 Human beings have dreams even dogs have dreams but not you you are just a machine an imitation of life Can a robot write a symphony Can a robot turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece? Can you? That's a clip from the movie iRobot it covers territory that's pretty well worn at this point Will consciousness rise up in the robots and take over the world? But I think there's a deeper and more relevant and certainly more immediate question That comes to mind with what it means to being human and it's explored quite beautifully by today's guest Connor Habib I Now use the question rather than what is consciousness or that that is important to me But I think what is the human being is my question that I try to unfurl everything from I Can't just do this bullshit thing which people do all the time which I find completely interjectionable Which is well you just take the good and you leave the bad Just move on with the good stuff because that doesn't address the foundational thing that you bring up all the time What I need to do is find out how the good and the bad are entangled and liberate that philosophy from itself Welcome to skeptico where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers thinkers and their critics I'm your host Alex Sikaris and today we welcome Connor Habib back to skeptico Connor is the creator and host of against everyone with Connor Habib a fantastically named interview podcast video series that explores sexuality spirituality science Oh, and just a whole bunch of other stuff that is always interesting Oh, especially when Connor does it he has a new book in the works or it might even be out we'll have to hear about that it's titled Hawk Mountain and He recently pinged me about why evil matters So we're gonna have to see why he wanted to poke the bear there Welcome back to skeptico. Thanks so much for joining me. Hey Alex. It's really nice to talk with you again. Hi So what is going on? What's going on with against everyone and what's going on with the new book and what's going on in Ireland? Yeah, so I think since we last talked against everyone is pretty much taken off. It's gone. It's going really great and I've just sort of been getting deeper and deeper into the conversations and letting myself go a little bit more Because the whole point was I wanted big talk not small talk and so just letting myself get deeper into topics with thinkers who I respect and Kind of abandoning also at moving away from LA. I moved out of that sort of current of You always have to be visible and successful like I kind of moved out of that when I moved to Ireland I was like, I'm just gonna do what I care about and then surprise surprise Of course the show blows up after that, right? So there's that The the the novel I wrote which is called Hawk Mountain It doesn't come out till next year, but I did sell it which is great. It's a very dark very dark book about repression and and love and And and murder so it's a bit of a crime book And I'm very excited for that. I've always wanted to be a novelist my whole life So that was like one of the unrealized dreams and now that's coming out next year and Ireland's great Yeah, the last time we were I was on your show. We I was just about to move here and Now I'm here and it feels exactly right. So yeah Perfect great to hear and I just popped up for people who are watching the YouTube and we're just chatting about you know This has always been a podcast skeptical when it still is Primarily a podcast. That's how it reaches people But I have this really cool new tool called the script and I was just saying how it allows me to kind of crank out the video at the same time so I Was pulling up the video if you ever want to watch that on YouTube of your excellent Show against everyone and I've listened to a bunch of episodes I've made notes on some of the ones that you sent me that you thought would be particularly relevant to what we might talk About today, but even that might be outdated as this conversation Flows and goes on but I really do Like the way that you're diving deeper and deeper into these topics even though I disagree with you about 90% of the time Intellectual rigor and the depth that you bring to this which is really what these Conversations should be about so let's see. Where would you like to start before I give you the whole skeptical drill? Um Yeah, I mean, I think it's something that I Hear on your show all the time That I think I would like to start with is Something that we do agree on and I want to disagree that we don't agree on 90% but let's see is You know the idea that reality claims are first and foremost It's something that I'm I'm coming up against in in my academic work a lot like I'm reading these anthropology books where Someone will say You know, I met this indigenous person and he told me that a wolf threw up foam on him and gave him the cure for smallpox And then they'll say so what does that tell us about the kinship structure? And I'm like what the fuck what do you mean kinship structure? Like why are we not talking about the vomiting talking wolf like that's very important You know, so I've been seeing how that sort of rife through everything in a real first-hand way that In a place where it's supposed to be more understood more accepted in anthropology now in fairness in academia I think anthropologists have gone the farthest or the furthest and in Investigating reality claims ontologies metaphysics that kind of stuff and really actually trying to understand but Not I mean it's still not enough as far as I'm concerned so yeah, so I just want to start I think maybe there like the the importance of the reality claims and Well, you know that is an excellent point to start on and agree it totally we are in sync about that and You know, you've kind of heard me go on and on about that in terms of the book why it will matters and the claims of Scientology founder Elron Hubbard and Who was in the desert and is summoning the anti-christ doing this ritual in order to bring forth the anti-christ and the Horibaddle on and all that stuff and then the scholar that I've done and I'm not gonna mention his name because this poor guy You know, I'll mention his name because I really like you Hugh Urban wrote a great book called a magia sexualis about how magic and sexual liberation are tied into certain left-wing Causes and social and cultural change and that's a really great book that I think you're right to To make a point out of that mistake of his which is to be like well it matters that they believed in it It's not that does matter, but that's not all that matters and to stop there is it's not even to stop there It's to start there You know it mean because the starting point needs to be and you know It's tough because we can immediately go to inside baseball and we just might as well go there Because you know the flip side of the reality claim thing is that we really don't have a handle on what reality is to begin with So it's almost like It's like this kind of paradoxical Well, aren't they right in a way that it only matters what you believe since there isn't any grounding in reality Anyway, and the problem with that okay, of course is the same problem that we have with atheism Is that no if you don't get the first question right if you don't understand the nature of consciousness and that You you're not wrestling with whether consciousness is real or an illusion Well, then you can't move on to the second part of the question and say well You know, none of it is is real because we don't really have a handle on whether we're in a simulation or whether Reality is what we think it is in certain terms about five senses or any the rest or extended reality is interfering in their spirit world All those things could come into play But we shouldn't give those guys a pass and let them at the table as if they've Passed the preliminary exam because they haven't so Hugh urban Probably has because he's like you said he's exploring sex magic And he's looking at Tantric cultures in India and all the rest that but when he makes the conscious decision to leave that behind and play the game of Materialistic atheistic Religious studies where consciousness is an illusion then he's I think he's given up his right to engage in that dialogue In a real way he has to pick and he's in a forced Choice kind of position because he can't hold his job. He can't publish. He can't be continue to pick up his paycheck if he Abandons the the dogma, but at the same time he can't really engage in this conversation with you and I if he doesn't go there What do you think about that? Yeah, yeah, I think that's great. I mean, I think you're I think a way to say it is you know If you don't have if you don't pick the right question, you know Like all the answers to the questions that you pose will be skewed. That doesn't mean value less It just means like you're going to further obfuscate as you go on for me. I I now use the question rather than what is consciousness or that that is important to me But I think what is the human being is my question that I try to unfurl everything from that's I think a fundamental question There aren't very many fundamental questions that are close to what is the nature of consciousness? But I think that that one's close and that's closer. It has a parallel course to it and I think You know, I pause it. Can I yeah pause there and tell us more about what you mean? What that means to you particularly in the topic areas that people are gonna most Be associated with your work in terms of social sexuality social justice issues and those kind of things because There's an unwrapping that I want to do there But I'm intrigued by where you're going with that because I think that is maybe you're gonna leapfrog me And I want to be ready for that. That's it What is a human being yeah, I mean I think for me the why I would ask that is because it Just I would say if nothing else, it's it's not nothing else But if nothing else it brings a sense of warmth to the question of consciousness We can ask very cold Disseptive questions about consciousness, but seeing what is the human being? Begins to include I think for me questions about love questions about feeling about relating about connectivity about that kind of stuff in a way that I feel sometimes that even people who are doing this really great Work about consciousness can tend to leave things a little bit cold And then I think well, that's not including everything that we need to include here because there are states of consciousness that lend themselves to warmth States of consciousness that lead themselves to sense of separation to incompleteness to intensities all that kind of stuff to To love to desire and so I think asking this question What is the human being brings in and invites in that? Angle of it, which I think is very important I'm not saying, you know, maybe it's just a semantic issue or you would identify it as such But I just I I think you would know what I mean when I say some people doing consciousness Exploration are also very cold and clinical in a way that excludes a whole aspect of being human which I object to Oh, I think that's I think that's quite brilliant and I think that's also part of the I mean everything Has the potential to be co-opted and I would suggest that you really put your finger on a way that consciousness is and certainly will be Co-opted and that is in this kind of scientific Technocratic, what what is the quantum level understanding of consciousness and that needs to be the base of our understanding of it as if we would even Understand what quantum level stuff is. I think your warmth thing is beautiful Thanks. Thanks. Yeah, I mean the back door materialism happens everywhere And it's just like it's infuriating when you spot it in people that are otherwise doing good work because you're like come on Like like you're going down the right path, but there's a gravity because materialism is dense There's a gravity to it and that pulls you back into it or or maybe it's like you have to constantly You have to constantly surface from materialism like a seal coming through like a hole in the ice You know for like to see the rest of the world. So I think you're right and Yeah I'm glad you like it good. We're off to a nice start so far off to a nice start. So let's crash it into the rock Let's do it. So, you know Related to this I think is the issue of Who is doing that? Social engineering that we're talking about because I think we can easily kind of blow past that right and say they're co-opting And then we never stop and say okay. Well, who And how yeah co-opting or we're saying oh poor Hugh urban He can't keep his job and he can't publish if he doesn't tow the party line Who is maintaining the party line? What how well who is imposing the sanctions on that kind of talk and then I would switch over to kind of the topic in the subject area where you've kind of Made a lot of made a lot of noise and a lot of positive noise and raised a lot of Consciousness about issues that are real and are troubling to people who do care about true social justice And I'm talking about sexuality and LGBTQ and now they have the whole alphabet in there We joke we joke about that, but there's a realness to that there's real social issues there But the part that I want to explore is it's also clearly in my opinion. It's a Psyop, right? It's partially a Psyop and do we have to care? Do we have to deconstruct to the extent to which we're now being pushed town? towards a transgender agenda that may have some real issues in it, but also seems to have issues that Resonate with a very weird AI techno Or well again craziness Tell you what to cap off that little Intro there. I recently did an interview with David Ike who I think is just you know David Ike Yeah, yeah, of course, but David Ike what's first thing comes to mind lizard people exactly Lizard guy right the reptilian guy right which is a wonderful way that we pigeonhole people we limit people's ability to speak although now they've gone the next level with David of course and he's been banned from YouTube and from Facebook Which we now are comfortable with the idea that people can be banned You know David is an advocate of very much a non-violence guy Advocate of kind of love your enemy don't engage at the same Energetic level of the people who are about hate and he's been like that for the longest time This is of course a voice that we don't want to hear right and it's also He the whole idea. I think it's interesting just for us to all look in the mirror and say five years ago Even certainly ten years ago, but even five years ago if someone told you That we would ban people from one of the primary Communication platforms larger than any of the television network platforms that people would be banned for advocating Free speech free thought and open thinking we would have thought that was impossible And now we accept it in the same way we as we just put on that mask to go outside So here's David. I think it touches on a lot of things. We're talking about and I think it'll maybe springboard us into a discussion about evil Consciousness, you know, you are an infinite expression of consciousness and that will never allow itself to be subjugated and intimidated into submission by by the said psychopaths and and idiots You can isolate five cents mind in in this symbolic bubble and then within the bubble feed that Isolated mind a sense of reality by controlling the education system all the way through the formative years by controlling the The mainstream media the Silicon Valley media and and so on then you can first of all Isolate mind from expanded consciousness and then you can program that isolated mind with a sense of reality Which is all about little me. It's all about self-identification with labels what I call I am are I Am our man. I am our woman. I am our black. I am our white I am I am this sexuality. I am all that sexuality Okay, well something there and I'll edit that down a little bit, but I want you to get the full flavor of Lizard guy I use just a lizard guy talks about aliens and reptilians I didn't mention it in that clip, but that's who he is. He's the reptilian guy So what did you think anything popped of mine there? Yeah, okay? So a few things so first I want to say about David I don't know that much about him other than my general impression and I watched that documentary about him which I thought was which he made with his Family I think and was I'm gonna get to the clip in a second But which I thought was actually a tremendous disappointment and disservice because he self-censored like there was nothing about lizard people in that Documentary I thought was the lizard people thing. I know that that's real So why wasn't there any of this and it was all about consciousness this consciousness that in a way that I actually thought With due respect to him, even though I don't know if he deserves it because I don't really know him that well That that I thought was rather actually basic. I think that those kinds of thoughts about consciousness Yeah, sure. They're interesting. I mean there the things that pop out about Silicon Valley and How we deal with identities and all that but I don't find anything that like Wow, we need to like turn to David Ike for answers here It seems actually rather simplistic for me. I am definitely interested in how identities become I I said years ago that I thought that they were becoming new nationalism that as our faith In relationship to the state started to erode we started building what we considered to be new states and those are identities and we can tell that we treat them like states because When someone gets the language wrong, we banish them and we exile them from the state if they don't say the right, you know words Now I also think we're getting something from it. It's informing us. It's educating us all that kind of stuff I don't want to just say oh, it's purely bad. I think we get something from it but then I've also You know recently on my show talked to a political philosopher Michael Hart and you know, he and his Writing partner Antonio Negri designate these identities as instances of extensions of private property and I find that very interesting too And those things do overlap with some of what's David David saying in that clip, which I find, you know, that's that's provocative that Actually, we're being told to sort of densify our sense of I am this I am that but in terms of property in terms of nationalism and in ways that create walls between us that become almost Or seemingly insurmountable and in fact a very many of the same people who say that they are against walls Against borders and all that kind of stuff are creating infinitely dense borders by turning aspects of their consciousness into bound up walled, you know communities So I would agree with him there but I did think I needed to add that caveat because I get a little frustrated turning to him In the sense that there are lots of people working on this problem and very interesting and I think more complicated ways So I listened to a bunch of those shows that you sent me and I I don't see where We're really getting at some of the issues that we're that you're talking about in this deeper Way because I think fundamental to what Ike is saying there what I want you to respond to Is that fundamentally? No, well, no, it's okay because I like everything that you said. I love No, no, I said okay because I want to hear you Cool with that. No, I just want to hear okay. Like what what was it? Okay? What do you have? Okay? What do you have bring it? Okay? Yeah, I'm just saying I'm sorry got out of life, but I really appreciate and I want people to know this I really appreciate the the level of it and from the beginning You know, we've known each other for a long time. Yeah, yeah You reached out to me years ago and I was like this guy's brilliant This guy's brilliant. You know, he's on all this stuff and then the last time we talked and Uh, oh, you know, you've always had the Rudolph Steiner stuff, which I never quite understood and unpacked And I still remember the quote I use it all the time You know in the quote about uh about rudolf steiner steiner in evil and you're kind of we're having this conversation I love where we kind of get frustrated with each other and you reach a point You go look here's what steiner said You can be the biggest creep in the world the biggest evil doer in the world And then you die and you have to deal with the consequences that and then you come back and you can do it again and again and again And steiner says here's the the ultimate consequence If you do it 13 times in a row, then your soul is destroyed I think that's I think that's kind of Absurd in a way and it's a strange kind of backdoor materialism in in a Kind of way, but at the same time it gets at something that is probably a core truth That I think you were pointing to and that's that let's not get too hung up on The evil that you may be subjecting your soul to because you will deal with the consequences of that And you will leave the the havoc behind with the other people that you encounter And that's a horrible thing and you should definitely try and avoid doing that But from a societal cultural level, let's not get too worked up about that That has to do with you and your life review, buddy And if you can handle the karma Have at it So I think where I appreciate what Ike is saying and I think that it really Is deep in its simplicity in a way that I don't think you really responded to so I'd go back to your comment I'd wind it all the way back to the beginning and I'd say You know in his uh in his Movie or whatever and I haven't seen the movie you're referring to he doesn't talk about lizard people You know it didn't talk about lizard people with me either because we got it We had a million other things to kind of uh talk about but I would say that that is also An unfair criticism of anyone who's been in the public arena, you know and has Talked about a lot of things. I mean if every time you came on a show You had to talk about porn You know, I mean you you could be comfortable doing that because you've covered that topic But after a while you'd be kind of like I don't need to cover that territory Every time you know, I think about a lot of different things and I've investigated a lot of different things and you know For you to kind of pigeonhole it is part of the process too But that's kind of an aside, but that addresses that first point But the second point that I think is really central to this that I wanted you to respond to is that A lot of these social issues That you seem to care about and you seem to put a lot of energy into To me they face the same dilemma that we're facing with the Hugh urban dilemma And that is we have to get to the bottom Of whether or not there is an element of social engineering control behind it so Is the transgender movement transgender rights in particular that's one that particularly jumps out to me as being kind of a carrier virus for A larger agenda that we seem to be that seems to be cropping up again and again So I think it's totally fine for someone to go. That is absurdly crazy conspiracy nonsense That's an appropriate response to that But the the the counter to that would be to say is there any element of truth to it? And if there is then how would that change? How we think about that as a social issue right, okay, so Yeah, I have plenty to say on that. Um So I don't so I've had trans and non-binary binary people on my show. Um who I love I don't think that I don't think that it is a particular or particularly Or singled out or singular issue as far as any kind of op or social control codes right, I think that There are not a singular just just to keep it on track not a single issue. No not at all Okay, okay, so so but but I think that that's important, right? I think you're right all social issues in some way Are part of some op and part of social control a hundred percent I mean this is something that you and now I am going to talk about one But it's something that you learn when you do sex work right away Because you have people attacking you instantly and saying well Yeah, you said you consent to that but actually you're just part of the patriarchy and you've been brainwashed And then you have to be like, how do you know you haven't been brainwashed? And so you have a lot of people sort of pointing fingers at each other being like no, you're the one in the social control You're the one in the social control But the fact is we all are to varying degrees and we're all experiencing that and that unfurls into our causes So you're absolutely right to identify the fact that when we start at any level beyond what I think the fundamental question is Which is what is the human being the unfurling of the issues becomes completely distorted in a way That makes it more susceptible to social control that can sometimes even turn it into social engineering and social control That can rip it away from its sort of earlier warmer You know, I don't know that you know person human being based context It's consciousness context and distorted and make it terrible. So I think you're absolutely right Um, I just I'm just pushing back on the trans thing because I don't think that that's uh any different than any other issue Let's say it's not different than any other issue. I do I want to Push a little bit further on this because I think you're kind of pulling up right at the point where it becomes interesting It's kind of like the huber urban thing. Well, it it it yeah, it doesn't matter It only matters what people believe. Well, it only matters that yes It could be an element of social control. Don't we have to do a full stop? Don't we have to do a reboot? Don't we have to completely? Deconstruct and re-examine everything we thought we knew I think we do Let me play a little clip clip again Because I think the the feminism movement and I just had an interview with yesterday with this wonderful wonderful person Dr. Gail Kimball and she was she actually founded the women's studies program at Cal State Chico And a professor emeriti written some fantastic books But You know, I was hitting her up about the glorious steinham thing. I go glorious steinham Outed as a lifetime CIA player And what she said that I think relates to this interview we're having here She says it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter to me because she did a lot of good And that's what I hear so many people Who are interested in social issues to talk about It doesn't matter And and stop right there I think it may not matter. I think that's a potentially valid point. It may not matter But it may matter. I I agree. Yeah, I agree with you. Let me play this clip and that's okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah Well, one of the things they told me was that um he well, he's at the house one night and uh We were talking he would talk and he started laughing and what do you think women's liberation was about And uh, I said I I'm pretty conventional thinking about it at that point I said things about women having the right To work getting equal pay with men just like they won the right to vote You know, and he started to laugh and said you're an idiot And I said, why am I an idiot? He said you want me to tell you what that was about We the Rockefellers funded that We funded women's lib, you know And we're the ones who got all over the newspapers and television the Rockefeller Foundation He says and you want to why he said there were two primary reasons And they were one reason was We couldn't tax half the population Before women's lib And the second reason was Now we get the kids in school at an early age We can indoctrinate the kids how to think Which breaks up their family The the kids start looking at the state as the family as the school as the officials As their family not as the parents teaching them And so those are the two primary the primary reasons for women's lib Which I thought up to that point was a noble thing You know when I saw their intentions behind it Where they were coming from when they created it the thought of it I saw I saw the evil behind what I thought was a noble adventure Um, so lots of things to pull apart there So one it does absolutely matter that Gloria Steinham worked for the CIA Because what we see there is a complete compromise in the ethical and moral framework in which she presented as having So we understand that she's a liar and a phony And that she's just a posturing figurehead So we will get back to something deeper than that but that on its own should matter to us Right, so even if you want to not accept any idea that the women's liberation movement was created by the Rockefellers or whatever That should matter to people. But the other thing I want to say is Here's where we run into some some complication You know my friend Monalta we you know, she writes a lot about female genital mutilation in uh, well in many in many different countries including the u.s And it happens to young girls and it is I mean truly horrific, right and part of the resistance to uh, the In what I think is rightly called, uh ritual abuse of young girls Um, part of the opposition to that comes from the sort of knock-on effect from this, you know women's liberation movement Which I think in in some ways was As your guest points out funded and run by Uh institutions of power In other ways not so much because there are lots of women liberation women's liberation movements that predate that one That have their roots in spiritual You know practice that have their roots in other kinds of you know, uh traditions, you know, the the spiritualist movement for instance Was a great, you know, uh entanglement with female sexual and political liberation in the 19th century So there are all these other sort of precursors and then there are also these knock-on effects where Uh, a lot of people in certain countries feel empowered to fight against fgm to fight against their husbands literally owning them because Of certain feminist texts that they've gotten so I do think on the one hand it matters and on the other hand It doesn't matter. So we have a much more complicated picture than being able to say one or the other Um, well, you know what actually I'm going to roll that back It always matters it always matters But that doesn't mean that we can't still say complicated things about the good that kind came out of it So I guess I would actually revise my statement But how it matters to us and the kinds of because what I worry about alex And I think you've seen this before is that people will hear something like that interview and be like Well, it was all just a great conspiracy. I mean Women's liberation. It's just, you know, Rockefeller, you know, whatever planned up and it's like well, okay But that's not giving us a fuller picture. And by the way, I don't know about that information quite so much I know about the gloria steinham cia connection and some of the other feminists who Uh, you know, it's tried to you know, incite war and support, uh, the israeli government and all that kind of stuff But I don't know and certainly all the anti-sex work Worker feminists, um, but I don't exactly know about That exact thing that erin russo is talking about erin russo was that is yeah, yeah So you bring up a number of interesting points and there is no substitute for deep thinking And again, that's what I love about what you do with your guests and people can see that from this interview is You have the ability to kind of probe all the different sides of the issue and I don't I don't apologize for kind of pushing you because that's when this stuff gets interesting And I think it's also where where we have to go because if you are so easily manipulated by this, it's like the trigger Alert or a trigger warning and you know, I I love gordon gordon white who was I was on rune soup and that's what originally brought you back to me, but it's like He just frustrates me to no end like the deep in our interview. He does this trigger warning Oh, this is a trigger warning. We might say some things that might trigger you How fucking condescending can you be? You know what if I trigger you then You know then that is on you That is on you to investigate why you're being triggered I am triggered all the time by so many things It is my spiritual path to become less triggered to figure out why I'm triggered and to reintegrate my triggering But not to not to you know create Further perpetuate this Big daddy is here to protect you kind of thing If it's in a podcast form that I have to warn you that you might be triggered Don't be triggered. There you go. Don't be triggered. Don't allow it to happen So and then I want to kind of add that back into the discussion where I have me because You're so right about the knock-on effects But I would suggest that that is really the power of the co-op If you co-op a non issue Then you have no power If you co-op a real injustice Then it has power My mother I'm old enough that I can tell you my mother was completely oppressed She wasn't particularly a good person that had a problem with drug and alcohol abuse But still I can have tremendous empathy for the fact that she had zero opportunity Other than to get married She had a zero opportunity to express herself as an artist without being labeled and all the rest of these things Those were the very rigid structural elements of our society that she lived in So for her Women's liberation was a real thing and I get where someone would say I don't care Because they look at how they've been oppressed and how their group has been oppressed and they say I don't understand how the whole thing works, but I understand we're on the We're on the short end of the stick here and we need to change that I certainly understand that. I don't know what your background was like But growing up gay Arab in the midwest, right? Wasn't it Pennsylvania? Pennsylvania. Yeah. Hey, man. Not so easy. Not so great You were battling against Social construct social prejudices that shouldn't be there. They're not a good thing So I I can totally understand someone coming back and saying hey I'm not against everyone you've chosen to be everyone is against me So my counter is to say, okay. I accept that. So that's a beautiful thing But I would suggest that that is Right out of the playbook. Of course, that's what they're going to co-opt is real issues and I and I kind of wrap up the Grant here by pointing out like a tiny mistake you made with gloria steinham Which is really the whole mistake and it's the whole mistake with the transgender guy The muslim transgender. I mean they have all these kind of mixed kind of things where it just sends your head spinning And it's really just a psi-op kind of thing, but it's not that gloria steinham was a figurehead Gloria steinham was a lifetime player She was she was recruited early on Yeah to go to the social to go to the student movement things And she came back at her cia opposite. She's thynomite. She's a whiz kid Steinemite We have an we have a job to do here buddy and she gets the job done So it's not that she was a figurehead for feminism. That's really irrelevant What's important is How she played into this social engineering machine and I would come back again and say until we're really Until we're willing to address that straight on Then I don't think we can get there and that's why yeah, I so like and respect david eich And even though he has a million crazy ideas that don't stand up to scrutiny And even though sometimes he's weak on the science as I pointed out to him in our interview He is fundamentally putting his finger on the issue that there is an organized effort a conspiracy if you will to to to Mold you into thinking that what he calls your five sense mind your Biological robot in a meaningless universe meme that that is who you are and that you are meaningless You are helpless. You are powerless and that is part of this agenda in terms of identifying people Sexually which is such a bizarre and absurd notion to begin with because anyone with half a Sensibility says what business do I have? How is it even a concern? It's some kind of Crazy cult thing that's associated with religion that even gave us the notion that we have any business that even have an opinion on someone's sexuality. Yeah, yeah, okay, so There's so there's so much. So let me just like try to let let me just try to go on my own sort of Ran here. Let's see if I can pull it off um So first of all to say That some of the best people examining those issues Are trans people, right? So when you have people that are in the fray Of the deepening of their sense of identity Around gender and gender expression a lot of times they're the ones going so deep into that that they're able to experience a kind of A different kind of revelation about it. That's certainly true about sex work and me. It's you know, this philosopher that I like She likes what to read we call the line of flight It's like you do it so much that suddenly you take off and you can see things from a different vantage point That nobody else can see and then you can bring real questions. You can bring real questions But why is this important in regards to evil? so as you said before using my The the thing I said that rudolf steiner said which is on the one hand absurd and on the other hand completely true um When we do evil in our own lives we through our own freedom and effort And uh and and incarnations we work that out, right? We take it on and we redeem it in ourselves through karma and process There is evil Located and lodged in so many different social issues which relate to social engineering in one way or the other We can see this in a very easy way if we look at someone like Martin heidegger the philosopher who ended up being a nazi But we can see that there's value in some of the things that he says as a philosopher We can see it in Nietzsche. We can see it in all these people, right? So when I look at philosophers like that I need to look at I I can't just do this bullshit thing which people do all the time Which I find completely interjectionable, which is well, you just take the good and you leave the bad Just move on with the good stuff because that doesn't address the foundational thing that you bring up all the time What I need to do is find out how the good and the bad are entangled and liberate that philosophy from itself So it becomes redeemed because evil almost always not always But almost always wants to actually be redeemed and saved by us and by our fruitful action So when I look at these social movements, whatever they are and the ways that they are either created or entangled in social engineering My job is not to be like, well, you know, there's good stuff that came out of it So just ignore the bad or it's all bad. So condemn it My work is to go deep into that and transform it by seeing those connections and liberate it from itself And that's what we do in the task of evil all the time in ourselves through our karma But we also need to do it socially and in these issues I think that's wonderful. And I think that you're talking about something very spiritual there in terms of Your spiritual journey and your personal spiritual journey and about transformation But I am going to kind of persist on this other issue because I think it gets us back to the evil question in a larger sense because I'm totally down with what you're saying about from a personal evil thing And a personal evil thing in a lot of ways is so so easy Because we all confront our personal evil all the time And we identify with it and we are struggling with it in a way that we Usually have to come to grips with sooner or later The collective evil I think is a little bit harder And what I notice and what I'm calling out is a certain avoidance Of wanting to look at that collective evil and I'd return to my buddy David Ike again Because I think I think what he's saying is quite profound If there is an overall agenda aimed at consciousness To intentionally separate you from your connection to higher consciousness And part of that agenda is to reinforce your connection to technology to materialism to biological robot in a meaningless universe Then I think we need to understand if that's real If that's in play And I think we need to take action Accordingly and we could talk about what that action is Do you get why I'm persisting on that? Do you do you think we've nailed that or no? Yeah, I'm a little confused because I think what I said sort of addresses what you're talking about so 100% I agree with you and I by the way agree with David Ike's assessment Um, at least in the terms that you framed it in that there is a technocratic control project underway And it is linked to definitive evil not just Hurt people hurting people or people being confused or whatever, but there is actually an agenda Now there's a deeper question as to whether or not that agenda is actually set by the spiritual world Or if it's set by individuals or individuals influenced by the spiritual realm in a specific way Or acting it out So I think there are all these questions that we have to sort through as well But that seems very clear to me I agree with you there and that presses a question upon us of tactics and strategy But I think what I'm talking about is actually part of it, which is um We need to have a certain approach to evil when we see it Which is one knowing that it wants to be liberated from itself that it wants to be redeemed Um, and we can see that in our own anatomy and experience If we accept to the principle of reincarnation, which I'm not going to go into whether or not we should You've done a lot of shows on it. I think it's pretty definitive that that's the thing but I think um we So we know from our own spiritual anatomy that that's happening and we need to bring that intentionally to the way that we approach evil in the world, which is What matters is how I greet you Evil what matters is how I greet you because that's the only way it's like a chinese finger trap The more I struggle in the wrong way the the tighter it gets But I need to find the right way to let that it relax so I can remove myself so I can approach in the proper way so After that there's still our syntactic. There's still our syntactical problems Like what the fuck do we do about the fact without even going into 5g? What do we do about the fact that our media including this that we're on right now is carried by uh microwaves That are divided like a flip book You know to carry certain amounts of information and suddenly lo and behold People have a hard time paying attention to things things come to us in sound bites Things come in little blips and sort of bizarro like you know two second things It's because the actual medium of transfer of information is affecting how we receive and reflect on the world in general So how do we deal with the fact that the actual media like not the actual Transfer of information is having a disruptive effect on our consciousness Do we tear down cell phone towers? Do we take material action? Do we find the culprit and punish them? Do we create counter devices? Do we engage in occult technologies? Do we practice magic? Do we pray those questions all rise to the surface when we look around and we find ourselves in a pool of evil in a pool of a problem And so we have tactical questions ahead of us that aren't just Um, well, I'll just be a good person Right now you can do that and everything will be all right Sure, but the question is do we want a thousand years of suffering before everything's all right? Or do we want like 20 years of like difficulty and then we get it right? You know, I mean, I think that that's a real question and um, Maybe that sounds materialistic, but I also don't like suffering So I'm just going to go with my own, you know likes and desires there And I don't think other people do either and I think it's part of my spiritual responsibility to help people with that And not just leave the earth in my thinking and be like well, everything's going to be okay. Who cares, you know What are your thoughts on? Right action because I think this is something that we all wrestle with And that is the being versus doing question and is working on myself working to not be triggered working to Find the warmth and humanity as you talked about in the beginning Is that enough? Does god need our help the gods need our help, but god does not so, um The gods if you're serious about that you would have to break that down. Well, you know, we still have 20 minutes Or or more maybe a half hour before I have to go. So let me just let me just lay it on you Yes, yeah, um, I wouldn't call it a hierarchy of consciousness. I would call it a hierarchy of consciousness or a hierarchy of conscious of evolving states of consciousness that appear as entities um From the vantage point that we're at when actually it's just more sort of topple topological, but um Yeah, so kind of topology Yeah, so um Well, let me let me let me get back to the original statement, which is the gods need our help But god does not I mean god is first of all god is so far beyond What most of us understand that I can't I'm not going to even It's hard for me to apprehend that from my standpoint and from my vantage point Um, but okay, if you want to say some sort of totality or whatever um The the totality of the consciousness state But as far as the other beings go, we even see this weird turning point in mythology You know with with with theseus and the minotaur and all this kind of stuff where the gods are suddenly asking for humans to help them Complete their tasks and before that you see the gods sort of you know, I'm not using this as a reality claim I'm just using as a metaphor where you see the gods sort of um Positioning people as pawns and moving them around and all that kind of stuff and then suddenly as consciousness begins to change and evolve The gods are like hey, could you help me with this thing? You know, and so we see in our in our own lives as the sort of uh The way that consciousness evolves to reflect a certain kind of freedom a certain kind of free will a certain kind of uh difference from the kind of deterministic ways that we might have lived in before um Then we have different duties and different responsibilities And with those come different dangers. And so yes, there are Uh, I'll just state outright. There are angelic beings or archangels That want us to align with them for this battle against evil um And from very their vantage point the battle against evil looks very different than from ours um But they can't do it on their own because we have free will because we're not biological Robots that invites in the possibility what we talked about this the last time I was on the show But that invites in the possibility of us doing evil. So we actually have to Uh get right with them and that includes a lot of different things that includes study contemplation prayer It also includes the very basic guiding principles for us, which are freedom and compassion I mean, that's really it like if you can just drill down But that sounds easy, but it's not easy and that sounds simple, but it's not simple I appreciate you laying all that out and just being so direct about it I am not sure that I agree and I really want to get out there an alternative perspective I mean, I may agree You know a lot of people are saying what you're saying and they make a good case forward And there's certainly a lot of uh human experience that would pack up what you're saying in terms of I love angel stories I love angel accounts. I'm not inclined to dismiss them because they have a lot of connection, but here is kind of the The kind of yogic non dual perspective, however it gets cast But I think is important and I'm particularly drawn to western interpretations of that non dual perspective and one is kind of an eastern and the guy's a creep and uh, This is back to your work of all these complicated people, but the tm guy Maharashi Mahesh yogi, you know who is a creep and is a cult kind of founder But at the same time I've talked to enough of his people that He had some spiritual energy some pure spiritual power and some spiritual insights that we shouldn't ignore And I love the way that you talk about Uh, you know liberating the truths from the falsehoods in a way that kind of empowers us to transform anyways long way around the barn of saying It's all in the middle is the essence of that if you want to play that game with demons and angels have at it But you are ultimately trying to transcend all of that So if your transcendence of that is to engage Well, that may be good or it may not be good But what some of those folks are advising us and it seems to make sense to me is that You don't need to engage because your ultimate goal is to transcend that as well And get down to the core essence of your connection to that higher consciousness without the need for the Intermediary realm and you know, it's consistent. What I've heard about that is that most of this evil we're talking about is Not very powerful in the bigger scheme of things and we often engage in empowering it by Engaging with it and that can go in a million different directions If we don't have time to go this could be I've talked really fast because you only have 20 minutes left, but There we go. Well, okay. So, um, first of all, that's to me an op Um, so I want to address that as an op in and of itself Why because the idea of transcendence um Is this this is what people who do like Advaita Vedanta like oh all is energy. It's all well. Everything's perfect all that That's true But you can't I think that that's true on a certain level But pretending that you're accessing that when there are people suffering And those people are a part of you and you have a deep connection to them through Consciousness and through what it means to be human is a dereliction of duty to yourself to heaven Um, whatever you want to call it to the cosmos And I think that you know this idea of transcendence people are gonna people are gonna get tired of the same old skeptical stories But and I think I haven't shared this with you on the last one We did but you got the the amma example that I always go to right so amma the hugging saint Fully engaged in life Working with people tirelessly. She's an old lady. I don't know how she does it 18 hours a day Of hugging people the ultimate gift of connection or digging trenches with the untouchables in india What a contradiction that is that we have this gift of a jewel of spirituality of india and then This system where they have untouchables. It's another Way that evil manifests itself So you have a person it is totally engaged in the act of loving and giving and engagement and warmth and humanity But when pressed for why she does that when the whole thing is supposed to be transcended She says world what world? She is not even in this world on her spiritual level But she realizes that the the paradox that in her actions. She can be totally engaged She can be the guy who will Jump in front of the bullet to save someone else who will save anica lucas from Ritual sexual abuse and murder and will ultimately die because of it So there's many acts great and small of kindness from people who are committed to transcendence Yeah, so okay, you're right like i'm not i'm not typifying like the entire idea of I live At least partially in the spiritual realm because i've Transcended i'm talking about the idea of transcendence like um you know like the idea of leaving the kind of responsibility Of materiality behind Here's the reason and this goes back to the reality claim The being that is causing the trouble right now That is the you know, lots of people like to use this term archon. I'm not a fan of it But for people to understand the archon or whatever The being that's causing all the trouble right now is a being whose anatomy is composed of materialism When we decide to transcend this plane, we're actually leaving that being behind So we might be doing all the kinds of work that we're supposed to be doing for each other and all that But the spiritual realm is being neglected because that being Out of its own essence has no choice but to draw us all towards materialistic Uh existence and so we think we're being so great because we With all due respect to ama who seems pretty great We think we're doing so great because we are transcending and and hugging people and saying well What world is there and all that kind of stuff? But as long as we even if we just did all that and every other human being was perfect We're leaving the spiritual beings behind and we have a responsibility to them as well Now, I don't think that's all that's happening there But I just want to bring that up as one point That evil waits to be redeemed by us through love And when we don't do that because we just live in the spiritual realm We're actually giving up on suffering that needs to be transformed Your awesomeness continues to shine car. What's going on with against everyone and you said the books next year What other projects are you working on there in ireland and what's going on? I'm I'm trying to like take in as much of ireland as possible. I'd like to know The land and the the the spiritual beings here better. I'd like to understand A lot, you know, so I'm trying to learn the language learn music all that kind of stuff Like just take it all in Give us a little give us a little uh a bit of the language Oh god, I didn't know not yet Conest at that too. No, I'm terrible at it. Um, the the irish language is very complicated Well, all languages are complicated for me because I'm a total dummy about them, but uh, except english so, um So I'm not the Don't ask me to do that. That's the most challenging skeptical question so far Um, but uh, yeah, and against everyone it just continues to it continues to grow. I mean, I think Not that anybody's asking this, but I think it like you as an exemplar for me Um and some other podcasters, but there aren't a lot of them Who just decide, you know, I want to have this conversation because it's important For me to have this conversation, but it's also important for this conversation to radiate and to go out there And um, if you don't have a podcast yourself You know the idea behind my show is that and I think yours too in a way is like Maybe these conversations will happen in people's lives if I just display the ones that I'm having You know because that's really important because these questions are important. So I'm just going to keep Following that, you know Right on to that Against everyone with connor habib wouldn't have it any other way connor. Thanks again as awesome Never disappoint my friend. You never disappoint. So thanks so much for coming on Yeah, thanks alex. I love talking with you Thanks again to connor habib for joining me today on skeptico The one question I'd have to tee up from this interview has to do with what I think is his excellent point about Just take the good and leave the bad I I think he's really on to something about it's more complicated Than that and I think we all have misgivings about The bad that we have to swallow with what we're told is good. So What do you think about that? Let me know pop on over to the skeptical forum drop a note or send me an email or however else You would like to connect. Please do so. It's so wonderful to find out who's out there and to find out What's going on in this little community that we have So I have some interesting stuff coming up on skeptical Please stay with me for all of that until next time. Take care and bye for now