Vandana Shiva is a world teacher, a potential world leader, and an environmental activist. She believes in decentralization, devolution, and decentralization of power. She recognizes that there is a constant threat of calling people conspiracy theorists because they are speaking out against establishment power. We spoke at our live event, Community, where we talked about how big business are destroying the environment, then blaming you. We spoke about food fascism, industrialization of our food, and why big data is the new oil. This is a fantastic conversation. Let me know in the comments if this is your first time you've seen Vandana, and let me know if, like me, you believe this is exactly the kind of voice we need in politics to change the world right now. I'm joined now by Vandana Shiva at Community, and we talk about a variety of subjects, including: - How she became a world leader - Her journey to become a world-teacher - Why she believes we need to decentralize power - Her views on the role of women in politics - And much more! Join us in the home of truth, because Vandana is coming. You're going to see the future. In this video, I'm going to be a veteran. - This is the future, you're gonna be a warrior. You'll have to join me on this voyage to truth and freedom. If you're one of the 6.5 million watching us on YouTube right now, click the link in the description and join us on this video? - click here to watch the video on the video I'm watching it on YouTube, right here, click it on the description on the YouTube channel right now? - I'm a veteran, right in the vlogged it's just... It's just a veteran? It s just... Oh, a veteran . That's going to help me help me out of this voyage, right, I'm gonna help me ... In the Home of Truth & freedom, I m going to have a veteran... - That's just that. -- -- In this vayeeeeeeee -- Thank you, Ms. VANANAN SHANTHA Shiva -- That's a VANDANA SHANtha Shiva? -- A VANDANAN Shiva - A VANANA Shiva VANNA SHANNA Shiva
00:01:08.000Thanks for joining me on this voyage to truth and freedom.
00:01:10.000If you're one of the 6.5 million watching us on YouTube right now, click the link in the description and join us in the home of truth, because Vandana Shiva is coming!
00:01:20.000Vandana Shiva, world teacher, Indian scholar, environmental activist, activist but from a perspective of liberating actual people,
00:01:27.000not punishing people, not penalising ordinary people while allowing centralist, globalist
00:01:50.000She believes in decentralization of power, devolution.
00:01:54.000She recognizes that there is a constant threat of calling people conspiracy theorists because they're speaking out against establishment power.
00:02:16.000Let me know in the comments if this is the first time you've seen Vandana Shiva, and let me know if, like me, you believe this is exactly the kind of voice we need in politics to change the world right now.
00:02:26.000I'm joined now by Vandana Shiva at Community.
00:02:29.000Vandana Shiva, as I usually refer to her, is, I believe, a world teacher.
00:02:35.000We're today, of course, going to talk about a variety of subjects.
00:02:38.000First, I'd like to thank you for your presence, Vandana.
00:03:58.000In a sense, Vandana, this piece of fabric embodies many of the principles that need to be practiced in order to overcome these gargantuan entities of domination that first dominated your nation and in their colors of National imperialism and now appear to be masked by logo, we still confront the same problem.
00:04:26.000Human beings cannot have a relationship with nature, land, and one another, it seems, increasingly, without the intercedents of this corporate power.
00:04:37.000Just you describing this seemed like a minor miracle that I Oh wow, seeds that prior to the time where seeds were patented dies prior to these processes becoming industrialized.
00:04:48.000And I'm not naive about the power of technology and the power of industry, but I am deeply concerned about the mentality behind it and the inherent disregard for nature, both human nature and nature more broadly, which I know you would say are not distinct.
00:05:02.000In this country right now, there is a lot of awareness, and I think this is true around the world in the wake of the East Palestine disaster in the United States of America, with the way that industry and industrial practices are negatively impacting the world.
00:05:16.000Where I live, the River Thames is continually polluted, and I can't help but think this is in part because the companies that own Thames water now are financed and owned in places like Canada and Abu Dhabi and I believe in part in China.
00:05:33.000What happens when corporations are able to own things that don't seem like they should even be primarily regarded as resources like water and nature and land?
00:05:44.000What happens to us spiritually and what happens ecologically?
00:05:49.000Well, I think all of nature's gifts that are vital to survival of all life, human life, as well as the life of other beings, the water, the air, the oceans, and actually till British imperialism, the land, the land was a commons.
00:06:07.000They were always held in, 1789 I think it was, Lord Corvallis says, All the soil of India is British property and therefore the peasants of India had to pay a tax to the British and they starved to death while Britain made $45 trillion out of the exploitation.
00:06:29.000So the reason nature herself is either treated as a mine or a dump And rivers and water are treated as mines to take out the water, out of the flow, and dump for the waste.
00:06:45.000So the privatization of rivers is the extractivism out of the river, but also the dumping of the waste.
00:07:24.000The chemicals and the antibiotics are supplied by Cargill.
00:07:28.000And all the waste is thrown into the commons of the river.
00:07:32.000The interesting thing is for why, even though there's columns in Guardian that recognize that Cargill, the world's biggest corporation in agriculture, has a role, There are paid journalists in The Guardian who talk about, oh, the farmers.
00:08:03.000The farmers are victims in this system.
00:08:05.000And the second is, you do not pick particularly vulnerable people at a time where we desperately need farmers to take care of the earth, to take care of the rivers, to take care of our food, to grow good food, to try and destroy the link between today and the future, between the earth and us.
00:08:28.000Vandana, how is it that ...that farmers have become increasingly vilified even when there are farm protests in Sri Lanka and India and Germany and England and the Netherlands.
00:08:40.000How is it that there appears to be a global uprising, an activism movement in agriculture And the simultaneous, as you say, media smearing of people that are farmers.
00:08:54.000And why is it happening in such a particular way, Vandana?
00:08:57.000Why are we hearing of farmers and this movement against what appears to be the increasing industrialization, centralization and globalization of agriculture?
00:09:19.000I've written many papers and books on food fascism.
00:09:26.000And fascism is, of course, how Mussolini defined it, the convergence of economic and political power.
00:09:33.000And food fascism is the recent control over our food systems by giant corporations and the billionaires.
00:09:44.000Because earlier, the British controlled the land, but they didn't control the food.
00:09:49.000It's with globalization and the green revolution and industrialization of food that the corporations control food.
00:09:56.000And I remember when I was organizing protests against the GATT and WTO, we shut down WTO in Seattle, but I remember 500,000 farmer protests in India.
00:10:09.000And there's this sea of farmers saying, food and agriculture is too precious to be left to the greed of free trade.
00:10:17.000It must be kept in the hands of the farmers.
00:10:20.000So food sovereignty came as the call, as opposite to the food dictatorship and food fascism.
00:10:27.000And if you look now, that same system wants to industrialize further, further remove people from the land, farming without farmers, Further industrialize agriculture, put more energy.
00:10:40.000Recent calculations are showing that the footprint of this lab food that they want to push as a solution to climate change is 25 times more than conventional agriculture.
00:10:52.000So they're taking a destructive alternative.
00:10:56.000But from the beginning of colonialism, Removing the people's ability to sustain themselves and provide for themselves is the first step.
00:11:10.000And separation from nature is where it begins.
00:11:13.000But destruction of the farmers who work with the land, because I have realized increasingly, you know, you want to make an automobile, you will have to go somewhere for aluminum, somewhere else now for lithium and cobalt and all of that, you'll have to travel around the world.
00:11:30.000But if I'm a peasant, or if I'm a gardener, I work with the soil, I have a little bit of seed, I give my love and my knowledge, the sun shines and does the photosynthesis, it's the only truly independent production system.
00:11:47.000And it's the freedom that they want to attack.
00:11:49.000They're afraid, not just afraid of freedom, but they're challenged by it.
00:11:54.000Because this system is so much more humane, so much more ecological, so much more light-footed, that they want to put their false solutions by saying the farmers are to blame.
00:12:39.000And, you know, if you want to be... I mean, I call this journalist who's being used for making this language, I call him the Nescafe expert of food.
00:12:50.000You know, just like you have filter coffee that filters slowly, the farmer's wisdom filters beautifully.
00:12:56.000I've given 40 years of my life to trying to understand the food system.
00:13:01.000Two years ago, he was on a Zoom conference with me.
00:13:05.000And he says, well, I've received 2,000 papers, and now I'm going to start to read them.
00:13:10.000And now I'll write a book called Regenesis.
00:13:13.000And I said, in two years, reading a few books?
00:13:19.000And you might remember, we had a very beautiful saint called Kabir.
00:13:37.000And the people said, how is it that, you know, the mullahs in the mosques and the priests in the temples don't convince us of the path to God?
00:13:48.000And you speak, and we know what that path is.
00:13:53.000And he said something which we all need to remember.
00:13:57.000In Hindi, he said, They speak from the word they have read, often the propaganda word fed by the corporations who want to get rid of the farmer.
00:14:11.000And I speak from my experience and in life.
00:14:16.000And so, those of us who are defending the earth and farmers, and the earth will not be defended without those who will take care of her.
00:14:26.000And the only caretakers in the world, everywhere, are farmers.
00:14:31.000To try and destroy them means you really want to also create new conquests of the earth, new colonization of the earth.
00:14:39.000It's beautiful how you've described it and defined it and helped me to understand it as a, in a sense, a project of colonization to smear farmers as fascists, to disempower them, to break the link between people and the land so this too can become colonized, industrialized, globalized and centralized.
00:14:59.000Often when I think of globalism, I think of it as being vast and all-encompassing, which of course it is, but also it's tiny and it intercedes in the tiny relationships between human beings and the relationships between people who work with the soil and the soil itself.
00:15:14.000Almost as if there can be no intimacy, no intimacy between human beings and the land.
00:15:20.000Almost as if nature itself can be patented, remedied, broken down and destroyed.
00:15:25.000Thank you for helping me to understand that.
00:15:27.000One of the things you've helped me to understand also is that our models of colonialism and imperialism have migrated from recognizably models that are underwritten by nationalism, identifiable figures of empire, the crown, the flag, into rather more diffuse and difficult-to-map monoliths, I understand now, because it's 20 or so years since the names have become familiar to us, thanks in no small part to your great work in spreading this message, the power of companies like Monsanto, the havoc that they have wreaked.
00:16:06.000But, even now, to talk of someone like Bill Gates, and the, it's odd to say billionaire class, because you need a few more people to create a class, and it's such a tiny cadre of individuals, are able to exert, it seems to me at least, a disproportionate, extraordinarily high amount of power on agriculture, on world health, not least through the World Health Organization, And have had an ability, historically and recently, that they have the capacity to direct policy in areas that's very, very surprising.
00:16:41.000How have we found ourselves in this position?
00:16:43.000And what can we do to address it, again, without being regarded as conspiracy theories?
00:16:49.000Because I know even the subjects that we're discussing already, the smearing of farmers, that's right-wing and fascist, to speak about the rights of farmers and to stand up for their causes.
00:16:58.000And now when you speak about Billionaires, what might be the sort of centripetal force of this globalism.
00:17:05.000If you talk about that, people say you're a conspiracy theorist.
00:17:07.000How are these conversations being closed down?
00:17:09.000First of all, I suppose I'm asking you, what is the role of... Let's take, for example, Bill Gates, because he seems like the best example.
00:17:15.000And how can we speak about it plainly and with facts, so that it's not regarded as conspiratorial or crackpot?
00:17:22.000Well, you know, I watched Bill Gates take over the UN system with the climate summit in Paris in 2015.
00:17:30.000And that's when I decided to write the book, Oneness vs. 1%, which I gifted you at the last community festival.
00:17:37.000And in the book we've analyzed how did people like Bill Gates become as wealthy as they are and how are they controlling so much?
00:17:46.000So they became wealthy through liberalization, neoliberal liberalization, where trade was liberalized and traded information.
00:19:19.000Corteva is the merger of Dow and DuPont.
00:19:22.000And they show it as if they're covering scientific news.
00:19:25.000But they're really doing an advertisement.
00:19:30.000So, philanthro-capitalism is give a tiny bait and take the whole thing, but also present yourself as a philanthropist.
00:19:41.000And the reason they control the governments is also through the philanthropy issue.
00:19:44.000Because when they enter and say, this is the recipe to save your children, as philanthropy, the governments who've been made desperate for money because of indebtedness by the World Bank and IMF, they cling to every piece.
00:19:59.000But before you know it, he's taken over the health sector.
00:21:11.000But even on the more quotidian and minor level of appliances in Western and anglophonic countries, this washing machine, you'll have more time.
00:21:20.000This dishwasher, you'll have more time.
00:21:23.000All of these artifacts and objects are built on an imagined promise of an imagined future that we're never going to arrive at because when you get there, you'll find it doesn't belong to you, it belongs to them.
00:21:33.000And not just that, running around to maintain these systems Takes all your time.
00:21:41.000There's a friend of mine, Julie Cho, who's run a book called something about no time now.
00:23:03.000They eat the straw or grass, and then what they gift us back is fertilizer.
00:23:10.000So you can either have that fertilizer, or you can have the fossil fuel fertilizer, which gives you climate change, which gives you pollution of the rivers, dead zones in the rivers, and it gives you dead soils because it kills all the life.
00:23:25.000And fertilizers are emitting more greenhouse gases than all the aviation.
00:23:34.000Fertilizers are emitting more greenhouse gases than all aviation.
00:23:38.000If you take the full cycle of manufacturing.
00:23:40.000The full cycle of manufacturing, when the full cycle of manufacturing is accounted for.
00:23:44.000And with the tiny bits of digitalization that has happened because the surveillance economy they want to create is basically an economy that is driven by data.
00:24:23.000Can you imagine the processing that'll have to be done?
00:24:26.000If every person is running their entire home On smart machines, to open their door, to open their fridge, now it's time to go to bed.
00:24:38.000Not only is it a very foolish kind of slavery, it's a huge ecological footprint on the planet and we can't afford it.
00:24:46.000So we have to learn to walk lightly again.
00:24:51.000It feels like we're being extracted from our own lives and our own reality in the manner that would once only have been plausible through the model of imagining total surrender to God, as if one oneself is merely a node, a reflection, a cipher and tunnel of some divine light.
00:25:14.000Now I see this becoming absolutely materialized, that you surrender yourself to some externalized system of surveillance and data capture and management and organization.
00:25:25.000I see that this is what happens when you prioritize materialism over spirituality.
00:25:32.000I see that this is what happens when rationality and logistics Pervade all things and subjugate the difficult to quantify, impossible to quantify, sublime nature of things.
00:25:46.000This desacralization, a word that I learned and thought of because of you, because of a conversation we once had, This desacralization is increasing at great pace, it seems to me.
00:26:00.000And what once seemed implausible, impossible, perhaps because it was the idea that we could be extracted from our own lives, that we could be dominated centrally, now seems to be Under why?
00:26:14.000How do you feel about the increasing control of censorship, the inhibition of free speech, the ability of the media machine to shut down conversation, where someone like you, if I may say, an Indian woman, can face being called a right-wing fascist, which just seems It seems implausible if you sort of break down what right-wing fascist is supposed to mean in terms of genocidal ideology, corporatism.
00:26:40.000How are we to ensure that we're able to have free conversations?
00:26:43.000It seems to me that because the scale of the problem we're facing is so vast, the solution has to be similarly vast.
00:26:50.000I don't mean complex, but I do mean vast, because I think it nothing less.
00:26:54.000Then a global response to this global movement will do.
00:27:01.000Absolute freedom to run your own community.
00:27:02.000Absolute freedom to control your own food source.
00:27:06.000Absolute freedom to trade when necessary and however you want to.
00:27:14.000I mean, I'm basically asking you how to solve all the world's problems in one question there, Vandana, which seems pretty hefty.
00:27:18.000But let's just, if we could, focus on the idea of the curtailing of communication and censorship.
00:27:23.000Do you think that the prohibition of free communication is a significant part of this project to globalise and centrally control all things, this surveillance state that you tell us about?
00:27:36.000You know, a system of total control, but a system of total control which turns the control into the next source of profits.
00:28:55.000It's extraordinary that the veil for this discourse, for this new and emergent system of centralization, is sort of all gilded with the linguistics of freedom and respect and honor.
00:29:09.000Like, the conversations that we find ourselves having in the media space, our organization, such as we are, Stay Free Media, What we have to be cautious about is being labelled right-wing, being labelled conspiracy theorists.
00:29:22.000And what's used to, as I understand, underwrite it, is the idea that somehow they are protecting people.
00:29:29.000That someone is being protected by this.
00:29:33.000Take Bill Gates, take the surveillance state, take the capture of our data, take what happened in the last three years, the lockdowns, the shutting down of free speech, the closing down of expert opinion.
00:29:45.000The removal of valid and valuable data.
00:29:48.000All of this was advanced as giving us freedom.
00:29:51.000How is it and why is it that we're being told that all of this is for our safety and security when plainly elsewhere, excuse me, plainly elsewhere you can see that their motivation is so seldom about altruism and kindness.
00:30:07.000You remember George Orwell wrote a book, 1984, and he talked about doublespeak.
00:30:15.000How every word will mean the opposite.
00:30:17.000Now the fascists who want to control every element of our food, our breath, our thinking, our communication, are the ones who are actually institutionalizing the next stage of fascism now through technology, which should be a tool and a means and has been elevated to a god.
00:30:38.000And they therefore have to use the doublespeak of calling those who are living and seeking freedom as the right way.
00:30:49.000And they have to present those who are speaking truth as a conspiracy theorist.
00:30:56.000How many brilliant doctors who actually heal people and who are now having an opportunity to talk were censored.
00:31:06.000And I think if you want to understand the destruction of freedom in our age, looking at the last two years...
00:33:16.000We've had both Jordan Peterson and Richard Dawkins on our show.
00:33:19.000They're both men, academics, public speakers that I respect.
00:33:22.000Just for clarity and transparency, I believe in God.
00:33:25.000It's the most important thing in my life to have a framework for my own conduct, morality, the way I treat other people, and what I do when I know that I fall short of the standards that a living and loving God suggests.
00:35:11.000I hope that the god that is adored by millions of people is a grown-up kind of god who is no longer... I hope that most people who... the kind of people I would like to know who worship and admire him...
00:35:22.000...regard those stories as not literally true.
00:35:25.000Now, there are some who do regard them as literally true, and I suspect they either haven't read the Old Testament, or they're not the kind of people I would wish to know, because you do not want to worship a character like that.
00:35:36.000By all means, worship some kind of great spirit of the universe, some kind of creative intelligence who created the universe, but don't worship this vile, vindictive monster.
00:35:47.000Who is the obvious person to host this debate?
00:35:55.000I think I'm the perfect person to host this debate.
00:35:58.000Recently in our country, the Archbishop of York said that the words Our Father at the beginning of the Lord's Prayer are Problematic.
00:36:06.000Because many of us have complex relationships with patriarchy, male authority, and fatherhood.
00:36:11.000But I would say, as a person that recognizes the challenges of patriarchy and authority, I do not like authority.
00:36:17.000And I understand why the term patriarchy would be used to establish and define that authority, because, broadly speaking, historically, and even contemporarily, it's a type of male power, you could say.
00:36:26.000Let me know in the comments if you disagree with that.
00:36:27.000The reason I use the Lord's Prayer myself is because when I say, Our Father, what I'm focused on is OUR The idea that we all share a common father, that we are brothers and sisters here.
00:36:38.000And how do you treat your brothers and sisters?
00:36:40.000Hopefully, although in the Bible, sometimes they literally kill each other, like Cain and Abel, the first ever brothers there were.
00:36:45.000Hopefully, with love and with an open heart.
00:36:48.000Hopefully, in families, when there are conflicts, the intention is to resolve those conflicts, not to forcify and fortify those conflicts.
00:36:56.000The conditions of the material world are insufficient for me to feel connected enough, safe enough, loved enough to deal with reality.
00:37:03.000For me, spirituality and faith in God is a survival technique.
00:37:28.000But my intention is to try my best to be a kind and good man.
00:37:32.000Jordan Peterson is perhaps one of the most controversial public intellectuals that has ever lived actually.
00:37:38.000But often what he's saying is there are values in tradition.
00:37:41.000I've argued with him about that publicly and probably will continue to.
00:37:45.000That there is such a thing as a male and a female.
00:37:48.000I've argued with him about the nature and application of those arguments, although biology I would contest, and any sensible person, I think, would say biology is biology.
00:37:56.000And he says that having some set of principles and some set of hierarchy is inevitable.
00:38:02.000But whoever you are, whether you believe in God or not, wherever you stand on the spectrum of social ideologies, you do have a standard.
00:38:10.000Even if your standard is there is no God.
00:38:13.000All of them use humanitarianism and humanism, which are derived often from Christianity, the ideals in them that human life is sacred.
00:38:21.000Like George Carlin, the great stand-up comedian, would say when critiquing the American Constitution, you know, we have inalienable rights.
00:39:16.000All of us acknowledge that there are a set of principles that we're going to abide by.
00:39:20.000Now, an evolutionary biologist like Dawkins would say that these are based on ideas like reciprocal altruism.
00:39:26.000So we have learned over time that we need social relationships that are built on bonds of trust, and therefore out of selfishness, selfish genes, he says, he says that the genes want to propagate themselves, not us as individuals, the genes from which we are comprised want to be propagated, and therefore certain behavioral strategies become necessary.
00:39:43.000But what I think you end up with there, in the case of Dawkins, is the same sort of cart before the horse argument that religious people are accused of i.e what i'm saying is Dawkins is like there absolutely cannot be god or love now how do i get there when it seems like people are being loving and good like say when we see a story like person jumps into the river to save a drowning stranger and then dies like oh well obviously that's because uh in the past you would have to be brave otherwise you'd be kicked out of the tribe you know they find ways of making beauty redundant they find
00:40:15.000Deliberate ways of stripping away the necessary conditions and tools of our advancement as a species.
00:40:21.000If you say beauty is not beautiful, if you say that truth is not truth, then you start to, I think, shake the foundations of humanity.
00:40:27.000Now, of course, the scientists would say truth is what they're primarily interested in.
00:40:39.000Spirituality is about accepting a oneness.
00:40:42.000Religiosity can be about this set of ideas is better than this one.
00:40:45.000I know a lot of you guys are Christians, and I love you for your Christianity, and I love our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
00:40:50.000However, personally, I would not prohibit arriving at transcendence or enlightenment via the teachings of the Buddha, who obviously presents us with an ideology that does not have a Godhead.
00:41:00.000Or our brothers and sisters, to quote my dear friend Cornel West, who would say that Islam is another pathway to enlightenment.
00:41:06.000Of course, Christianity has historically been used for dominion, for crusades, for capture, for plunder, for murder.
00:41:13.000And of course, Islam has people that have used it for comparable motives.
00:41:17.000And even, and it always seems mad to me when I see this, in places like Burma, Buddhism is used!
00:41:21.000The reason that I would align more with Jordan Peterson than Richard Dawkins is because I believe that what Jordan Peterson is trying to present us with are the values and the inherent power within certain spiritual doctrines and certain theological tropes, scriptures and cultural assets.
00:41:38.000That if you value service above self-service, you might live a better life.
00:41:43.000If you value kindness above the pursuit of individual success, you might have a better life.
00:41:48.000If when you're alone at night, you feel like there is no meaning, consciousness is just an accident of evolution, a by-product of complex networked processes in the brain.
00:41:59.000You might end up feeling desperately alone and that your only hope is pleasure.
00:42:03.000And now we're just debating the aesthetics of the pleasure.
00:42:05.000Is pleasure for you to be stooped over some white powder in the company and entangled limbs of strangers?
00:42:12.000Or is pleasure for you a family model derived from the sort of Western post-Protestant ideas of what a nuclear family should be?
00:42:19.000Or is pleasure for you skiing or bungee jumping?
00:42:29.000sex generates pleasure because you are in a harmonious and loving and respectful relationship or eating generates pleasure because you are allowing the machine of the body to continue to survive that you may look after your children or serve your community.
00:42:44.000I don't agree with religion being used to prescribe the actions of others.
00:42:48.000I don't believe that religion should be used to say, hey, you lot, stop doing that over there.
00:42:52.000I think that religion should be used for, right, how am I going to behave today?
00:42:55.000And again, I always feel it's necessary to add, because I'm a person whose religion and spirituality has come from my own personal failings, that it's not about me telling you what to do, it's about me telling me what to do, that I can become sort of happy and connected, because my separateness is not real.
00:43:10.000Perhaps the fundamental idea is that beneath the reality that we experience through the senses, beneath it, around it, within it, across it, there is another reality.
00:43:18.000A more powerful reality that is not subject to the senses in the same way, but is intuited and felt.
00:43:24.000That when we feel love for children, or a friend, or an animal, or nature, sunset, whatever, it is the reminder of deep connection.
00:43:33.000Many different cultural artifacts Whether divine or not, have sought to describe this experience and how from this experience of numinism, the presence of the divine, the deep awe that we suddenly feel, the wonder that can come in psychedelics or suddenly seeing an ocean or some tiny miracle of the insect world,
00:43:54.000That this awe is somehow connected to ethics and moral conduct.
00:44:00.000That because of this sense of connection, we might be kind, we might be loving, we might be of service, we might not spend our life in the relentless pursuit of pleasure.
00:44:07.000Most of my spiritual values were taught to me as a result of my own addiction and alcoholism, so they are about controlling, recognizing, letting go of drives, letting go of drives, and recognizing that my drive to pleasure and personal satisfaction is not the map, is not the agenda, is not the set of imperatives that I should be pursuing.
00:44:27.000But I think that what I have experienced extremely, although many people much more extremely than me, is relevant to all of us.
00:44:33.000That all of us on some level have to find a pathway.
00:44:37.000I don't think it actually matters if you're an atheist or not.
00:44:38.000I can't quite see how I would get there if I didn't believe that there was a different reality to the one we experience every day.
00:44:44.000That certain prophets have come back have awoken, have realised, are attuned to this great oneness.
00:44:49.000I don't know how I'd get there in the same way, based on arithmetic, algebra, measurements.
00:44:54.000Although, God, as many atheists will tell you, there's enough miracles in the cosmos,
00:44:58.000there's enough miracles in the quantum field to keep you fueled forever.
00:45:01.000And significantly, down there in the quantum field, the rules of physics as we understand them start to fall
00:45:06.000So even the things we lean on, like gravity, velocity, momentum,
00:45:11.000these things start to not make sense in the quantum field.
00:45:14.000It shows you that perhaps reality as we understand it is just a local set of customs relevant and appropriate to our biological form and our geological and cosmological reality.
00:46:15.000But when it comes to this issue, I fall down on the side of Jordan Peterson.
00:46:18.000Let me know in the comments below what side of this conversation you're on, what your relationship with God is, or what your relationship with atheism is, and how we derive a shared morality together that is workable, whichever side of that argument we fall upon.
00:46:30.000The fact is we're here together and we've got to find a way to get along.
00:46:33.000And plus, let me know if you think I should host that debate.