June 4, 2025 • 61 mins
"The less you care, the harder you come."
Your therapist won't tell you this, but caring too much is the ultimate cockblock to pleasure. And you, my sweet, overly invested friend, are drowning in a sea of giving-a-fuck when you could be floating in an ocean of delicious indifference.
Welcome to this week's episode, where we're going to strip you of your precious concerns like a dominatrix peeling off your armor of good intentions.
You think you need more love? More connection? More meaning?
Wrong.
What you need is the courage to stop giving a damn, and I'm here to hurt you in all the ways that'll set you free.
Get ready for:
- A master class in the art of strategic apathy
- The dirty truth about why your caring addiction is cock-blocking your evolution
- How psychedelics might divorce you from your neediness (and why that's hot)
- The sexiest thing about power (hint: it doesn't care what you think about it)
Listen as we explore why drama is the foreplay of existence, and how your resistance to pleasure is just fear wearing a consent-culture costume.
This isn't self-help. This is self-harm in reverse – destroying the parts of you that keep sabotaging your liberation.
If you're clutching your pearls of wisdom too tight to let new pleasure in, this episode will teach you the art of letting go like a zen master having a tantric breakthrough.
WARNING: Side effects may include:
- Spontaneous outbreaks of not giving a fuck
- Increased pleasure tolerance
- Decreased tolerance for your own bullshit
- Sudden urges to prioritize your pleasure over others' comfort
- The ability to say "no" without writing a thesis to justify it
Available now wherever you get your permission to stop caring so damn much.
The stakes are high, but your anxiety about them doesn't have to be.
Come play in the space between caring too much and not caring at all. That's where the real pleasure lives.
And remember: If you're worried about whether you should listen to this episode, that's exactly why you need to.
Your enlightenment is optional. Your pleasure is mandatory.
Got something to say to me? Slide into the DMs.
It's OUT! Sophistication Nation: Brief Interviews with Women I Pretend to Understand: https://emersondameron.hearnow.com/sophistication-nation
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
K-Chung, los Angeles, 1630 AM.
Kchungradioorg.
On the World Wide Web, this isEmerson Dameron's Medicated
Minutes, la's number oneavant-garde personal development
program, home of Ask a Sadist,proudly sponsored by the First
Church of the Satanic Buddha,birthplace and habitat of
(00:30):
bite-sized erotic thrillers.
My name is Emerson Dameron.
I'm the writer, producer, host,everything.
I love you personally.
Levity saves lives, lives, and Ithink the main thing to do with
it is Riff it out and then runit through the steps.
(00:50):
Keep raising the stakes.
How can I do that?
I'm going to be talking aboutdeath.
I'm going to be talking abouttrying to break out of the cage
that my depression presents todisprove my big idea that I'm a
worthless human being.
God, so much other stuff.
It's gonna be fun.
Y'all Come along.
I will be doing some of thatand that's the main thing I want
(01:12):
to do Get that done and out ofthe way, and then I'm gonna work
on finding some work to do, away to present myself so that I
can make some cash.
Tomorrow's gonna be all aboutthe money.
Honey Gonna do all of the stuffthat will make the ends meet or
(01:32):
just make ends Means is whatI'm gonna be working on and I'm
gonna be mean to it.
I'm gonna rough it up.
Hell yeah, you'll see.
Well, you won't, but it willand it will feel and it may not
see anything anymore because I'mgonna gouge its eyes out, make
ends, meet with a vengeance anduse my anger.
That's what I'm gonna do.
The next step, the new me, hellyeah, and maybe other stuff too
(02:25):
.
Life would be so much easier, somuch less confusing if it
didn't have so many other peoplein it.
People are confusing, right.
They're frustrating.
You don't ever really know whatthey're coming from.
It's hard to read, it's hard topick out the signals, it's hard
to do the dance.
People surprise you.
You don't really know who yourfriends are.
Prankster Alan Abel, in 1979,faked his own death and at the
(02:48):
beginning of 1980, he placed hisown obituary in the New York
Times and the reactions of hisfriends to the news of his death
surprised him.
Some people he barely knew werebrokenhearted and some people
he considered his best friends.
His MySpace top eight justshrugged.
So you don't really know whoyour friends are until you
alienate everyone, and of courseyou wouldn't do that, that's
(03:09):
not in your nature.
But you do have to wondersometimes why we can't just be
real with each other.
The reason is nobody wants that.
That would be boring, it wouldbe oppressive.
We're headed toward that Ourprivate lives fully exposed.
It's gonna be hell.
We're not ready for that.
We like the mystery.
You like stories where thereare stakes, where there's
(03:31):
suffering, where there's drama,conflict, mystery and intrigue.
Life needs stakes to beinteresting and to be worthwhile
, to keep you engaged.
When life gets boring, you getpulled into dangerous, poisonous
distractions Because you'remissing the drama.
You're missing the action, thelust, the erotic intrigue and
(03:53):
the push-pull, the friction.
Risk and freedom cannot besacrificed.
Life is not worth livingwithout them.
If you're willing to take arisk and be free and understand
that freedom hurts and requiresyou to challenge a lot of your
assumptions, which can be reallyuncomfortable at first and can
provoke cognitive dissonance, ifyou're willing to embrace that,
(04:15):
you will discover that securityand safety are a lie.
So you sacrifice your risk andfreedom on the altar of security
and safety and a sense ofcontinuity and knowing what
comes next.
You are deluding yourselfBecause everything is always in
flux and everything is theater,everything is play, everything
is storytelling, everything ismystery.
(04:37):
There's kabuki, there's kayfabe, there's all kinds of drama
Push-pull, friction, intrigue,betrayal Also really hot sex.
You know that there's more tolife than this, intuitively in
your gut.
And you're doing well.
You're quite successful.
In some ways, life has turnedout a lot better than you
expected, certainly moreinteresting.
You've done well and you'vebeen rewarded.
(04:59):
That's because you deserve it.
You've worked hard, you'veworked smart and you've applied
yourself.
Things are working out, but younevertheless have a growing
sense, certainly manageable, butnoticeable, as the years go on,
seemingly much more quicklythan they used to.
You have the sense that you'remissing the point.
Here's the thing If you want todig into that and figure out
(05:22):
what's going on there and getyour fingers in the grease,
you're going to have to unlearnsome things that you think that
you know.
You know dominance and power.
Flexing your power and wardingit over people is wrong.
Powerful people, masters of theworld, are bad people and they
got that way because they'resociopaths.
Money corrupts.
(05:42):
Power corrupts absolutely,especially if it's absolute
power, because power is evil.
Humility is good and sufferingbuilds character.
Community is good.
You're just like everyone else.
Everyone is the same.
Nobody is better than anyoneelse.
Nobody has the right to flextheir power over everyone else,
except that that's totally wrong.
(06:02):
Power is value neutral.
It is necessary to get anythingdone.
Martyrdom is taking power in aRube Goldbergian way.
That's an example of power.
Power is much more complex andmultifaceted than your narrative
would indicate, and power canbe good.
It can also destroy you.
But you have more power thanyou know what to do with already
(06:24):
, and that's why it drives youcrazy, because it can blow up in
your face.
It can take out your wholeneighborhood if you don't figure
out how to use it.
But here's the thing, power isresponsibility.
You're responsible for thepower that you have, whether
you're owning it or not, andyour power is scary and you're
right to be afraid of it,because it can kill you and
everything you love.
But mastering your own power isthe work of a lifetime, but it
(06:49):
cannot begin until youacknowledge that you have it.
When you do that, you might geta little excited Because your
power is sexy, so it makes you asexy MF and you already knew
that about yourself.
You just have to own it.
Don't be scared, don't be shy.
It knew that about yourself.
You just have to own it.
Don't be scared, don't be shy.
It feels good.
Come on in the water's fine,it's got bubbles in it.
You're a basically good person.
(07:10):
You know you're hardly perfect.
That would make you boring anduntouchable and kind of plastic
and evil and unknowable, kind ofdisgusting.
But you're good.
You put other people first.
You're kind, you're considerate, you do the right things.
You hold the door for peopleand you defer your own
gratification.
You don't complain, but you dokind of resent people.
(07:34):
You're not getting back fromthe system what you're putting
into it.
You're a good person.
You don't burden people withyour own needs and they don't
get met.
People should just figure outwhat you need and do it for you.
Because you're a good person,you deserve that.
They should just know.
But they don't.
If you're not taking care ofyourself, no one else will.
(07:54):
Here's the truth.
You might be more intuitivethan other people.
You might be more intelligent,you might be more soulful.
You certainly have qualitiesthey don't have, and if you're
thinking about these thingsdeeply which is why you're here
you've got the edge on a lot ofpeople.
Frankly, most people arewalking around in a walking daze
and don't know what they'redoing.
Neither do you, because nobodyknows what they're doing.
(08:19):
But now you know that you don'tknow what you're doing, and
that is true leverage power, andthat gives you the
responsibility to dominatepeople when they're asking for
it.
If you run into somebody andit's clear that they don't know
what they're doing, put thatperson in a headlock and give
them more than they want.
You're doing them a big favor,especially if you're getting
them out of the cockpit ofwhatever plane they were about
(08:40):
to fly into the side of amountain.
But you can only do thatbecause you know that you don't
know what you're doing.
Life is a game.
You know that pleasure feelsgood and so does fun, and there
are different kinds of fun.
There's a bad buzz and a goodbuzz.
There's the fun that you put ona credit card, metaphorically
or literally.
That creates greater pain downthe road, and there's flywheel
(09:04):
fun that creates more fun.
That's the fun you want to goto.
But you want to go towardpleasure, and that's what life
is about.
It's not about self-sacrifice,unless that's what gets you off.
It's not about money.
It's not about sex per se.
It is about pleasure and funand that's really the whole game
.
And life is a game.
It's theater.
(09:24):
Everything is in flux and youcan cut out your moralizing.
It's exhausting.
You don't really believe ityourself, which is why you're a
raging basket case.
It's because of the cognitivedissonance, because you're not
buying what you're sellingbecause it's worthless.
Get over the moralizing crap.
Just cut it out.
Live a little bit, find outwhat's actually true for you,
(09:48):
and that involves understandingthat life is a game.
It's about pleasure and play.
It's why plants turn toward thesun, it's why butterflies are
free.
Be in that.
Adopt the playful philosophy ofthe seducer, the libertine.
Get a little bit decadent,fun-loving, embrace the sadism
or masochism within you,dominate or submit because it
feels good.
(10:08):
And because it feels good, itis your responsibility.
Any sort of portentousness orominousness that comes with any
connotations of the notion ofresponsibility will be easily
mitigated by the fun that you'regoing to have and when you get
all kinds of hot in the crotchfrom embracing the pleasure and
the play and the fun and theflux and the theater of life.
(10:31):
Let go, do it.
Wake up, show up.
You're already here, come onRarely.
Have we seen a person fail whohas thoroughly followed our path
?
On our path, we avoid harddrugs and alcohol while
indulging whole hog in weed andpsychedelics.
(10:53):
Or we drink socially, smokeweed and avoid anything else
smacking of fun, or we smokeweed and then forget we smoked
it, convince ourselves ourcocaine is vegan, or only drink
for the gram.
It depends on who you ask andwhen and who they're trying to
impress.
We don't agree on the rules, sowe can't lose.
The name of our path is CaliSober.
(11:15):
Those who do not succeed atCali Sober are people who cannot
or will not just chill andunderstand that everything is
relative.
There are such unfortunates.
They are not at fault.
They seem to have been born inUtah.
Our stories disclose in ageneral way what we used to be
like and then trail off intononsense about how we're all
different.
(11:35):
We're all the same and nothingreally matters.
If you've decided you want whatwe have and you can afford the
ridiculous rents we pay, thenyou are ready to take certain
steps.
Here are the steps we took,which are suggested as a program
of California sobriety.
Step 1.
We admitted that doing as manydrugs as possible, as often as
(11:56):
possible, had becomeunmanageable.
Step 2.
We came to believe that a powergreater than ourselves could
help us chill, help us hash outour childhood traumas and make
us feel special.
Step three we made a decisionto chill, to smoke a bowl and
turn our will over to whateverhigher power had the shortest
waiting list.
Step four we made a searchingand fearless moral inventory of
(12:19):
ourselves and figured out how tomonetize it as IP.
Step five we admitted to ourhigher power, to ourselves and
to a famous person, the exactnature of our wrongs and
understood that their halt ispart of the journey.
Step 6.
We were entirely ready toexperience transformative
personal growth through theingestion of Toad Venom.
Step 7.
(12:39):
We hallucinated contact withvarious entities some clockwork
elves, a blue axolotl with atrident, henry Rollins and
others, and immediately referredto them as our good friends.
We humbly asked them to removeour shortcomings or to let us
know if they had the hookup forthat.
Step 8.
We made a list of all thepersons we harmed and were
(12:59):
totally ready to make amends toall of them, because we have no
time to hate Step 9.
We didn't make amends to all ofthem because we have no time to
hate Step 9.
We didn't make amends to any ofthem because it would mean
putting up with their bad energyin an hour of freeway traffic,
and we have no time for thateither.
Step 10.
We continued to take personalinventory and, when we were
wrong, smoked enough weed tochill and stop judging ourselves
(13:20):
, or vaped enough DMT totranscend good and evil For good
.
Step 11.
We sought through shrooms,sound baths and combo ceremonies
to improve our consciouscontact with our higher powers
as we understood them, prayingonly for a million dollar idea
that would get traction beforean earthquake swallowed us all
or we went broke and had to moveback to Topeka.
(13:41):
Step 12.
Having experienced ego death asa result of these steps, we
tried to carry this message toothers by bragging about it.
Many exclaimed what an order.
I can't go through with it.
Do not be discouraged.
No one takes anything seriously.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Your dreams are just content If it feels as if the
world is ending just chill, orswitch from Sativa to Indica, or
(14:21):
try a hybrid the 12 steps ofcali soap.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
When I met her I knew she was tough and tender, but
mostly tender.
The toughness was played up,genuine, but also a coping
mechanism, a facade.
To the extent that she playedit, I treated her like a pal.
We had a lot in common.
We were both conversant aboutart, great literature and
psychedelic mushrooms.
She was a serious person with alot of responsibilities.
(14:49):
Sex is where people hide things.
Our sexual personas can bealmost like photo negatives, the
selves that we present, that wewant to be identified with
professionally, socially or toourselves.
Even Everything is hidden inthe sex.
She was so busy, competent withit, responsible, or to
ourselves.
Even Everything is hidden inthe sex.
She was so busy, competent withit, responsible and respected
(15:14):
and taken seriously, and such agood girl that she would do
anything to get dropped downlike a bad one, humiliated, used
, degraded.
I made her my dirty little elseand she couldn't get enough of
it and she would do anything toget tossed, cooking gifts and
treats and vacations that Ispecifically asked for.
When she was preoccupied or outof town, she would find toys
for me to play with, sometimesyounger women adjacent to her
(15:36):
friend group that she mentoredAt first.
It was women of the type thatshe preferred and we got some
explosive electromagneticthreesomes and foursomes out of
that.
And then she started comingthrough with the girls.
I like Rock and roll girls Alittle dirty, a little edgy,
artsy, not yet thoroughlycorrupted, ready for it,
(15:58):
cognizant that there's a firsttime for everything.
It's probably going to happensoon.
I was taking advantage of her,but not.
She did all of this because sheloved me.
She knew I was part of the deal, she wanted the case and she
went above and beyond to get it.
It was a wonderful relationship, I would say for both of us.
I felt loved, desired, longedfor, worshipped.
(16:21):
I felt like a p***y.
She felt sweet, submissive,sexy and, more than anything
else, useful.
She had found her higher power,leader, authority figure so you
could dominate her and make herlove it.
It was a wonderful relationshipuntil I reconnected with my
soulmate if such a thing existsmy twin flame.
(16:41):
If you believe in that crap,she may as well be.
She is very unavailable, butthat's not stopping me from
loving her profoundly, fully andcompletely.
She deserves nothing less.
I love to hold her through herfeminine storms.
She shakes and cries and thenthat gets way to rolling
(17:02):
laughter.
I roll around in each other'sarms and I straddle her.
She shares her profoundsensuality, deep, deep down to
the earth's core.
I go deep, deep, deep anddominate the hell out of her.
I straddle her, I flick hersternum below.
She holds gas that's going tothe head.
I make her an awkw awkward andI slide back down.
(17:25):
I f***ing gas, even thoughshe's a little too tight for me.
I pump it.
I pump it, I put my hands in.
She looks next.
I remember now she sees stars,so she knows who's in charge
around here.
I'll love her for the rest ofmy life.
I think it's probably going tobe mutual, because we're never
(17:45):
going to be able to have anadult relationship.
We can let each other down, butnot catastrophically.
Domestic bliss usually does it.
That's my twin flame.
She's around.
We can't stop pounding it out.
We got caught.
Last time it was by her husband,this time it was by my
ultra-compliant girlfriend who,it turns out, had some festering
(18:06):
resentments around the thirdparties that were entering and
exiting through the revolvingdoor in our relationship.
I kind of had a feeling, but Ididn't want to press the issue
because I didn't want to stopthat train.
But that's when it becameuntenable.
That was the end of what, in apractical, material sense, is
certainly the best relationshipof my life, and I what in a
practical material sense iscertainly the best relationship
(18:26):
of my life, and I was not in ahurry to get in another one,
because I'd reconnected with thelove of my life and she was
unavailable.
So I didn't have to have arelationship with anyone else,
which is good, everyone'shorrible.
I could have sex with anyoneelse I wanted, because we're not
really a thing and yet we are.
So I don't have to have sexwith anyone else I wanted,
because we're not really a thingand yet we are.
So I don't have to have sexwith anyone except for her.
(18:47):
I want that.
It was good.
It's not going to last.
Nothing does why.
That he saves lives, but onlytemporarily.
So if I made it, if I reallybroke through, if I made it as
(19:36):
much as it's possible to make itand then made it a little bit
more, because that's the kind ofsuccess we're talking about
here, purely theoretical realm,so we can succeed as hard as we
want, and I did that to thepoint where it's impossible for
me to take the L.
Nothing is a risk, nothing isan expense.
That's how hard I made it.
If that were the case and I hadthe power to do so, I would
save everyone.
(19:57):
No questions asked from all ofus.
What's it to me?
I've made it so hard that Ihave no hard feelings anymore.
Things could not have turnedout better than they did, so why
would I be mad at anyone?
And it's impossible for me totake the L.
I can do whatever I want andset it all on fire, and it'll
all just come back.
I'll just make it again.
That's part of making it allthe way, and past that, I would
(20:20):
save everyone from this, all ofthis.
That's the first thing I woulddo.
So why is God a bigger assholethan I am?
Not just me, like everyone Iknow.
If I knew someone that was asbig an asshole, as petty and
vindictive and violent as theOld Testament God, I would end
that friendship immediately andnot feel bad about it.
(20:41):
Also, needy, weak, pathetic,incapable of doing anything
without external validation, godis a bitch.
You can do better than this.
Maybe that's the price of fame.
If you succeed too hard, itdoes seem to create challenges
that most people can't handle.
Maybe nothing, not evenomniscience, omnipotence and all
(21:03):
benevolence all at the sametime isn't enough to defeat the
curse of fame.
In that case, my heart goes outto him.
Do I worship him?
Hell, no, I'm actually betteroff worshiping myself.
(21:29):
Things to do that might help Gooutside.
You promised yourself hours agothat you would go outside, did
you?
No, you did not.
You haven't been outside muchof at all in the last few weeks.
You used to go for walks.
What happened?
Are you scared?
What is this?
You don't talk to people.
You used to go for walks.
What happened?
Are you scared?
What is this?
You don't talk to people.
You're scared to death.
The more days that go by and youdon't talk to another soul, the
(21:51):
harder it feels like it's goingto be, which is the thing that
does the most to make it hard,and it is not insignificant.
When you think something isgoing to be a miserable
experience, that goes a long waytoward making it one.
Not saying that it wouldn't beanyway.
If you're out of practice,you're not going to have a great
night the first time you go out.
You're not going to have one ofthose nights where everything
just comes together, and if youdo, that might be the worst
(22:12):
thing that could happen.
It's like getting up doingstand-up the first time and you
kill.
You're going to be chasing thatdragon for the rest of your
life A lot of the rest of yourlife at least the next 10 years
is going to be sucking out loudat stand-up comedy or, in your
case, getting out among thepublic, which is something that
you have not done much of in thelast calendar year and change.
(22:33):
Human interaction has a lot ofvariables you can't control, so
make sure you're maxing all thevariables that you can control
Hydrate, exercise, don't listento as much sad music.
Listening to sad music makesyou feel worse.
It doesn't help.
That's an established fact.
Of course, we do it anywaybecause we like to torture
ourselves and we like to tellstories about our suffering,
which is our favorite thing todo, and that's why we always
(22:56):
overdo it like you have.
Maybe.
Just do the opposite ofeverything that you want to do,
but don't know why you want todo.
Just try it For a while.
Do the opposite.
It'll be a pain in the ass andyou can go back to ruining your
own life as soon as you a storyas this goes on.
(23:38):
Pay attention not just to thewords, but to how you feel about
the words in your body.
The words, but to how you feelabout the words in your body
deep down, in all those placesthat are so energetically
charged that it's a little scaryto go there.
By the end you will know me andyourself much more intimately
than you ever expected to, thanyou thought you would ever be
(23:59):
able to, but you are because youhave courage that you're afraid
to express.
That is so powerful.
With me, it's all aboutpleasure and power.
I have this friend.
We're pretty tight.
He asked me once how should Isolve my problems and I said let
me get back to that.
I'm amazed at how disgustingyou are, entranced with your
(24:21):
vapidity, shell, shocked at thewarmth of your heart and the
depth of feeling I see when Ilook deep, deep down in your
eyes, deeper than I everexpected to penetrating opening
all my windows and doors andsaying seduce me.
What I said was take a differentview of the problems, take
different views of differentproblems, take a unique view of
(24:44):
each problem, if that's what ittakes.
And he did, and his problemsdissolved.
We celebrated by smoking5-MeO-DMT, the venom of the
Colorado River, toad BufoAlvarius, known as the Everest
of psychedelics, although, nowthat I think about it, we may
have done that before all of theproblems disintegrated.
It's neither here nor there.
(25:05):
Welcome, welcome.
(25:44):
I'm glad you're here.
I'm very excited for the ideasthat I'm going to share.
Really, just one big idea thatI'm thoroughly confident will
save your life.
I'm seriously thrilled about it.
I'm experiencing a wholespectrum of positive emotions.
That is not a typical day atthe office for me, as you'll
discover.
(26:05):
I used to care very deeply andprofoundly and dangerously about
almost everything, all sorts ofthings.
I cared way too much.
I just cared about whateverhappened to be going on in front
of me, and it was more than Icould handle.
I oscillated wildly betweenanxiety and depression.
(26:26):
I sought out depression as arelief from anxiety and I sought
out anxiety as a relief fromdepression.
There wasn't much I could doabout most of the things that I
cared about and I knew deep downthat I was wasting my energy.
I was driven to care, to beinvested in my life and the
times that I was living in.
(26:47):
Caring is its own punishment, asI discovered.
It wears down the nervoussystem.
It wastes your time.
It takes your focus off whatreally matters, which will soon
be revealed.
That's foreshadowing Inliterature.
It's an open loop in marketing,and I put it there because I
care about you and I care aboutthis big idea.
(27:08):
This is my retirement tour fromcaring.
I'm gonna care just long enoughto share this big idea and I'm
gonna hang up my jersey.
It's so important that I wannashare it with you, and that is
that much.
As caring is its own punishment, apathy is its own reward.
The correct approach to life isapathy.
(27:31):
The less you care, the betteroff you are, and you should
really focus your energy ongetting your level of caring
down as close as you can to zero.
There is an art, a science, tonot caring.
Primarily, it is a dailypractice.
You are what you do every day.
(27:51):
You are what you don't do everyday.
That's part of the practice.
This practice is the practiceof learning not to care.
I had to learn not to care.
I was not born not caring.
It was a very deliberatepractice A lot of trial and
error, a lot of frustration, alot of caring a lot more before
(28:13):
I learned to care a lot less.
And one of my goals in sharingthis information is to make
things easier for you, sharewhat I learned so that you can
learn from what I've alreadyfigured out and not care as much
now and then really not carelater and you're truly done
caring.
What this really requires is afundamental mindset shift.
(28:37):
It's a rewiring, not just theway that you think, but the way
that you perceive the entireworld the frame that goes around
the picture of your life andyour perception and who you
think you are, and what thismeans is that your practice is
cultivating the attitude ofapathy.
It begins with admitting theproblem.
(28:58):
The problem is that you care,probably way too much.
That must be followed bycontrary action, in this case a
commitment to change andrearrange first your thinking,
then the stories you tellyourself about yourself, your
commitment to caring as a formof suffering, self-abuse,
(29:19):
self-sabotage, and then you willbe on the royal road to a life
of magical, a life of magical,mystical apathy as your
spiritual practice.
Caring is caused by neuroticidiocy.
It's caused by themisperception that anything
matters.
Almost nothing matters.
(29:39):
Very few things do.
Some monks and contemplativesdevote their lives to trying to
figure out what those perhapshalf a dozen things are.
They stare at the sides ofcliffs and sit in silence for
months, possibly years, in theattempt to figure this out.
Some of them believe that theyhave, and they've tried to share
(30:00):
that information, but it getslost in translation.
My belief is that the thingsthat are worth caring about are
largely ineffable.
There's very little hope ofgetting enlightened in that way
in this lifetime, so you'rereally better off cutting your
losses and not caring aboutanything that will solve the
major problem in your life.
(30:20):
The contemplatives are rightabout one thing Meditation is
your friend by this time.
You've been hit over the headwith meditation for the last
many, many years.
Thousands of years it's beenaround.
If you've lived previouslifetimes, you're probably
hassled about meditation inprevious incarnations.
(30:40):
You're getting a lot of stuffabout it now from Tim Ferriss
and Sam Harris and yourtherapist and people on dating
apps.
If you live in SouthernCalifornia, as I do, everybody
wants to meditate.
They want you to meditate.
They're right.
Unfortunately, they areannoying, but they are correct.
Meditation is not anice-to-have.
(31:02):
It's not a cute woo-woo.
New Age hobby.
It is absolutely crucial tomake sense of the modern world,
and the way to do that is bymanaging your emotions and
eventually killing them dead,murdering your feelings,
absolutely slaughtering thatpart of your experience.
It will be much easier to notcare.
(31:24):
You will open up whole newvistas of possibilities and
capabilities that you were notaware of before.
The next thing you want to dophysical exercise Also not news
to you that this is a good idea.
You want to hydrate yourself,move around every day, get into
your body, which gets you out ofyour head, out of your heart
(31:44):
and soul, in those conceptualplaces and into the physical
realm where you can rely on youranimal instincts.
Get jacked, because that makesyou dumb, or it makes it easier
for you to be dumb, becauseyou're hot, remarkable looking
and thus don't need to indulgethis idea that being smart is an
(32:05):
advantage.
It really, really isn't.
You just have to be smartenough to know that you're an
idiot and then be smart enoughto stop caring.
Then the next thing is todesensitize yourself.
I was very squeamish as a kid.
I didn't like horror movies.
I didn't like amusement parkrides, particularly roller
coasters.
I had a nervous stomach.
(32:26):
I didn't like gore.
I was just easily scared todeath Not all the way to death,
because then I would havestopped caring and that would
have solved my problems.
I was very much alive, all toomuch.
In some respects, I was able todesensitize myself by the time
I was in high school.
I discovered at that time theunderground press.
(32:49):
I did not have internet access.
This was in the mid-90s.
I loved getting stuff in themail, which is one unique facet
of living in the middle ofnowhere.
The mail was very exciting tome and I ordered certain
materials through the mailcertain publications, small
press zines, pamphlets fromfringe activist organizations
(33:10):
and threw myself into theextreme.
I was interested in serialkillers for a bit.
Being into serial killers iskind of like being into the
Doors.
It's cool if you're a teenager.
If you're in that phase, enjoythe hell out of it.
It's very fun.
I was very into blood and goreand low-budget horror films and
metal music.
(33:31):
Ghetto Boys, the Gravediggers,Horrorcore was a genre of rap at
the time and then when I wentto, college I majored in
journalism.
I had a class with a journalismprofessor who'd previously been
a working newspaper man.
In the course of his work hehad to look at a picture of a
young girl child who had drowned.
That's when he decided thatjournalism was not for him and
(33:53):
the reason he was teaching it isthat he wanted to dissuade as
many people from becomingjournalists as he possibly could
.
His goal was to have one-thirdof the class drop out before it
was done, and he succeeded inthat.
I was not one of them.
I'm a straight A and straight Fstudent.
I'm an inverse bell curve I getA's in things that I care about
(34:15):
and I'm good at and I get F'sin everything else.
I had screaming ADHD when I wasa kid, which probably also
explained some of thescatterbrained, scatterhearted
caring that I was doing.
I loved that class.
I thrived.
I got an A.
I finished it because being inthe field of journalism was an
excellent way to desensitizemyself, to see the horror of
(34:38):
human existence, the morbidreality that we live in, to
simply get used to it, thickenmy skin, toughen up where the
fringe terrors of the worldbecame commonplace for me.
I'd recommend doing the samePrepare to care a lot before you
care less.
That means driving into thestorm, finding the thing that
(34:59):
scares you because you careabout it so much, getting used
to that thing, desensitizingyourself.
Have someone drop a bag ofspiders in your bed.
If that's what you're afraid of, you won't die and you'll care
less after that.
It is a process.
You will care the most beforeyou stop caring.
So I remind you, as the sayinggoes, don't quit before the
(35:22):
miracle happens.
In a blink, the lights will gooff.
You will be in sweet, sweetdarkness and silence.
Another way to cultivate theattitude of apathy is to get
good at shrugging off the thingsthat are hardest to shrug off,
which would be your successes.
If you can be apathetic aboutyour wins, through meditation,
(35:43):
desensitization, etc.
You will find it much easier toshrug off your losses as well.
If you're shrugging offeverything, you are what you do
every day and you become thatthing and you will become what
you are and you won't care andit'll be glorious.
For now, self-care is important.
For now, take care of yourself,hydrate, work out, as we
(36:04):
mentioned, meditate, be kind toyourself, be generous.
This isn't really worth caringabout that much.
Yes, it is, but you want tohave fun, not caring.
You're working on yourself.
This is doing the work, thework of a lifetime, the best
work you can do.
It's fun.
Work is a misnomer.
The idea of hard work wascreated by sociopaths, the
(36:29):
rulers of the world.
They were born not caring aboutanything.
Everything they do is strategic.
It's about consolidating power,and they've convinced you that
hard work is somehow noblebecause they want you to do
their hard work on their behalfand they want to get rich off of
your back.
And they want you to carebecause that makes you
low-hanging fruit, easy pickings, easy to exploit.
(36:52):
That's where this poisonous,horrific, smothering culture of
caring originated People who arenever able to care.
You're never going to be onthat level of not caring.
You're just unlikely to getthere in this lifetime.
So I wouldn't try to competewith those people.
Some humility is necessary.
Don't care too much aboutyourself.
(37:13):
Let your ego die.
Don't care about status.
Don't care about the big thingsand don't care about the petty
things.
Don't care about high schoolcrap.
Do practice self-care for aslong as it takes to get to the
point where you don't need tocare about anything.
Yourself can be one of the lastthings that you stop caring
about.
Be generously selfish.
Being selfish makes youwell-defined.
(37:35):
You know what you like.
You can communicate.
You can establish boundarieswith people and people like that
it makes life easier for themif they know who the hell you
are.
So selfishness if you're notgood at it, if you don't have
boundaries, if you're not goodat enforcing them when someone
tries to drive a tank through.
Being generously selfish willmake people around you happy.
(37:57):
Maybe they will start caringabout you.
That'll take some of thepressure off of you.
They might take care of yourneeds.
There'll be a few fewer thingsthat you have to care about.
You can get them to performtasks on your behalf.
Find someone who enjoys groceryshopping and also digs your
action.
Combine those things and havethem do some grocery shopping.
There's some choices you don'thave to make.
(38:18):
Some things you don't have tocare about anymore.
You will have the power to walkaway.
Your relationships will beamazing on a level that you
cannot comprehend right now,because there's no way to
describe this experience.
Until you're there, you will bemagnetic.
The sex will be volcanic.
You won't care, and that's okay.
(38:38):
You don't have to.
It'll be a story that you cantell and someone else will get
off on it.
You can go right on not caring,because that's the secret of
your success.
There are resources for this.
Practical nihilism is onephilosophical outlook if you're
of an intellectual bent, but themain thing to do is don't be
afraid to get up to the lip ofthe abyss and look in and see
(39:02):
how abyssy it really is andresist the urge to do anything
about it.
Anything you do is just goingto cause new problems or make
the existing problems worse, orboth.
Caring is always a bad idea.
Almost nothing is worth caringabout.
You don't know the things thatare worth caring about.
Cut your losses, stop caringand you can stop all the other
(39:24):
things.
You can stop ruminating, youcan stop procrastinating.
You can break through blocksand resistance and stop smoking,
stop snitching.
When you stop caring, that isthe big stop sign that stops all
of the traffic.
It stops all of the honkinghorns and the air pollution and
(39:45):
the rush hour traffic of thepeople that just care way too
much.
You won't be annoyed by thembecause you won't care.
Believe that.
Care about that enough to get tothe point of not caring and
that'll be the last thing youhave to care about and you will
be free, and freedom will not beterrifying the way it is for a
lot of people because, toreiterate, you won't care.
(40:28):
Bye, Thank you.
(41:25):
Hi, I'm Emerson.
You might not know it to see myboyishly tousled hair and smug
smirk, but I have severe,chronic depression.
Had it my whole life.
For me, the way that tends tomanifest is ironclad belief,
gospel truth, my risen Christ,that I am a repulsive,
(41:47):
radioactive piece of shit.
No one should have anything todo with me and I deserve to die
and I should try to make thathappen.
If you saw the old Pink Panthermovies where Clouseau hires his
assistant to try to assassinatehim to keep him sharp, I have a
highly motivated assassin in mymind that follows me around
everywhere I go, which maybehelps keep me on my toes, but
(42:10):
it's also exhausting.
Most of my life has been aseries of experiments to try to
get rid of that.
I've tried tons ofantidepressants handfuls, pamela
, paxil, zoloft, prozac, lithium, experimental treatment for
depression for 16-year-oldsthere was one.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
It was Paxil.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
The New York Times later determined it should not
be given to teenagers becauseit's resulted in extreme
antisocial antics.
Anyway, I tried a lot of stuff.
Nothing really helped in agroundbreaking kind of way,
which I wanted.
10% happier is not going to cutit for me.
I listened with interest when Istarted hearing some gurglings
around the fringes back in like2016, about ketamine as a
(42:55):
treatment fortreatment-resistant depression.
At the time it was in clinicaltrials and you could sign up for
a clinical trial and then waitinterminably to get into that
and then possibly not get intoit, or you could go to a
ketamine clinic.
Basically, they rig you up withketamine, fill you up with it
and then they send you on yourway.
There's no therapeuticcomponent, it's just drugs, and
(43:17):
it can cost sometimes into fivefigures Obscene, prohibitive
amounts of money.
If you could afford that, youhave no excuse for being
depressed.
So I realized it was going totake a while before I got to try
that.
But I also figured out thatthere is an active group of
psychedelic enthusiastspsychonauts who get together in
LA for salons, parties andevents.
(43:40):
I was a late comer topsychedelics.
I've self-medicated nine waysfrom Sunday.
I was mostly a cocaine andearly times guy, from way back
until that stopped being fun andthen for a long time after it
stopped being fun, I hadn't donea lot of psychedelics and I was
excited.
I ended up learning the secrethandshakes of the psychonaut
world, shaking some hands andeventually getting myself in a
(44:04):
position to try the motherfuckerof psychedelics.
5-meo-dmt Different from regularDMT, that's for weaklings.
This is the venom of theColorado River Toad, which used
to be called Bufo alvarius.
It's a toad that sleeps for 10months out of the year and when
it wakes up it secretes venomthat is a psychedelic baseball
(44:26):
bat to the head.
The experience is ineffable.
It's completely indescribable.
I've done it four times now.
It varies from time to time, itvaries wildly from person to
person, but I'm gonna, as Ialways do with the ineffable,
I'm gonna see if I can F it.
My experience of it was Ishowed up in the home of a very
(44:46):
enterprising young woman on thescene of really some of the best
people I've ever met.
Like some of the psychedelicfolks have definitely been the
cream of the crop in terms ofpeople I've known.
They can be a little evangelical.
Some of them have flowerscoming out of their mouths when
they talk about psychedelics andwill give you the idea that
they can fix everything, whenreally they're more like big
(45:07):
homework assignments.
You have to do a lot of thework.
They show you where you'restuck and then you have to work
on that.
There's also some folks who areobnoxious.
In the psychedelic integrationcircles there's a lot of like
people bragging about ego, deathor I saw God dick measuring
contests.
If you do this, you will havethe experience of there is no
(45:28):
separation between you and God.
When you cease to exist, thelines of demarcation are gone.
If you bring that back as yourego returns and you interpret it
as I am God, they can excusesome pretty horrible behavior on
your part, which explains someof the people that are involved
in that scene and why it'shaving some problems.
It gave me the experience ofdying.
I will always be grateful forthat.
(45:50):
The way it usually worked withthose experiences in general is
I would be scared to death rightbefore I did it.
I would be very optimisticleading up to it.
I would make lots of thingshappen, go way out of my way to
make it happen and then, whenthe time came, I'd be like, oh
no, I don't want to becomesomeone else, I don't want to
start believing in God, I don'twant to be exposed to the true
(46:10):
beauty of the universe.
I'm not ready for that, I'llnever be ready for that.
I'm going to die.
I'm going to be one of thepeople who dies.
I'm going to die with thishippie.
You know it?
Kind of figures, let's fuckingdo this.
I took a big hit Orgasmic,explosive, propulsive, mindfuck,
(46:30):
absolutely devastating,exhilarating ecstasy.
You are flying through theuniverse, terrifying and
exhilarating, and shows you howthere's really no difference
between that and they're mattersof interpretation.
Without interpretation, you gotnothing.
You are completely unmooredfrom reality, and when that
happens, that can go in anynumber of directions.
In my case, I saw a trap doorin the fabric of the universe
(46:54):
just swinging open.
I said fuck it, I'm going in,let's fire it into the sun.
That's a mixed metaphor.
I like the sun better.
I think people will get thatmore.
I went sailing right into it,came to sort of.
It felt like it was reallyhappening.
I had no sense that I'd taken adrug or that this was going to
be over in 15 minutes which itis.
It's the longest 15 minutes ofyour life.
While I was in it.
(47:14):
I didn't know any of that.
I just knew that I was in Deepin the woods I could see an
abandoned, rusted out HondaCivic nearby.
I found my driver's licensewhich said Emerson Penn, dameron
III on it.
But I knew that it wasn't mydriver's license because I knew
that I was dead.
His problems were no longermine, which made them kind of
hilarious.
(47:35):
I was being reabsorbed.
I was a drop of rain hittingthe surface of the ocean,
reabsorbing into a universalconsciousness from which I came.
Life continued.
I didn't experience life asmyself.
I was not recognizable asmyself.
The boundaries of thatcontainer dissolved.
It was nice.
I would do it again.
I will at some point.
(47:55):
I've been in love with death mywhole life and terrified of it,
too True of most of myrelationships.
I've always had a really strongdrive to kill the pain.
When everything I do in myattempts to kill the pain makes
it worse, I want to end it.
I want peace.
I've always considered death tobe this just profound release
and a peaceful experience.
(48:15):
What I learned from dying firmlybelieving that I was dying in
the way that I'm not capable offirmly believing much of
anything is that I could onlylove death or fear it, because I
didn't understand it, or rather, I didn't understand that I
didn't understand it.
I thought it was possible tounderstand.
I wanted to F the ineffable,which you know.
That's what art, love, havingkids and all kinds of stuff is.
(48:38):
It's the impossible journey youhave to take it.
You're a coyote and Don Quixoteand you're the shit, and that's
what you're here to do.
It's follow through on yourmission to make a fool of
yourself.
It's the fool's journey tojoyous excursion.
The take on suicide that I'vealways defaulted to, and what
has kept me from doing itsuccessfully is, rather than
(49:00):
killing yourself physically,eventually that'll happen.
You're just being impatient,rushing it.
If you want to do killingyourself physically, it totally
makes sense to be afraid of it,because it is guaranteed to
happen.
You're probably not going tohave a cat burglar, but you're
definitely going to die, so youmight as well be afraid of that.
Rather than killing yourselfphysically, why not kill
(49:22):
yourself as frequently andthoroughly as possible,
Constantly be in a process ofdying and reinventing yourself
as someone else?
I didn't manage to do that untilthe fourth time.
I smoked toad venom, which wasdifferent.
This time I died, not hardenough.
When I came back, whatever hername was thoroughly
congratulated me for reallydoing the work and getting in
(49:45):
there and doing it to it.
My heart had grown three sizesthat day.
Great, I was happy about that.
I left it was the middle of theday on a Saturday.
I immediately slammed intotraffic on the 405.
I kind of knew it was going tobe raw for a while.
I had not vanquished my ego atall.
It was back in full force.
You really need people aroundOne at all.
(50:06):
It was back in full force.
You really need people aroundOne of the issues.
You need people to make senseof these things or not make
sense of them.
Bathe in the liminal poetry andparadox.
Integration circles are goodfor that.
I think it should be moremainstream.
I think the fact that it'staboo is the most dangerous
thing about it.
Like sex or anything else, Rockand roll should be taboo again.
I think it almost is.
You wouldn't tell anyone.
If you like new rock music, youhave to listen to pop the
(50:27):
poptimus one, and I have tothank Bufo Alvarez for helping
me get there.
If you're gonna do that now,which I can't unconditionally
recommend, it worked out wellfor me.
I got to experience death.
Will you be that lucky?
I don't know.
Past performance is noindicator of future results and
a terrifying experience.
I don't wish death on youbecause I don't need to.
(50:49):
It's going to happen anyway.
Would I recommend it?
Possibly?
I don't think people are calledto anything, but if you get the
sense that this is really goingto open things up and show you
what you need to see and you canlearn what you already know and
forget you forgot how to do it,look into it.
Get the synthetic stuff Becausethe actual toads people are
(51:10):
going around harvesting them.
It was trendy for a while.
I think there's now apsychedelic backlash, which
sucks, because that's the onething that's really helped me.
I go to bat for it, for thepsychedelic baseball bat to the
head.
I really changed and I don'tlike pant stories where what I
learned that day is that reallywe're all the same.
We kind of are, but you know,try to be more subtle or not.
It's hard to get attention.
So maybe just let it all hangout and blast the fuck through
(51:33):
the stratosphere.
Absolutely fucking do it.
Go for it.
This is the time, this is yourchance.
This right here is all we get.
Fucking, live it.
The world is so strange.
When you're exposed to all ofit without the prophylactic of
your self-concept, it'soverwhelming.
You're gonna be absolutelyoverwhelmed.
I hope you're okay with that.
(51:55):
You're not gonna be the Dom inthis relationship.
You'll count the spankings andyou'll get a lot of them and
they'll hurt.
One of them at least will beone to grow on, and you'll get a
lot of them and they'll hurt.
One of them at least will beone to grow on, and you'll
probably get multiple ones togrow on.
Once you've had the experienceof not existing, it's hard to
take things as seriously anymore.
The problems are stilloccurring, but they're happening
to someone else, which againmakes them kind of hilarious.
(52:17):
I love drugs.
I've become wary of psychedelicexceptionalism.
I highly recommend reading thebook Drug Use for Grownups by Dr
Carl Hart, who takes issue withthe romance, the shroud of
positive valence that has formedaround psychedelics, in
particular over the last fewyears, as tools of personal
growth and optimization foralready wealthy people.
(52:40):
It's going to change you alittle bit when you fucking tear
yourself a new asshole, Tearyourself a million new assholes,
Get fucked by the universe inholes you didn't even know you
had, Throw yourself into thefire and then into the ice and
then into the earth and way upinto the air and just keep
flying and flying and flying.
Are you flying or falling?
(53:00):
What's the difference?
How can you tell there's no up,no down, no right angles
anywhere?
What is going on?
How can you tell there's no up,no down, no right angles
anywhere?
What is going on?
How do you know it's gonna beokay?
It's not gonna be okay.
It's never been okay.
You don't want okay.
You need something bigger thanthat.
And it's happening right nowbecause your head is Exploding.
You are getting mind fuckedhard and your mind fucking right
(53:21):
back.
This is as the the harder itgets.
The more you get, the moreyou're able fucking right back.
This is as the harder it gets.
The more you get, the moreyou're able to give.
The louder you receive, thelouder you transmit, and it's
almost louder than you can stand.
You didn't think that you couldpossibly stand it this loud.
It is blasting you, it'sblowing your hair back.
You'll be slightly shifted fromthat experience.
(53:44):
In all likelihood, you won't beexactly the same.
So if you want to be, good luck, Because that's the most
unlikely thing Of all theidiotic goals that you could
possibly have.
Maintaining a state ofequilibrium consistently is
absolutely hopeless.
That's the dumbest thing.
That's dumber than pursuingyour passions.
I don't know how you're goingto get there, but good luck, and
let me know how your passions.
Speaker 3 (54:04):
I don't know how you're going to get there.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
But good luck and let me know how it goes.
I have spent my whole lifetrying to fight my depression,
Tried a lot of things thateither did more harm than good
or basically, on balance, leftme right where I was, Got into
psychedelics in order to see ifI could change that.
I got more than I asked forBecause I didn't want to be
happy necessarily.
Happiness is not necessarily afalse goal.
(54:27):
I think it's got.
It makes a lot of falsepromises.
I got to die.
Any day above ground is a goodday.
I found that being below groundkind of also made things
interesting.
It's really in how youinterpret it.
So go die.
Speaker 3 (54:39):
Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes, LA's number
one avant-garde.
No-transcript.
K-Chung, los Angeles, 1630 AM.
Kchungradioorg.
On the World Wide Web, this isEmerson Dameron's Medicated
Minutes, la's number oneavant-garde personal development
program, home of Ask a Sadist,proudly sponsored by the First
Church of the Satanic Buddha,birthplace and habitat of
(00:30):
bite-sized erotic thrillers.
My name is Emerson Dameron.
I'm the writer, producer, host,everything.
I love you personally.
Levity saves lives, lives, and Ithink the main thing to do with
it is Riff it out and then runit through the steps.
(00:50):
Keep raising the stakes.
How can I do that?
I'm going to be talking aboutdeath.
I'm going to be talking abouttrying to break out of the cage
that my depression presents todisprove my big idea that I'm a
worthless human being.
God, so much other stuff.
It's gonna be fun.
Y'all Come along.
I will be doing some of thatand that's the main thing I want
(01:12):
to do Get that done and out ofthe way, and then I'm gonna work
on finding some work to do, away to present myself so that I
can make some cash.
Tomorrow's gonna be all aboutthe money.
Honey Gonna do all of the stuffthat will make the ends meet or
(01:32):
just make ends Means is whatI'm gonna be working on and I'm
gonna be mean to it.
I'm gonna rough it up.
Hell yeah, you'll see.
Well, you won't, but it willand it will feel and it may not
see anything anymore because I'mgonna gouge its eyes out, make
ends, meet with a vengeance anduse my anger.
That's what I'm gonna do.
The next step, the new me, hellyeah, and maybe other stuff too
(02:25):
.
Life would be so much easier, somuch less confusing if it
didn't have so many other peoplein it.
People are confusing, right.
They're frustrating.
You don't ever really know whatthey're coming from.
It's hard to read, it's hard topick out the signals, it's hard
to do the dance.
People surprise you.
You don't really know who yourfriends are.
Prankster Alan Abel, in 1979,faked his own death and at the
(02:48):
beginning of 1980, he placed hisown obituary in the New York
Times and the reactions of hisfriends to the news of his death
surprised him.
Some people he barely knew werebrokenhearted and some people
he considered his best friends.
His MySpace top eight justshrugged.
So you don't really know whoyour friends are until you
alienate everyone, and of courseyou wouldn't do that, that's
(03:09):
not in your nature.
But you do have to wondersometimes why we can't just be
real with each other.
The reason is nobody wants that.
That would be boring, it wouldbe oppressive.
We're headed toward that Ourprivate lives fully exposed.
It's gonna be hell.
We're not ready for that.
We like the mystery.
You like stories where thereare stakes, where there's
(03:31):
suffering, where there's drama,conflict, mystery and intrigue.
Life needs stakes to beinteresting and to be worthwhile
, to keep you engaged.
When life gets boring, you getpulled into dangerous, poisonous
distractions Because you'remissing the drama.
You're missing the action, thelust, the erotic intrigue and
(03:53):
the push-pull, the friction.
Risk and freedom cannot besacrificed.
Life is not worth livingwithout them.
If you're willing to take arisk and be free and understand
that freedom hurts and requiresyou to challenge a lot of your
assumptions, which can be reallyuncomfortable at first and can
provoke cognitive dissonance, ifyou're willing to embrace that,
(04:15):
you will discover that securityand safety are a lie.
So you sacrifice your risk andfreedom on the altar of security
and safety and a sense ofcontinuity and knowing what
comes next.
You are deluding yourselfBecause everything is always in
flux and everything is theater,everything is play, everything
is storytelling, everything ismystery.
(04:37):
There's kabuki, there's kayfabe, there's all kinds of drama
Push-pull, friction, intrigue,betrayal Also really hot sex.
You know that there's more tolife than this, intuitively in
your gut.
And you're doing well.
You're quite successful.
In some ways, life has turnedout a lot better than you
expected, certainly moreinteresting.
You've done well and you'vebeen rewarded.
(04:59):
That's because you deserve it.
You've worked hard, you'veworked smart and you've applied
yourself.
Things are working out, but younevertheless have a growing
sense, certainly manageable, butnoticeable, as the years go on,
seemingly much more quicklythan they used to.
You have the sense that you'remissing the point.
Here's the thing If you want todig into that and figure out
(05:22):
what's going on there and getyour fingers in the grease,
you're going to have to unlearnsome things that you think that
you know.
You know dominance and power.
Flexing your power and wardingit over people is wrong.
Powerful people, masters of theworld, are bad people and they
got that way because they'resociopaths.
Money corrupts.
(05:42):
Power corrupts absolutely,especially if it's absolute
power, because power is evil.
Humility is good and sufferingbuilds character.
Community is good.
You're just like everyone else.
Everyone is the same.
Nobody is better than anyoneelse.
Nobody has the right to flextheir power over everyone else,
except that that's totally wrong.
(06:02):
Power is value neutral.
It is necessary to get anythingdone.
Martyrdom is taking power in aRube Goldbergian way.
That's an example of power.
Power is much more complex andmultifaceted than your narrative
would indicate, and power canbe good.
It can also destroy you.
But you have more power thanyou know what to do with already
(06:24):
, and that's why it drives youcrazy, because it can blow up in
your face.
It can take out your wholeneighborhood if you don't figure
out how to use it.
But here's the thing, power isresponsibility.
You're responsible for thepower that you have, whether
you're owning it or not, andyour power is scary and you're
right to be afraid of it,because it can kill you and
everything you love.
But mastering your own power isthe work of a lifetime, but it
(06:49):
cannot begin until youacknowledge that you have it.
When you do that, you might geta little excited Because your
power is sexy, so it makes you asexy MF and you already knew
that about yourself.
You just have to own it.
Don't be scared, don't be shy.
It knew that about yourself.
You just have to own it.
Don't be scared, don't be shy.
It feels good.
Come on in the water's fine,it's got bubbles in it.
You're a basically good person.
(07:10):
You know you're hardly perfect.
That would make you boring anduntouchable and kind of plastic
and evil and unknowable, kind ofdisgusting.
But you're good.
You put other people first.
You're kind, you're considerate, you do the right things.
You hold the door for peopleand you defer your own
gratification.
You don't complain, but you dokind of resent people.
(07:34):
You're not getting back fromthe system what you're putting
into it.
You're a good person.
You don't burden people withyour own needs and they don't
get met.
People should just figure outwhat you need and do it for you.
Because you're a good person,you deserve that.
They should just know.
But they don't.
If you're not taking care ofyourself, no one else will.
(07:54):
Here's the truth.
You might be more intuitivethan other people.
You might be more intelligent,you might be more soulful.
You certainly have qualitiesthey don't have, and if you're
thinking about these thingsdeeply which is why you're here
you've got the edge on a lot ofpeople.
Frankly, most people arewalking around in a walking daze
and don't know what they'redoing.
Neither do you, because nobodyknows what they're doing.
(08:19):
But now you know that you don'tknow what you're doing, and
that is true leverage power, andthat gives you the
responsibility to dominatepeople when they're asking for
it.
If you run into somebody andit's clear that they don't know
what they're doing, put thatperson in a headlock and give
them more than they want.
You're doing them a big favor,especially if you're getting
them out of the cockpit ofwhatever plane they were about
(08:40):
to fly into the side of amountain.
But you can only do thatbecause you know that you don't
know what you're doing.
Life is a game.
You know that pleasure feelsgood and so does fun, and there
are different kinds of fun.
There's a bad buzz and a goodbuzz.
There's the fun that you put ona credit card, metaphorically
or literally.
That creates greater pain downthe road, and there's flywheel
(09:04):
fun that creates more fun.
That's the fun you want to goto.
But you want to go towardpleasure, and that's what life
is about.
It's not about self-sacrifice,unless that's what gets you off.
It's not about money.
It's not about sex per se.
It is about pleasure and funand that's really the whole game
.
And life is a game.
It's theater.
(09:24):
Everything is in flux and youcan cut out your moralizing.
It's exhausting.
You don't really believe ityourself, which is why you're a
raging basket case.
It's because of the cognitivedissonance, because you're not
buying what you're sellingbecause it's worthless.
Get over the moralizing crap.
Just cut it out.
Live a little bit, find outwhat's actually true for you,
(09:48):
and that involves understandingthat life is a game.
It's about pleasure and play.
It's why plants turn toward thesun, it's why butterflies are
free.
Be in that.
Adopt the playful philosophy ofthe seducer, the libertine.
Get a little bit decadent,fun-loving, embrace the sadism
or masochism within you,dominate or submit because it
feels good.
(10:08):
And because it feels good, itis your responsibility.
Any sort of portentousness orominousness that comes with any
connotations of the notion ofresponsibility will be easily
mitigated by the fun that you'regoing to have and when you get
all kinds of hot in the crotchfrom embracing the pleasure and
the play and the fun and theflux and the theater of life.
(10:31):
Let go, do it.
Wake up, show up.
You're already here, come onRarely.
Have we seen a person fail whohas thoroughly followed our path
?
On our path, we avoid harddrugs and alcohol while
indulging whole hog in weed andpsychedelics.
(10:53):
Or we drink socially, smokeweed and avoid anything else
smacking of fun, or we smokeweed and then forget we smoked
it, convince ourselves ourcocaine is vegan, or only drink
for the gram.
It depends on who you ask andwhen and who they're trying to
impress.
We don't agree on the rules, sowe can't lose.
The name of our path is CaliSober.
(11:15):
Those who do not succeed atCali Sober are people who cannot
or will not just chill andunderstand that everything is
relative.
There are such unfortunates.
They are not at fault.
They seem to have been born inUtah.
Our stories disclose in ageneral way what we used to be
like and then trail off intononsense about how we're all
different.
(11:35):
We're all the same and nothingreally matters.
If you've decided you want whatwe have and you can afford the
ridiculous rents we pay, thenyou are ready to take certain
steps.
Here are the steps we took,which are suggested as a program
of California sobriety.
Step 1.
We admitted that doing as manydrugs as possible, as often as
(11:56):
possible, had becomeunmanageable.
Step 2.
We came to believe that a powergreater than ourselves could
help us chill, help us hash outour childhood traumas and make
us feel special.
Step three we made a decisionto chill, to smoke a bowl and
turn our will over to whateverhigher power had the shortest
waiting list.
Step four we made a searchingand fearless moral inventory of
(12:19):
ourselves and figured out how tomonetize it as IP.
Step five we admitted to ourhigher power, to ourselves and
to a famous person, the exactnature of our wrongs and
understood that their halt ispart of the journey.
Step 6.
We were entirely ready toexperience transformative
personal growth through theingestion of Toad Venom.
Step 7.
(12:39):
We hallucinated contact withvarious entities some clockwork
elves, a blue axolotl with atrident, henry Rollins and
others, and immediately referredto them as our good friends.
We humbly asked them to removeour shortcomings or to let us
know if they had the hookup forthat.
Step 8.
We made a list of all thepersons we harmed and were
(12:59):
totally ready to make amends toall of them, because we have no
time to hate Step 9.
We didn't make amends to all ofthem because we have no time to
hate Step 9.
We didn't make amends to any ofthem because it would mean
putting up with their bad energyin an hour of freeway traffic,
and we have no time for thateither.
Step 10.
We continued to take personalinventory and, when we were
wrong, smoked enough weed tochill and stop judging ourselves
(13:20):
, or vaped enough DMT totranscend good and evil For good
.
Step 11.
We sought through shrooms,sound baths and combo ceremonies
to improve our consciouscontact with our higher powers
as we understood them, prayingonly for a million dollar idea
that would get traction beforean earthquake swallowed us all
or we went broke and had to moveback to Topeka.
(13:41):
Step 12.
Having experienced ego death asa result of these steps, we
tried to carry this message toothers by bragging about it.
Many exclaimed what an order.
I can't go through with it.
Do not be discouraged.
No one takes anything seriously.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Your dreams are just content If it feels as if the
world is ending just chill, orswitch from Sativa to Indica, or
(14:21):
try a hybrid the 12 steps ofcali soap.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
When I met her I knew she was tough and tender, but
mostly tender.
The toughness was played up,genuine, but also a coping
mechanism, a facade.
To the extent that she playedit, I treated her like a pal.
We had a lot in common.
We were both conversant aboutart, great literature and
psychedelic mushrooms.
She was a serious person with alot of responsibilities.
(14:49):
Sex is where people hide things.
Our sexual personas can bealmost like photo negatives, the
selves that we present, that wewant to be identified with
professionally, socially or toourselves.
Even Everything is hidden inthe sex.
She was so busy, competent withit, responsible, or to
ourselves.
Even Everything is hidden inthe sex.
She was so busy, competent withit, responsible and respected
(15:14):
and taken seriously, and such agood girl that she would do
anything to get dropped downlike a bad one, humiliated, used
, degraded.
I made her my dirty little elseand she couldn't get enough of
it and she would do anything toget tossed, cooking gifts and
treats and vacations that Ispecifically asked for.
When she was preoccupied or outof town, she would find toys
for me to play with, sometimesyounger women adjacent to her
(15:36):
friend group that she mentoredAt first.
It was women of the type thatshe preferred and we got some
explosive electromagneticthreesomes and foursomes out of
that.
And then she started comingthrough with the girls.
I like Rock and roll girls Alittle dirty, a little edgy,
artsy, not yet thoroughlycorrupted, ready for it,
(15:58):
cognizant that there's a firsttime for everything.
It's probably going to happensoon.
I was taking advantage of her,but not.
She did all of this because sheloved me.
She knew I was part of the deal, she wanted the case and she
went above and beyond to get it.
It was a wonderful relationship, I would say for both of us.
I felt loved, desired, longedfor, worshipped.
(16:21):
I felt like a p***y.
She felt sweet, submissive,sexy and, more than anything
else, useful.
She had found her higher power,leader, authority figure so you
could dominate her and make herlove it.
It was a wonderful relationshipuntil I reconnected with my
soulmate if such a thing existsmy twin flame.
(16:41):
If you believe in that crap,she may as well be.
She is very unavailable, butthat's not stopping me from
loving her profoundly, fully andcompletely.
She deserves nothing less.
I love to hold her through herfeminine storms.
She shakes and cries and thenthat gets way to rolling
(17:02):
laughter.
I roll around in each other'sarms and I straddle her.
She shares her profoundsensuality, deep, deep down to
the earth's core.
I go deep, deep, deep anddominate the hell out of her.
I straddle her, I flick hersternum below.
She holds gas that's going tothe head.
I make her an awkw awkward andI slide back down.
(17:25):
I f***ing gas, even thoughshe's a little too tight for me.
I pump it.
I pump it, I put my hands in.
She looks next.
I remember now she sees stars,so she knows who's in charge
around here.
I'll love her for the rest ofmy life.
I think it's probably going tobe mutual, because we're never
(17:45):
going to be able to have anadult relationship.
We can let each other down, butnot catastrophically.
Domestic bliss usually does it.
That's my twin flame.
She's around.
We can't stop pounding it out.
We got caught.
Last time it was by her husband,this time it was by my
ultra-compliant girlfriend who,it turns out, had some festering
(18:06):
resentments around the thirdparties that were entering and
exiting through the revolvingdoor in our relationship.
I kind of had a feeling, but Ididn't want to press the issue
because I didn't want to stopthat train.
But that's when it becameuntenable.
That was the end of what, in apractical, material sense, is
certainly the best relationshipof my life, and I what in a
practical material sense iscertainly the best relationship
(18:26):
of my life, and I was not in ahurry to get in another one,
because I'd reconnected with thelove of my life and she was
unavailable.
So I didn't have to have arelationship with anyone else,
which is good, everyone'shorrible.
I could have sex with anyoneelse I wanted, because we're not
really a thing and yet we are.
So I don't have to have sexwith anyone else I wanted,
because we're not really a thingand yet we are.
So I don't have to have sexwith anyone except for her.
(18:47):
I want that.
It was good.
It's not going to last.
Nothing does why.
That he saves lives, but onlytemporarily.
So if I made it, if I reallybroke through, if I made it as
(19:36):
much as it's possible to make itand then made it a little bit
more, because that's the kind ofsuccess we're talking about
here, purely theoretical realm,so we can succeed as hard as we
want, and I did that to thepoint where it's impossible for
me to take the L.
Nothing is a risk, nothing isan expense.
That's how hard I made it.
If that were the case and I hadthe power to do so, I would
save everyone.
(19:57):
No questions asked from all ofus.
What's it to me?
I've made it so hard that Ihave no hard feelings anymore.
Things could not have turnedout better than they did, so why
would I be mad at anyone?
And it's impossible for me totake the L.
I can do whatever I want andset it all on fire, and it'll
all just come back.
I'll just make it again.
That's part of making it allthe way, and past that, I would
(20:20):
save everyone from this, all ofthis.
That's the first thing I woulddo.
So why is God a bigger assholethan I am?
Not just me, like everyone Iknow.
If I knew someone that was asbig an asshole, as petty and
vindictive and violent as theOld Testament God, I would end
that friendship immediately andnot feel bad about it.
(20:41):
Also, needy, weak, pathetic,incapable of doing anything
without external validation, godis a bitch.
You can do better than this.
Maybe that's the price of fame.
If you succeed too hard, itdoes seem to create challenges
that most people can't handle.
Maybe nothing, not evenomniscience, omnipotence and all
(21:03):
benevolence all at the sametime isn't enough to defeat the
curse of fame.
In that case, my heart goes outto him.
Do I worship him?
Hell, no, I'm actually betteroff worshiping myself.
(21:29):
Things to do that might help Gooutside.
You promised yourself hours agothat you would go outside, did
you?
No, you did not.
You haven't been outside muchof at all in the last few weeks.
You used to go for walks.
What happened?
Are you scared?
What is this?
You don't talk to people.
You used to go for walks.
What happened?
Are you scared?
What is this?
You don't talk to people.
You're scared to death.
The more days that go by and youdon't talk to another soul, the
(21:51):
harder it feels like it's goingto be, which is the thing that
does the most to make it hard,and it is not insignificant.
When you think something isgoing to be a miserable
experience, that goes a long waytoward making it one.
Not saying that it wouldn't beanyway.
If you're out of practice,you're not going to have a great
night the first time you go out.
You're not going to have one ofthose nights where everything
just comes together, and if youdo, that might be the worst
(22:12):
thing that could happen.
It's like getting up doingstand-up the first time and you
kill.
You're going to be chasing thatdragon for the rest of your
life A lot of the rest of yourlife at least the next 10 years
is going to be sucking out loudat stand-up comedy or, in your
case, getting out among thepublic, which is something that
you have not done much of in thelast calendar year and change.
(22:33):
Human interaction has a lot ofvariables you can't control, so
make sure you're maxing all thevariables that you can control
Hydrate, exercise, don't listento as much sad music.
Listening to sad music makesyou feel worse.
It doesn't help.
That's an established fact.
Of course, we do it anywaybecause we like to torture
ourselves and we like to tellstories about our suffering,
which is our favorite thing todo, and that's why we always
(22:56):
overdo it like you have.
Maybe.
Just do the opposite ofeverything that you want to do,
but don't know why you want todo.
Just try it For a while.
Do the opposite.
It'll be a pain in the ass andyou can go back to ruining your
own life as soon as you a storyas this goes on.
(23:38):
Pay attention not just to thewords, but to how you feel about
the words in your body.
The words, but to how you feelabout the words in your body
deep down, in all those placesthat are so energetically
charged that it's a little scaryto go there.
By the end you will know me andyourself much more intimately
than you ever expected to, thanyou thought you would ever be
(23:59):
able to, but you are because youhave courage that you're afraid
to express.
That is so powerful.
With me, it's all aboutpleasure and power.
I have this friend.
We're pretty tight.
He asked me once how should Isolve my problems and I said let
me get back to that.
I'm amazed at how disgustingyou are, entranced with your
(24:21):
vapidity, shell, shocked at thewarmth of your heart and the
depth of feeling I see when Ilook deep, deep down in your
eyes, deeper than I everexpected to penetrating opening
all my windows and doors andsaying seduce me.
What I said was take a differentview of the problems, take
different views of differentproblems, take a unique view of
(24:44):
each problem, if that's what ittakes.
And he did, and his problemsdissolved.
We celebrated by smoking5-MeO-DMT, the venom of the
Colorado River, toad BufoAlvarius, known as the Everest
of psychedelics, although, nowthat I think about it, we may
have done that before all of theproblems disintegrated.
It's neither here nor there.
(25:05):
Welcome, welcome.
(25:44):
I'm glad you're here.
I'm very excited for the ideasthat I'm going to share.
Really, just one big idea thatI'm thoroughly confident will
save your life.
I'm seriously thrilled about it.
I'm experiencing a wholespectrum of positive emotions.
That is not a typical day atthe office for me, as you'll
discover.
(26:05):
I used to care very deeply andprofoundly and dangerously about
almost everything, all sorts ofthings.
I cared way too much.
I just cared about whateverhappened to be going on in front
of me, and it was more than Icould handle.
I oscillated wildly betweenanxiety and depression.
(26:26):
I sought out depression as arelief from anxiety and I sought
out anxiety as a relief fromdepression.
There wasn't much I could doabout most of the things that I
cared about and I knew deep downthat I was wasting my energy.
I was driven to care, to beinvested in my life and the
times that I was living in.
(26:47):
Caring is its own punishment, asI discovered.
It wears down the nervoussystem.
It wastes your time.
It takes your focus off whatreally matters, which will soon
be revealed.
That's foreshadowing Inliterature.
It's an open loop in marketing,and I put it there because I
care about you and I care aboutthis big idea.
(27:08):
This is my retirement tour fromcaring.
I'm gonna care just long enoughto share this big idea and I'm
gonna hang up my jersey.
It's so important that I wannashare it with you, and that is
that much.
As caring is its own punishment, apathy is its own reward.
The correct approach to life isapathy.
(27:31):
The less you care, the betteroff you are, and you should
really focus your energy ongetting your level of caring
down as close as you can to zero.
There is an art, a science, tonot caring.
Primarily, it is a dailypractice.
You are what you do every day.
(27:51):
You are what you don't do everyday.
That's part of the practice.
This practice is the practiceof learning not to care.
I had to learn not to care.
I was not born not caring.
It was a very deliberatepractice A lot of trial and
error, a lot of frustration, alot of caring a lot more before
(28:13):
I learned to care a lot less.
And one of my goals in sharingthis information is to make
things easier for you, sharewhat I learned so that you can
learn from what I've alreadyfigured out and not care as much
now and then really not carelater and you're truly done
caring.
What this really requires is afundamental mindset shift.
(28:37):
It's a rewiring, not just theway that you think, but the way
that you perceive the entireworld the frame that goes around
the picture of your life andyour perception and who you
think you are, and what thismeans is that your practice is
cultivating the attitude ofapathy.
It begins with admitting theproblem.
(28:58):
The problem is that you care,probably way too much.
That must be followed bycontrary action, in this case a
commitment to change andrearrange first your thinking,
then the stories you tellyourself about yourself, your
commitment to caring as a formof suffering, self-abuse,
(29:19):
self-sabotage, and then you willbe on the royal road to a life
of magical, a life of magical,mystical apathy as your
spiritual practice.
Caring is caused by neuroticidiocy.
It's caused by themisperception that anything
matters.
Almost nothing matters.
(29:39):
Very few things do.
Some monks and contemplativesdevote their lives to trying to
figure out what those perhapshalf a dozen things are.
They stare at the sides ofcliffs and sit in silence for
months, possibly years, in theattempt to figure this out.
Some of them believe that theyhave, and they've tried to share
(30:00):
that information, but it getslost in translation.
My belief is that the thingsthat are worth caring about are
largely ineffable.
There's very little hope ofgetting enlightened in that way
in this lifetime, so you'rereally better off cutting your
losses and not caring aboutanything that will solve the
major problem in your life.
(30:20):
The contemplatives are rightabout one thing Meditation is
your friend by this time.
You've been hit over the headwith meditation for the last
many, many years.
Thousands of years it's beenaround.
If you've lived previouslifetimes, you're probably
hassled about meditation inprevious incarnations.
(30:40):
You're getting a lot of stuffabout it now from Tim Ferriss
and Sam Harris and yourtherapist and people on dating
apps.
If you live in SouthernCalifornia, as I do, everybody
wants to meditate.
They want you to meditate.
They're right.
Unfortunately, they areannoying, but they are correct.
Meditation is not anice-to-have.
(31:02):
It's not a cute woo-woo.
New Age hobby.
It is absolutely crucial tomake sense of the modern world,
and the way to do that is bymanaging your emotions and
eventually killing them dead,murdering your feelings,
absolutely slaughtering thatpart of your experience.
It will be much easier to notcare.
(31:24):
You will open up whole newvistas of possibilities and
capabilities that you were notaware of before.
The next thing you want to dophysical exercise Also not news
to you that this is a good idea.
You want to hydrate yourself,move around every day, get into
your body, which gets you out ofyour head, out of your heart
(31:44):
and soul, in those conceptualplaces and into the physical
realm where you can rely on youranimal instincts.
Get jacked, because that makesyou dumb, or it makes it easier
for you to be dumb, becauseyou're hot, remarkable looking
and thus don't need to indulgethis idea that being smart is an
(32:05):
advantage.
It really, really isn't.
You just have to be smartenough to know that you're an
idiot and then be smart enoughto stop caring.
Then the next thing is todesensitize yourself.
I was very squeamish as a kid.
I didn't like horror movies.
I didn't like amusement parkrides, particularly roller
coasters.
I had a nervous stomach.
(32:26):
I didn't like gore.
I was just easily scared todeath Not all the way to death,
because then I would havestopped caring and that would
have solved my problems.
I was very much alive, all toomuch.
In some respects, I was able todesensitize myself by the time
I was in high school.
I discovered at that time theunderground press.
(32:49):
I did not have internet access.
This was in the mid-90s.
I loved getting stuff in themail, which is one unique facet
of living in the middle ofnowhere.
The mail was very exciting tome and I ordered certain
materials through the mailcertain publications, small
press zines, pamphlets fromfringe activist organizations
(33:10):
and threw myself into theextreme.
I was interested in serialkillers for a bit.
Being into serial killers iskind of like being into the
Doors.
It's cool if you're a teenager.
If you're in that phase, enjoythe hell out of it.
It's very fun.
I was very into blood and goreand low-budget horror films and
metal music.
(33:31):
Ghetto Boys, the Gravediggers,Horrorcore was a genre of rap at
the time and then when I wentto, college I majored in
journalism.
I had a class with a journalismprofessor who'd previously been
a working newspaper man.
In the course of his work hehad to look at a picture of a
young girl child who had drowned.
That's when he decided thatjournalism was not for him and
(33:53):
the reason he was teaching it isthat he wanted to dissuade as
many people from becomingjournalists as he possibly could
.
His goal was to have one-thirdof the class drop out before it
was done, and he succeeded inthat.
I was not one of them.
I'm a straight A and straight Fstudent.
I'm an inverse bell curve I getA's in things that I care about
(34:15):
and I'm good at and I get F'sin everything else.
I had screaming ADHD when I wasa kid, which probably also
explained some of thescatterbrained, scatterhearted
caring that I was doing.
I loved that class.
I thrived.
I got an A.
I finished it because being inthe field of journalism was an
excellent way to desensitizemyself, to see the horror of
(34:38):
human existence, the morbidreality that we live in, to
simply get used to it, thickenmy skin, toughen up where the
fringe terrors of the worldbecame commonplace for me.
I'd recommend doing the samePrepare to care a lot before you
care less.
That means driving into thestorm, finding the thing that
(34:59):
scares you because you careabout it so much, getting used
to that thing, desensitizingyourself.
Have someone drop a bag ofspiders in your bed.
If that's what you're afraid of, you won't die and you'll care
less after that.
It is a process.
You will care the most beforeyou stop caring.
So I remind you, as the sayinggoes, don't quit before the
(35:22):
miracle happens.
In a blink, the lights will gooff.
You will be in sweet, sweetdarkness and silence.
Another way to cultivate theattitude of apathy is to get
good at shrugging off the thingsthat are hardest to shrug off,
which would be your successes.
If you can be apathetic aboutyour wins, through meditation,
(35:43):
desensitization, etc.
You will find it much easier toshrug off your losses as well.
If you're shrugging offeverything, you are what you do
every day and you become thatthing and you will become what
you are and you won't care andit'll be glorious.
For now, self-care is important.
For now, take care of yourself,hydrate, work out, as we
(36:04):
mentioned, meditate, be kind toyourself, be generous.
This isn't really worth caringabout that much.
Yes, it is, but you want tohave fun, not caring.
You're working on yourself.
This is doing the work, thework of a lifetime, the best
work you can do.
It's fun.
Work is a misnomer.
The idea of hard work wascreated by sociopaths, the
(36:29):
rulers of the world.
They were born not caring aboutanything.
Everything they do is strategic.
It's about consolidating power,and they've convinced you that
hard work is somehow noblebecause they want you to do
their hard work on their behalfand they want to get rich off of
your back.
And they want you to carebecause that makes you
low-hanging fruit, easy pickings, easy to exploit.
(36:52):
That's where this poisonous,horrific, smothering culture of
caring originated People who arenever able to care.
You're never going to be onthat level of not caring.
You're just unlikely to getthere in this lifetime.
So I wouldn't try to competewith those people.
Some humility is necessary.
Don't care too much aboutyourself.
(37:13):
Let your ego die.
Don't care about status.
Don't care about the big thingsand don't care about the petty
things.
Don't care about high schoolcrap.
Do practice self-care for aslong as it takes to get to the
point where you don't need tocare about anything.
Yourself can be one of the lastthings that you stop caring
about.
Be generously selfish.
Being selfish makes youwell-defined.
(37:35):
You know what you like.
You can communicate.
You can establish boundarieswith people and people like that
it makes life easier for themif they know who the hell you
are.
So selfishness if you're notgood at it, if you don't have
boundaries, if you're not goodat enforcing them when someone
tries to drive a tank through.
Being generously selfish willmake people around you happy.
(37:57):
Maybe they will start caringabout you.
That'll take some of thepressure off of you.
They might take care of yourneeds.
There'll be a few fewer thingsthat you have to care about.
You can get them to performtasks on your behalf.
Find someone who enjoys groceryshopping and also digs your
action.
Combine those things and havethem do some grocery shopping.
There's some choices you don'thave to make.
(38:18):
Some things you don't have tocare about anymore.
You will have the power to walkaway.
Your relationships will beamazing on a level that you
cannot comprehend right now,because there's no way to
describe this experience.
Until you're there, you will bemagnetic.
The sex will be volcanic.
You won't care, and that's okay.
(38:38):
You don't have to.
It'll be a story that you cantell and someone else will get
off on it.
You can go right on not caring,because that's the secret of
your success.
There are resources for this.
Practical nihilism is onephilosophical outlook if you're
of an intellectual bent, but themain thing to do is don't be
afraid to get up to the lip ofthe abyss and look in and see
(39:02):
how abyssy it really is andresist the urge to do anything
about it.
Anything you do is just goingto cause new problems or make
the existing problems worse, orboth.
Caring is always a bad idea.
Almost nothing is worth caringabout.
You don't know the things thatare worth caring about.
Cut your losses, stop caringand you can stop all the other
(39:24):
things.
You can stop ruminating, youcan stop procrastinating.
You can break through blocksand resistance and stop smoking,
stop snitching.
When you stop caring, that isthe big stop sign that stops all
of the traffic.
It stops all of the honkinghorns and the air pollution and
(39:45):
the rush hour traffic of thepeople that just care way too
much.
You won't be annoyed by thembecause you won't care.
Believe that.
Care about that enough to get tothe point of not caring and
that'll be the last thing youhave to care about and you will
be free, and freedom will not beterrifying the way it is for a
lot of people because, toreiterate, you won't care.
(40:28):
Bye, Thank you.
(41:25):
Hi, I'm Emerson.
You might not know it to see myboyishly tousled hair and smug
smirk, but I have severe,chronic depression.
Had it my whole life.
For me, the way that tends tomanifest is ironclad belief,
gospel truth, my risen Christ,that I am a repulsive,
(41:47):
radioactive piece of shit.
No one should have anything todo with me and I deserve to die
and I should try to make thathappen.
If you saw the old Pink Panthermovies where Clouseau hires his
assistant to try to assassinatehim to keep him sharp, I have a
highly motivated assassin in mymind that follows me around
everywhere I go, which maybehelps keep me on my toes, but
(42:10):
it's also exhausting.
Most of my life has been aseries of experiments to try to
get rid of that.
I've tried tons ofantidepressants handfuls, pamela
, paxil, zoloft, prozac, lithium, experimental treatment for
depression for 16-year-oldsthere was one.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
It was Paxil.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
The New York Times later determined it should not
be given to teenagers becauseit's resulted in extreme
antisocial antics.
Anyway, I tried a lot of stuff.
Nothing really helped in agroundbreaking kind of way,
which I wanted.
10% happier is not going to cutit for me.
I listened with interest when Istarted hearing some gurglings
around the fringes back in like2016, about ketamine as a
(42:55):
treatment fortreatment-resistant depression.
At the time it was in clinicaltrials and you could sign up for
a clinical trial and then waitinterminably to get into that
and then possibly not get intoit, or you could go to a
ketamine clinic.
Basically, they rig you up withketamine, fill you up with it
and then they send you on yourway.
There's no therapeuticcomponent, it's just drugs, and
(43:17):
it can cost sometimes into fivefigures Obscene, prohibitive
amounts of money.
If you could afford that, youhave no excuse for being
depressed.
So I realized it was going totake a while before I got to try
that.
But I also figured out thatthere is an active group of
psychedelic enthusiastspsychonauts who get together in
LA for salons, parties andevents.
(43:40):
I was a late comer topsychedelics.
I've self-medicated nine waysfrom Sunday.
I was mostly a cocaine andearly times guy, from way back
until that stopped being fun andthen for a long time after it
stopped being fun, I hadn't donea lot of psychedelics and I was
excited.
I ended up learning the secrethandshakes of the psychonaut
world, shaking some hands andeventually getting myself in a
(44:04):
position to try the motherfuckerof psychedelics.
5-meo-dmt Different from regularDMT, that's for weaklings.
This is the venom of theColorado River Toad, which used
to be called Bufo alvarius.
It's a toad that sleeps for 10months out of the year and when
it wakes up it secretes venomthat is a psychedelic baseball
(44:26):
bat to the head.
The experience is ineffable.
It's completely indescribable.
I've done it four times now.
It varies from time to time, itvaries wildly from person to
person, but I'm gonna, as Ialways do with the ineffable,
I'm gonna see if I can F it.
My experience of it was Ishowed up in the home of a very
(44:46):
enterprising young woman on thescene of really some of the best
people I've ever met.
Like some of the psychedelicfolks have definitely been the
cream of the crop in terms ofpeople I've known.
They can be a little evangelical.
Some of them have flowerscoming out of their mouths when
they talk about psychedelics andwill give you the idea that
they can fix everything, whenreally they're more like big
(45:07):
homework assignments.
You have to do a lot of thework.
They show you where you'restuck and then you have to work
on that.
There's also some folks who areobnoxious.
In the psychedelic integrationcircles there's a lot of like
people bragging about ego, deathor I saw God dick measuring
contests.
If you do this, you will havethe experience of there is no
(45:28):
separation between you and God.
When you cease to exist, thelines of demarcation are gone.
If you bring that back as yourego returns and you interpret it
as I am God, they can excusesome pretty horrible behavior on
your part, which explains someof the people that are involved
in that scene and why it'shaving some problems.
It gave me the experience ofdying.
I will always be grateful forthat.
(45:50):
The way it usually worked withthose experiences in general is
I would be scared to death rightbefore I did it.
I would be very optimisticleading up to it.
I would make lots of thingshappen, go way out of my way to
make it happen and then, whenthe time came, I'd be like, oh
no, I don't want to becomesomeone else, I don't want to
start believing in God, I don'twant to be exposed to the true
(46:10):
beauty of the universe.
I'm not ready for that, I'llnever be ready for that.
I'm going to die.
I'm going to be one of thepeople who dies.
I'm going to die with thishippie.
You know it?
Kind of figures, let's fuckingdo this.
I took a big hit Orgasmic,explosive, propulsive, mindfuck,
(46:30):
absolutely devastating,exhilarating ecstasy.
You are flying through theuniverse, terrifying and
exhilarating, and shows you howthere's really no difference
between that and they're mattersof interpretation.
Without interpretation, you gotnothing.
You are completely unmooredfrom reality, and when that
happens, that can go in anynumber of directions.
In my case, I saw a trap doorin the fabric of the universe
(46:54):
just swinging open.
I said fuck it, I'm going in,let's fire it into the sun.
That's a mixed metaphor.
I like the sun better.
I think people will get thatmore.
I went sailing right into it,came to sort of.
It felt like it was reallyhappening.
I had no sense that I'd taken adrug or that this was going to
be over in 15 minutes which itis.
It's the longest 15 minutes ofyour life.
While I was in it.
(47:14):
I didn't know any of that.
I just knew that I was in Deepin the woods I could see an
abandoned, rusted out HondaCivic nearby.
I found my driver's licensewhich said Emerson Penn, dameron
III on it.
But I knew that it wasn't mydriver's license because I knew
that I was dead.
His problems were no longermine, which made them kind of
hilarious.
(47:35):
I was being reabsorbed.
I was a drop of rain hittingthe surface of the ocean,
reabsorbing into a universalconsciousness from which I came.
Life continued.
I didn't experience life asmyself.
I was not recognizable asmyself.
The boundaries of thatcontainer dissolved.
It was nice.
I would do it again.
I will at some point.
(47:55):
I've been in love with death mywhole life and terrified of it,
too True of most of myrelationships.
I've always had a really strongdrive to kill the pain.
When everything I do in myattempts to kill the pain makes
it worse, I want to end it.
I want peace.
I've always considered death tobe this just profound release
and a peaceful experience.
(48:15):
What I learned from dying firmlybelieving that I was dying in
the way that I'm not capable offirmly believing much of
anything is that I could onlylove death or fear it, because I
didn't understand it, or rather, I didn't understand that I
didn't understand it.
I thought it was possible tounderstand.
I wanted to F the ineffable,which you know.
That's what art, love, havingkids and all kinds of stuff is.
(48:38):
It's the impossible journey youhave to take it.
You're a coyote and Don Quixoteand you're the shit, and that's
what you're here to do.
It's follow through on yourmission to make a fool of
yourself.
It's the fool's journey tojoyous excursion.
The take on suicide that I'vealways defaulted to, and what
has kept me from doing itsuccessfully is, rather than
(49:00):
killing yourself physically,eventually that'll happen.
You're just being impatient,rushing it.
If you want to do killingyourself physically, it totally
makes sense to be afraid of it,because it is guaranteed to
happen.
You're probably not going tohave a cat burglar, but you're
definitely going to die, so youmight as well be afraid of that.
Rather than killing yourselfphysically, why not kill
(49:22):
yourself as frequently andthoroughly as possible,
Constantly be in a process ofdying and reinventing yourself
as someone else?
I didn't manage to do that untilthe fourth time.
I smoked toad venom, which wasdifferent.
This time I died, not hardenough.
When I came back, whatever hername was thoroughly
congratulated me for reallydoing the work and getting in
(49:45):
there and doing it to it.
My heart had grown three sizesthat day.
Great, I was happy about that.
I left it was the middle of theday on a Saturday.
I immediately slammed intotraffic on the 405.
I kind of knew it was going tobe raw for a while.
I had not vanquished my ego atall.
It was back in full force.
You really need people aroundOne at all.
(50:06):
It was back in full force.
You really need people aroundOne of the issues.
You need people to make senseof these things or not make
sense of them.
Bathe in the liminal poetry andparadox.
Integration circles are goodfor that.
I think it should be moremainstream.
I think the fact that it'staboo is the most dangerous
thing about it.
Like sex or anything else, Rockand roll should be taboo again.
I think it almost is.
You wouldn't tell anyone.
If you like new rock music, youhave to listen to pop the
(50:27):
poptimus one, and I have tothank Bufo Alvarez for helping
me get there.
If you're gonna do that now,which I can't unconditionally
recommend, it worked out wellfor me.
I got to experience death.
Will you be that lucky?
I don't know.
Past performance is noindicator of future results and
a terrifying experience.
I don't wish death on youbecause I don't need to.
(50:49):
It's going to happen anyway.
Would I recommend it?
Possibly?
I don't think people are calledto anything, but if you get the
sense that this is really goingto open things up and show you
what you need to see and you canlearn what you already know and
forget you forgot how to do it,look into it.
Get the synthetic stuff Becausethe actual toads people are
(51:10):
going around harvesting them.
It was trendy for a while.
I think there's now apsychedelic backlash, which
sucks, because that's the onething that's really helped me.
I go to bat for it, for thepsychedelic baseball bat to the
head.
I really changed and I don'tlike pant stories where what I
learned that day is that reallywe're all the same.
We kind of are, but you know,try to be more subtle or not.
It's hard to get attention.
So maybe just let it all hangout and blast the fuck through
(51:33):
the stratosphere.
Absolutely fucking do it.
Go for it.
This is the time, this is yourchance.
This right here is all we get.
Fucking, live it.
The world is so strange.
When you're exposed to all ofit without the prophylactic of
your self-concept, it'soverwhelming.
You're gonna be absolutelyoverwhelmed.
I hope you're okay with that.
(51:55):
You're not gonna be the Dom inthis relationship.
You'll count the spankings andyou'll get a lot of them and
they'll hurt.
One of them at least will beone to grow on, and you'll get a
lot of them and they'll hurt.
One of them at least will beone to grow on, and you'll
probably get multiple ones togrow on.
Once you've had the experienceof not existing, it's hard to
take things as seriously anymore.
The problems are stilloccurring, but they're happening
to someone else, which againmakes them kind of hilarious.
(52:17):
I love drugs.
I've become wary of psychedelicexceptionalism.
I highly recommend reading thebook Drug Use for Grownups by Dr
Carl Hart, who takes issue withthe romance, the shroud of
positive valence that has formedaround psychedelics, in
particular over the last fewyears, as tools of personal
growth and optimization foralready wealthy people.
(52:40):
It's going to change you alittle bit when you fucking tear
yourself a new asshole, Tearyourself a million new assholes,
Get fucked by the universe inholes you didn't even know you
had, Throw yourself into thefire and then into the ice and
then into the earth and way upinto the air and just keep
flying and flying and flying.
Are you flying or falling?
(53:00):
What's the difference?
How can you tell there's no up,no down, no right angles
anywhere?
What is going on?
How can you tell there's no up,no down, no right angles
anywhere?
What is going on?
How do you know it's gonna beokay?
It's not gonna be okay.
It's never been okay.
You don't want okay.
You need something bigger thanthat.
And it's happening right nowbecause your head is Exploding.
You are getting mind fuckedhard and your mind fucking right
(53:21):
back.
This is as the the harder itgets.
The more you get, the moreyou're able fucking right back.
This is as the harder it gets.
The more you get, the moreyou're able to give.
The louder you receive, thelouder you transmit, and it's
almost louder than you can stand.
You didn't think that you couldpossibly stand it this loud.
It is blasting you, it'sblowing your hair back.
You'll be slightly shifted fromthat experience.
(53:44):
In all likelihood, you won't beexactly the same.
So if you want to be, good luck, Because that's the most
unlikely thing Of all theidiotic goals that you could
possibly have.
Maintaining a state ofequilibrium consistently is
absolutely hopeless.
That's the dumbest thing.
That's dumber than pursuingyour passions.
I don't know how you're goingto get there, but good luck, and
let me know how your passions.
Speaker 3 (54:04):
I don't know how you're going to get there.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
But good luck and let me know how it goes.
I have spent my whole lifetrying to fight my depression,
Tried a lot of things thateither did more harm than good
or basically, on balance, leftme right where I was, Got into
psychedelics in order to see ifI could change that.
I got more than I asked forBecause I didn't want to be
happy necessarily.
Happiness is not necessarily afalse goal.
(54:27):
I think it's got.
It makes a lot of falsepromises.
I got to die.
Any day above ground is a goodday.
I found that being below groundkind of also made things
interesting.
It's really in how youinterpret it.
So go die.
Speaker 3 (54:39):
Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes, LA's number
one avant-garde.
No-transcript.
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