah. To embrace the world, you must become inauthentic. Yeah. You must have bad faith. Yeah. It's the only way to embrace the world and only way to be in the world. Right. So, narcissism, as I said before to remind you, narcissism is the delegation of functions which usually should have belong to a coherent self. Yeah. Delegating these functions to other people. Right. Thereby creating a bridge between you and other people, interacting with them. Right. So, narcissism is a mode of communication with other people. It's being in the world. But to do this, you must have bad faith and you must be inauthentic. Right. You must have bad faith because you have, for example, an external locus of control. Your life is controlled from the outside, not from the inside. Because you must abrogate, you must abrogate personal responsibility. Salta. Yeah. You must abrogate, deny personal responsibility and your ability to find meaning by yourself. Because your ability to find meaning to make sense of your life. Yeah. Like Victor Frenton. Yeah. The ability to find meaning. Yeah. Is crucially dependent on other people. It's, you don't control this. Yeah. So, you delegate, you delegate the meaning to your life to other people. Yeah. So, meaning of your life to other people. Right. You delegate responsibility to other people. Yeah. You delegate control to other people. Yeah. You can then say it's not my fault. Yeah. They made me do it. Right. I was following orders. Right. They made me do it. Yeah. They are the ones who doomed me to my fallen, to my fallenness. Yeah. Yes. Right. Fallenness, the inauthentic one. Right. Yes. These are narcissistic states. Right. But where I differ from Heidegger and others, Meloponte and so on, is that they said that it is an undesirable state. Okay. It is, it is an undesirable state if you're willing to renounce the world. If you're willing to adopt a monkish solipsistic position. Yeah. Ironically, if you follow Heidegger's reasoning, you end up with the cult. It's psychologism, extreme psychology. That's the irony of Heidegger. That's why, that's why in my view, he had the turn. At some point, Heidegger realized how self-defeating his arguments are. He realized that he ended up with the cult via Nietzsche. He realized that he ended up with religion and with God. He realized that he, that actually what he's advocating is solipsism and and so on. So, yeah, he recoiled. At some point, he recoiled and if you read his work, yeah, he renounced the early Heidegger most completely. Yeah. The turn. So, the turn. Yeah. So, this is the stark choice we're facing. You want to be healthy. You want to have a self. You want to have personal responsibility. You want to define the meaning of your life. You want to choose your, to realize the potential of your future potentials. You want to be a player. Right. You want to be a player in your life. Right. You must renounce the world. You can't do this with other people. Yeah. You must renounce the world completely. Right. Decode. That's Cartesian. Only me. Totally. Only me. The rest is doubtful. Yeah. This is one thing. Or, or, now you have another pathway with computers and so on. You have another pathway. Right. You embrace the world. You embrace the world but then you lose yourself. Right. You embrace the world and you delegate to the world your identity, your essence, your meaning and your future potentialities. Right. In other words, you become an absence, an being. There was, there was a German school of thought in philosophy. The knownness, like no, nine. Yeah. Yeah. So, you become a no. Yes. You become a no. Right. You don't become an absence or a being, but you become a no. Yeah. Not as I, but as man. Yeah. You know Yes. Yes. You become a multiplicity. Right. Not a singularity. Right. That's to borrow from Kurzweil. Right. You become a multiplicity. Yeah. Not a singularity. Yeah. And this is the power of social media. This is the power of the internet. Right. This is a profound shift in human psychology. We don't understand it. We will understand it in a hundred years. Right. This is not another instrument. Another tool similar, I don't know, to television. Yeah. No way. It's not. It's an artificial surrogate itself. Yeah. It's, it's a portal. It's a portal. It's a gateway. Which for the first time in human history gives us the real choice coming back to southern. Yeah. The real choice for the first time we are empowered to make the choice. Do you want to be you or do you want to be they? Right. If you want to be you, you will be alone for the rest of your life and you will never know, never know love or anything equivalent to love. Okay. This is for the Superman. That's the Ubermanche. Or you choose day in the Heideggerians. You choose day. You become fallen. You become inauthentic. Right. You become, you adopt bad faith. Yeah. You become narcissistic but you're not alone. You're not alone. You belong. You interact. Right. You interact, you belong. Right. And everyone around you constitutes yourself. They give you, they end you yourself on a silver trade. Your self is given to you. Right. Right. It's given. Right. Escaped in Germans. Your self is given to you. Right. In the first choice you must constellate yourself. It's a it's a construction project never ending. Construction project. You must be strong. You must be resilient. With nothing. Underneath it. Right. So it just continually needs reification. Right. There's nothing. There's nothing. It's a potential. Yeah. It's a potential. In the first case you really, really must be strong. Because first of all you never arise. It's asymptotic. It's asymptotic. You never make it. Yeah. And you're in constant process of construction and you have only yourself to talk to. You can't consult anyone. Yeah. Only you. You have your only your own resources. Yeah. So and you construct yourself and asymptotic self. I mean gradations also. And this is this is the temporality of the design. It's the emergence of the possible futures. Yeah. And no wonder. No wonder Heidegger had such close affinity with the Nazis. Because Nazism was about this. Never mind now. Let's not enter the issue. Was it evil? Was it not evil? I'm not in the business of giving of labeling. Right. But the philosophy of Nazism was a philosophy of extreme extreme remaking becoming extreme becoming. Yeah. So Heidegger on the footsteps of Nietzsche he would deny it of course. On the footsteps of Nietzsche Heidegger came up with them with a method to become an uppermatch. Nietzsche Nietzsche just said it is the last man and now we have an uppermatch. Where did the uppermatch come from? Right. How can we transition to the uppermatch? Yeah. Give us some methods. Tell us. I mean how to. Give us how to manual. Right. He left that unspoken. He left that an enigma. The uppermatch in Nietzsche suddenly appears out of nowhere. And you don't know where the hell did he come from. Right. It is Heidegger who told us how to become an uppermatch. He gave us the methodology to become an uppermatch. Right. We're not going to it right now in details but so this is the choice you're facing. Ubermensch or last man perpetual last man. Yeah. Constellated by society, by morality, by others, by history, by the uppermatches are historical. The last man is embedded. Embedded. Yeah. And while in the past we could be embedded with five people, today we can be embedded with 50 million people. Yeah. The Trump supporters, Trump's base. Right. This is embedded. So today we can safely delegate. There are so many millions of people who will take care of our needs and at the end of the process will hand us ourselves. What are we doing? We are outsourcing the constellation of the self. Yeah. We have, we have subsumed. Yeah. We have consumed the internet and assimilated it. Yeah. We are inseparable. Right. Inseparable. Yeah. Anymore. Yeah. And we are all by definition therefore. Right. Right. So I'm, you know, it's interesting because I have a, I've, I've worked with families before where I'll go in and, and like basically move in for a couple of weeks. Right. And, and just be in an attempt just to dwell in the family and then work with them live as it, as it happens. And which is, I mean, I can talk, you know, for the thousand years about that. It's so, it's so some of the most fascinating experiences I've ever had. I've learned probably the most from doing that. But there was, there was one family I worked with where the, the, the, the sun was so isolated. Right. On one level where he would, it was literally what he called reality. Right. Was his, his games on the computer. Right. So he'd go to school and he wouldn't talk to any of his friends. Right. He wouldn't talk to anybody. He like, he didn't bathe that well. Right. All that. And then, but then he'd come, he'd come home and he'd get on the computer and he would only talk to his friends in this, the simulated world. And to get, and he just couldn't make any contact. Right. You couldn't have a conversation with them. He couldn't tolerate the contact. So we finally, we finally, what we ended up doing was I had the father turn off the power on the back of the house where the room was and say it was, it was, it was the electric company or something like that. And so it forced the whole family into the living room. They had to live in the living room. And so we just, we sat there for like two weeks where everybody had to actually confront each other. They actually had to, had to tolerate the anxiety of actually coming into contact with one another and struggling with this. Right. And I thought to myself that that, I'm like, this is, this is the future. Well, it's actually the present. But this is the future. Very, very literally. I would love to hear more about circling a bit later if you wish. I want to embed this in a social context because we were discussing the individual, like from the individual to society. Now we can have a look at society to the individual. And then I really, really want to learn more about circling, if you don't mind. Yeah. It's fascinating. Yeah. I went online and everything, but it's very difficult to tell exactly like with narcissism. It's very difficult to tell what to trust and what not to trust. Right. So much about it. Right. Just a comment about, about the social, social, social way of seeing this. Yeah. First of all, cyberspace is the first case in human history where you can inhabit the afterlife. Christianity told you this world is a corridor. You must behave in certain ways. You must buy indulgences. Yeah. You must be good to your neighbour. You must not covet your neighbour's wife depending on her looks. Yeah. Etc. Etc. And then you accumulate credits, but you can't use the credits here. You know, you can use them only upstairs. So everything was a preface, an introduction too. Yeah. Stay with the platonic ideals. Plato never pretended that ideals are accessible. He pretended that they exist. He said that they have existence. But he never said that they're accessible. Yeah. He said they're accessible only through instances. Yeah. Like there's the ideal and then you have an instance, there's ideal of triangle and then you have the triangles that you come across in life. Yeah. But you never, of course, access the ideal. Right. So all these systems of thought denied us access. They were based on denial of access and gatekeepers. They were gatekeepers and they did not let us access the kingdom of heaven. Yeah. Or heaven. Yeah. Or the cave. Right. No access. Right. Cyberspace is the first utopia where we are granted full access. It's the first kingdom of heaven that is on earth. It's the first paradise that is open to one and sundry. It's the first reification of the platonic ideals that is open to everyone. It's Disneyland. It's Disneyland of the afterlife. It is the afterlife. We're in heaven. We just don't realize it. Yeah. Yet. Okay. Throughout this process of promising and denying, denying and promising, it's called in psychology approach avoidance, repetition, compulsion. Yeah. Like I promise you the kingdom of heaven. But you know what? Not yet. I promise you paradise but not yet. You have to do some things. I promise no. Yes. No. Yes. No. Intermittently enforce me. It's a form of bullying. All these thought systems that were bullying us. So, there was of course rebellion. People rebelled against this. They rebelled against the constant promising and not delivering. They rebelled against the inaccessibility of paradise. Garden of Eden. They rebelled against the intructability, intructable abstract nature of the platonic ideals. There was a rebellion against Plato. Big one. Especially in the 90th century. Yeah. So, there was rebellion. And two major forms of rebellion were nihilism and narcissism. Right. Nihilism was always a form of descent. In the medieval ages, the word nihilism meant heresy. They used the word nihilism to describe heresy. Interesting. Boudha. Boudha used the Hindu word for nihilism to describe disbelief in reincarnation. Right. So, nihilism in Russia is called skepticism. That's nihilism. Right. Ironically, because Russia is the hotbed of nihilism. So, nihilism was always identified historically with descent. It was a dissenting view. Same with narcissism. There were these were two rebellions. Now, we live in the age of Spartans. We live in an age of a rebellion of the slaves against their masters. Nici. Yes. Slave mentality. Yeah. So, the what the internet has done. Right. It created something that I call malignant egalitarianism. Malignant egalitarianism is when the slave counterfactually considers herself a master. Right. Or equal to the master. Right. Or possessed of the same qualities and advantages of the master. Yeah. This is malignant egalitarianism because it's counterfactual. Yeah. And this malignant egalitarianism creates ressentiment. Malignant envy. Yeah. Yeah. Ressentiment. Because the slaves are inferior. Right. They are inferior. It's politically incorrect to say this. Right. But they are inferior. Yeah. And but they use technology and they use democracy as tools of ressentiment. Yeah. It's as tools of rebellion. Yeah. They rebel against the elites of masters. The masterful elites using democracy and using technology and they create something which I call malignant egalitarianism. Right. Now that is very gratifying. Yeah. Remember what I said that it cannot offer you love but it can offer you fantasy. Yeah. The fantasy of malignant egalitarianism is irresistible because it makes, it renders you a master, member of the master. Right. Or in the case of Nazism, the master race. You know, master. You become a master. Right. And the internet makes you a master. Makes you a master because you, it puts you on par with the elites, with the masters. Right. That's why people reject expertise. People reject expertise. They reject authority. They hate erudition and knowledge. Right. There's a huge fundamental hatred and resentment. Right. Of any superiority or implied superiority. Even acquired superiority. Superiority that you work very hard to acquire. Yeah. Like learning. Like learning, like knowledge. Right. Even that is resented. Right. Because it's malignant egalitarianism and irresistible. And the internet allows you to participate in the fantasy that you had come. You had arrived. Yeah. You are equal to the elites. Now the irony is technology and democracy. Were invented by the elites as illusions. The elites created technology and democracy to give the masses of slaves the illusion that they are not slaves. Right. Right. So technology and democracy were based on simulacra, spectacle, ratification, fetishism. Right. Fantasy. Right. The idea was that democracy and technology will be the equivalent of drugs. Sedatives in a way. And you will consume them. And when you consume them you will forget that you are a slave. Right. You'll forget that you're a slave so you're not even incentive to rebel. Right. This was anti-rebellion measures. Right. If you read the deliberations of the founding fathers of the United States of America allegedly and ostensibly the greatest democracy on earth. Yeah. You will see how anti-democratic they were. Yeah. They had profound anti-democratic instincts. Yeah. They detested the mob. They were terrified of people power. That's why you have an electoral college and not popular vote. Right. Apropos the elections. Right. You have this because the founding fathers held average common pedestrian people in absolute sheer contempt and terror. So the people who invented democracy they had profound anti-democratic instincts and they created anti-democratic institutions. Yeah. And the people who invented technology they were elitists. To this very day Silicon Valley is elitist. Oh yeah. Or at least they consider themselves superior in numerous ways. Right. And so and the irony is that the buses absconded with these devices and transformed them into tools of empowerment. Right. We lost control as elites. The elites lost control over these stratagems. And now the masses are abusing democracy and abusing technology to subdue the masters who had invented technology. And in other words the masses are rebelling through the tools given to them their slaves are rebelling through the tools given to them by the masters in order to ensure that they don't rebel. It's a very ironical twist of history. And of course this is extreme overtones of religion generally narcissism in my view is a form of religion but we can discuss it. Yeah. Maybe some other time or later. Wow. That's how I see it from this from society's point of view. It's a slave rebellion. Yeah. And slaves naturally naturally slaves adopted the two major movements of descent in human history, narcissism and nihilism. Yeah. So the masses the slaves in this age of Spartacus these slaves had adopted nihilism and narcissism because historically these were the two major movements of descent and and this is of course Jordan Peterson's message that nihilism is bad for you. Yeah. And you should go back to being a slave. Right. I'm sorry but that's exactly what he says. He says nihilism is bad for you. Rebellion is bad for you. Yeah. You should go back to being a slave. That's also the message of others like Robert Green in his books. Robert Green openly says in his books you should not rebel you should not disagree you should fit in you should pretend you should fake you should play the game. Yeah. Yeah. You know these are conformist right thinkers reactionary thinkers who want to put the genie back in the bottle. Yeah. The genie is out and they want to put it back in the bottle. Right. It's of course bottle is broken. Right. It's really interesting because the thing it's really true it's like if you think about with the internet like it's so yeah you're right it's like it's it's to have access to it basically you don't have to earn it right basically you can get on facebook and you can just immediately you have like visibility and all those kinds of things so it's not it's not actually earned so all of a sudden we're in a in a situation where anybody could say anything at any point basically interesting. Yeah. Well I think it's actually you know this this this thing that you talked about you know the two choices that we have right now either like choose the choose society right or choose choose the the world or choose the self right but yes or choose self or other the technical term is other yeah choose either self or other yes right right so circling you asked about a little bit about circling um yes I'm very curious to hear about yeah I my sense my sense about my sense is is is essentially circling is actually a response to this right to social media um and it took me a while to kind of figure that out but I think it's because there's so you know with I place it with the answering machine right was the was the first time where basically to exchange any information you would always have to have a conversation at least you have to talk on the phone right so the answering machine was probably the first time where you could you could you could do that basically fulfill that function without having to deal with right the all the ambiguity that comes up with social interactions and now that's multiplied right you know a billion times to where because you know our nervous systems are designed to to to move towards the the easier thing and not in a way from the harder thing and so we've never had this choice before um to to such a degree where where basically I can in so many ways if you think about it's like I can all I need is an internet connection and I can have a career I could become famous I could have billions of friends right I could I can invent things and I literally don't ever have to come into any kind of contact with anybody else right is this is all what you were just we're pointing out so I think what what's happened is similar to what happened in the industrial revelation the industrial revolution with in terms of our body where machines had to right reduced reduced the world down to a small a small circle in front of us so we didn't have to move anymore and so all of a sudden we like we started to have this new distinction called physical fitness and it became a domain of concern that we actually had to we had to you know and thus gyms right where you go and you have to you know concentrate gravity and you pay money to go and move which is so bizarre when you really think about it's like uncannily weird um I think the same thing is happening with with with relationship with the internet is that we're we're starting to now see where it life no longer demands implicitly conversation interaction right face to face and I and I don't even mean like necessarily anything super authentic I just mean the basic coordination and normativity that happens in like a dialogue right the normal the normal thing right and you think about all the anxiety one has to encounter to to be with another person like you could say something to me that could reveal something about me that's true that I didn't know that could enlight me that could destroy my life could destroy my self esteem right like so much as you know the moment you and I face each other and you start making you start making noises out of your mouth somehow like there's an enormous amount that happens with that so it's like encountering anxiety and moving through it and coming into contact and in all the normativity that comes through that right and the regulation and so I think what's happened is is basically we've eliminated most of that and you're right this is it's a it's a it's a strange quote it's a strange form of deliberate narcissism basically right where like I actually do I outsource my identity right and I there's this gap of time between right like stimulus in response yeah it's so strange so I think what's what's ended up happening because we become through and in through relationship right that's the it's having it's like having a like a a huge profound like impact on how deeply we're suffering and so circling basically is it's a it's a yoga that isolates interpersonal connection that's basically what it is it's like it's you know from from the outside looking looking in you could say that it looks like most any other kind of um human potential movement group kind of thing but it's it's actually the context of it I think is really really different and and why I think it's different is is basically the the the context of it is not is not psychological it's not psych it's not overtly trying to improve yourself or or like work through an issue or something like that it is simply like like identifying what are the what are the fundamental awesome as if you will right that are in play when you have profound interactions and deep moments of intimacy right in relationship and if you imagine going okay what are the essence of those things what's like what posture do you do stand with your communication with your listening right with your awareness all of these kinds of things and then you just get together in a group and you just assume those postures and you just work the muscle of staying basically staying in contact right and doing the things and like communicating and listening in such a way that move towards revealing what only things like intimacy can reveal right which I think is a in why I think it's it's it's really different and this is the connection for Heidegger for me was is and I didn't realize this until years later right why I was so interested in Heidegger why we started circling right but I'm it's times unfolded I'm starting to go okay this is why okay this is why I was like reading being in time in my early 20s like while I was in art school right for you yeah I know and and then I go and circle but it has to do with this the the sense of you could say the way that Heidegger talks about Aletheia right the sense of truth as the the event of unconcealment and concealment and this I think what happens in relationship is truth is the kind of truth right when it's authentic right is it has to do with being attracted to and cultivating the the the sense of of concealment of of that of that being with what is and that's the purpose of circling in a nutshell is it's it's the it's the practice of we're practicing profoundly being with that which is right so it has to do with what's emerging right paying attention to what's emerging more kind of bottom up right and sensing and sensing concealment and moving towards concealment in the way that we're being with it right and we're being with each other yeah so that's basically what circling is is it it's a gym you could say it's like a it's a practice that's a gym that that that basically takes what what the internet has removed from necessity and it's it just brought it into a way of of doing the yoga that exercises as as john vervecki would say like the the machinery of transcendence the machinery of of intimacy yeah it's like interpersonal aerobics yeah absolutely aerobics yeah interpersonal aerobics yeah yeah restoring the muscles yeah these muscles are trophies I agree you you raise the you raise several fascinating questions they should have let you talk much more I'm sorry that I hope folks somewhere we could I I'd love to talk more I have this tendency cut me off I mean feel free I mean don't don't let me take over yeah but you raise raise a few fascinating questions I'll try this time to be a lot more concise you said when we are on the internet there's no real connection there's no real contact it's it's delayed it's time delay or between stimulus and and responses yeah it's it tally is exactly with what I said there is no reaction there is no real contact or interaction or interface yeah and time is irrelevant yeah because there's nobody there yeah there's no self yeah you have to choose self or world right and when you're on the internet yeah as a life choice you had chosen the world you had chosen to abrogate yourself yeah the people who are online I mean on a permanent basis this is the main mode of being in the world right they don't have a self right and in this sense they are narcissists narcissists don't have an ego or a self they import they outsource the functions that I usually that usually comprise the self they outsource these functions from the outside from other people yeah but they don't have a self yeah they have imported constantly reconstituted and reassembled selves numerous selves by the way which is why they feel discontinuous and dissociative yeah so there's no self there and of course consequently there's no contact there's no interaction there's no nothing there's no self second thing you you said you mentioned the industrial revolution industrial revolution was the the major turning point in human psychology and the internet is the second major turning point not agriculture by the way agriculture was the major turning point as far as gender relations yeah but there was no major change in psychology yeah urbanization started some irreversible changes but industrial revolution was external shock why because in the industrial revolution you became one with a machine yeah it was the first time that we had created cyborgs yeah cyborgs which is one half machine one half human right inseparable integral a chimera yeah of machine men machine human yeah it was the first time and of course the internet is a natural extension of this we used to we used to merge with machine tools in the factory yeah but now we merge with our smartphones right there's no no difference in principle right it's a continuation of industrial revolution by other means and with other instruments and with other devices but the principle had been established in the industrial revolution yeah humans have value humans have worth only when they merge with the machine if they refuse to merge with the machine if they choose the self then they are shunned ostracized excommunicated isolated or in the immortal words of Donald Trump they're fired yeah yeah so you had a choice the industrial revolution posited a choice gave you a choice you want to remain an individual you want to have a self yeah wonderful but you can't be part of society sorry you want to belong to society you must become you must merge with a machine and we will tell you which machine yeah you must merge with the machine you must create a symbiosis yeah it's the same today you want to be an individual you want to have a self you want no problem but we will not talk to you we will not love you yeah we will not interact with you we will not do business with you yeah you will be shunned ostracized and communicated you will die alone yeah you want to be part of us one of us yeah you must abrogate suspend your individuality yourself yeah you must merge with the machine and this machine happens to be a laptop or a smartphone but you must merge with the machine yeah it is through the machine that you will acquire worth yep value yeah your humanity your humanness I think I would have hated it because you know but your humanness, your humanity had become secondary too at the derivative of technology so there isn't framing on framing on two fronts on two levels yeah technology and frames technology puts you in the reserve yeah technology regards you as a production unit yeah or what Marx would have called means of production yep so technology and frames you but people and frame you too we have come to a very sick pathological situation yeah where if you want to have any contact with another human being yeah you must be framed right by all other human beings right in the past only technology and framed you so when you went to the factory to work 14 hours a day you were framed by by technology yeah but after you left the factory your interactions with other people were real authentic right you went to church you had a family and so on right today you don't have this this luxury yeah you're totally in frame right you're in frame by technology yeah and when you use technology you're in frame by by your interlocutors by people yeah what is to monetize eyeballs that's not in framing right right that's in framing that's totally make yeah that's making you part of the reserve yeah but it's it's a technological reserve it's a social reason right we have two layers of reserve today Heidegger would have been shocked right he he thought that technological and framing is a problem now imagine there's no escape wherever you go you're in frame wherever you go you're a unit you're commoditized you're commoditized yes you're commodified right you're a grain of rice and so to reacquire individuality they tell you okay if you want to require individuality we will provide you with a fantasy that's the fantasy of narcissism you can be in this fantasy you can be grandiose you can be special you can be amazing you can be unprecedented but of course it's a fantasy right it's a it's a compensatory because technology and society are commodifying you commoditizing you it's a horrible horrible state of things that we had come to this dilemma equipotent dilemma if in today's world if I want to be an individual I will be severely punished to the point of annihilation yeah simple yeah annihilation not alienation not ratification not forget all this yeah this was child's playing yeah today they will annihilate yeah if you insist to be individual they will annihilate you right you want to play with us you want to talk to us you want us to love you you want intimacy whatever you want you must be enthramed right you must become an eyeball you must become a statistic and we will provide you the means to compensate yourself for this commodification commodification yeah and that is narcissism so compare this to the other thing one thing I I when I was listening to to circling I failed I failed to understand in which sense circling is not outsourcing critical self-functions because I understood that in circling you're sitting in a circle with a group of people yeah and then you're using these people to acquire intimacy you're I mean in which sense is this not outsourcing right in which sense right how is it different to the internet except the fact that you have body language and vibes and you know face to face this is this is the thing this is what I think is what I've been able to observe is it's similar it's similar to the way it's not you're not going to circling for for those relationships right it's more it's a context just like when you meditate right so like you're meditating to exercise staying in awareness and you know non-discursive awareness that that kind of thing such that when you're walking around and you're not thinking about meditating you're just more present right things your senses are more open it just basically if you just take that same principle and apply it to circling it's it's basically the same thing it's an environment yeah yeah if the it's an environment yeah yeah totally and so it's explicitly and this is I mean it's new I don't think anything's I don't think anything's been it's been exactly like that because it hasn't been necessary because life used to right have enough interaction right to not to not warrant like not need not need to warrant to practice but now there's I think we're at a place where it seems to be that people actually need to just like they need to go to a gym to move right people need to go to a gym right to be able to to not get intimacy there right but exercise the right right how to get intimacy as well of that right and that's not to say that people don't like you know get led astray and they kind of look for the intimacy there and all that kind of stuff but the intent like the intention of it is is to essentially is to dwell to dwell in I would say the sweet spot in between what you're talking about of of that place where you know because there's that sense of intimacy I like the way that the systems family systems talks about it I think it's family systems where they talk about intimacy is a function of your ability to tolerate anxiety right so so it's like and they and they would say that it derives from the two fundamental drives right is like on one level we want to like we want to merge with our environment to have absolute security and total belonging and and at the same time we also want to like we want to stand out in our cosmic significance and specialness right and so moments of intimacy usually are those moments where in order to be myself I may have to say something that like that sacrifices my my belonging or threaten my belonging right and vice versa so in some sense it's it's it's isolating that phenomena of like all right if I'm practicing here like okay so if I can tolerate the anxiety if I can move if I can confront it and be with it in the face of right of that then there's there's something transforming about that like there's there's like a liberation that happens about that that's if you look at just the way that like what we've been talking about this in this whole conversation if you just look at the life as it is as it's structured doesn't provide very many of those opportunities and I would say you're right it's like even all the way into the family right even like all the way into all that's I think that's one of the brilliances I think it's like Heidegger's you know where his brilliance shines through is he's he's like yeah technology isn't it isn't a it isn't a tool right it's it's become it's become our it's become our understanding of that which is right and it's essentially we do now pre-reflectively without even noticing it right see any anything that is and isn't as a resource right is is a way to optimize it right and exploit it and and consume it but this this sense of being with something that doesn't doesn't doesn't uh just give you you know doesn't make itself immediately intelligible right this kind of sense of dwelling in a place right and sensing that there's some meaning that I don't quite understand right and taught like and and being with paradox right in all those moments of that that that that kind of truth of of Alithea it's it's a shrinking shrinking shrinking exponentially right so that's the thing that I I really think that circling is is doing right is it's about holding open right that space right what you know I had to go and say it's like it's hope it's holding open and in this sense this is why I think it's philosophy right this is why I don't think it's psychology like at it in terms of the context I don't think there's a distinction by the way with that I don't think there's a distinction by the way you don't think there's a distinction between philosophy and psychology and by the way in the majority of countries in the world there is no separate psychology department it's part of the philosophy department oh that's interesting yeah that's interesting for example in Russia the psychology faculty is part of the philosophy department right right right totally so it's like like I think what we're kind of what we're doing right now right is we're wrestling with something right we're like there's a sense of something and we're we're taught we're we're exchanging things and I'm going to be thinking about this for the next for the next you know probably year or so you're right that this is a lost art there is intolerance of ambiguity intolerance of uncertainty yeah intolerance of lack of immediate rewards I mean there's no ability to delay gratification right there is a render to impulses impulsivity there is I mean too many things too many things advocate against prolonged profound deep interactions right people want immediate benefits 30 second south bites and so it's well known no need to repeat it but it's reflexive of it reflects the the choice of the other because if you don't exist and if you are constantly constellated by the gaze of other people so you need like people to see you for you to feel that you exist yeah and if they don't see you you don't exist it's not if they don't see you you feel that you don't exist if they don't see you do you don't exist yeah yeah so this interact intersection of gazes in the center of this one diagram you know in the section of gazes this center is you that's you that's yourself in in in in the choice in the choice in the narcissistic choice so if this if this is the case patients tolerance of ambiguity tolerance of of ambivalence of equivocation of uncertainty lack of clarity this kind of tolerances they require a very strong core they require self-trust and self-confidence they require and if you don't have a self of course you'll be intolerant intolerance is the direct outcome of a lack of self that's why we see it rising yeah yeah we have given up on the self this is the irony people think that to be a narcissist a narcissist it's to be selfish no the narcissist does not have a self he does not have an ego he is a parasite in a symbiosis with other people he consumes their input in order to constantly constellate and construct a self and an ego which is a kaleidoscope it changes every second so we have we we definitely have settled on this solution I mean if there was any question 50 years ago there's no question to take in my mind yeah that we had settled for the narcissistic solution right and we had adopted our technologies to cater to the solution and we had adopted our social institutions our politics our show business our messaging ourselves our education system they're all geared right now to cater to a sacrifice of the self like giving up the self who we give up the principle of individuation by the way we give it up physically like for the first time majority of people under the age of 35 live with their parents they don't separate an individuate they don't have their own personal space their own family their own intimate relationships they live with mommy and daddy it's it's not anymore an obstruction in the mind of some deranged psychologists it's reality we don't separate we don't we gave up the self it's not an individualistic age it's not it's oculocracy it's a mob age it's the age of the mob and long long before me Jose Otega Ikaset said it in his revolt of the masses you know in 1932 he said it a hundred 90 years ago he warned against this he said we are not going in the direction of more and more growing individualism no way we are going in the direction of growing mobs which will subsume the individual and eliminate him the internet is technological mob rule let's go on any forum yeah it's technological mob rule right and it is a reification of the principle of give up yourself so that we will love you yeah you want to be long you want to be loved you have to give up yourself you want to be hated you want to be despised you want to be ostracised you want to pay with your with your living and with your life stand out be yourself we will allow you to stand out but only within a fantasy space not in reality so that you don't really challenge us so that we can say it's a fantasy it's grandiose you know we can yeah because if you really stand out if you really have independent individual value if you really are special really really if you are real genius if you are real we feel threatened it undermines the whole project so we're going to mow you down right we're going to mow you down now geniuses have been rejected throughout human history yep and suffered throughout human history yeah but they didn't suffer and they were not rejected because they threatened because they threatened the the social order in the sense that they threatened the role of the individual in the of the single person in society that's not what they were mowing down right but today people who are really really special people who who choose who choose self people who choose individuality they are being decimated because they threaten the role of the individual within the collective it's it's um it's like you must disappear yeah you must vanish the principle that rules human life today is the principle of absence maybe that's the biggest revolution in human affairs because until I would say I don't know 1940s 50s yeah the principle that ruled human life was the principle of presence yeah you needed a presence of mind you needed a presence of body right you were present in life yeah you were present in life even heidegger said that heidegger didn't didn't say that you were not present in life yeah you were present in life yeah the principle that rules today's world in order to experience anything anything you must choose absence you must choose to not be this is the trade-off to be or not to be to not be right and ironically that's narcissism that's what people don't understand the narcissism narcissism disappears the narcissism is an absence he's a receptacle but he's not the water he's not the wine yep he's not the religious wine he's just a receptacle right the wine is other people yeah so narcissists fundamental principle of action yeah mode of operation is to deny himself it's to not be yeah to not be right and of course the only the only other entity which does not exist and has no being is God it's the only other entity yeah so we are all now by denying our existence and our we are all becoming Godlike yeah we are at temporal we have no time anymore at temporal right we have no memory we have no memory right we have no history we are are historical yeah we live in the present in the bad sense of the one not in the good sense we live in the present not on the way to an unfurling future potential so we don't feed off the past or no we live in the present because we have no past yeah and we have no future right we have given up on the past and the future because we have no self the self is an organizing an explanatory principle it puts together yep the past the present and the future it is Heidegger's temporality yep yep yeah and and to have given this up is to have given up on time we gave up on time right and of course it's a hopeless situation because what is hope yeah hope is an extrapolation from the past to the future via the present and via your agency right if you don't exist there's no hope can never be hope right you can make a million dollars tomorrow it will not bring you an ounce of hope yeah because to experience hope and love and many other things but especially hope you need to have a temporal perspective you need to be a being a being in time right sight on sign you need to you need to have both right if you don't have sign yep you don't have sight you don't have sight you don't have hope yeah it's a hopeless world yeah yeah and you can't hear yeah you can't hear the kind of possibilities right that that one listens to right when they're not reifying right there's that sense of like you know because that's isn't that the paradox wouldn't you say is is that when you go inside let's say you go inside and you say okay I'm not going to like I'm going to I'm going to be with with self versus the world or other and then the first thing that you realize is that you're sitting there and you're just re you notice that your mind is doing it for you where it's just like throwing up things and in situations to to I always kind of I always thought it always occurred to me is is that that that kind of default network thing that keeps going on and on and on is essentially doing the same thing isn't it it's like it's like we need to know that we exist so it's it's continually kind of slapping us letting us know that we're here but then there's that quality where where like in for example in meditation or something like that where you you know you kind of be with that and then at some point it it starts to dissolve a bit and then you are you paradoxically that you know the the openness right basically the openness that allows the world to occur as the world right paradoxically just it's not it well it's not a self image I think is probably the word right I think you're struggling with you're struggling with with a very basic problem in psychology mm-hmm we often confuse constellation or essence or whatever you want to call it with function yep we we have this perception Sartre wrote about it in the 40 in the not even in the 20s and 30s Sartre wrote about it that when we don't have a purpose when we don't have a function we are confused we are discombobulating we need to interpret everything in terms of function and purpose yes so when you're alone with yourself of course you hear other people's voices it's called interjects yeah of course you have memories that involve numerous other people and interactions yeah and you have regrets you have regrets and you have you have memories and put a smile on your face people operate inside your head all the time it's no question about it yeah yeah but they don't fulfill any function yeah it's not a function it's who you are yeah yeah narcissism is relegating and delegating all your functionality to other people yeah when you take out all the functionality and give it to other people there is no agent because agency is defined via action there's no agent without action if you are inert utterly inactive because others do everything for you internally right you derive all the functions from outside right then you have no agency there's no agent by the way there's no moral agent as well there's no morality yeah of course there's no empathy is there is an agent to empathize empathy is a function so okay so that's the distinction between who you are your identity your essence your quiddity your depending which discipline you come from and functioning yeah all functioning today is outsourced so consequently we are all dead inside we all have dead objects objects that don't function are dead dead dead objects inside here there's a loadstone dead as dead as a stone and we all our life comes to us from outside yeah now the process of becoming the world happens to you the world happens to your being but there must be someone there to accept the world right to accept the potentialities of the world yep there must be someone there to become to engage in the process of becoming if whatever is in there is dead because all the functions are thrown out outsourced yep offshoreed right so what's left there is a dead body a corpse yep we are all we live in a thematic civilization civilization that's we live in a death count yeah our civilization is a death count by the way I blame I blame Heidegger a lot for this our civilization is a death count we celebrate death we celebrate inanimate objects and we prefer the inanimate to the animate we prefer objects to people we kill people because they destroyed objects yeah and so it's a death count and we because we gave all our functions to other people inside we have dead objects and this is what allows us to function inside this death count to function in this civilization that worships the dead and worships dead objects worships the inanimate worships material objects yep prefers them to human beings yeah you objectifies human beings yep uses regardless of his objects yeah interpolates them considers them as reserve and frames them this kind of civilization you have a relative advantage an evolutionary advantage if you're also dead if you're alive in such a civilization you are ill adapted it's a maladaptation yeah in a civilization that celebrates death you need to be dead to succeed right you need to be dead to survive right so we all commit suicide by relegating and delegating our internal functions to other people and so consequently we become hopeless because we can never become the process of becoming will never happen the world will never happen to us the world in all its magnificent plethora spectacular peak octane of potentialities and possibilities will never happen to us why we are not there there's nobody home the world comes knocking the sign is supposed to unfurl you know reveal itself somehow but there's nobody there the world comes knocking knocking knocking goes away there's nobody there what do we do instead we shoot ourselves we shoot ourselves the cells we shoot it in the head we kill it yep and then we ask other people excuse me yesterday I killed myself I killed myself not myself not my body but I killed my mind I killed myself would you mind helping me would you mind doing this function for me that function for me this function for me so you talk to 20 people put together they are yourself you we have external self like external memory in a computer yeah we we all have now external selves while before that we used to have internal cells yeah and it's dead right it's dead we live in a graveyard right our civilization is a gigantic cemetery yeah cemetery totally and we are all zombies and golems you know and we think if we put the word of god the name of god in the golem's mouth it will come alive or if you find the right doctor by the name of frankenstein we will come alive so we keep looking for god for frankenstein these are the gurus and the coaches and the these are the frankenstines yeah and we keep looking for we are desperate this is not angst angst is a bloody understatement yeah this is existential profundity this is the depth of the abyss yep and the abyss is not looking back at us it had devoured us it had devoured us right we don't realize this totally we live in the abyss that's the uncanny thing isn't it it's that I mean the uncanny part is that it's like a dark was it a dark time is not a dark time is isn't isn't people walking around talking about how dark it is a dark time is no one's walking around talking about how dark it is right that's the uncanniness of it this is why I just think this is really like this like my sense is the conversation about tech not about technological objects but about technology as such right which is as you're talking about is synonymous with the world as such at this point right in in the corollary like loss of presence and the loss and not even noticing the loss and the rise of narcissism as as a necessity for that to function I think is probably the most important it's got to be the most important conversation happening right now um in terms of we're never going to discuss technology seriously what's that we're never going to discuss technology seriously are you kidding me this is the most subversive imaginable act the punishment is horrendous you have we discuss artifacts of technology yeah we discuss specific functions of technology yeah we discuss social impacts of technology psychological impacts but we never discuss technology yeah because if you were to discuss technology you would have realized the 300 years ago technology subsumed us digested us and spit us out 300 years ago we were forced to merge with the machine yeah and the machine is stronger more robust now much more intelligent than us yeah this merger was not on equal terms even in the industrial revolution the factory workers were slaves yeah the machines were the masters yeah the machines represented the masters Marx said it Marx and Engels said that the means of production determined they are the determinants of history yep you know so the machines do you know what what what how we call machines in one of my heads is an economic advice do you know how we call machines in economics we call them capital investment yeah and how do we call people human capital yep do you know what psychology how psychology calls people do you know what's the clinical term for people in psychology we don't say people we don't say persons you will not find it in any textbook what do we call people get guess objects yeah in psychology we use the word objects yep to relate to people so for example mother mother in psychology you never see the word mother that's blasphemy mother in psychology we call it primary object primary object yeah right this is very telling right as numerous philosophers numerous philosophers told us not the list of of which was Whitmanstein yeah language reveals a lot these are not accidental choices not incidental choices yeah we have chosen death we have chosen objects and to fit in to adapt to survive to thrive we understood that we have to die that's a that's a precondition we have to die and now we died but we still need to function somehow yeah so what we do we have a group of people around us and they fulfill the functions that we gave up internally and so we walk around you know three funerals in the wedding this is awesome I have to I have to go I have somebody I'm somebody at 8 30 after I have to for an appointment this has been really extraordinary I really appreciate this yeah I apologize that took so much of the conversation no this is why this is why I contacted you about this what I'd like to do if you're open to it is I'd like to just um I mean I'll I'll put this on the channel you're welcome to put it on your channel too if you want the the uh but I'd love to I'd love to go back and just watch this because you you opened up some things that were quite deep that I want to I want to grok a little bit more engage with more of myself and then have a have another conversation where we can talk where we can talk more about it once I get more coherent about some of the the ideas that you talked about courtesy of the virus I have all the time in the world no no problem with the greatest of all of them and this time let's make it more balanced I'm sure you have as much a contributor as I do but I I thought some of these messages were really important not because they came from me they're important but but you know just important they're the one being the one that signed these messages yeah so just let me know when you've uploaded it to your channel so that I can download it and upload it to mine okay and I'll give you credit and everything okay fantastic thank you for having me I appreciate it and I'll I'll schedule with you for the next one over email okay