Hi, I'm Jesse Hirsch, and welcome to Metaviews, recorded live in front of an automated audience.

And today we're gonna have a fun conversation.

Authority in a revolution is a little misleading, but in fact, Caesar, what I like to do with each of my shows is take three pillars and use those pillars to weave our conversation through.

And in your case, I chose Trickster, interdependence, and mindfulness, which, you know, we will see how we choose to weave those things together.

But interdependence, ironically, has been a bit of a through line for us lately, partly because I've been on a big rail against individualism and a need for, you know, where you're looking at unity.

I'm sort of thinking harmony, which is perhaps two sides to the same coin.

But we like to start every meta views with the news, partly because Metaviews publishes a daily newsletter.

And our issue today looks at the tragedy going on in Gaza and the ludicrous announcement coming from the Trump regime as to their plans in Gaza, which get into.

Only because the real purpose of our news segment, Caesar, is to turn to our guest and say, what are you paying attention to?

It kind of feels like we are in the craziest news cycle ever.

And this is kind of an intuitive test of our guest asking the question, what do you think our audience should be paying attention to?

I love that.

I love that thought.

Thank you so much for saying that.

Thanks for the introduction.

I appreciate, appreciate that the thing that I'm looking forward to, that I'm.

That I'm reading, that I'm pulling up in my daily life is one, the things that everyone else is reading as well, because obviously it's being shown to us.

No, what we do about it, we're going to see it, right?

However, the things that I check, mostly that's in my life.

Three things that I know off the top of my head is that most people don't know this world poverty is lower than extreme poverty.

70% of people thought, when they add, when they asked that it, 18% thought it stayed the same.

Only 13% actually thought that it thought that it dropped.

And it did drop.

As a matter of fact, it's dropped a good amount.

Life expectancy is up, investable investments in renewable energy up, literacy, health, spending, all of those things are up.

We've also decommissioned 85% of our war hits.

Like, all things that are going on that are actually quite beneficial and progressive are just not being talked about.

My goal when I take information is when someone's telling me whichever side is telling me information.

Am I feeling scared?

If that's the case, then I can tell they have an agenda.

Right.

So my thought is take it because it's not wrong, but not complete either.

Right.

So those are the things that I'm really thinking about is some of those progressive parts about the world too.

Right on.

And if you could adjust the game just a slight touch because you were.

It's breaking up just a bit.

But let me ask you a followup because I love that your answer there in no small part because I think people take for granted the extent to which not just recently, but over the last several decades, we as a human society have lift, lift, lifted a lot of people out of poverty.

And the challenge, because you also evoked what I share, a need for a much greener planet, a much more harmonious relationship with nature.

I'm curious.

And this is a real curveball.

So if you want to pass, by all means.

How do we continue to help increase people's living standards, people's quality of life and be environmentally responsible?

Because it seems like there's a lot of political disagreement there, even just amongst people who accept that climate change is a problem, not even counting the deniers, that there is still an issue of how do we spread prosperity to everybody at a time when we're questioning some of the technology and some of the industrial society that got us here.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, one, we should be questioning everything as most as possible.

Questioning from a space of intrigue to learn more.

Not questioning from a place of doubting.

You put doubt in there, you're going to spend the rest of your time just saying no to everything.

It's of saying yes, let's participate and let's make it the best version for everybody.

How is the gain on this, by the way?

Better.

Awesome.

Fantastic.

So secondly, the most important thing, and I, it can only be important because of the culture we live in.

This is still.

Regardless of where we are at the end of the industrial era, we're still a capitalistic society.

Right.

That means that dollar value for now and for the time being still has a stronghold over people.

So more so people over profit at some point, 80s and the 90s and perhaps maybe the early aughts, it was a lot more.

Maybe we'll go, maybe the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the scale might dip back up a little bit or whatnot.

But overall the fact that we're having this conversation a lot about us trying to make people over profit, that being said, since we still live in that society, you can vote with your dollars.

That's one of the best things you can do.

There's things like B Corporation website that gives a framework to companies on how to make a profit but still are fairly feeding their employees for pay for health care, for food and so on, the environment as well, and also holding accountable their stake and shareholders.

For if you want to invest in us, then you need to also have the morals that match us.

And B Corporation has these frameworks for companies.

If a company does that, then the B corporation gives them a stamp on their brick and mortar on their product or on their website.

And then you listening me, you as host as well can go to that website and type in a category, furniture, clothes, food, whatever it is, find the companies that are doing that.

Because even though we vote every two years or every year, we spend money almost every day.

Probably every day.

Right, on with that.

Every single day.

Now, ironically, we're doing debug here.

In the real time, it was food and four that it kicked in again.

I don't know why those vowel sounds were hitting it.

But again, to tie it back into other guests we've had, we've been trying to talk about a shift from a kind of money economy to a care economy, right?

Trying to go from the ideology of profit to the ideology of care and mutual care and mutual aid.

But that brings us to our second segment of Every Meta Views, which we call WTF or what's the Future?

Because we are a future centric podcast and we kind of like the idea that everyone is a futurist, that everyone has their own event horizon.

The same way with the news, we kind of said, well, Caesar, what are you looking at?

In this case, it's what do you see on the event horizon?

What do you see in the future that motivates you, that keeps you excited, keeps you motivated?

I see first thing first, the very first thing I see is a lot of crowd, a lot of crowding in a room, right?

You know, this is a very interesting analogy, but I often think about the first episode of the new seasons of the Real World.

Remember that show?

Everybody watched it, right?

The first episode, all different people from all of these different ways of living got put together in this one room.

And the drama starts and it continuously gets into drama because everybody's learning this new way of living in a space that's being shared with other people who have different ways of living, Right?

That's metaphor for exactly what's going on in globalization.

So in the early, in the immediate between now and I'd Say, probably the next.

I'm not making any predictions here, but I would assume somewhere between five and 15 years, we're gonna consistently rubbing up against each other saying, hey, you're upsetting me.

Hey, I'm upsetting you.

And we're gonna, for the most part, pull ourselves away into our respective corners and say, you do that.

I do that.

Until we have to bump into each other again.

Because we live a society where we're all interconnected, where there's interdependence.

Right.

So the immediate future is going to be tougher, much more tough because of social media and globalization.

In the long term, I don't think everybody's going to be harmonizing and singing Kumbaya on social media, without question.

But over time, it'll either settle itself.

Like every.

Every wave, every, you know, nature thing happens is always the other side of it, or it's going to take some large calamity for everybody to realize, okay, this is.

This is.

This is not that.

Not that serious than what we're making it.

Because when it's.

When push comes to shove, we can band together.

I live in Los Angeles, and we just had all those fires, and I helped my neighbors where I live, I went out to the streets and moved stuff out of the.

Off Ventura Boulevard so people can drive through.

And not one time did I turn to India and did I say, before I help you, are you Republican or are you a Democrat?

Right.

So calamity caused us to realize, like, what are we doing here?

What are we doing here?

We are more interdependent than we really.

And that individualism that you're talking about, I'm not a big fan of it either.

And I recognize how much value it's given us as well.

Well, and the crowded metaphor does speak to how climate volatility and climate change will force us, if not temporarily, perhaps more permanently, to live closer together.

Right.

The vision of North America that we've grown up with, where we all have our own private estates, where we all have our own big yards, I mean, that's not really practical.

When you're taking shelter from a storm, when you're taking shelter from extreme heat, when you're taking shelter from fire.

So I think that's a really powerful metaphor that is still at the same time filled with hope, because the hope is that.

That we learn how to get along, that we learn how to share space, and we learn how to deal with conflict in a much more peaceful or collaborative way than we currently come at it.

Which, to your point, is a Natural segue to our future conversation.

And this is our turkey prez coming home to roost.

You wrote what I thought was a brilliant blog post on your website that sort of identified Trump as the trickster.

I'd love if you would share that analysis with my listeners, with our viewers, because I thought it was powerful, both in describing what we're experiencing, but also how to process it, how to respond to it.

Yeah, thank you for saying that.

I appreciate the compliment.

It's a lot to unpack, obviously, and I'll do the best I can to keep it as concise as possible.

A few things.

First thing first, tricksters, the archetype itself.

What is a trickster?

A trickster is an archetype that is a type of repetitive character that we see in myths, in stories, in movies, in life, that constantly tricks us, that constantly says one thing and then, of course, does another thing.

And then if we respond to it, they're going to jump back and say, nope, wasn't me.

Nope, that's what it was.

That's not.

That's.

That's what a trickster does.

Now, in response to that, it's up to the society, up to the characters of the story to learn a lesson from that.

If they don't learn the lesson, the trickster will continuously show up.

That's the necessary need of a trickster in a story.

Of course, when we.

Once we've broken that archetype down, it's really easy to recognize someone like Donald Trump.

Doing that is very.

For him.

You can watch his words constantly.

I it.

What was the line where he said, drinking bleach for Covid.

And he said that.

And then every.

All of a lot of people went in an uproar.

And then, of course, his followers turned and said, no, no, no, no, no.

This is what he means.

Because there's some cases.

This is what he means.

This is what.

And then when he asked him to respond to does I, I was playing.

So now nobody got any satisfactory, right?

He said something.

People that stood up by him, who stood for him, did not get backed up by it.

They were isolated.

And then, of course, the people who were disagreeing with it are realizing, okay, then we got.

We're now more upset because he's saying things like this.

That sort of archetype is highly, highly effective in our society right now.

And if I can go a little more physical in detail, it's also just the fact of the fact that his face is colored.

It's a painted face, right?

His hair is that way.

This is Not a knock on his choice matter.

I don't agree with the man whatsoever, but I'm also not in the business of belittling people and name calling.

You can see the archetype showing itself in this society.

And I think that if we can realize that and put it in its place, instead of looking at it as this one time phenomenon, if we can recognize the tricksters that have shown up in our society before and in art, myth and story, which is a projection of the current psyche of the time, we can sit as a people and say, okay, I know the symptom, I know this, for lack of a better term, I know this, this disease, this cold, this cough that I have, I've had it before, so I know remedy that we can respond to it, to diminish the amount of effort, the amount of, diminish the amount of bruising or the, I can't think of the right word for it, but we can just diminish the amount of problems that we're going to see from it.

That's what the goal of the trickster is.

And whether he knows it or not, he's not showing up to us to say, I'm gonna go out and show them a lesson.

It's just who he is naturally.

It's just clearly who he is as an individual.

He has no problem saying one thing and doing the opposite.

He has no problem deflecting and saying, I'm not taking responsibility for that.

He has no problem not ever saying I was wrong, instead just either doubling down or jumping somewhere else.

And that's what the trickster does.

They wear one mask, they wear a different mask, and no matter what, it's the same person.

Say, no, I'm here now I'm there now I'm here, now I'm there.

I'm being this person now, I'm being that person now.

And that's who he is.

And it takes both a certain amount of distance and a certain amount of critical thinking to kind of see that.

But to your other point, there is an inherent desire for that character in our culture presently because he embodies both an anti establishment, even ethos that many people desire for legitimate reasons.

They're upset, they want change, and he's not telling them the truth, but he's offering them change.

And that is very popular.

But it's also worth drawing the parallel that in an Internet culture where there's lots of trolls, lots of people who are tricksters, on a smaller scale, he's kind of the trickster in chief.

He's kind of the archetype who embodies that on a societal scale or on a mass scale.

And I think it's important for us, to your point about lessons, to recognize why this is happening now.

And this is where I'd love to kind of push you or to throw a curveball at you, to use a metaphor I have.

Is it possible that the lesson is interdependence?

And I say this because so much, especially in the last week, so much of what he is trying to do seems like destruction, like destroying Medicaid or destroying social service or destroying USAID or just gutting all these social programs because there is this belief around them of individualism and individual liberty.

When maybe the lesson is we need to take care of each other, we need to take care of the most vulnerable.

We're in this together.

And that may be the response that society gets to this clown, I will use the word, you inferred it.

Or this trickster who is, you know, the other word I think you were inferring or for me evoking is trauma.

Because he is creating a lot of trauma for a lot of people.

And this is a very traumatic moment collectively.

You know, I think because of the language he's using and the images he's evoking.

And go back to your point about la.

What I've been loving about L.

A is the popular response.

Like I saw the, you know, the occupation of the 110 freeway as part of a protest there.

I wish that was happening in other cities.

But maybe that's the lesson, right?

Maybe the lesson is we can't do this alone.

We have to come together.

Am I stretching it or do you think it's possible to read that?

You're not stretching it at all.

First thing first, I don't care what society has told any particular person or any person listening.

The idea of a self made person is a lie.

It's just not true.

It's just not.

It's just not true.

What, so that's just not how life works.

That's not how nature works.

If you've been told that and if you believe that you need to reflect inward and find a spot in your life where you did only one thing completely on your own.

Please tell me that and bring it to me.

And then of course we'll take that to Harvard, because I'm sure they'll give you some sort of money.

Because it's a study, because it's not how life works, right?

So that being said, the other side of that is I have not seen anywhere yet where interdependence and working together has, has not worked.

It hasn't maybe hasn't gotten the goal met, but has taught us a lesson that we now find the best possible solution, right?

If you want to go fast, you go alone.

If you want to go far, you go to get there.

So I find interdependence is probably the root of where we can all come together here of the kleptocracy that he's kind of starting is in reverse.

The trickle up economic mentality where the billionaires are going to make a metric ton of money.

Now this is a part where the person, the version of me who zooms out gets a little intrigued.

But I have to remind myself to stay emotionally invested because sometimes I'm like, okay, this is, this is like a movie.

What, what's going on here?

The people are going to vote for this man in because they felt they weren't making enough money, right?

They weren't.

Their money was being pulled from them.

And then he comes in and he's going to do the same exact thing.

Now you're going to have a slew of people of society really upset because both sides did not fulfill their agreement.

What do we do with that except start talking to each other more?

Interdependence is the main way, how we go about doing it as an individual thing, which is this is where individualism still obviously works, right?

Like you row the boat, the one individual still has to be a fantastic rower and so does the one in front of him, in front of him and in front of her and in front of her and so in front of them and so on and so forth.

And together the cosmic symphony keeps going.

So both of those have to work at the same time.

And we're seeing projection, this almost peak moment of individualism shining bright.

And if I know anything about metaphors, I know lights are the most brightest before they blow.

Well, and on that point, I would love to get your perspective on something you said there.

And this is where you're clearly someone who has spent a lot of time thinking, hence the point of mindfulness.

And certainly your Buddhist learnings teachings, wisdom might come to bear on this question.

Why do you think they want more money?

And I say this because on some levels, logically, it can't be about material wealth.

Like they all have more money than they could spend before they die, right?

What is the spiritual deficit or the hole in their soul that causes them to think that they don't have enough?

And again, you don't have to answer this.

This is a pretty crazy philosophical question.

But you inspired it, because you're right.

They're kind of on this hamster wheel chasing power when they already have tons of power.

Right.

What is the again?

The hole in their soul that I suspect you may be able to.

That the rest of us still don't.

You know, it's interesting.

I want to preface by saying that everything that I'm saying here is stuff that I just found in nature.

It's not an invention on my part.

I'm also not saying this is gospel.

I'm finding a way.

This is not the way.

In no way whatsoever am I saying I have the answer.

But I have seen the patterns of the way nature works.

And being a person who's certified in mindfulness and recognizing Buddhist nature and being an individual who used to be a slave to his impulses, I just.

I can see these patterns that are so visible to me that if I see someone else who doesn't see it, then I'm just gonna be like, hey, let's check this out, see what you got, and take it or leave it, you know, and go from there.

Because I'm not here to, you know, start a whole venture to answer your question.

That's very funny.

It's very funny.

So I have.

I'm going to start by saying something that actually is pretty tough to say as a Buddhist and also in this society, the people who said to you, money doesn't buy happiness.

Lied.

They lied.

They lied.

I'll tell you why.

Because to not have money to be hungry makes you miserable.

So if you remove that, and this current society, money does that, it will bring you happiness.

Now, on top of that, there's been studies that show after a certain amount of money, your joy doesn't scale up with the more money that you make.

I forget the amount.

It's somewhere between.

Like, if you make.

I think it's.

These numbers are not accurate, but it's somewhere between like 80,000 a year and 120,000 a year.

You're.

Your.

Your joy scales up appropriately.

And then from that, like, 150,000 to 100 250,000.

The scaling doesn't match it anymore, so it kind of tapers off, right?

So there's that.

Now let's think about what it takes for us as a society with an addiction.

Addiction is not drugs, alcohol, porn, womenizing, like maleizing.

I don't even know.

Could be, though, Sexualizing.

It's not that the addiction is the escapism that you're feeling inside that you want to get away from.

Right.

So these people have that amount of money, they got a certain amount of money that brought them that joy and then the next batch doesn't give that to them, so they continually chase it.

Right.

And I can't speak for everybody because I don't know these people directly, but there is a consistent chasing of that, that more that's there for these individuals.

So what they do instead, it turns into something like power, for example.

It turns into something like influence, for example.

Then you give it a society here where it's made to the culture itself, the era, the industrial era, is made to show how you've maximized your output.

That is an equation that will, that's a problem that will bring the equation of disaster.

Because you are constantly going to keep chasing this thing that's not going to give you the joy that it gave you before.

It's every particular person who wants to get that first high that they got the first time they used.

Well, and then you bring that back to interdependence.

In that if we accept, again, I think the natural statement that there is an inherent interdependence to us as humans as a community, if some of us are pursuing that high in such a reckless way that they've become billionaires, it's a collective problem.

But to flip it and go back to something you said earlier, if we accept that we do, yes, live in a society that's based on money and that even to your point, there's a certain psychology and pleasure and status to getting that kind of money, how do we articulate, say within the B corp movement or within the benefit corporation movement, an interdependency that is still based on prosperity, but is based on the idea that raising the water raises all boats.

So it's not just a B corp that benefits its staff, but it's a network of B corps that all want to make sure that they're prospering with each other and reinforcing each other, or a community of different businesses, restaurant, you know, care provider, you know, craft books, like whatever I've yet, and I'm an outsider.

How do we foster that kind of interdependence within these commercial entities so that we are still within a capitalist society, but empowering more people.

Right.

And raising the wealth of more people so that we don't have billionaires, we have a whole bunch of people at 150 grand or 250 grand.

Right.

And so it's more evenly distributed.

Absolutely, absolutely.

First thing first, can I pass on this show?

Sorry, say it again.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

We fucking swear all the time.

Okay, great.

Good to hear.

Okay, first thing, if someone's listening here, you are a business owner and you want to live this sort of way where you can make a buck and also take care of your environment and take care of your people.

People take care of the company right next door to you or that you're working with preach that shit.

The same way that they prophesize their dualism, get out there and start talking that shit to the world.

I totally understand that.

Progress is quiet.

Destruction is loud.

There's a tree outside my place right now, probably outside of every listener's place right now.

If that tree crashed, they would hear it.

They would go outside and see what the hell happened, right?

However, right now it's growing and nobody's saying things.

So progress is quiet.

The same goes with doing good things, right?

Humility comes with quietness.

Isn't the time for it though, unfortunately.

This is not the time for.

This is the time for you to go and preach that what you're doing in the world and say, this is who I'm helping.

This is who I am.

I need you to be a part of this as well.

If you are a business owner, right?

Secondly, if you aren't a business owner, this is where we go again, the voting with your dollars.

And this is where mindfulness has to really come in here because we're doing what's called.

This is so funny.

So there's no, there's no.

I haven't found a law for this yet.

This conscious, this lawyer.

So I, I started calling it the Cardona's Law of convenience to where we have no problem right now spending money, buying somewhere that is convenient for us, I.

E.

Amazon, or when we know it's going to cause more pollution, it's hiring more people.

And those people are being mistreated, but they start a union.

So then the company itself starts union busting in the country.

That's with our dollars.

We're doing it.

And the people who want to continuously maintain where we are now are buying into that.

So you as an individual have to be more mindful, say, I understand this is not convenient for me, but this is something that I need to do if I want to see that change.

I can't keep waiting, as we've seen on 47 presidents, to do something because a lot of the time the ones that have tried to do something, they've gotten stopped.

And then the rest of them, they don't care.

They're just going to do what they can to line their pockets again.

That's a scarcity mentality.

It's who they feel.

So I'm not here to blame them, but it's the cause.

But an individual like you or myself who don't own a business or a corporation, maybe you do.

But the point I made, now it's up to us to be mindful.

You got to be a little more disciplined in your life and say, I want change here.

Great.

Then start doing it yourself and start sharing this information to other people also.

And you know, I think the interesting piece about mindfulness is your point about convenience.

Reminded me of the experience I've had moving from the city to the country because this is now my sixth, almost seventh year on a farm.

And cities are a culture of convenience because everything is there for you.

And if you're not mindful about that, you really end up in some lazy habits and really unhealthy habits.

So I guess as a preface, because I kind of a follow up question to this, but I guess more as a foundation.

Do you think it's difficult to be mindful in a city?

Yeah, absolutely.

And I say this because hanging out with trees, it's really a lot easier to get into a mindful state.

So what are your thoughts?

And we won't pick on cities, we'll just use.

You kind of alluded to this in your blog post.

The political chaos of our moment.

How does one achieve mindfulness when it feels like we're in a perpetual crisis?

Everyone's, you know, emotionally at their lengths or overwhelmed and it's hard to detach, it's hard to slow down.

Yeah, that's a, that's a really great question.

It's a fantastic question, actually.

First thing first, you can pick on cities because it's, it's an example of the, of the, of the extreme case scenario.

So then we know how to tend to that, right?

If you, you know how to cook for 30 people, then you're going to be able to cook for just one person.

So the extreme case totally, totally works.

Buying from convenience, it's very hard to do, obviously, because we live in a society where we're being pinched financially as well.

There's a couple ways that go with that.

And this is how I talk about this a lot as a public speaker.

Mindfulness is not just being a monk.

It's not just abstaining.

It's recognizing where you are, what you have and what you can do.

I wanted the environment to Be a lot better.

I didn't like the car that I drove, but I had to drive a car that was a 2010 Hyundai Santa Fe for 10 years.

It's what I could do.

It's what I.

It's what I had at the moment.

Right.

What I could do in return, though, is I did have enough money that I could buy from places like not Amazon, not Chick fil A, not McDonald's, not Walmart, not these places.

And I.

I could put my money in those places.

At some point, I was able to buy an electric car.

And still I started making more money in my life.

And I realized, okay, this is a place that I can make more modifications.

And at the same time, this is a really important note.

A mindful part about mindfulness is being mindful about being mindful.

This is the conundrum.

Like the Buddha says, at some point you have to let go of Buddhism.

You kindle the fire with a stick, and then since that fire started, you take that stick, you throw it in the fire too.

There's a realization that you do what you can with what you have.

There are still times, and it's not a lot, but I pride myself in being honest because I want integrity.

If I'm going to ask people from the world, I'm going to do the same thing.

There are times where I get something quickly.

So I will buy from Amazon without question.

That is literally the one out of 10 times.

So every nine buys, I'm buying from Better World Book, I'm buying Dr.

Bronner.

I'm buying from places that care about the society.

You know, I'm also buying for people who have the things already so it's not producing more stuff.

And at times I need to, for the convenience, because it needs to be done.

Do something, get it over with and go.

There's a middle ground there.

You have to find.

You know, we did a great interview several episodes ago with someone who pointed out that if we didn't make any more clothes ever, we'd still have more than enough clothes to go around to clothes everybody and have new styles.

You know, my girlfriend says that all the time.

My girlfriend says that all the time.

So let me throw you a knuckleball, partly because you said something earlier which I thought was brilliant, and I want to see if it fits a paradox that you just described.

I love the idea of preaching progress because to your point, the tree grows and no one pays attention until it falls.

And I also like your meta mindfulness.

We got to be mindful about being Mindful.

Should we be preaching about being mindful?

And maybe that's a contradiction, but at the same time it strikes me there's a key insight there that in the kind of each one teach one model, maybe there is a logic behind talking about the personal benefits that come from mindfulness as a kind of way, a grassroots way of encouraging other people to think about thinking right and think about the decisions they make and why they make those decisions so they can be more mindful about how they're living.

Yeah, I think I understand your question.

You're talking about the paradox of preaching about being mindful.

Because the paradox is we're not being mindful about teaching it.

Sure.

Or that at a certain point it becomes contradictory, like what they used to call virtue signaling that maybe you're not really being mindful, you're just like the.

Like everyone wants to think that you're mindful.

Oh, yeah, right.

And then it becomes hollow.

Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely.

You're first thing I think is that we are guaranteed that percentage of people who are going to virtue signal.

It's just.

It's just where the world is.

Not everybody is going to be that progressive.

Right.

I think that one of the most healthiest things for me that worked in my life is realizing this is where.

This is a little.

Where the individualism comes in is realizing my job is to show you what I've seen that works.

My job is not to tell you what you need to be doing.

I spend most of my time prefacing by saying I'm not a person to tell somebody what to do.

What I've seen, however, is.

And then I proceed and say something that I see that worked for me or what I know works in society, or so on and so forth.

But the real note about it is virtue signaling aside, because they are going to without question.

But if you want to go about a life that is actually helping people to help them see the best version of themselves, then you have to recognize that their way of doing it is going to be their way of doing it.

The moment that you say no, no, no, it's like this, then you have now put how you processed everything onto that person.

But that's not how it works.

You got to see that person and meet them right where they are.

You can't tell.

Like I said in the very beginning, I don't have the way.

I have found a way because it's really important to realize the dynamism of culture.

That's what makes the interdependent part interdependent.

Because we are different and yet we are still bonded and connected.

So for someone like me and I, I'm just tons of contradictions in my life, contradictory natures of me, that I'm human that way.

If I would, it would be a spit in every person listening here's face if I told them, no, no, I.

I don't ever.

I'm good, I'm good.

But what are we talking about here?

Come on.

This is the human realm.

We live in a space where we're like, okay, you know what?

I'm starving now.

Nothing's open.

I'm going to Burger King.

Screw it.

Understood.

You need to give yourself the space to, to not get it right.

And then two, recognize that that person that you're trying to share that with, they have to walk their own journey as well.

The lion, the 10 men, they didn't put Dorothy on their back and just walk down Yellow Brick Road.

She had to walk down there, too.

They helped for her.

They helped battle the, the obstacles, but she still has to walk it.

So those two sides go hand in hand.

And hopefully that was clear enough, what I'm trying to say.

Absolutely.

But that's what goes hand in hand, 100%.

And allow me to really get you to elevate it even further.

How do we translate that back to politics?

Because if we were to assume, and I think this is a safe assumption, that the majority of Trump voters are fundamentally not bad people, they're not stupid, they're not evil.

You know, there's a lot of reasons why the trickster has fooled them, has, you know, captured them in his spell.

How do we reach out to these folks?

How do we engage them in a mindful way, in a respectful way that fosters that sense of interdependence, but also maybe gets them to the side that we desire, which is to take climate change seriously, which is to not value money, which is to see care and community as good things, because we can't write these people off.

But it does seem like the Democrats and MSNBC are just insulting them, when instead, what we need to be doing is engaging them.

And I think on an abstract way, you just offered the template, so I'm asking you to apply it for stupid people like myself so that we get more of a recipe of, of how we tackle the next couple of years in terms of trying to win back a lot of these Americans who've fell in love with the trickster.

But, you know, we need to win back and help them learn the lesson that they need to learn.

Whatever that may be.

Yeah, yeah.

From, from, from one end of Fox News to the other end of msnbc.

Stop watching that shit.

If there's information to be got, then get the information and realize that it's slanted without a question.

And then there is, you're right.

A large percentage of Trump supporters care.

They actually care.

And they will help you if you need something.

That is for sure.

My biological father is a Trump supporter, and he's a big Trump supporter.

A very, very, very much a right winger conservative.

My entire life he's been that way.

He loved Rush Limbaugh.

He loved Sean Handy.

His whole thing is that he just donated a large amount to a family in need in Los Angeles here for the, for the fires, for the family who lost it.

It's hard to, I don't mean to stereotype it, but you can see the person's photos on their GoFundMe.

They aren't right wingers.

Yeah, he had no problem doing that.

Right.

So let's.

And again, as a Canadian, right.

We've got a bit of distance.

Does he realize he just became a socialist?

Like, does he realize he just did a very socialist act?

No, it would terrify him.

But that is what he did, right?

Absolutely.

So the note that comes with that is if.

And here's the best part about this note.

I agree with you on that.

I see that the moment I go to him and say something like that, if I point that out, tell me how and why he would say, oh, you're right, you know, it's a good point.

Maybe I'm Democrat now.

That's not how it works.

You don't, you don't meet people by telling them the exact opposite of what they are.

You don't meet them with.

Honestly, got to be honest.

You typically don't meet people with facts.

You got to meet somebody right where they are.

And you have to be able to put your stuff aside and understand where they're coming from.

Because understanding does not mean agreeing with them.

There's a fundamental difference there that's not being had because the media right now is talking so much nonsense.

Do you know, I think I might have said this earlier.

85% of nuclear warheads have been demolished.

There was 70,000 in the 80s, and now there's a little over 9,000 today.

I mean, still 9,000 too many.

But your point is valid.

Absolutely.

Still 9,000 too many.

Let's look at the scale.

Scale of where it's going.

Yeah.

And tell me when MSNBC said that.

Tell me when CNN Mentioned that abc, NBC, all the other three, MLB and WWF and wo, mlb, BMW.

Well, they don't say that stuff.

Although, not to get totally off track, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I used to appear on mainstream news here in Canada regularly.

And I'd run into people, friends, family, and they'd be like, oh yeah, I saw you on the news.

And I would say, oh, yeah, what was I saying?

And they'd say, oh, I can't remember, but you looked great.

Oh, gosh.

And that's kind of the point of the news, is that the information is not being transferred.

Right?

It's just the style, it's just the image.

So FOX makes you feel like a good conservative, MSNBC makes you feel like a good liberal, but you're not learning anything.

There's no information that's actually being transferred.

So in the end, they can't retain any idea that, oh, poverty is actually being alleviated or nuclear weapons are being decommissioned.

Because if the headline is one nuclear weapon is missing, that'll get all the attention and all the spin.

Absolutely.

Destruction is loud.

Right?

We said this, right?

I will say they are getting some information and the information at the other side.

Be angry people and be afraid.

We have.

Or be exactly.

Be scared.

That's where we have to get through the working method of what we're.

Information we're taking in.

And that again comes from understanding, not agreeing, understanding where that person comes from.

Well, and.

And the assumption, in the contrast that we're creating with the kind of mainstream media and what you and I are doing now is dialogue, that when you can converse with people, you create an opportunity for them to express their perspective and then you have the opportunity to validate their perspective without agreeing with it.

Right.

You don't need to agree with someone to validate and say, oh, I understand why you feel that way.

Right.

Or I understand why that's your perspective, here's mine.

Right?

And you can have that negotiation, you can have that, you know, a sense of meaning, that instead of it being imposed, it is woven together between people who are speaking.

Now, you said something else earlier, which I thought was quite humble but also quite wise.

And it brings us to our final segment on Every Meta Views, which is our shoutouts.

And it's the idea that no idea is our own, that knowledge flows through us.

And in particular, the more that knowledge is shared, the more valuable that knowledge becomes.

So this is kind of Caesar, the question of whose shoulders are you standing on in the sense of who would you give a shout out to.

And this could be a living person, could be dead, could be a personal someone who's personal to you or it could be someone that you think our audience should be reading or listening to or looking at their art.

This is kind of to go back to the notion of interdependence, that culture that ideas do not happen in a vacuum.

And when we've had such a wonderful and enlightening conversation as we have with you, I always feel there's a good opportunity to say, well, who are you learning from?

Where can we get access to the wisdom and secrets of the universe that you've clearly been rolling and smoking for some time that we'd love for you.

To pass around first thing first, sober man entirely.

So I'm smoking some wisdom that's completely non physical.

Also going to take a step and eat the question a little bit and say to the Buddha, Joseph Campbell, Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Naval Ravikant and oh there a thumbs up Naval Ravikant Scott Galloway to be a little more modern here and put I'm going to name all those people in case somebody wants to gain some cool information from them, particularly Joseph Campbell because he's fantastic.

But then the real answer is my mother.

Right on.

My mom, my mom, if I may say a little bit more about her, she was a black woman who grew up in a very tough environment.

Her mother was used to beat her and was really harsh to her.

So her mother moved out when she was in her teens.

She so drugs.

She was a stripper.

She lived in the hood.

She figured out the shit that she wanted to do in herself.

And then at some point she got her, she got that.

She got she built herself enough upward that she could be.

She had my sister, then she had me.

We fast forward to today.

She's almost six years old.

She's a business owner property.

She's a woman of God.

She is as, as she's a black woman from the south who went through all of that stuff who has no problem talking, no problem switching my child's name from her to they them.

No problem.

So I don't know anybody else's problem with that, but this woman has the ability to meet a person right where they are and still progress in her life and still make money and still thrive through so from her is the.

Reason why much respect.

And I say this not just because I'm a mama's boy, but because the world revolves around powerful women.

So much respect.

Finally, where can our audience learn more about you in addition to your website which I want you to spell out so that the AI makes sure that it gets it right.

But where else can people learn more about the wisdom and brilliance of Caesar?

Cool.

Thank you for saying that.

Yeah.

So, first thing first, my website, Caesar Cardona.

C E S A R C A R D.

It has all my information there.

My newsletter.

Sign up to the newsletter because I will be sending.

I send two to three newsletters a month, and it has data, science, good things happening in the world, another way that you can have some sort of call to action that you can help out, and a way that you.

And some takeaway information that can help you become the best version of yourself.

And some stuff about me.

My website's there.

Also, my partner and I are starting a podcast in March, on March 4, and it's called Beauty in the Break.

And it's stories about resilience in our most breaking moments.

Right on.

Fantastic.

And, you know, clearly you have a way with words.

So both your newsletter and your podcast are something that I think listeners or viewers will enjoy tremendously.

So thank you very much, Cesar.

This has been a very enlightening discussion, partly because we've sort of been advancing our larger agenda of fostering greater collaboration, greater commitment to community, and an acknowledgment that, as Caesar said, we are fundamentally interdependent and interconnected.

It's how we've evolved.

We've literally evolved to live in community.

And unfortunately, we've come of lost that, but I think that that's coming back and coming back strong.

Meta views can be found on all the socials on the Internet, on podcast platforms of choice.

We'll be back soon with another great episode.

Probably not as good as this episode.

We can't hit it out of the park every time, but nonetheless, we will continue our path towards enlightenment, humility, and wisdom.

And we'll see you soon.

Take care.