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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Rev Transcription and Captioning Service.

Click the sponsor links to get a discount at the support of this podcast.

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 and 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 Freedman.

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?

We're right in into the deepest.

No foreplay on camera.

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 authentic is not the

right word, but like, yeah, we'll say organized.

I would say that Nietzsche is probably one of the people with the most influence on me.

But I also feel like, to a degree, your personality will oftentimes dictate what philosophers that

you can vibe with.

So what ideas from Nietzsche was it, the Ubermensch?

Definitely the Ubermensch 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 secular context.

And the idea also that the Ubermensch is a striving and overcoming something that you're

always working towards that very few will ever, it's not like 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 turned

into a super soldier, like that wouldn't make it.

That's like the very surface level and incorrect understanding of what the Ubermensch is.

The Ubermensch is the idea of this kind of human that transcends all 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 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, an image, an ideal, a set of principles that

we can connect to that doesn't rely on otherworldly kind of out there things deeply human.

With Nietzsche, I feel like the concept of the Ubermensch is something built on authenticity

as well.

As Heidegger would say, like Dasein, right?

So when you are authentic and Heidegger being a follower of Nietzsche's and highly influenced

by him, 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 create from your lump

of clay that is you.

Because there are certain things that are just not going to happen for me because it's

not in my proclivity.

I mean, I'm never going to be five foot tall and 120 pounds, that again, I guess.

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 combination that makes you, that gestalt part of yourself,

what those things are and how you can use them, then you can work towards 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.

Religion is a constant 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 like the idea of Catholic's original sin.

If you think of sin, not as evil, but as missing the mark, the archer's term where it derives

or even like in Spanish without.

So as being, if you accept that you are imperfect, if you accept that you need to constantly

strive even against yourself, because 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, 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 character of your little demons that you get to play with and around them finding a

path to whatever the hell, ideal versions of yourself you can carve and pretending like

that's such a thing as even possible.

The other idea about Nietzsche is, on his idea of morality, he presents the argument

that morality is a human illusion and that, 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 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 history and the most varied history you can find.

So I would say probably religion is your earliest one that you can get for written history or

written examples of human behavior and psychology at the furthest that we can look into it 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, Europe

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 vary quite a bit from

monotheist, polytheist and so on and so forth.

But then just seeing how there's all the through lines.

And of course, Campbell, he did this much earlier than me thinking about it.

But 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 is if it

only applies to this time, this people like getting overly pomo about it is just a really

idiotic postmodern.

So you think that there is just like Joseph Campbell, there's a thread that connects all

of these stories, narratives that we construct 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, Nassim Taleb likes to talk about how he views his, the way he interacts with groups

in terms of scale.

You know, what is this thing about like at a, at the familial level, I'm a, I'm a communist

and then at the civic level, I'm a, I'm a Republican or something and that's other level.

And 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 from, you know, subjective to the environment

around them.

So I don't even mean environment just in the sake of physical environment, 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 at times it takes you out.

It's just not with any particular compunction or prejudice.

It just, oops, you know, sorry, there's no more dodos.

My bad.

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 is there's an

evolutionary advantage to being, to striving, to 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 force is behind this evolutionary advantage and scale.

Yes.

So when we're dealing with a small tribe, sure, when you meet another tribe, maybe there's

other factors that are going to end to 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 you can't really be close enough to someone down the line of

some of that next like that 150 is 150, 150, and they just now all of a sudden become 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 a negative results for those that aren't,

you know what I mean?

Right.

But another way to frame that is 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 than the way we treat a stranger,

the way we position ourselves towards that stranger might be in a way that 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 AIDS be in coming up

with all cool kinds of technologies and ways to 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 starting for resources.

Yes.

I think that there's a lot of rationality behind this argument.

And in some ways I agree and a lot of ways I see it as missing the point of how this

experiment has been playing out across time when you look at what, for one, it's like

defined resources, you know, what is a, what is a resource of, as humans would define it,

right?

Or wealth even.

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, this is built on concept, on idea, and some, 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 that these things don't become, 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 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.

Do you think that that is a basic resource, the knowledge to attain the very low level

things of water and food?

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.

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 path line, the pathway of Western civilization and its growth and then

you look at how technology injected into it over time, you know, how it magnifies things

or pushes things at orders of magnitude faster and then the internet comes along even faster,

you know, and so you're watching industrial revolution to, what is it, 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, plant obsolescence happens quicker and over and over and over again.

And wealth increases, increases, increases, increases in terms of the things that we're

able to acquire.

Right.

I mean, I've seen homeless people 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 going on hard time, what are they, the things

that they value, you know, 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, 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 actually brings me to a lower state.

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 selves.

Well, it's also a necessity for, it's animalistic, but it's also either you do it or you don't.

Right?

Unless somebody's willing to share that water or if that water is of such a limited capability

or such a limited amount, then you will have to murder to have that water.

But over Netflix, the argument is the higher, we get up to this hierarchy of what we consider

in Los Angeles resources, we're less willing to commit violence.

We're less willing to commit violence, I would say over Netflix, but we are willing to commit

violence over Netflix, over everything associated with Netflix, over televisions, over sneakers,

over, 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, targets, I mean, and then you

look and it's like, well, okay, well, what are people, what are they got?

What are they so hell bent to get out of this whole thing?

And I'm even talking about the ideological elements or anything like that.

Just like, okay, something's going on, boom, looting, whatever, you know, what are you

going to loot?

Yeah.

You know, you'll have AOC say, oh, people needing bread, I didn't see a single loaf of bread.

You know, I saw TV, television, poetry, Josh, 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, what is

becoming first principles to most people.

Well, wait, wait, but you could also argue though, those riots were more like the madness

of crowds, which is definitely a lot more than just that.

I'm just saying that given a chance, it's like, okay, boom, the lights are off, the

grid is down, we've hacked into the whole system, turn into an 80s movie and you have

the ability to go get ahold of whatever it is that you think is most important.

And what do we do?

And I say we, as in, you know, I'm including all of us, we grab a TV, we, we attack it,

we break into a sneaker store on Melrose.

We do, it's just like, we still giant cause statues where 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.

I'm a big fan of art, but 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.

Yeah.

Are you, are you going to go, well, you can't really sell it on the, on like the art markets

where people were really going to pay for it.

So are you going to become an underground art dealer with your one piece of cause art?

One interesting thing, just 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 you've been on Joe Rogan several times,

Although everybody always comes to me and go, oh, that was so great.

I didn't know you, you're on, you've been on Joe Rogan.

I go, this is like my fifth time, dude.

I've been a fan of yours for a long time from, from other avenues.

This is a long time coming actually everybody.

You have no idea like how many times through 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 a starstruck.

Don't talk about this, but you symbolize something very important to me through my journey,

through wrestling, through Jiu Jitsu, through Judo, through just street fighting, through

just combat.

There's a, you're the, in some sense, the devil on my shoulder of like, of violence

in a good, in a, in a devil gets a bad rap.

He does get a bad rap.

I realize, you know, sitting in, in ice down at that low ass level, you know, but you know,

the angel side is more like the athletic, the sport, the science, the tech, the, the

technical, the chest side of things.

So, uh, but on the library, Alexander, let me ask, uh, because you were on Joe Rogan,

it does make me really sad.

And I realized 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 wanted 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 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.

So many friends 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 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, um, 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 a wrestler.

So I've mentioned to you offline that I competed in a couple of catch wrestling tournaments.

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 as

catch can.

It's just that over time, certain aspects were, were, um, uh, removed from the competition

structure so that they became, uh, null elements, things that were discarded.

Uh, but it's funny that you can take a high level, um, 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, uh, 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 solve there.

You could be attacking the head, the arms, you could be attacking the legs.

There's also a 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, uh, thing.

Then taking the guy from their feet to the floor, uh, and to pinning them as you go from

like, was it, uh, Cornish wrestling, Turkish oil wrestling, Mongolian, Sumo, uh, Indian,

uh, well, they'll call it Pellewani.

It's also called Kushdi, um, Jiu Jitsu, Judo.

Um, so many of them is like, there's a, you saw him, though.

Even if it doesn't end the match, it's still like, what are the most important aspects

of the competition itself across 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, uh, what could be a definition of dominance?

I don't know.

And then, I mean, it sounds very much like a chain to a radiator.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This, uh, there's a threat that connects all winners, uh, but submission feels different.

Uh, I mean, it is actually different.

When you think about it across the landscape, I don't think radically different, but still

slightly different in that, um, if you think of wrestling as being derived from, from, from

combat, right?

So it, 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 don't, don't come at me with your talks about your fucking worm guards and blah

blah blah and whatever fit spider, barren.

Yeah.

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, uh, getting someone on their back.

Okay.

They're hot.

You guys, 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?

And that was 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 jujitsu's, uh, concepts

come from with all their leveraging and off balancing is, Oh man, if I end up in this situation

and 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 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

IBJF jujitsu tournaments and just, you've 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?

Pull 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 the, everything learns how to kill,

how to fight, 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 shit head.

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.

And if you are probably getting into any large amount of fights, it's probably cause you're

being shitty at being an alpha and now people are tired of you being in charge.

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 healthcare 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 a 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 used to follow and I had to unfollow

it because it was too painful for me as a human being called nature's metal on Instagram.

It was sobering and then it was like, this is too sober.

It is very sobering.

So in there, the risk is at its highest level.

Where the damage you take, the winner walks away, hurt.

Getting blamed when you need every aspect of your physical and athletic faculties to

survive because it isn't going to be 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, what is it, there's a lyric from a clutch song.

Don't go for the fat ones.

Don't go for the slow ones.

Man, but that, the universal truth of the way nature works is not cruel, it's not cruel

as just the way it is.

Yeah.

I mean, watch animals getting to 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 to 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, nah, 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, 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, is, is again, it's an absolute.

It is in every person.

It is a part of every interaction.

It is in part of every, every law, everything.

And I'm not, by the way, not an ANCAP.

So don't even, don't, don't hit your wagon to me on that one.

ANCAP.

An anchor, capitalists, yes.

Not an, not an ANCAP.

They have nice book, book shops.

Yeah, they do.

I mean, I'm not, I'm not going to, you know, sit here and, and talk ANCAPs, 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, cause I'm going to take, I'm going to gather all kinds of people.

I'm going to make this, I'm going to get the strongest together and I'm going to take

your shit.

Okay.

Can I actually, on that topic, I've, um, a friend of mine now, uh, a fellow Russian,

uh, Ukrainian, uh, Michael Malis.

Oh yeah, I'm familiar with Michael Malis.

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

you're in the white and black.

But he, he lives in New York city.

He is, uh, espoused his ideas at anarchism and his idea, and this is different than,

um, sort of the iron rand, uh, 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, uh, in an anarchism is one that feels to

me not grounded in reality.

I may be, 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 going to be that it's going to be globalist 100% because it has no, pure capitalism has

no consideration for, uh, has no consideration for your, your native users or of any sort.

Like it doesn't.

It doesn't matter.

And, but the idea of governments is that the land, the little piece of land you're 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, the, the 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 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, well, we won't call it utopia.

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 emerge because even people always think of states as like people rubbing

their hands and smoking cigars and back rooms and just out of nowhere coming around and

just like, Oh, we're going to create this big centralized thing and just so that we can

tell everybody what to do and we can be in charge.

I mean, I know that there are people like that that exists, that they would like to

do things of that nature and that they see, uh, 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, eventually a state, people want a, 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 and 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, 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?

It has to be a ruler.

So you're saying like naturally when you start talking and thinking about scale of humans,

naturally states emerge and can we try to make an argument for anarchism, which is,

uh, okay, okay, okay.

So, uh, anarchy in a sense is an 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 managerial.

So you, you have a sense, uh, 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 would take maybe not even just, maybe not even defining, uh, it specifically as a 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

the paradigm that we exist in now where we're, we're giving so much value to stuff that isn't

really all that valuable.

Yeah.

You know, we're, 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, uh, 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, the classic idea is like, oh, you know, women are psychic

and I have a sixth sense and what have you.

And I think that's just a, uh, 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, at,

at seeing, um, uh, 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,

There's generally more.

Distinctively.

In all the full forms.

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 in 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 meeting persona and some of these personas are even deliberately created to illicit

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, go fund these 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.

Oh, 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 cash out of it in this sense.

And I'm not even, and this isn't just a reference to like butt pics 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.

You're saying this kind of new medium of communication on social media is, uh, 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, these arguments of 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 ship, but that doesn't describe capitalism.

Is the ability for us to create whatever we want or, you know, create our thoughts, ideas,

physical things and trade them freely amongst each other 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 than someone a third observer goes, oh man, you

should have, 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 that you, you both agree 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.

It's like the fuck they will, when did you see this happen in real life?

You know, I mean, people aren't even accountable in their revolutions at the 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.

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 eventually communism will happen to every, 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.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then it's just like, so you have to think like, if, if there was one billion Marx's in

the world, how would they behave?

It would be absolutely, 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.

That doesn't mean they can't make, I don't know that it's never, what, you know, somebody

argues he's just a, he's a loner.

I mean, I don't know that his personality sucked at all.

Let me walk that back and that he was human.

Say 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

people was written to me that 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 the bitter

guy.

I will agree with you and Marx is as bitter as they come to, but, um, you know, a bitterness

in and of itself doesn't make like what, why I, I hate Marxism comes from, you know, the,

the whole, the entirety of the thing.

And but the dismissal of human nature, but I'm not going to say that Marxism or practic

man, you can find any forbidden book and it could have something good in it.

As colonels, a good idea.

Yeah.

And like at the end of the day, you know, Marx is a human being.

It's got a nice beard.

He does.

He had a hell of a beard.

You know, 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, are, are, they're more hot for like, uh, Max Sterner.

People like to think that, uh, Nietzsche, uh, 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,

the, 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, uh, physiological construct as anybody

else.

Like, of course it's possible that this guy could think the same thing.

We, we think a lot of the same things to be perfectly honest.

I mean, reading the Haggakure 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, uh, 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, uh, impetus for action that he

found, uh, a problem, like, well, that's the same, that's the same shit now.

Like we're not, and this was 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 and we haven't changed.

Growing set of tools, though, to, to kill each other with or 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, acquire more and more knowledge

about that human nature, uh, but it's been a very slow journey, slower than people realize

in terms of understanding, uh, human nature.

Let me ask in terms of egoism, to be curious, uh, uh, to, to get your sense about Ayn Rand

and, um, her whole idea of virtue of like selfishness and her, because you mentioned

that everybody has a kernel of truth.

There, there's potential for a kernel of truth to be discovered in any, in anything.

For example, I've been recently reading Mein Kampf, uh, you know what, that's the thing.

And there's something in, there's probably things in Mein Kampf 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 René Girard's, uh, concept of the scapegoat, I mean, in

that sense, whereas, uh, you know, Hitler uses, he wants to make the, the Jews, uh,

the scapegoat for World War one.

Yeah.

I mean, for me, the starting point, similar with Ayn Rand is, uh, like Mein Kampf 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.

Yeah.

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.

That's a Peterson kind of concept.

Also, um, Jonathan Haight 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 disgust

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 it's probably jarring for people to think, but we're, we're all, I guess, supposedly

potentially capable of just being in, and all these evil people in the world think they're

doing it for the sake of good, 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.

Yeah.

He had, he had his five year plan.

He had a look at the things.

He 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 moods to make decisions.

I think we also have to consider, um, 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, I'm not sure that, uh, that's, you're right there.

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 land.

As nationalistic as Hitler, but, uh, and was as capable and willing for, uh, violent conflict

as Hitler for the names of the state.

Yeah.

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, uh, in Germany,

part of that was, uh, the national socialist, like they, they came up and then they, they

were the other ones to fight the communists.

And so you had the two totalitarians going after it.

Um, 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, just, you know, casually thinking it seemed like Stalin decided to go, all right,

well, we're not going to go just start launching right into more conflicts here.

We're going to, these dudes are going down.

So that's cool for us because they hate us and we hate them.

Um, but now we're going to, we're going to focus internally and then we're going to

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, there's fascinating dynamics of propaganda throughout the whole period

that that's, that's a whole another kernel.

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 delude themselves.

I mean, the same is true with the Stalin, uh, people want to take Stalin as word for

it.

They still delude themselves.

Yeah.

That way we will dilute, we, we will dilute ourselves over any number of things and until

even after the fact where the history just says, Hey, fuckface, you know, you, you cannot

supplement your pseudo reality onto actual reality here.

But yet we deal with people in pseudo realities constantly.

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 truth is 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 two in Russia

is very different today under Putin than the version that we're learning on the, 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.

Yeah.

It was, it was a unifier of a sense and it, I mean, yeah, I mean, you, you can't argue

that war and conflict that, and, or I just even, um, reducing that to stressors, agitation,

suffering, doesn't create human motivation.

You know, we started this off, you brought up, uh, Frankel, I'm like, yeah, Frankel's

dope answers for meaning, uh, has those 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, um,

Yeah.

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 who's listening, uh, war to survive.

We need war to flourish.

We need at least.

Can you explain the quote, the air quotes around the war?

Well, because, uh, take, take, take, take, take the

Do you see wars as violence?

No.

Wars are not violence.

So like, so no air quotes because, uh, while, you know, us getting on the mat or just getting

on these hardwood floors and wrestling around is not literal war.

It's war of a sorts, you know, we're, you know, it is, it is a deluded form of war.

American football is a deluded form of war.

All this, these are deluded 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 is 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 exists in creation without my knowledge does so without my consent.

Okay.

That's pretty heavy.

That's that's hard.

Can you break that up?

Can you say that again?

All things that exist in 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 is another similar

look into how the judges in that book is, he would study everything everywhere he went.

And so he's collected this group of Neriduels from all over to go on these hunts against

certain tribes 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 explaining how watching the judge and how he drawing

everything's got this 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, a Spanish

armor.

He draws it into his book and then crushes it.

So the reason we'll always have war in the society is because there's this struggle amongst

people that want to be the designers.

There's that, but I'm just saying that he's got this whole quote on war, like war is play.

War is a game and the difference is that what's at stake.

So all things are a game of some sort and 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 all aspects of any game is war and it's just what is at stake?

If it's your life, it's a different story.

If it's just a coin, it's another thing.

Another nice way to put it is humans play a game in this pursuit of creating whatever

the hell the reason is that we keep creating cooler and cooler things, that it seems to

be the result of a game that would naturally play, would naturally crave.

I don't know.

I mean, that's been the struggle of philosophy is to understand what is the underlying force

of all that?

Is it the will to power?

I think will to power is a really great way of describing it.

Do you want to be the winner of the game?

No, not just, no, I don't look at will to power as 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 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 needing component of fulfillment, then

you're going to be a very unhappy person with a whole lot of things.

But 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 our collective definition.

If I just come up, listen, I'm sort of, if I come up with my...

That's a lot of weight on the external on you.

Right.

That's how games seem to work.

Somewhat.

So I'm already a winner in my life by defining my own definition of success.

I'm basically the best person in the world at doing me.

At being Lex.

Yeah.

So like, and I'm really happy with that.

That's the source of...

Well, I mean, think about it.

Games are also iterated, right?

So you start off with your game and then your game with your immediate and then the game

further than that and 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 don't want to think about things that way.

We don't want to think about being towards death.

We don't want to think about whether or not I'm going anywhere after this other than

in the ground or what have you.

You know...

So all of these games are a sense of distraction.

This is where we...

Kind of.

The violence is that we need to let this out.

And so it is of our...

Kids need to wrestle and play, just like animals need to wrestle and play.

We need to have forms of competition.

We need to have ways to test ourselves to create when...

What is it?

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 way of saying that there will always be war, I mean, that's my hopeful view is

that most of the war conducted in the future will be, like you said, the man must go to

war with himself.

That would be great.

That's what, to me, love is, is like focusing on yourself and your own improvement and your

own creativity and towards others feeling sort of emphasizing cooperative behavior and

compassion and empathy.

It would be great.

But I mean, you can have, well, I'll put it to you this way.

If you have a whole community of Randians and a whole community of Ancoms and they could

all like, I don't know, a toast of London on Netflix and they love Netflix and they

love the internet and they love picking apart Moncombe 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 fundamental root, they cannot help but go to war because they are literally oil

and water.

They're the perceived, but they would, the very labels they assign to themselves would

need to dissipate.

Well, true.

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, there's some days I'm an Ancom, some days I'm an Ancapsons, whatever the Anarchy

Capital.

It depends on the hour, the minute of the day, you constantly changing moods and embracing

that flow, the change of opinions, of ideas.

As there's some days where 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 and cynical I get.

I can see that.

Up and down.

I don't even let my, well, okay, I try not to let.

In most days, it's never a problem.

Any sort of, what are the kids call it now, black pilled way of thinking, be my over,

the umbrella, which I hang under.

We actually, to drag us back, can we talk about Carl Gotch and Cat Tristler?

Because I do want to make sure I touch it.

I mean, who were?

Carl Gotch is.

Is he the greatest Cat Tristler?

I don't know if he was the greatest Cat Tristler ever.

I don't, I don't, I mean, he's one of them for a myriad of, Carl Gotch, Billy Robinson,

Gotch and Robinson's trainer, Billy Riley.

So who are these figures and what did they bring to him?

Mitsuo Maeda, he's one of the greatest Cat Tristlers ever because he's responsible for

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu along with Gustavo Gracie.

Okay.

There's so much of things I'd like to say here.

One of the things that Cat Tristler seemed to espouse as a principle is that of violence.

I just, the tournaments I competed at, the unfortunate thing, and we'll probably hopefully

talk about it a little bit, they weren't disorganized and the level of competition was pretty low

where people really sucked.

Pretty typical.

Is that typical?

Okay.

Well, it's, I mean, think about local run of the mill, Jiu Jitsu tournament versus IBJJF.

Yeah.

Created, you know, a vast difference.

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 Cat Tristler tournament.

It seemed more real and honest because of the way they communicated about violence and

aggression.

I love that.

So it is, it is often more honest.

I think that as...

Who is that from?

Is that originated from Gotch?

That Billy Robinson said by Maeda?

Well, I mean, it originates from all wrestling in that even Wade Chalice, not a, 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 pin you, but there's no way you're going to let

me do that. So how do I make it so that you want me to pin you?

Well, it's by you put them in excruciating pain.

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.

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 loved 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 Bruce Lee water flows may make it so easy to pin yourself.

So it's technique. It's like the elegance, the ease of movement.

This is the Satya Brothers, Vasya Satya, like the, just the elegance, the efficiency, the

chance of it.

They're practically like ballet watching those guys.

You know, it's incredible. Satya Brothers are massive.

And also caveat a little bit that like, if you're, if you're approaching this from a

Russian perspective, Russians are quite truthful about things, especially when it comes to

something like combat.

They just, this is how it is, and this is how it's going to be.

It's honest.

Yes.

And honesty is what I really like about catch wrestling because I find that we, given any

opportunity for us to be dishonest for any number of reasons, we're going to, 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 ADCC world champions, you know, some of the best you have ever heard

of.

There ain't 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.

And then you said no and attacked their leg.

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, 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 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 to, that's 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?

Cause you know, it's not my fault.

You're not stronger than.

I'm speaking of something else that's, uh, that's, well, 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.

Well, but let's talk about, let's talk about the highest level of competitions.

There's a book called wrestling tough.

Yeah.

There's a really good book.

Cause I've, I've encountered in my life, a few, uh, especially in wrestling, people

who really try 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 fuel.

And like, I remember the story, I don't know where I read it, 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 usual like athletic convention

and like, you know, design of necessity.

So my anecdote for this was I was sitting with a 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 a world champion

guy.

Uh, and he's competed at the highest levels, uh, and he, he looks at me and he goes, hmm,

you know, do you ever get nervous before fights?

And I looked at him and I went, no, I don't.

And he just looks at me and he's like, fuck man, I'm so nervous, you know, how do you

do it, man?

Well, you know, I wish it 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, so, uh, 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 next fight

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, but there is a, there's a state at which you need to be in to do your

best.

You have to lose to the individual, you have to find that.

Can you comment on, uh, Tyson, Mike Tyson?

Oh, yeah, that thing.

So first, so he, uh, there's two things I want to know.

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 I've hurting somebody in the ring.

So like he gets aroused at the violence.

Yeah.

Uh, I like it cause 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.

So do you think there's something more deeply universal to the, the Mike Tyson speaking

to the fact that he's aroused at the possibility of violence?

Yeah, 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, 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.

Yeah.

But, uh, the power with 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 time 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 very nature of it.

Yeah.

There's an example in Lesbock's 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 the overcoming it is

the thing that all of a sudden gives you that tapping into your highest state, right?

This is, you know, man is a chasm, a tightrope between man and Ubermensch.

Well, I don't want to leave your thought about, we'll call those things flourishes to

the aspect of Tyson's interpretation or 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 to me, that's an absolute, I don't want to, don't

come at me with all your other fucking social sciences crap, no, we have distinct personalities.

That personality, that who you really are.

And this, you know, again, Heidegger, Dasein, like being authentic.

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 abuse of household or something

like that.

And I was a kid who was very joyful and inquisitive and spent a lot of time around older people

of all things.

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 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 hold anything against like any of the kids that used to pick on me or

whatever, especially at the youngest age is like, man, they don't know shit either.

So, 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 and it's

okay.

And being in that moment of just going, going to town with someone else, it just felt like

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 I've 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 them up is one thing, 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 level is necessary and you need to learn what comes with all,

what's the responsibility of, when you enact violence, I mean, you take on something when

you have a responsibility for that.

This is the extension of your actions.

So 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 get this back together

again.

And I never say that I, that I'll merge the two or anything like that.

So all what happened, my journey from adolescence on 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.

And the attempt for society and certain people within managerial positions 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 that you could explore through sport, you can explore it and it's more socially

acceptable to explore it through sport.

For sure.

And even, but even then there's like, at times it's socially unacceptable.

So I beat some shilt, 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 of him getting, you know, it's

raining blood, quote, some slayer from a lacerated, some shilt, bleeding in his horror, creating

my structures.

Now I shall rain in blood.

But I win the fight, arm bar, 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, we don't want him doing, everybody had this huge problem.

And then some folks would even contend, oh, you know, we're trying to do, like, no, no,

this isn't planned.

This isn't, you know, 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 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 one, 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 and call it orgiastic, you know,

to align with it.

Go back to Mike Tyson.

Yeah, but Tyson, but no, no, it isn't, it's beyond that.

Is it a celebration of human nature?

I've had some 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, this is, this is where I feel like the restrictions of general existence in society

are gone and I get to fully live in a state that feels more meaningful of the most meaning.

You know, I think of it as life and death and 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 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 chair, but like I don't, there's a part of

me that can just like, no, 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 was me learning how to fully understand violence, humans 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

my sporting career.

Even when I get in the ring, I don't have any mercy generally.

And if I do, it's because I make 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.

The natural state.

There's nothing, there's nothing that will hold me back other than the referee.

And that's that.

You know, I know I agreed to be allowed to do and not to do, 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 just yet another

canvas that humans can paint beautifully on.

Clearly.

I mean, we have venerated the violent.

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 when

they're a hero.

We venerate the violent in our religion.

Well, I mean, I guess some people venerate the violence of Yahweh and Saddam and Gomorrah.

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?

Yeah, there are a few, actually.

Fighting semi shield and a rematch.

Well, the first one was pretty good, too.

But the rematch was I was suffering.

I'd suffered early prior, the week prior to 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.

But I wasn't back up to 100% in terms of this 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 260, 257 or 260 something, something

like that.

This time he was like 290.

And so he was a significantly bigger cat.

And he was, he's a big dude.

And I just remember being up against the ropes with him, changing levels, trying to take

him down.

And he's fighting and he's hippin.

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.

It's not going to happen.

And I arm barred him.

The other arm.

And you remember the fact he's like, man, I really wanted to get you for that.

I wanted to get that match back.

And then you fucking got my other arm, dick.

I'm like, dude, I still love you though.

But the whole time you're like, so this has to do the, the dichotomy of you're feeling

you're worst.

And having to overcome.

You're like literally mentally telling yourself, there's no way.

There's no fucking way I'm going to lose this fight.

And then there's even my last bare knuckle match and getting in the ring and fighting

bare knuckle boxing for the first time.

And just thinking, just being in a great state and 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

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, okay.

That's not just like empty trash talk.

That's no, that's like a clarity of mind and the seriousness of all this.

I go on my diet.

I'm most pretty high of chance of being deformed some way.

So the 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, uh, I'm

not a religious person at all, even though I very much have to seem, seems to bang on

the drum about the usefulness or understanding the usefulness of religion for people.

Um, but, you know, if, 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, that sounds great.

I saw you, uh, throw your hat into the ring of fader Emily Nankin.

Yes.

He got COVID, I guess.

I hope he, I hope he overcomes it and comes out just as good.

If not better.

But did I understand correctly that 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 year's like two warriors.

And, and, 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, there 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 loss 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 Fyodor and to venerate him in win or defeat, to be in

there with, with someone, uh, 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 and his violent

form is also a, uh, veneration of just human connection.

It's also the removal.

I feel like it's the purest, one of the purest ways, purest on the most honest places a 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, I believe that.

And, uh, 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 portray themselves as one thing and they're winning the crowd

at times we'll see who they really are and still hate them.

You know, it's like, but I said all the good things, bro, don't work that way.

Yeah.

But speaking of Fyodor, 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, to see how, how this unfolds, because you

got to compare a lot of things.

And I, uh, did I, did I, I think I'm like, 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, but, um, I made an argument, uh, I was in, I, 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 came Velazquez versus steep

Miochik be the greatest MMA heavyweight of all time.

And I said, fucking no way.

Oh no, it's Cormier Miochik.

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, 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 Alistair

or, uh, yeah, Alistair Overeem into the, into 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.

Because he done over his career K1 champion, uh, he was a champion in, um, uh, dream.

Um, he strike force, blah, blah, blah, his overall record, the entirety of all the, the

different opponents he's fought.

And I just sit back and I go, okay, he's not the UFC champ, but his accolades, his merits

in some ways actually stand up higher than Cormier's and Miojito's.

So what about the moments?

Do you give much value to the special moments, like the highest, highest you rise to not in

terms of records or the strikes landed, but just creating a magical moment in, in a, 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, creates a drama, and a special

magic happens, even if it's like, not when the myth is greater than reality.

And that is always the case.

But do you, do you, and so I understand that so very much.

And it takes an asshole like me to, to poo poo on your myth, 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 a absolute massive fan of myth.

But you prefer facts and logic.

It's like, it's like when I, no, 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, uh, including

Marx was enough for people, then we would never, we wouldn't have any religions.

We wouldn't have any, like there would be no, we wouldn't have narratives and myths and

all this kind of stuff.

It would not be, it just, I'm sorry, there is no, there's nothing about history that

supports the idea that rationality will over, will, will overcome all.

There's something about Ben Shapiro's facts.

Don't care about your feelings that feels to be missed feels to be missing something

fundamental about human nature.

It's not clear to me exactly what is missing.

To give all, all Ben, Ben, uh, a fair shake 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, say, Hey,

are you saying that you want to fight Ben Shapiro that you're looking to actually, cause

I was waiting for him to say something and then I can 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.

Intellectual argument.

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 look at some of the numbers and there's the magic.

There is some context also in that where did Alistair Overeem fight?

Oh, we fought in pride where you could soccer kick people and stomp their heads and this

and that.

And so the, the, the game environment is actually different too.

There's 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 Severin

fought bare knuckle, head butts, the whole nine.

You beat Dan Severin, right?

I did beat Dan Severin.

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 an eye.

He's still responsible for inspiration along this whole pathway.

You know, it's, it's meeting, meeting your God and then putting a knife in it, I guess.

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 Severin down to my level, but I couldn't bring his mustache down to

my level.

Oh.

It is, it is of mythic proportions and.

Great than yours.

Great.

Your facial hair is great than yours.