00:00:18.000Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:00:21.000As you know, we're dedicating the show not only to commenting on news stories, but also exploring new ways to create community so that we can get outside of the ongoing cultural conflict, which increasingly I understand to be a perennial tactic of the system to ensure the necessary collaboration and collusion that would bring about an end to their dread.
00:00:43.000I'm also going to be talking about the important story emerging from the United Kingdom around the murder of Henry Novak and the way that it's been handled.
00:00:51.000Later in the show, I'll be talking to Karina Fitch about community.
00:00:57.000As you know, we're exploring different ways of establishing community.
00:01:01.000She was part of a community called The Farm, a very famous community in your country, the United States of America, born peculiarly of midwives.
00:01:10.000But for me, inspirational as I explore the idea that I'm coming to call blockchain.
00:01:17.000Amish live like the Amish, your own self sustained community with your own values.
00:01:22.000But if possible, and if you approve of it, why not use cryptocurrencies and digital currencies perhaps a better word to ensure that you can participate in trade?0.59
00:01:33.000If you don't have Rumble yet, get Rumble now and get Rumble Premium because Rumble Premium means that I make additional revenue.
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00:01:50.000If you don't have my book yet, How to Become Christian in Seven Days, please get it.
00:03:50.000Scan the QR code, click the link in the description, download Rumble Wallet.
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00:03:55.000Take control of your money and get started with Rumble Wallet today.
00:03:59.000Now we bring you the sad story of the murder of Henry Novak.
00:04:03.000So that we can orient ourselves in this story, we're going to watch some BBC reporting.
00:04:09.000Now, you know, I don't particularly trust the BBC, even though I grew up in Britain where the BBC meant great sitcoms, brilliant sport, great nature documentaries.
00:04:19.000Now the BBC means propaganda in my country.
00:04:22.000And I recently learned in a conversation that you'll see later in the show, something a lot worse in yours and in pornography circles.
00:04:30.000BBC can even mean the British Broadcasting Corporation or something that I won't go into here for taste reasons.
00:04:38.000Both of them penetrate you and both of them can be painful.
00:04:42.000That's one thing I want you to bear in mind when considering the BBC.
00:04:46.000Now, a quick change of tone as we look into the difficult story of the murder of Henry Novak and consider what is happening in the United Kingdom.
00:04:56.000What is happening around racial tension, the subject of migration, the exploitation of crimes like this one, and how do we orient ourselves in this time of cultural collision?
00:05:10.000Clashes in Southampton last night, where hundreds of people gathered to protest close to the family home of Vikram Digwa, the man who killed the 18 year old student Henry Novak.
00:05:23.000Condemned today by the Minister for Policing and Crime, crowds made their feelings clear, throwing bottles and using makeshift weapons.
00:05:32.000As a result, 11 officers were injured.
00:06:12.000What is this violence and what are these public disturbances really a symptom of?
00:06:18.000Despite the Novak family's wish that his death would not cause any further violence.
00:06:24.000We want his story to make our streets safer for everyone.
00:06:29.000That is why we are calling on the government to treat knife crime as the national emergency that it is.
00:06:37.000The protest followed an earlier large gathering outside Southampton police station, attended By far right activist Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley Lennon.
00:07:08.000Notice, though, that the protests are charged with a particular intention.
00:07:14.000Notice that the Protests are being directed in a particular way.
00:07:18.000Notice that the BBC can't resist every time Tommy Robinson appears saying this is his real name.
00:07:24.000We've had Tommy Robinson on this show before, and I think that Tommy Robinson is a significant and important voice when trying to understand the tensions in the United Kingdom.
00:07:33.000Something has to change politically in the UK urgently, definitively.
00:07:38.000Even the understandable plea of the family there that knife crime has to be addressed, which, you know, if it was my child that had been murdered, would obviously be an understandable priority.
00:07:50.000Is but an expression of a much deeper malaise that we have to look into.
00:07:54.000What is happening in the United Kingdom that there is so much despair, so much rage?
00:08:00.000Migration and illegal immigration, in a sense, is a subject that the British people appeared to have reached a conclusion on.
00:08:08.000British people are concerned about migration, and there seems to be a significant number of people that are concerned about Islam and migration and cultures that are not assimilated into the dominant mainstream culture.
00:08:26.000Is the assailant and murderer of this young man not Muslim, he's a Sikh?
00:08:33.000Other complications include, and to become even more nuanced, what is British culture right now?
00:08:41.000What is the problem in the United Kingdom?
00:08:44.000Why is there so much despair and desperation?
00:08:47.000What is this infection at the heart of the UK?
00:08:52.000And is migration the cause of it or just another symptom?
00:08:56.000Again, If the British people are concerned about migration, they want net zero migration.
00:09:01.000If they want no migration, if they want legal migration instead of illegal migration, these are all matters that a population in a democracy should decide and determine for themselves.
00:09:10.000Now, what we're addressing, in addition to the problem around migration, is what is this deeper tension?
00:09:17.000Cam footage that showed the moments before Henry Novak died.
00:09:22.000The shocking footage shows police handcuff the 18 year old after his killer, Vikram Digwa, Lied about being the victim of a racist attack.
00:09:33.000Despite repeatedly telling officers he had been stabbed and telling them he couldn't breathe nine times, officers told Henry he was under arrest.
00:09:54.000A reckoning occurs when the truth emerges in spite of the best efforts.
00:10:01.000Of, in this instance, the establishment to conceal it.
00:10:05.000Part of the reckoning will include beginning to understand how excessive rhetoric and condemnation that condemns working class white people has led to a hysteria around the subject of race, in particular when it comes to policing.
00:10:25.000Obviously, in the moment of Henry Novak's arrest, the idea of racism and racial abuse was so high.
00:10:33.000On the agenda of the arresting officers, that it obfuscated the reality that was before them.
00:10:39.000A man bleeding out, a very young man, almost a boy, one would have to say, bleeding out in the street.
00:10:47.000The challenge that we're confronted with now is one that I'm starting to discern relatively frequently.
00:10:56.000One ought to be able to extract the superficial information and identify a principle.
00:11:03.000People are understandably going to compare this death to the death of George Floyd.
00:11:24.000It led to a lot of protest because when people see footage of someone dying in custody, it's overwhelming and it confirms, I think, a sense and a fear that many people have that the police that are supposed to protect and serve, whether that's their logo or not, their logo or their slogan or not.
00:11:45.000Many people feel that in some areas, and this varies, of course, depending on location, that the police are focused on a particular agenda.
00:11:54.000In the United States of America, in the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots, there was a sense that the police force of LA were needlessly and aggressively and excessively persecuting the black population of Los Angeles.
00:12:09.000In the United Kingdom, right now, people believe that there is two tier policing, that the motivation to ensure that certain dictatorships Around race and hate speech and hateful language are met and observed, is leading in this case to the death of a young man.
00:12:28.000That's what I mean when I say it's a reckoning.
00:12:29.000Something has been revealed, a balance has to be restored, authenticity has to be rediscovered.
00:12:37.000Henry Novak's death points to a very particular problem.
00:12:41.000It's the problem that many of us understand and feel that the police force aren't there to protect and serve, the police force are there to control.
00:12:50.000In a statement, Chief Constable Alexis Boone said, I know that since the release of the body worn video footage from the night of Henry Novak's murder, there is a desire for answers and accountability.
00:13:03.000But that must be done in the right way and not used as an excuse to threaten and intimidate my officers and bring violence to our streets, causing fear and harm.
00:13:14.000In a way, we should look at the similarities between the death of George Floyd and the death of Henry Novak and disregard the differences.
00:13:20.000There is a sense that people feel that the police.
00:13:23.000Are acting outside of their remit, and it is necessary in a civilised country, any country or nation worthy of the name, that the police and the community that are policed by them feel a sense of harmony.
00:13:36.000This is a revelation that that harmony has been completely broken down.
00:13:39.000The National Police Chiefs Council said it will review anti racism guidance.
00:13:45.000The guidance, which was issued last year, suggested officers should treat ethnic minorities differently in order to ensure.
00:13:56.000It now says it is listening to legitimate concerns.
00:14:00.000So interesting, isn't it, to hear that phrase, equality of outcomes, if you've followed the career of, for example, Jordan Peterson, who talks about communism entering into the culture, which I myself was very cynical about.
00:14:11.000I was like, no, communism is where the state is trying to create social equality between poor people and stop rampant capitalism leading to an oligarchical class.
00:14:19.000That was my understanding of communism.
00:14:20.000I think that was the intention of perhaps Karl Marx when he wrote Das Kapital.
00:14:24.000But when you use a phrase like Quality of outcomes in a situation like policing, you see what the problems are likely to be.
00:14:31.000That, of course, in itself was an attempt to address the historic racism that many non white communities in the UK felt was punitive to them.
00:14:43.000It's not that long ago that Mark Duggan died in custody in Tottenham, which led to riots across the UK.
00:14:50.000Who knows what flavour of disturbance will emerge as a result of this death.
00:14:56.000Listening to legitimate concerns about how some of these commitments are worded or phrased.
00:15:03.000And the Independent Office of Police Conduct is investigating what happened.
00:15:08.000So I'd say that's quite tepid media coverage there that doesn't get to the heart of the issue or the problem.
00:15:14.000You can already see that the media are reporting on this in a way that's kind of bureaucratic and hollow and empty, and that the police practices were misguided.
00:15:23.000Let's have a look to our political leaders, the members of parliament, the equivalent of your Congress, to see what.
00:15:29.000It is enshrined in the police's own policy documents.
00:15:33.000The Police Anti Racism Commitment, published in March 2025 by the NPCC and the College of Policing, urges police forces to reverse engineer the same arrest rates between ethnic groups, even though the offending rates are different, by treating different ethnic groups differently.
00:15:53.000An official police document actually says people should be treated differently based on the colour of their skin.
00:16:02.000I've said before at this dispatch box, at least twice, that document should be withdrawn.
00:16:06.000The dangerous ideology of so called anti racism, allowing people to be treated differently based on race, must end.
00:16:13.000For any pause for a moment, can't you see that part of the problem here is that centralised government is too blunt of a tool to address the granular and particular problems that come with policing a special or particular community?
00:16:26.000You can't just say, too many people of colour are getting arrested, why don't we treat them all different at scale, not in a population of 60 million people.0.68
00:16:33.000If you break down government to its smallest possible level, you would have community government.0.94
00:16:39.000Community policing and a sense of connection.
00:16:42.000In a way, DEI, an attempt to address historic racism, is a good idea.
00:16:47.000People should be treated fairly and justly.
00:16:50.000But when those measures lead to the tragic death of a young white boy in custody just because the murderer said he was being racist, you see the problem.
00:16:59.000And it's a problem that would be addressed if it weren't for centralised authority.
00:17:04.000In a way, if we get caught up now in conflict and race wars and protests, we will be participating and facilitating.
00:17:12.000Further authoritarianism, further centralization, when what's required is the opposite.
00:17:28.000That's an example of how these riots and disturbances are being policed differently.
00:17:32.000But this is a murder that's going to have a lot more heat in it because it feels symbolic.
00:17:38.000It feels like the expression of something that's been held down and repressed.0.94
00:17:42.000The British people are really angry about the subject of migration, even though from that perspective it's an imperfect murder because it's not a Muslim murderer or assailant.0.75
00:17:50.000In fact, reality won't conform to any of these stereotypes or prejudices or ideas.0.88
00:17:55.000That's why you need a more nuanced, agile, mobile, and in short, Decentralized form of government.
00:18:02.000You can't continually settle for we're going to have a left wing government, we're going to have a right wing government, we're going to have a conservative, Labour, reform, green, it doesn't matter.
00:18:12.000The system is no longer fit for purpose.
00:18:14.000Until we address these problems at depth, systematically, we're going to vacillate between different types of prejudice and bigotry.
00:18:23.000Oh, this is great for the LGBTQ community and various other minority interests.
00:18:29.000Oh no, look, we've enraged the indigenous white population.
00:18:33.000Well, let's have a Nationalist, ethnic, but let's have a nationalist patriotic moment.0.90
00:18:41.000I'm beginning to understand at scale that the culture and the counterculture are controlled by the same forces, and they're happy for us to vacillate between two poles that are ultimately controlled.
00:18:53.000Until we address the problem of the system itself, we will be contained within a paradigm that suits them perfectly.
00:19:01.000Rupert Lowe, the leader of the Restore Britain party, that's getting a lot of traction.
00:19:06.000Proposes bringing back the death penalty.
00:19:09.000But, and the sentiment behind that is understandable.
00:19:13.000There's an outrageous murder that's taken place that's galvanizing a lot of public support.
00:19:17.000But why would you give the state that can't handle the power to arrest the power to kill?
00:19:26.000It doesn't matter the hue or inflection of the state, it doesn't matter the pigmentation of the skin of the person being killed.
00:19:33.000What matters is that the machine itself is corrupted.
00:19:36.000It's not going to solve any problems to give the state.
00:19:39.000More power just because in this particular moment it suits your emotion.
00:19:43.000Reintroduction of the death penalty for both foreign and domestic criminals should be put to the British people in a legally binding referendum.0.76
00:19:56.000Like right now, of course, people would vote for the death penalty, bring back hanging, hanging's too good for them.
00:20:02.000But don't you detect that underneath it there is an emotion?
00:20:04.000The emotion is anger, despair, and sorrow.
00:20:15.000The cause of it is for a long time, you've had corrupt leadership, you've had governments that ultimately do not serve the people that they've been elected to govern.
00:20:45.000Why would you not vote for your community to be policed in a way that you determine regularly, that you can update?
00:20:52.000Indeed, there is no point in having almost any ideology in politics.
00:20:57.000It has to be at this point pure pragmatism, recognizing that no one's going to be right all of the time.
00:21:03.000Errors and mistakes are going to be made.
00:21:05.000But I tell you this the trend is what has to be stopped.
00:21:09.000The trend is to use crisis of all kinds.
00:21:13.000To legitimize authoritarianism and centralization, they can do it through disease, climate change, race riots, war, they'll do it all of the time.
00:21:21.000Unless we are able to step back and look at the macro trends, we will be deluged in the micro problems, even in problems as tragic as the death of Henry Novak.
00:21:31.000What the whole world has now seen in Henry's video is what we all know anyway.0.97
00:21:36.000It's a different treatment for white people compared to non whites.0.92
00:21:40.000And we've seen this spread through every single institution in our country.1.00
00:21:59.000To anyone who wants to claim representative communities, get that fucking family out of Southampton.1.00
00:22:05.000The fact that his family might go shopping in this city next week and walk past that scumbag's brother who facilitated and accommodated the murder of Henry is an absolute.1.00
00:22:15.000The fact he's walking the streets is insane.0.99
00:22:18.000Get them out when people talk about justice.
00:22:21.000Tommy Robinson's anger obviously reaches a lot of people, affects a lot of people, and it's sincere and authentic, and in a time where Politicians are inauthentic and totally insincere, and you can't trust them.
00:22:29.000You recognize that they're in the majority and in the main on the take in one way or another.
00:22:33.000That there's a kind of performance being undertaken.
00:22:35.000Tommy Robinson's sincerity really registers, but that is not the energy that brings about the kind of change that we really want to facilitate, the kind of change that we want to see.
00:22:46.000Because actually, do you not feel and believe and pray that Henry Novak's family receive the grace to grieve and to mourn on one level?
00:22:59.000That this kind of thing doesn't happen anymore.
00:23:02.000It wouldn't be appealing or any measure of success if, in a couple of days' time, some Sikh family are grieving the death of some kid or teenager.
00:23:12.000The kind of anger and hostility, while understandable, and in a way, it does require venting and expression.
00:23:18.000And Tommy Robinson, I believe, is the culmination and result of years of condemnation, criticism, exploitation of white working class people.
00:23:27.000It's gone on for a very, very long while.
00:23:29.000Man, you've got to look at this through a bigger lens, through a sharper lens.
00:23:33.000You've got to recognise after the Second World War, where the people of Britain and the people of the nations colonised by Britain laid down their lives for what were we told?
00:24:18.000We can't just watch this pendulum swinging back and forth between left and right and black and white.
00:24:28.000What we actually need to address and change is the way that government operates and works, starting in fact with the word government.
00:24:36.000We need to strip the ideology, glamour, and power from government and ensure that communities are managed at the most local and lowest level.
00:24:44.000Centralisation is only necessary for matters of national defence and coordination, cooperation, and communication when it comes to matters like transport.
00:24:54.000Strip away the ideology, strip away the loathing, employ this technology that's being suggested for facial recognition technology, for digital ID, essentially for centralised control.
00:25:25.000It will not be resolved by endless conflict, although protests are clearly necessary.
00:25:30.000This system is not going to change from within.
00:25:35.000It has to change as a result of external pressure.
00:25:38.000It's the only way it's going to change.
00:25:39.000My prayer is that people are able to see.
00:25:42.000That whether you're a Muslim or you're a Sikh or you're black or you're white, that you have the right to participate in your community and the way that your life is run.0.74
00:25:52.000Unless there is a spiritual awakening to accompany this rage and anger, we will ultimately facilitate further control and authoritarianism.0.84
00:26:03.000Let me know what you think in the comments and the chat.
00:26:06.000Hey, do you know that my brand Reborn is doing exceptionally well?
00:26:10.000We've got a range of wonderful apparel that you'll be seeing more of, and my particular flavor, favorite, Is Mepheline Blue minty, delicious, incredible, and keeping me functioning at a high level under incredible pressure?
00:26:22.000Let me know in the comments and chat what type of subscription you have, and if there's any other products available, any products that are not available that you would like to see.
00:26:32.000Karina, I want to talk to you about firstly, well, two things really.
00:26:39.000Like, I'm really interested in Ina Mae Gaskin and how the farm worked and how midwifery.
00:26:49.000I'm really interested in how that relates to the way that Amish people live, a community that's able to live according to its principles within the world.
00:27:02.000And I'm really interested in how our individual spiritual power can be accessed in order that we are liberated from what seemed to me to be invisible and insidious forms of control.
00:27:21.000Given that you grew up in Ina Mae Gaskin's farm, and I know that Stephen Gaskin is also sort of significant there, what can you tell us about that?
00:27:33.000And how can we learn how to establish community and how not to?
00:28:07.000My experience growing up here was the norm.
00:28:09.000I didn't learn until I was older and we moved away from the farm how different our reality was.
00:28:16.000So we lived in communal houses with up to 30 other people.
00:28:24.000There was always other kids to play with.
00:28:28.000We didn't really, there was no concept of like a boundary between homes or like fences or yards, anything like that.
00:28:39.000It was not something that I learned until I was 10 years old and we left.
00:28:45.000So it was really, from my perspective, I feel like as a child, I got to reap a lot of the benefits of the community without the hard labor that it took for the founders.
00:28:57.000You know, they, Because when they bought the land, there was nothing on it.
00:29:13.000So we grew most of our food that we ate.
00:29:17.000So there was like a farming crew, and my father worked on the farming crew.
00:29:21.000And I think the midwives became central because so many people were giving birth.
00:29:27.000And I don't know how much you know about the history of the farm, but it started from a group of about 300 or so San Francisco hippies that were following Stephen Gaskin as a kind of spiritual guru.
00:29:40.000And so he was invited to speak at different locations across the country, and all these people in San Francisco that were going to his Monday night class, where he was talking about a mixture of like Christianity and Eastern spirituality, and psychedelics and meditation, all these things that were like such a part of the counterculture movement at that time.
00:30:10.000He was invited to speak, and all of his followers were like, Hey, can we go with you?
00:30:15.000So he was like, Sure, if you can get a bus or whatever.
00:30:19.000So there was like this caravan of about 20 school buses that were all painted and decked out.
00:30:25.000And along the way, babies were being born.
00:30:28.000And so Ina May, who was one of the writers of the spiritual midwifery book, she started to attend births.
00:30:41.000It was a lot of empirical learning and reading books.
00:30:47.000And then there was just a lot of babies being made and being born.
00:30:52.000And because we were doing everything ourselves and very much committed to this life of being connected to the earth and kind of more natural pregnancies and natural birth, the midwives became definitely a centerpiece of the community.
00:31:09.000If you're watching this on YouTube right now, we have to leave.
00:31:12.000Please click the link in the description and join us over on Rumble.
00:31:17.000I became very interested in midwifery, Karina.
00:31:24.000When my first daughter was born, and my wife started to read, like, Ina Mae Gaskin and other teachers of natural birth and home birth.
00:31:38.000And one of the books that really struck me because it sort of fitted right into my understanding of reality in areas that I know more about.
00:31:47.000Was the language that's used to describe birth, like the words like even phrases that you don't even consider, like waters breaking instead of waters releasing, or the way that a woman describes her, the sensations and feelings, which definitely, as I understand, include pain, but the language is kind of incendiary.
00:32:11.000And when I was learning about that via my wife, I started to recognize.
00:32:19.000That there are ways in which systems take control of nature using the idea of help and aid and safety and hygiene and medicine, which of course have a place.
00:32:35.000And I can almost feel, not with you, but sometimes when I'm talking about these kind of ideas, the counter argument where people would say, well, look at the infant mortality rates in this culture or in this country or at this point in history versus infant mortality rates now.
00:32:51.000And that there is a requirement for medicine.
00:32:53.000But I started to get the sense that this mode of using safety to take control is a very instructive way that systems of authority operate.
00:33:08.000And that became really super clear, I think, during the COVID pandemic era, where the idea of protection and safety and hygiene and care was used to really amplify systems of control and power and wealth transfer.
00:33:25.000Stephen Gaskin, before, but I didn't realize it was so closely related to the countercultural movement.
00:33:30.000Having spent like the early part of your childhood there and having worked there subsequently, Karina, can you tell me why do you think this community succeeded where so many other communities appear to fail, particularly in the traps of like it sounds like there's often financial or sexual corruption that takes place in these communities?
00:33:51.000What is it that the farm did differently?
00:33:56.000Well, I just first want to go back to your point about the safety and control thing, because I think that what that is really is ultimately manipulation.
00:34:07.000Because if you tell a mother, if we don't do this, your baby might die, then of course she's going to agree to whatever they want.
00:34:16.000But ultimately, we actually, as the United States of America and being like the wealthiest nation in the world, have some of the worst outcomes when it comes to infant and maternal mortality.0.91
00:34:29.000And we are the only country in the industrialized world with a rising maternal mortality rate.
00:34:37.000So we clearly have, you know, we clearly don't have it right as far as majority folks giving birth in the hospital, our C-section rates, the disparities.
00:34:46.000We have major racial disparities in maternal and infant health outcomes that are the result of over-medicalized birth.
00:34:54.000They are the result of care that is not personalized, that is not relationship-based.
00:35:00.000where women are just kind of treated like a number or going through a factory system.
00:35:06.000So there's, I mean, there's so much I could say about that, but I know you asked me about what worked or how did we survive.
00:35:17.000I do want to say first that, you know, the farm was really an amazing place to grow up.
00:35:23.000And I have so much gratitude for the values that I learned here, but it was certainly not a utopia.
00:35:31.000We did have, you know, in order to become a part of the community, our parents had to take on a vow of poverty, which meant that they would give away any assets they have, material assets, to the community in exchange for housing, for food, education.
00:36:01.000I remember doing like Bucket showers before we had indoor plumbing.
00:36:07.000And when we left the farm, when my family left the farm, it was about a year after there was a mass exodus from the community because of a change in the political and economic structure.
00:36:20.000So when I was a child, it was basically communistic.
00:36:24.000You know, you would go to the store and you would get a certain number or a certain amount of cups of beans and rice or tofu, depending on how many people were in your household.
00:39:03.000And so I think what I really would say as far as what I learned from the farm is that yes, it's like I truly believe in sustainability and community and the value and the importance of that.
00:39:23.000But when you don't do the shadow work, then things fall apart.
00:39:31.000In my opinion, that's one of the things that the farm failed to do.
00:39:36.000And like you were talking about, these communities having like sexual issues, sexual exploitation, sexual abuse.
00:39:48.000I don't think we had more than the outside world.
00:39:51.000I don't think it was in higher numbers necessarily, but it was not, it was pushed under the rug for literally for decades.
00:39:59.000And it's just been in the last few years since I moved back that we're unpacking that.
00:40:04.000I think when we hold on to a vision of ourselves as a utopia, then we don't want to look at what's not working.
00:40:11.000And that's a big mistake, in my opinion.
00:40:14.000Yeah, I think you're right about that.
00:40:16.000And your use of the word shadow work is apposite.
00:40:21.000On a practical level, it sounds like to establish a community, you probably require a charismatic leader, or at least that's one way of getting a community established.
00:40:33.000But the problems that come with that are the cult of personality, it sounds like, and in groups and out groups, as you described it.
00:40:44.000And also, scale like that when the community gets kind of large, its boundaries are pushed.
00:40:51.000But it sounds like things started to go wrong when there was a natural problem, i.e., a crop failure as a result of weather.
00:41:00.000And when I'm thinking about community, Karina, as I am, I feel that energy independence and food independence are a necessity.
00:41:08.000And I'm also paying attention to things that appear to happen, one might say naturally, almost like there's a kind of inertia or a tendency.
00:41:18.000And I wonder about things like hierarchy.
00:41:23.000And I'm interested that the solution sounds like a kind of bureaucratic solution.
00:41:30.000Because I think that we live in a world where bureaucracy, regardless of whether you live in a socialist Oriented culture or capitalist oriented culture, the bureaucracies seem to remain the same, and some of the outcomes appear somewhat consistent.
00:41:47.000Uniformity, homogeneity, even if there's superficial diversity, homogeneity at depth, homogeneity of thought, centralized control, tendency to try to resolve problems externally that are likely spiritual.
00:41:59.000So, this kind of spiritual foundation to community is the other aspect of it that I'm interested in, and I note that.
00:42:06.000This community emerged somewhat at least out of midwifery as well as the countercultural movement that was, you know, of the time.
00:42:15.000I've started to wonder if culture and counterculture are ultimately controlled by the same force.
00:42:20.000It's something I started considering pretty recently when I watched that documentary about John and Yoko in New York.
00:42:26.000And the similarities of the counterculture versus the culture then compared to now are sort of stark.
00:42:33.000You almost only had to replace the word Nixon for the word Trump and the word. hippies for the word woke.
00:42:40.000And you could make the same documentary to the point where it made me feel like the whole thing's kind of closer to theatre than anything else.
00:42:48.000And there's a kind of a vested interest, it seems to me at least, in ensuring that any truly independent or intentional community fails because it is a viable alternative to living in the dominator master culture that most people default to because we're born into it, programmed into it, and don't even recognise that we're in it.
00:43:08.000How important then is the midwife aspect and how important are those sort of fundamental building blocks like food?
00:43:18.000And do you see that there could be, because you're saying here now, I'm guessing you're still at the farm and live there yet.
00:43:24.000I wonder if there are times that you've contemplated other solutions and what are the fundamentals as you've experienced them to the success and identity of a community?
00:43:48.000I think that we, you know, counterculture movements are resisting the dominant culture, but oftentimes they can recreate those same dynamics.
00:44:00.000Because if we're not dismantling, if we're not doing that, again, it goes back to the shadow work.
00:44:05.000If we're not dismantling those systems on the inside, then we inevitably recreate them.
00:44:11.000And, and, um, I can see ways that that happened here on the farm.
00:44:17.000I think you had a guest I listened to a podcast because I was like, let me check.
00:44:22.000I didn't even know who you were actually a couple weeks ago.
00:44:26.000And it was a guest you had in 2018, Mandy, somebody, and she's a shaman.
00:44:32.000And she was saying, you know, the hippies failed because they didn't want to do the inner work.
00:44:36.000They just wanted an easy road to enlightenment.
00:44:39.000And that really struck me because I can, I'm not to say that I don't think that we failed.
00:44:55.000You know, economic situations, they go shopping for food outside the community.
00:45:01.000But, you know, we come together still with the same values around nonviolence and spiritual communion, stewardship of the land.
00:45:14.000And birth sits kind of at the center of that because, you know, the easiest way to destroy a culture is to break up its birth practice, or the fastest way.
00:45:26.000That's a quote from Michelle O'Donnell, who's a French obstetrician.
00:45:30.000And, you know, when we come into the world, those first moments are so impactful, right?
00:45:39.000It's considered to be a critical period of development, that first hour after birth.
00:45:44.000And the definition of critical period of development is that a lot of things happen, big things happen in a short amount of time with far reaching impact.
00:45:57.000Bring babies into the world in a way that is rooted in love, that is rooted in care and connection and presence and belonging, that has that ripples out.
00:46:11.000I mean, that has far reaching consequences to a community, to a family, to a community, and to the world at large.0.98
00:46:20.000And so I think that because of that, you know, midwifery has always been a centerpiece of the community.
00:46:27.000And because of the book, The Spiritual Midwifery, I mean, it was sold.
00:46:33.000It's been translated into a bunch of different languages.
00:46:36.000And we get people that call us from all different parts of the world that still come to birth here because mostly because of that book, because it was such a powerful book, because it shared story after story of women having like these ecstatic experiences in birth, these deeply spiritual, ecstatic, supported, connected experiences.
00:47:01.000Most of the world, well, I wouldn't say most of the world, but most of the Western world, people are giving birth in a hospital.
00:47:07.000It's a very clinical, it's completely different, energetic, a completely different way to enter the world.
00:47:14.000And we have an epidemic of birth trauma as a result of that.
00:47:21.000So many women are experiencing trauma in birth because they are not being respected, they are not being listened to, they are not being given options, they're cut against their will, they are, you know, they.
00:47:35.000It's just, it's really a problem and it's really disheartening.
00:47:40.000And I mean, I have so many clients that come to me in their second or third pregnancy after they've had a traumatic hospital birth.
00:47:50.000Not to say that the hospital doesn't have its place because we need it for those high risk situations, but we would be much better served if we had a system where the norm was to go to a midwife and then the midwife refers you to a doctor if it's needed.
00:48:06.000But the way it is currently, it's like, We have obstetricians providing primary care when they're really trained for complicated, high risk pregnancy.
00:48:18.000Do you think the result of that is that all pregnancy is treated or birth is treated as a kind of crisis rather than a natural event?
00:48:31.000Because it sort of shares, I suppose, qualities and traits with crisis like it's dramatic, there can be blood, it's loud, you know, like his life is appearing.
00:48:45.000So, if you have a system that's oriented towards control, It can misread those signals.
00:48:56.000And I wonder how, when you've raised now a couple of times shadow work, and Wendy Mandy would be the guest that you'd have watched.
00:49:08.000And she's a very, as one might imagine, shaman.
00:49:12.000She's an unusual, quite brilliant individual.
00:49:17.000And she lives, as shamans, I suppose, must, on the margins and the.
00:49:23.000And I feel that why she would, and I like you, like you agree with her assessment.
00:49:29.000And when you watch that John and Yoko documentary one to one, you see the naivety of John Lennon, you see the sort of power of Yoko Ono, but she's a sort of a very agenda led woman.
00:49:43.000And I also think that people, if we're not careful, we take on the sort of subtle agendas of the culture and its tendency to work in.
00:49:55.000So it's very easy to take on, for example, as a response to, if you want to call it patriarchy or male domination of certain spheres, a kind of a feminist lens without recognizing where the blind spots might be in a sort of a direct confrontation with an idea.
00:50:15.000Particularly, actually, one of the problems I'm seeing in my own country, the UK, is because.
00:50:23.000For so long, but you know, in this sort of moment, in this sort of postmodern moment, the sort of lexicon for discussion is around race and gender and sex and minorities.
00:50:35.000It's created, and I'm beginning to believe deliberately, a kind of tension in what one might call the indigenous native class of whether it's the UK or the United States of America, even though the historical differences and provenance of those two nations in some ways couldn't be more different.
00:50:58.000And that tension is very useful if what you want is to continue to legitimize centralized control.0.82
00:51:04.000Because what you have in my country right now is, you might say, a working class population that, for obvious reasons, is majority white, but it's not the majority that it once was, that feels a great deal of anger.0.62
00:51:18.000And that anger tends to target subjects like migration, understandably and perhaps in some ways correctly, but cannot take on.
00:51:28.000The complexity and nuance of the real problem, the real problem.
00:51:35.000And so I wonder sometimes when taking something as natural, fundamental, and universal as childbirth, which, let's face it, for now, one way or another, we're all going to go through, that it might have something in it that's revealing.
00:51:56.000I mean, for me, I use birth as a metaphor for almost.
00:52:01.000It really is a very useful metaphor for any process of transformation, let's say, or for understanding kind of like the nature and the natural world.
00:52:16.000I mean, ultimately, birth is a physiological process, but it's holistic.
00:52:21.000It's not just physical, it's emotional, it's spiritual, it's hormonal, it's psychological, right?
00:52:32.000People, you know, when I work with people, The people that I work with when they're pregnant, it's like I get to know them very well because I know that their past history of sexual trauma is likely to come up in their birth, and we need to address that.
00:52:46.000Or if they had a horrible relationship with their mother, whatever their mother wound is, that's something we get into.
00:52:54.000And ultimately, birth is this incredible opportunity for healing, for transformation.
00:53:05.000For stepping into, you know, I see it really as an initiation into a much longer and larger process known as matrescence.
00:53:15.000And matrescence, if you haven't heard of it, is a term that was coined by anthropologist Donna Raphael back in the 1970s.
00:53:26.000She's the same woman who coined the term doula.
00:54:08.000Same thing happens in matrescence and pregnancy and birth.
00:54:11.000So, there's all these parallels, and we often You know, we think about these brain changes in terms of like, oh, she's got mommy brain, and it's kind of like this, oh, she's spacey and forgetful, and it's kind of, you kind of get this bad rap.
00:54:29.000So these changes in the brain can be seen before you can pee on a stick and know you're pregnant.
00:54:36.000You could do an MRI of the brain and see that you're pregnant.
00:54:40.000And they basically make us more able to read nonverbal cues, more tolerant of monotony.
00:54:48.000More capable of multitasking, more ambitious, and more empathetic.
00:54:55.000And so, all of which are obviously hugely important when you're caring for a tiny human who can't speak yet.
00:55:01.000Fathers have a similar process, it's called patrescence.
00:55:06.000For fathers, the brain changes aren't quite as intense, but what's interesting is that for fathers, they're proportional to how much you are involved in your child's care.
00:55:19.000So, the more Baby baths, the more diaper changes, the more your brain changes.
00:55:25.000But basically, we become highly neuroplastic and we go through this incredible period of years where we are in a developmental process.
00:55:38.000And right now, I don't know if you know this, but right now, mothers are in crisis.
00:55:50.000We have the highest, like I said, the worst.
00:55:54.000Rates in this country for maternal health and maternal death, or as far as rising rates.
00:56:02.000We have huge racial disparities with black mothers dying at three to four times the rate of white women.
00:56:09.000We have a mental health crisis with 20%.
00:56:13.000So, perinatal mood disorders are the number one complication of pregnancy, the number one complication of pregnancy.
00:56:20.000That means, and it's 20% of women will experience.
00:56:25.000Anxiety, depression, OCD, bipolar, anything of that nature.
00:56:31.000And suicide is a leading cause of maternal death in the first year of life.
00:56:36.000So we have to wonder why this is happening?
00:56:40.000And I really believe that a big part of it is, you know, we often think like, well, women are having postpartum depression and they think it's their own personal problem.
00:56:52.000And we often, I mean, sometimes we blame mothers, but we just assume that it's something that they, as an individual, Has to deal with.
00:57:01.000But in reality, it is, I believe, a very normal response to a culture that's not supporting mothers.
00:57:07.000Because we do live in a patriarchal culture, and some people don't like that word, but too bad.
00:57:14.000Men have more power in our world, structurally, economically, politically.
00:57:19.000Of course, there's exceptions to that, but overall.
00:57:23.000And so we're still stuck in these old archetypes for motherhood of what I call the martyr mother, where you give until.
00:57:31.000You just self sacrifice and to the point where you're not well, you're exhausted, you're burnt out all the time, but you're giving for your children, you're giving for your partner.
00:57:45.000I would say the supermom came along with the first wave of feminism.1.00
00:57:48.000It's like, oh, you can have it all, you can have a career.
00:57:51.000And really, we just added things to our plate.
00:57:55.000We didn't take anything off because we're still the primary, in most families, we're still the primary.
00:58:03.000Care providers for our children, while at the same time we may be holding other pieces like a mission driven career, in my case, or you're going for your higher education.
00:58:16.000And so it's like this juggling act that leaves moms chronically overwhelmed and burnt out.
00:58:25.000And the surveys, the national surveys, have shown that 90% of mothers feel overwhelmed and burnt out.
00:58:37.000Karina, I've got quite a lot of questions actually, because I like.
00:58:43.000But the thing I want to ask first is so much of what you're describing indicates that there is something universal, if not uniform, to the experience of motherhood.
00:58:56.000Otherwise, there would be no possibility for systems and faculties to be developed that address these problems.
00:59:05.000None of the statistics would mean anything, none of the solutions would.
00:59:08.000A sort of a universal idea of a mother, a universal idea of the process of birth.
00:59:17.000So there is something beyond the individual, as you said, that's being expressed.
00:59:22.000One of the ways that I understand this personally is when we look at the problems of addiction, there's an inability or unwillingness to fully address the cultural and social contexts in which addiction emerges.
00:59:39.000The fact that addiction is a response to the denial of a spiritual necessity, a requirement that certain people will not be able, and I'm one of them actually, to cope if you are told that you should be able to deal with reality using these means and methods.
01:00:00.000So I recognize that there is some unaddressed issue that you're describing when it comes to the role of a woman at the transition of a woman to a mother.
01:00:13.000And that there is some unmet need and some illegitimate expectation.
01:00:21.000If this is true, the same, I think it's fair to say, is true of men.
01:00:26.000Now, I don't agree with the way that society is sort of shaping up in the cultures that I've experienced, you know, the United Kingdom, sort of institutionalized entertainment, media, et cetera.0.93
01:00:40.000But how do we find a way of acknowledging?
01:00:44.000These differences between the sexes, which are so tangible and measurable as to be discernible neurologically prior to pregnancy being readable in a P test.