Josh Barnett: Philosophy of Violence, Power, and the Martial Arts

00:00:00.000 | The following is a conversation with Josh Barnett,

00:00:03.200 | one of the greatest fighters

00:00:04.720 | and submission wrestlers in history,

00:00:06.820 | with an epic 25-year career

00:00:09.680 | that includes being the UFC heavyweight champion

00:00:12.200 | and countless other accolades.

00:00:14.400 | He also happens to be one of the most intelligent

00:00:17.400 | and brutally honest human beings in all of martial arts,

00:00:20.920 | and especially so about his appreciation of

00:00:24.040 | and fascination with violence.

00:00:27.080 | Quick mention of our sponsors,

00:00:29.080 | which feels ridiculous to say after that introduction.

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00:00:42.840 | at the support of this podcast.

00:00:44.800 | As a side note, let me say that I've been a fan

00:00:46.960 | of Josh Barnett for a long time.

00:00:49.100 | This conversation was indeed a long time coming,

00:00:52.000 | and I'm sure we'll talk many times again.

00:00:54.400 | For what it's worth, I'm a student of combat sports

00:00:57.160 | and admire when they're done at the highest level,

00:00:59.960 | either through masterful execution of skill

00:01:02.720 | or relentless dominance of pure guts.

00:01:05.720 | For context, I'm a black belt in jiu-jitsu

00:01:08.320 | and have competed in wrestling, submission grappling,

00:01:10.900 | jiu-jitsu, judo, and even catch wrestling,

00:01:13.720 | which is a variant of submission grappling

00:01:15.560 | that Josh is one of the great practitioners,

00:01:18.480 | scholars, and teachers of.

00:01:20.480 | I could probably talk for hours

00:01:21.760 | about what I've learned from my time on the mat,

00:01:24.200 | but if I were to say one thing,

00:01:25.960 | it is that the mat is honest.

00:01:28.560 | You can't run away from yourself when you step on the mat.

00:01:31.360 | It reveals your fears, the lies you might tell yourself,

00:01:34.720 | all the delusions you might have, or at least I had,

00:01:38.140 | that there's anything in this world that can be achieved

00:01:40.740 | except through blood, sweat, and tears.

00:01:43.600 | That honesty, taken to the highest levels,

00:01:46.240 | as is the case with Josh,

00:01:47.840 | creates the most special of human beings

00:01:50.120 | and definitely someone who is fascinating to talk to.

00:01:54.080 | If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,

00:01:56.240 | review it on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify,

00:01:59.320 | support it on Patreon,

00:02:00.600 | or connect with me on Twitter @AlexFriedman.

00:02:03.320 | And now, here's my conversation with Josh Barnett.

00:02:06.520 | Who were the philosophers and philosophical ideas

00:02:10.400 | that influenced you the most?

00:02:11.640 | - Are we just jumping right in?

00:02:12.920 | - We're right in, into the deepest.

00:02:15.200 | - No foreplay on camera, all right.

00:02:17.200 | I had an interesting philosophical journey,

00:02:19.880 | at least I think it's interesting,

00:02:21.200 | and that was, I think, as far as organized philosophy,

00:02:26.200 | or maybe, authentic's not the right word,

00:02:31.800 | but like, yeah, we'll say organized.

00:02:33.920 | I would say that Nietzsche is probably one of the people

00:02:40.520 | with the most influence on me,

00:02:43.400 | but I also feel like, to a degree,

00:02:46.400 | your personality will oftentimes dictate

00:02:50.560 | what philosophers that you can vibe with.

00:02:53.520 | - So what ideas from Nietzsche was it, the Übermensch?

00:02:56.680 | - Definitely the Übermensch is huge to me,

00:02:58.720 | because I see it as an extension of,

00:03:01.960 | basically, the religious concepts of God and higher ideals,

00:03:06.740 | but just put into a different, secular context.

00:03:09.720 | And the idea, also, that the Übermensch is striving

00:03:14.640 | and overcoming something that you're always working towards

00:03:17.480 | that very few will ever,

00:03:20.160 | it's not like the concept that you can just make them.

00:03:25.160 | It doesn't happen that way,

00:03:26.840 | and it's not based simply upon if you were, say,

00:03:30.840 | put through a genetic program

00:03:32.240 | and turned into a super soldier.

00:03:34.920 | That wouldn't make it.

00:03:36.480 | That's the very surface level and incorrect understanding

00:03:41.240 | of what the Übermensch is.

00:03:42.400 | The Übermensch is the idea of this kind of human

00:03:46.640 | that transcends all the weaker, lower aspects of humans,

00:03:51.640 | which we're full of.

00:03:53.280 | But I also think that there's an element

00:03:54.960 | in Nietzsche's writing that suggests

00:03:56.780 | that it's not something you can even be in all the time.

00:04:01.200 | Like, it's even a temporary state,

00:04:03.360 | because it's not something that we're capable of maintaining.

00:04:05.960 | - It's something to strive for.

00:04:07.440 | Like a morality, an image, an ideal,

00:04:12.280 | a set of principles that we can connect to

00:04:14.880 | that doesn't rely on otherworldly,

00:04:18.520 | kind of out there things.

00:04:20.280 | It's deeply human.

00:04:21.560 | - With Nietzsche, I feel like the concept of the Übermensch

00:04:24.600 | is something built on authenticity as well.

00:04:29.920 | Heidegger was like Dasein, right?

00:04:31.280 | So when you are authentic,

00:04:33.560 | and Heidegger being a follower of Nietzsche's

00:04:36.680 | and highly influenced by him.

00:04:38.280 | I think that the Übermensch is an example of authenticity

00:04:42.440 | in that it isn't about trying to be anything

00:04:46.280 | that you cannot be, or to go against who you are,

00:04:51.160 | but to actually understand that, accept that,

00:04:53.920 | and then work with what you can work with

00:04:55.760 | and create from your lump of clay that is you.

00:05:00.760 | Because I can't become...

00:05:03.880 | There's certain things that are just not gonna happen

00:05:07.000 | for me because it's not in my proclivity.

00:05:08.520 | I mean, I'm never gonna be five foot tall and 120 pounds.

00:05:12.560 | I mean, that again, I guess.

00:05:15.400 | But I know, as you get more in tune with who you are,

00:05:20.400 | as you start learning more about what unique things,

00:05:25.240 | or at least what that combination that makes you,

00:05:28.920 | that gestalt part of yourself,

00:05:31.040 | what those things are and how you can use them,

00:05:33.320 | then you can work towards being that,

00:05:36.640 | taking what that is and seeing if you can get to that point.

00:05:40.880 | Now, the likelihood is, no, maybe, probably never.

00:05:43.360 | I mean, but we can never achieve godhood,

00:05:44.920 | yet religion is a constant striving

00:05:48.440 | and a look at a higher ideal concept,

00:05:51.840 | even if it's multiple gods or one god.

00:05:53.960 | It's still essentially all built around this concept.

00:05:57.480 | Like, I like the idea of Catholics' original sin,

00:06:01.320 | if you think of sin not as evil, but as missing the mark,

00:06:04.920 | the archer's term where it derives,

00:06:06.360 | or even like in Spanish, without.

00:06:09.360 | So, as being, if you accept that you are imperfect,

00:06:13.040 | if you accept that you need to constantly strive,

00:06:15.400 | even against yourself, because you will figure out

00:06:18.800 | the best ways at which to submarine your own capabilities,

00:06:22.320 | submarine your own dreams and wishes and whatever,

00:06:25.400 | you will ruin them more than anything else.

00:06:27.240 | And you will tell yourself that you ruined them on purpose,

00:06:30.160 | for a good reason, or you'll say that you'll figure out

00:06:32.520 | a way to put it on everything else but yourself.

00:06:35.560 | And so, the idea of thinking of,

00:06:38.680 | well, as I'm starting off on this whole thing,

00:06:41.400 | I got a lot of work to do, and that's just the way it is.

00:06:43.560 | And I gotta figure out what areas those are gonna be.

00:06:45.920 | And so, I thought, oh yeah, if I think of original sin,

00:06:49.360 | actually can be, that can be kind of a clever idea,

00:06:52.380 | but it's also just accepting that we're all uniquely strange

00:06:57.380 | and unequal in our own ways,

00:07:01.120 | but we have to figure out how that fits in.

00:07:02.960 | - The word authenticity kinda connects to all of that.

00:07:05.860 | So, striving to be your authentic self means

00:07:08.780 | figuring out exactly the shape of the flaws,

00:07:11.620 | the character of your little demons that you get to play with

00:07:15.860 | and around them finding a path to whatever the hell

00:07:18.740 | ideal versions of yourself you can carve,

00:07:22.500 | and pretending like that's such a thing is even possible.

00:07:25.460 | The other idea about Nietzsche is,

00:07:27.980 | on his idea of morality, he presents the argument

00:07:30.740 | that morality's a human illusion,

00:07:33.900 | and that there's not such a thing as good and evil,

00:07:37.420 | and these are all kinda constructs.

00:07:39.460 | Do you think there's such a thing as good and evil

00:07:42.580 | that's connected to some objective reality?

00:07:44.900 | - I think that there are some,

00:07:47.680 | I actually do believe that there are some universals.

00:07:49.940 | I'm not Kantian in any way,

00:07:51.540 | but I do think that there are some universals.

00:07:53.420 | And the thing that actually brought me

00:07:54.740 | to even the concept of that was Jung.

00:07:57.060 | So, Jung's concept of the collective unconsciousness,

00:08:02.300 | and then taking that thought and then applying it

00:08:05.900 | to looking through history,

00:08:08.420 | and the most varied history you can find.

00:08:11.740 | So, I would say probably religion is your earliest one

00:08:15.140 | that you can get for written history,

00:08:17.420 | or written examples of human behavior and psychology

00:08:22.420 | at the furthest that we can look into it,

00:08:26.280 | from man's hand to whatever the medium is,

00:08:31.180 | cuneiform or whatever.

00:08:32.660 | But as you do that, and then let's say going

00:08:34.660 | from Mesopotamia to India to Europe,

00:08:39.660 | and just going from all these places,

00:08:41.800 | as disparate as they may seem,

00:08:43.540 | as many different cultures and ethnicities and religions,

00:08:45.820 | and how the religions will vary quite a bit

00:08:47.740 | from monotheist to polytheist, and so on and so forth.

00:08:52.740 | But then just seeing how there's all the through lines.

00:08:55.820 | And of course, Campbell, he did this much earlier

00:08:59.600 | than me thinking about it.

00:09:01.780 | But I think that by looking at things that way

00:09:06.780 | and starting to find the threads,

00:09:08.700 | instead of always just looking at everything

00:09:10.500 | as being its own compartmentalized concept,

00:09:12.980 | is if it only applies to this time,

00:09:15.540 | this people, getting overly pomo about it

00:09:18.580 | is just a really idiotic postmodern.

00:09:21.560 | - So, you think that there is, just like Joseph Campbell,

00:09:24.500 | there's a thread that connects all of these stories,

00:09:28.020 | narratives that we constructed for ourselves as we evolve,

00:09:31.000 | and that thread is grounded in some kind of absolute ideas

00:09:35.260 | of maybe on the morality side,

00:09:37.660 | which is the trickiest one, of good and evil.

00:09:39.380 | - Somewhat, yeah.

00:09:40.340 | I think that a lot of this stuff is just derived

00:09:42.580 | from a biological perspective.

00:09:44.300 | I feel like these things are innate within us.

00:09:47.340 | - Do you think our innately humans are good?

00:09:50.180 | Like we-- - No.

00:09:52.020 | I don't.

00:09:52.860 | I feel like, I also feel like there's an issue of scale too.

00:09:56.460 | Like Nassim Taleb likes to talk about how he views his,

00:10:01.300 | the way he interacts with groups in terms of scale.

00:10:05.260 | What is this thing about at the familial level,

00:10:08.300 | I'm a communist, and then at the civic level,

00:10:12.060 | I'm a Republican or something, and at this other level,

00:10:15.660 | and then it goes on, at the widest level,

00:10:17.580 | he's a libertarian or something of that nature.

00:10:20.180 | - Like fundamentally, human interaction changes--

00:10:22.620 | - On scale. - On scale.

00:10:23.780 | - On scale, and also from subjective

00:10:28.580 | to the environment around them.

00:10:30.140 | And I don't even mean environment just in the sake

00:10:32.700 | of physical environment, nature, right?

00:10:35.100 | Like nature's constantly trying to murder you.

00:10:36.700 | Well, it's not really trying, it's just nature's being nature

00:10:39.780 | and the universe is the universe,

00:10:41.180 | and at times it takes you out.

00:10:43.780 | It's just not with any particular compunction or prejudice.

00:10:48.780 | It's just, oops, sorry, there's no more dodo's.

00:10:52.780 | - My bad.

00:10:53.860 | - But don't you think the particular flavor

00:10:55.580 | of the complexity that is the human mind was created,

00:11:00.180 | like, let me make an argument

00:11:02.220 | for that all people are fundamentally good.

00:11:04.900 | - Okay.

00:11:05.740 | - There's an evolutionary advantage to striving

00:11:10.940 | to cooperate, to add more love to the world,

00:11:15.660 | of compassion, empathy, all that kind of stuff,

00:11:18.140 | and that the very thing that created the human mind

00:11:22.860 | was this evolutionary advantage,

00:11:25.740 | whatever the forces behind this evolutionary advantage.

00:11:28.180 | - And scale, yes.

00:11:29.660 | So when we're dealing with a small tribe, sure.

00:11:33.420 | When you meet another tribe, maybe.

00:11:36.540 | There's other factors that are going into that.

00:11:38.980 | Let's say you scale up and so your 150

00:11:43.980 | has exceeded their 150, and you start to get

00:11:47.660 | to a certain point where you can't really be close enough

00:11:52.660 | to someone down the line of that next,

00:11:56.940 | like that 150's 150, 150, and they just now

00:12:00.020 | all of a sudden become some guy, whatever.

00:12:04.220 | And when it comes to some guy, once it starts hitting scale,

00:12:08.260 | I don't know that it's capable.

00:12:10.860 | People can be as magnanimous to a stranger

00:12:16.780 | as to the known.

00:12:18.500 | If they orient themselves to be secure enough,

00:12:23.220 | 'cause it does come to security, insecurity,

00:12:25.460 | in one way or the other, either brought on by the unknown,

00:12:28.460 | brought on by an actual threat, brought on by even their own

00:12:32.300 | as we would use the word insecurity

00:12:34.140 | in that their own insecurity within their own capabilities,

00:12:36.780 | their own belief in themselves, all these things

00:12:40.260 | can change things from being compassionate

00:12:44.180 | and what have you to at least at the very,

00:12:46.620 | maybe not evil, but self-interest driven

00:12:49.620 | to the point of negative results for those that aren't.

00:12:54.620 | You know what I mean?

00:12:55.860 | - Right, but another way to frame that is maybe

00:12:59.900 | it's less about scale and more about the amount

00:13:01.900 | of resources available, so if we're overflowing

00:13:05.100 | with resources in terms of security and safety,

00:13:10.100 | all the things you've mentioned,

00:13:12.620 | if we have more than enough resources,

00:13:15.260 | then the way we treat a stranger,

00:13:16.900 | the way we position ourselves towards that stranger

00:13:19.580 | might be in a way that allows us to be our real human selves

00:13:24.580 | as opposed to sort of our animal self.

00:13:28.020 | And therefore, it's mostly about how clever

00:13:30.620 | can we descendants of apes be in coming up

00:13:33.380 | with all cool kinds of technologies and ways

00:13:36.260 | to efficiently use the resources we have

00:13:39.500 | such that we're not constrained.

00:13:41.180 | And my hope is that human innovation

00:13:46.180 | will outpace the growth of our,

00:13:49.740 | the number of people that are starving for resources.

00:13:53.140 | - Yes, I think that there's a lot of rationality

00:13:57.060 | behind this argument.

00:13:59.260 | And in some ways, I agree, and in a lot of ways,

00:14:04.260 | I see it as missing the point of how the system

00:14:09.780 | is a resource, but it's missing the point

00:14:12.380 | of how this experiment has been playing out across time.

00:14:15.540 | When you look at what, for one, it's like define resources.

00:14:20.540 | What is a resource as humans would define it,

00:14:25.700 | or wealth even?

00:14:28.620 | And so you can say, well, an iPhone's a resource,

00:14:32.900 | the internet's a resource, water obviously is a resource,

00:14:36.620 | what is more important to human beings?

00:14:39.100 | Water, internet, or iPhones?

00:14:41.580 | It's water, right?

00:14:42.700 | So if we look at resources, if we start with

00:14:46.300 | what do human beings need to live?

00:14:48.780 | I mean, actually live, not live here

00:14:52.420 | in this bullshit fantasy creation extension

00:14:56.340 | of our own ingenuity and a prison of our own creation

00:14:59.900 | and also a paradise of our own creation.

00:15:02.260 | But this is not how human beings normally live.

00:15:05.020 | This is all built upon stuff,

00:15:06.820 | this is built on concept, on idea,

00:15:10.980 | and some of it's built on just, well, this is the paradigm,

00:15:14.060 | so this is what you do.

00:15:15.900 | Human beings need food, they need water to survive,

00:15:19.780 | they need shelter from the elements,

00:15:22.620 | and they need certain skills to perpetuate these things

00:15:26.500 | and be able to pass them down so that they can,

00:15:28.700 | so that these things don't become,

00:15:30.840 | you don't end up in this gap where you have

00:15:34.460 | to relearn things, 'cause if it's lost,

00:15:37.820 | then that time before you can get it back again

00:15:41.660 | is going to be dark ages of sorts,

00:15:44.820 | or it's going to be highly detrimental to your group,

00:15:48.260 | because not knowing how to fish, not knowing how to hunt,

00:15:51.540 | not knowing how to even clean and cook the game

00:15:55.180 | once you have it could be lethal.

00:15:58.420 | - That's fascinating to think of that as a basic resource,

00:16:00.740 | the knowledge to attain the very low level things

00:16:03.540 | of water and food.

00:16:04.380 | - You'll figure it out.

00:16:05.540 | We did it once before, and we've done it over and over

00:16:08.380 | and over and over again.

00:16:09.580 | - It's just costly.

00:16:11.060 | - Yes, it has costs, for sure.

00:16:13.260 | But when you think of how you look at the,

00:16:19.540 | well, we'll just deal with the first world of the West.

00:16:23.400 | You look at the pathway of Western civilization

00:16:28.400 | and its growth, and then you look at how technology

00:16:32.700 | has been injected into it over time,

00:16:34.980 | how it magnifies things or pushes things

00:16:39.180 | at orders of magnitude faster,

00:16:41.900 | and then the internet comes along, and even faster.

00:16:44.420 | So you're watching industrial revolution

00:16:45.980 | to what is it, the capacitor, and then so on.

00:16:50.580 | It goes further and further.

00:16:51.820 | And as the internet and technology,

00:16:54.580 | especially on the electronic side of things,

00:16:57.020 | start increasing in capability,

00:16:59.380 | massively outpaces even our necessity for it at times.

00:17:04.380 | It becomes plant obsolescence happens quicker

00:17:08.380 | and over and over and over again.

00:17:10.140 | And wealth increases, increases, increases, increases

00:17:13.120 | in terms of the things that we're able to acquire.

00:17:16.940 | I've seen homeless people with smartphones.

00:17:19.740 | So we're living in the most wealth-laden,

00:17:23.680 | luxury-laden age of all of humanity yet.

00:17:29.520 | What happens when we see calamity

00:17:32.600 | or people go on hard time?

00:17:34.000 | What are the things that they value?

00:17:36.720 | What do people go to an argument about the cost

00:17:39.720 | of things that are luxury items generally

00:17:41.760 | and not necessity items?

00:17:44.680 | We get into fights about things that are,

00:17:49.680 | at the end of the day, not necessities to us.

00:17:53.320 | People are so concerned about Netflix and the internet.

00:17:57.560 | Personally, I'm very concerned about the internet

00:17:59.720 | because I look at it as my own little personal library

00:18:02.640 | of Alexandria in my pocket.

00:18:05.080 | That's what I love about it.

00:18:06.040 | And the ability to have a tool as effective as it is,

00:18:09.040 | even though I'm in a constant battle,

00:18:10.760 | to not let that tool become a vice

00:18:13.880 | or to become something that actually brings me

00:18:17.560 | to a lower state.

00:18:19.040 | - But the question is, are we willing to murder each other

00:18:23.680 | over Netflix versus murder each other over water?

00:18:27.240 | - We're willing to murder each other over water.

00:18:29.760 | That's a given.

00:18:30.800 | - Right, but that's our animalistic selves.

00:18:33.160 | - Well, it's also a necessity for,

00:18:35.000 | it's animalistic, but it's also either you do it

00:18:36.920 | or you don't, right?

00:18:38.560 | Unless somebody's willing to share that water

00:18:40.440 | or if that water is of such a limited capability

00:18:44.000 | or such a limited amount, then you will have to murder

00:18:50.360 | to have that water.

00:18:51.200 | - With Netflix, the argument is the higher we get up

00:18:53.760 | to this hierarchy of what we consider

00:18:57.600 | in Los Angeles resources, we're less willing

00:19:01.240 | to commit violence.

00:19:03.000 | - We're less willing to commit violence,

00:19:05.160 | I would say, over Netflix, but we are willing

00:19:06.720 | to commit violence over Netflix,

00:19:07.920 | over everything associated with Netflix,

00:19:09.500 | over televisions, over sneakers, over,

00:19:12.480 | I mean, when we look at a good,

00:19:16.920 | I mean, the majority of the stuff that came

00:19:20.560 | with the riots, I mean, it was used car dealerships,

00:19:24.520 | targets, I mean, and then you look and it's like,

00:19:27.880 | well, okay, what are people, what do they gotta,

00:19:30.440 | what are they so hell-bent to get out of this whole thing?

00:19:34.800 | And I'm even talking about the ideological elements

00:19:36.680 | or anything like that, just like, okay,

00:19:38.000 | something's going on, boom, looting, whatever.

00:19:40.040 | - Yeah, other stuff.

00:19:41.200 | - What are you gonna loot?

00:19:42.640 | You'll have AOC say, oh, people needing bread.

00:19:45.680 | I didn't see a single loaf of bread.

00:19:48.680 | I saw televisions and shoes. - It's poetry, Josh.

00:19:52.160 | - But to me, it is poetry in a sense,

00:19:54.720 | because you get to see how we actually are operating,

00:19:59.720 | what is becoming first principles to most people.

00:20:03.560 | - Wait, wait, but you could also argue, though,

00:20:05.400 | that those riots were more like the madness of crowds,

00:20:07.680 | which is like-- - Oh, it's definitely

00:20:08.680 | a lot more than just that.

00:20:10.060 | I'm just saying that given a chance, it's like, okay,

00:20:12.720 | boom, the lights are off, the grid is down,

00:20:15.840 | we've hacked into the whole system.

00:20:18.700 | Turned into an '80s movie.

00:20:19.860 | And you have the ability to go get ahold of whatever it is

00:20:24.860 | that you think is most important.

00:20:26.540 | And what do we do?

00:20:27.700 | And I say we, as in, you know, including all of us,

00:20:30.620 | we grab a TV, we attack it,

00:20:33.020 | we break into a sneaker store in Melrose.

00:20:35.260 | We do, it's just like, ah, we steal giant cause statues,

00:20:39.820 | where the value of that is completely market-driven.

00:20:43.460 | It's just a piece of polypropylene or whatever, butyl,

00:20:46.760 | and it's cool, I'm a big fan of art.

00:20:49.980 | But it's like, (laughs)

00:20:53.500 | you know, I can't eat that, and at the end of the day,

00:20:55.900 | man, you're sitting there with your,

00:20:57.620 | like, what'd you do today, honey, what'd you get?

00:20:59.340 | You know, man, we were able to, you know,

00:21:01.300 | oh, I got this designer art statue.

00:21:04.220 | Are you gonna go, well, you can't really sell it

00:21:07.820 | on the art markets, where people

00:21:09.820 | are really gonna pay for it, so are you gonna become

00:21:12.020 | an underground art dealer with your one piece of cause art?

00:21:15.100 | - One interesting thing, just before I forget it,

00:21:17.480 | you mentioned the Library of Alexandria, and your--

00:21:21.240 | - Phone.

00:21:22.400 | - Well, your phone, but also just thinking

00:21:25.160 | of your little world that you're creating

00:21:27.240 | for yourself on the internet.

00:21:28.320 | That's a really powerful way to actually phrase it.

00:21:30.600 | One of the things that, you've been on Joe Rogan

00:21:33.400 | several times, I've always--

00:21:34.240 | - Although everybody always comes to me,

00:21:35.360 | and go, oh, that was so great, I didn't know,

00:21:36.960 | you've been on Joe Rogan?

00:21:38.440 | I go, this is like my fifth time, dude.

00:21:40.280 | - I've been a fan of yours for a long time,

00:21:42.120 | from other avenues.

00:21:45.180 | - This is a long time coming, actually.

00:21:46.740 | Everybody, you have no idea how many times

00:21:49.260 | through messaging and missing each other over the years,

00:21:54.020 | this is ridiculous, this is a long time coming.

00:21:56.160 | You don't realize how special this is for us.

00:21:58.700 | - Well, I'm also starstruck.

00:22:00.020 | We'll talk about this, but you symbolize something

00:22:02.380 | very important to me through my journey,

00:22:05.700 | through wrestling, through jiu-jitsu, through judo,

00:22:08.260 | through just street fighting, through just combat.

00:22:11.460 | There's, you're the, in some sense,

00:22:14.100 | the devil on my shoulder of violence.

00:22:17.780 | Devil gets a bad rap.

00:22:22.300 | - He does get a bad rap.

00:22:23.300 | I realize, sitting encased in ice down

00:22:26.420 | at that low-ass level.

00:22:27.940 | - But the angel side is more like the athletic,

00:22:32.740 | the sport, the science, the technical,

00:22:35.540 | the chess side of things.

00:22:37.580 | But on the Library of Alexandria, let me ask,

00:22:41.220 | because you were on Joe Rogan,

00:22:43.220 | it does make me really sad, and I realize

00:22:46.980 | that I'm just probably being romantic,

00:22:48.540 | that his, most of his library of interviews

00:22:53.260 | that were on YouTube have now been taken down

00:22:56.660 | because he went to Spotify.

00:22:58.300 | And that was the first, I'm probably an idiot,

00:23:00.420 | but it was the first time I realized

00:23:03.020 | that this knowledge that we've been building up

00:23:05.220 | on the internet doesn't necessarily last forever.

00:23:08.340 | - No, it doesn't, unless you preserve it.

00:23:10.420 | I mean, it's like all things.

00:23:11.820 | If you do not preserve them, if you do not make efforts,

00:23:16.820 | so many of my, it just really brings to mind

00:23:19.540 | right off the top of my head, so many friends of mine

00:23:22.700 | that are Jewish, they're basically secular.

00:23:27.380 | But yet, through even the secular aspect

00:23:31.700 | of just keeping the traditions alive,

00:23:33.220 | it's like, well, you could always pick a book

00:23:35.620 | and read about it, clearly, it's called the Torah.

00:23:39.380 | But if you don't put these things into action,

00:23:44.340 | if you don't make them a part of your consciousness,

00:23:48.580 | maybe even subconsciousness, just through repetition,

00:23:52.580 | they will die, they will become simply something

00:23:55.420 | that exists somewhere until you find it again.

00:23:58.980 | And Carl Gottsch used to say something,

00:24:00.940 | he would say that I don't invent moves,

00:24:03.920 | I just rediscover them.

00:24:05.780 | But yet, Gottsch and Billy Robinson also would understand

00:24:10.460 | that if someone's not carrying the torch, it'll go out.

00:24:16.380 | Now, that doesn't mean fire can't be rekindled,

00:24:18.740 | it just means that that torch no longer

00:24:21.780 | is lighting the way on this knowledge.

00:24:24.300 | And so it's important to be an individual,

00:24:29.300 | even on an individual level, to be a repository

00:24:32.660 | for aspects of knowledge.

00:24:35.700 | - You mentioned Gottsch, you consider yourself

00:24:40.140 | a catch wrestler, so I've mentioned to you offline

00:24:45.940 | that I competed in a couple of catch wrestling tournaments.

00:24:49.180 | Can we go Wikipedia level at the very basic,

00:24:52.300 | you're the exactly right person to ask,

00:24:54.340 | what is catch wrestling, and what are

00:24:57.020 | its defining principles?

00:24:58.580 | - I would say the easiest way for us to talk about

00:25:02.660 | and give an overview of what catch is,

00:25:07.660 | in the simplest terms, is think of collegiate wrestling

00:25:12.180 | with submissions, that is essentially what catch is.

00:25:15.780 | And it's not surprising because collegiate wrestling

00:25:18.300 | is actually derived from catch as catch can.

00:25:21.480 | It's just that over time, certain aspects were removed

00:25:25.620 | from the competition structure, so that they became

00:25:30.540 | null elements, things that were discarded.

00:25:33.300 | But it's funny that you can take high level

00:25:36.940 | amateur collegiate types, and you can show them a move

00:25:42.540 | and then add a little bit to it and go,

00:25:44.540 | oh, well hey, that was just like what we already do here,

00:25:47.180 | but except, oh, I didn't know you could take it

00:25:49.780 | all the way to this point, or things of that nature,

00:25:53.080 | especially when it comes to professional wrestling,

00:25:54.820 | like teaching people, no, I know you're just using this

00:25:58.260 | for in a show, but this is actually a real move

00:26:00.780 | and here's how it really feels.

00:26:02.140 | - And so collegiate wrestling, and wrestling in general

00:26:04.940 | for people who are not aware, is basically two people

00:26:07.580 | start on their feet, and they have to score,

00:26:10.580 | they're trying to take each other down,

00:26:12.180 | and they have to, they score points along the way.

00:26:15.860 | You can end matches by pinning them, for example,

00:26:19.100 | on their back.

00:26:20.460 | I think one way to describe wrestling is,

00:26:23.960 | it's very much about figuring out ways

00:26:27.100 | to establish control and leverage in these kind of tie-ups,

00:26:30.860 | or there's different styles where you can do more

00:26:35.740 | from a distance to where it's more about the timing

00:26:38.060 | and all that kind of stuff.

00:26:39.580 | Ultimately, it's an art of both upper body and lower body,

00:26:43.540 | and you could choose the different puzzles

00:26:45.180 | that you solve there.

00:26:46.400 | You could be attacking the head, the arms,

00:26:49.600 | you could be attacking the legs.

00:26:51.440 | There's also part of collegiate wrestling

00:26:53.220 | that's on the ground that has more,

00:26:56.380 | what's called a referee's position or whatever.

00:26:58.100 | - Right, the referee's position where you're on

00:27:00.780 | your hands and knees, basically.

00:27:02.500 | And so--

00:27:04.020 | - Do you understand what that's supposed to simulate?

00:27:06.420 | Why is that one of the standard positions?

00:27:08.500 | - It's one of the standard positions because,

00:27:10.220 | one, it's one of the easiest ways to actually get up,

00:27:13.220 | but two, it's because you cannot be on your back.

00:27:15.980 | If you're on your back, you're getting pinned.

00:27:17.940 | And back exposure, or being pinned,

00:27:22.100 | is pretty much the universal wrestling thing.

00:27:26.900 | One, taking the guy from their feet to the floor,

00:27:30.900 | and two, pinning them.

00:27:33.820 | As you go from, what is it,

00:27:36.140 | Cornish wrestling, Turkish oil wrestling,

00:27:40.460 | Mongolian, Sumo, Indian,

00:27:44.180 | well, they'll call it Pellwani, it's also called Kushti,

00:27:49.580 | Jiu-Jitsu, Judo, so many of them.

00:27:53.460 | Isombo, even if it doesn't end the match,

00:27:58.060 | it's still one of the most important aspects

00:28:00.540 | of the competition itself across every style.

00:28:05.260 | - And this is where submission, like catch wrestling,

00:28:07.900 | or submission wrestling, or Jiu-Jitsu feels different.

00:28:11.900 | It seems like for most wrestling, for a lot of wrestling,

00:28:16.060 | the dominance is the goal, as opposed to submission,

00:28:21.060 | which I guess those two are related,

00:28:25.340 | but dominating the position.

00:28:27.340 | So that's what pinning is.

00:28:28.420 | It's almost like breaking your opponent,

00:28:31.860 | breaking through all of their defenses

00:28:36.060 | to where they're completely defenseless

00:28:37.580 | and you can do anything with them that you want.

00:28:39.180 | Maybe that's what could be a definition of dominance,

00:28:41.880 | I don't know. (laughs)

00:28:44.060 | - It sounds very much like a chain to a radiator, yeah.

00:28:46.820 | - Yeah. (laughs)

00:28:48.780 | Yeah, there's a thread that connects all partners.

00:28:52.380 | But submission feels different.

00:28:54.260 | - It is actually different when you think about it

00:28:57.300 | across the landscape.

00:28:58.980 | I don't think radically different,

00:29:00.240 | but still slightly different in that,

00:29:02.900 | if you think of wrestling as being derived

00:29:04.900 | from combat, right?

00:29:07.620 | So, well, it is combat sports, but more lethal combat.

00:29:11.940 | Getting somebody off their feet and onto their back

00:29:14.580 | is about as lethal a place for the person on bottom to be.

00:29:17.860 | In general, I mean, don't come at me with your talks

00:29:22.460 | about your fucking worm guards and blah, blah, blah,

00:29:25.420 | and whatever spider, barren, okay, get out of here with that.

00:29:29.180 | We're not talking about you

00:29:30.780 | in this highly regimented sporting environment.

00:29:34.300 | We're talking about general, all the body hair,

00:29:37.780 | none of the waxing human beings.

00:29:39.620 | So, getting someone on their back, okay.

00:29:44.620 | As you're trying to get up,

00:29:47.060 | you're getting hit with a rock or stabbed

00:29:48.660 | or what have you, set on fire, who knows.

00:29:52.620 | Generally, these conflicts are not just isolated

00:29:55.400 | to one-on-one.

00:29:57.460 | If it's four-on-two, your buddy that was with you

00:30:01.320 | back-to-back, now he's on his back.

00:30:03.220 | What do you think?

00:30:04.060 | Now it's gonna be one-on-one while three go on one.

00:30:06.620 | So, and then you go, you elevate this

00:30:08.700 | to armored combat, right?

00:30:10.940 | And it's boom, put 'em on the ground.

00:30:12.460 | Oh, crap, it's hard to get up.

00:30:13.700 | Well, while you're struggling to get up, stab.

00:30:16.300 | That's where jujitsu's concepts come from

00:30:18.860 | with all their leveraging and off-balancing is,

00:30:20.900 | oh man, if I end up in this situation

00:30:23.160 | in tight, close quarters combat,

00:30:24.660 | yes, we could fight it out with swords and knives

00:30:27.140 | and what have you, but it's way easier

00:30:29.860 | if the first thing I can do is foot sweep you on your back

00:30:33.900 | and then pull my knife and just go stick.

00:30:36.380 | - Is there a thread that connects

00:30:38.420 | all of these different arts from, not just arts,

00:30:41.800 | but from the very base violence of war,

00:30:45.400 | just like you said, that there's no rules,

00:30:47.780 | to the very regimented IBJF--

00:30:52.340 | - I do. - Jujitsu tournaments.

00:30:53.980 | And just, you've kinda laid out some of it,

00:30:55.600 | but can you go all the way to the--

00:30:57.500 | - So, when you start off with absolute skills

00:31:01.120 | in the sense of absolute offense and defense

00:31:04.200 | in the taking or preserving of life,

00:31:07.260 | full-on at its purest form of self-defense

00:31:12.260 | and self-preservation, and then you extrapolate

00:31:18.100 | part of that in that all animals train in violence.

00:31:23.100 | All play usually degenerates into some sort of soft violence.

00:31:27.940 | So, be it cats when they're kittens and puppies,

00:31:31.000 | and everything learns how to kill, how to fight.

00:31:34.080 | Not that, just that dumb alpha meme stuff

00:31:40.020 | where the idea is that, oh, by being alpha,

00:31:42.180 | that means you run around basically

00:31:43.540 | just being a bully and a shithead.

00:31:45.060 | No, actually, alpha wolves spend very little time fighting

00:31:50.060 | because if you were actually alpha,

00:31:52.380 | you don't get into fights.

00:31:54.060 | There's no need to.

00:31:55.940 | And if you're probably getting into

00:31:58.780 | any large amount of fights,

00:32:00.220 | it's probably 'cause you're being shitty at being an alpha,

00:32:02.700 | and now people are tired of you being in charge.

00:32:05.240 | And yet, in the animal world,

00:32:08.660 | and it would be the same for human beings

00:32:10.700 | at that base beginning level of violence,

00:32:14.500 | there's a big risk.

00:32:17.060 | So, I know that we live in this place with healthcare,

00:32:21.860 | or you might be in a place with nationalized health,

00:32:24.020 | whatever, right?

00:32:24.860 | There's Band-Aids, there's penicillin,

00:32:30.180 | there's all that kind of stuff.

00:32:32.420 | But that's not the normal way of things.

00:32:36.100 | - There's a channel that just hurts me every time.

00:32:40.580 | I used to follow, and I had to unfollow it

00:32:42.980 | 'cause it was too painful for me as a human being

00:32:44.660 | called Nature Is Metal on Instagram.

00:32:47.300 | It was sobering, and then it was like, this is too sobering.

00:32:51.180 | - It's very sobering.

00:32:52.900 | - So, in there, the risk is at its highest level.

00:32:56.500 | The damage you take, the winner walks away hurt.

00:33:01.500 | - Getting lamed when you need every aspect

00:33:06.460 | of your physical and athletic faculties to survive

00:33:10.780 | because is it gonna be the, this isn't the first,

00:33:13.900 | and it's definitely not gonna be the last,

00:33:15.540 | especially if you're the slowest one.

00:33:17.380 | What is it?

00:33:20.180 | It's a lyric from a clutch song.

00:33:23.740 | Don't go for the fat ones, just go for the slow ones.

00:33:26.820 | (laughing)

00:33:28.900 | - Oh, man, but that universal truth of the way nature works.

00:33:33.220 | You said it's not cruel, it's just the way it is.

00:33:36.300 | - Yeah, I mean, watch animals get into fights

00:33:38.980 | on any of these sort of documentary stuff.

00:33:41.900 | You'll see an intense, short, and then dispersal.

00:33:45.980 | Like, you'll see as soon as one feels like,

00:33:47.900 | oh, things have switched just enough,

00:33:49.780 | boom, the bear or whatever it is takes off.

00:33:51.980 | It's like, I'm not, I'm done with this.

00:33:53.740 | Because if you can get out of there

00:33:55.380 | with just some scars and what have you, okay.

00:33:58.260 | You lose an eye, nah, it's not as good.

00:34:01.460 | You really get hurt bad and get infected, you're done.

00:34:04.980 | So there's a serious risk to be,

00:34:07.900 | that can come with these sort of things.

00:34:10.860 | Yet, I believe that we are inherently born

00:34:15.860 | for at least aspects of use of violence.

00:34:19.820 | And so at the end of the day,

00:34:22.580 | we need these things not just to survive each other,

00:34:26.180 | but they're a part of being able to hunt and other things.

00:34:30.420 | - So violence is a part of human nature.

00:34:33.340 | - Violence is, it's an absolute.

00:34:36.060 | It is in every person, it is a part of every interaction,

00:34:38.700 | it is a part of every law, everything.

00:34:41.660 | And I'm not, by the way, I'm not an ANCAP,

00:34:43.900 | so don't hit your wagon to me on that one.

00:34:47.220 | - ANCAP is anarchic capitalist.

00:34:48.780 | - Anarchic capitalist, yes.

00:34:50.740 | Not an ANCAP.

00:34:52.460 | - They have nice book shops.

00:34:54.460 | - Yeah, they do.

00:34:55.300 | I mean, I'm not gonna sit here and shit talk ANCAPs.

00:34:59.500 | Although I also used to get into the conversations

00:35:01.580 | with an ANCOM, anarcho-communist, a good friend of mine,

00:35:06.580 | and he would bring up this stuff and I'm like,

00:35:11.300 | "Yeah, cool, man, I'm down with anarchy.

00:35:13.640 | "You ain't gonna like it."

00:35:15.220 | What do you mean?

00:35:16.060 | I go, 'cause I'm gonna take all,

00:35:17.220 | I'm gonna gather all kinds of people together.

00:35:18.820 | I'm gonna make this, I'm gonna get the strongest together

00:35:20.700 | and I'm going to take your shit.

00:35:22.500 | - Okay, can I ask you, on that topic,

00:35:25.140 | I have a friend of mine now,

00:35:27.680 | a fellow Russian, Ukrainian, Michael Malice.

00:35:33.580 | - Oh, yeah, I'm familiar with Michael Malice.

00:35:35.580 | I watched a little bit of your guys' conversation.

00:35:38.660 | - So this is really good to ask you because--

00:35:42.600 | - I like how he's in the white suit

00:35:44.340 | and you're in the white and black.

00:35:46.820 | But he lives in New York City.

00:35:49.580 | He espouses ideas of anarchism.

00:35:52.260 | And his idea, and this is different

00:35:55.740 | than sort of the Ayn Rand set of ideas,

00:36:00.500 | that there's a line between sort of capitalism

00:36:02.700 | that's backed by the state and just pure anarchism.

00:36:05.720 | And his idea that violence won't take over in an anarchism

00:36:13.100 | is one that feels to me not grounded in reality.

00:36:18.100 | I may be wrong.

00:36:19.700 | So is there some, so the idea with pure capitalism is that--

00:36:24.700 | - You mean laissez-faire, completely deregulated?

00:36:28.100 | Yeah, well, what it will agree, it'll end up in,

00:36:30.900 | one, it'll end up in, if you're anti-globalist,

00:36:34.260 | it's gonna be that.

00:36:35.700 | It's gonna be globalist 100% because it has no,

00:36:40.140 | pure capitalism has no consideration for,

00:36:43.920 | has no consideration for your native users or of any sort.

00:36:49.420 | Like it doesn't-- - Yeah, land doesn't matter.

00:36:51.020 | But the idea of governments is that the land,

00:36:53.300 | the little piece of land geographically you're born on

00:36:56.380 | means you're going to stick to whatever founding documents

00:36:59.620 | created that little land.

00:37:01.060 | So anarchism is against that.

00:37:04.120 | And the argument is you should be able to choose

00:37:06.260 | which ideas you live with.

00:37:09.040 | And the concern there is nobody,

00:37:12.380 | this geographical little land, the governments

00:37:15.940 | that organize on that land will not,

00:37:19.720 | do not need to protect you from the violence.

00:37:21.860 | And my sense is there does need to be an army,

00:37:24.040 | there does need to be police that help,

00:37:27.660 | however the form that police takes.

00:37:29.460 | But there needs to be a more centralized,

00:37:33.060 | not completely centralized, but more centralized

00:37:36.180 | safety net of to protect you from the violence.

00:37:39.400 | - Scale again, right?

00:37:40.440 | So if you want to have your anarchist utopia,

00:37:44.760 | well, we won't call it utopia,

00:37:46.280 | your anarchist creation here.

00:37:49.140 | At certain scale, I'm sure it's doable, you know?

00:37:53.740 | But as it scales, as the scale increases,

00:37:58.440 | it's completely untenable and a state will emerge.

00:38:02.060 | A state will always emerge. - A state will always emerge.

00:38:03.880 | - 'Cause even, people always think of states

00:38:05.980 | as people rubbing their hands and smoking cigars

00:38:08.680 | in back rooms and just out of nowhere coming around

00:38:11.440 | and just like, oh, we're gonna create

00:38:12.640 | this big centralized thing and just so that we can

00:38:14.680 | tell everybody what to do and we can be in charge.

00:38:17.920 | I mean, I know that there are people like that that exist,

00:38:20.920 | that they would like to do things of that nature

00:38:23.280 | and that they see the use of power

00:38:26.760 | as something to be used more for their personal gains

00:38:32.120 | over first, which again, self-interest and human beings.

00:38:36.160 | But eventually, people want, they want something to go like,

00:38:41.160 | okay, who's taking care of this

00:38:45.440 | and who's taking care of that?

00:38:46.840 | And how do we create some sort of protocol for this?

00:38:51.840 | Like, okay, well, when it's not Bob, when is it Susie?

00:38:56.080 | When is it whatever?

00:38:56.920 | I mean, like how do we, it's gotta get done

00:38:59.720 | if we want this thing to become bigger,

00:39:01.120 | if we want all of our plumbing to work right,

00:39:04.520 | if we want, it's just, I'm sorry, a state's gonna happen.

00:39:06.920 | A state is also, when you think about it,

00:39:10.720 | is supposed to have consideration to tribe, right?

00:39:13.580 | So if people think that we're not tribes,

00:39:15.880 | well, you're not really thinking very deeply.

00:39:18.960 | We're all tribes of a sort.

00:39:20.640 | And everybody likes to use the word tribalism

00:39:23.960 | and this idea of this antagonistic concept.

00:39:27.280 | But, and while sure, tribalism can be antagonistic,

00:39:30.520 | tribalism can also be a positive thing,

00:39:33.520 | or I could just say it just seems to be a natural thing.

00:39:36.080 | People, they create their groups of one sort or another.

00:39:40.160 | And so when you have, well, when you think about

00:39:45.160 | when nation states really started to become a thing,

00:39:47.840 | and I don't mean even the more modern-looking variants

00:39:52.160 | that we could think back of in, say, the 19th century

00:39:54.640 | or something like that.

00:39:56.480 | Even older than that.

00:39:57.480 | I mean, you think the Assyrians

00:39:58.480 | didn't have a state of some sort?

00:40:00.120 | Of course they did.

00:40:01.020 | How do you increase your empire

00:40:05.120 | if you don't actually have a place to start from?

00:40:07.320 | - It has to be a ruler.

00:40:08.160 | So you're saying like naturally,

00:40:09.800 | when you start talking and thinking about scale of humans,

00:40:13.160 | naturally states emerge.

00:40:16.360 | And can we try to make an argument for anarchism,

00:40:20.760 | which is--

00:40:21.600 | - Uh.

00:40:22.680 | - Okay, okay, okay.

00:40:24.280 | (laughing)

00:40:25.760 | So anarchy in a sense is an opposition

00:40:30.000 | to the unhelpful, unproductive, inefficient bureaucracies

00:40:34.160 | that eventually the states lead to.

00:40:37.000 | - Yes, and that's, we can see, I mean,

00:40:39.400 | I would say less anarchy, more study James Burnham.

00:40:44.400 | Or, well, anybody that wants to talk about

00:40:51.960 | the managerial problem and the manager--

00:40:55.520 | - I see, so you have a sense, a hope,

00:40:59.020 | maybe let's think like what is the path forward

00:41:01.360 | with the inefficient state?

00:41:04.200 | Is it revolution or is it to work within the system

00:41:07.520 | to constantly improve it, to manage--

00:41:08.960 | - Man, I don't know that one.

00:41:10.320 | I mean, my general sense,

00:41:12.680 | and maybe this is the Nietzschean part of me,

00:41:14.560 | is that yeah, it would take,

00:41:17.560 | maybe not even just,

00:41:18.920 | maybe not even defining it specifically as revolution.

00:41:22.120 | Maybe it would just take just total calamity

00:41:25.040 | to get people to stop being--

00:41:26.920 | - To pick people up.

00:41:28.260 | - To not stop being a lesser version of themselves,

00:41:30.580 | to stop thinking more about things from the paradigm

00:41:35.580 | that we exist in now where we're giving so much value

00:41:39.540 | to stuff that isn't really all that valuable.

00:41:42.180 | We're so concerned about likes,

00:41:45.140 | and I don't just mean whether we get 'em or not,

00:41:47.580 | but that, oh man, maybe we should take this off

00:41:50.420 | of our platform 'cause this is too destabilizing to people.

00:41:53.220 | 'Cause once you exceed Dunbar's number,

00:41:54.860 | I think it's actually, without having the right faculties,

00:41:59.860 | which would need to be developed

00:42:03.400 | because this is dealing with tech that brings things,

00:42:08.160 | ways of approaching being that we are not naturally programmed

00:42:13.160 | to be able to handle appropriately.

00:42:17.920 | So, and I think it's even more detrimental

00:42:22.360 | to women than men because I think women

00:42:26.260 | have a more natural proclivity towards group association

00:42:31.260 | and more group-oriented thinking and patterning.

00:42:37.380 | And now, and also coupled with seemingly more sensitivity

00:42:43.260 | towards human states.

00:42:49.700 | So I feel like women, the classic idea is like,

00:42:52.800 | oh, women are psychic, you have a sixth sense

00:42:54.860 | and what have you.

00:42:55.700 | And I think that's just a way of simplifying

00:43:00.700 | what I think is that women may be more in tune

00:43:05.260 | with picking up on the unsaid.

00:43:07.560 | Like they might be better at seeing physical cues,

00:43:12.560 | inflection and tone, like different,

00:43:14.220 | like they may be far more sensitive to these things,

00:43:16.560 | which to me would make sense

00:43:17.580 | because dealing with children that can't communicate.

00:43:22.580 | So, so--

00:43:24.700 | - It's generally more empathetic

00:43:25.900 | in all the full forms of human interaction.

00:43:26.740 | - Right, now, okay, now, whether it be a woman or a man,

00:43:29.860 | but especially with even the social push

00:43:34.340 | on this concept of empathy, which of course,

00:43:36.820 | it gets to the point where it loses any meaning anymore.

00:43:39.220 | Like people use the word empathy

00:43:41.060 | absolutely incorrectly all the time

00:43:42.580 | and they don't even understand

00:43:44.140 | what you're really asking of people.

00:43:47.020 | But let's just take it as we're using empathy

00:43:49.740 | in the correct sense and you're taking on

00:43:51.960 | the emotional content of the thing itself.

00:43:55.320 | Now you open that up to thousands of people,

00:43:57.940 | maybe hundreds of thousands of people all across the world

00:44:01.420 | that you will never meet, that you will never know,

00:44:03.340 | that you're not even getting an actual true representation

00:44:06.680 | most of the time of who these people are.

00:44:08.420 | You're meeting persona.

00:44:09.880 | And some of these personas are even deliberately created

00:44:15.680 | to elicit a response inauthentically.

00:44:20.020 | - Are you referring to bots or artists?

00:44:22.260 | - Could be bots or actual people.

00:44:24.260 | Bots are one thing, but I mean,

00:44:25.580 | there are literal people out there

00:44:27.180 | that will create something, create GoFundMes

00:44:30.420 | for tragedies that never didn't really,

00:44:32.460 | or events that didn't happen or any number of things.

00:44:36.520 | Okay, I mean, burn their own house down

00:44:38.580 | and then say, you know, we were attacked.

00:44:40.540 | And then it comes down, oh, you did it to yourself

00:44:42.820 | because you wanted money and empathy and this, that,

00:44:45.420 | and you wanted all this emotional wealth,

00:44:48.480 | let's say, this emotional coin,

00:44:51.420 | as well as actual if possible.

00:44:52.900 | You wanted to leverage it in some way.

00:44:55.240 | That's not the majority of people,

00:44:57.140 | but I would say a good amount of folks are thinking,

00:45:01.080 | well, if I post this photo

00:45:03.980 | and I put this little blurb in there,

00:45:07.140 | I bet I can get this much cache out of it in this sense.

00:45:10.560 | And I'm not even, and this isn't just a reference

00:45:12.480 | to like butt pics and stuff like that,

00:45:14.700 | because clearly, obviously, people understand

00:45:17.460 | that our inborn sexual nature is easy to manipulate.

00:45:22.460 | I mean, that's pretty obvious.

00:45:25.780 | - But you're saying this kind of new medium

00:45:27.820 | of communication on social media is unnatural.

00:45:32.220 | - And it preys on us.

00:45:33.340 | And so as you want this, you know,

00:45:36.300 | you look at an anarchist kind of mindset, right?

00:45:41.660 | And so it's just like, there is no overarching state

00:45:46.660 | to create any kind of structure, right?

00:45:51.820 | And so if you have that unfettered capitalism aspect with it

00:45:56.500 | and before I say anything particularly damning

00:46:00.140 | about unfettered capitalism, I'm a massive capitalist

00:46:03.980 | because I view capitalism essentially as,

00:46:06.620 | what it boils down to, I get these arguments

00:46:09.060 | from people too, they start giving me

00:46:10.980 | all these extra definitions about capitalism.

00:46:12.660 | Like, no, no, this is obviously some sort of theory

00:46:15.260 | you're taking from other shit,

00:46:16.300 | but that doesn't describe capitalism.

00:46:17.620 | Capitalism is the ability for us to create whatever we want,

00:46:22.620 | or, you know, create our thoughts, ideas, physical things,

00:46:27.260 | and trade them freely amongst each other

00:46:29.740 | in ways that we find acceptable, right?

00:46:34.300 | You know, I'm not even using the word fair

00:46:36.460 | 'cause I might think it's fair to me,

00:46:39.100 | you might think, huh, well, I mean, that was actually,

00:46:41.380 | I think what he thought was unfair to him

00:46:43.580 | and it's more fair to me.

00:46:44.700 | And then someone, a third observer goes,

00:46:46.620 | oh man, you should not have paid that for that,

00:46:49.260 | you should have paid this.

00:46:50.100 | And it's like, well, you know what, it works for me.

00:46:52.140 | - Sufficiently acceptable that you both agree

00:46:55.380 | to the transaction. - Correct.

00:46:56.780 | And, you know, but also at the root of that is freedom,

00:47:01.580 | right, and as far as I can tell,

00:47:03.740 | I've been banging this around in my head,

00:47:06.260 | it's like for every one unit of freedom,

00:47:09.060 | you need two units of accountability.

00:47:11.380 | And if you don't have that, what you end up with is,

00:47:16.140 | is human self-interest,

00:47:20.060 | we're not even gonna get into evil,

00:47:21.660 | human self-interest, sabotaging other things,

00:47:24.840 | even not in a sense to be malicious.

00:47:27.060 | - Okay, so in terms of,

00:47:28.860 | let's put this as mathematically speaking,

00:47:31.340 | I love this, so anarchism is more like two units of freedom

00:47:35.420 | than one unit of accountability,

00:47:37.380 | or maybe zero units of accountability.

00:47:38.980 | - Possibly, I mean, the anarchists tend to think like,

00:47:40.980 | no, everyone will be accountable,

00:47:42.260 | it's like, fuck they will,

00:47:43.940 | when have you seen this happen in real life?

00:47:46.060 | You know, I mean, people aren't even accountable

00:47:47.760 | in their revolutions half the time.

00:47:49.620 | So you aren't looking at the way people really are,

00:47:54.620 | it's like Marx is like, yeah, people are like this,

00:47:58.740 | they're like that, look at how capitalism does it.

00:48:00.740 | I mean, he of course assigns a lot of really

00:48:03.780 | ridiculous economic principles and practice,

00:48:06.780 | but also assumes that everybody who makes any profit

00:48:11.340 | from anything is somehow stealing it,

00:48:13.940 | really assigns a negative moral aspect to them,

00:48:15.980 | and then it's like, oh yeah, but then eventually,

00:48:18.400 | communism will happen, no one will act that way anymore,

00:48:20.660 | and you're like, whoa, hold on,

00:48:21.780 | you just said that people are all,

00:48:23.500 | are you saying it's all due to capitalism,

00:48:25.900 | or is it innate, it's just,

00:48:29.060 | it's a fundamental misunderstanding of,

00:48:31.660 | and it's like, hey, look at you,

00:48:35.140 | you're like a notorious, anti-Semitic, angry,

00:48:39.540 | just absolute curmudgeon of a human being

00:48:43.900 | who seems to be really not all that fun to be around.

00:48:46.780 | - Marx? - Yeah, and then it's just like--

00:48:48.620 | - So you have to think like,

00:48:49.580 | if there was one billion Marxists in the world,

00:48:52.780 | how would they behave? - They would all,

00:48:53.620 | it would be absolute terror.

00:48:54.940 | (laughing)

00:48:56.060 | They would hate each other so bad,

00:48:58.340 | and this isn't for me to even poison the well on Marx,

00:49:02.020 | it's like, oh, his personality sucks.

00:49:03.860 | There's lots of people whose personality sucks.

00:49:05.740 | That doesn't mean they can't make,

00:49:07.300 | I don't know that his, what?

00:49:09.780 | - You know what, somebody argued--

00:49:10.900 | - He's just a loner, I mean,

00:49:12.660 | I don't know if his personality sucked at all.

00:49:14.940 | - Let me walk that back in that he was human.

00:49:17.580 | Say his personality sucked,

00:49:19.420 | he was sometimes contradictory, irrational,

00:49:23.120 | sometimes he was quite sexist,

00:49:27.460 | despite the emails I've gotten.

00:49:29.500 | - Despite the emails I've gotten.

00:49:33.140 | - That told me that,

00:49:34.300 | this people was written to me

00:49:37.100 | that Nietzsche has been unfairly labeled a sexist

00:49:40.660 | in his discussion about women.

00:49:43.320 | I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of documents

00:49:45.760 | where he's just like,

00:49:47.380 | he's just a bitter guy.

00:49:51.300 | - I will agree with you,

00:49:52.660 | and Marx is as bitter as they come to,

00:49:54.620 | but you know what, bitterness in and of itself

00:49:58.740 | doesn't make,

00:49:59.900 | like, why I hate Marxism comes from the whole,

00:50:04.900 | the entirety of the thing, but--

00:50:08.660 | - The dismissal of human nature.

00:50:10.140 | - But I'm not going to say that Marxism,

00:50:14.860 | or, man, you can find any forbidden book

00:50:18.740 | and it could have something good in it.

00:50:20.660 | - His kernel's a good idea.

00:50:21.700 | - Yeah, and at the end of the day,

00:50:23.900 | Marx is a human being.

00:50:25.860 | - He's got a nice beard.

00:50:26.700 | - Yeah, he does, he had a hell of a beard.

00:50:28.500 | Yeah, a decent portrait.

00:50:29.740 | I mean, he looks like the kind of guy,

00:50:31.860 | I wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley,

00:50:33.460 | but thankfully, I don't think he was much of a fighter.

00:50:35.740 | (both laughing)

00:50:37.580 | But in any case, I mean, not the anarchists,

00:50:40.020 | or they're more hot for, like, Max Stirner.

00:50:44.820 | People like to think that Nietzsche

00:50:47.540 | borrowed a lot from Stirner,

00:50:48.740 | and my argument is, one,

00:50:50.620 | you don't have any real evidence for that,

00:50:52.500 | and two, bullshit.

00:50:54.100 | The fact that they have some overlapping thoughts

00:51:01.100 | doesn't make it lifted.

00:51:03.980 | Not to mention, go read more philosophy

00:51:06.740 | and see how there's so many different things.

00:51:08.620 | Oh, this guy said it in 1722.

00:51:12.220 | Well, and then this guy says it again in 1922.

00:51:15.100 | Does that mean he read the other guy's stuff?

00:51:16.600 | Not necessarily.

00:51:17.500 | I mean, he's working from the same type

00:51:19.260 | of human physiological construct as anybody else.

00:51:23.620 | Like, of course it's possible

00:51:25.260 | that this guy could think the same thing.

00:51:26.500 | We think a lot of the same things, to be perfectly honest.

00:51:29.380 | I mean, reading the Hagakure,

00:51:31.540 | going back to philosophy books,

00:51:33.380 | this was really impactful on me as a younger adult,

00:51:36.380 | because here's a book written in the 19th century

00:51:39.020 | about someone who lived through the 19th

00:51:41.820 | and 18th century at times, as a samurai, now a monk,

00:51:45.460 | and his objections to society at the time,

00:51:48.980 | the same objections one was having to society

00:51:51.980 | as I was reading it.

00:51:53.160 | Like, the same human behaviors,

00:51:55.500 | the same impetus for action that he found a problem.

00:52:00.500 | Like, well, that's the same shit now.

00:52:06.580 | And this was the thing, and then I'm reading more religion,

00:52:11.140 | I go, oh, we're no different

00:52:13.140 | than anyone who wrote the Torah or older.

00:52:16.140 | We are the same thing with the same problems

00:52:18.740 | with the same psychological issues,

00:52:21.420 | the same human behaviors.

00:52:22.660 | Like, these things are not different,

00:52:24.980 | and we haven't changed.

00:52:26.060 | - Growing set of tools, though, to kill each other with

00:52:29.180 | or to communicate together and all that kind of stuff,

00:52:31.260 | but underlying it, there's a human nature.

00:52:33.740 | Well, we're also trying to understand that human nature.

00:52:35.620 | I think we've, just like you said,

00:52:37.460 | learning how to fish, acquired more and more knowledge

00:52:39.820 | about that human nature, but it's been a very slow journey.

00:52:44.300 | It's slower than people realize.

00:52:45.860 | - Yes.

00:52:46.780 | - In terms of understanding human nature.

00:52:49.060 | Let me ask, in terms of egoism,

00:52:51.140 | it'd be curious to get your sense about Ayn Rand

00:52:56.140 | and her whole idea of virtue of selfishness and her,

00:53:01.740 | because you mentioned that everybody has a kernel of truth.

00:53:06.860 | There's potential for a kernel of truth

00:53:08.900 | to be discovered in anything.

00:53:10.660 | For example, I've been recently reading Mein Kampf.

00:53:16.180 | You know what, that's the thing.

00:53:18.260 | Even, there's something in,

00:53:20.380 | there's probably things in Mein Kampf

00:53:22.900 | that are not the surface-level read.

00:53:25.860 | If you get all hung up on probably all his crap about,

00:53:29.580 | his anger at Jews and this and that, all this crap,

00:53:34.260 | it's like, okay, yeah, that's right on the surface.

00:53:36.900 | Try to get below that.

00:53:38.860 | Try to see, how is he creating the Jews as a cope somehow?

00:53:43.860 | Like, how is he using, why are they his scapegoat?

00:53:46.820 | And I mean scapegoat in the,

00:53:49.180 | so René Girard's concept of the scapegoat,

00:53:51.980 | I mean it in that sense,

00:53:52.980 | whereas Hitler uses, wants to make the Jews

00:53:57.980 | the scapegoat for World War I.

00:54:00.300 | - Yeah, I mean, for me, the starting point,

00:54:01.980 | similar with Ayn Rand, is,

00:54:04.700 | like, Mein Kampf is not a good place to search,

00:54:08.180 | not just because Hitler is evil,

00:54:09.780 | but it's just not full of ideas.

00:54:11.820 | - No, it is not.

00:54:13.460 | It has its significance due to a lot of things.

00:54:16.260 | - Historically speaking.

00:54:17.100 | - Yeah, but--

00:54:17.940 | - The starting point for me with Hitler is, like,

00:54:20.500 | to acknowledge that he's human

00:54:23.180 | and to at least consider the possibility

00:54:26.060 | that any one of us could have been Hitler.

00:54:28.340 | So, like, not to make--

00:54:29.180 | - Well, that's a Peterson kind of concept.

00:54:31.540 | Also, Jonathan Haidt has a thing about

00:54:35.020 | the difference between hate and disgust mechanisms

00:54:38.500 | and things like that, and so he used,

00:54:39.900 | he goes into the, looking at Hitler

00:54:43.180 | and his, through his diary entries

00:54:45.580 | and journals and stuff like that,

00:54:46.580 | to look and see it more as the disgust mechanism

00:54:50.140 | than also try and see, like,

00:54:51.460 | if there's any evolutionary, biological

00:54:54.220 | attachment to this, whatever.

00:54:56.700 | I mean, you're right, he is a human being.

00:54:59.380 | Any of us are, we're all human beings.

00:55:02.140 | It's not that,

00:55:03.740 | it's probably jarring for people to think,

00:55:07.780 | but we're all, I guess, supposed,

00:55:12.380 | potentially capable of just being in,

00:55:14.860 | and all these evil people in the world

00:55:17.100 | think they're doing it for the sake of good,

00:55:19.780 | which makes them the most dangerous.

00:55:22.820 | - And there's some, there's differences

00:55:24.580 | in levels of insane.

00:55:26.580 | I think Hitler was way more insane than Stalin.

00:55:29.340 | I think Stalin legitimately thought he was doing good.

00:55:33.780 | - I would say that's probably true.

00:55:36.100 | Stalin was just outright brutal.

00:55:40.420 | Like, he had his five-year plan,

00:55:42.340 | he had all those other things.

00:55:43.980 | - He just had a much lower value for human life.

00:55:46.740 | - Yes.

00:55:47.580 | - And so he was willing to take,

00:55:48.980 | make decisions about what he actually,

00:55:51.420 | as a good executive,

00:55:53.900 | which he was, of managing different bureaucracies and so on,

00:55:59.420 | he was willing to make decisions

00:56:01.100 | that resulted in mass human suffering,

00:56:04.600 | where Hitler was, it seems like to me, much moodier.

00:56:09.600 | So a lot of emotions and moods to make decisions.

00:56:12.940 | - I think we also have to consider

00:56:15.100 | the different trajectories,

00:56:16.860 | and how, where, and when they were making their decisions.

00:56:19.540 | And I mean, not by time specifically,

00:56:21.500 | but Hitler engaged into this conflict

00:56:24.460 | across multiple continents.

00:56:27.340 | And then that, everything that comes with,

00:56:30.540 | basically, fighting the whole world,

00:56:33.940 | Stalin had his conflict,

00:56:36.580 | and then he really mostly compartmentalized the rest of it.

00:56:41.580 | So he was dealing with his own internal

00:56:43.700 | instead of dealing with the internal and the external.

00:56:46.400 | So if Stalin was put under a World War scenario,

00:56:48.980 | I don't know, maybe he would've

00:56:50.180 | eventually lost his marbles too.

00:56:52.140 | - Yeah, I'm not sure that, that's, you're right.

00:56:54.980 | The hunger for power was more internalized for Stalin.

00:56:58.660 | He wanted to control the land that already existed

00:57:01.140 | as opposed to wanting to colonize other land.

00:57:03.140 | He was as nationalistic as Hitler,

00:57:05.780 | but, and was as capable and willing

00:57:10.580 | for violent conflict as Hitler

00:57:13.460 | for the aims of the state.

00:57:16.140 | But he centered and internalized

00:57:22.740 | prior to then externalizing and moving outwards.

00:57:26.940 | Whereas even maybe prior to him,

00:57:28.940 | there was an interest to continually push communism

00:57:31.940 | in an aggressive sense, following on the momentum

00:57:34.420 | from the, what, 1918 revolution.

00:57:37.940 | And that, the halting of that through various aspects,

00:57:42.940 | I guess, in Germany, part of that was

00:57:46.740 | the National Socialists.

00:57:47.860 | They came up and then they were the other ones

00:57:50.220 | to fight the communists,

00:57:51.140 | and so you had the two totalitarians going after it.

00:57:54.300 | But then in the rest of the world

00:57:55.960 | that was not dealing with totalitarian aspects,

00:58:01.020 | it was just, it wasn't gonna stick,

00:58:02.940 | especially in the West and other places.

00:58:04.860 | But Stalin, just casually thinking,

00:58:09.220 | it seemed like Stalin decided to go,

00:58:11.460 | all right, well, we're not gonna go

00:58:12.820 | just start launching right into more conflicts here.

00:58:15.180 | We're gonna, these dudes are going down,

00:58:17.420 | so that's cool for us 'cause they hate us and we hate them.

00:58:20.760 | But now we're gonna focus internally,

00:58:25.000 | and then we're gonna work on growing at a slower rate

00:58:28.260 | and picking our battles a bit more specifically.

00:58:30.380 | And of course, there's, you can get to the,

00:58:33.080 | even this is after Stalin,

00:58:34.340 | but you got the Beslanov type stuff

00:58:36.580 | talking about subversion in cultural aspects.

00:58:40.860 | - Yeah, I mean, there's fascinating dynamics

00:58:42.900 | to propaganda throughout the whole period that's--

00:58:45.300 | - Yeah, it's a whole 'nother kernel, yeah.

00:58:47.220 | - Do you think Hitler could have been stopped?

00:58:50.060 | One of the things that's kind of fascinating to look at

00:58:53.780 | is how many nations, both journalists and nations,

00:58:58.080 | wanted, almost craved to take Hitler at his word

00:59:01.100 | that he wanted peace until it was too late.

00:59:04.500 | They almost wanted to delude themselves.

00:59:08.540 | I mean, the same is true with Stalin.

00:59:11.800 | People wanted to take Stalin at his word for--

00:59:13.780 | - Oh, they still delude themselves.

00:59:15.020 | - Yeah. - We will delude ourselves

00:59:17.620 | over any number of things until even after the fact

00:59:21.540 | where the history just says, hey, fuck face.

00:59:23.860 | You cannot supplement your pseudo-reality

00:59:27.580 | onto actual reality here.

00:59:29.380 | But yet, we deal with people in pseudo-realities constantly.

00:59:34.080 | We will always find a way to change reality

00:59:38.820 | to suit our needs.

00:59:40.140 | - Well, the nature of truth now,

00:59:41.360 | there's now multiple actual truths.

00:59:43.020 | It's kind of fascinating.

00:59:44.140 | There's multiple versions of history

00:59:46.740 | that people are telling.

00:59:47.940 | The version of the Great Patriotic War in Russia,

00:59:52.980 | the World War II in Russia,

00:59:54.740 | is very different today under Putin

00:59:57.020 | than the version that we're learning in the United States

01:00:01.060 | and different than the version in Europe.

01:00:02.740 | In the United States,

01:00:03.920 | the hero of the war is the United States.

01:00:07.700 | In Europe, there's a much more sad and solemn story

01:00:11.780 | of suffering and so on.

01:00:12.940 | - Sure. - In Russia,

01:00:14.260 | it's the Great-- - Patriotic War.

01:00:16.420 | - Yes. - It was a unifier

01:00:18.540 | of a sense.

01:00:19.380 | And it, I mean,

01:00:21.800 | yeah, I mean, you can't argue

01:00:25.580 | that war and conflict that,

01:00:28.220 | and/or just even reducing that to stressors,

01:00:32.260 | agitation, suffering, doesn't create human motivation.

01:00:36.620 | We started this off, you brought up Frankel.

01:00:38.780 | I'm like, yeah, Frankel's dope.

01:00:40.540 | Man's search for meaning.

01:00:42.060 | Maslow's great.

01:00:43.420 | And I talked to you about how I started to think,

01:00:46.940 | like, man, the ability for human beings

01:00:50.820 | to live and/or potentially flourish

01:00:54.700 | in the worst environments you can think of

01:00:57.620 | is pretty incredible in and of itself.

01:00:59.980 | And that it's a crazy thought

01:01:03.060 | to think that without Frankel and Maslow

01:01:07.860 | ending up in concentration camps,

01:01:10.140 | do they write some of the most important books

01:01:13.900 | on philosophy in the 20th century?

01:01:16.260 | And that's insane on a lot of different levels.

01:01:20.060 | But-- - Yeah, suffering

01:01:21.540 | is a creative force.

01:01:22.500 | I mean, I don't, do you think we'll always have war?

01:01:25.220 | - Yes, we will always have war in some form or another.

01:01:28.900 | We need, quote-unquote, air quotes,

01:01:32.700 | for those just listening, war to survive.

01:01:36.100 | We need war to flourish.

01:01:37.380 | We need at least-- - Can you explain

01:01:39.060 | the air quotes around war? - Well, because take,

01:01:42.340 | take the-- - You see wars as violence?

01:01:46.380 | - No, wars are not violence.

01:01:47.660 | - So like, so when we're talking about--

01:01:48.500 | - No, air quotes, because while, you know what,

01:01:50.820 | us getting on the mat or just getting

01:01:52.780 | on these hardwood floors and wrestling around

01:01:55.020 | is not literal war, it's war of a sorts.

01:01:58.540 | You know, it is a diluted form of war.

01:02:01.980 | American football is a diluted form of war.

01:02:03.940 | All this, these are diluted forms of war.

01:02:05.900 | Tennis is a diluted form of war.

01:02:07.880 | And I think one of the best explanations

01:02:12.620 | I ever got from this, another person very impactful

01:02:16.620 | on my life and outlook and thinking about things,

01:02:19.700 | Cormac McCarthy, and so in Blood Meridian,

01:02:22.500 | there's this fantastic speech about war given by the judge,

01:02:26.780 | which there's a ton of fantastic speeches

01:02:28.900 | on things given by the judge, yeah.

01:02:31.100 | All that exists in creation without my knowledge

01:02:33.100 | does so without my consent.

01:02:34.700 | Whoa, okay, that's pretty heavy.

01:02:36.820 | That's hard.

01:02:38.180 | - Go ahead, can you break that up?

01:02:39.180 | Can you say that again?

01:02:40.260 | - All things that exist in creation,

01:02:43.580 | all things that exist without my knowledge

01:02:45.300 | do so without my consent.

01:02:49.300 | - What does that mean to you?

01:02:50.500 | - Well, I think from the judge's perspective,

01:02:53.620 | it's like, well, I didn't consent to that bird

01:02:56.500 | or that dog or this building or all this.

01:02:59.820 | Like, all of this, you know, I didn't create it,

01:03:02.140 | so it's done so without my consent.

01:03:03.860 | And if it's up to my consent,

01:03:05.740 | well, I'll design it how I want to.

01:03:08.100 | Another similar look into how the judge is in that book

01:03:11.540 | is he would study everything everywhere he went.

01:03:17.420 | And so he's collected this group of Ne'er-do-wells

01:03:20.980 | from all over to go on these hunts

01:03:24.100 | against certain tribes in the Southwest

01:03:28.820 | and getting paid by the US government

01:03:31.340 | and the Mexican government.

01:03:32.860 | So he's on these Indian hunts,

01:03:36.500 | and yet they're going to all these different places,

01:03:39.660 | and they would stay the night in a cave somewhere,

01:03:43.840 | and he would find cave paintings,

01:03:44.940 | and he would write them all down.

01:03:46.180 | Or he would find old pieces.

01:03:47.780 | There's an example of him, the narrator,

01:03:50.980 | explaining how watching the judge

01:03:52.540 | and how he's drawing everything.

01:03:54.220 | He's got this notebook just full of things,

01:03:56.660 | drawings and writings,

01:03:58.900 | and how he found a piece of armor from a conquistador

01:04:03.140 | or something way back in the day, a Spanish armor,

01:04:04.860 | and he draws it into his book and then crushes it.

01:04:07.780 | - And so the reason we'll always have war in this society

01:04:13.380 | is because there's this struggle amongst people

01:04:17.140 | that want to be the designers.

01:04:18.540 | - There's that, but I'm just saying

01:04:21.340 | that he's got this whole quote on war.

01:04:23.740 | Like, war is play.

01:04:26.340 | War is a game, and the difference is is that

01:04:29.460 | what's at stake?

01:04:30.660 | So all things are a game of some sort,

01:04:33.940 | and you're putting up for it,

01:04:35.500 | or what you're willing to put up for it

01:04:36.900 | determines whether or not you're going to participate or not.

01:04:40.180 | And all aspects of any game is war,

01:04:45.180 | and it's just what is at stake?

01:04:48.180 | If it's your life, it's a different story.

01:04:49.960 | If it's just a coin, it's another thing.

01:04:52.340 | - A nice way to put it is humans play a game

01:04:56.380 | in this kind of pursuit of creating.

01:05:00.700 | Whatever the hell the reason is

01:05:02.860 | that we keep creating cooler and cooler things,

01:05:05.220 | that it seems to be the result of a game

01:05:08.980 | that we naturally play, we naturally crave.

01:05:11.460 | I don't know, I mean, that's been the struggle of philosophy

01:05:14.660 | is to understand what is the underlying force of all that.

01:05:17.580 | Is it the will to power?

01:05:19.220 | - I think will to power is a really great way

01:05:21.500 | of describing it.

01:05:23.500 | - Do you want to be the winner of the game?

01:05:25.620 | - No, not just, no, I don't look at will to power

01:05:27.660 | as being the winner of the game.

01:05:29.100 | Well, I mean, if we're gonna get philosophical,

01:05:31.680 | yes, you want to be the winner of the game.

01:05:33.300 | What does winning the game define how you win?

01:05:36.220 | Everybody's gonna define that win differently.

01:05:38.500 | You could define the win in the most base level

01:05:40.700 | like, oh, I got all the things.

01:05:42.360 | Well, if you got all those things

01:05:45.100 | without the needing component of fulfillment,

01:05:48.660 | then you're gonna be a very unhappy person

01:05:50.420 | with a whole lot of things.

01:05:51.420 | - But there's a self-referential aspect to where, to me,

01:05:54.820 | the winner of the game is defined

01:05:56.640 | by the people playing the game.

01:05:58.540 | So if I'm playing a game,

01:06:00.600 | I want to win in the sense that most of the other people

01:06:06.060 | who are playing the game will say, yeah, that guy won.

01:06:08.860 | By our collective definition of,

01:06:11.340 | if I just come up, listen, I'm sort of,

01:06:13.420 | if I come up with my own--

01:06:14.260 | - Well, that's a lot of weight on the external on you.

01:06:17.540 | - Right, but that's how games seem to work.

01:06:21.100 | - Somewhat.

01:06:21.940 | - So I'm already a winner in my life

01:06:24.260 | by defining my own definition of success.

01:06:26.300 | (laughing)

01:06:27.300 | I'm basically the best person in the world at doing me.

01:06:32.060 | - At being Lex.

01:06:32.900 | - Yeah, and I'm really happy with that.

01:06:35.740 | That's a source of happiness.

01:06:37.220 | - Well, I mean, think about it.

01:06:38.420 | Games are also iterated, right?

01:06:40.480 | So you start off with your game,

01:06:42.860 | and then your game with your immediates,

01:06:45.500 | and then the game further than that,

01:06:47.020 | and the game further than that,

01:06:47.980 | and then the game today, and the game tomorrow,

01:06:49.980 | and the game next week, and so it never ends.

01:06:52.540 | And if you try to keep thinking about it that way,

01:06:55.020 | no wonder people go crazy.

01:06:56.200 | But we don't want to think about things that way.

01:06:59.100 | We don't want to think about being towards death.

01:07:01.540 | We don't want to think about whether or not

01:07:04.860 | I'm going anywhere after this other than in the ground

01:07:07.380 | or what have you.

01:07:08.220 | - All of these games are a sense of some distraction.

01:07:12.020 | This is where we brought up--

01:07:12.860 | - Kind of, but I mean, it's violence is that

01:07:15.800 | we need to let this out.

01:07:18.620 | And so it is of our, kids need to wrestle and play,

01:07:23.180 | just like animals need to wrestle and play.

01:07:25.140 | We need to have forms of competition.

01:07:27.460 | We need to have ways to test ourselves,

01:07:29.820 | to create, when, what is it?

01:07:34.180 | When at peace, a man of war makes war with himself.

01:07:36.860 | And so we need to be able to competently

01:07:39.720 | go at war with ourselves, and go at war with our neighbor,

01:07:42.380 | and go at war with our neighbor's neighbor

01:07:44.380 | in a way that is repeatable at the very least.

01:07:47.740 | - So one way of saying that there will always be war,

01:07:50.620 | I mean, that's my hopeful view,

01:07:54.060 | is that most of the war conducted in the future

01:07:56.740 | will be, like you said,

01:07:57.980 | the man must go to war with himself.

01:08:00.460 | - That would be great.

01:08:02.300 | That's what, to me, love is,

01:08:04.660 | is like focusing on yourself and your own improvement,

01:08:07.820 | and your own creativity, and towards others feeling,

01:08:12.140 | sort of emphasizing cooperative behavior,

01:08:15.860 | and compassion, and empathy.

01:08:19.420 | - It would be great, but I mean, you can have,

01:08:21.780 | well, I'll put it to you this way.

01:08:23.860 | If you have a whole community of Randians,

01:08:29.700 | and a whole community of ANCOMS,

01:08:32.660 | and they could all, like, I don't know,

01:08:37.100 | a toast of London on Netflix, and they love Netflix,

01:08:40.660 | and they love the internet,

01:08:41.940 | and they love picking apart Mon Camp with you.

01:08:46.940 | They like all these things, even the esoteric

01:08:50.220 | that they can get on with.

01:08:52.460 | But at the fundamental root,

01:08:55.700 | they cannot help but go to war,

01:08:57.740 | because they are literally oil and water.

01:08:59.980 | - No, but see, but they would,

01:09:01.580 | the very labels they assign to themselves

01:09:05.780 | would need to dissipate.

01:09:07.540 | - Well, true, well, then you would have to stop being

01:09:09.780 | whatever it is that you took on

01:09:11.140 | as your ideological or religious point, right?

01:09:14.860 | - Yeah, I mean, there's some days I'm a ANCOM,

01:09:18.300 | some days I'm an ANCAP,

01:09:19.780 | some, whatever the, an ARCA, an ARCA cap,

01:09:24.940 | I mean, it depends on the hour, the minute of the day,

01:09:28.260 | you're constantly changing moods and embracing that flow,

01:09:31.240 | the change of opinions, of ideas.

01:09:34.380 | As there's some days where, like,

01:09:35.580 | I'm actually cognizant of the fact,

01:09:37.300 | 'cause I've been not getting much sleep,

01:09:39.180 | and after I get some sleep,

01:09:41.460 | I see I'm so much more optimistic about the world.

01:09:44.260 | The less and less sleep I get,

01:09:46.220 | the more sad and cynical I get.

01:09:48.060 | - I can see that.

01:09:48.980 | - Up and down, constantly.

01:09:50.300 | - I don't even let my, well, okay, I try not to let,

01:09:54.140 | and most days it's never a problem.

01:09:56.300 | Any sort of, like, what do the kids call it now,

01:10:00.300 | blackpilled way of thinking be my,

01:10:03.820 | my over, the umbrella which I hang under.

01:10:07.340 | - So we actually, to drag us back,

01:10:10.880 | can we talk about Carl Gotch in Catch Wrestling?

01:10:14.540 | (laughing)

01:10:15.900 | 'Cause I do wanna make sure I touch it.

01:10:18.460 | I mean, who were--

01:10:20.380 | - Carl Gotch is--

01:10:22.140 | - Is he the greatest catch wrestler?

01:10:23.620 | - I don't know if he was the greatest catch wrestler ever.

01:10:26.860 | I don't, I mean, he's one of them for a myriad of--

01:10:30.900 | Carl Gotch, Billy Robinson,

01:10:34.140 | Gotch and Robinson's trainer, Billy Riley.

01:10:38.080 | - So who are these figures, and what do they bring to--

01:10:41.620 | - Mitsuo Maeda, he's one of the greatest

01:10:43.380 | catch wrestlers ever, because he's responsible

01:10:45.660 | for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, along with Cristal Gracie.

01:10:48.660 | - Okay, there's a bunch of things I'd like to say here,

01:10:51.940 | but one of the things that Catch Wrestling

01:10:54.180 | seemed to espouse as a principle is that of violence.

01:10:57.940 | I just, the tournaments I competed at,

01:11:01.980 | the unfortunate thing, and we'll probably,

01:11:04.460 | hopefully talk about it a little bit,

01:11:06.300 | they were disorganized, and the level of competition

01:11:09.300 | was pretty low, where people really sucked.

01:11:11.180 | - Pretty typical.

01:11:12.780 | - Is that typical, okay.

01:11:13.780 | - Well, it's, I mean, think about local, run-of-the-mill

01:11:19.540 | Jiu-Jitsu tournament versus IBJJF created,

01:11:22.700 | you know, a vast difference, so.

01:11:24.700 | - So I, you know, but there is a, to me as a human being,

01:11:28.820 | like intellectually, philosophically,

01:11:31.900 | it was more interesting to go to a Catch Wrestling

01:11:33.860 | tournament, it seemed more real and honest,

01:11:37.020 | because of the way they communicate about violence

01:11:39.980 | and aggression, and so--

01:11:40.820 | - I love that, it is often more honest.

01:11:44.180 | I think that as--

01:11:45.020 | - Who is that from, does that originate from Gotch

01:11:46.980 | and then Billy Robinson, Maeda?

01:11:48.140 | - Well, it originates from all wrestling,

01:11:50.140 | in that, even Wade Chalice, not a,

01:11:54.260 | not a classically considered Catch Wrestler,

01:11:59.740 | yet the reason why he has the world record

01:12:02.660 | for most amount of world champions pinned,

01:12:05.300 | or the record for pins in the NCAA, is because,

01:12:09.460 | well, of course the idea is to put you on your back

01:12:11.740 | and pin you, but there's no way you're gonna let me do that.

01:12:15.380 | So, how do I make it so that you want me to pin you?

01:12:20.100 | Well, it's by you putting me in excruciating pain.

01:12:23.020 | So, at the end of the day, you're both there,

01:12:27.380 | you both wanna win, neither one wants to allow anything

01:12:30.820 | to the other, so how do I get you to lose to me?

01:12:35.820 | I make it so unbearable for you that you decide

01:12:38.900 | losing is better than staying.

01:12:40.260 | - So those two are so fascinating,

01:12:42.500 | because, so coming from Russia,

01:12:44.700 | I don't know if that's where I got it,

01:12:46.580 | or if it's just my own predisposition,

01:12:49.620 | is I always loved the, there's two ways

01:12:53.380 | to get you to want to pin yourself.

01:12:55.720 | One is to making it so painful not to pin yourself

01:12:59.180 | that you pin yourself, or whatever,

01:13:01.020 | and the other is, it's sort of like Bruce Lee water flows,

01:13:04.860 | make it so easy to pin yourself.

01:13:07.540 | So, it's technique, it's like the elegance,

01:13:10.020 | the ease of movement, this is the Satie brothers,

01:13:13.620 | Vova, Sietse, Satie, just the elegance,

01:13:18.100 | the efficiency, the chess.

01:13:18.940 | - Yeah, they're practically like ballet,

01:13:20.260 | watching those guys, it's incredible,

01:13:21.700 | Satie brothers are massive.

01:13:23.340 | - So those are the two pests, right?

01:13:25.500 | - I'll also caveat a little bit that,

01:13:28.020 | if you're approaching this from a Russian perspective,

01:13:31.940 | Russians are quite truthful about things,

01:13:36.620 | especially when it comes to something like combat.

01:13:38.460 | They just, this is how it is,

01:13:41.060 | and this is how it's going to be.

01:13:42.220 | - It's honest. - Yes.

01:13:43.420 | - And honesty is what I really like about catch wrestling,

01:13:46.660 | because I find that we,

01:13:48.820 | given any opportunity for us to be dishonest,

01:13:51.260 | for any number of reasons, we're gonna,

01:13:53.540 | especially if it's a dishonesty towards a positive, right?

01:13:57.540 | Like, oh, well, it's all technique, and it's all this,

01:14:00.060 | and it's the gentle art, and blah.

01:14:02.480 | Bro, I have rolled with ADCC world champions,

01:14:06.880 | some of the best you have ever heard of.

01:14:09.100 | There ain't a lot of gentleness when it comes to like,

01:14:12.100 | oh, yeah, they wanted to sweep you, and you said no,

01:14:15.220 | and then you did said no again,

01:14:17.100 | and then you said no and attacked their leg.

01:14:19.940 | It ceases to be all that gentle,

01:14:21.700 | because at the end of the day,

01:14:23.060 | these dudes are strong as hell, they're flexible.

01:14:25.860 | They're all, I mean, they're,

01:14:27.320 | the difference between the athleticism

01:14:29.420 | and the ability to actually win is a pretty wide gap.

01:14:34.420 | The athleticism shows up,

01:14:37.220 | but then there's all that other extra,

01:14:39.460 | and part of that is meanness and pain

01:14:42.500 | and getting what you need out of it.

01:14:45.460 | - But see, there is a philosophical difference

01:14:48.000 | in the way it's thought, 'cause--

01:14:49.700 | - I think some of it is just, they're just in denial.

01:14:53.300 | Like, oh, people will, they like to,

01:14:55.140 | people like to espouse a lot of things as theory,

01:14:57.620 | and then it's like, okay, let me watch.

01:14:59.500 | Oh, you're not doing anything about what you said right now.

01:15:02.100 | In fact, you're doing the opposite.

01:15:03.620 | You're literally hurting that guy

01:15:05.700 | because your shit ain't working,

01:15:09.300 | in the way that you'd like it to.

01:15:10.700 | So you're having to use strength.

01:15:12.060 | You're having to, it's one of my favorites.

01:15:13.300 | It's like, oh, you're using too much strength.

01:15:14.660 | And it's like, well, hold on.

01:15:16.300 | Do we want people not to use strength at this point

01:15:18.940 | to understand more of mechanics?

01:15:21.300 | Or are you trying to tell people

01:15:22.540 | if they use strength at all

01:15:23.980 | that they're somehow bad at what they do?

01:15:26.740 | 'Cause, you know, it's not my fault

01:15:28.340 | you're not stronger than me.

01:15:29.180 | - But see, I'm speaking of something else that's--

01:15:32.740 | - I tend to think what it comes down to is like,

01:15:34.540 | strength is fine until you beat me with it.

01:15:37.740 | Then it sucks.

01:15:38.780 | - Okay, so strength is another thing.

01:15:41.100 | I'm thinking about more like anger.

01:15:44.620 | - Oh, sure.

01:15:45.820 | So you have a lot of angry guys in jiu-jitsu.

01:15:47.700 | I know that.

01:15:48.860 | - Really?

01:15:49.700 | - Mm-hmm.

01:15:50.540 | - Okay, good.

01:15:51.360 | But let's talk about-- - Tons of 'em.

01:15:52.200 | - Let's talk about-- - They're only human.

01:15:53.020 | - The highest level of competition.

01:15:55.340 | There's a book called "Wrestling Tough."

01:15:56.900 | - Yeah.

01:15:57.740 | - It's a really good book.

01:15:59.060 | I've encountered in my life a few,

01:16:01.900 | especially in wrestling,

01:16:02.900 | people who really try to find a way to use anger,

01:16:08.100 | to get really angry at their opponent.

01:16:10.300 | Not like stupid anger, but just like--

01:16:12.700 | - Intense, pointed anger distilled into something

01:16:17.700 | that you can use as fuel.

01:16:20.780 | - And I remember this story.

01:16:22.540 | I don't know where I read it.

01:16:23.420 | It might be "Wrestling Tough,"

01:16:24.780 | where a person was imagining that their opponent

01:16:28.220 | just raped their mother,

01:16:29.860 | raped their girlfriend or something like that,

01:16:32.140 | to create this method acting thing in their head

01:16:35.060 | to be like, to snap 'em out of this polite interaction

01:16:38.860 | of usual athletic convention and really go to the--

01:16:43.860 | - You know what, that's a design of necessity.

01:16:46.500 | So my anecdote for this was I was sitting with,

01:16:51.500 | backstage before a fight, not my fight,

01:16:55.900 | and I'm working with this guy,

01:16:57.340 | and this dude is, this is a world champion guy,

01:17:00.980 | and he's competed at the highest levels.

01:17:03.740 | And he looks at me and he goes,

01:17:06.600 | "You ever get nervous before fights?"

01:17:11.540 | I looked at him and I went, "No, I don't."

01:17:14.660 | And he just looks at me, he's like,

01:17:15.700 | "Fuck, man, I'm so nervous.

01:17:17.660 | "How do you do it, man?

01:17:18.980 | "I wish I could be like you."

01:17:19.820 | And I said, "You know what?

01:17:21.220 | "That doesn't mean that what I'm doing is better.

01:17:24.000 | "It's just what is necessary for me.

01:17:25.940 | "It's the way I am."

01:17:27.420 | And I told him, so this anecdote goes into another anecdote.

01:17:31.500 | This is a "Family Guy" episode, I guess.

01:17:33.220 | (Lex laughing)

01:17:35.380 | Where another famous high-level guy told me

01:17:39.540 | about this experience with a world champion boxer in Japan.

01:17:44.540 | And this guy would get insanely nervous

01:17:48.660 | and worked up and anxious before his matches.

01:17:51.500 | And he hated it and hated it and hated it.

01:17:53.560 | And so he wanted to get rid of that feeling.

01:17:56.100 | So he went to a hypnotist for a bunch of sessions

01:17:58.460 | and managed to, and he goes in,

01:18:01.020 | and next fight, he's cool as a cucumber

01:18:04.100 | and doesn't perform and loses.

01:18:06.260 | And so what I said, going back to anecdote one,

01:18:10.020 | was whatever is necessary for you to get yourself

01:18:15.020 | in the best state of being right now

01:18:18.200 | to compete, whatever that may be.

01:18:20.540 | It could be absolute stress and fear.

01:18:23.700 | It could be anger.

01:18:24.860 | It could be calmness.

01:18:25.860 | It could be whatever.

01:18:26.820 | But there is a-- - So brilliant.

01:18:28.380 | - But there is a state at which you need to be in

01:18:33.100 | to do your best.

01:18:34.420 | - And you as the individual, you have to find that.

01:18:36.740 | Can you comment on Tyson, Mike Tyson?

01:18:40.980 | - Oh, yeah, that thing?

01:18:42.220 | - There's two things I wanna know.

01:18:45.180 | So he's, in terms of fear, there's a clip there,

01:18:48.620 | I think from a documentary, where he talks about

01:18:50.580 | he is fully afraid as he walks up to the ring.

01:18:54.860 | And as he gets closer and closer and closer,

01:18:56.420 | he gets more confident until he gets in

01:18:58.660 | and he's a god or something like that.

01:19:01.000 | That coupled with his statement on Joe Rogan

01:19:05.740 | that he gets aroused at the possibility

01:19:10.140 | of hurting somebody in the ring.

01:19:12.800 | So he gets aroused at the violence.

01:19:15.180 | - Yeah.

01:19:16.620 | - I like it 'cause it's coupled to your,

01:19:19.340 | basically, statement that we need to find

01:19:22.100 | our own unique way of existing at our top level

01:19:27.100 | of performance, and that perhaps is Mike Tyson.

01:19:30.300 | But do you think there's something more deeply universal

01:19:33.100 | to Mike Tyson speaking to the fact that he's aroused

01:19:36.700 | at the possibility of violence?

01:19:37.540 | - Yeah, I do, actually.

01:19:38.700 | Although I don't think that it always equates to arousal.

01:19:41.900 | For people, in fact, I would say in general, it doesn't.

01:19:45.220 | I can say I've never had a boner in the ring.

01:19:47.460 | In fact, if anything, old combat cock is like,

01:19:50.180 | we're not hanging around, we're leaving.

01:19:51.780 | We're going up, we're taking off.

01:19:53.780 | We don't want anything to do with this.

01:19:55.060 | You have fun, come back to us when you have something

01:19:57.860 | warmer, softer, smells better.

01:20:00.220 | But the power, the feeling of aliveness,

01:20:04.900 | yeah, I could see it.

01:20:06.060 | Back to even the concept of the Ubermensch,

01:20:09.380 | I feel like the highest states of being I've ever been in

01:20:13.320 | were in the midst of conflict.

01:20:15.900 | I felt like that was the time,

01:20:17.500 | those were the moments in my life where I felt like

01:20:20.020 | I was at the highest level of being as a human in existence.

01:20:25.020 | But yet, even being in that state,

01:20:27.900 | it was not something that you could interact with

01:20:31.220 | people that weren't in that state with you.

01:20:33.180 | They wouldn't get it, you would almost seem.

01:20:34.720 | And to be that way all the time,

01:20:36.540 | either A, might drive you mad,

01:20:38.260 | or B, is you're something that's untenable

01:20:42.000 | to the rest of society.

01:20:43.340 | You can't function with everybody else.

01:20:45.420 | It will not work.

01:20:46.780 | - It's just like you said with the Ubermensch,

01:20:48.700 | it's perhaps that ideal is not something

01:20:50.740 | you can hold for long.

01:20:52.180 | That's the very nature of it is.

01:20:53.620 | - Yeah, well, there was an example in "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"

01:20:56.700 | about a snake being down the person's throat

01:21:00.860 | and biting it, and then having this maniacal laughter

01:21:05.860 | erupting, and to me it was, at least I read it as,

01:21:10.900 | yeah, okay, there's this insane moment that isn't forever,

01:21:16.780 | but that it is life and death.

01:21:18.540 | And the overcoming it is the thing that all of a sudden

01:21:23.540 | gives you that tapping into your highest state, right?

01:21:27.540 | This is, man is a chasm, a tightrope

01:21:32.140 | between man and Ubermensch.

01:21:35.740 | Well, I don't wanna leave your thought about,

01:21:38.420 | we'll call those things flourishes to the aspect

01:21:43.580 | of Tyson's interpretation or his expression

01:21:48.580 | of his feelings in combat.

01:21:51.060 | And so I gave this anecdote to the guy,

01:21:53.820 | and I just, my first anecdote to that athlete

01:21:56.580 | I was working with, and I said,

01:21:58.220 | there isn't a superior way in this sense.

01:22:01.020 | There is the way that works for you.

01:22:02.660 | That may be something you can implement to other people

01:22:05.740 | if you find that person, 'cause we all have

01:22:07.500 | different personalities, and to me, that's an absolute.

01:22:11.260 | I don't wanna, don't come at me

01:22:13.580 | with all your other fucking social sciences crap.

01:22:16.580 | No, we have distinct personalities.

01:22:18.660 | That personality, who you really are,

01:22:21.380 | and this, again, Heidegger, Dasein, being authentic.

01:22:25.260 | If you're authentic with who you are, goods and bads,

01:22:28.060 | you will know how to create what that is.

01:22:30.100 | And for me, violence and fighting and conflict

01:22:33.840 | was something that always felt normal to me.

01:22:36.980 | And I don't mean normal in, like I grew up in a war zone

01:22:40.200 | or an abusive household or something like that.

01:22:42.980 | I just meant that, and I was a kid who was very

01:22:45.620 | joyful and inquisitive,

01:22:49.580 | and spent a lot of time around older people, of all things.

01:22:54.740 | And also, while I don't think I have much capability

01:22:58.860 | toward engineering, my mom said that one of the first things

01:23:02.220 | as like a little baby, when she put me

01:23:04.220 | in my sister's old crib, instead of my sister

01:23:07.680 | who just milled about and was fine with it all,

01:23:10.020 | the first thing I did was I completely deconstructed it.

01:23:12.060 | I didn't break it, I figured out how to pull it apart.

01:23:14.480 | - Curiosity about the world, and yet that wasn't

01:23:16.480 | in conflict with the idea of violence?

01:23:18.600 | - No, not at all.

01:23:19.620 | And so, being a very joyful and nice kid,

01:23:23.160 | but kids are kids, and if kids can find that you respond

01:23:28.160 | maybe more easily to agitation, they will agitate you.

01:23:34.320 | And if you should stand out in some way by being taller

01:23:37.200 | or bigger or something, or caring especially,

01:23:41.260 | they will agitate you.

01:23:42.760 | They don't really fully understand it either,

01:23:44.640 | and so I don't hold anything against any of the kids

01:23:47.280 | that used to pick on me or whatever,

01:23:48.800 | especially at the youngest ages.

01:23:50.560 | Man, they don't know shit either.

01:23:52.260 | But once that line was pushed, for me it was,

01:23:57.940 | oh, well, I was being cool, now you're being uncool.

01:24:02.420 | Well, then that gives me license for everything.

01:24:04.480 | And so, boom, we would just go at it.

01:24:06.280 | Or kids that would try to initiate a fight,

01:24:09.200 | okay, and being in that moment of just going to town

01:24:13.760 | with someone else, it just felt like this is--

01:24:18.760 | - I belong here.

01:24:19.760 | - Yeah, it was never a problem for me.

01:24:22.320 | In fact, if anything, what I had to understand was,

01:24:27.640 | well, not only did I learn the hard way,

01:24:29.760 | that it doesn't matter, at the end of the day,

01:24:32.920 | it doesn't really matter what anybody else does

01:24:36.080 | if your response in violence, even to their violence,

01:24:41.080 | if you're the winner,

01:24:42.720 | is often going to be penalized severely.

01:24:45.560 | Society, state apparatus, they don't want any of that.

01:24:51.320 | They wanna be the only arbiter of violence

01:24:53.480 | in the world always.

01:24:55.460 | But I learned a very difficult lesson with that,

01:24:58.200 | and it was really impactful in a negative way on me,

01:25:01.140 | but also I had to learn on an individual sense

01:25:05.320 | to, you need to manage violence too,

01:25:08.120 | because, hey, if someone attacks you

01:25:11.920 | or starts a fight with you and you go at it,

01:25:15.160 | okay, beating 'em up is one thing,

01:25:16.920 | trying to grab a handful of broken glass from the street

01:25:21.280 | and throw it in their face,

01:25:22.380 | maybe that's a bit much at seven.

01:25:25.520 | So you need to learn what level is necessary,

01:25:30.520 | and you need to learn what comes with all,

01:25:33.560 | what's the responsibility of, when you enact violence,

01:25:36.600 | I mean, you take on something

01:25:38.160 | when you have a responsibility for that.

01:25:40.680 | This is the extension of your actions.

01:25:42.880 | But as I got older, and especially as I found sports,

01:25:48.480 | and then combat sports,

01:25:51.120 | now this was a place for me to flourish,

01:25:54.920 | and to the point where I was more myself in that space

01:25:59.920 | than I was outside of it until time enough

01:26:02.780 | where I could learn to get this back together again.

01:26:05.960 | And I never say that I'll merge the two

01:26:09.680 | or anything like that, no, all what happened,

01:26:12.440 | my journey from adolescence on to manhood,

01:26:21.440 | a huge portion of it,

01:26:24.240 | besides the normal finding yourself, whatever, whatever,

01:26:27.240 | actually what it was was getting back to who I always was.

01:26:33.140 | - That curious kid, the kind kid.

01:26:35.180 | - Getting back to the guy

01:26:36.540 | that I should have been allowed to become

01:26:38.940 | instead of what happened under the pressures of other things.

01:26:43.940 | And the attempt for society and certain people

01:26:49.500 | within a managerial positions to compress what that was

01:26:55.580 | into something that they found more suitable.

01:26:58.100 | - Yeah, but those pressures allow you

01:26:59.300 | to discover this little world, forbidden world,

01:27:02.320 | in many ways, of violence that you could explore.

01:27:05.640 | Through sport, you can explore it,

01:27:07.440 | and it's more socially acceptable to explore it through sport.

01:27:11.440 | - For sure, but even then,

01:27:13.120 | at times, it's socially unacceptable.

01:27:16.560 | So I beat Sem Schilt, he cut my right eyebrow,

01:27:21.560 | I cut him and busted his nose,

01:27:25.760 | and he's bleeding all over me as I have an armbar on top,

01:27:28.800 | and it's raining blood, quote some slayer,

01:27:33.460 | from a lacerated Sem Schilt, bleeding in his horror,

01:27:37.540 | creating my structures, now I shall rain in blood.

01:27:39.620 | But I win the fight, armbar, nasty one,

01:27:44.620 | I get on my feet, and the first thing I do

01:27:48.860 | is I wipe all the blood off onto my hands,

01:27:52.220 | and I lick it, and I do my thing.

01:27:55.600 | And all the MMA journalists freaked out.

01:27:59.420 | Dana Wise, like, "Man, I don't know about that.

01:28:01.660 | "We don't want him doing, everybody had this huge problem."

01:28:04.940 | And then some folks would even contend,

01:28:07.740 | oh, you're trying to do, like, no, no, no,

01:28:11.100 | this isn't planned, I don't think of these things,

01:28:13.820 | this is how I really feel, this is who I really am.

01:28:16.900 | And it was even kind of comical after the fact,

01:28:21.900 | BJ Penn was on the very card with me,

01:28:24.220 | watching him at some point in his career

01:28:26.080 | all of a sudden win fights,

01:28:27.800 | and then do this licking the glove thing,

01:28:29.800 | and everyone thinks it's the coolest thing ever,

01:28:31.280 | and I'm like, "Hey, fuckfaces, I did this in 2002,

01:28:36.280 | "or one, 2001, and BJ Penn actually back then

01:28:40.000 | "was like, dude, you're a badass, you're a killer."

01:28:42.560 | - Where did that come from?

01:28:45.080 | Because that seems like a deeply human moment.

01:28:47.000 | - I could say, I could just be goofy about it

01:28:49.840 | and call it orgiastic, to align with--

01:28:52.320 | - Are we back to Mike Tyson?

01:28:53.720 | - Yeah, Tyson, but no, no, it's beyond that.

01:28:58.000 | - Is it a celebration of human nature?

01:29:01.080 | - I've had some pretty decent orgasms

01:29:02.680 | in my life at this point, I'm 43,

01:29:04.640 | but no, none have ever compared to that.

01:29:06.360 | Like I said, it is a feeling of highest being to me.

01:29:09.400 | - That's your Ubermensch moment.

01:29:12.420 | - This is where I feel like the restrictions

01:29:15.680 | of general existence in society are gone,

01:29:20.200 | and I get to fully live in a state

01:29:23.800 | that feels more meaningful, of the most meaning.

01:29:26.840 | I think of it as life and death.

01:29:28.440 | It is the way I'm built, and I've never had any problem

01:29:36.080 | applying violence.

01:29:37.040 | Like it doesn't, I don't know where it comes from

01:29:39.760 | or how you would define it or whatever,

01:29:41.240 | if you wanna stick me in a psychologist chair,

01:29:44.640 | but there's a part of me that can just,

01:29:48.440 | no, if I'm gonna apply, I can apply violence

01:29:50.600 | to any level and be okay with it.

01:29:52.880 | And it doesn't, I don't lose sleep,

01:29:54.920 | it doesn't bother me, it's not a problem.

01:29:57.900 | It was me learning how to fully understand violence,

01:30:02.900 | humans, and the broader perspective

01:30:07.440 | that allowed me to think about things

01:30:09.040 | and like, well, what do I really wanna accomplish

01:30:12.820 | with my actions in the world just on a whole?

01:30:15.720 | Not compartmentalizing my sporting career.

01:30:18.920 | Even when I get in the ring, I don't have any mercy,

01:30:23.920 | generally, and if I do, it's because I make

01:30:26.000 | a really deliberate attempt to be in a state

01:30:31.000 | where I can have mercy.

01:30:33.440 | If I just go in there to fight with everything I got,

01:30:36.680 | there is zero-- - The natural state of violence.

01:30:38.200 | - There's nothing that will hold me back

01:30:40.120 | other than the referee, and that's that.

01:30:43.120 | I know I agreed to be allowed to do and not to do,

01:30:46.760 | but within that, no, and I expect it to be done to me.

01:30:51.760 | - But in terms of values, in terms of seeing what,

01:30:56.320 | to me, violence is just yet another canvas

01:31:01.320 | that humans can paint beautifully on.

01:31:04.880 | - Clearly, I mean, we have venerated the violent.

01:31:07.740 | There are communists that venerate the violent

01:31:11.840 | on their behalf.

01:31:12.920 | There are national socialists

01:31:14.460 | that venerate the violent there,

01:31:16.240 | and then if you remove it from an ideological perspective,

01:31:19.240 | we venerate the violent when they're a hero.

01:31:23.680 | We venerate the violent in our religion.

01:31:26.960 | Well, I mean, I guess some people venerate the violence

01:31:29.240 | of Yahweh and Sodom and Gomorrah, right?

01:31:32.360 | So, or do we say Jehovah?

01:31:34.720 | I don't know.

01:31:35.560 | - Is there, you've already mentioned one,

01:31:38.960 | but is there a fight where you've achieved

01:31:42.560 | the highest of heights for your own personal being,

01:31:46.200 | just when you look within yourself

01:31:48.480 | that you're the proudest of,

01:31:49.880 | or maybe was your most beautiful creation?

01:31:51.940 | Is there something that stands out?

01:31:52.780 | - Yeah, there are a few, actually.

01:31:54.920 | Fighting semi-shield and a rematch.

01:31:57.080 | Well, the first one was pretty good, too,

01:31:58.880 | but the rematch was I was suffering,

01:32:01.660 | I had suffered prior, the week prior to food poisoning,

01:32:07.400 | and so while my abs were looking all right,

01:32:09.880 | I, in the ring, didn't have the power that I expected to,

01:32:16.120 | and I was struggling in ways,

01:32:19.640 | in some of the grappling, with the submission stuff,

01:32:22.800 | that I hadn't accounted for.

01:32:24.240 | - Just exhaustion or mental exhaustion?

01:32:26.760 | - No, I mean, like, just physical,

01:32:28.680 | I wasn't back up to 100% in terms of just power output,

01:32:32.120 | and semi was, well, he's always seven foot tall,

01:32:36.800 | but this time he was, the first time I fought him,

01:32:38.640 | he was 260, or 257, or 260 something, something like that.

01:32:43.640 | This time, he was like 290,

01:32:46.800 | and so he was a significantly bigger cat,

01:32:49.000 | and he's a big dude, and I just remember being

01:32:54.000 | up against the ropes with him,

01:32:57.980 | changing levels, trying to take him down,

01:33:00.320 | and he's fighting, he's hipping,

01:33:01.800 | and I just thought in my head,

01:33:03.600 | there's no fucking way I'm gonna lose this fight.

01:33:05.360 | There's no way, you are not going to beat me,

01:33:07.200 | it's not gonna happen, and I armbarred him, the other arm.

01:33:11.120 | You remember the fact, he's like,

01:33:12.560 | man, I really wanted to get you for that,

01:33:13.880 | I wanted to get that match back,

01:33:15.040 | and then you fucking got my other arm, dick.

01:33:16.760 | I'm like, eh, dude, I still love you, though.

01:33:20.200 | - But the whole time, you're like,

01:33:22.240 | so this has to do with the dichotomy

01:33:24.800 | of you feeling your worst.

01:33:27.120 | - And having to overcome and make it.

01:33:28.400 | - You're literally mentally telling yourself,

01:33:30.320 | there's no way.

01:33:31.160 | - There's no fucking way I'm gonna lose this fight,

01:33:32.800 | and then there's even my last bare knuckle match,

01:33:35.440 | and getting in the ring and fighting

01:33:36.920 | bare knuckle boxing for the first time,

01:33:40.520 | and just thinking, just being in a great state,

01:33:45.520 | and just looking so forward to seeing,

01:33:48.840 | I mean, I called someone, I was talking to them

01:33:52.160 | the night before, and I said, yeah, well,

01:33:54.260 | I video called you 'cause this face

01:33:57.440 | might not look like this when I see you next,

01:34:00.000 | and they're just like, ooh, okay.

01:34:03.200 | - So it's not just empty trash talk.

01:34:05.040 | - No.

01:34:05.880 | - That's a clarity of mind and a seriousness

01:34:08.720 | about this particular battle.

01:34:09.560 | - I might die, pretty high chance

01:34:12.960 | of being deformed some way, so, well, fuck it.

01:34:16.040 | I don't really care.

01:34:16.960 | - Do you think about, are you accepting

01:34:18.640 | your own death that you're going through?

01:34:20.320 | - Yes, 100%.

01:34:21.160 | In fact, and that's, in a strange way,

01:34:24.120 | that's partially what makes it so elevated

01:34:26.360 | in terms of my sense of feeling,

01:34:29.160 | by being able to have death at my side, it feels good.

01:34:34.160 | And to be there and to think that this could be the one,

01:34:42.000 | like, why not?

01:34:43.800 | I'm not a religious person at all,

01:34:46.160 | even though I very much have to,

01:34:48.520 | seems to bang on the drum about the usefulness

01:34:50.840 | or understanding the usefulness of religion for people.

01:34:53.600 | But if I gotta do something, then yeah,

01:34:58.840 | put me in Valhalla, man.

01:34:59.880 | I don't wanna be anywhere else.

01:35:01.000 | Nothing else seems like a good place for me to be.

01:35:02.840 | I wanna fight all day long and feast all night.

01:35:06.240 | You know, it sounds great.

01:35:07.760 | - I saw you throw your hat into the ring of Vader,

01:35:11.280 | I mean, I mean, I think.

01:35:12.120 | - Yes.

01:35:13.320 | He got COVID, I guess.

01:35:14.480 | I hope he overcomes it and comes out just as good,

01:35:17.760 | if not better.

01:35:18.600 | - Epic with that.

01:35:19.440 | Did I understand correctly that that might be his last fight?

01:35:22.000 | - Yes, that's my understanding.

01:35:24.160 | And it would be epic as hell.

01:35:25.440 | And it would be epic as hell

01:35:26.640 | because the person that I wanna give my most to

01:35:31.240 | is a person that I respect,

01:35:33.040 | especially at this long career of mine

01:35:38.040 | and getting at this--

01:35:39.480 | - And his as well. - Twilight years.

01:35:41.040 | - It's like two warriors.

01:35:42.360 | - And that's the thing about even this going in there

01:35:45.320 | with the aspect of being with death and all that

01:35:47.920 | is that when that person is in there,

01:35:51.080 | they are my brother with me in this.

01:35:52.960 | And that so when you give me your best,

01:35:55.160 | even if I win dominant fashion,

01:35:58.240 | but if you show up and you're as authentic

01:36:00.560 | and being here as I am, then I love you.

01:36:03.040 | And I'm glad for you to be here and we're in this together.

01:36:05.360 | And at this point, your loss or my loss or whatever

01:36:10.360 | is no less deserving of veneration than the win.

01:36:14.600 | Like we're here in this.

01:36:15.920 | And so to be in the ring with Fyodor

01:36:18.080 | and to venerate him in win or defeat,

01:36:21.400 | to be in there with someone like that is to me,

01:36:26.400 | it's so rare.

01:36:29.480 | - It's incredible how the ultimate violence

01:36:33.240 | is coupled with like love or respect.

01:36:37.800 | And it's like, it's weird how this is,

01:36:40.200 | how the competition in its violent form

01:36:45.400 | is also a veneration of just human connection.

01:36:51.200 | - It's also the removal.

01:36:52.360 | I feel like it's the purest, one of the purest ways,

01:36:55.640 | purest, most honest places a person can exist.

01:36:59.160 | That line in Fight Club, you don't know really who you are

01:37:01.280 | until you've been in a fight.

01:37:02.120 | I mean, believe that.

01:37:03.560 | And I've seen so many examples of people

01:37:06.480 | trying to portray themselves as one thing.

01:37:09.500 | And then in the ring, you see who they really are.

01:37:12.880 | Or even when they're trying to portray themselves

01:37:15.200 | as one thing and they're winning,

01:37:18.080 | the crowd at times will see who they really are

01:37:21.280 | and still hate them.

01:37:22.280 | It's like, but I said all the good things.

01:37:25.760 | Bro, don't work that way.

01:37:27.760 | - Yeah, but speaking of fado,

01:37:29.480 | if we take you out of the picture,

01:37:31.480 | who are the greatest mixed martial arts fighters

01:37:33.720 | of all time?

01:37:34.560 | - I feel--

01:37:36.760 | - You out of the picture.

01:37:38.280 | - As a cop out to some degree,

01:37:40.680 | I feel like we need a little bit more time

01:37:42.760 | to see how this unfolds.

01:37:47.360 | Because you gotta compare a lot of things.

01:37:48.840 | And I, did I, I think I'm--

01:37:52.440 | - Like centuries?

01:37:53.280 | - I did an interview.

01:37:54.120 | I don't know about centuries,

01:37:55.120 | but that would help if we can keep accurate records

01:37:57.240 | and not allow too much bias to fall in,

01:38:01.660 | too much propaganda.

01:38:02.500 | - The victor still, right?

01:38:03.320 | - Yeah, good luck, yeah.

01:38:04.160 | But I made an argument.

01:38:08.040 | I did a, it was a interview with an MMA outlet of some sort.

01:38:14.240 | And I can't recall who it was.

01:38:16.360 | But oh, it was an argument about,

01:38:18.880 | will the winner of Cain Velasquez versus Stipe Miocik

01:38:23.880 | be the greatest MMA heavyweight of all time?

01:38:26.560 | And I said, fucking no way.

01:38:29.200 | Oh no, it's Cormier and Miocik.

01:38:31.080 | That's what it was.

01:38:32.040 | I said, absolutely not, not even close.

01:38:35.200 | And I said, these guys need a bit more time

01:38:37.400 | to see how things go.

01:38:39.360 | And also how things go for some of their opponents.

01:38:41.200 | And there's more factors than just this one fight.

01:38:43.640 | It really is.

01:38:44.480 | And I go, and when you wanna weigh these people,

01:38:47.720 | even if let's say, we'll bring Alistair,

01:38:50.120 | yeah, Alistair Overeem into the equation.

01:38:52.840 | Okay, you judge him on what you know now,

01:38:56.120 | what he's done for you lately, okay?

01:38:58.480 | - Right.

01:38:59.380 | - Which is a very myopic way of doing it.

01:39:01.940 | What has he done over his career?

01:39:04.600 | K1 champion.

01:39:06.480 | He was a champion in Dream.

01:39:10.560 | He striked for us, blah, blah, blah.

01:39:13.960 | His overall record.

01:39:15.680 | The entirety of all the different opponents he's fought.

01:39:18.200 | And I just sit back and I go,

01:39:20.360 | okay, he's not the UFC champ,

01:39:22.640 | but his accolades, his merits,

01:39:27.360 | in some ways, actually stand up higher

01:39:32.980 | than Cormier's and Miocik's.

01:39:35.560 | - So what about the moments,

01:39:37.160 | do you give much value to the special moments,

01:39:41.640 | like the highest heights you rise to?

01:39:43.560 | Not in terms of records or the strikes landed,

01:39:46.560 | but just creating a magical moment in a fight.

01:39:50.320 | It doesn't have to be even a championship fight,

01:39:52.340 | but just, you know, Conor McGregor

01:39:54.760 | is an example of somebody who creates a narrative,

01:39:57.080 | who creates a story, who creates a drama,

01:39:59.160 | and a special magic happens,

01:40:00.720 | even if it's like not with a--

01:40:02.400 | - Myth is greater than reality,

01:40:04.400 | and that is always the case.

01:40:05.560 | - But do you--

01:40:06.400 | - And so I understand that so very much,

01:40:08.240 | and it takes an asshole like me to poo-poo on your myth.

01:40:13.200 | At least get you, at the end of the day,

01:40:15.000 | you're not gonna abandon your myth,

01:40:16.520 | but perhaps temper it with the facts and logic.

01:40:21.520 | - So you're not a fan of myth?

01:40:24.120 | - No, I'm an absolute massive fan of myth.

01:40:26.540 | - But you prefer facts and logic.

01:40:28.080 | - It's like when I, no, I mean,

01:40:29.760 | I like saying facts and logic,

01:40:32.400 | because people, I also,

01:40:34.480 | I am not a materialist in that sense.

01:40:36.240 | I don't think that materialism can solve for everything.

01:40:38.720 | It's not enough, it's not robust enough.

01:40:40.800 | I'm sorry, if facts and logic,

01:40:42.720 | or reason, as the Enlightenment scholars all thought,

01:40:46.560 | including Marx, was enough for people,

01:40:49.760 | then we wouldn't have any religions.

01:40:53.360 | We wouldn't have, there would be no,

01:40:55.400 | we wouldn't have narratives and myths

01:40:56.800 | and all this kind of stuff.

01:40:58.100 | It would not, it just, I'm sorry,

01:40:59.640 | there is no, there is nothing about history

01:41:02.400 | that supports the idea that rationality will overcome all.

01:41:07.400 | - There's something about Ben Shapiro's

01:41:09.360 | facts don't care about your feelings

01:41:10.880 | that feels to be, feels to be missing

01:41:14.880 | something fundamental about human nature.

01:41:16.600 | It's not clear to me exactly what is missing.

01:41:20.200 | - To give old Ben a fair shake,

01:41:24.720 | and I don't know Ben Shapiro.

01:41:27.240 | I don't really listen to Ben Shapiro,

01:41:29.000 | not against Ben Shapiro.

01:41:30.720 | I'm not here to say anything particularly bad about him.

01:41:35.800 | Although I will say at one time,

01:41:37.160 | Tom Arnold was seemingly trying to pick

01:41:39.680 | an actionable fight with Ben Shapiro.

01:41:42.160 | - In the ring.

01:41:43.000 | - Somewhere, yeah.

01:41:44.600 | And I just, and I actually responded,

01:41:46.920 | and I tried to get him to clarify,

01:41:48.200 | say hey, are you saying that you wanna fight Ben Shapiro,

01:41:51.760 | that you're looking to actually,

01:41:52.920 | 'cause I was waiting for him to say something,

01:41:54.480 | and then I can be like, okay, well,

01:41:56.020 | it's one thing to wanna get into a fight with someone.

01:41:58.120 | It's another thing to go pick on a little tiny guy like Ben

01:42:03.120 | who's much smaller than you and doesn't train or whatever,

01:42:05.760 | but if it's not me, I can find someone your size,

01:42:08.360 | and you can go fight him.

01:42:09.720 | Basically, don't be a bully piece of shit.

01:42:13.320 | Which, by the way, Tom Arnold, you are a mental midget.

01:42:17.480 | You are never going to be able to compete

01:42:20.220 | even with Ben Shapiro in an argument

01:42:22.040 | on any level about anything.

01:42:23.920 | - Oh, intellectual argument.

01:42:24.960 | - Yeah, intellectual argument.

01:42:26.640 | Maybe you can scream louder than him, but whatever.

01:42:29.840 | - But nevertheless, in the discussion of greatness

01:42:34.240 | in fighting, are numbers. - I think you need to look

01:42:36.840 | at some of the, you need to look at some of the numbers.

01:42:39.120 | - And there's the magic.

01:42:40.280 | - There is some context also in that,

01:42:42.920 | where did Alistair Overeem fight?

01:42:45.200 | Oh, he fought in Pride, where you could soccer kick people

01:42:47.400 | and stomp their head and this and that,

01:42:48.840 | and so the game environment is actually different too.

01:42:53.360 | - There's more uncertainty, there's more chaos in Pride,

01:42:55.700 | there's more-- - Go back a little further

01:42:58.160 | and go like, what about the guys that used to fight,

01:43:00.560 | Dan Severn fought bare knuckle, head butts, the whole nine.

01:43:04.480 | - You beat Dan Severn, right?

01:43:05.560 | - I did beat Dan Severn, that was killing an idol,

01:43:08.200 | so to speak, although I didn't really kill him

01:43:10.260 | because I still love him.

01:43:12.080 | I mean, he's still responsible for inspiration

01:43:15.720 | along this whole pathway.

01:43:17.400 | It's meeting your God and then putting a knife in it,

01:43:21.400 | I guess. (laughing)

01:43:24.560 | - Realizing they're human and then bringing them

01:43:26.800 | down to your level.

01:43:27.640 | - Exactly, but also there's a huge misconception there

01:43:31.400 | and that is that I could bring,

01:43:33.080 | maybe I could bring Dan Severn down to my level,

01:43:35.840 | but I couldn't bring his mustache down to my level.

01:43:38.720 | It is of mythic proportions and--

01:43:41.200 | - Greater than yours.

01:43:42.880 | Your facial hair is greater than yours.

01:43:44.600 | - My facial hair is creating its own legacy,

01:43:47.960 | but it is not Dan Severn mustache level

01:43:50.360 | or now Don Fry mustache, so Don Fry mustache,

01:43:53.900 | Dan Severn mustache, now you have like

01:43:57.040 | Shia versus Sunni, like that's--

01:43:59.000 | (laughing)

01:44:00.960 | - You think there'll be Karl Marx painting

01:44:04.320 | of Josh Barnett one day with the beard?

01:44:06.440 | And is that basically what you're trying to--

01:44:08.280 | - I hope so, I will actually comb my hair, unlike Marx.

01:44:11.520 | But--

01:44:12.360 | - Chaos has a charm to it.

01:44:16.440 | - It does, it does.

01:44:17.400 | I mean, we all thought Doc Brown in Back to the Future

01:44:20.400 | was quite charming.

01:44:22.240 | - You have to throw that into the calculation

01:44:23.760 | where they fought.

01:44:24.800 | - Yes. - I mean, this is the--

01:44:25.640 | - And the rules that they fought under,

01:44:27.080 | you know, some guy like Igor Volfeynchen

01:44:28.880 | won a 32-man tournament or something like that.

01:44:33.260 | I go, okay,

01:44:34.280 | Stipe and Daniel Cormier are awesome.

01:44:39.480 | And they will, for sure, be revered

01:44:44.040 | for their careers, 100%.

01:44:48.600 | Can you say that they're particularly even better

01:44:51.960 | overall than Igor Volfeynchen?

01:44:54.000 | Well, maybe one of them could've beat them,

01:44:55.800 | maybe one of them wouldn't have.

01:44:57.640 | Maybe Igor would've fuckin' got 'em

01:44:59.680 | with the knuckles right away.

01:45:01.080 | Well, maybe if they fought 'em in pride,

01:45:02.440 | they wouldn't have won.

01:45:03.280 | Maybe if they fought 'em bare-knuckle, they wouldn't have won.

01:45:05.760 | I don't know.

01:45:06.600 | - And there's something about the chaos,

01:45:07.760 | like do you put Hoyse Gracie in the top 10?

01:45:11.040 | You know, there's something about--

01:45:12.280 | - Top 10 of all time in terms of competitors?

01:45:17.280 | Capable?

01:45:19.040 | I don't know, I'd have to think about that, maybe not.

01:45:21.120 | But I put Hoyse Gracie as like pyramid level,

01:45:24.520 | like wow, dude, what an amazing man.

01:45:28.600 | Yeah, he's so important, absolutely incredibly important.

01:45:32.000 | - But there's something about stepping into,

01:45:36.200 | like fighting another human being

01:45:37.760 | under all the uncertainty that the early UFCs had.

01:45:40.640 | I mean, you don't know what is going to happen.

01:45:43.520 | And couple that with not much money.

01:45:46.540 | All of it.

01:45:48.480 | - Yes.

01:45:49.320 | - So the purity of it, too.

01:45:50.440 | There's something about money,

01:45:51.640 | I mean, that gets the shit for that in the capitalist world,

01:45:54.040 | but that ruins the purity of the violence.

01:45:57.200 | - Yeah, people, given the opportunity for,

01:46:00.720 | yeah, the bigger things get, the more,

01:46:04.720 | I love the fact that fighting has opened up

01:46:07.280 | to such a degree that the career business side of it,

01:46:12.280 | 'cause I absolutely distinctly separate the two,

01:46:16.400 | the business side of it has opened up

01:46:18.580 | to give me far more possibilities,

01:46:20.260 | opened way more doors for me than I ever intended it to.

01:46:23.060 | Whereas the athlete side of things has,

01:46:29.840 | if anything, just gotten substantially worse, I would say.

01:46:33.680 | And some of this can be, some of this is due to all,

01:46:38.680 | the nature of all games will be learned,

01:46:43.280 | will be gamed without even the rules being broken.

01:46:47.800 | And once that's figured out,

01:46:49.300 | you need to make an adjustment.

01:46:51.240 | No adjustments have been made.

01:46:53.680 | So the game just appears to be the same game

01:46:56.480 | over and over and over and over and over again,

01:46:59.520 | on ESPN+, on whatever, on whatever, on whatever.

01:47:02.720 | It doesn't really matter which night you watch,

01:47:04.680 | it's the same game constantly.

01:47:06.880 | And that's not because the athletes are worse or better,

01:47:11.880 | it's because they have had that game structure long enough

01:47:16.460 | that they figured out,

01:47:18.120 | what do you do to be the most successful at it?

01:47:21.240 | What is the highest percentage way of approaching it,

01:47:23.280 | essentially, even if you're not thinking of percentages?

01:47:26.220 | - What were the, if we take a step back,

01:47:29.000 | it's really fascinating to think about the early UFCs.

01:47:31.860 | Did you fight Dan Saverin in the UFC?

01:47:33.640 | - I fought him in Super Brawl.

01:47:35.240 | - Super Brawl, so that was in the early, early days,

01:47:37.180 | you're undefeated. - 2000.

01:47:38.580 | - What were those early days, let's say,

01:47:43.480 | of mixed martial arts like?

01:47:45.320 | Did you have--

01:47:46.560 | - Let me tell you the day of high adventure.

01:47:49.180 | (laughing)

01:47:50.880 | Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.

01:47:54.600 | Yeah, it is, it was so much fun.

01:47:56.680 | And it made you feel absolutely like you were a part of

01:48:00.160 | a novel, a comic book.

01:48:04.480 | I mean, I would love to transcribe my experiences

01:48:08.880 | as what I consider a second generation MMA athlete,

01:48:13.000 | except I'm way too sensitive to anybody's personal,

01:48:18.000 | any things that are, not even to,

01:48:25.360 | I'm not a gospy person.

01:48:26.640 | I really do believe that small people talk about others.

01:48:29.920 | Big people talk about ideas.

01:48:31.660 | But there's just some stories that you can't tell

01:48:36.960 | without telling the whole story.

01:48:38.240 | And there are so many amazing stories

01:48:42.120 | that could be told.

01:48:43.400 | - People being at their best, people being at their worst.

01:48:45.800 | - Yeah, the whole, the whole--

01:48:47.600 | - Is there something you could speak to

01:48:50.400 | the chaos of the time?

01:48:51.800 | - Oh, 100%, like, well, okay, so we at AMC got

01:48:55.840 | connected to somebody that was throwing an event

01:48:58.640 | in Nampa, Idaho, and we all piled into this

01:49:02.240 | and Matt Humes, Subaru wagon, and we jammed out.

01:49:07.160 | And we left Kirkland and we headed over to Idaho,

01:49:10.900 | only to find out that there was nothing

01:49:15.900 | really put in place.

01:49:17.640 | It was absolute disrepair and chaos.

01:49:22.640 | They didn't have a ring, they didn't have this.

01:49:25.080 | It was such a bullshit adventure.

01:49:28.520 | But we were like, well, you know,

01:49:32.220 | there's hardly anywhere to fight.

01:49:34.600 | It's tough to find these opportunities.

01:49:36.280 | So, okay, well, how about this?

01:49:39.400 | Whoever is here to fight and is willing,

01:49:42.920 | all right, well, since there's no venue,

01:49:45.300 | there's no this, whatever, we all got gloves,

01:49:47.600 | we got mouthpieces, we'll just go to the park

01:49:50.080 | as long as they'll get paid.

01:49:51.600 | And so, folks were kind of like,

01:49:54.760 | I don't know about that.

01:49:56.200 | The guy I was gonna fight was, he finally figured,

01:49:59.680 | he finally gets information on who I actually am.

01:50:03.000 | And I was undefeated at the time.

01:50:05.520 | I think I had fought Super Bowl XIII

01:50:09.320 | and already won that tournament.

01:50:10.440 | And so, he's like, yeah, I had no clue.

01:50:13.960 | I'm so glad we didn't fight.

01:50:15.100 | You would have murdered me.

01:50:16.120 | This is, you know, what a setup.

01:50:18.480 | And eventually, Matt had to strong arm the guy

01:50:21.720 | and get our money that we were supposed to all get

01:50:24.080 | and drive back.

01:50:25.560 | And 'cause his whole position was,

01:50:27.320 | well, there ain't no fucking way.

01:50:28.440 | We drove all the way out here for free.

01:50:31.540 | This is on you.

01:50:32.920 | You fucked this up, not my problem.

01:50:35.440 | But what is my problem is the lack of cash in my account.

01:50:38.360 | So, fix it.

01:50:40.180 | You know, or me fighting my first organized fight

01:50:45.180 | against an AMC guy on 11 days notice

01:50:50.400 | through a connection to an old wrestling coach I had.

01:50:54.540 | And I just gathered up with all my old martial arts,

01:50:58.120 | my old martial arts instructor that I had worked with.

01:51:00.560 | And we grappled in his apartment.

01:51:05.560 | We did tie pads in the park.

01:51:08.560 | I ran a couple miles every day.

01:51:11.200 | And then, all right, boom, show it up.

01:51:13.240 | Won my fight by front choke in two minutes.

01:51:15.720 | And then Matt goes, okay, well, hey, you did really great.

01:51:20.320 | We'd like you to come back and fight again in the summer.

01:51:22.280 | What do you think?

01:51:23.440 | Okay, go back off to university.

01:51:26.060 | And then I think, hmm, well, that fight didn't go exactly

01:51:29.480 | how I wanted it to.

01:51:30.960 | So, I gotta find a way to get more experience.

01:51:34.640 | I would literally fight people in the university

01:51:38.280 | like rec center on the old wrestling mats

01:51:41.720 | as they didn't all have a wrestling team.

01:51:43.280 | I would find anyone doing martial arts,

01:51:45.280 | anyone talking about getting into street fights,

01:51:47.280 | anyone, whatever, and just basically go,

01:51:49.280 | oh, you ever watch UFC?

01:51:51.300 | Yeah, yeah, that stuff's cool.

01:51:52.560 | What do you think?

01:51:53.400 | Oh, man, I'm super into it, man.

01:51:54.560 | It's badass.

01:51:55.920 | Rad.

01:51:56.760 | So, would you wanna fight?

01:52:00.040 | (laughing)

01:52:01.920 | I mean, it was way easier picking fights

01:52:04.000 | than it was getting a girlfriend.

01:52:06.360 | So, I just, you know, path leads to resistance.

01:52:10.200 | - I think it might be useful for us

01:52:11.960 | to get some advice from you.

01:52:14.360 | - Yeah, all right.

01:52:15.200 | - 'Cause you've accomplished for the journey

01:52:18.560 | of a martial artist first.

01:52:21.120 | If you've accomplished some of the greatest accolades

01:52:24.000 | there is in the sport,

01:52:24.960 | if somebody who's starting out now

01:52:27.280 | or early on in their journey,

01:52:29.000 | what advice would you give on how to become

01:52:33.920 | a martial artist, a catch wrestler, a fighter?

01:52:37.480 | - Well, I mean, really what it comes down to

01:52:41.840 | is do it because you love it.

01:52:43.520 | Do it for that reason and that reason alone.

01:52:46.240 | Most people that get into this

01:52:49.440 | and attempt to make any sort of

01:52:51.640 | professional inroads with it,

01:52:53.320 | you are not going to be the world champion.

01:52:55.560 | You probably will never even fight for a belt.

01:52:59.200 | You're probably not going to net make money at this.

01:53:03.340 | So, don't do it for those reasons.

01:53:06.200 | Do it for the reason of the passion.

01:53:08.280 | Do it for the reason to be the absolute best

01:53:10.360 | that you can be, whatever that ends up being.

01:53:13.120 | You might, at best, only be mediocre.

01:53:17.000 | But you won't even be mediocre

01:53:18.240 | if you don't do it like you really mean it.

01:53:20.360 | So-- - The passion look,

01:53:22.240 | where's the kernel of the passion, would you say?

01:53:25.120 | Is it in the learning process itself, the improvement?

01:53:27.720 | - I think it really depends on the person, right?

01:53:29.560 | I mean, there's some people that really love

01:53:31.200 | the fact of they feel like they're growing, right?

01:53:36.200 | Will to power, you're growing,

01:53:37.960 | growing stronger, growing better.

01:53:39.600 | The idea of eliminating weakness.

01:53:44.700 | So, to which I'll quickly define weakness

01:53:48.720 | as just like things that weaken you,

01:53:51.280 | not like being physically weak.

01:53:53.680 | Sure, you could call that weakness,

01:53:55.320 | but maybe you're not meant to be a super strong guy.

01:53:57.720 | But choosing to be weak is really a different story

01:54:02.420 | other than just like we're all deficient

01:54:06.040 | in some way or another.

01:54:07.380 | So, that's neither here nor there.

01:54:10.440 | It's a matter of what you decide to do with it.

01:54:12.160 | And that's an information strength and weakness,

01:54:13.680 | at least the way I look at it.

01:54:14.840 | Like strength is choosing,

01:54:16.480 | regardless of the difficulty, to make improvements.

01:54:19.760 | Strength is even choosing to acknowledge

01:54:21.520 | that you do lack and accept it

01:54:25.160 | and then make a decision on what to do with it.

01:54:27.520 | - Yeah, but there's also, there's a bunch of stuff

01:54:30.840 | that just like you said, it's what you're drawn to.

01:54:32.620 | There's an honesty to just grappling

01:54:35.000 | that it seems more real than anything else you can do.

01:54:38.320 | - Sure, well, and also--

01:54:39.840 | - That's where the passion and love can come from.

01:54:41.200 | - Yeah, I mean, it's being in an environment,

01:54:43.420 | hopefully, that is as true as possible,

01:54:46.040 | would be a starter.

01:54:47.720 | So, it's hard to be a bullshit person

01:54:52.400 | when you're literally trying to tear each other's arms off.

01:54:55.520 | - Yeah.

01:54:56.360 | - You really sort of see who somebody is.

01:54:58.840 | I also feel like you really get to see somebody who,

01:55:01.480 | there are a couple instances where you really see

01:55:03.140 | who people are on the mats and in the bedroom.

01:55:07.040 | So, even the aspect of self-betterment,

01:55:17.600 | growth along a path, I mean, hell,

01:55:19.520 | that's part of the device of capture

01:55:23.720 | for martial arts as a business.

01:55:26.440 | Give you a belt, put a stripe on your belt.

01:55:29.040 | Each of these iterations cost 20 bucks.

01:55:31.960 | - But there's a benefit to that, too.

01:55:35.440 | I really enjoyed the progression of belts.

01:55:38.240 | - Sure.

01:55:39.080 | - 'Cause a bit of it is OCD or whatever,

01:55:41.400 | but you're enjoying the recognition of your growth

01:55:44.300 | when you feel, when you're made to feel,

01:55:46.480 | when I think genuinely you do earn it.

01:55:48.880 | - Yeah, I agree. - In that process.

01:55:50.320 | - I agree.

01:55:51.160 | It makes complete sense to me.

01:55:52.960 | It just, anything that has a goodness in its purity

01:55:57.600 | can also have a detriment in its perversion.

01:56:00.680 | - And there's a value to competition.

01:56:04.360 | I've gotten some shit in the past for saying this.

01:56:06.360 | I've gotten the most value in giving everything I have

01:56:11.360 | to try to win and lose.

01:56:15.940 | So I've gotten, I remember most of the matches I've lost,

01:56:19.760 | and I think that's what I've gotten the most

01:56:23.580 | from the sport is losing.

01:56:25.160 | - Think about it.

01:56:26.000 | I mean, if you really think about it,

01:56:27.640 | what makes you wanna actually, in detail,

01:56:34.080 | go over what happened?

01:56:36.940 | Oh, it's the time when you didn't get what you wanted.

01:56:39.320 | It's a time when you gave it everything you had

01:56:41.580 | and you came up short or failed miserably.

01:56:45.820 | - Especially if you're embarrassed in some way.

01:56:47.820 | - Right, and so that's usually the only time people,

01:56:50.300 | again, calamity, is the impetus for them

01:56:53.000 | to actually turn around and go,

01:56:54.700 | "Who the fuck am I?

01:56:55.740 | "What am I doing and why am I doing it?"

01:56:57.780 | Instead of naturally going, "Hmm, okay, well, I won.

01:57:02.320 | "Why?

01:57:03.240 | "What was it that caused it?"

01:57:04.080 | And so I think part of my success is that

01:57:06.940 | when I win, I'm brutal.

01:57:09.820 | When I lose, I'm brutal.

01:57:11.900 | And there is no in-between.

01:57:13.760 | So I remember losing the rematch against Noguera,

01:57:18.760 | and I still feel like it was a bullshit call.

01:57:24.340 | I feel like I won that fight, but my opinion is that,

01:57:28.420 | and this even came up, so one of the coaches in the back

01:57:31.740 | was like, "Oh, you did great.

01:57:34.080 | "Don't feel bad, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

01:57:35.900 | And I go, "No, fuck that.

01:57:36.800 | "I didn't finish him.

01:57:37.920 | "I allowed the referees to make a decision

01:57:40.360 | "that I think is incorrect and bad,

01:57:42.300 | "but that came because I didn't take him out.

01:57:44.860 | "Fuck that, no, no.

01:57:46.480 | "He won, he's gonna get more money,

01:57:48.280 | "he's gonna get more recognition,

01:57:49.600 | "blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:57:50.980 | "I accept all this, and it's not okay.

01:57:53.400 | "And I need to, when I get a chance to fight him again,

01:57:57.080 | "I gotta figure out how to take this guy out,

01:58:00.240 | "I don't wanna say forever.

01:58:01.440 | "I'm not trying to put him six feet underground.

01:58:02.940 | "Well, when I fight, yes I am."

01:58:04.620 | But the point being, I need to find a way to,

01:58:09.020 | this is definitive, you don't get to say shit about it,

01:58:12.640 | 'cause I'm the only one who can stand right now.

01:58:15.080 | That's the way it's gotta be.

01:58:16.480 | Anything less than that is not good enough.

01:58:19.740 | And even if I achieve that, then I gotta figure out,

01:58:22.880 | okay, it's not a given.

01:58:25.300 | How did I get to this point?

01:58:26.580 | How did I make that happen?

01:58:28.780 | Was it simply because of his own mistakes,

01:58:32.680 | or was it because of my successful action?

01:58:36.960 | - So it was always self-critical.

01:58:38.680 | - Always, constantly.

01:58:40.440 | - You love movies.

01:58:42.480 | I read this somewhere.

01:58:43.960 | You mentioned "Blade Runner" as a favorite.

01:58:45.640 | - Number one of all time, the final cut, that's my go-to.

01:58:48.680 | - So you would say "Blade Runner"

01:58:51.520 | is the greatest movie of all time.

01:58:52.760 | - It's one of the greatest movies of all time.

01:58:54.800 | - What's in the top?

01:58:56.800 | - My top five, "Blade Runner," final cut.

01:59:01.360 | - This is the original "Blade Runner."

01:59:03.160 | - And I used to own, on tape, the original--

01:59:06.880 | - VHS? - Cut, yeah.

01:59:08.900 | And I had the director's cut on DVD.

01:59:11.820 | - Why "Blade Runner," by the way?

01:59:13.460 | What connects you to it? - As a kid,

01:59:15.580 | I just thought it was so cool.

01:59:17.140 | There was something about it that really spoke to me,

01:59:18.620 | the whole cyberpunk landscapes,

01:59:20.180 | and this guy chasing down rogue androids, replicants,

01:59:25.180 | and all this.

01:59:27.860 | - Is it just the entire cyberpunk universe,

01:59:31.220 | or is it just robots as well?

01:59:32.980 | - No, it's, I mean, the cyberpunk universe is part of it.

01:59:36.980 | On the surface, I've always tended

01:59:39.540 | towards dark subject matter,

01:59:42.460 | like things that are of the dark, so to speak,

01:59:45.540 | are things that I've always been gravitated towards.

01:59:48.540 | I think maybe part of it is that the things that are darker

01:59:51.580 | are more accepting and more upfront with death.

01:59:56.580 | And perhaps I think that maybe that is what was--

02:00:02.980 | - Yeah, somehow more honest, perhaps.

02:00:04.660 | There's also the aspect of rebelliousness, usually.

02:00:08.780 | Like there is, I was never one to wanna just do

02:00:13.780 | what somebody told me to do.

02:00:16.100 | I'm not sitting around trying to always be

02:00:22.420 | such a radical individual that I can't take orders.

02:00:25.380 | No, in fact, I'm more than willing to take orders

02:00:28.420 | from somebody that I feel is competent and has merit

02:00:32.860 | and reason behind what they're doing

02:00:34.660 | and makes like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:00:36.260 | I'm 100% for it.

02:00:37.340 | Not only will I kinda take orders,

02:00:38.700 | I will help you achieve whatever it is

02:00:40.620 | if I think it's worthwhile, even at my own expense.

02:00:45.620 | But to get to that point is a rarity.

02:00:49.460 | Like it's just not a given.

02:00:51.260 | And so you can even imagine like being a grade school teacher

02:00:54.100 | and this kid doesn't respect you

02:00:55.260 | and he doesn't really think you're that smart.

02:00:57.860 | They don't really appreciate that.

02:01:00.140 | - So cyberpunk is number one.

02:01:01.620 | What else is there?

02:01:02.460 | - Cyberpunk is kinda number one.

02:01:03.300 | It's an environment I love, but at the same time,

02:01:05.500 | Conan the Barbarian by John Milius

02:01:07.140 | is one of my favorite films of all time.

02:01:09.340 | And that's such a pure film in a way.

02:01:15.340 | Like the motivations are pure.

02:01:17.060 | They're very easy to follow, but not lacking in depth.

02:01:22.060 | It's not just explosions and teal and orange.

02:01:29.140 | It's more on the human condition and I love it.

02:01:33.980 | And it's shot incredibly well.

02:01:36.380 | It's got an incredible soundtrack.

02:01:38.300 | Yeah, I fucking love it.

02:01:39.860 | But with Blade Runner also in a deeper sense,

02:01:42.140 | again, the human condition.

02:01:43.620 | You start seeing like what is being?

02:01:45.820 | What is being human?

02:01:47.860 | How does this relate to, if you can make it

02:01:51.340 | and you can tell it what to do,

02:01:52.900 | at what point is it like you should or you shouldn't?

02:01:56.860 | Why do you get to determine what's alive

02:01:58.940 | and what's not?

02:01:59.780 | What's a life that should be allowed to live and what isn't?

02:02:02.700 | And what would be the strain of being Roy Batty

02:02:07.700 | and seeing all these incredible moments

02:02:12.260 | that with his passing will no longer exist?

02:02:17.140 | Especially if he hasn't had a chance

02:02:18.940 | to put that flame into another torch, so to speak.

02:02:22.680 | If he hasn't written them down,

02:02:23.940 | if he hasn't passed them down to somebody else.

02:02:28.740 | Gone like tears in the rain.

02:02:30.340 | - Like tears in the rain, that scene is incredible.

02:02:33.220 | But it's funny 'cause those two universes

02:02:35.180 | are very different according to the barbarian

02:02:36.740 | and cyberpunk 'cause that makes me curious

02:02:39.580 | about what else might be in the list.

02:02:41.820 | - Well, let me think.

02:02:44.380 | It's a pretty--

02:02:45.300 | - Do you like the Godfather type of universes?

02:02:48.300 | - No, I mean, I'm sure the Godfather.

02:02:49.380 | I've never actually even watched the whole Godfather.

02:02:51.300 | - No, but also like was it Casino, Goodfellas?

02:02:54.580 | - Goodfellas is a good movie, but no, that's not in my top.

02:02:56.980 | It's a good flick.

02:02:58.580 | But it doesn't really do it for me.

02:03:00.380 | If people really wanna get into this a little more,

02:03:03.460 | I did make a list of 100 of my favorite movies

02:03:07.260 | on my Facebook fan page.

02:03:08.580 | - Nice.

02:03:09.420 | Do you remember like some--

02:03:12.180 | - Oh yeah, like Blazing Saddles is on there,

02:03:14.260 | Rage of the Lost Ark, Valhalla Rising

02:03:18.780 | by Nicholas from Winding Refn,

02:03:21.020 | Maniac by William Lustig.

02:03:25.700 | It's a 1980 gnarly, video nasty horror movie

02:03:30.700 | about a serial killer who murders women and scalps them.

02:03:36.740 | And it's gnarly as hell and very brutal and very bleak

02:03:41.580 | and very, I mean, it's the kind of thing

02:03:46.580 | that like a lot of people

02:03:47.500 | would have a real hard time watching.

02:03:49.340 | But one, again, I like things that are dark,

02:03:53.100 | but two, I thought the performances

02:03:55.420 | were fantastic in this film.

02:03:57.220 | And they really got out, I think,

02:03:59.100 | what the underlying thing was.

02:04:00.300 | And it was a guy who was basically just like run amok

02:04:05.300 | by the overbearing mother, Jungian archetype.

02:04:08.620 | And she imparted her insanity into him.

02:04:12.700 | But yet there is this aspect you could see

02:04:17.140 | of him wanting to try and actually be able

02:04:19.580 | to be in the world and have love

02:04:22.820 | and have feminine companionship

02:04:27.820 | to go with his masculine aspect.

02:04:31.620 | But he had no way of understanding

02:04:34.580 | how to really make that happen.

02:04:36.420 | And he had a complete negative connotation to the feminine.

02:04:40.220 | So it's his struggle with,

02:04:42.820 | and there's a little part in the movie

02:04:45.860 | where he somehow comes across this model or something.

02:04:50.860 | And then actually he starts to feel like

02:04:55.020 | maybe he might be able to actually have a relationship

02:04:57.180 | with somebody and it goes somewhere.

02:04:59.660 | But yeah, even the Elijah Wood remake,

02:05:02.860 | I felt was really well done and captured

02:05:05.460 | most of the essence of what the movie was about.

02:05:07.380 | But I still feel like the original

02:05:09.540 | by William Lustig is the best.

02:05:12.540 | - What's the greatest love movie of all time?

02:05:16.860 | - Greatest love movie of all time.

02:05:18.900 | - So like something where love is,

02:05:20.220 | I mean, I suppose love underlies most of these movies,

02:05:22.820 | and especially if you like the dark.

02:05:24.020 | - I mean, hell, Takashi Miike's films

02:05:26.380 | are all about family of all things.

02:05:28.740 | As bonkers as those movies are,

02:05:31.180 | the general theme is family almost entirely

02:05:34.660 | in all of his films.

02:05:35.920 | - Yeah, there's very, I mean,

02:05:38.580 | even you can argue Blader on it.

02:05:39.860 | Yeah, it's everywhere.

02:05:40.700 | - Greatest love film of all time?

02:05:43.180 | That's, I mean, is Excalibur a film about love?

02:05:48.660 | - What's Excalibur about?

02:05:51.380 | - King Arthur.

02:05:52.220 | Excalibur is about Arthur becoming king of the Britons

02:05:57.780 | and his love of his country and his love of Guinevere.

02:06:01.580 | But eventually, yeah, it becomes more of about

02:06:06.980 | the necessity for the king to love,

02:06:11.020 | to hold Excalibur, to stay,

02:06:15.700 | to realize that while if you're the king,

02:06:18.380 | you can love your wife and you can love your best friend,

02:06:21.420 | and they may fuck each other behind your back

02:06:25.940 | and as they fall in love too,

02:06:27.860 | but at the end of the day, your responsibility,

02:06:29.820 | your love has to be to the country and everyone else first

02:06:33.380 | and not your own personal wants,

02:06:36.660 | which made a much more interesting story

02:06:40.380 | when you have Carmen Berenina and,

02:06:43.340 | or was it, oh, what is that one?

02:06:46.420 | It's a German opera, but, and horses and slow-mo

02:06:50.580 | and sword fights and an epic death scene

02:06:53.420 | between Arthur and his son.

02:06:56.900 | - Okay, I'll definitely have to watch it,

02:06:58.260 | and I haven't watched it in embarrassing.

02:07:01.060 | - It is John Borman's second film in Hollywood,

02:07:05.300 | his first one being Point Blank with Lee Marvin,

02:07:07.420 | which is also on top,

02:07:08.940 | one of the upper echelon movies on my list,

02:07:11.280 | derived from a book by, called The Outfit by,

02:07:17.180 | what is his name?

02:07:20.380 | I forget, but Darwin Cook, the comics illustrator,

02:07:24.820 | he did, Donald Westlake wrote,

02:07:26.500 | so Darwin Cook does an amazing comic book send-up

02:07:29.980 | of Darwin Cook's novels, and they are fucking incredible.

02:07:33.820 | So anyways, but the Point Blank with Lee Marvin,

02:07:37.720 | it's a man driven by purpose, revenge,

02:07:43.180 | but also by really pure motivations.

02:07:46.620 | He wants his money.

02:07:47.620 | He was betrayed, and he wants his cash,

02:07:52.500 | because this is what he agreed to do the thing for,

02:07:54.480 | and this is, which also is part of the reason

02:07:56.780 | why I like No Country for Old Men so much,

02:07:58.560 | which I felt was a great movie, even better book,

02:08:02.140 | but I remember talking to my friend,

02:08:03.900 | and I go, you know, Anton Chigurh is the most pure

02:08:08.260 | human being in that whole book.

02:08:09.980 | Well, that guy's the villain.

02:08:11.180 | I go, ha ha, is he evil?

02:08:13.580 | He's the one, he lies to no one.

02:08:17.300 | He does everything he says he will do.

02:08:19.380 | He always follows his word, and on the rare occasion,

02:08:22.420 | he allows fate to make a decision,

02:08:24.940 | as he figures, like, well, whatever all led us to here

02:08:27.540 | will lead us one way or the other,

02:08:30.540 | and if we're at this crossroads,

02:08:32.220 | how is there any better or worse way

02:08:34.700 | than to do it over a coin flip?

02:08:36.500 | And so that whole scene where the guy's going,

02:08:39.540 | well, what am I putting up?

02:08:40.940 | And he goes, everything.

02:08:42.060 | You've been putting it up every day of your life,

02:08:44.860 | and that's true.

02:08:46.000 | Everything we do is a decision, is a calling, is a choice.

02:08:51.000 | And then it bummed me out that they reduced

02:08:55.780 | the last interaction between Chigurh

02:08:57.420 | and what's-his-face's wife, and he finally finds her,

02:09:02.020 | and she's like, you don't have to do this.

02:09:03.580 | And he's like, yes, I do.

02:09:05.620 | This is the way it is.

02:09:06.780 | You can think that your life could have turned out

02:09:08.260 | any sort of way, you could have done this,

02:09:09.860 | you could have done that, but the reality is

02:09:11.140 | this is the way your life is,

02:09:11.980 | and it's the way it was always going to be.

02:09:14.500 | The fact that I'm here is the end of it, and that's that.

02:09:18.620 | - Yeah, it's funny, if you're honest,

02:09:20.540 | this is what dark movies reveal,

02:09:21.980 | that the villains are the purest of humans,

02:09:27.020 | and can teach us the most profound lessons,

02:09:30.300 | and that's certainly an example of it.

02:09:32.540 | What do you think, the big, ridiculous,

02:09:34.780 | last philosophical question, what do you think

02:09:36.660 | is the meaning of this whole thing we've got going on,

02:09:39.940 | of life and existence on Earth,

02:09:42.180 | from your individual perspective,

02:09:43.640 | but the entirety of the human species?

02:09:45.580 | - Life, the universe, and everything?

02:09:48.620 | - Yeah.

02:09:49.460 | Don't.

02:09:51.460 | (laughing)

02:09:56.940 | - We could just leave it at that.

02:09:57.780 | - You knew exactly where I was going, I love it.

02:10:00.380 | - Josh, I love you very much, you've been a huge inspiration.

02:10:03.260 | - I have a friend who, she said,

02:10:07.020 | "Do you know Lex Friedman, have you gone on Lex's?"

02:10:09.580 | And I go, "Yes, I know Lex Friedman is."

02:10:11.820 | I've sadly been way too long in contact

02:10:15.380 | without making it happen for too long,

02:10:17.700 | and yes, I will 100%, I even cut a shirt

02:10:21.700 | at the beginning of the pandemic

02:10:23.060 | to make my own little mask at one point,

02:10:25.060 | due to the Lex process.

02:10:27.020 | (laughing)

02:10:27.860 | And I love it, I can't really hear you,

02:10:31.180 | but I'm demonstrating.

02:10:32.260 | (laughing)

02:10:33.940 | Just see it through, but this has been a blast,

02:10:36.340 | and I hope you come back.

02:10:37.980 | - Next time, let's drink some of the Warbringer whiskey.

02:10:41.020 | - I will bring some Warmaster, I wasn't sure

02:10:44.380 | if you imbibed at all in spirits.

02:10:47.780 | - 100%, it felt a little weird to do it early on

02:10:51.520 | in the morning, especially 'cause I'm flying out there.

02:10:53.540 | - Does it though?

02:10:54.380 | I mean, I've had some wonderful morning whiskey at times.

02:10:57.580 | - Now that you've mentioned it, it doesn't at all.

02:11:00.940 | So next time, let's make sure,

02:11:02.740 | what Joe Rogan calls the adult beverages,

02:11:06.700 | let's make sure we indulge.

02:11:08.620 | - I have zero reservations for doing such a thing,

02:11:11.220 | I'm into it.

02:11:12.460 | - Josh, thanks for talking today.

02:11:14.020 | - My pleasure.

02:11:14.860 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation

02:11:17.420 | with Josh Barnett, and thank you to our sponsors,

02:11:20.820 | Munk Pack, Low Carb Snacks, Element Electrolyte Drink,

02:11:25.540 | 8 Sleep Self-Cooling Mattress,

02:11:27.780 | and Rev Transcription and Captioning Service.

02:11:30.540 | Click the sponsor links to get a discount

02:11:32.460 | and to support this podcast.

02:11:34.580 | And now, let me leave you with some words

02:11:36.300 | from Sun Tzu in the art of war.

02:11:39.300 | "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy

02:11:42.740 | "without fighting."

02:11:44.580 | Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

02:11:47.340 | (upbeat music)

02:11:49.920 | (upbeat music)

02:11:52.500 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Josh Barnett: Philosophy of Violence, Power, and the Martial Arts | Lex Fridman #165

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