Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
josh barnett
one of the greatest fighters and
submission wrestlers in history
with an epic 25-year career that
includes being the ufc heavyweight
champion
and countless other accolades he also
happens to be one of the most
intelligent
and brutally honest human beings in all
of martial arts
and especially so about his appreciation
of
and fascination with violence
quick mention of our sponsors which
feels ridiculous to say after that
introduction
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as a side note let me say that i've been
a fan of josh barnett for a long time
this conversation was indeed a long time
coming and i'm sure we'll talk many
times again
for what it's worth i'm a student of
combat sports admire when they're done
at the highest level either through
masterful execution of skill
or relentless dominance of pure guts
for context i'm a black belt in
jiu-jitsu and have competed in wrestling
submission grappling jiu-jitsu judo
and even catch wrestling which is a
variant of submission grappling that
josh
is one of the great practitioners
scholars and teachers of
i could probably talk for hours about
what i've learned from my time on the
mat
but if i were to say one thing it is
that the mat
is honest you can't run away from
yourself when you step on the mat
it reveals your fears the lies you might
tell yourself
all the delusions you might have or at
least i had
that there's anything in this world that
can be achieved except through blood
sweat and tears that honesty taken to
the highest levels
as is the case with josh creates the
most special of human beings
and definitely someone who is
fascinating to talk to if you enjoy this
thing subscribe on youtube
review it on apple podcast follow on
spotify
support on patreon or connect with me on
twitter at lex friedman
and now here's my conversation with josh
barnett
who were the philosophers and
philosophical ideas that influenced you
the most
are we just jumping right in that's
we're right and we're not interested
no foreplay on camera all right i had an
interesting philosophical journey
at least i think it's interesting and
that was
i think as far as organized philosophy
or maybe uh
i think authentic's not the right word
but like uh
yeah we'll stay organized um
i would say that nietzsche is probably
one of the people with the most
influence on on me
uh but i also feel like to a degree
your personality and will oftentimes
dictate what philosophers that you can
you can vibe with yeah so what what what
ideas from nietzsche was it the
the ubermaj definitely the ubermensches
is huge to me because i see it as an
extension
of basically the religious concepts of
god and higher
ideals but just put into a different a
secular context
and the idea also that the ubermensch
is a striving and overcoming you know
something that you're always working
towards
that very few will ever it's not like
the the concept that you can just
make them it doesn't happen that way and
it's not based simply upon
if you were say put through a genetic
program
and and and turned into a super soldier
like i wouldn't that wouldn't make it
you know that's like the the very
surface level and incorrect
understanding what ubermensch is
the ubermensch is the idea of this this
kind of uh
human that that transcends all the
the weaker lower aspects of humans which
we're full of
but i also think that there's an element
in nietzsche's writing that suggests
that it's not something
you can't even be in all the time like
it's
even a temporary state because it's not
something that we're capable of
maintaining
it's something to strive for like a
morality
uh an image ideal a set of principles
that we can
connect to that doesn't rely on
otherworldly
kind of uh outdoor things
with nietzsche i feel like the concept
of the ubermensch
is something built on authenticity as
well
as heidegger was like dozen right so
when you are authentic
and heidegger being a follower of
nietzsche's
and highly influenced by him uh with i
think that the ubermensch is an example
of authenticity in that it isn't
about trying to be anything that you
cannot be or to go against who you
are but to actually understand that
accept that and then work with what you
can work with and and and
create from your lump of clay that is
you
because i can't become
certain there's certain things that are
just not going to happen for me because
it's not in my proclivity i mean i'm
never going gonna be you know five foot
tall and 120 pounds
i mean that again i guess but uh
um but i know
but as you get more in tune with who you
are as you start
learning more about what unique things
or at least what that
that combination that makes you that
gestalt part of yourself
what those things are and how you can
use them then you know you can work
towards being that
taking what that is and seeing if you
can
get to that point now the likelihood is
no maybe probably never i mean but we
can never achieve godhood yet
you know religion is is a constant you
know striving
and a look at a higher ideal concept
even if it's multiple gods or one god
it's still
essentially all built around this
concept like i i like the idea of
catholics original sin if you think of
sin not as evil but as
you know missing the mark the archer's
term where it derives or even like in
spanish you know without so as being
if you accept that you are imperfect if
you accept that you you need to
constantly strive even against yourself
because you you will figure out the best
ways at which to
submarine your own capabilities
submarine your own
dreams and wishes and whatever you will
ruin them more than anything else
and you will tell yourself that you
ruined them on purpose for a good reason
or you'll say that
you'll figure out a way to put it on
everything else but yourself
and so the idea of thinking of
well as i'm starting off on this whole
thing i got a lot of work to do
and that's just the way it is and i got
to figure out what areas those are going
to be
and so you know i thought oh yeah if i
think of original sin
actually can be that can be kind of a
clever idea but it's also
just accepting that we're all
uniquely strange and unequal in our own
ways
but we have to figure out how that fits
in the word authenticity kind of
connects to all of that so
striving to be your authentic self means
figuring out exactly the shape of the
flaws
the the character of your like little
demons you get to play with and
around them finding a path to whatever
the hell uh
ideal versions of yourself you can carve
and pretending like that's
such a thing is even possible the other
idea about nietzsche is
on his idea of morality he presents the
argument that uh
morality is a human illusion and that uh
you know there's not such a thing as
good and evil and these are all kind of
constructs do you think there's such a
thing as a
good and evil that's connected to some
objective reality
i think that there are some i
actually do believe that there are some
universals i'm not kantian in any way
but i do think that there are some
universals and
the thing that actually brought me to
even the concept of that was jung
so you know jung's concept of the
collective unconsciousness
and then taking that thought and then
applying it to
looking through his history and uh
the most varied history you can find so
i would say probably religion is your
earliest one
that you can get for for written history
or uh
written examples of human behavior and
psychology
at its at the the furthest that we can
look into it
uh with you know from man's hand to
whatever the medium is cuneiform or
whatever but as you do that and then
let's say going from
mesopotamia to india to
you know up to and just going from all
these places as disparate as they may
seem
as many different cultures and
ethnicities and religions and how the
religions will
will vary quite a bit from monotheists
to
uh polytheists and so on and so forth
but then just seeing how there's all the
through lines and of course campbell
he did this uh much earlier than
me thinking about it but uh i think that
by
looking at things that way and starting
to find the threads instead of always
just looking at everything as being its
own compartmentalized
concept as if it only applies to this
time this people like
getting overly pomo about it is just a
really idiotic
post-modern so you think that there is
uh
just like joseph campbell there's a
thread that connects
all of these stories narratives that we
constructed for ourselves as we evolve
and that thread is grounded in some kind
of absolute ideas of maybe on the
morality side which is the trickiest one
of good and evil
somewhat yeah i think that a lot of this
stuff is just derived from a biological
perspective i feel like these things are
innate within us
do you think our innately humans are
good like we
no i don't i feel like
i also feel like there's an issue of
scale too like
um like nasim taleb likes to talk about
how he
views his the way he interacts with with
groups
in terms of scale you know what is this
thing about like at a
at the familia level i'm a i'm a
communist and then at the
civic level i'm a i'm a republican or
something
at this other level then it goes on at
the widest level he's a libertarian
or something of that nature you know
like fundamentally human interaction
changes
on scale on scale and scale and also uh
from
uh you know subjective to the
environment around them so and i don't
even mean
environment just in the sake of physical
environment uh nature right like
nature's constantly trying to murder you
well it's not really trying it's just
nature's being nature the universe is
the universe and
uh at times it takes you out it's just
not with any particular uh compunction
or prejudice it's just
oops you know sorry there's no more
dodos my bad
but don't you think the particular
flavor of the complexity that is the
human mind
was created like let me make an argument
for that
all people are fundamentally good okay
is uh
there's an evolutionary advantage to
being
to striving to uh cooperate
to add more love to the world of like
compassion empathy all that kind of
stuff
and that the very thing that created
the human mind was
this evolutionary advantage whatever the
forces behind this evolutionary
advantage
and scale yes so when we're dealing with
a small tribe
sure yeah when you meet another tribe
maybe there are other factors that are
going into that
let's say you scale up and so
your 150 has exceeded their 150 and
like you start to get to a certain point
where
um you can't really be
close enough to someone down the line of
some of of that next like that 150s 150
and they just now all of a sudden become
some
some guy whatever and when it comes to
some guy
at once it starts hitting scale i don't
know that it's
capable people can be
as as magnanimous to a stranger as
to the known if they orient themselves
to be
secure enough because it does come to
security insecurity
in one way or the other either brought
on by the unknown brought on by
an actual threat brought on by even
their own as we would use the word
insecurity in that their own insecurity
within their own capabilities their own
belief in themselves
all these things can change things from
being compassionate and what have you to
at least at the very least
maybe not evil but self-interest driven
to the point of
negative results for those that aren't
you know what i mean right
but another way to frame that is uh
maybe
it's less about scale and more about the
amount of resources available so
if we're overflowing with resources in
terms of
security and safety all the things
you've mentioned
if we have more than enough resources
then the way we treat a stranger
the way we position ourselves towards
that stranger might be
in a way that uh allows us to be our
real human selves as opposed to sort of
our animal self
and therefore it's mostly about how
clever can we
descendants of abes be in coming up with
all cool kinds of technologies and ways
to uh
efficiently use the resources we have
such that we're not constrained
and my hope is that we can
that human innovation will outpace
the growth of our the number of people
that are starving for resources
yes uh i think that there's a lot of uh
rationality behind uh this argument and
you know in in some ways i agree and and
in a lot of ways i see it as
missing the point of of how this
experiment
has been playing out across time when
you look at uh what
for one it's like define resources you
know what is a
what is a resource of of as
humans uh would would define it right
or wealth even and so you can say
well you know an iphone's a resource the
internet's a resource
water obviously is a resource but if we
weigh them
what is more important to human beings
water internet or iphones
it's water right so if we look at
resources
if we start with what do human beings
need to live
i mean actually live not live here
in this bullshit fantasy creation
extension of our own
ingenuity and you know a prison of our
own creation and also a paradise of our
own creation
but this is not how human beings
normally live this is all built upon
stuff
on on built on concept on idea
and some and and some of it's built on
just well this is the paradigm so this
is what you do
human beings need food they need water
to survive
they need shelter from the elements and
they need certain skills
to perpetuate these things and be able
to pass them down so that they can
so these things don't become uh
you don't end up in this this gap where
you have to relearn things
because if it's lost then
that time before you can get it back
again is going to be
a dark ages of sorts you know or it's
going to be highly detrimental to
to your group because not knowing how to
fish
not knowing how to hunt not knowing how
to even
clean and cook the game once you have it
could be lethal that's fascinating to
think of that as a basic resource the
knowledge to attain the very
low level things of water right and
we'll figure it out we did it once
before
and we've done it over and over and over
and over again it's just costly
yes it has costs for sure um
but when you think of how
you look at the well we'll just deal
with
the first world of the west you look at
the the
the pathline the pathway of of western
civilization
and its growth and then you look at how
technology injected into it over time
you know how it magnifies uh
things or how pushes things at uh orders
of magnitude faster
and then the internet comes along and
even faster you know so you're watching
industrial evolution to
what is it the uh the capacitor and then
so on it goes further and further and as
the internet and technology
especially on the electronic side of
things start increasing in capability
it massively outpaces even our
necessity for it at times it becomes you
know plan
obsolescence happens quicker and over
and over and over again
and wealth increasing increases increase
increases
in terms of the things that we're able
to acquire right i mean
i've seen homeless people with with
smartphones you know so
we're living in the most wealth-laden
luxury laden age of
all of humanity yet what happens when
we see calamity or people go on hard
time what are
they the things that they value you know
what what is what do people go to an
argument about the cost of things that
are luxury items generally
and not necessity items you know we get
into fights about
um you know things that are
at the end of the day not necessities to
us you know people are so concerned
about
netflix and the internet and personally
i'm very concerned about the internet
because i look at it as
my own little personal library of
alexandria in my pocket
that's what i love about it and the
ability to have a tool as effective as
it is even though i'm in a constant
battle to not let that tool
become a vice or to become something
that
that actually brings me to a lower state
but we will the question is over the are
we willing to murder each other over
netflix
versus murder each other over water
we're willing to murder each other over
water
that's a given right but that's our
animalistic cells of death well it's
also a necessity for
it's animalistic but it's also either
you do it or you don't right like unless
somebody's willing to share that water
or if that water is of such a limited
uh uh capability or such a limited
amount
then you will have to murder to have
that one netflix the argument is the
higher
we get up to this hierarchy of what we
consider
in los angeles resources yes we were
less willing to be
to commit violence we are less willing
to commit violence the oh i would say
over netflix but we are willing to
commit violence over netflix over
everything associated with netflix over
televisions over sneakers
over over um you know i mean
when we look at a good i mean the
majority of
the stuff that came with the riots i
mean it was
use car dealerships uh targets
i mean and then you look it's like whoa
okay what are people
what do they got what are they so hell
bent to get
out of this whole thing i'm even talking
about the ideological elements or
anything like that just like okay
something's going on boom looting
whatever
yeah we you know what what are you going
to loot yeah you know you'll have aoc
say oh people needing bread
like i didn't see a single loaf of bread
you know i saw
television poetry you know but
to me it is poetry in a sense because
you get to see
who we how we actually are operating you
know
what are where what is becoming first
principles to most people but
wait but you could also argue though
those rides were more like the madness
of crowds which is oh it's definitely a
lot
more than just that i'm just saying that
given a chance it's like okay
boom the the lights are off the grid is
down
we've we've hacked into the whole system
turned into an 80s movie and
you have the ability to go get a hold of
whatever it is that you think is most
important and what do we do
and i say we as in you know including
all of us we grab a tv
we we attack it we we break into a
sneaker store on melrose we do
it's just like uh we still giant cause
statues
or the value of that is completely
market driven
like it's just a piece of polypropylene
or whatever butyl
and you know it's cool you know i'm a
big fan of art uh but uh
it's like you know i can't eat that and
at the end of the day man
you're sitting there with your with your
like what'd you do today honey what'd
you get
you know man we were able to you know oh
i got this
i got this designer art statue
are you gonna go well you can't really
sell it on the on like the art markets
where people are really gonna pay for it
so
are you gonna become an underground art
dealer with your one piece of cause
art one interesting thing you just said
before i forget it you mentioned the
library of alexandria and your phone
well your phone but also just thinking
of your little world
that you're creating for yourself on the
internet that's a really powerful way to
actually phrase it one of the things
that uh
you've been on joe rogan several times
although everybody always comes to me oh
that was so great i didn't know
you you're on you've on joe rogan i go
this is like my fifth time dude
i've been a fan of yours for a long time
from
uh from other avenues this is a long
time coming actually everybody you have
no idea like how many times through
uh messaging and missing each other
over the years this is ridiculous this
is a long time coming you don't
realize how special this is for us this
is a well i'm also star struck we'll
talk about this but you symbolize
something
very important to me through my journey
through wrestling through jiu jitsu
through judo through
to street fighting through just combat
there's uh
you're the in some sense the devil on my
shoulder
of like of violence in a good in the in
in uh the devil gets a bad rap
does he does get a bad rap i i realize
you know sitting encased in in ice down
at that low-ass level you know
yeah but you know the angel side is more
like the athletic the sport the science
the tech
the the technical the chess side of
things so uh
but on the library alexander let me ask
uh
because you're on joe rogan it does make
me really sad
and i realize that i'm just probably
being romantic that
his most of his library of
interviews that were on youtube have not
been taken down
because he went to spotify and that was
the first i'm probably an idiot but it
was the first time i realized
that this knowledge that we've been
building up on the internet
doesn't necessarily last forever no it
doesn't unless you preserve it i mean
it's like all things if
if you do not preserve them if you do
not make uh
efforts um you know so many of my it
just really brings the minor off the
top of my head all my so many friends of
of mine that are jewish
uh you know they're they're basically
secular
but yet through even the secular
aspect of just keeping the traditions
alive it's like well you could always
pick a book and read out about read
about it clearly
it's called the torah but um
if you don't put these things into
action if you don't make them a part of
your consciousness maybe even on the
subconsciousness just by
through through repetition they will die
they will become
simply something that exists somewhere
until you
find it again and carl gotch used to say
something um
he would say that i don't invent moves i
just rediscover them
but yet gotch and billy robinson also
would understand that you
if someone's not carrying the torch
it'll go out
now that doesn't mean fire can't be
rekindled it just means that it that
torch no longer
is lighting the way on on this knowledge
and so it's
it's important to be
an individual even on on an individual
level to be a repository for
for aspects of knowledge you mentioned
gotch
you uh consider yourself
a catch uh wrestler
so i've mentioned to you offline that i
competed in a couple of catch wrestling
tournaments
uh can we go wikipedia level at the very
basic you're the exactly right person to
ask
what is catch wrestling and what are its
defining principles
i would say the easiest way for us to
talk about
and give uh
an overview of what catch is in the
simplest terms is
think of collegiate wrestling with
submissions
that is essentially what catch is and
it's not surprising because collegiate
wrestling is actually derived from
catch's catch can it's just that over
time
certain aspects were were
removed from the competition structure
so that they became
null elements things that were discarded
but
it's funny that you can take high level
amateur collegiate types and you can
show them
a move and then add a little bit to it
and go oh well hey that was just like
what we already do here but except oh i
didn't know you could take it all the
way to this point or
you know things of that nature
especially when it comes to professional
wrestling like uh teaching people like
no that that
i know you're just using this for in a
show but this is actually a real move
and here's how it really feels
and so collegiate wrestling and
wrestling in general for people who are
not aware is basically
two people started on their feet and
that's a score
that they're trying to take each other
down and they have to um
they score points along the way you can
end matches by
pinning them for example on their back
i think one way to describe wrestling
is uh it's very much about figuring out
ways to establish
control and leverage in these kind of uh
tie ups or there's different styles
where you can do more from a distance to
where it's more about the timing and all
that kind of stuff
ultimately it's an art of like both
upper body and lower body and you could
choose the different puzzles that you
solved there
you could be attacking the head the arms
you could be attacking the legs
there's also part of collegiate
wrestling that's on the ground
that has more uh what's called like a
referee's position
right the referee's position where
you're on uh your hands and knees
basically and so uh do you do you
understand what that's supposed to
simulate why is that one of the standard
positions
it's one of the standard positions
because one it's one of the easiest ways
to actually get up
um but two it's because you cannot be on
your back
if you're on your back you're getting
pinned and
the back exposure or being pinned is
pretty much the universal wrestling
thing one taking the guy from their feet
to the floor and two
pinning them as you go from like was it
uh cornish wrestling
turkish oil wrestling mongolian sumo
uh indian um well they'll call it
pelhani
it's also called kushti um
jujitsu judo so many of them is
like there's a usambo even if it doesn't
end the match it's still like one of the
most important
aspects of the competition itself across
oh so every style and this is where
submission
like catch wrestling or uh submission
wrestling
or jiu jitsu feels different which
it seems like for most wrestling for a
lot of wrestling
the dominance is the is the goal
as opposed to submission which
i guess those are two are related but
dominating the position so that's what
pinning is it's almost like
breaking your opponent
like breaking uh through all of their
defenses to where they're completely
defenseless and you could do anything
with them that you want maybe
that's a wikipedia definition of
dominance i don't know
and then yeah i mean it sounds very much
like a chain to a radiator yeah
yeah yeah this uh there's a threat that
connects all right
but submission feels different i mean
it is actually different when you think
about it across the landscape
i don't think radically different but
distill slightly different and that
um if you think of wrestling as being
derived from
from from combat right so well it is
combat sports but
more more lethal combat getting somebody
off their feet and onto their back
is about as lethal a place for the
person on bottom to be
in general i mean i i don't
don't come at me with your talks about
your fucking worm guards
and blah blah blah and whatever spider
bear
okay get out of here with that this is
we're not talking about you
in this highly uh regimented sporting
environment
we're talking about general you know all
the body hair
none of the waxing human beings so um
getting someone on their back okay
they're how
you as you're trying to get up you're
getting hit with a rock or stabbed or
what have you
set on fire who knows
generally these conflicts are not just
isolated to
one on one you it's if it's four on two
your your your your buddy that was with
you back to back now he's on his back
what do you think now it's going to be
one-on-one well three go on one
so and then you go you elevate this to
to armored combat right
and it's boom put them on the ground oh
crap it's hard to get up well while
you're struggling to get up stab
you know that's where jiu jitsu's uh
concepts come from with all their
leveraging and off balancing is
oh man if i end up in this situation in
tight close quarters combat
yes we could fight it out with swords
and knives and what have you but
it's way easier if the first thing i can
do is foot sweep you on your back
and then pull my knife and just go and
stick is there a thread
that connects all of these different
arts from
not just arts but from the very base
violence of war just like you said that
there's no rules
to the very regimented uh
ibajf i do jiu jitsu tournaments and
just you kind of laid out some of it but
can you go all the way to the
so when you you start off with absolute
skills
in the sense of absolute offense and
defense
in the taking or preserving of life
right
full-on at its at its purest
form of self defense and
self-preservation
okay and then you extrapolate part of
that in that
all animals train in violence
all play usually degenerates into some
sort of soft violence
so be it cats when they're kittens and
puppies and
all that everything learns how to kill
how to fight
um not that you know just that that dumb
alpha
meme stuff where the idea is that oh by
being alpha that means you run around
like basically just being a bully in a
shithead
no actually alpha wolves spend
very little time fighting because if you
were actually
alpha you don't get into fights there's
no need to
um and if you are probably getting into
any
large amount of fights it's probably
because you're being shitty at being an
alpha and now people are tired of you
being in charge um and yet
in the animal world and it would be the
same for human beings at that
that that base beginning level of
violence
there's a big risk so i know that we
live in this
place with health care and where or you
might be
in a place with nationalized health
whatever right there's there's there's
band-aids
there's there's uh uh uh penicillin
there's all that kind of stuff but
that's not the normal way of things
you know yeah there's a channel that
just
hurts me every time i i used to follow
and i had to unfollow it because it was
too painful for me as a human being
called nature is metal
oh yes on instagram it was uh sobering
and then it was like this is too sober
that's very sobering so in there the
risk
is at its highest level there the damage
you take
the winner walks away hurt getting lame
when you need every aspect of your
physical and athletic faculties to
survive because
it isn't going to be the the this isn't
the first and it's definitely not going
to be the last
especially if you're the slowest one you
know it's a is it was it uh
is a lyric from a clutch song
uh don't go for the fat ones just go for
the slow ones
[Laughter]
oh man but that the universal truth of
the way nature works it's not cruel it's
just the way it is
yeah i mean watch uh animals get into
fights on
on any of these sort of documentary
stuff you'll see
an intense short and then dispersal like
you'll see as soon as one feels like uh
things have switched just enough
boom the bear or whatever it is takes
off it's like i'm not i'm done with this
because if you can get out of there with
just some scars and what have you
okay you lose an eye no it's not as good
uh you really get hurt bad and get
infected you're done
yeah you know so it there's a serious
risk to be
um that can come with these sort of
things yet
i believe that we are inherently
born for at least aspects of and use of
violence
and so at the end of the day we need
these things not just to
not just survive each other but they're
they're a part of being able to
hunt and other things but uh so violence
is a part of human nature violence is
a is like it's an absolute it is in
every person it is a part of every
interaction it isn't part of every
every law everything and i'm not by the
way i'm not an ancap
so don't even don't don't hit your wagon
to me on that one
and cap is an arcade captain capitalist
yes
not a not an end cap they have nice book
book shops
yeah they do i mean i'm not i'm not
gonna you know sit here and and shit
talk and caps
uh although i also used to get into the
conversations with uh
with uh an ancom uh anarcho communist
uh a good friend of mine and he would he
would bring up this stuff and i'm like
yeah cool man i'm down with anarchy you
ain't gonna like it
what do you mean i go because i'm gonna
take on i'm gonna gather all kinds of
people think i'm gonna make this i'm
gonna get the strongest together
going to take your shit okay okay on
that
topic i have um a friend of mine now
uh a fellow russian uh ukrainian
uh michael malus oh yeah i'm familiar
with michael melons
i watched a little bit of your guys's uh
conversation
so this is really good to ask you
because
uh i like how he's in the white suit and
and you're in the white and black but he
he lives in new york city
he is uh espouses ideas of monarchism
and his idea and this is different than
um
sort of the iron rand set of ideas
that there's a line between sort of
capitalism that's backed by the state
and just pure anarchism and
his idea that violence won't take over
in an anarchism is one that feels to me
not grounded in reality i may be agree i
may be wrong so is there some
so uh the idea with pure capitalism
is that you mean laissez-faire
completely deregulated yeah yeah well
what it will agree it'll end up in one
it'll end up in
if if you're anti-globalist it's gonna
be that
it's gonna be globalist 100 because
it has no con pure capitalism has no
consideration
for uh has no consideration for your
your native users
or of any sort like it does it doesn't
matter and but the idea of governments
is that the land
little piece of land geographically
you're born on
means you're going to stick to whatever
founding documents
created that little land so anarchism is
against that
and the argument is you should be able
to choose which ideas you live with
and the concern there is nobody
uh this geographical land the
governments
that organize on that land will not
do not need to protect you from the
violence and my sense is there does need
to be an army there does need to be
police
that help what however the form that
police takes but
there needs to be a more centralized not
completely centralized but more
centralized
safety net of to protect you from the
violence scale again right so
if you want to have your anarchist
utopia
well we'll call it utah your anarchist
creation here at certain scale i'm sure
it's
doable you know um
but as it scales as the scale increases
it's completely untenable and a state
will emerge
a state will always you because even
people always think of states as as like
people rubbing their hands and smoking
cigars and back rooms
and just out of nowhere coming around
just like oh we're going to create this
big centralized thing and just so we can
tell everybody what to do and we can be
in charge
i mean i know that there are people like
that that exist
that they would like to do things of
that nature and that they see
the use of power as
something to be used more for their
their personal gains
over first which again self-interest in
human beings
but um uh but eventually a state people
want us they want something to go like
okay
who's taking care of this and who's
taking care of that and who and how do
we create
some sort of uh some sort of uh
protocol for this like okay well when
it's not bob when is it susie when is it
whatever i mean like how do we
you know it's got to get done if we want
this thing to become bigger if we want
our
all of our plumbing to work right if we
want it's just i'm sorry
a state's going to happen a state is
also when you think about it
it's supposed to have consideration to
tribe right so if people think that
we're not tribes
well you're not you're not really
thinking very deeply
we're all tribes of a sort and uh
everybody likes to use the word
tribalism in this idea of of this uh
antagonistic concept but and while sure
tribalism can be antagonistic tribalism
can also be
uh a positive thing or i could just say
it just seems to be a natural thing
people you know they create their their
groups of one sort or another
and so when you have
well when you think about where when
nation states really started to become a
thing
uh and i don't mean even the more modern
looking variants that we could think
back of and say the 19th century or
something like that right
even older than that i mean you think
the assyrians didn't have a state of
some sort of course they did
um they how do you increase your your
your your empire if you don't actually
have a place to start from
a ruler so you're saying like naturally
when you start talking thinking about
scale of humans
naturally states emerge
and so can we try to make an argument
for
anarchism which is okay
okay so uh
anarchy in a sense is in opposition to
the
unhelpful unproductive inefficient
bureaucracies that eventually
the states lead to yes and that's what
we can see
i mean i would say less anarchy let more
study james burnham you know
uh or well
any anybody that wants to talk about the
the managerial problem and the matter
so you you have a sense i hope
maybe let's think like what is the path
forward with the
inefficient state is it revolution or
is it to work within the system to
constantly improve it
man i don't know that one i mean my
general sense
uh and maybe this is the nietzschean
part of me is that
yeah it'll it would take maybe not even
just maybe not even defining uh it
specifically as revolution maybe it
would just take
just total calamity to to get people to
stop
being shitty to not stop being a lesser
version of themselves to stop
thinking more about uh things from
you know the paradigm that we exist in
now where we're giving so much value to
stuff that isn't really all that
valuable
you know where we're so concerned about
likes
and i don't just mean like whether we
get them or not but that
oh man maybe we should take this off of
our platform because this is too
destabilizing to people and it's like
because once you exceed dunbar's number
i think it's actually without having the
right
faculties which would need to be
developed
because this is dealing with this is
dealing with tech that brings
things ways of approaching being
that we are not naturally
programmed to be able uh to handle
appropriately so and i think it's even
even
even more it's even more detrimental to
women than men
because i think uh women have a more
natural proclivity towards
um uh group association
and and and more group
oriented thinking and patterning and
now and with also coupled with
seemingly more sensitivity towards
towards human uh states
so i feel like women like the classic
idea is like oh you know women are
psychic you know i have a sixth sense
and what have you and i think that's
just a
uh a way of
uh simplifying what i think is that
women may be more in tune with
picking up on the unsaid like they might
be better at seeing
physical cues uh inflection and tone
like different like they may
be far more sensitive to these things
which to me would make sense because
dealing with
children that can't uh communicate
uh so so generally more understanding
and all the full form right now okay
now whether it be a woman or a man but
especially
with even the social uh push on this
concept of empathy
which of course it gets to the point
where it loses any meaning anymore like
people use the word
empathy absolutely incorrectly all the
time and they don't even understand
what you're really asking of people but
let's just take it as
as we're using empathy in the correct
sense and you're taking on
the emotional content of the thing
itself
now you open that up to thousands of
people maybe hundreds of thousands of
people
all across the world that you will never
meet that you will never know that
you're not even getting an
actual true representation most of the
time of who these people
are you're you're meeting persona and
some of these personas
are even deliberately created
to elicit a response inauthentically
are you referring to bots or uh could be
bots or actual people
bots are one thing but i mean there are
literal people out there that will
create something create uh gofundmes for
for
tragedies that never didn't really or
events that didn't happen or
any number of things okay i mean burn
their own house down and then say you
know we were attacked
and then it comes down you did it to
yourself because you wanted money and
empathy and this that and
you wanted all this this emotional
wealth let's say this emotional uh
coin as well as actual if possible you
wanted to leverage it in some way
that's not the majority of people but i
would say
a good amount of folks are thinking well
if i post this photo um
and i put this little blurb in there i
bet i can get this much cachet out of it
in this sense
and i'm not even and this isn't just a
reference to like butt picks and stuff
like that
because clearly obviously people
understand that that
uh our inborn uh sexual nature
is easy to manipulate i mean that's
pretty
pretty obvious but you're you're saying
this kind of new medium of communication
on social media is
uh is is unnatural and it preys on us
and so as
you you want this you know you look at
you look at an anarchist kind of mindset
right and so you're just like
there's no there there is no overarching
state
to to create any kind of
uh structure right and so if you have
that unfettered capitalism aspect with
it
and before i say anything particularly
damning
about unfettered capitalism uh i'm a
massive capitalist
because i view capitalism essentially as
what it boils down to
i get these arguments people too they
they start giving me all these extra
definitions about capitalism like no
no this is obviously some sort of theory
you're taking from other shit but that
doesn't describe capitalism capitalism
is
the ability for us to create
whatever we want you know create our
thoughts ideas
physical things and trade them freely
amongst each other uh
in ways that we find um
acceptable right you know i'm not even
using the word fair
because i might think it's fair to me
you might think
huh well i mean that was actually i
think he what he thought was unfair to
him and it's more fair to me
and someone a third observer goes oh man
you should
you should not have paid that for that
you should have paid this and it's like
well you know what it works for me
without sufficiently acceptable you you
both agreed to the transaction
correct and uh you know but but
also at the at the root of that is
freedom right and
as far as i can tell i've been banging
this around in my head
it's like for every one unit of freedom
you need two units of
accountability and if you don't have
that
what you end up with is
human self-interest we're not even going
to get into evil human self-interest
sabotaging other things even not in a
sense to be malicious
okay so in terms of uh let's let's put
this as mathematically speaking
i love this so anarchism is more like
two units of freedom and one unit of
accountability or maybe zero units of
accountability possibly i mean the
anarchists tend to think like no
everyone will be accountable
fuck they will when have you seen this
happen in real life
you know i mean people aren't even
accountable in their revolutions after
that time so
uh you aren't looking at
the way people really are it's like marx
is like
yeah the people are like this they're
like that look at how capitalism does it
i mean
he of course assigns a lot of really
ridiculous economic principles and
practice
uh but and also assumes that everybody
you know who
makes any profit from anything is
somehow stealing it and you know
really assigns a negative moral aspect
to them and then it's like oh yeah but
then eventually communism will happen
ever no one will act that way anymore
and you're like whoa
hold on you just said that people are
all are you saying it's
all due to capitalism or it's is it
innate it's just
it's a fundamental misunderstanding of
and it's like
hey look at you
you're like a notorious like
anti-semitic
angry like uh just
absolute curmudgeon of a human being who
seems to be really not all that fun to
be around
marx yeah and then it's just like so you
have to think like if if there was
one billion marxists in the world how
would they behave
it would be absolute they would hate
each other
so bad and you know this isn't for me to
even poison the well on marx is like oh
his personality sucks like there's lots
of people whose personality sucks
that doesn't mean they can't make i
don't know that his name
what you know what somebody argues he's
just a he's a loner
i mean i don't know his personality
sucked at all let me walk that back and
that he was human
saying his personality sucked he was
sometimes
contradictory irrational sometimes
he was uh quite sexist
despite the emails i've gotten that uh
that that's that told me that
uh that there's this people was written
to me that uh nietzsche has been
unfairly labeled as sexist
in his discussion about women i'm pretty
sure there's a bunch of documents where
he's just
like he's just a bitter guy
i i will agree with you and marx is as
bitter as they come
to but um you know what bitterness
in and of itself doesn't make like
wha why i hate marxism comes from you
know
the the whole the entirety of the thing
and but the dismissal of humanity but
i'm not going to
say that marxism or practical man
you can find any forbidden book and
it could have something good in it it's
colonel's a good idea yeah and like
at the end of the day you know marx is a
human being he's got a nice beard
he does he had a hell of a beard yeah a
decent portrait i mean he looks like the
kind of guy like
i wouldn't want to meet him in a dark
alley but thankfully i don't think he
was much of a fighter
but in any case i mean not the
anarchists are are
they're more hot for like uh max sterner
people like to think that uh nietzsche
borrowed a lot from sterner and
my argument is one you don't have any
real evidence for that and two
bullshit you know i mean
anybody could i i the fact that they
have some overlapping thoughts
doesn't make it uh lifted not to mention
go read a lot more philosophy and see
how there's so many different things
oh this guy said it in uh 1722
well and then this guy says that again
in 1922. does that mean he read the
other guy's stuff not necessarily i mean
he's working from the same type of human
physiological construct as anybody else
like
of course it's possible this guy could
think the same thing we we think a lot
of the same things
to be perfectly honest i mean reading
the hagakure going back to philosophy
books
this was really impactful on me as a
younger adult because
here's a book written in the 19th
century about someone who lived through
the 19th and 18th century at times as a
samurai now a monk
and his objections to society at the
time
the same objections one was having to
society
as i was reading it like the same human
behaviors the same
uh impetus for action
that he found a problem
like well that's the same that's the
same shit now
like we're not and this is the thing and
then i'm reading more religion i go oh
we're no different than anyone who wrote
the torah
or older we are the same thing with the
same problems with the same
uh psychological issues the same human
behaviors like these things are not
different yeah and we haven't changed
growing set of tools though to
to kill each other with or to
communicate together and all that kind
of stuff but underlying it
there's a human nature well we're also
trying to understand that human nature i
think we've
just like you said learning how to fish
acquired more and more knowledge about
that human nature
uh but it's been a very slow journey
it's slower than people realize
yes in terms of understanding uh human
nature
let me ask in terms of egoism to be
curious
uh to get your sons about ayn rand
and um her whole idea of virtue of like
selfishness sure
and her because you mentioned that
everybody has
a kernel of truth there there's
potential for a colonel truth to be
discovered in
anything for example i've been recently
reading mineconf
you know what that's the thing even
there's something
in there's probably things in mineconf
that are
not the surface level read if you get
all hung up on on all probably all his
crap about
uh you know his anger anger at jews and
this and that all this crap it's like
okay yeah that that's right on the
surface
try to get below that try to see you
know how is he how is he creating the
jews as a cope somehow like how is he
using why
why are they his his scapegoat and i
mean scapegoat in the
so randy gerard's uh concept of the
scapegoat i mean
in that sense whereas uh you know hitler
uses
it wants to make the the jews the
scapegoat
for world war one yeah i mean for me the
starting point
similar with ann rand is uh like
mineconf is not a good
place to search not just because
hitler's evil
but it's just not full of ideas no it is
not
it has its significance due to a lot of
historically speaking
but the starting point for me with
hitler is like
to acknowledge that he's human and
to at least consider the possibility
that any one of us could have been
hitler
so like that not that peterson kind of
concept also
um jonathan height has a thing about uh
the difference between
hate and disgust mechanisms and things
like that and so he used he
goes into the looking at uh hitler and
his
through his his diary entries and
journals and stuff like that to look
uh and see it more as the the discuss
mechanism then also try and see like if
there's any
evolutionary biological uh attachment to
this whatever
i mean you're right he is a human being
any of us
are we're all human beings it's not that
probably jarring for people to think but
we're
we're all i guess supposed potentially
capable of just being in
and all these evil people in the world
think they're doing it for the sake
of good yeah which makes them the most
dangerous
and there's some there's differences in
levels of insane
i think hitler was way more insane than
stalin i think stalin legitimately
thought he was
being doing good i would say that's
probably true stalin it was just
outright brutal like yeah he had he had
his five-year plan he had all those
other things uh
he's just had a much lower value for
human life yes
and so he was willing to take make
decisions about what he actually
as a as a good executive of
which he was of managing different uh
bureaucracies and so on
he was willing to make decisions that
resulted in
mass human suffering where hitler was
it seems like to me what much moodier so
allowed emotions and moves to make his
decisions we also have to consider
the different trajectories and how where
and when they were making their
decisions and i mean
not by time specifically but you know
hitler engaged into this
this conflict across multiple continents
and then that everything that comes with
basically fighting the whole world
stalin had his conflict and then
he really mostly compartmentalized the
rest of it
so he was dealing with his own internal
instead of dealing with the internal and
the external
so if stalin was put under a world war
scenario i don't know maybe he would
have eventually lost his marbles too
yeah i'm not sure that you that's you're
right the hunger for power
was more internalized for stalin he
wanted to control the land that already
existed as opposed to wanting to
colonize other lands he was
as nationalistic as hitler but uh
and was as capable and willing for
violent conflict as hitler for than the
aims of
the state but
he he he centered and
internalized prior to then
externalizing and moving outwards
whereas even maybe prior to him there
was an interest to
continually push communism in an
aggressive sense following on the
momentum from the
the 1918 revolution and
that the halting of that uh
through various aspects i guess in
germany part of that was
the the national socialist like they
they came up and then they were the
other ones to fight the communists and
so you had the two totalitarians going
after it
but then in the rest of the world that
was not dealing with
um totalitarian aspects
it was just it wasn't going to stick
especially in the west and other places
but
stalin see just you know casually
thinking it seemed like stalin
decided to go all right well we're not
gonna go just start launching right into
more conflicts here we're gonna these
dudes are going down so
that's cool for us because they hate us
and we hate them
um but now we're gonna we're gonna focus
internally and then we're gonna work on
growing at a slower rate and picking our
battles a bit more specifically and of
course there's
you know you can get to the even this is
after stalin but yeah you got the
besmanov type stuff talking about
subversion
in in cultural aspects yeah i mean
there's
this fascinating dynamics to propaganda
throughout that that's
that's a whole nother colonel yeah do
you think
hitler could have been stopped one of
the things that's kind of fascinating to
look at is how many nations
both journalists and nations wanted
almost
crave to take hitler's word that he
wanted peace
until it was too late they almost wanted
to be
deluded themselves i mean the same is
true with
this stalin uh people wanted to take
stalin at his word for
they'll delude themselves yeah that way
we will do we we will delude ourselves
over any number of things
and until even after the fact where the
history just says hey fuck face
you know you you cannot supplement your
pseudo-reality onto
actual reality here anymore but yet
we deal with people in pseudo-realities
constantly it i mean it
we will always find a way to to change
reality to suit our
needs well the nature of truth now
there's now multiple actual truths it's
kind of fascinating there's multiple
versions of history that people are
telling you know the the version
the version of the the the great
patriotic war in russia the world war ii
and russia
is very different today under putin than
the version that we're
learning on uh in the united states and
then different than the version in
europe in the united states
uh the the hero of the war is the united
states
in europe there's a much more sad and
solemn story of suffering and so on sure
and in russia
it's the great patriotic war yes it was
a unifier
of a sense and it i mean
yeah i mean you can't argue that
war and conflict that and or are just
even
um reducing that to stressors agitation
suffering
doesn't um create human motivation you
know we started this off you brought up
frankel and i'm like yeah frankel's dope
answers for meaning uh maslow's great
and and i talked to you about how i
started to think like man
do the ability for human beings to to
to live and or potentially flourish in
the
worst environments you can think of is
pretty incredible in and of itself
and that it's a crazy thought
to think that without frankel
and maslow ending up in concentration
camps
do they write some of the most important
books on philosophy in the 20th century
and that's
insane on a lot of different levels but
suffering is a creative force i mean i
don't do you think we'll always have war
yes we will always have war in some form
or another
we we need quote unquote
air quotes for those just listening uh
war
to survive we need war to flourish we
need at least can you explain the quote
of the air quotes
well because uh take
take take take wars as violence no
violence so like so we're talking quotes
because uh well
you know what us getting on the mat or
just getting on these hardwood floors
and wrestling around
yeah is not literal war it's war
of a sort you know work you know it is
it is a deluded
form of war american football is a
diluted form of war all this these are
diluted forms of war tennis is a deluded
form of war
um and i think the
one of the best explanations i ever got
from this and another person very
uh impactful on my life and outlook and
thinking about things cormac mccarthy
and so in blood meridian there's this
fantastic speech about war given by the
judge which there's a ton of fantastic
speeches
on things given by the judge yeah all
that existing creation without my
knowledge does so without my consent
okay that's pretty heavy that's that's
hard
dory can you break that up can you say
it again uh all things that exist
and creation all things that exist
without my knowledge do so without my
consent
what does that mean well i think from
the judge's
perspective it's like well i didn't
consent to to that bird
or that dog or this building or all this
like all of this
you know i didn't create it so it's done
so without my consent and if it's up to
my consent
well i'll design it how i want to
there's a another similar
uh look into how the judge is in that
book is he would
study everything everywhere he went
and so he's collected this group of
nerdy wells from all over
to go on these hunts uh
against uh certain tribes in in the
southwest
and getting paid by the us government
the mexican government so
he's on these indian hunts and
yet they're going to all these different
places and
they would stay the night in a cave
somewhere and he would find cave
paintings he would write them all down
or he would find old pieces there's an
example of him
the narrator uh explaining how watching
the judge
and how he drawing everything he's got
his notebook just full
of things drawings and writings
and how he found like a piece of armor
from a conquistador or something way
back in the day of spanish armor and he
draws it into his his book
and then crushes it so that so
the reason we'll always have war in this
society is because there's this
struggle of amongst people that want to
be the designers
there's there's that but it's i'm just
saying that uh
he's got this whole quote on war like
war is about is
is play war is a game and the difference
is is that what's at stake
so all things are a game of some sort
and some
you're putting up for it or what you're
willing to put up for it determines
whether or not you're going to
participate or not and you know all
aspects of
any game is war and it's just
what is at stake you know if it's your
life it's a different story if it's just
a coin
it's another thing a nice way to put it
is uh humans
play a game in this kind of pursuit of
uh creating whatever the hell the reason
is that we keep creating cooler and
cooler things
that that it seems to be the result of a
game that would naturally play it would
naturally crave
i don't know i mean that's been the
struggle of philosophy
it's to understand what is the
underlying force of all that is it the
will to power is it i think will to
power is a really great way of
of describing it do you want to be the
winner of the game
no not just nah i don't look at wilt
powers being the winner of the game
well i mean if we're going to get
philosophical yes you want to be the
winner of the game
what does winning the game define how
you win everybody's going to define that
win differently
you know you could define the win in the
most base level like oh i got all the
things
well if you got all those things without
the the needing component of fulfillment
then you're going to be a very unhappy
person with a whole lot of things
there's a self-referential aspect to
where to me
the winner of the game is defined by the
people playing the game
so if i'm playing a game
i want to win in the sense that most of
the other people who are playing the
game will say yeah that guy won
by their by our collective definition if
i just come up listen i'm sort of
if i come out that's a lot of that's a
lot of weight on the external on you
right but that's that's how games seem
to work
somewhat so i'm already a winner in my
life by defining my own different
success i'm i'm basically the best
person in the world
at doing uh uh me at being lex
yeah so like and now i'm really happy
with that that's that's the source of uh
well i mean think about it games are
also iterated right so you you start off
with your game
yeah and then your game with your
immediates and then the game further
than that the game further than that and
then the game today and the game
tomorrow
and the game next week and so it never
ends and
if you try to keep thinking about it
that way no wonder people go crazy but
we we don't want to think about things
that way we don't want to think about
uh being towards death we don't want to
think about um
whether or not i'm going anywhere after
this other than in the ground or what
have you like
you know all of these games are sense
some distraction this is where we
kind of but i mean it's violence is that
um we
need to let this out and so
it is of our kids need a wrestle and
play
just like animals need to wrestle and
play we need to have forms of
competition we need to have ways to to
test ourselves
to create uh when
uh what is it uh when at peace a man of
war makes war with himself
and so we need to be able to competently
go at war with ourselves and go at war
with our neighbor and go at war with our
neighbor's neighbor
in a way that is repeatable at the very
least
so one one way of saying that there will
always be war i mean that's my
hopeful view is that most of the work
conducted in the future will be like you
said
the man must go to war with himself that
would be great
that that's that's what to me love is
is like focusing on yourself and your
own improvement
and your own creativity and towards
others
feeling uh sort of emphasizing
cooperative behavior and compassion and
would be great empathy it would be great
but i mean you can have
well i'll put it to you this way if you
have
uh a whole community of randians
and a whole community of ancoms
and they could all like uh
i don't know uh toast of london on
netflix and they love netflix and they
love the internet
and they love uh
picking apart moncomp with you they love
like they like all these
things even the esoteric that they can
they can they can get on
with but at the at the fundamental route
they cannot help but go to war because
they are literally oil and water
no the perceived but they would the
various
labels they assigned to themselves would
need to dissipate well this is really
well then you would have to stop being
whatever it is that you took on as your
ideological or religious
point right yeah i mean i there's some
days i'm uh
and calm some days i'm an end caps and
uh
whatever the uh an arctic uh naked
capital i mean there's it depends on the
the hour the minute of the day you're
constantly changing moods and embracing
that
flow the change of opinions of ideas
as there's some days like i'm actually
cognizant of the fact because i've been
not getting my sleep
and after i get some sleep i see i'm so
much more optimistic about the world
the less and less sleep i get the more
sad cynical i guess you can see that
up and down i don't even let my well
okay
i try not to let and most days it's
never a problem
any sort of like uh what are the kids
call it now black-pilled way of thinking
be my my my over my the umbrella which i
hang under so we actually uh to drag us
back
can we talk about carl gotch and cat
tressley
uh is he the greatest catch wrestler i
don't know if he was the greatest
catch wrestler ever i don't i don't i
mean he's one of them for a myriad of
carl gotch uh billy robinson
uh gotcha robinson's trainer billy riley
um so who are these figures and what do
they
mean he's one of the greatest catch
wrestlers ever
because he's responsible for brazilian
jiu jitsu right along with gustav gracie
okay there's a bunch of things i'd like
to say here but one of the things
that catch wrestling seem to espouse as
a principle is that of violence i i just
the the termites i competed at uh the
unfortunate thing and we'll probably
hopefully talk about a little bit they
were disorganized
and the level of competition was pretty
low people really sucked
pretty typical is that typical okay well
it's it's i mean think about
um you know local run-of-the-mill
yes uh jiu-jitsu tournament versus ibjf
created you know a vast difference so so
i
you know but there is a to me as a human
being
that like intellectually philosophically
it was more interesting to go to catch
wrestling tournament it seemed
more real and honest because of the way
they communicate about violence
i love aggression it is it is often
uh more honest i think that who is that
from does that originate from gosh and
then
well i mean it originates from all
wrestling in that uh
even wait wait chalice not a
[Music]
not a classically considered catch
wrestler
yet the reason why he has the world
record for
most amount of world champions pinned or
the record for pins in the ncaa
is because well of course the idea is to
put you on your back and opinion but
you're
there's no way you're gonna let me do
that uh so
how do i make it so that you want me to
pin you well
it's by you put them in excruciating
pain yeah so
at the end of the day you're both there
you both want to win neither one wants
to allow
anything to the other yeah so how do i
how do i get you
to lose to me i make it so unbearable
for you that you decide losing is better
than staying so those are two those two
are so fascinating because
so coming from russia i don't know if
that's where i got it
or if it's just my own predisposition is
i always
love the there's two ways to get you to
want to pin yourself
one is to making it so painful not to
pin yourself that you pin yourself or
whatever
and the other is it's sort of like uh
bruce lee water flows
make it so easy to pin yourself so it's
technique
it's like the elegance the ease of
movement this is the uh satia brothers
uh like the just
[Music]
russians are quite truthful
about things uh especially when it comes
to something like combat they just
this is how it is yeah and this is how
it's going to be it's honest
yes and honesty is what i really like
about uh catch wrestling because i find
that we
given any opportunity for us to be
dishonest for any number of reasons
we're gonna
especially if it's a dishonesty towards
a positive
right like oh well you know it's all
technique and it's all this and it's the
gentle art and blah
bro i have rolled with 80cc world
champions
you know some of the best you have ever
heard of varying a lot of gentleness
when it comes to like oh yeah they
wanted to sweep you and you said
no and then you did said no again yeah
and then you said no and attacked their
leg
yeah it ceases to be all that gentle
because
at the end of the day these dudes are
strong as hell they're flexible they're
all i mean they're
the difference between the athleticism
and and the
the ability to actually win is a pretty
wide gap
the athleticism shows up but then
there's all that other extra
and part of that is meanness and and
pain
and uh getting what you need out of it
but see there is a philosophical
difference in the way it's thought
because
i think some of it is just they just in
denial like oh people will
they like to people like to espouse a
lot of things as theory
and then it's like okay let me watch
when they're oh you're not doing
anything about what you said right now
in fact you're doing the opposite you're
you're
literally hurting that guy because you
your shit ain't working in the way that
you'd like it to so you're having to use
strength you're having
one of my favorites like oh you're using
too much strength and it's like well
hold on
do we want people not to use strength at
this point to understand more of
mechanics
or are you trying to tell people if they
use strength at all
uh that they're somehow bad at what they
do because you know
it's not my fault you're not stronger
than me i'm speaking to something else
that's uh that's i tend to think what it
comes down to is like
strength is fine until you beat me with
it
then it sucks okay so strength is
another thing
i'm speaking i'm thinking about more
like anger
oh sure okay so like a lot of angry guys
in jiu jitsu i know that
really okay okay but let's talk about
let's talk about they're only human the
highest
level of competition there's a book
called wrestling tough
yeah this is a really good book there's
i've encountered in my life a few
uh especially in wrestling people who
really tried to find
a way to use anger to get really angry
at their opponent
not like stupid anger but just like
intense
pointed uh anger uh
distilled into something uh that you can
use yeah
fuel and like i remember the story i
don't know where i read it might be
wrestling tough
where a person was imagining that their
opponent
just raped their mother raped their uh
girlfriend or something like that to
to create this like method acting thing
in their head to be like
to to snap them out of this polite
interaction of
the usual like athletic convention and
like
you know really design of necessity
so my anecdote for this was
i was sitting with uh backstage before a
fight
not my fight and i'm i'm working with
this guy and this dude is
this is a this is the world champion guy
uh and he competed at the highest levels
uh and he he looks at me and he goes
you know you ever get nervous before
fights i looked at him and i went
no i don't and he just looks at me he's
like fuck man
i'm sorry you know how do you do it man
well you know i wish i could be like you
and i said you know what
that doesn't mean that what i'm doing is
better it's just what
is necessary for me it's the way i am
and i told him
so this anecdote goes into another
anecdote this is a family guy episode i
guess
where some uh another famous high-level
guy told me about
this experience with a world champion
boxer
in japan and this guy would get insanely
nervous
and worked up and anxious before his
matches and he hated it and hated it and
hated it and so he wanted to
get rid of that feeling so he went to a
hypnotist for a bunch of sessions
and managed to and he goes in and the
next fight he
cools a cucumber and doesn't perform and
loses
and so what i said going back to
anecdote one
was uh you know whatever is necessary
for you
to get yourself in the best state of
being
right now to compete whatever that may
be it could be
absolute stress and fear it could be
anger it could be calmness it could be
whatever
but there is a so brilliant but there is
a a
there's a state at which you need to be
in to do your best
and use the individual you have to find
that can you comment on
uh uh tyson mike tyson oh yeah that
thing
so first so he uh there's two things i
wanna so he's a
in terms of fear there's a clip there i
think from a documentary where he talks
about he is
like fully afraid as he walks up to the
ring and as he gets closer and closer
and closer he gets more confident
until he gets in and then he's a god or
something like that
that coupled with his statement on joe
rogan that he gets aroused uh
at the possibility of true like of
hurting somebody in the ring
so like he gets aroused at the violence
yeah uh
i like it because it's coupled to your
basically statement that we need to own
to find our own unique way of
existing at our top level of performance
and that perhaps is mike tyson but do
you think there's something more deeply
universal to the
mike tyson speaking to the fact that
he's aroused that the possibility of
that
i do actually uh although i don't think
that it always equates to arousal
for people in fact i would say in
general it doesn't yes uh
i can say i've never had a boner in the
ring in fact of anything you know old
combat cock is like
we're not hanging around we're leaving
we're going up yeah we're taking off
yeah we don't want anything to do with
this yes you have fun come back to us
when you have something
warmer softer smells better yeah but
the power the feeling of aliveness
yeah i could see it it being you know
back to the even the concept of the
ubermensch i feel like
the states the highest states of being
i've ever been in were in
the midst of conflict i felt like that
was the times those are the those are
the moments in my life where i felt like
i was at the highest level of being as a
human
in existence but yet even being in that
state
was not it was not something that you
could interact with people that weren't
in that state with you like they
wouldn't get it you would almost seem
and to be that way all the time
either a might drive you mad or b is
you're not you're something that's
untenable to the rest of society like
you can't
function with everybody else it will not
work it's just like you said with the
ubermensch it's like it's
perhaps that ideal is not something you
can hold for long that's the the very
nature of it
yeah well there was an example in the
spoke zarathustra about
a snake being down the person's throat
and biting it and then having this
maniacal laughter
erupting and you know to me it was
at least i read it as yeah okay there's
this insane
moment that isn't forever but that it is
life and death and it is and and the
overcoming it
is the thing that all of a sudden gives
you
that tapping into the your your highest
state right this is
you know man is uh a chasm a tightrope
between
uh man and ubermensch well i i don't
want to leave
your thought about uh we'll just
we'll call those things flourishes to to
the aspect of
uh tyson's uh interpretation or or his
his
his expression of his feelings in combat
and
so i gave this antidote to the guy and i
just you know at my first anecdote
to that athlete i was working with and i
said you know this isn't there isn't a
superior way in this sense
there is the way that works for you that
may be something you can implement to
other people
if you find that person because we all
have different personalities and and to
me that's a
that is that's an absolute i don't want
to no don't come at me
with all your other fucking the social
sciences crap no
we have distinct personalities that that
personality that that
who you really are and this you know
again heidegger dozen like being
authentic if you're
if you're authentic with who you are
goods and bads you will know how to
create what that is and for me
violence and fighting and conflict was
something that always felt
normal to me and i don't mean normal and
like i grew up in a war zone or a
abusive household or something like that
i just meant that i was a kid who was
very
joyful and inquisitive
and spent a lot of time around older
people of all things uh
and also while i don't think i have much
capability towards engineering my mom
said that one of the first things
as like a little baby when she put me in
my sister's old crib
instead of my sister who just milled
about and was fine with it all
the first thing i did was i completely
deconstructed it i didn't break it i
figured out how to pull it apart
curiosity about the world and yet that
wasn't in conflict with the idea of
violence
no not at all and so being a very joyful
and
nice kid but you know kids are kids and
and
if if kids can find that you
respond maybe more easily
to agitation they will agitate you
and if you should stand out in some way
by being taller or bigger
or something or caring especially
they will agitate you they don't really
fully understand it either and so i
don't i don't hold anything against like
any of the kids
used to pick on me or whatever
especially at the youngest stage just
like
man they don't know shit either so um
but once that line was pushed for me it
was
oh well i was i was being cool now
you're being uncool
yeah well then that gives me license for
everything and so
boom we would just go at it or kids that
would try to initiate a fight
okay and being in that moment of just
going going to town with someone else it
just felt like
this is this is i belong here yeah it
was it was never
a problem for me like the in fact if
anything the
over what i had to understand was well
not only did i
learn the hard way that it doesn't
matter
at the end of the day it doesn't really
matter what anybody else does
if your response and violence
even to their violence if you're the
winner
is often going to be penalized severely
you know society state apparatus
they don't want any of that they want to
be the only arbiter of violence in the
world
always but i learned a very difficult
lesson with that
and it was really impactful in a
negative way on me but
also i had to learn on an individual
sense
to you need to manage violence too
because
hey if someone attacks you or
starts a fight with you and you go at it
okay beating him up is one thing
you know um you know trying to grab a
handful of broken glass from the street
and throw it in their face
maybe that's a bit much at seven
so you need to learn what what level
is necessary and you need to learn what
comes with
with all what's the responsibility of
when you enact violence i mean you take
on
something when you you have a
responsibility for that
this is a extension of your actions um
so
uh but as i got older and especially as
i found
sports and then combat sports
now this was a place for me to flourish
and
to the point where i was more myself
in that space than i was outside of it
until time enough where i could learn to
to get this back together again and i
never say that i
that i'll merge the two or anything like
that no all
what happened my my uh
um my journey uh from adolescence on to
uh to manhood a huge portion of it
besides the normal finding yourself
whatever whatever actually what it was
was
re getting back to who i always was
getting that curious kid the kind kid
getting back to the guy
that i should have been allowed to
become instead of
what happened under the pressures of
other things yeah and uh the attempt for
society
and and certain people within
you know managerial positions to to
compress
what that was into something that they
found more suitable yeah but those
pressures allow you to discover this
little world
forbidden world in many ways of violence
then
you could explore through sport you can
explore it
and uh it's more socially acceptable to
explore at this sport
for sure and even but even then there's
like uh
at times it's socially unacceptable so i
beat sam schilt i'm he cut my right
eyebrow
i cut him and busted his nose and he's
bleeding all over me as i have an arm
bar
on top i'm getting you know it's raining
quote some slayer from a lacerated some
shield
bleeding in his horror creating my
structures now i shall reign in blood
but uh
i win the fight
armbar nasty one i get on my feet and
the first thing i do is i
wipe all the blood off onto my hands and
i
lick it and i do my thing and
all the mma journalists freaked out dana
white's like man i don't know about that
you know
you know we don't want him doing
everybody had this huge problem
and then some folks would even contend
oh you know look you're trying to do
like no no this isn't planned this isn't
i don't think of these things this isn't
this is how i really feel this is who i
really am
and you know it was even kind of comical
after the fact you know and bj penn was
on the very card with me
watching him at some point in his career
all of a sudden win fights and then
and do this licking the glove thing and
everyone thinks it's the coolest thing
ever and i'm like hey
fuck faces i did this in 2002
or 1 2001 and bj penn actually back then
was like dude you're a badass you're a
killer
you know where did that come from
because that seems like a deeply human
moment
i could say i could just be you know
goofy about it call it orgy stick
to the line back to mike tyson yeah but
tyson but uh no no it isn't it's beyond
that
uh is it pretty good
there's pretty decent orgasms in my life
at this point i'm 43. so but no
none have ever compared to that like i
said it is a feeling of highest being to
me
and i see ubermensch moment this is this
is where i feel like
the restrictions of general existence
in society are gone and i get to
fully live uh in a state that feels more
meaningful
of the most meaning you know i think of
it as life and death and
i it's just it is the way i'm built and
i don't have
i've never had any problem applying
violence like it doesn't i
i don't know where it comes from or how
you would define it or whatever if you
want to
stick me under in a psychologist's chair
but
like i don't there's a part of me that
can just like i
know if i'm gonna apply i can apply
violence to any level
and be okay with it and it doesn't i
don't lose sleep
it doesn't bother me it's not a problem
it's it was me learning how to fully
understand
violence humans and and the broader
perspective that allowed me to think
about things and like well
what am i what what do i really want to
accomplish with my actions in the world
just on a whole
you know not compartmentalizing uh my
sporting career even
when i get in the ring i i don't have
any mercy
generally and if i do it's because i
make a a really
deliberate attempt to be
in a state where i can have mercy if i
just go in there to fight
with everything i got there is zero
natural state there's nothing there's
nothing that will hold me back
other than the referee and that's that
you know i
i know i agreed to to be allowed to do
and not to do
but but within that no and i expect
it to be done to me but in terms of
values in terms of seeing
what to me violence is uh is just
yet another canvas that humans can uh
paint beautifully on clearly i mean uh
we have venerated the violent
uh there are communists that venerate
the violent on their behalf there are
national socialists that venerate the
violent there
and then if you remove it from an
ideological perspective
we venerate the violent uh when they're
a hero
we venerate the violent in our religion
well i mean i guess some people venerate
the violence of of
yahweh and sodom and gomorrah right so
or do we say jehovah i don't know
is there you've already mentioned one
but is there a fight
where you've achieved the highest
of heights for your own personal being
just when you look within yourself
that you're the proudest of or maybe was
your most beautiful creation is this
something that stands out there there
are a few
actually uh fighting semi shield and a
rematch uh well the first one was pretty
good
too uh but the rematch was i i was
suffering
i had suffered early prior the week
prior
to uh food poisoning and so
while my abs are looking all right
i in the ring didn't have
the power that i expected to and i was
struggling in ways in some of the
grappling for the submission stuff that
i
hadn't accounted for just exhaustion or
mental exhaustion no
i mean like just physical this i wasn't
back up to a hundred percent in terms of
just power output
and semi was well he's always
seven foot tall but this time he was the
first time i fought him he was too
or 257 or 260 something something like
that this time he was like 290.
and so he was a significantly bigger cat
and he he was
he's a big dude and i just remember
being in up against the ropes with him
changing levels trying to take him down
and he's fighting he's hipping
and i just thought in my head there's no
fucking way i'm going to lose this fight
there's no way you are not going to beat
me
is not going to happen and i arm barred
him the other arm
even the fact he's like i really want to
get you for that i want to get that
match back and then you fucking got my
other arm dick
i'm like dude i still love you though
yeah you know and that's
but the whole time you're like so this
has to do the
the dichotomy of your feeling your worst
and having to overcome you're like
literally mentally telling yourself
there's
no way there's no fucking way i'm gonna
lose this fight and then there's even my
last bare knuckle match
and getting in the ring and fighting
bare knuckle uh
boxing for the first time um and just
thinking just being in a great state
and just just looking so forward to
seeing
i mean i called someone and i was
talking to them the night before and i
said yeah well
i i want you know i video called you
because this face might not look like
this
when i see you next and they're just
like uh
oh okay that's not just like empty trash
talk that's
no that's like a clarity of mind and the
seriousness about it i i know i might
die i'm
most pretty high chance of of being
deformed some way
so but fuck it i don't really are you do
you think about
are you accepting your own death yes 100
yeah i in fact and that's in a strange
way that's partially what
makes it so elevated in terms of my my
sense of
feeling by being able to
have death at my side it feels good
and to be there and to think that
this could be the one like why not you
know i'm not
a religious person at all even though i
very much have to seem seems to bang on
the drama about the usefulness or the
understanding the usefulness of religion
for people
um but you know if if
if i got to do something then yeah put
me in valhalla man i don't want to be
anywhere else nothing else seems like a
good place for me to be i want to
i want to fight all day long and feast
all night you know it sounds great
i saw you uh throw your hat into the
ring of vader
emiliano yes he got cloved i guess i
hope he i hope he overcomes it and comes
out
just as good if not better epic would
that did i understand correctly
that might be his last fight yes that's
my understanding
and it would be epic as hell and it
would be epic as hell because
the the person that i want to give my
most to is a person that i respect
especially at this this long uh
this long this this this long career of
mine and getting at this this
this twilight years like
and that's the thing about even this
going in there with the aspect of being
with death and all that is that
when that person is in there they are my
brother with me in this
and that so when you give me your best
even if i
even if i win dominant fashion but if
you show up
and you're as authentic and being here
as i am then then i love you and i'm
glad for you to be here and we're in
this together and
and at this point you know your loss or
my
or whatever is no less deserving of
veneration than the wind
like we're here in this and so to be in
the ring with fiora
and to venerate him in win or defeat
to be in there with with someone
like that is to me
it's so rare so it's incredible how
the ultimate violence is coupled with
like love or respect and it's like
it's it's weird how this is uh how
the competition in this violent form
is also a uh veneration of
just the human connection it's also the
removal i feel like it's the
purest purest ways purest on
most honest places of person can exist
uh that line and fight club you don't
know really who you are until you've
been in a fight i mean believe that
and i i've seen so many examples of
people trying to
portray themselves as one thing and then
in the ring
you see who they really are or even when
they're trying to persuade themselves as
one thing
and they're winning the crowd
at times will see who they really are
and still hate them
you know it's like but i said all the
good things
yeah bro don't work that way yeah but
speaking of fedor if we take you out of
the picture
who are the greatest mixed martial arts
fighters of all time
uh i i feel you out of the picture
as a cop-out to some degree i feel like
we need a little bit more time
you know so to to see how how this
unfolds
because you've got to compare a lot of
things and i ah
did i did i i think i'm like sanctuary i
did an interview
i don't know about centuries but that
would help if we can keep accurate
records and not allow
uh too much uh bias to to fall into too
much profit
right yeah but um i made an
argument uh i was in a i get a
it was it was a interview with an mma
outlet of some sort and i can't recall
who it was
but oh it was an argument about will the
winner
of cain velasquez versus
stephen yochik be the greatest mma
heavyweight of all time and i said
fucking no way oh no it was cormier
and miocic that's what it was i said
absolutely not
not even close and i said these guys
need a bit more time
to see how things go and also how things
go for some of their opponents and like
there's more factors than just this one
fight it really is
and i go and when you want to weigh
these people
even if let's say we'll bring aleister
or uh yeah aleister over him into the
end of the equation
okay you judge him on what you know now
what he's done for you lately okay right
which is a very myopic way of doing it
what has he done over his career k1
champion
uh he was a champion in uh
uh dream um he strike force
blah blah blah his overall record the
entirety of all the different opponents
he's fought and i just sit back and i go
i okay he's not the ufc champ
but his accolades his merits
in some ways actually stand up
higher than cormier's and mjojk is
so what about the moments do you give
much value to the special
moments like the highest heights you
rise to not in terms of records
or the strikes landed but just creating
a magical moment in
in a in a fight it doesn't have to be
even a championship fight
but just you know conor mcgregor is an
example of somebody who creates a
narrative who gets a story he creates a
drama
and the special magic happens even if
it's like not
myth is greater than reality and that is
always the case
but do you and so i understand that so
very much and
it takes an asshole like me to to poo
poo on your myth
they at least get you at the end of the
day you're not going to abandon your
myth
but um perhaps temper it with
the facts and logic but uh so you're not
a fan of myth
no i'm an absolute massive fan of myth
but you prefer facts and logic
it's like when i i know i mean i like
saying facts and logic because people
i also i am not a materialist in that
sense i don't think that materialism can
solve for everything it's not enough
it's not it's not robust enough i'm
sorry if facts and logic and or
uh reason as the enlightenment scholars
all thought
including marx was enough for people
then we would never we wouldn't have any
religions
yeah we wouldn't have like there would
be no we wouldn't have narratives and
myths and all this kind of stuff
it would not it just i'm sorry there is
no there's nothing
about history that supports the idea
that
rationality will over will overcome all
there's something about
ben shapiro's facts don't care about
your feelings that feels to be mis
fields be missing something fundamental
about human nature it's not
clear to me exactly what is missing to
give all
oh oh ben uh a fair shake
yeah and uh you know i don't know ben
shapiro i don't really listen to ben
shapiro not
against ben shapiro um i don't i'm not
here to say anything particularly bad
about him
um although i will say at one time tom
arnold was
seemingly trying to pick an actionable
fight with ben shapiro
in the ring or somewhere yeah and i just
and i actually responded like and i
tried to get him to clarify i said hey
are you saying that you want to fight
ben shapiro that you're looking to
actually because i was waiting for him
to say something and then i'd be like
okay
well it's one thing to want to get into
a fight with someone it's another thing
to go
pick on a little tiny you know guy
like ben who's much smaller than you and
doesn't train or whatever but you know
if it's not me i can find someone your
size and you can go fight him
you know don't be a basically don't be a
bully piece of shit
yeah you know which by the way tom
arnold you are a mental midget you are
never going to be able to
compete even with ben shapiro in an
argument on any level
about anything oh intellectual argument
yeah an intellectual argument you could
scr maybe you can scream louder than him
but whatever but but nevertheless
in the discussion of greatness in
fighting i think you you need to all
right numbers you need
the numbers the numbers and there's the
magic there is some context also in that
where did aleister overing fight oh we
found pride where you could soccer kick
people and stomp their heads and this
and that and so the the
the the game environment is actually
different too
so more uncertainty there's more chaos
and pride there's more
go back a little further and go like
what about the guys that used to like
dan severn fought bare knuckle head
butts the whole nine
beat down seven right i did beat dan
severan that was that was killing an
idol
so to speak although i didn't really
kill him because i still love him
you know he's still in i mean he's still
responsible for
inspiration along this whole pathway you
know it's it's
meaning meeting your god and then
putting a knife in it i guess
[Laughter]
uh realizing they're human and then
bringing them down to your level
exactly but also there's a there's a
huge misconception there and that is
that i could bring maybe i could bring
dan severan down to my level
but i couldn't bring his mustache down
to my level oh it is it is of mythic
proportions
and uh greater than yours your facial
hair is greater than yours
my facial hair is is is is creating its
own legacy but it is not dan severn
mustache level or no don fry mustache so
don fry mustache dance ever mustache
you know now you have like shia versus
sunni like
you think there will be a karl marx uh
like painting of josh barnett one day
with the beard and is that is that
basically i hope so i'll i will actually
comb my hair unlike marks but uh um
chaos is uh has a charm to it it does
it does i mean uh we all thought doc
brown in back to the future was was
quite
charming so yeah you have to throw that
into the calculation where they fought
yes this is and the rules that they
fought under you know some guy like
eager of
changing won a 32-man tournament or
something like that i go
okay uh stipa and daniel cormier are
awesome and they may they will they will
for sure
be uh revered as
when they're as for their careers 100
percent
can you say that they're particularly
even better overall than eager of
changing
maybe one of them could have beat them
maybe maybe one of them wouldn't have
you know maybe maybe here would have
fucking got him with the knuckles
right away well maybe if they fought him
in pride they wouldn't have won maybe if
they fought him
bare knuckle they wouldn't won i don't
know and there's something about the cat
like do you put
boys gracie in the top ten you know
there's some
top ten of all time in terms of
competitors is capable um
i don't know i'd have to think about
that maybe not but i because
tracy as like pyramid level like wow
dude what a what an amazing man oh yeah
he's so important absolutely incredibly
important
but there's something about stepping
into
uh like fighting another human being
under all the uncertainty that the early
ufc's had
i mean you don't know yup what is going
to happen and
couple that with not much money yep
all of it yes so that the purity of it
too there's something about money
i mean that i guess shit for that yes
world but that
ruins the purity of the violence yeah
people
given the opportunity for
yeah yeah well the bigger things get the
more i love the fact that that
fighting has opened up to such a degree
that the
career business side of it because i i
absolutely distinctly separate the two
the business side of it has
opened up to give me far more
possibilities open way more doors for me
than i ever intended it to
uh whereas the
p the athlete side of things has if
anything just gotten
substantially worse i would say and uh
some of this can be some of this is due
to
all the the nature of all games
will be learned will be gamed
uh without even the rules being broken
and once that's figured out
you need to make an adjustment no
adjustments have been made
so the game just appears to be the same
game over and over and over and over and
over again
on espn plus on whatever on whatever on
whatever it doesn't really matter which
night you watch
it's the same game constantly and
that's not because the the the athletes
are worse or better
it's because they have had that game uh
structure long enough that they figured
out
what do you do to be to be the most
successful at it what is the highest
percentage way of approaching it
essentially even if you're not thinking
of percentages
what would the if we take a step back
it's really fascinating to think about
the early ufc's
did you fight dan severan in the ufc i
found him in super brawl
so that was the early early days you're
undefeated
uh what were those early days let's say
of mixed martial arts like give
let me tell you the day of high
adventure
yeah it is it was so much fun and it
made you feel
absolutely like you were a part of uh
a novel a comic book i mean
i i would love to transcribe my
experiences
as what i consider a second generation
mma athlete
except i'm way too
sensitive uh to anybody's
personal any things that are not not
even to
you know i'm not a gossipy person i
really do believe that like small people
talk about others
big people talk about ideas so
um but there's some stories that just
can't
you can't tell without telling the whole
story and there are
so many amazing stories that could be
told
people being at their best people being
at their worst yeah the whole the whole
gospel is there something you could
speak to the chaos of the time
oh 100 like okay so we at amc
got uh connected to somebody that was
throwing an event in nampa idaho and we
all piled into this and matt humes
uh subaru wagon and we jammed out and we
left kirkland
and we headed over to idaho only to
find out that there was
nothing really put in place it was
absolute
disrepair and chaos there
they didn't have a ring they didn't have
this i it was
such a bullshit adventure but we were
like well you know there's hardly
anywhere to fight
it's tough to find these opportunities
so okay well
how about this whoever is here to fight
and
is willing all right well since there's
no venue there's no this whatever
we all got gloves we got mouthpieces
we'll just go to the park
still get paid yeah and so
folks were kind of like i don't know
about that the guy i was gonna fight
was he finally figured that they finally
he finally gets information on who i
actually am and i was undefeated at the
time and
i think i had fought superbrawl 13
already won that tournament and so he's
like yeah i had no clue
i'm so glad we didn't fight you would
have murdered me this is you know what a
setup
and eventually matt had to had to
strong-arm the guy and
get our money that we were supposed to
all get and drive back
and because he his whole position was
well there ain't no fucking way we drove
all the way out here
for free this is on you you fucked this
up
not my problem but what is my problem is
the lack of cash in my account
so fix it you know or
me fighting my first uh organized
fight against an amc guy
on 11 days notice uh
through a connection to an old wrestling
coach i had and i just
gathered up with what all my old martial
art my old martial arts
instructor that i had worked with and we
grappled in his apartment we did tie
pads in the park
i ran a couple miles every day and then
all right boom show it up one my fight
by front joke in two minutes
and then matt goes okay well
hey you did really great we'd like you
to come back and fight again in the
summer what do you think
okay go back off to university and then
i think hmm
well that fight didn't go exactly as how
i wanted it to
so i gotta find a way to get more
experience
i would literally fight people in uh the
university
like rec center on the old wrestling
mats as they didn't know i had a
wrestling team
i would find anyone doing martial arts
anyone talking about getting into street
fights
anyone whatever and just basically go oh
ever watch
ufc yeah yeah that stuff's cool what do
you what do you think oh man i'm super
into it man that's badass
rad so would you would you want to fight
i mean it was way easier picking fights
and then it was
you know getting a girlfriend yeah i
just you know path least resistance
i think it might be useful for us to uh
get some advice from you
yeah all right because you've
accomplished for
the journey of a martial artist first
if you've accomplished some of the
greatest accolades there is in the sport
if somebody who's starting out now
or like early on in their journey what
advice would you give
on how to become a martial artist
a catch wrestler a fighter uh
well i mean really what it comes down to
is do it because you love it
do it for that reason and that reason
alone uh
most people that get into this and
attempt to make
any sort of professional inroads with it
you are
not going to be the world champion uh
you probably will never even fight for a
belt
and you're probably not going to net
make money at this
so don't do it for those reasons do it
for the reason of the passion
do it for the reason to be the absolute
best that you can be
whatever that ends up being you might at
best only be
mediocre but you won't even be mediocre
if you don't do it like you really mean
it
so compassion look where's the kernel of
the passion
would you say is it in the learning
process itself the improvement
i think it really depends on the person
right i mean there's some people that
really love the
the the fact of they feel like they're
growing
right so well to power you know you're
growing growing stronger growing better
you know the idea of of eliminating
weakness
so uh twitch i'll quickly define
weaknesses as like things that weaken
you
not like being physically weak sure you
could call that weakness but maybe
you're not meant to be a super strong
guy
but choosing to be weak is really
a different story other than just like
we're all
uh deficient in some way or another so
that's neither here nor there it's a
matter of what you decide to do with it
and that's an infinite strength and
weakness
at least the way i look at it like
strength is choosing regardless of the
difficulty
to make improvements to strength is even
choosing to acknowledge that you you do
lack
and accept it and then make a decision
what to do with it um yeah but there's
also
there's a bunch of stuff that just like
you said it's what you're drawn to
there's an
honesty to just grappling that it seems
more real than anything else you can do
sure well that's the that's where the
passion of love can come yeah i mean
it's
being in an environment hopefully that
is as true as possible
uh would be would be a starter so it's
hard to be uh
a bullshit person when you're literally
trying to tear each other's arms off
yeah you know you really sort of see who
somebody is uh i also feel like you
really
really get to see somebody who there are
a couple instances where you really see
who people are
on the mats and in the bedroom so
even the aspect of self
betterment
growth along a path i mean hell that's
part of the
the the device of capture for
martial arts as a business give you a
belt
put a stripe on your belt each each of
these iterations cost 20 bucks
so but there's a benefit to that too i i
really enjoyed
the progression of belts sure is it um
you know a bit of his ocd or whatever
but you're enjoying
the recognition of your growth when you
feel when you're made to
feel when i think genuinely you do earn
it yeah i agree i process it i agree
i actually it makes complete sense to me
it just it's anything that is
is has a goodness in its purity can also
have
a detriment in its perversion so
and there's a value to competition i've
gotten some shit in the past for saying
this i've gotten the most
value in giving everything uh
i have to try to win and
and lose so like i've gotten i remember
most of the matches i've lost
and i think that's what i've gotten the
most from the sport is losing
think about it i mean if you really
think about it um
what what makes you want to actually in
detail
go over what happened oh it's the time
when you didn't get what you wanted
yeah it's a time when you gave it
everything you had and you came up short
or failed miserably okay so unless you
feel embarrassed in some way
right and so that's usually the only
time people again calamity
is the impetus for them to actually turn
around and go who the fuck
am i what am i doing and why am i doing
it yeah instead of naturally going
hmm okay well i won why
what was it the cause and so i think
part of my success is that
when i win i'm brutal when i lose
i'm brutal and there is no in-between so
i remember losing
uh the rematch against
noguera and i still feel like it was a
bullshit call like i feel like i won
that fight but
my my opinion is that and this even came
up so one of the coaches in the back was
like
oh you did great you know don't feel bad
you know blah blah blah blah and i go no
fuck that i didn't finish him i allowed
the referees to make a judge
a decision that i think is incorrect and
bad but that
came because i didn't take him out you
know fuck that no
no he won he's going to get more money
he's going to get more recognition blah
blah blah
blah blah i accept all this and i don't
and it's not okay
and i need to if i when i get a chance
to fight him again i got to figure out a
way to like take this guy out
i want to say forever i'm not trying to
put him six feet underground well
when i fight yes i am but yeah but but
the point being
i need to find a way to like this is
definitive
you don't get to say shit about it
because i'm the only one who can stand
right now
that's the way it's got to be anything
less than that is
not good enough and even if i achieve
that
then i gotta figure out okay it's not a
given
how did i get to this point how did i
make that happen
was it simply been uh because of his own
mistakes
or was it because of my my my successful
action so it's always self-critical
always constantly
you uh love movies i read this somewhere
yeah you mentioned blade runner as a
favorite number one of all time
the final cut that's my go-to so you
would say
uh blade runner is the greatest movie of
all time it's one of the greatest movies
of all time
what's in the top nice top five uh
blade runner final cut this is the
original blade runner
and i used to own on tape the original
vhs cut yeah and uh
and i had the director's cut on dvd why
blade runner by the way
as a kid i just thought it was so cool
there was something about really spoke
to me the whole cyberpunk landscapes and
uh you know this guy
chasing down rogue uh androids
replicants
and is it just the entire cyberpunk
universe it's just robots as well no
it's it's
i mean the cyberpunk universe is part of
it uh on the on the surface i have a
i've always tended towards dark subject
matter
uh like things that are of the dark so
to speak
are things that i've always been
gravitated towards i think maybe part of
it is that
the things that are darker are more
accepting and
more upfront with death
and perhaps i think that maybe that is
what was uh yeah somehow more honest
perhaps
and there's also the aspect of uh
rebelliousness usually like there was uh
i was never one to
want to just do what somebody told me to
do
you know um i'm not sitting around
trying to always be such a radical
individual that i can't
take orders no in fact i'm more than
willing to take orders
from somebody that i feel is competent
and has merit and reason behind what
they're doing and makes like okay yeah
yeah
i'm 100 for not only what can i take
orders i will help you achieve whatever
it is if i think it's worthwhile
um even at my own expense
but uh to get to that point is a rarity
like it's not not a given and so you can
even imagine like being a grade school
teacher and this kid doesn't respect you
and he doesn't really think you're that
smart
they don't really appreciate that but um
so cyberpunk is number one what else
cyberpunk is kind of number one it's an
environment i love but at the same time
conan the barbarian by john millions is
one of my favorite
films of all time uh and
you know that's such a pure film in a
way like the motivations are pure
they're very easy to follow but
not lacking in depth you know it's not
it's not just explosions and and teal
and orange
it's uh it's it's more on the human
condition
and i love it and it's shot incredibly
well it's got an incredible soundtrack
yeah i
fucking love it but with blade runner
also in a deeper sense you know again
the human condition
you know you start seeing like what what
is what is being what is being human
you know how does this relate to well if
you can make it and you can tell it what
to do
at what point is it like you should or
you shouldn't
you know why do you get to determine
what's alive and what's not what's a
life
that should be allowed to live and what
isn't and
what would be the strain of being roy
batty
and seeing all these incredible moments
that with his passing will no longer
exist especially if he hasn't had a
chance to
put that flame into another torch so to
speak if he hasn't written them down if
he hasn't passed them down
to somebody else
gone like tears in the rain like tears
in the rain that scene is incredible
uh yeah i mean but it's funny because
those two universes are very different
than the barbarian and cyberpunk because
they're that makes me curious about
what else might be in the list uh
well let me think it's a pretty do you
like that
no no i mean i'm sure the god i've never
actually even watched the whole
godfather no but also like uh was it a
casino
good fellas good phil is a good movie
but no that's not in my top
it's a good flick uh but it doesn't
really do it for me
uh i if people really want to get into
this a little more i did make a hundred
a list of a hundred hundred of my
favorite movies on my facebook fan page
nice
uh but uh do you remember like
oh yeah like blazing saddles is on there
right to the lost ark
um valhalla rising by
nicholas from winding refin uh maniac by
uh william lustig it's a
1980 gnarly
video nasty horror movie about a serial
killer
uh who murders women and
scalps them uh and it's gnarly as hell
and very brutal and very bleak and very
uh
i mean it's the kind of thing that like
a lot of people would have a real hard
time watching
but uh one again i like things that are
dark
but two i thought the performances were
fantastic in this film and they really
got out
the i think what the underlying thing
was and it was you know it was a guy who
was
basically just like run amok by the
overbearing mother uh union
archetype and it she was she imparted
her insanity into him
and he but yet there is this aspect you
could see of him of him
wanting to try and actually be able to
be in the world
and have love and have
a feminine companionship
to go with with his masculine aspect
but he had no way of understanding how
to really make that happen
and he had a complete negative
connotation to the feminine
so his struggle with and there's a
little
part in the in the movie where he
somehow comes across this model or
something
and they actually he starts to feel like
maybe he might be able to actually have
a relationship with somebody
and it goes somewhere but uh yeah even
the elijah wood remake i felt was
really well done and captured most of
the essence of what the movie was about
but i still feel like the
original by william lustig uh is the
best
what's the greatest uh love
movie of all time i just love movie of
all time it's like something more loves
i mean i suppose love underlies most of
these movies especially
i mean hell takashi mikey's films are
all about family
of all things as bonkers as those movies
are they
the general theme is family almost
entirely
in all of his films uh yeah there's
there's very i mean even you can argue
later on yeah there's this
every love film of all time uh
that's intro i mean is excalibur a film
about love
uh what's this called about king arthur
his caliber is about uh arthur becoming
king of the britons and his love of his
his country and his love of guinevere
but eventually yeah it becomes more of
about
the the necessity for the king to love
to to hold hold excalibur
to stay to realize that while if you're
the king
you can love your wife and you can love
your best friend and they
may fuck each other behind your back
and as they fall in love too but at the
end of the day you're responsible your
your love has to be to the to
the country and everyone else first and
not your own personal
uh wants which you know
well it made a much more interesting
story when you have uh carmen berenina
and and what is that one it's it's a
german
opera but uh you know into horses and
slo-mo and
sword fights and an epic death scene
between
uh arthur and his his son okay now i
definitely have to watch it i haven't
watched it
embarrassing it's uh it is john borman's
second film in hollywood his first one
being uh point blank with lee marvin
which is also
on top one of the upper echelon movies
on my list
derived from a book by called
the outfit by
ah what is his name uh
i forget but darwin cook the comics
illustrator he did donald westlake wrote
so darwin cooked is does an amazing
comic book
send up of darwin cook's novels and they
are fucking incredible
so anyways but uh the point blank with
lee marvin
uh you know it's a man driven by
purpose revenge but also by like really
pure motivations he wants his money he
was he was betrayed
he and he wants his his cash
because this is what he agreed to do the
thing for and this is which also is part
of the reason why i like no country for
old men so much
which i felt was a great great great
movie even better book
but uh i remember talking to my friend
and i go you know
anton chigger is the most pure human
being in that whole book
well that guy's the villain i go is he
evil
he's the one he lies to no one he does
everything he says he will do
he always follows his word and on the
rare occasion he he allows fate to make
a decision
as he figures like well whatever all led
us to hear will will
will lead us one way or the other and if
we're at this crossroads what
how is there any better or worse way
than to do it over a coin flip
and so that whole scene where the guy is
going
well what am i putting up and he goes
everything you've been putting it up
every day of your life and that's true
everything we do is a
as a decision as a calling as a choice
and
it toward and then it bumped me out they
they
reduced the last interaction between
chigger and
uh what's his face's wife and he finally
finds her
and she's like you don't have to do this
i mean she's he's like yes yes i do
this is the way it is you can think that
your life could have turned out any
sort of ways you could have done this
you could have done that but the reality
is this is the way your life is that's
the way it was always going to be
you know the fact that i'm here is the
end of it and that's that
yeah it's funny if you're honest this is
what dark movies reveal that the
villains
are the the purest of humans
and uh can teach us the most like
profound lessons
and that's the certain example of it
what do you think
the big ridiculous last philosophical
question what do you think is the
the meaning of this whole thing we got
going on of life and existence on earth
from your individual perspective but the
entirety of the human species
life uh the universe and everything yeah
don't
[Laughter]
we could just leave it at that i knew
exactly where i was going i love it
josh i love you very much you've been a
huge inspiration i have uh
a friend who she said do you know lex
friedman have you gone on lexi's con
i go yes i know i know lex friedman is
i've
sadly been way too long in contact
without
making it happen for too long and uh and
yes i will 100
uh i even cut a shirt at the beginning
of the pandemic to make my own little
mask at one point
due to the the lex process yeah and uh
uh i love it i can't really hear you
like but i'm demonstrating
just let's see it through but uh now
this has been a blast and next time
i'm back next time let's drink some of
the the warbringer whiskey i will bring
some warmaster uh i wasn't sure if
you were uh if you imbibed at all in
spirits
100 percent it felt a little weird to do
it early on in the morning especially
because i'm flying
though does it i mean i've had some
wonderful morning whiskey at times
it it uh now that you've mentioned it it
doesn't at all
so next time let's make sure what joe
oregon calls the
uh adult beverages let's uh make sure we
indulge
i have zero reservations for doing such
a thing i'm into it
josh thanks for talking today my
pleasure
thanks for listening to this
conversation with josh barnett and thank
you
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and now let me leave you with some words
from sun tzu in the art of
war the supreme art of war is to subdue
the enemy
without fighting thank you for listening
and hope to see you
next time
you