Ian Spellman A New Paradigm for Science Education

[Speaker 1] (0:00 - 0:38) What's up, everyone? I'm Joel Rafiti. I've got my co-host here, Asmos, with me as always. Welcome back. You are now listening to the Hear for the Truth podcast. Today we have Ian Spellman joining us, who has been a science teacher, worked within mainstream academia, and now is offering alternative science education and reframing what it means to be educated around science, how we can think more critically, how we can be less dogmatic, and how we can truly educate the young people. Yeah. It's a conversation that I really enjoyed. We hope you enjoy it as well. And without further ado, here is Ian. [Speaker 2] (0:39 - 0:46) You are now listening to the Hear for the Truth podcast, hosted by Joel Rafiti and you're Asmos. [Speaker 1] (0:49 - 14:21) Ian Spellman is a professional educator currently building on eight years of full-time experience to bring what he has learned in traditional classrooms to the growing multitudes of folks who are in the process of decoupling themselves from formal educational institutions. Many freedom-oriented parents have begun questioning the benefits of enrolling their kids in public and even private schools in the wake of scandemic lockdowns. The wholesale takeover of academia by radical ideologies, hell-bent on warping the minds of children and young adults into as anti-natural a state as possible, and just a general recognition that most schools now seem to have a net negative psychological impact on developing minds. A growing response to all this has been a surge in homeschooling and unschooling initiatives across the world, which has also meant a search for private educators and curriculums that are grounded in a more naturalistic worldview, and which recapture the formerly high standards of intellectual rigor we should rightly expect from the world of higher learning. Man, that is so well-written. It feels like it could have come from me on some level, and I couldn't agree with you more, man. People are asking us daily what we recommend in terms of education for children, alternative options. Where's the truth? Who's got the goods? People want to know all this information now. So dude, glad you're doing what you're doing. Welcome to Here for the Truth. Pleasure to be here, guys. Thank you very much for having me. Nah, man, no worries at all. You know how we like to start these conversations, man. What are the major rites of passages? What's some of the history behind, I guess, how you moved from mainstream educations into what you're doing now? And yeah, how's this all come about? Yeah, well, when I'm tracing back my trajectory as far as not really jiving with what most people around me are telling me, I always go back to this memory I have as a kid. When I was just watching TV in my living room, I was probably like seven or eight years old. And I remember seeing back to back, there were these two commercials on TV where they were both advertising competing products. I think it was like a house cleaner product. And I remember at the end of each commercial, they both said something like, we're the number one cleaning products like in America or whatever it was. So I remember my young childhood mind looking at that, realized like, how can they both be number one? And I thought I was taught always like the TV is this wonderful thing. You're supposed to trust everything. But here I am, it's like the adults of my life are making these TV programs. And yet here I'm seeing this clear contradiction. One of them has to be wrong. So people have asked me that before. And for some reason, this is just a very strong memory I have. Ever since then, yeah, I've always just not really very easily trusted what you could say the mainstream wants to sort of convince us to believe. So as far as how I got into going from academia into this more alternative approach, a lot of that has to do, I think, also with the way I was raised. I was brought up in a very sort of like evangelical Christian household. And in my sort of teenage years and early 20s, I wanted to do the typical rebellion against that. And what better way to do it than to go into university and study sociology and biology, particularly, like I said, I'm going to be an evolutionary biologist and, you know, through all this stuff. And because at that point, I'd had enough of just a lot of these sort of misrepresentations that I felt a lot of people on the sort of like far right wing, I guess you could call it evangelical world, the way they misrepresent certain things. So I go to university thinking it's going to be this like bastion of free thinking. And, you know, herein lies all the truth. And science really does have all the answers, like so many people when they're young and idealistic, they tend to think. But after a few years of doing that, I started realizing that the way they argue, the way they present things, and also the ways in which they try to combat that opposite side of things that other worlds that I came from when they're sort of discussing, like, you know, the scientific ignorance of, you know, the religious right or whatever, I realized that they're misrepresenting those positions as well in so many of the same ways. So from there, I really started to question, I started to really get in my head towards the end of my university career. Like, I love this knowledge. I love science. And every all this research I've been involved in, there's so much here. But I'm starting to see that this materialist reductionist paradigm is just its own religion. As so many have said, I came to this organic understanding of that firsthand. And then, like, for so many, it really accelerated exponentially once 2020 hit. And I started to see how scientific language was being used mostly to just befuddle people into believing things that were clearly incorrect, clearly, like, the antithesis of what science is supposed to be. And, I mean, I was already studying and brushing up on sort of, like, the conspiratorial history of, like, the pharmaceutical industry. I'd already kind of known a bit about that going into this. So I think that sort of primed me for initial skepticism. But I, like most of us, had no idea the levels it was going to get to at that time. So here I was. Shortly before late 2017, I came to Thailand and started teaching here. I was getting out of America for various reasons. I had a buddy over here who he'd been hopping all over Asia for a while. So he just told me, just get out of the US and come to Thailand, teach for a year. Ended up staying for eight and continuing on. So I've been over here dealing with this whole thing as a teacher, science teacher, specifically, dealing with, you know, kids of all ages. I've taught kindergarten through middle school. I'm currently teaching high school or secondary level, depending on where you are in the world. And just the fact that I've worked at a few different schools. And once, you know, the whole scandemic thing started happening, it was strange for me that they would hire me specifically for my background in science and biology. But then as soon as I had any sort of challenge to the whole, you know, anything regarding, especially the masking, forcing the kids to wear masks, I had a really hard time getting behind that and I refused to enforce it. And yeah, just that disconnect between people, you know, these people who were taught to believe have the best interests of kids in their education in mind. Especially I was working at a school that prided themselves on being like a Steiner school, Rudolf Steiner, Maria Montessori, and they still just fell for this hook, line and sinker. And I basically got run out of that school for being one of only like two or three people who wouldn't wear a mask, wouldn't enforce it to the kids, wouldn't get jabbed and all that. And so, really, it was that moment of being sort of run out of that job that I realized that the world is, especially the Western world, is abandoning these mainstream educational institutions and droves. And that means we now have a lot of parents who, you know, they want to homeschool their kids. They know that they've got to take them out of school, but I'm seeing this everywhere in like homeschool groups and forums and everything is that a lot of parents just don't know where to begin. They've, you know, they've never had to teach before, they've never been educators. And a lot of the times, the subjects matter, especially if their kids are a little older, like middle school or high school level, they're like, I have no idea how to teach about like genetics or cells or anything sort of like this higher level science stuff. I can take them to museums or for a walk in the woods, which is absolutely fantastic. But most homeschool curriculums and programs that you find are really just going to be a recycled version of your typical sort of like Pearson textbook or whatever it is, just like, you know, rehashed for a homeschool curriculum. So, I wanted to make something that was going to not only walk people through the foundations of the biological sciences specifically, but weave in discussions that are going to range from like history, psychology, philosophy, etymology, all these other topics that I find very interesting that have these really interesting intersections with the study of the life sciences and create something that was new, that showed that there really is more of a synthesis between all of these seemingly disconnected fields. And at the same time, I'm not going to be shying away telling people like, you shouldn't be, you know, researching alternative theories. I know the one that gets talked about a lot and you guys have talked about recently would be like the terrain theory versus germ theory thing where, you know, your mainstream university professor is going to say, absolutely not. We're not going to talk about that because that's just not part of the curriculum or whatever else. So, I want to be able to first steel man the arguments of say the textbooks, give people the ability to really understand what those arguments are, what all the words mean. And then once you can understand that, then we can start to really see the flaws in it because a lot of people, I'm starting to wrap up here, but a lot of the people who get into these more alternative theories like your terrain theories and everything else, and there's a lot of legitimacy to those. But I feel like a lot of people, they realize that, you know, one scientific paradigm was wrong and it's more the psychology behind it where they're just going to immediately jump to another dogma or way of thinking without first totally understanding the whole playing field of everything that goes into it. So, I want to bring people up to speed with the ABCs as best as possible. And so, really that's been my inspiration. I love it, man. You're hired, bro. You're hired. Yeah. Oh, thank you. Well, I mean, I just love how you communicate things and even just this idea of, and, you know, someone who has influenced us, Michael Tesarian talks about often, like, you know, I want to know the argument of the other side of the challenging things. So, how does one teach? And this is a question I want to ask you. How does one teach critical thinking, you know, in children, you know, to get them to hold space for differing, you know, arguments, different ideologies? Yeah. Look, there's a lot of different ways, but like one strategy that I've really found is useful, especially with, I want to say especially with younger students though, it could work with pretty much anyone. As you take, like if we take an example out of the sciences, one thing I really love doing is, say, starting a lesson or curriculum or topic by taking some statement that's sort of held as like an absolute fundamental truth, something no one would ever think to question. Like, for example, putting up a picture of, say, a water molecule and saying, like, this is not H2O or something. And then getting people to make, and not necessarily saying like, this is what I believe or I'm making some sort of objective statement about it, but just to kind of get them to think about these types of models in a new way. Or, you know, if I wanted to introduce talking about, say, germ theory, I could say, like, I could just make a statement like, germs don't make you sick. Because for most people, especially most kids, and Asia is very different than the West now because people tend not to be as sort of like, you know, and in the West, we have a lot of people that really like to shake the bars of occasion. In Asia, that doesn't really happen. So, you have a lot more collectivism here. So, things like that, I find leads to some really interesting discussions with students when you show things like that, and then you have to try to get them to come up with some sort of understanding or maybe provide some arguments for them as to why this might be the case. [Speaker 2] (14:22 - 14:22) Yeah, I guess. [Speaker 1] (14:23 - 24:29) I'm sorry. No, go ahead. I guess that's kind of one benefit to, like, you know, posting, like, debates and getting kids to think through the proper arguments to present, you know, for an opposing side. Well, I think we've lost that art in education, like debating, you know. I mean, I know there's debate things that go on in school and stuff, but I just feel like it's not something that's very present. It's like, here you go, this is what the truth is, regurgitate it, get your grade, move on. Yeah, yeah. And it's kind of tough as a teacher as well, because when you're working for an institution, we as well are sort of forced in some ways, we're funneled into teaching in that way. So, it becomes sort of like a nuanced art of trying to figure out, like, how can I still give these students some decent lessons, but, you know, I still kind of have to play the game of school, which is why I find, like, homeschooling and unschooling to be such a fantastic initiative, because it's trying to undo all of that. You know, what I was going to say earlier, and I don't know, I just popped into my head at that moment, would be an interesting experiment to do with kids. Now, you would have to, like, get certain kids on it, get certain kids to go along with it, and other ones to be, like, maybe the test subjects, but to recreate the Ash conformity experiment, and then educate them afterwards what you did. So, you have, like, five kids in on the experiment, and then, you know, one person not, and then they're going along, and to see if they get impacted by the people within their environment, and then to kind of show them, you know, what happens, and what the case may, you know, what can happen in those situations when you're impacted by the people around you. Anyways, that was just something that popped into my head. I don't know if it would work, but. And just for those that don't know, Ash conformity experiment is basically highlighting, you know, people going along with group consensus, regardless of knowledge that they already have. Yeah, if you haven't, just search it online, and it's a short little video. Uh, yeah, I'm familiar, because my other background is in sociology, so that was another, was one of those classic studies you kind of have to learn about there. I've not, so I've not tried that with students, though I imagine, yeah, some interesting results could come out of that for sure. Yeah, anyways, this just popped in my head, because it would be interesting to see how that would go, depending on the age group, of course. I don't know if it would work with, like, four-year-olds. Yeah, most likely not, but I've got, I've got, yeah, my current ones, I might be able to swing that with. Thanks for the idea. If I do it, I'll report back the results. Awesome. So, like, obviously, you know, for those who are thinking alternatively, for those who are freedom-oriented and freedom-minded and questioning the mainstream paradigm around things, you know, homeschooling is becoming the more popular option. But I mean, homeschooling has its pitfalls, like, like you've mentioned, like, most parents, like, are not educators, you know, and most of us, or many people, you know, they're going to swing to the opposite. Oh, mainstream education is, you know, completely screwed up, therefore, you know, I just tend to have them at home and my kids around me, and that, in many ways, then it becomes the parent just indoctrinating the child with where their thinking finishes. Um, you know, but then, obviously, you offer courses, there's curriculums, etc. But then, you know, do you want our kids to be stuck learning online? You know, we're not going to have free-minded thinking, alternative teachers in every single city in the world. So, like, what are some of the solutions, you know, moving forward? You, not long ago, you referenced, uh, Tesarian. And so, I borrow, you know, obviously, I came to you guys, uh, through, uh, your appearances there. So, he's also been a huge, uh, influence and teacher. And so, what he's, uh, this, this may seem like an unwieldy, uh, fix for a lot of people, but I really think it's the best answer is, like, people got to start, uh, cultivating some sort of personal self-reflection and understand their own psychology. Because I think this is, this might have even been a topic that you guys just, I remember someone discussing this, uh, the problems of homeschooling in depth at some point. Um, and what you just said is exactly the case. Because if you're just taking them out of a public school or even a private school, and you're just replacing one dogmatic worldview with another, then you're still just creating, uh, a slave mindset in the next generation. So, really, the onus is on parents. I don't really know other, any other way around it. They need to be able to recognize that you're not trying to create some, like, carbon copy robot version of yourself. And, and that's unfortunately what education has become. And even well-meaning parents who want to homeschool their kids because of, you know, I want to give them a better education or everything. If those parents haven't deprogrammed themselves from their own schooling, then they're not going to know anything else. They're just going to create this sort of, you know, rigid program, like, here's your set schedule, you must fill, you do this worksheet. And I've seen this happen, uh, with parents a lot. Is there, they're kind of, uh, at a loss as to what to do. You can't blame them. Um, they don't really, uh, they're, they don't know what to do. Um, and, and they don't also all have the time and like, yeah, in their lives, doing their thing. And I mean, I've had conversations with parents that would like to do some form of unschooling or homeschooling, but either financially, they're not at that place time-wise they don't have. And so it's like, they just, they just kind of do what they can. Yeah, absolutely. I, I have, uh, nothing but empathy for people in this situation, especially now with things being as they are. I mean, most households are having, like both parents are having to work like two jobs just in order to, you know, feed their family. Um, so yeah, time is, uh, a precious commodity at this time. Unfortunately, uh, we don't have it. So, um, I'm not saying that I'm going to have, I don't have all the answers to fix everything, but it can, but definitely it can start by at least approaching, uh, your children's education with the idea that, uh, no one knows everything and 99.9% of all the ideas that people have had have been wrong in some way. So, it's best to approach education and teaching them any subjects with the caveat that, okay, this might be wrong. We might have some interesting ideas, but, you know, here's what people say about this. Here's what some different people say about the same subjects. They don't always agree, um, gather all the information you can, and then all consistently be asking, like, what do you think about this? Get really used to questioning your kids or, uh, and even yourself. Like, what do we really think about this information? Not what do, you know, my friends and family want me to think about the information or my peer group or whatever. What is, like, the truth or community think I should believe? Uh, what, you know, what is the information actually telling me? What's really being revealed here through my own, say, intuition, my own intellectual faculties? Um, and so, if you're doing that yourself and if you're encouraging your kids to do it by, uh, by just coaxing these sorts of questions with them and are coaxing these answers out of them as best you can, um, that I think will, uh, that's probably one of the best de-schooling methods I know is to start asking them, like, how they feel about the information, not just, okay, remember this and put it on the paper when the time comes. Yeah. What do you actually, what do you genuinely think about this, you know? Yeah, right. I don't, I don't, I don't know all the answers, but here's one to the beliefs. Here's what some people believe. Here are the reasons why, but, you know, ultimately there's no firm dogmatism around it. Like, what does your mind say about all this? Yeah. And it's, it stimulates further curiosity. And I had an acting teacher who's, um, who's a friend of mine. Um, he said in a class once many years ago, he's like, as a parent, you know, if you can just cultivate curiosity in your child, like a good portion of your job is done, you know? Right. Because the system that we have, especially the educational system and everything that you were saying before about parents being pretty entrenched in their dogmas and wanting to create carbon copies, it's like you, you, you swallow up that curiosity because you're like, no, the schools tell you what's true. Don't go outside the box. Parents have their like specific ways of being that they project on their kids. And so I feel like that curiosity gets, um, you know, just kind of dissolves away, uh, very often. And I think the more you can keep that, that wonder, that sense of not knowing, um, is I think can really be very supportive as a child continues on in their life. I know that. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's also like a great value just in living and experiencing life. Like to me, life would be so dull and boring if I wasn't curious, if I wasn't inquisitive about what, what the answers might be or what my future might hold or what else might be possible for me. Like it's such a reductionistic paradigm to live in where we think we can't question everything. And everyone already knows all the answers. There's no space for me to discover anything new. Like, are you kidding me? It's like, uh, it's like, uh, the Truman show when he goes to like, it'll be where he goes to like, like buy a ticket to travel. It's like, ah, it's been explored. No, no, don't worry about that. You don't need to go there. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. I've seen this a lot now. It's like, uh, teaching young people now, it's like, uh, one, uh, teacher colleague that I have put it really well. He says, it's almost like we're teaching the internet. Uh, cause we're, we're, the kids now really are a product. They've grown up, uh, just entrenched in this. Whereas, you know, I'm, I'm 33. So I at least grew up during a time when the internet wasn't really a big thing. And I know you guys are with the last generation. [Speaker 3] (24:30 - 24:31) Yeah, exactly. [Speaker 1] (24:31 - 30:10) Yeah. We kind of have that Island of a youthful memory of things just being a lot simpler. Uh, so now I can definitely see that with the exception of a few students, um, that curiosity, like you're saying seems to just be killed because they're used to the idea of like, okay, well, any fact that I need to look up, you know, here it is. I've got this phone that I'm glued to 24 seven. I can just look up any, anything. Uh, but of course, when all of those searches are going to be, you know, filtered out by, you know, certain companies and institutions that want only certain information, uh, being put forward, of course, they're, they're going to be raised in this world where, okay, there really is only one answer. Um, especially for like these scientific questions. Uh, whereas, uh, what, what, what scientific research is actually showing us is we actually don't really know much of anything. All we have is at best conjectures. Um, and really life, the universe, everything is, uh, it really is just one gigantic mystery. And it seems like every single time we sort of prod and poke for those answers, uh, we may be, it's almost like we get one step forward and two steps back, at least with our current, like sort of poking and prodding, uh, scientific, uh, method that we use to get to everything. There's no real reverence for the mystery. It's like science is now being used as a tool for, you know, it's, it's, it's the will to power. It's, it's like, I want to learn science so that I have, uh, control and dominance over nature and over my body as opposed to, you know, I want to look at this in terms of like how a natural philosopher would look at things. Like I love nature and I love that the wisdom, I love the wisdom that nature has to show us through observation, uh, which is why I, I, I much prefer, uh, to think of learning these topics. Uh, I, I might prefer the, uh, the title of a natural philosopher as opposed to a scientist. Um, it was the word science itself that has like an etymological, uh, link to just like a splitting, a breaking down of everything. Um, so it's actually, it's linked to, uh, etymologically to words like scissors, um, schism, um, and, and schizophrenia as well. They share a common root, um, because it's all talking about like the, the splitting and breaking down. But if you don't know how to break everything, if you don't know how to first break everything up and then also put it all back together and synthesize everything into this greater form of knowledge, all you've got is a bunch of random screwing out pieces. Yeah. Um, well, natural philosopher like leaves room for intuition, you know, I think science is at the exclusion of that because for the natural, for like what the things that we're drawn to study, to discover, to learn more of, that's like, that's an intuitive felt sense of where one is drawn to, you know, um, which, which doesn't exist in the, in the current scientific paradigm. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't. Um, cause again, yeah. Like the, the, as we were saying, the current scientific paradigm is just, uh, you know, what does the textbook say? What does Google say? And there you go. There's your answer. Yeah. But philosophy automatically entails, there's going to be sort of more a receptive listening and it's going to be a more, a more, uh, personal approach to this knowledge. Yeah. And like, not that, you know, Google and having, you know, phones at our beck and call is an entire negative thing either, you know, like if, if understood correctly and again, you know, if it's approached non-dogmatically, then, you know, it's, it's, it's an incredible tool for us to discover answers, get different perspectives, get different belief systems and form our own conclusions at a far quicker pace than we ever could have as well. Yeah. Right. You need that foundational philosophy though, to be the person that's going to utilize, you know, these devices, you know, to, to go, Hey, I can keep searching. I can explore these things that can connect, connect with these different people from all around the world and gain these new ideas. And then hopefully use your own process of introspection and, and to feel what's right. You know, so I totally agree with what you're saying. The other, the other day, my oldest daughter, who's five years old, she goes, dad is, are there such a thing as like flying snakes? I'm like, I don't know. Let's, let's check it out. So like we Google flying snakes and, you know, within five minutes of watching a video of a flying, of a flying snake. So, you know, those flying snakes, they're, they're, they're more of gliders, but like, they jump and they, for a long, long, long time, bro. Like it's actually pretty crazy. Yeah. That's the cool. That's the one thing I do love about like the internet sometimes where it's like, you like look up something and you're like, wow, I've been alive for 43 years and I had no fucking clue where this is real. So yeah, it's cool. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, these tools are, are, should be looked at as gifts and it's all about your approach to it. As cliche as that might be to say the, if you, if you go at using them with a, with this consciousness and sort of like a purpose, you know, exactly what you're going to be using them for and you know, and why, but you know, obviously we're living in a world where most people aren't doing that. Most people are just going to be unplugged from that sort of conscious approach. And yeah, so I, I believe, I don't know if either of you are familiar with the works of the ringing cedars. [Speaker 2] (30:11 - 30:11) Oh yeah. [Speaker 1] (30:12 - 30:13) Oh yeah. [Speaker 2] (30:13 - 30:13) Okay. [Speaker 1] (30:13 - 30:21) Yeah. I'm familiar with them. I have friends that are really into them. I was supposed to get the books to add to the library, but I haven't read them at all. Yeah. [Speaker 2] (30:21 - 30:22) Yeah. Okay. [Speaker 1] (30:22 - 40:05) I'll go friends that are super, super into them and swear by them. But I haven't gone super deep myself. I get a bit of a cultish vibe sometimes around it. I, I understand. I, I, I have as well, there's certain, for certain groups that I maybe avoid with them, but it's more so just the message of the books itself. I was just going to bring up a quick points about them and, and, and I would, and I would recommend anyone just sort of check them out just for themselves. Just, you know, obviously don't turn into a cult. And that's actually one of the main points of the book is don't turn this into a cult. Don't turn this into a religion. That's not the point, but anyway the whole this one point they make in the book is that, you know, all of this, everything that we have happening right now, as far as, you know, this technological rollout, everything that people associate with like the WEF or whatever. So the, the word for this now that we like to use is technocracy and that's the word used in the book. And so the point is brought up multiple times, like, what are we supposed to do with all this? Are we supposed to just abandon everything and go back to like this all natural living? Like how so many sort of idealists sort of hippie types want to talk about like, you know, throw it all away, all your Silicon devices and go back to the soil and just, you know, live like cavemen. But the point is no, no, like years we should be, whatever tools we have, it's almost like there needs to be a sort of alchemy with them. If we've been, if we've been given these tools by people who have nefarious abilities, then we need to know how to be the same kind of alchemist that they are. If they can twist good for evil, then we need to know how to twist evil for good. So we need to be able to use these things like the technology we're using now to have this conversation. I know people bring this up all the time. So yeah, these tools, absolutely. They need to be used for this purpose. You know, otherwise, you know, we're lost. We have the ability to make these connections all around the world and learn all these awesome things. So yeah, take advantage. And it's not going away. Like it's not right. Technology isn't going away. And even with everything that went down in 2020, there are people who like made decisions based on fear and they're like, we're just moving off the grid and fuck all this shit. And then it's like, they realize the like reality versus the fantasy isn't the same. And then they come to face to face with what, what do they really want and what are their values? And there may be like, well, maybe I don't want to live in the middle of nowhere on 10 acres of land. Now some people do and they make it work. So again, it's like, where are you making these decisions from? You know, are they coming from a place of fear? You know, to what degree does self-knowledge play into this? You know, you said earlier, like about Michael and everything we talk about, like, how well do you know yourself? You know, how well can you reflect on what you truly want and who you are? This is where obviously I'm in. So a lot of esoteric stuff like human design and, you know, Michael's telescope and learning these things about yourself. And from a human design standpoint, understanding your unique authority and your unique decision making process, which is your personal intuition in a sense. And so that's like served me well in my life, even before I even knew these specific things about me. And also not to hold any of this stuff as like strict dogma. You know, you've heard me say before, I'm not like a dogmatist. I like taking an information from different places. How does it interact with me and who I am and what I'm into? And then how does that allow me to make decisions that I think are correct for me? So, you know, I think that's extremely important to consider. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, every single tool is transformed by the consciousness that uses it, right? Yes. And, you know, I really, I really dislike when people come from the angle that like all these, you know, tools that are in mass production and we utilize every single day has come from evil minds and for nefarious purposes. You know, like Jeff Bezos, like for example, like he found a hole in the market and he created a product which billions of people use and rely upon like every single day. Like there's this great morality that it takes to create that level of value as well. Not saying that we have to agree with everything that just Jeff Bezos does in every single arena of his life. But in that particular arena, he's done the majority of people a service. Like the iPhone, like Apple, you know, whatever it might be like on some level, we also have to acknowledge that it takes great minds to build these products and to be able to, you know, provide value to the masses to such a degree in such a capacity. So it's not about, you know, just like shunning away from everything that has now been adopted on a mainstream level. Well, even the same thing when like movies and cinema and art, it's like, it's all bad. Hollywood's evil. You can't watch anything. You can't entertain yourself, like throw away your TV. It's like, okay, I get it on some level. Like you have to be discerning and mindful on what you're consuming. And at the same time, there's beautiful stories. I mean, you learn about the human condition. You learn about yourself. You tune into yourself. You feel feelings that maybe you wouldn't have felt before because you've been stimulated in a certain way. So it's like, you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. And this is the thing like, you know, we're so dualistic in our thinking that everything's either good or bad. It's either good or evil, you know, and it's about getting rid of the evil and just coming closer to the good, you know, but we don't realize that both contain each other. Like both are necessary. And the goal is to become more expanded and holistic in how you receive and relate to these ideas. You know, it's not about like, let me just fucking push away everything that doesn't fit within my current dogma and just, you know, absorb more of the thing that I think is going to fulfill me in that way. I don't know. Yeah, absolutely. No, you go. You go in. Yeah, a lot I could say there. Really good points. To me, it strikes me as a form of this self-flagellation that's been just on a psychological level that's been brought about by especially all this trauma of the past few years, though. I mean, it's been ongoing for most of human history, and that's why people want to get into this whole way of thinking, because it does. It makes their life less enjoyable. Like when you're saying like every single production of Hollywood is like something to be burned and, you know, shunned. Because I agree with your point wholeheartedly. You've got to know how to look at these things and catch the beauty of them. Otherwise, like, you know, it's much, much better to take something that may be bad or may have some bad origin and turn it into something beautiful, even if it's just internally rather than just like, you know, ignore it and just think like, oh, there's this ugly thing out in the world that I'm going to try to avoid. And then the other side of the coin there is when like what you're saying about Jeff Bezos is, yeah, he obviously has done plenty of despicable things, but yeah, you're right. Like we've got to acknowledge maybe he's done some good for the world by releasing these sorts of these products and giving people the opportunity to have this. And then all the, say, what the maybe alternative truth community want to say are like the good guys, right? Well, what kind of skeletons do they have in their closet, right? Like no one kind of gets out of this world. So we're only ever seeing personas of people, whether they're the heroes or the villains. But really, like you said, everybody has a little bit of both in them. Human beings are super complex. Anyone that's really understands and studies psychology knows these things. So it's like and this is something I've talked about often. It's like you go online in the world where I live now, truth, community, conspiracy, community, wherever you want to call it, fucking community, is that like you're into someone and then they say one thing that you that you disagree with. Then you're like, yeah, that dude that I'm following him. I can't believe I listened to anything that person ever said in his entire life. What are you talking about? It's OK to disagree with people. And they're just projecting their own fear. And they're just projecting their own inability for self-awareness. And when we completely blindly shut out all of Hollywood or like all of, you know, then we just were coming from the angle that we're scared that someone else can't critically think for themselves. We're scared that someone can't watch a movie and not have the capacity to like take the good and leave what doesn't resonate or use a product and take the good and leave what doesn't resonate. We're coming from a place that's anti-rationality, that's anti-trust of what humans are actually capable of. And I think that we all have the capability to interact with things with more discernment, you know, more holistically, et cetera, et cetera. But most of the people particularly like that call themselves truth seekers, it's always fear-based actions. It's no, this is satanic. This is going to affect me negatively. Even if I dabble in this on any degree whatsoever, then that leads me down a whole, you know, arena that I don't trust myself in. It's the same thing with religionists, you know, anything that has an astrological sign on it, anything that's related to the tarot, anything that has a yoga mat in the room, let's not engage with that whatsoever. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. Especially that ladder mindset is sort of what I've grown up with. But isn't that part of the reason why you consider yourself a critical thinking being now? Like me too, I was always raised as Jehovah's Witness, right? But on some level, that's the fundamental foundation that gave me the contrast to be like, hang on, something ain't right here. And in many ways, that's what fostered my ability to think critically. [Speaker 3] (40:06 - 40:08) Now a short break from the episode. [Speaker 1] (40:09 - 40:35) Hey everyone, if you've been enjoying this conversation, we have these kinds of conversations and so many other kinds of conversations about these subjects in our Friends of the Truth community. So if you're interested in joining us, hanging out with us, diving deep on these subjects, go to friendsofthetruth.co. Yeah. And even beyond us, come connect with an amazing group of legends who are inspired, who are empowered, and who would love to connect with you. And the power of community at this time cannot be undecided. [Speaker 3] (40:36 - 40:37) Back to the episode. [Speaker 1] (40:38 - 42:22) Oh yeah, it's something I'm extremely grateful for having seen, lived through and been in so many, we'll say like ideologically opposed social circles. It really gave me so much insight on a lot of things. It really helped me to question a lot of the assumptions that I have about the world. Another thing that I was heavily involved in in my early 20s was the punk rock movement. I was very much into... I was in a band traveling around and everyone there was into Karl Marx and we've got to overthrow capitalism and socialism is the way to go. So I spent years of my early 20s in that world as well, just as another example. And so now I've seen that same group of people that I would have figured were so anti-establishment before, now they're all the ones who are going along with basically everything the TV is telling them to do. Yeah. I was going to just kind of jump in there. It's interesting too, the conversations that I've had with people that left these collectivistic countries, older individuals that left these countries and then at the start of 2020 and into 2021, they knew, they can sense what was happening. They're like, no, I'm not going along with this. Because they've lived it, they've been there, they've had these personal experiences and their intuition has been heightened to a place where like, I've seen this before. Yeah. And I'm not having anything to do with it. Yeah. Anyways, that's why they're always going to rely on the younger generations, right? The younger folk are the revolutionaries, the cultivated revolutionaries for that reason. [Speaker 3] (42:23 - 42:23) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (42:23 - 42:35) And we have to go through these rites of passage in our life, whether you're like punk rock and you're like down with the system, capitalism is evil, or you're hardcore religious, whatever the case may be. These are phases in our life. [Speaker 2] (42:35 - 42:36) Yeah, exactly. [Speaker 1] (42:36 - 45:11) You learn through these processes, you balance from one side of the other to the other side, then you create some more nuance. You can see the benefits of maybe certain things that are good about one side versus the other. Again, this whole black and white thinking, it's like, we're so much more complex than that. Yeah. And for that reason, I'm a lot more hesitant to maybe trust the words or the insight of people who have only ever been one thing. Because I know plenty of people like this as well. Like, oh, just from the moment I was born, I've always been blah, blah, blah. I've always been Christian. I've always been atheist. I've always thought this. My family's always been Republican or Democrats. And I've never thought anything different outside of that. These people do exist. I've come across them. And so, yeah, you can tell that there's, I mean, not to talk down about anyone, that's not the point here, but we can definitely see there's a bit of an arrest in their ability to perfectly well expect it. They're not really going to be able to see anything outside of their own perspective. And their identity very often is wrapped up with a singular ideology, which inherently in some way prevents not all people from seeing many different sides. Whether you're like, I'm a Christian, I'm a Buddhist, I'm this. That's cool. It's a personal relationship. I've had conversations with people that align with these things or that's how they identify. And there is some room for nuance, but there's many that don't. The minute you challenge your question, the usual thing happens, either ridicule, dismission, aggression, condescension, defensiveness, et cetera. Yeah. And that's humanity in a nutshell. Yeah. I, by no means, I'm not immune to that. I'm in my own process. I'm learning things. There's things that I thought were like, oh, this is totally the truth six years ago. And then I get exposed to new information that challenged me in different ways. And my intuition goes, oh, this feels right. This seems like a good path to go down. And then it's totally shifted my thinking and perception of things or the world or the human body or health. So I think there has to be that openness. Oh, and something I was going to say before is, I think part of it is this inability to hold space within yourself for the vulnerability of, I don't know. I don't know. Like, I'm not sure. Like we're just, it's like certainty feels safer in the human body than uncertainty. [Speaker 2] (45:12 - 45:13) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (45:13 - 49:47) From a system standpoint. So unless you've built that capacity to deal with like uncertainty, not knowing, discomfort, confusion, you know, you're going to latch onto something that is like, you know, the life raft. I'll go, I believe this now. Okay, great. I can continue on the next five years of my life. Yeah. Whereas it takes a certain kind of person that can live in this space. Yeah. And that's particularly the case when we derive our self-worth by how others perceive us and how others see us, you know, because it's like, we need to be seen as someone that knows things or as someone that, you know, gets things or someone that's smart or someone that grasps ideas quickly, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. When for most of us, we don't give ourselves the proper self-acceptance and time to think things through properly, to come to our own, our own conclusion. You know, we live in this culture that expects us to know the answers and have answers and pick a side immediately. Yeah. Like think about Palestine, Israel. How dare you to not pick a side? You know, how, how, how dare you not know which, which one is the, you know, like. The day after. The day after it happens, you must know. You gotta know. I was having this conversation last night with friends of mine that I, that I, that I saw that I haven't seen in a long time back in, I'm back in my hometown. And we were having that conversation, like, like with anything that goes on in the world, like you can't have space for not knowing, for wanting to like look into both sides to say that, oh, maybe each side has a point. And no, you must claim your, your position and announce it to everyone. And if you don't announce it to everyone, you're a part of the problem and your silence is violence. Yep. Like, fuck off. Yeah. Like, I don't know yet. All right. Yeah. Uh, I couldn't agree more, especially when you're in a position like, oh, so for you guys being sort of like, uh, you know, these, the, this bastion of, of knowledge with this podcast, uh, sort of teachers in your own right. Absolutely. And then, you know, going in front of a classroom, it's kind of a weird thing because we're, what you say is exactly right. We're kind of expected to know everything and to have all the answers to any sort of question that could be posed. And this has been a personal challenge of mine and I'm getting better at it, but like oftentimes students are going to ask you questions, especially about complicated topics. When you get to higher levels of science, like, you know, I legitimately forget the answer to this, or I just don't know the answer. And you've got to be able to, you know, drop the ego a little bit as a teacher and just say, sorry, man, I don't know. Like, you're going to have to figure this out. Let me, let me come back to you. Yeah. And, and, but you're the exact, like that right there is the example of the thing that we're trying to cultivate and all this stuff we're talking about now, like it's okay to not know. It's okay to be in the process of discovering something. But if we're just, if we have teachers our whole life that like just regurgitate something or they don't say, I don't know, or they don't say, Hey, like, this is what I believe so far, but I could be wrong. Like you have to like cut that projection field of like, Oh my God, you're the teacher, you know, everything, you're amazing. You have a podcast. Oh my God. You're creating a course about science. Oh my God. I don't have that knowledge. I'm not doing those things. You must know more than me. And like, maybe on some levels we might know more, but how can we, as the people in those positions go, Hey, listen, thank you for saying those kinds of things about me. And like, I'm a human being I'm in process. I don't know things. I fuck up. My wife thinks I'm an asshole sometimes, you know, whatever the case may be. And just like, so, so they could go, Oh, okay, cool. I could, that person's a human. They're not a God. They don't know everything. They're not like inherently better than me because they're on a screen or because, you know, they're standing up in front of a classroom. Like just like the, the, again, this is where I think humility works. I've talked about this before. That word is something that I think gets overused, but the humility of like, Hey, listen, I I'm in process. I don't know everything. And putting it, putting the onus back on the student, Hey, listen, you know, why don't you, like, these are some things I've learned, but like, why don't you continue the investigation process? Yeah. Yeah. No one, no one can think or learn properly with so much tension and expectation, you know? And it's like, we, we, we put out, we put our own minds and our own selves in chains first, but like, we have to allow ourselves the freedom to have the time to learn and to think and to discover in order to be good teachers and to offer that to someone else. As well, you know? Right. [Speaker 2] (49:47 - 49:47) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (49:48 - 55:40) And there's so much pressure to live up to that projection because if you don't, what does that mean? You know, what does that mean? This is where self-esteem comes into play. A person of high self-esteem doesn't just give you a bullshit regurgitated answer so that you can come across as not knowing, you know, and maybe getting judged for not knowing, but they're like, Hey, listen, I know what I know. And the things I don't know, I'm cool with not knowing. Right. And if you're not able to tackle that personal dragon, when you are in this position of, you know, being a teacher, which should be seen as like, as a sacred duty, if you're guiding and leading the minds of young learners. But if you can't undo that projection of like, Oh, I'm supposed to know everything, then someone asks the question and you don't know the answer. And so, you just like seen it happen. Like people just, you know, make something up or they'll just say something that probably isn't true or whatever. So, you're in that, in those cases, you're giving the students incorrect information just to sort of save face. Yeah. And this is important for parents. Like again, I'm not a parent, but if you're a parent and you're in the homeschooling world or unschooling, whatever, like, can you do that? Can your kids are going to ask you all these different questions? Can you not just give them bullshit answers? Because shit, I'm mom, I'm dad, I have to know. And like, my kid can't see me vulnerable or my kid can't see me like without having the answer. So, this is happening in those settings as well. So, again, it comes back down to the individual. So many illusions are propagated by our own urge to fake self-worth to ourselves. Fuck, man. That's a good one. Yeah. Okay, bro. We could keep going on and talking about all this stuff, but what's lifeology? Oh, yeah, that thing that you're doing, that you're creating and what it's about. Like, what is it? Yeah. So, I introduced a little bit at the beginning. But yeah, what is this more properly? Yeah. So, it's a curriculum, right? And right now it is just an online-based curriculum. I'm essentially kind of creating a biology textbook we could say from the ground up. But in doing so, as I said before, I'm going to be intermingling alternative theories and various other topics surrounding like esoterics. I might even bring in stuff to do with like alchemy and how these theories and ways of looking at things have intersected with the modern scientific worldview. Where does one paradigm work and where does another paradigm work? And so, what does this mean specifically? I start out the program. Really, I don't talk about anything science related at all in any sort of strict sense. The beginnings of the whole program is just about just scientific philosophy, epistemology in general. How do we know anything that we know and can we know anything? So, that's number one for me. If people are going to learn nothing else about the inner workings of cells and DNA and all these other things, all that stuff is secondary. But I start off in this foundation of everything is viable to be questioned even the most fundamental tenets of science. And then from there, I'm going to take students through the typical things that you'd associate with the biological sciences. So, we start off with like cells and basic cell anatomy. Going through a lot of that stuff, most people learn when say they're in like high school or whatever. This is the nucleus and this is what it probably does and various other things, the endoplasmic reticulum. Moving on through there, we're going to talk about say like what is energy? How does energy relate to the inner workings of life and everything? So, really, it's covering the gamut of biological topics just from what I'm hoping to be fresher perspectives, sort of an upgrade to the materialist reductionist paradigm that sort of undergirds all of these sciences. So, it is a proper curriculum. It's structured. It goes through all the lessons. I have the topics all drawn out. It's not done yet. It's a huge work in the making. So, I'm still tweaking what I have and reading a lot. It's a full-time job on top of actually being a daytime teacher as well. But yeah, so that's what I'm hoping to do is it's an all-encompassing biology program aimed at sort of recapturing or we'll say reclaiming the sciences from this materialist worldview and bringing them back into their proper space of natural philosophy and appreciation of the wisdom that nature has to show us. I love a man. I love the vision and I think that's a very important endeavor that you're going on for sure and one that's very, very necessary. Because I think a lot of the reasoning and the foundational ideas that lead to low self-esteem within the masses is this whole idea that everything is random. The universe is random. The Big Bang led to a bunch of life that also is just random and anything could happen at any time. So, I'm curious, how do you go about teaching? Because that's the primordial question that kids ask like, what is all this? Where did all this come from? What's going on? What's the purpose of all this? [Speaker 2] (55:40 - 55:40) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (55:40 - 58:33) Well, that could be like a whole podcast in and of itself getting into that topic. But generally, the way that the sciences and this mainstream paradigm of painted everything is that everything sort of started with like physical laws, which is eventually what gave birth to this Big Bang and everything. And then from the particles and atoms, they all came together and they became more complex. They formed into molecules. Molecules eventually became more complex and formed into life. And it's just this ongoing, as you say, random process. So, basically, the order, we could say, from the main branches of the natural sciences are going to be like physics, then chemistry, then biology. And then after biology, we have psychology. Psychology is just an epiphenomenon of the brain and electrical signals bouncing back and forth. And that's really all it is. But a simple way to answer this question would be to say, okay, well, what if we flip that around and we start investigating the evolution of the cosmos, reality, whatever word you want to apply to it. And we say, well, what if we start with mind and consciousness? Because this point keeps getting made over and over again, but it's worth restating is it's like the worldview of science hasn't actually been keeping up with what scientific discoveries have been showing. In particular, in this world of, you know, everybody loves to throw around the word quantum physics and quantum theory. But what is it really showing at its most foundational level is our observation of the universe around us, of the actual physical space shows us really it's not a predictable space at all. Our own observation changes the way that things work on the most foundational level. And so, what is that actually showing us? It's showing us that mind really is probably the primary thing. It's not an accidental epiphenomena, but it's like the entire universe that we live in, this physical place that we've been tricked into having this like Cartesian view of where, you know, we're the subject and it's the object and there's this sort of like indivisible wall. What if mind and matter are really just two sides of the same coin? Like they say the same thing about, you know, like an electric current and magnetism. It's really just two angles on the same thing. That's what mind and matter is. The entire reality that we have, all these physical laws that we're working out through the scientific method are just the result of this sort of like collective dream that we're all having together, birthing the cosmos into reality. Very resilient. Yeah. [Speaker 3] (58:34 - 58:35) Have you gotten into Walt Russell's work? [Speaker 1] (58:36 - 1:02:35) Yeah, I have. I've read, I got through half of The Secret of Light. But since I have like so many, you know, figurative tabs open, I put that one to the side for now. But I'm planning to go back to it. Because right now, I've actually recently over the past couple of months, I haven't really even been studying biology. I've been going back into physics a lot and studying. That's why I had electromagnetism on the mind. I've been going back into physics a lot lately because I'm really trying to understand the concept of energy. I recently listened to your guys's interview with Eileen McCusick with the electric body. I actually I have one of her tuning forks. I bought one a while ago. So yeah, so what she was talking about was really resonating with a lot of things that I've been studying as well. So yeah, can't remember where I was going with that. But Well, I guess the cool thing is, man, there's so many different avenues and angles that overlap that connect. And, you know, and I think that's what we're moving more towards, you know, it isn't just this, like, materialist reductionist or even in medicine, like one cause one solution. Here you go. Here's your pill. It's just, there's nuance to it. And that's why I love that we have these conversations, you know, with Eileen about the bio field and you know, obviously how I feel about Dr. Hammer's work and or how we feel about Dr. Hammer's work and his research, you know, like consciousness can't be left at the door, you know, and it's such a big piece of the puzzle. Yeah. What are your thoughts on like, on evolution? Because like, I find like many people also in this community just want to like throw in Darwinism completely out the window. Yeah, yeah. I know. That's, that was like the progenitor debate for me, going back when I being raised evangelical and going into this. Yeah. So, the picture that people have, I think of what evolution is on sort of both sides of this ideology war, the culture war, it lags behind a lot of what actual evolutionary research shows us about things. So, I'm not going to do, I don't, I wouldn't do like a deep dive into evolution at this moment, but it's, I see where people are coming from when they're pointing out issues with it. Because again, the whole Darwinian model relies on the idea that everything really is random. So, that's why it's very popular amongst the materialist reductionists. So, there's definite issues with Darwinian model, but it has become, it seems, another instance of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as we keep saying. People don't want to, they just want to say, okay, evolution is what's believed by these atheistic scientists, and I don't want to believe anything that they believe. So, obviously, I'm just going to say, it's all evil, it's all horrible. When no, evolution is really at its most basic, just telling us- Can't take anything- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can't believe anything. Yeah, he was a 33, man. We can't do that. So, yeah, yeah. It's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's a refusal to see nuance. I can understand where the people who want to criticize it are coming from, because there are legitimate criticisms of the models. Yeah, absolutely. But to say that, things, organisms don't adapt over successive generations through various mechanisms, I mean- Yeah, well- Yeah, they do. Yeah, well, even with GNM, the third biological law is about embryology that relates to evolutionary processes. And I've had some, well, I don't know if I believe in GNM because of evolution. It's like- Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. [Speaker 3] (1:02:35 - 1:02:35) Okay. [Speaker 1] (1:02:36 - 1:06:06) Yeah, but come on. You can't be Christian and believe in GNM. Yeah, right. Yeah, you can't give any- If you connect those dots about evolution, it's- Yeah. Again, no nuance. Yeah, you can't let them gain any sort of ground. That's just the way we live. If there's any sort of concept of like we at one point in human evolution, we weren't modern humans, then that automatically entails like, oh, we have no soul and there is no creator and all this. Yeah, it's really amazing to see people get caught into this sort of thinking. We see it every day. How do you teach that to kids though? What is the right way to teach kids? Where did we come from? Where did we evolve from? Did we originate in the water? Were we just single cell organisms once upon a time? How do you like- Yeah, was our DNA- Were we genetically manipulated with aliens? Yeah, so I should add a bit of detail here. Currently, I'm teaching in Bangkok at a Christian school despite not being a Christian. I haven't gotten to evolution yet because I'm relatively recent. I've been teaching about other topics, but when I've taught evolution or discussed it with lifeology students, yeah, I'm going to share or I have shared with them the mainstream view. I always do. I'm going to say this is what the institutions are going to tell you, but then I am going to bring out- I love that you guys already prompted me with the examples. I will say, well, here's some evidence to say that maybe we did evolve for a good portion of our time, but what if there was some extra dimensional or extra planetary intelligence or just some other race that manipulated us in some way because here's the theorists that believe this and here's their evidence. Even if I can't represent every single detail of their arguments, I can at least point them in the directions of here's some scholars that have looked into this. Yeah, and what that does, even just as you were saying that, and obviously, I'm not a 12-year-old or a 15-year-old, it excites me. It goes like you saying, okay, this is what's being taught in institutions and these are some other things. For me, at least, maybe this is how I'm built. I'm like, oh, really? Wait, people think this? Well, I got to look into this more. That's what we want. That's what we want. For someone to go, oh, wait, I just came across this book that counters what my mom said or counters what my teacher said. This is interesting. Then that continues, hopefully, in a person's life. Yeah, the true thinkers are the ones who have that. They're the ones that are going to have that reaction to contradictory information. There's some people I think where it really excites them. For me, I always got this like an excited tingling in my stomach whenever I came across or heard something like that. I would just be super jazzed. What is this idea? I need to know. But then other people I know who you do that. It's just shut down. It depends very much on the student. I definitely have students who are like that. I can tell when I'm going on my ramblings. I can tell who's getting really wide-eyed and like, whoa, and who's just like some students just tuning out. [Speaker 2] (1:06:07 - 1:06:08) Yeah, it's true. [Speaker 1] (1:06:09 - 1:06:55) You're not going to get them all. You're not supposed to, I think. No. It's really, you're always, even if you got a class of 100 students, you've got to focus on who are the one or two students that actually give a shit because those are the ones that I'm going to actually care about. The rest, if they're there to just stick around. This is the other mystery that we've talked about before on this show. What makes an individual go, okay, 2020 happened. Yeah, I'm not into it. Bullshit. How does someone have intuition? What is it in their upbringing? What is it in their makeup, their soul journey? This is a mystery. I don't know, but it's fascinating. And again, everyone opens the doors in their own time as well. There's many people who never gave a shit about learning and weren't interested at school whatsoever. [Speaker 3] (1:06:55 - 1:06:56) And then they were. [Speaker 1] (1:06:56 - 1:07:23) And all of a sudden, yeah, became some of the greatest minds. Of course. And who people at the beginning of 2020 were like, oh, maybe they got impacted by the fear or whatever. And then now they're like, yeah, fuck that bullshit. So again, it's not about, it's just, I guess in general, I'm always curious to see what is it in a person? Because you can't just go, okay, well, this led to this, led to this. And that's why you're this person. And that's why you're a critical thinker. There's so many factors. It's a mystery. [Speaker 2] (1:07:23 - 1:07:24) Yeah, it's a mystery. [Speaker 1] (1:07:24 - 1:07:39) There's not a single answer. That's an individual thing, man, like we always say. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't be able to add anything to that. It's a complicated constellation of factors that are going to go into it. I don't know. I don't know if there really is. [Speaker 3] (1:07:40 - 1:07:40) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:07:41 - 1:08:19) I just like to bring up that you're a science teacher and your name is Mr. Spillman. Yeah. I like it. That's all. Casting spells? Are you casting spells? Yeah. People have made reference to that before. The origins of my name, it's German. So it comes from Spielmann. So it's an anglicized version, but basically that meant some ancestor at some point was like a playwright, a writer. Is that where spiel comes from? Like his spiel? [Speaker 2] (1:08:19 - 1:08:20) Yeah. Like my spiel. [Speaker 1] (1:08:20 - 1:08:21) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [Speaker 2] (1:08:21 - 1:08:22) Oh, wow. That's cool. Right? [Speaker 1] (1:08:23 - 1:12:02) Yeah. I learned another new thing today. Yeah, there you go. So that's where that comes from. That's the other thing. There's so much sometimes of value in words and etymology and numbers and numerology, which science just completely disregards as well. Oh, yeah. I annoy the shit out of my young students with etymology all the time. You never really see that in a science course, but I want to tell them, okay, we're going to talk about energy today, but where did energy come from? This word. And so I'm taking them back to like, the Proto-Indo-European root of the word, basically meaning work that happens or something to make things do something. And I get a lot of glazed overlooks with that from a lot of students of, why are we doing this? This is an English class. But to me, those intersections are really what I find to be so fascinating. Yep. In terms of what do you think, obviously, again, everyone's individuals, everyone's different. What's the appropriate schedule or way for people to learn or be schooled in general? Okay, we're saying that mainstream might not have all the answers. We go to school, whatever, seven, eight hours a day, X amount of classes, whatnot. But what's the right amount of time and consumption that's necessary for students in your opinion? I don't think there's going to be a one size fit all answer. I know that might be the answer you were expecting, but that really is just the case. There's no real avoiding that. There's some students I know who love to just sit for hours and listen to a lecture. Other students I have in my classroom, they should not be in a classroom at all. So, it really depends on the individual, I think, especially learning about nature. Ideally, what I want to be able to do at some point is take lifeology offline and have an actual physical space channel sort of like my own inner Aristotle would be another sort of hero of mine. It's his whole idea. He himself was a natural philosopher. He's referred to as history's first scientist. Yep. His whole thing was, yeah, he was breaking away from sort of like these really flighty, heady ideas of Plato and his other teachers because he's like, I want to bring philosophy back down to the earth. And so, he was very obsessed with plants and animals and stuff like that. And he would bring his students just out on walks. And he'd say, he waxed philosophical by having them observe the blossoming of a flower or whatever. So, I think that strategy works a lot better than anything else I can think of. So, even if you are just giving like a lesson presentation or something and you have a specific topic in mind, get the vast majority of student, 99% of students should not be in some poor, wild classroom. Get them out into the trees or a meadow or something. Yeah. Yeah, Tom. But as far as schedule goes, yeah, that's a very individual thing. Yeah. Like it's well enough to say, you know, self-directed learning. But then at the same time, it has to be like a set container like for learning. Like it's like, oh, yeah, just in your own time when you're already like, all right, dad, I just want to play my iPad. You know, it's like... Yeah. Yeah. There's a very fine balance, especially when the students are young. Because of course, like the vast majority of students, you're going to say, okay, we're taking you out of school. We're going to do homeschooling. And basically, you're going to set your own schedule. Great. I'm going to wake up at like 11 a.m. and I'm going to play. I'm just going to play video games until four. And then maybe I'll do my math homework after dinner if I feel like it. [Speaker 3] (1:12:02 - 1:12:03) Okay. [Speaker 1] (1:12:03 - 1:21:29) Well, no, as a parent, you've got to know how to set those boundaries for your kids. Like, well, we still need to do this and we can make it as enjoyable as possible. But we still kind of have these objectives and we need to meet them together. Boundaries and structure is still a piece of the puzzle. Yeah, of course. Yeah. So, finding that fine line as a parent and as an educator, if you're a homeschooling parent, you've got to play both of these roles. So, there's no real good easy answer for that. I wish there was. And I bet there's a lot of parents out there who wish there was. But I just don't think it is. You've got to know your kid. Well, that's it. And as a parent or as an educator, like how can you tune into the individuality of this child at their age, like what they're drawn to, where their natural skills lie that you can observe, and then guide them in this direction of the things that are going to stimulate them and support the growth of these inner gifts. And you know what the thing is also, like, very often we're most motivated to learn things when it becomes necessary for the achievement of something that we value, right? Like, I was never interested in business, commerce, or economics until I wanted to be an entrepreneur and create my own business and monetize a podcast. So, it's like now all of a sudden, I'm very interested in learning economics, commerce, and business, etc. You know what I mean? So, by then having a goal or a vision or an objective to move towards, in doing so, we find ourselves having to have self-efficacy to learn the things necessary to then achieve that goal and move towards, you know, starting the lemonade stand or building a dance business or whatever the hell it might be. Yeah. Because if you're not doing that, if students don't have like an actual tangible idea of where certain knowledge is going to lead them, then they don't want to learn and they're not going to want to learn it. And I see this all the time. And honestly, I feel bad for the vast majority of students who get sent into a classroom and you can tell they don't want to be there, right? And I acknowledge this with them out in the open. Like, look, I know maybe like 70% of you don't care about what I'm teaching. And if it were up to me, you would be, you know, out playing or doing whatever you want. But it's just an unfortunate byproduct of this sort of Prussian school factory model that we have where, you know, just take a bunch of random kids and sit them all in a classroom together. Maybe some of them have aptitude and interest in the subject and they really want to learn. Others have absolutely no care at all. And when they're at a young age and they have like, you know, they're just 100% impulse, you know, they're going to be like off the walls running around, especially kids being so hyperactive now. And so like, you know, so much bottled up energy, just keeping them under control becomes just such a task. Because yeah, because it's what we're getting at here is this point that gets made a lot of this standardization of humans thinking like you can just take any child and just stick them anywhere and basically everyone's going to be, everyone's going to pop out the same with the same aptitude. And at the same time, schools are going to turn around and give you this line about how oh, we're trying to foster the individuality of all of our students. Like, you're not really actually seeing that in practice. Let me ask you this question, like, do you have kids? No, not yet. Planning in the near future though. Okay, cool. All right. So say you had, you know, a seven year old and eight year old, for example, like, would you be sending them to, is there a preferred school that you would be sending them to? Or, you know, would you be backing yourself to educate them appropriately in the home? What would you personally do? If I had, if I, if it was absolutely impossible for me to educate them at home myself, then yeah, I'd have to just be very, very selective with the schools. And now, like, normally my old answer would have been like, okay, well, I'm going to look for the schools that are really into these like alternative paradigms of education. Like, you know, they do like Steiner, Montessori stuff. Like, that's a really good start. And now I'm seeing from my own personal experience and just other stories I've heard, okay, now apparently that doesn't really solve all the issues when things get challenging. So, maybe I'm just cynical, but the experiences that I've had, and they're not all bad. I mean, I'm still, I'm still teaching as a day job and everything. That's worked through all that. But now what I'm constantly telling people is nothing has convinced me more to homeschool my kids than working at schools. Because even like the, what was supposed to be one of the most forward-thinking and best schools in Thailand, just as far as I was concerned, just completely failed in their mission. And yeah, of course, as a scientist, we're supposed to say, you know, we need more data points to draw conclusions. But in the real world, it doesn't always happen like that, you know. So, my intuition is yeah, keep it small, keep it local. And if you can't actually provide the education for your kids, because obviously not everyone can do that, now we're living in this world of we have online homeschooling co-ops. These kinds of things happen. Find your tribe, find people who at least, no one's going to ever think exactly like you, but find the people who at least think similar enough to you where you can, you know, you feel like you can trust your children with them for, you know, like a lesson here and there on this like math or whatever topic it is. Yeah. You know, different homeschooling pods are being created in that regards. And I think also too, it's creating an opportunity for educators like yourself that have a certain, you know, way of thinking to provide opportunity. Like people can create a homeschooling pod and then a person can go in and be the teacher like in person too and like probably make a better living potentially at a school too. So these are opportunities for educators too. They're like, listen, I don't want to work, but like I'm in this town and I've met these families and they want to create a pod and you know, I can, I can kind of create a curriculum or, you know, like I'm friends with Ian and he's got, he's got, you know, this little program that I might integrate. Like we don't, you know, we don't know what's going to happen in the next five years, 10 years, what's going to come about. And it's really exciting times too. And very often innovation happens when, you know, we're, we're pushed up against the wall and collectively the last four years we have. And there's a lot of interesting things that are coming from this. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I really do think that's the, that's the forward momentum that we have going and I don't see it really going anywhere anytime soon. Public schools have shown that, you know, they're staunchly committed to the current path that they're on. And so it's getting worse and worse. Parents are realizing this, even if the parents don't are, are, you know, they don't even have to be like, you know, alternative thinking, you know, sort of what they call the right wing now. I think now even like sort of moderate or even left-wing parents are realizing like, you know, this is just stupid. Like I don't want my kid to be here. Yeah. I've had conversations with more like classically liberal people that maybe aren't so far on the left side and they're like, yeah, I'm not into what's happening. Yeah. Yeah. So very different than when I was growing up, you know, sure. There was still that indoctrination element of like, you know, the traditional schooling system, but what they were teaching, it wasn't, it was very different. Yeah. Yeah. Things have, things have really taken off, especially over the past few years. So they're, they're committing suicide in a lot of ways, I think just on an institutional level. And so these sorts of community-based co-ops, I really see them taking off in the near future. And so, like you say, that provides so much of an opportunity for not just like trained, like your sort of typical, like, you know, white-collar teacher type people, but what about like the blue-collar folks, the carpenters, the electricians and everybody seem to have all this practical knowledge. Like, okay, herein lies the opportunity for them to come in and give other lessons. And okay, how can we, how can we merge this? Why don't we have like a physicist and an electrician teaching a class together? Because here's someone with the hands-on knowledge of how the wiring works. Here's someone who can explain the theory. Imagine what a class like that would be. I would love to have that class. Yeah. That would be phenomenal. And these types of things, like when we're not bound by the strictures of this legacy schooling system and people are just like, okay, well, I just want to cultivate a learning experience that benefits my own interests and benefits what I want to do with my life. People are going to love learning again. Kids are going to love learning again. Like even just something simple, like we bring someone in, like all these people or a carpenter, okay, we're going to build this little shed that will also have like a toilet and a sink and like, how do the pipes go in and how does this happen? And like, it'd be so interesting to have this foundational knowledge. Exactly. Yeah. You're getting both the practical and the intellectual side of things. Ian, man, it's just such a pleasure having you on, man. I really enjoyed this conversation. Likewise, guys. Yeah. [Speaker 2] (1:21:30 - 1:21:30) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:21:30 - 1:22:23) Love the work you're doing, man. Love what you're putting out there. And I love the vision, like I mentioned, and you're putting it to action, dude. So like your response was about to say, is your offer currently available or how can people learn more? Yeah. So, I have a website. It's iansfelmanlifology.com. There's not much to it right now. I've written out a lot of things, but the most important thing is if people are interested in what I'm doing, I do have a contact form. You can easily find that there. Send me a message if you're looking for something like this, if you feel like it's a good fit. I'm currently taking on beta students, small group sessions and everything else. So, kind of working through that sort of as demand shows itself. So, yeah, I'm interested in just talking to people. Even if it's not what you're looking for, just love chatting with like-minded folks. [Speaker 2] (1:22:24 - 1:22:25) Awesome, man. [Speaker 1] (1:22:25 - 1:24:00) What ages are you currently aiming at? I know I'm not growing in the future, but in terms of what you're currently doing? Yeah. That's an important question. Right now, the stuff that I've made is going to be geared more towards like the high school, secondary age group to like early university. I have a few things that I have prepared for younger people, younger students. But yeah, I would say in general, the level that I'm going for is going to be high school level. And especially because I feel like that was kind of a hole in the market. There's a lot of really good sort of simple younger learner type stuff, but the more like advanced juicy stuff, I feel like most of it is just regurgitated textbooks. So, that's the gap I wanted to fill. But then the other thing I like to also remind people of is this. So, I am building this as this homeschooling, unschooling program, but I'm very much into teaching people who are planning to be educators themselves. Because one thing I've gotten from interviews with parents is that like, I want to teach these subjects, but I don't really remember anything about biology. It's been like 20 years, 30 years since I've learned anything about this stuff. But I have maybe my kid is like five or six years old, probably not old enough. Well, I'm perfectly willing to teach parents the subjects as well. Yeah, teach the teachers, teach them the subjects and then okay, then how can they distill this down into something that works for their kids? [Speaker 2] (1:24:01 - 1:24:03) That's great. Yeah, so. [Speaker 1] (1:24:04 - 1:27:53) Awesome, man. We'll put the link in the show notes guides. It's at ianspellmanlifeology.com. Ian, once again, thanks for joining us, man. And for everyone else, stay tuned for the wrap up. Take care, guys. My pleasure. See you, everyone. So good. So necessary. I think, you know, the desire, the urge and the market for like genuine alternative education options is going to continue to expand. I feel like we're in like a middle period right now between everyone like questioning mainstream education and private public schools and also looking for the correct path, the correct answers. And I'm excited to see how things unfold and, you know, what the paradigm shift continues to offer. Yeah, for sure, man. And I think like a lot of people have maybe more questions than answers, you know, around this, especially around like what we talked about in the episode. How do I educate my child? Because I'm not happy with the system. So I love you know, I love what Ian's all about. I love what he's doing. I love his process. Even before we started the episode, he was talking about how, you know, he's he's constantly updating and constantly learning new things. And you have to be that way. You know, you have to be that way. And you have to have the humility to understand, you know, as a parent, as a teacher, like, hey, I don't know everything. And how do I present this to, you know, my students? But it's exciting, you know, what the future holds. And yeah, we'll see what happens. But, you know, Ian's doing some cool work. And how do you ultimately teach a child to think critically is a big piece of the puzzle. And I mean, it can only be taught through experience, you know, like what are the tenants of critical thinking in your own life, you know, and how can you pass that on in a way that isn't dogmatic? But yeah, we can only teach really like what we know ourselves and what we've experienced. I think it's just really important that people continue to have these conversations. I think that's, you know, like-minded community is so necessary. And particularly like parents with kids of similar ages, you know, discussing this, discussing options, and then most importantly, like taking action. I know so many amazing, you know, empowered, truth-seeking parents now who are taking action in this arena. And you know, there's this power in community. Even in our own community, Friends of the Truth, we have a specific homeschooling thread with amazing conversations taking place. Probably going to post specific homeschooling community calls in the future for the parents within our community to discuss and get together and, you know, offer options. But yeah, even like individually, like on certain topics, you know, we can kind of point you in the right direction now in terms of like who's offering what and, you know, kind of who we recommend in terms of someone needing to learn something in different fields, economics. Nice to know that Ian's in the science arena now. And yeah, it'd be nice to eventually culminate, you know, the right people in the different subjects to just give someone where they can feel safe in that way. I know it's cliche, but children are the future and how do we nurture them? How do we raise them? How do we educate them? And it's super important in terms of what's going to create this new world or parallel worlds or challenging, you know, established systems and established ways of thought. And so, I commend all the parents out there that are asking themselves these questions that may be confusing at times, it may be stressful as well as you're venturing into like a new paradigm. But, you know, that's part of it. You know, what do you value? And based on what you ultimately value, you're going to do what you have to do to make things happen. Yeah. Thanks for listening, guys. If you love what we do, please support us in any way you can, whether it's liking this episode, following our podcast, sending us an email, sharing it with a friend. If you want to go a step further, come join our community, Friends of the Truth. You can find that at friendsofthetruth.co or using the link in the show notes.