The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #136 - Daniel Pinchbeck (Part 1)

00:00:01.000 The Joe Rogan Experience podcast is brought to you by The Fleshlight.

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00:00:11.000 Daniel Pinchback is in the house, ladies and gentlemen.

00:00:15.000 Strapping.

00:00:16.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:17.000 We're gonna get crazy Taking a long ride Down some of my favorite schools of thought with this guy here Daniel Pinchback is author if you've never heard of him Taking a long ride down some of my favorite schools of thought with this guy here.

00:00:34.000 Daniel Pinchbeck is an author.

00:00:36.000 If you've never heard of him, he's got a great book called Breaking Open the Head.

00:00:39.000 And another one called 2012, The Return of Quetzalcoatl.

00:00:44.000 Did I say it right?

00:00:46.000 Good enough.

00:00:46.000 Good enough?

00:00:47.000 Close enough?

00:00:47.000 Quetzalcoatl.

00:00:49.000 And just an all-around fascinating dude.

00:00:53.000 Thanks for coming by, man.

00:00:54.000 I'm sorry you got stuck in traffic, but it's almost appropriate because you're sort of a little bit of a doom and gloom, end of civilization sort of a dude, and there's a giant power outage in L.A. that fucked traffic upside down.

00:01:04.000 Well, yeah, now that I know that, I feel better about the situation.

00:01:07.000 Yeah.

00:01:08.000 Do you, though? 0.98

00:01:09.000 Oh, finally, some apocalyptic shit's happening. 0.98

00:01:12.000 And while I'm here, perfect. 0.98

00:01:14.000 In New York, we just had a hurricane and an earthquake in one week.

00:01:17.000 Yeah.

00:01:18.000 I moved here when the earthquake happened.

00:01:20.000 I moved here like only like a month after the earthquake in 94 happened.

00:01:23.000 And it was this feeling of humility in L.A. that I liked.

00:01:27.000 When I first got here, I was like, people seem kind of shook up, but they seem pretty friendly.

00:01:31.000 Almost like any sort of a natural disaster does to any big group of people.

00:01:38.000 What are you doing there, buddy?

00:01:39.000 I'm looking at your alpha brain.

00:01:41.000 You want some?

00:01:41.000 What is it?

00:01:42.000 It's all nootropics.

00:01:43.000 It's vitamins for cognitive function.

00:01:45.000 Sure, why not?

00:01:45.000 Maybe I'll get brighter.

00:01:46.000 Yes, 1.5 million people are in power right now.

00:01:49.000 In Los Angeles?

00:01:50.000 In Los Angeles right now, which is kind of crazy.

00:01:52.000 Yeah, it is crazy. 1.00

00:01:53.000 I mean, that's a lot of fucking people. 1.00

00:01:55.000 We sell those. 1.00

00:01:56.000 I'll get you a bottle of those things, man.

00:01:57.000 We just started putting those out on onnit.com.

00:02:00.000 O-N-N-I-T dot com. 1.00

00:02:02.000 And what it is, is there's a lot of different things that people take to improve mental function.

00:02:07.000 And we just put the highest ingredients together and...

00:02:11.000 I started selling it.

00:02:13.000 Nice.

00:02:14.000 It's fascinating stuff, man.

00:02:15.000 You know, the science of it is a little sketchy. 0.93

00:02:17.000 A lot of people call it bullshit, but I think it works. 0.98

00:02:21.000 It works for me, man. 0.99

00:02:21.000 Even if it's just a placebo effect, I'll take all the lies that you tell me if I believe them. 0.99

00:02:25.000 It seems like it works for me, too.

00:02:27.000 Well, the dreams are...

00:02:28.000 No question. 1.00

00:02:29.000 You take them and you have this fucking... 1.00

00:02:32.000 These crazy, vivid, rememberable dreams. 0.99

00:02:35.000 It's very unusual.

00:02:36.000 And supposedly it's because of choline.

00:02:39.000 Is that how you say it?

00:02:40.000 Is that the nutrient?

00:02:41.000 I believe it's called choline, but apparently it's known to stimulate dreams. 0.97

00:02:46.000 It gives you fucking weird, creepy, memorable dreams. 0.99

00:02:50.000 I've got a weird dream about a werewolf and a gorilla having sex. 0.99

00:02:54.000 And I was trying to be quiet and get out of the room before they realized I was there.

00:02:58.000 Last night I was laying in bed and I was looking up your books on Amazon and the one cover he has is so trippy.

00:03:05.000 I actually spent a good time just scrolling up and down on my browser just looking at the cover.

00:03:12.000 Which one?

00:03:12.000 Breaking open the head?

00:03:13.000 I think so, yeah.

00:03:14.000 The one that has the mushroom in the middle and then it's just like... 0.69

00:03:16.000 It was fucking awesome. 0.97

00:03:18.000 That's how stoned I was last night. 0.95

00:03:19.000 Dude, you're here when this is...

00:03:21.000 What if this really was going down?

00:03:24.000 Like, right now in Los Angeles.

00:03:25.000 Are you prepared?

00:03:26.000 Because I know you're a big 2012 advocate, and I've talked to you about...

00:03:29.000 Well, I'm just out of Burning Man, so at least I have my flashlight and camelback.

00:03:33.000 Did you just leave Burning Man?

00:03:34.000 Yeah, three days ago.

00:03:35.000 Wow.

00:03:36.000 How was it?

00:03:37.000 It was great.

00:03:37.000 Now, you're like my age, right?

00:03:39.000 45. I'm 44. Are you not tired of those crazy hippies yet? 1.00

00:03:44.000 The really nutty ones? 1.00

00:03:47.000 No, you know, whatever.

00:03:48.000 I mean, I like...

00:03:49.000 I like the whole scene.

00:03:50.000 I mean, it's all sorts of genius people there, actually.

00:03:53.000 Yes, definitely.

00:03:54.000 Like, not just hippies, but the heads of all the technology companies.

00:03:56.000 I had a debate with some Google exec who's a yoga practitioner.

00:04:02.000 I had lots of great conversations around there.

00:04:04.000 It's all the psychedelic community.

00:04:06.000 I spent a lot of time with this woman who runs the Women's Visionary Congress, and my friend John Perry Barlow, who wrote lyrics for The Grateful Dead and started Electronic Freedom Foundation.

00:04:16.000 It's actually an amazing, you know, brain trust of human oddities and eccentric fossils.

00:04:22.000 I believe that, but there's also a lot of douchebags and you've got to wade through them. 1.00

00:04:27.000 And when you're, what you are is like this figurehead for this psychedelic movement in sort of a lot of ways. 0.92

00:04:32.000 So you must get a lot of crackpots. 0.96

00:04:34.000 And when I say douchebags, it's not their fault. 1.00

00:04:36.000 There's a lot of crazy people. 0.98

00:04:37.000 Honestly, I actually didn't have one douchebag experience. 0.68

00:04:40.000 A lot of people did come up to me who had read my books or seen the film, and people were extremely respectful and actually kind of moving.

00:04:49.000 So many people told me that the books had affected them or impacted their lives or whatever.

00:04:53.000 I mean, every Dead show I've ever been to, or any Fish show I've ever been to, has never been douchebags.

00:04:57.000 Even though you would think there would be a shitload of douchebags, everyone has this positive vibe to them.

00:05:01.000 So everyone, even if there are douchebags, they still have this underlining, yeah, I'm happy and I want to give you love and positive energy. 0.90

00:05:08.000 It seems like the whole scene and stuff like that.

00:05:10.000 So I just have a negative idea of it.

00:05:11.000 I think so.

00:05:12.000 You're like Cartman right now.

00:05:15.000 I lived in Boulder for a while and became very terrified of hippies.

00:05:18.000 You're very East Coast.

00:05:19.000 I was so hippie before.

00:05:20.000 I was so down with it.

00:05:21.000 And you're around them for a while. 1.00

00:05:22.000 God, so many people are fucking crazy. 1.00

00:05:26.000 Everybody's crazy. 1.00

00:05:27.000 Republicans are crazy. 1.00

00:05:28.000 Right-wing Christians are crazy. 1.00

00:05:29.000 I mean, you look at the Republican convention. 0.99

00:05:31.000 You look at these speeches, these debates that they're having. 1.00

00:05:35.000 It's like one nutty fucking person after a nutty person. 1.00

00:05:38.000 I mean, this fucking... 1.00

00:05:39.000 The guy from California, the guy from Massachusetts, rather, Mitt Romney, he's a Mormon. 0.99

00:05:46.000 I mean, at a certain point in time, you gotta go, come on, man, really?

00:05:50.000 You believe that Joseph Smith, this 14-year-old kid, found these golden tablets with the lost works of Jesus, and only you could read them because you had a magic rock.

00:06:00.000 Really?

00:06:01.000 Right?

00:06:02.000 At a certain point in time?

00:06:03.000 I mean, how is a guy like that allowed to even run for president?

00:06:09.000 If there's certain things that you believe, do you think that there should be a line that someone can pull you aside and go, come on, man.

00:06:14.000 This is crazy.

00:06:15.000 It would be very hard to draw that line at this point.

00:06:17.000 I mean, people believing in the Bible and so on, it's hard enough.

00:06:21.000 Well, how about the 6,000-year people?

00:06:22.000 The people that really believe the earth is 6,000 years old.

00:06:24.000 There's a lot of them.

00:06:26.000 Sarah Palin.

00:06:28.000 She really believes that.

00:06:29.000 A lot of people do.

00:06:31.000 I think you learn from that movie Red State that there's this big center of the world that's really crazy. 1.00

00:06:37.000 And they believe crazy shit. 1.00

00:06:41.000 I just watched that Wild Whites of West Virginia. 1.00

00:06:44.000 Those people believe probably things that you'd be amazed at.

00:06:47.000 I don't think they're thinking about that. 0.56

00:06:48.000 They're just pill people.

00:06:49.000 Pill popping people and partiers.

00:06:51.000 Have you seen that?

00:06:52.000 The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia?

00:06:54.000 Nope.

00:06:54.000 It's a fascinating yet terrifying documentary that Johnny Knoxville put together about this family in West Virginia that's completely crazy.

00:07:02.000 All they do, like they're just constantly committing crimes and selling pills and going on rampages and getting arrested.

00:07:08.000 It's just a fascinating family that's just not living by the rules that you or I live by.

00:07:14.000 You know, it's interesting.

00:07:16.000 Burning Man was sold out this year.

00:07:18.000 And it's just like I think the first time that it was ever sold out.

00:07:21.000 Did it seem like overly crowded or did it seem like why did they even put a limit to it?

00:07:26.000 Well, they don't have a control over that.

00:07:27.000 It's the Bureau of Land Management.

00:07:29.000 I think it's actually because it counts as a city, it's only allowed to grow 3% per year.

00:07:34.000 So it was growing from 51 to 54,000 or something like that.

00:07:37.000 Right.

00:07:37.000 Something like that.

00:07:39.000 So yeah, it could easily go up to 75,000 or 100,000 in terms of the space there.

00:07:43.000 They can just keep adding avenues and expanding it and so on.

00:07:46.000 Did you see any awesome art? 0.97

00:07:48.000 Did you see any like, wow, they took it to the next level type shit this year? 0.90

00:07:52.000 Yeah, there was some beautiful stuff. 0.98

00:07:53.000 There was a huge model of the Trojan horse, which 300 Greeks and white togas dragged through the gates.

00:07:59.000 Then they blew it up in spectacular fashion on Friday night.

00:08:03.000 There was lots of fun stuff. 0.98

00:08:04.000 That sounds pretty fucking badass. 0.86

00:08:05.000 I want to go so bad. 0.94

00:08:06.000 I talked about it maybe 20 podcasts ago.

00:08:09.000 I was thinking about going, and I'm mad at myself for not going.

00:08:12.000 My perceptions are always just going to be some really cool people, but just going to wade through some knuckleheads to get to them.

00:08:18.000 But you're sounding like it's not that way.

00:08:20.000 You're sounding like it's pretty positive overall.

00:08:22.000 Yeah, I mean, I still like it. 0.86

00:08:27.000 December 21st, 2012 is the big day and that's, you know, etched in stone and a lot of people's ideas about a lot of the shit that you write about and a lot of the shit that people think of about the coming of the next age. 0.89

00:08:40.000 If it rolls around and nothing happens then what? 0.95

00:08:42.000 Right on.

00:08:43.000 Yeah, well, I mean, once again, actually, people would have to look at whatever I said and read about it.

00:08:46.000 I never particularly said that anything was going to happen on that date.

00:08:50.000 Absolutely true, yes.

00:08:50.000 You absolutely have not.

00:08:52.000 On the other hand, it seems to me that it's super clear that we're in the middle of a transformation, that we can see now the global economy is buckling, the planetary ecology is also buckling, we've hit peak oil, A lot of the resources are in serious depletion.

00:09:11.000 So yeah, we're faced with an endgame for the current global civilization that we're in.

00:09:18.000 Is that peak oil thing been clearly established?

00:09:20.000 Yeah, it's been very clearly established.

00:09:22.000 So everyone agrees it's not a debated thing?

00:09:24.000 Well, I mean, of course, there's some debate and there's some disinformation.

00:09:27.000 There's a lot of money involved.

00:09:28.000 But if you look at what the main geologists talk about, it's a prediction that was made back in the 70s, even.

00:09:36.000 And that's why they're trying to get this oil in Canada.

00:09:40.000 These big protests have been happening on the White House lawn where Daryl Hannah got arrested.

00:09:44.000 One of NASA's top climate scientists got arrested.

00:09:47.000 And they're protesting this extraction, which is apparently incredibly inefficient.

00:09:53.000 Yeah, of course.

00:09:53.000 Of course, but it's why we are in wars in Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and why we're trying to hold down our access to the remaining resources.

00:10:03.000 But yeah, so I never anticipated anything exactly what happened on December 21, 2012, although it certainly might.

00:10:11.000 But I think that what we need to do and what I tried to do in my work up to this point is really try to take a big step back and look at our situation and factor in all sorts of stuff that the modern worldview is not really factoring in, which for me includes Shamanism, the DMT experience, psychic experience in general, the kind of psychic capacities that actually many people are aware of that happen all the time, whether it's synchronicity or telepathy.

00:10:41.000 We were on the phone today.

00:10:42.000 I talked to you about it.

00:10:44.000 I picked up my phone and I was going through the contacts to find your number and the phone rang and it was you. 1.00

00:10:51.000 I love that shit. 1.00

00:10:53.000 That's as creepy as it gets. 1.00

00:10:55.000 There's a lot of minutes in the day, man.

00:10:57.000 It happens more and more the older I get to.

00:10:57.000 How do you know when I'm calling you, man?

00:10:59.000 There's a lot of goddamn minutes in the day. 0.99

00:11:00.000 When was the last time I fucking called you? 0.99

00:11:01.000 I mean, yeah, you were supposed to be on the podcast today and we had emailed each other about it, but we hadn't talked on the phone in a long-ass time. 0.98

00:11:07.000 That's a weird coincidence.

00:11:09.000 Right.

00:11:10.000 Well, I mean, you could say that it's weird and creepy, but then you kind of get past that point and you just kind of integrate it.

00:11:14.000 And it's like, okay, somehow there's actually one consciousness that's kind of working through all of us.

00:11:20.000 And as time moves on in this period, it seems like those synchronicities are speeding up and our psychic capacities are somehow intensifying.

00:11:30.000 But I will say that one idea I'm working on for December 21st, 2012, is to utilize the date, because now there's so much popular focus on it, to create a kind of global event, which would be a kind of spectacle.

00:11:42.000 I'm working with composers and a team from Cirque du Soleil, and they're kind of putting together a concept for a show that would kind of celebrate humanity's evolution to this present point.

00:11:55.000 And then ending with a synchronized peace meditation, kind of global focus on unity, with the idea that you could take the energy that's pointed towards that day, and there's so much fear around it, and anxiety, and trepidation, and actually make it into the most awesome thing possible, where it's like, well, look where we've arrived at, and look at our opportunities now to make a shift and a jump into a new form of planetary civilization.

00:12:20.000 Well, this is the clearest time in human history where the common person, any person really, has a direct influence over an incredible amount of people with viral information, with videos, and with anything that you write that really resonates with people.

00:12:33.000 You can hit an amazing amount of people now.

00:12:35.000 So a guy like you could get in touch with a bunch of other people who could do exactly the same thing, and a ripple effect can go on, and it can hit millions and millions easy.

00:12:44.000 There's never been an opportunity to do anything like that.

00:12:46.000 Yeah, I mean, we'd totally love to have you involved with our Unify Earth project.

00:12:50.000 I'd love to, sure.

00:12:51.000 You should do it at SeaWorld.

00:12:51.000 Sure.

00:12:52.000 Actually, we're actually working with...

00:12:55.000 I love that.

00:12:55.000 It's awesome to watch.

00:12:56.000 At the moment, we're actually in negotiation with the Mexican government to use Chichen Itza, which is considered by the Mayans to be the heart of the Mayan world. 0.99

00:13:04.000 You know what would be the shit, dude? 0.99

00:13:05.000 A Toby Keith concert at Chichen Itza. 0.99

00:13:08.000 Would that be the most ironic thing of all time?

00:13:12.000 Toby King is like this super rah-rah American country music singer. 1.00

00:13:16.000 He's like, Saddam Hussein will kick your ass. 1.00

00:13:18.000 You know, he's like one of those guys. 1.00

00:13:19.000 But he's a good singer.

00:13:21.000 I mean, he's got good songs.

00:13:23.000 But some of them are like real knucklehead rah-rah-rah songs. 0.98

00:13:26.000 I just think him on the fucking pyramids playing a concert might be one of the most ironic things of all time. 0.98

00:13:33.000 Talking about how awesome America is. 0.99

00:13:36.000 You can love it or leave it.

00:13:38.000 He had a good song about smoking weed with Willie Nelson, though.

00:13:41.000 He's got good music.

00:13:42.000 He's got good music.

00:13:42.000 I just think it would be funny.

00:13:44.000 It would be funny.

00:13:45.000 Yeah, I'm scared of Chichen Itza, though.

00:13:47.000 Don't ever forget that dream, Joe.

00:13:49.000 Write that dream down right now.

00:13:50.000 It's on the internet now.

00:13:51.000 We can draw this dream for you.

00:13:53.000 You're right.

00:13:54.000 Boy, I should never stop dreaming.

00:13:55.000 Go never stop.

00:13:56.000 I think, as you do, that things are moving in a certain direction.

00:14:01.000 And I wonder how much people steer it, you know?

00:14:03.000 How much things like this steer it.

00:14:05.000 How much communication online steers it.

00:14:07.000 Because it seems to me this is the only time where people have been able to sort of...

00:14:12.000 Merge in this way globally on their own and do it on a regular basis.

00:14:16.000 People are addicted to just going on Twitter, addicted to communicating with people on message boards and on Facebook.

00:14:23.000 There's an interconnectivity that's never existed before.

00:14:27.000 So an idea, the idea of a hive mind influenced by anyone is way different now than it's ever been in human history, as far as we know, right?

00:14:35.000 Absolutely, yeah.

00:14:36.000 It's an amazing time.

00:14:37.000 Yeah, for sure.

00:14:37.000 I mean, one idea that a lot of...

00:14:40.000 Different people are kind of moving towards this idea that maybe humanity is on the verge of transitioning into being kind of like a superorganism, you know, that we're kind of like coming to awareness of ourselves as a singular being, in a sense, you know, and then we can, you know, begin to act more symbiotically rather than like parasitically or aggressively.

00:14:59.000 There was a really fascinating article recently written on creativity and how people are always praising creativity and looking forward to getting new and creative ideas.

00:15:08.000 But that other people's creativity actually makes people uncomfortable.

00:15:12.000 It makes people uncomfortable and uneasy.

00:15:14.000 And the idea that someone had come up with these ideas that they didn't.

00:15:17.000 And you wonder if... 0.96

00:15:20.000 Like, the really powerful push towards fundamentalism, the really powerful push towards the 6,000-year-old earth kind of shit, you know, and follow the Bible kind of shit, is really the same thing as someone trying to confine creativity. 0.98

00:15:36.000 They're trying to confine enlightenment. 0.98

00:15:38.000 I guess my feeling is basically we live in a culture where people are being indoctrinated not to think.

00:15:47.000 They're being indoctrinated by the media, the mainstream culture, by the education system to be ignorant, to not question, to not develop their independent capacity of thought.

00:15:58.000 Okay, but are you saying this from the education system or are you saying this from the media?

00:16:03.000 Yeah, yeah, from both, I think. 0.97

00:16:05.000 But the media does not make you dumb, right? 0.98

00:16:07.000 Oh, yes, it does. 1.00

00:16:08.000 The media makes people incredibly stupid. 1.00

00:16:10.000 But it makes you dumb? 1.00

00:16:11.000 You? 1.00

00:16:12.000 You.

00:16:12.000 You can't watch CNN and become...

00:16:14.000 I don't watch that stuff.

00:16:15.000 But if you did, you think it would affect you?

00:16:16.000 Yeah, if I'm in a hotel room and I watch that stuff for a couple days, I feel like I'm having a lobotomy.

00:16:20.000 Whoa, really?

00:16:21.000 Just CNN? Yeah, of course.

00:16:23.000 You can't just see it as a program?

00:16:25.000 No, all these things are, from my perspective, they're basically kind of holding the mass consciousness, the planetary consciousness, at a certain low level or low frequency.

00:16:36.000 Mm-hmm.

00:16:36.000 Where it's passive, consumerist, fear-based.

00:16:40.000 There's this violent activity, very disjointed.

00:16:43.000 It creates a lot of frustration and anxiety.

00:16:45.000 There's no deeper analysis.

00:16:47.000 There's no attempt to create a coherent understanding of what's happening in any sense.

00:16:52.000 I can see your point that maybe perhaps it isn't used to its utmost abilities or the capabilities that we would have for it.

00:16:59.000 But I don't think that it's not...

00:17:03.000 I think this idea that we're helpless to media constantly bombarding us with these images and ideals and that we have to accept them. 0.52

00:17:20.000 I think that's silly.

00:17:22.000 And I think that, honestly, with the internet, you look at the society that's growing out of the internet, look at movements like Anonymous, look at things that have never happened before, these giant groups moving forward and taking down websites and taking down companies that they feel have acted unjustly.

00:17:43.000 No one's ever been able to do something like that before.

00:17:45.000 That's Stevia, if you want it.

00:17:47.000 You're going to have some coffee.

00:17:48.000 That's good.

00:17:48.000 Yeah, well, I mean, so we have two things.

00:17:51.000 A number of things are happening simultaneously, and that's another thing that's very interesting about our time, is that things are getting pretty complicated.

00:17:57.000 Now, one problem with television in general is that it's designed to reduce everything into tiny little sound bites.

00:18:03.000 You know, when Lincoln and Jefferson debated in the 1860s, the debates lasted eight hours, you know?

00:18:08.000 When we have a debate on TV, each person gets, like...

00:18:11.000 36 seconds for this response, 22 seconds. 1.00

00:18:13.000 We're basically used to everything being spoon-fed and dumbed down to an absolute level of stupidity. 0.98

00:18:19.000 And basically, the problem is that because our scenario on the planet is very complex at this point, we actually need to be able to articulate and analyze at a much deeper level. 0.96

00:18:29.000 So yes, we have two things going on. 0.92

00:18:31.000 We have the one-directional mass media, which I really am convinced is basically a kind of lobotomy machine that anesthetizes people into an ultimate state of idiocy and consumerist passivity.

00:18:43.000 And then we have the development of this new interactive media, which is having profound effects and will continue to have profound effects.

00:18:50.000 And if you go look at the history of media, Every time there's a new form of media that's very powerful, it transforms the society, the political system, the government, changes everything.

00:19:02.000 You could never have had an empire until you had a written code of laws that could be distributed to the borders and beyond.

00:19:08.000 You could never have had a modern representational democracy, nation-state, unless you had the printing press, which distributed enough materials that everybody could participate in civic dialogues.

00:19:21.000 Now with this interactive technology, potentially points towards a much deeper transition in our political and social paradigm.

00:19:28.000 Potentially towards a way from centralized control hierarchy to more of a kind of distributed or direct democracy.

00:19:36.000 and interconnectedness as human beings in general.

00:19:40.000 No one's been this close to this many people just through online communication.

00:19:45.000 No one has ever had that kind of an influence before by such a wide variety of people and ideas all coming at you.

00:19:51.000 Sure, and look how incredibly new it is.

00:19:52.000 We're just adapting.

00:19:54.000 We're just treading water trying to catch up with this force that our culture has unleashed.

00:20:00.000 And it's good or is it no?

00:20:01.000 It's awesome.

00:20:02.000 Is it as awesome?

00:20:03.000 Sure.

00:20:03.000 Well, if you love change, it's great.

00:20:04.000 I mean, if you're somebody who heads Warner Records, you're probably scratching your head at this point.

00:20:08.000 I had the most fascinating conversation with a guy who was trying to say that Google was bad and the idea of the internet search is bad.

00:20:15.000 I go, why?

00:20:16.000 He goes, because, you know, it used to be if you wanted knowledge, you had to go look for it. 0.98

00:20:20.000 I was like, wow, that might be the craziest fucking thing I've ever heard. 1.00

00:20:23.000 You think it should be hard to find that shit? 1.00

00:20:25.000 It should be hard. 1.00

00:20:26.000 You should have to go to a library and look up the right book.

00:20:28.000 It should take hours.

00:20:29.000 No, you should be able to save your phone.

00:20:30.000 That's very much like people who talk about, you shouldn't take a psychedelic because it's like a shortcut to the mystical experience.

00:20:35.000 Right.

00:20:36.000 And of course, the answer to that is like, you know, what's wrong with a shortcut?

00:20:38.000 If I'm trying to get somewhere, am I going to go like all around in like a circuitous, boring route? 0.87

00:20:42.000 Or am I going to just take the frigging shortcut? 0.97

00:20:44.000 Yeah. 0.62

00:20:44.000 That reminds me of a joke that Terence McKenna used to say, that some guy practiced a city of levitation for 40 years and figured out finally how to float. 0.62

00:20:54.000 And he came up to the Buddha and he said, Master, I can walk across the water.

00:20:58.000 And the Buddha said, but the ferry's only a nickel. 0.99

00:21:03.000 I mean, take the fucking mushroom. 1.00

00:21:05.000 Take a chance, dude. 1.00

00:21:06.000 Take a shortcut.

00:21:07.000 Not only that, the idea that you are independent from nature and that you don't need some help in any way.

00:21:15.000 I mean, you're constantly getting help from nutrients and vitamins and protein and all these different things that you absorb through nature.

00:21:20.000 But then when it comes to this that you think may or may not do something to your mind, I can get there naturally.

00:21:26.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:21:26.000 To get back to the Google search, I think that the fact that we now have so much knowledge and information at our disposal is an extraordinary thing.

00:21:36.000 But then the question is still, how do we manage that?

00:21:39.000 What do we do with it?

00:21:39.000 And what type of society can we pull ourselves into?

00:21:45.000 Because at the moment, what we have is not going to last very much longer.

00:21:48.000 I like what you said, pull ourselves into, because it's going to have to be that, because you're going to have to pull away from the system that we have now, especially the financial system.

00:21:58.000 We've learned from when Ron Paul wanted the audits of the bailouts and people found out how many trillions of dollars had been sent into this whole idea of bailouts and where these tax dollars went.

00:22:09.000 I think a lot of people became really disillusioned and disenfranchised and had no connection to it.

00:22:16.000 You know what I mean?

00:22:17.000 When it happened, did it make any sense to you?

00:22:20.000 When you were hearing about the bailouts, did any of that make any sense to you?

00:22:23.000 I don't pay attention to any of that.

00:22:24.000 It seems like a system you can't fix.

00:22:26.000 It almost feels like trying to go against the machine that's currently in place is so intangible.

00:22:34.000 It's so gigantic.

00:22:36.000 The financial system is completely and utterly corrupt and unrecognizable.

00:22:41.000 It's impossible to understand.

00:22:43.000 Right.

00:22:43.000 Well, that's been a bunch of the work I've been doing over the last few years.

00:22:47.000 I mean, in the film, actually, we interviewed you for the film.

00:22:49.000 We didn't end up using your interview.

00:22:50.000 We just couldn't somehow splice it in.

00:22:51.000 People put it online.

00:22:53.000 2012, Time for Change.

00:22:55.000 And we interviewed this guy, Bernard Lyotard, who was an economist.

00:22:58.000 He was one of the architects of the euro.

00:22:59.000 He wrote a great book called The Future of Money.

00:23:02.000 And in that book, he, you know, and in our film, we discussed how the financial system is broken.

00:23:06.000 It really doesn't matter at this point who you put in control because it's still just like a car with no brakes, but that actually we're going to have to reinvent instruments for exchanging value that actually have fundamentally different value systems connected to them.

00:23:23.000 So, for instance, he proposes a currency, which he calls the Terra, that has a negative interest charge.

00:23:28.000 So it's a new trading currency, a global trading currency, that's indexed not to just a virtual abstraction like our money currently is, but actually it's indexed to a basket of real-world goods and resources that decline in value over time, because most things do.

00:23:43.000 So the longer you held on to a Terra, the less it would be worth.

00:23:47.000 So instead of a gold standard, it would be based on a bunch of different valuable things?

00:23:52.000 Exactly.

00:23:52.000 A bundle of resources that would include fuel and wheat and processed foods and unprocessed goods and so on.

00:24:00.000 And as a summation of all of that, it would actually decline in value.

00:24:04.000 It would have what's called a demirage charge.

00:24:06.000 So when people got a bunch of these taros through some business deal, rather than seeking to hoard them or hold on to them, that wouldn't work.

00:24:13.000 So they would be best used by putting them back into circulation, by sharing them or whatever.

00:24:19.000 So that's Leotard's concept, one of many concepts.

00:24:23.000 We're actually publishing a book through my company Evolver called Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein.

00:24:28.000 It's actually already out on the internet and you can get copies.

00:24:32.000 But he actually puts together a whole paradigm looking at the inevitability of the financial system breaking down and really seeing that rather than just having one monopoly of a value exchanging instrument like money that's controlled by private banking interests, You could really create a whole ecology of different ways of exchanging value that would be used for different purposes.

00:24:53.000 Do you think that the government would ever allow something like that to actually take place?

00:24:57.000 I mean, it almost seems like trying to create a government inside a government.

00:24:59.000 Well, I mean, it's happened before.

00:25:00.000 For instance, in the Depression, they reissued a lot of local currencies.

00:25:04.000 It was also done in the 19th century, obviously.

00:25:06.000 I read about a town in North Carolina or South Carolina that's trying to do that right now.

00:25:10.000 Exactly.

00:25:10.000 Well, I think that's definitely going to be on the horizon because people are not going to be able to use this currency.

00:25:15.000 Yeah, it was a small town, and they had their own currency in this town.

00:25:18.000 And there was a debate about its legality.

00:25:21.000 And in fact, if you look at the bankruptcy of the government and the effects of peak oil and all this other stuff going on, the capacity of the federal government to intervene and to meddle may actually become radically reduced in the next years.

00:25:36.000 Because there's just not going to be the money available for that kind of endless effort. 0.98

00:25:42.000 Damn. 0.99

00:25:43.000 My face is melting. 1.00

00:25:48.000 You know what he's saying?

00:25:49.000 Yeah, it was just like so much information I'm thinking about right now.

00:25:53.000 Well, you know, is it possible that none of this will actually happen?

00:25:57.000 That we'll sort of stumble into the finish line?

00:25:59.000 No, it's not possible.

00:26:00.000 It's not possible.

00:26:00.000 It's absolutely not possible.

00:26:01.000 So you think it's absolutely 100% that the society that we currently enjoy is going to collapse?

00:26:07.000 Absolutely.

00:26:08.000 100%.

00:26:08.000 I mean, it's obvious.

00:26:09.000 What kind of a time frame are you going to be in?

00:26:10.000 You know, could be a year, could be 10 or 15 years.

00:26:14.000 But the point is to recognize that, you know, we're in it now.

00:26:17.000 I mean, that, you know, our faith in capitalism, you know, capitalism is a system that has an inherent instability to it.

00:26:23.000 And basically what it requires is constantly new markets that need to be turned into money.

00:26:28.000 So you can keep the dynamism, that way you can keep the debt growing and you keep extending the credit.

00:26:33.000 But I think what we're going to realize soon enough is that capitalism was not a final system.

00:26:38.000 It was a transitional system.

00:26:40.000 We don't know what that transition is into yet, but capitalism is like an adolescent system.

00:26:45.000 It's like aggressive, compulsive, competitive.

00:26:48.000 At a certain point, you have to shift into maturity and adulthood, and you have to let go of some of that transition.

00:26:54.000 Adolescent compulsion.

00:26:55.000 How important is psychedelics in this equation?

00:26:58.000 Because the best tool, in my opinion, to sort of calm down those instincts, those competitive, super hyper-aggressive instincts, is psychedelics, and it's...

00:27:09.000 Have you tried hacky sacking?

00:27:10.000 No, I haven't.

00:27:11.000 You should try it.

00:27:12.000 You think that really helped?

00:27:13.000 Yeah, it's awesome.

00:27:14.000 It's funny because it makes me violent when I watch it.

00:27:16.000 Really?

00:27:17.000 Why?

00:27:17.000 No, just kidding.

00:27:18.000 It's so fun.

00:27:19.000 So I think that psychedelics have tremendous value.

00:27:22.000 People always say that I'm an advocate of psychedelics, and I suppose it's true to a certain extent, but I also feel that it's an individual decision.

00:27:27.000 They're not for everybody, and obviously they're still illegal and frowned upon in our society.

00:27:31.000 Right.

00:27:31.000 But the fact is that one of the values of psychedelics is they kind of decondition you from your present state of consciousness and your social ideology and belief system.

00:27:41.000 There's a kind of peeling away.

00:27:43.000 I remember the first time I took mushrooms, one of the first experiences I had was going to a deli and buying something with money and just finding it totally ludicrous that our culture invested so much belief in these wrinkly, brown, ugly pieces of paper.

00:27:57.000 You know, and that everybody was kind of so disconnected from their present experience and focused on the sports or the stock ticker or all this crap, for my opinion.

00:28:06.000 You know, so I think that peeling away back to a kind of, you know, phenomenological, as they say, level of just presence of being, that's a very powerful thing.

00:28:16.000 And we tend...

00:28:17.000 As humans, it's very easy for us to get lost in abstractions and concepts, and then we believe in our concepts.

00:28:24.000 We think that they're real.

00:28:26.000 So the psychedelics can break that investment we've made in all these things that we think are real that are just abstractions and concepts.

00:28:34.000 Does it have to be either or?

00:28:35.000 Can you enjoy a good movie and still be a person who believes that we're evolving as a consciousness and that we are in an adolescent state of evolution and somehow or another we're in a transitionary period and we're all coming...

00:28:48.000 But can't you just enjoy the X-Men?

00:28:51.000 I actually love the X-Men.

00:28:52.000 You love the X-Men?

00:28:53.000 So that's cool?

00:28:53.000 Movies are cool?

00:28:54.000 Just tell me what's cool.

00:28:55.000 Movies are cool but TV's not.

00:28:57.000 Do you ever see Walking Dead? 0.91

00:28:58.000 It's a pretty fucking good show, man. 0.98

00:29:00.000 There's zombies and these people trying to survive. 1.00

00:29:02.000 It's fucking fun. 1.00

00:29:03.000 Sometimes I like to sit in front of something and watch some shit that somebody created that's supposed to entertain me. 0.99

00:29:09.000 I don't think it has to cut your capacity for thinking and reason and logic and original thought. 0.98

00:29:16.000 I don't think it has to.

00:29:17.000 I think it could just be fun to watch.

00:29:19.000 I think a lot of people are conditioned by it.

00:29:22.000 A lot of people are weak. 1.00

00:29:22.000 But a lot of people fucking eat cheeseburgers all day and become 700 pounds. 1.00

00:29:26.000 I don't judge. 0.99

00:29:30.000 Enjoy whatever you want to enjoy.

00:29:31.000 I don't really care.

00:29:32.000 Personally, what I like are kind of...

00:29:35.000 When I get excited now about popular narratives, it's more because I see in them the seeds of part of this transformation that's underway.

00:29:44.000 Now, for instance, if you look at like a lot of the most archetypally huge stories that our culture keeps telling us, which includes the mutant, you know, the X-Men, Harry Potter, you know, Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Rings to a certain extent, but Star Wars, let's say, Avatar.

00:29:59.000 The story that's repeated over and over again is there's like this hero's journey.

00:30:02.000 And as part of that hero's journey, there has to be a learning to use our psychic faculties.

00:30:08.000 You know, so, so, you know, the Matrix.

00:30:11.000 He's trying to tell us we're all superheroes, dude.

00:30:14.000 Yeah, so if you look at mutants, they're going to this academy, they have to learn how to master these paranormal gifts.

00:30:20.000 You know, Harry Potter, you have to learn to cast your spells.

00:30:22.000 Star Wars, you have to use the Force.

00:30:24.000 You know, I actually, the more that I've thought about it, and the more my own experiences have kind of echoed, you know, some of these things, I think that these stories are so powerful because they represent a kind of yearning that people have for a kind of initiatory training and extrasensory perception.

00:30:39.000 And that is something that our society...

00:30:42.000 You know, has rigorously denied us, you know?

00:30:44.000 And I think if you look at, like, what happens to you when you're, like, an adolescent, like, let's say you're 15, 20 years old, you know, you have this beginning, and when you're a young teenager, you have this tremendous sense of expectation.

00:30:55.000 You're, like, waiting for some transformative thing to happen to you.

00:30:59.000 And then it doesn't happen.

00:31:00.000 And so instead, you accept a lot of basically crappy, degraded substitutes, like dulling entertainment, like, you know, watching athletes do this and that or whatever, Rather than having gone through something that you always just know is missing, but then the culture kind of hides it from you.

00:31:17.000 And I think that that thing that's missing from our culture is this direct initiatory process.

00:31:23.000 How is the culture hiding it from you, though?

00:31:25.000 I think the culture, the water sort of seeks its own level on a lot of these things, and a lot of people just get lazy and don't look for it.

00:31:32.000 And this culture that's opening up right now, The experiences now are being detailed and talked about that people could never understand before.

00:31:41.000 The connection that people have together through the internet now, there's never been anything like this before. 0.81

00:31:47.000 I don't think it's getting dumber. 0.99

00:31:50.000 I think there's always going to be a certain amount of dumb people. 0.99

00:31:52.000 I think there's always going to be a certain amount of people that smoke cigarettes. 1.00

00:31:54.000 Totally.

00:31:54.000 I just stopped recently, which was very exciting.

00:31:56.000 Did you really?

00:31:57.000 You smoked cigarettes.

00:31:58.000 I know. 1.00

00:31:58.000 Is that pathetic? 1.00

00:31:59.000 Wow. 1.00

00:32:00.000 You're such a smart guy.

00:32:01.000 I know, I know, I know. 1.00

00:32:02.000 What the fuck is that? 0.99

00:32:03.000 I know. 0.99

00:32:04.000 I apologize.

00:32:05.000 That's what a ruthless drug.

00:32:06.000 He doesn't get it.

00:32:06.000 No, I do get it.

00:32:07.000 I want you to get it.

00:32:08.000 Bro, I swear to God I get it. 0.99

00:32:09.000 I want to start fucking putting cigarettes in here. 1.00

00:32:10.000 I fuck with you because I love you because you're one of my best friends, but I get it. 1.00

00:32:13.000 Actually, it was through ayahuasca that I stopped. 1.00

00:32:15.000 Actually, it was through ayahuasca that I started also, to be honest, because there's a whole relationship between ayahuasca shamanism and the Amazon and tobacco.

00:32:21.000 Right.

00:32:21.000 That's when I first started smoking.

00:32:22.000 They blow tobacco on you, right?

00:32:24.000 They do, and it's also, there's something about tobacco and ayahuasca that are very synergetic together.

00:32:28.000 I mean, it's a, you know, tobacco is considered a very important power plant.

00:32:32.000 You tried to patch first?

00:32:33.000 Why didn't you try cigars, where you can get natural tobacco?

00:32:36.000 Natural tobacco I tried, yeah.

00:32:38.000 Cigars are way better for you.

00:32:39.000 I mean, they're probably not the best thing for you, but they're better for you than cigarettes.

00:32:43.000 Yeah.

00:32:43.000 Isn't it...

00:32:44.000 It's all the chemicals in cigarettes that are...

00:32:45.000 I smoke, like, natural American spirits.

00:32:48.000 I mean, I stayed at least at that level. 0.99

00:32:49.000 That shit seems like it hurts me more, though. 0.99

00:32:51.000 Like, when I do natural spirits, it's like the next day I'm coughing up black things. 1.00

00:32:55.000 It's because it's not giving you any numbing power.

00:32:57.000 It's like cigars or something. 0.98

00:32:58.000 There's 590 fucking ingredients in cigarettes that, by the way, are all government-approved. 0.99

00:33:04.000 Did anybody really go over all those 590? 0.99

00:33:08.000 No, a lobbyist, right? 0.95

00:33:10.000 Who the fuck went over all those ingredients and made sure that they're all cool? 0.99

00:33:13.000 People are dying half a million a year in America alone directly related to cigarette smoking. 0.99

00:33:19.000 What you were saying though, a lot of people probably...

00:33:22.000 I think also feel like they did accomplish what they wanted in life.

00:33:25.000 Like, I think that seems like it seems almost negative that you say it like that because...

00:33:29.000 Like, I talked to my dad. 0.97

00:33:30.000 He's like, fuck yeah, this is exactly what I wanted to do with my life. 0.99

00:33:33.000 I love my life. 0.99

00:33:34.000 I'm happy.

00:33:35.000 I'm married.

00:33:36.000 That's kind of rare, though, dude.

00:33:36.000 Don't you think?

00:33:37.000 Your dad's pretty smart.

00:33:37.000 No, I think...

00:33:38.000 I mean, unless...

00:33:40.000 I think that's just a negative look.

00:33:42.000 I think a lot of people like what they do.

00:33:43.000 You've got a great job, though.

00:33:45.000 You've got an easy job.

00:33:46.000 No, I'm not talking about me at all.

00:33:48.000 I'm not talking about me at all.

00:33:48.000 I'm talking about my mom, my dad, everyone I grew up around with.

00:33:53.000 They all liked what they did.

00:33:54.000 Well, you might have been lucky, and you grew up in the Midwest, and you grew up in a different time.

00:33:58.000 What I'm offering you is like, you know, my way of thinking about it.

00:34:01.000 Your way of thinking might be different.

00:34:02.000 Oh, no, no, no.

00:34:02.000 My personal, you know, experience growing up was like, you know, I thought there would be this amazing thing that would happen.

00:34:09.000 You've got to do something to have those things, man.

00:34:12.000 You've got to, you know, I've always said that there should be some sort of a right of manhood.

00:34:17.000 It doesn't have to be even a manhood thing attached to something manly or aggressive.

00:34:22.000 I mean, to finding your character, finding your limitations, doing something extraordinary.

00:34:27.000 Yeah, well, I mean, you know, Some of the thinkers that I wrote about in my books talked about how cultures need to have some type of initiatory ritual.

00:34:35.000 And if they don't have it consciously constructed, it'll end up being unconsciously destructive.

00:34:41.000 It'll happen through war or through destruction of the environment or something.

00:34:46.000 So one theory that I have about the quote-unquote 2012 or this transition that we're in is that it's almost on an unconscious level.

00:34:54.000 Humanity has not been able to change its behavior, right?

00:34:56.000 So it's like it's on an unconscious level.

00:34:58.000 We're kind of willing ourselves into a state of catastrophe to bring about an initiation and thereby a transformation of consciousness.

00:35:07.000 100% sure.

00:35:09.000 Yeah.

00:35:09.000 Of that?

00:35:10.000 That.

00:35:12.000 94%.

00:35:12.000 That's strong, man.

00:35:13.000 That's very strong.

00:35:14.000 Those are strong words. 0.99

00:35:15.000 Who knows what the fuck is going to happen. 0.99

00:35:17.000 That's what I say. 0.98

00:35:18.000 I say it could be some sort of a meteor impact or it could be some sort of a Skynet thing.

00:35:23.000 I do believe that something is absolutely going to happen.

00:35:25.000 It just seems to me that things are moving at such a furious pace that it just can't last.

00:35:31.000 And I think it's a natural cycle, man.

00:35:33.000 I really do.

00:35:34.000 I think the reason why we're having all these natural disasters is that's a part of a natural cycle, too.

00:35:38.000 Yeah, but if you talk to my grandfather about TVs, he was like, wow, this is crazy.

00:35:44.000 TV was invented.

00:35:45.000 You could see TV. It's just us living our life, and then around a certain age, we grow up to a certain point where we're like, yeah, it's fucking spinning out of control. 0.94

00:35:54.000 That is possible. 0.82

00:35:55.000 Back in the 40s, it's probably like Charlie Chaplin thought it was spinning out of control.

00:35:58.000 That is possible, but it also could be that human beings, even though we love to think of ourselves as being separate from all the other things in this world, we are a natural thing. 0.99

00:36:08.000 And even though we have plastic fucking cars and glass lenses for our fucking cell phones... 0.95

00:36:15.000 We are still a natural thing, and we are subject to the natural cycles of this earth, of this superorganism, of the universe itself. 0.99

00:36:23.000 And even when we see crazy weather patterns and wild crazy shit, there could easily also be crazy cultural patterns.

00:36:30.000 And that culture, even though we can create it and we do have control of it, it may be very well a natural movement. 0.96

00:36:37.000 As natural as your evolution from baby to adulthood.

00:36:40.000 It could be a natural thing.

00:36:41.000 Could be whoobies.

00:36:42.000 We've published some... 1.00

00:36:44.000 Could be whoobies make me want to fucking choke a bitch. 1.00

00:36:47.000 But that's a good one, man. 0.99

00:36:49.000 I have a web magazine that I run, Reality Sandwich, and we've been publishing some excerpts.

00:36:54.000 Which is not Mac-friendly, by the way.

00:36:56.000 I want you to know that.

00:36:56.000 I don't know if you know that.

00:36:57.000 Both of these computers, I tried to go to your website today and just search my name obviously first, but then Joe Rogan's name, and both of them kept on crashing my browser.

00:37:06.000 I don't know.

00:37:08.000 I've never had that problem.

00:37:09.000 Google Chrome, check it out.

00:37:10.000 Do you use one of those old Macs with a trackball?

00:37:12.000 No, I use a new Mac.

00:37:13.000 Remember those trackballs in the center of it?

00:37:15.000 Anyway, we've published a few pieces by a German scientist, the guy Dieter Braus, who wrote a book called Revolution 2012, and he's one of a bunch of people who are arguing that a lot of what's happening has to do with changes that are taking place throughout the whole solar system that have to do with the sun changing, that actually the electromagnetic environment of the Earth is shifting.

00:37:33.000 What is supposed to be the galactic alignment on December 21st, 2012?

00:37:37.000 Because I've heard Neil Tyson, who I very much respect, poo-poo it.

00:37:40.000 He's a scientist.

00:37:42.000 A very famous internet scientist.

00:37:46.000 He's a scholar, a very well-respected, I believe he's an astrophysicist or something along those lines, but super, super brilliant guy.

00:37:54.000 He pooh-poohed that there was any alignment whatsoever.

00:37:56.000 He said it's a constant thing, that same alignment happens all the time.

00:38:00.000 He's like, you know, the fact that everyone's making it out that December 21st, 2012 was the first time that this happens in 25,000 years, he's like, that's nonsense.

00:38:08.000 And he's, I believe, he knows more than I do.

00:38:11.000 Well, he probably knows more than you do.

00:38:13.000 Yeah, for sure.

00:38:13.000 So, I mean, I can just give you my little interpretation.

00:38:16.000 I mean, my understanding is that it's simply an optical alignment, which means there's no particular reason that we would know of that would be such a tremendous transformative thing, where the winter solstice sun rises within the dark rift at the center of the Milky Way.

00:38:31.000 So, in a sense, it's an eclipse of the center of the Milky Way by the sun.

00:38:36.000 On the winter solstice, on that particular date.

00:38:38.000 So that date had a lot of significance for them.

00:38:41.000 It was like the key moment in the year.

00:38:43.000 And they considered the Sun to be the first father, and they saw the dark rift at the center of the Milky Way as the cosmic mother, or they also called it apparently a black hole.

00:38:52.000 Which is interesting, because only in the last 15 years that our astronomers discover there is a huge black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

00:38:58.000 Well, they know that there's actually a supermassive black hole in the center of every single galaxy.

00:39:02.000 And that that supermassive black hole is one half of one percent of the mass of every galaxy.

00:39:07.000 So if you have a giant galaxy, it's a much bigger black hole.

00:39:10.000 And they even have, there's the first photograph they've ever taken of a black hole eating a black hole.

The Joe Rogan Experience - September 08, 2011

Joe Rogan Experience #136 - Daniel Pinchbeck (Part 1)

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