David Rodriguez Breaking the Chains of Forced Education

[Speaker 2] (0:00 - 0:14) Welcome back to Here for the Truth, everybody. If you're happy to hear conquered conversations and gain some education from a couple of dudes wearing backwards hats, and if that doesn't offend you, then, you know, you're in the right place. [Speaker 3] (0:15 - 0:23) And if you're okay with someone saying like a few too many times, you know, not in its appropriate format as a simile, then, you know, keep listening. [Speaker 2] (0:23 - 1:45) Yeah, sometimes we use the word bro and dude as well. We sincerely hope that, you know, that isn't too much of a problem and that you can see past that and still gain some value from this conversation that we're about to have. We love hearing from all our listeners. Guys, we have David Rodriguez in the house today. I recently got the chance to meet David at Music and Sky. I had no idea who he was. There was an awesome Luminary Kids section set up at Music and Sky recently and Alyssa and I were there hanging out. And, you know, there was this talk, you know, and we're like, who's this guy? So, we decided to go sit down and his speech was so powerful. It was so impactful. It landed so heartfelt deeply for both my wife and I and an emotional reaction, like just the truism that he was sharing about kids and about education, about the importance of taking this stuff really, really seriously. And I told Gerasimos about it and Gerasimos goes, I love David, right? And so, there's no question that we're going to get him on. So, so grateful to have this conversation. If you're a parent, if you're not a parent, if you're looking to become a parent, this is relevant to you and this is incredibly powerful. So, without further ado, here is David Rodriguez. [Speaker 1] (1:46 - 1:53) You are now listening to the Year for the Truth Podcast, hosted by Joel Rafiti and Gerasimos. [Speaker 2] (1:56 - 3:30) David James Rodriguez helps parents empower their children using voluntary learning strategies. He's the principal of Valor Academy where he graduates teenagers as young as 14 years old, liberating students from forced learning environments. He's a homeschool and apprenticeship coach for parents, as well as publisher of the Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto, the world-famous teacher. David founded Education Options TV, where he has introduced thousands of parents to respectful schools and approaches to learning. And he's interviewed world leaders who are demonstrating the future of education today. His free Facebook group, Homeschool Leader has 3,000 members. He's passionate about getting all of the thinkers out of forced learning. So, he co-created the Gatto Movement, of which that is an acronym for, which is accomplished by helping parents remove their children from bad schools. He's the host of Voluntary Learning, formerly called the Freedom Lovers Show, where the slogan is building a world based on consents, self-ownership, and freedom. Born and raised in California, he sold his first business at the age of 26, and he has a business degree from San Jose State University. David Rodriguez, we met at Music in Sky just recently. My wife and I caught your talk at the Luminary Village. I had no idea who you were. I knew nothing about you. I was sitting there. And man, the truths that you were speaking brought tears to both our eyes. Just this recognition, man. When you know the truth is being transmitted, it brings up something in the other person. So, dude, so stoked to have you here. And thank you for being here for the truth. [Speaker 1] (3:30 - 3:45) Hey, man, it's an honor to be here. And yeah, I was happy to see you in the audience later because you guys have children, and this is what it's all about for me. So, yeah, it's a joy to be with you both. And congratulations on your success on this show. You guys are doing really amazing stuff on the planet. So, thanks for having me. [Speaker 2] (3:46 - 3:51) Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Dude, I know you're a rising comedic star. So, I do want to kick us off with a joke here, bro. [Speaker 1] (3:53 - 4:22) You know what's so funny? Comedy is like an art. And I've learned that once you put it on video, then like the joke is cooked. So, I really don't have anything to deliver yet. So, give me a few more months. We've done a few shows and I'm learning about the art form itself. So, I got some stuff cooking and they're not complete yet because once I put it on the record, it's a done for thing. So, give me a few more months and I'll put something on the record. Sounds good. [Speaker 2] (4:22 - 4:36) No worries, bro. I'll give you a drink then. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Please. How does a non-binary person murder someone? How? They slash them. [Speaker 1] (4:39 - 5:46) Well, this is the power of comedy, right? To laugh at the most heinous things. What else are we going to do, right? This is going on, you know, and people are doing this. This has actually happened. So, it is just absurd. You know, I can't believe that, you know, parents take their kids to these schools. And if your children are in these schools, do whatever you can to get them out because that's exactly what it is. It's just like, we got to laugh. And then, I mean, some serious stuff's happening. The puberty blockers or the hormone blockers on these kids, the group destroying them. I met the 19-year-old Chloe Cole. She was up here doing some touring and I got to meet her. And sure enough, when she was 12 or 13 years old, she's like, yeah, you know, I kind of feel like a little masculine little boy. And so, she went to the therapist and they started telling all these things. And she said, I never was suicidal until I was on the hormone blockers. And that's when I became suicidal. Long story short, she had a double mastectomy and, you know, she'll probably never have kids. And she's 19 years old, the beginning of her life. It's just like unacceptable and intolerable. [Speaker 3] (5:47 - 6:10) And there's so many stories like this. And what blows my mind is that like, it comes down to education. Because I don't think many of these parents are doing these things out of this malicious reasoning. Like, they think they're doing the right thing. They think they're progressive. They think they're evolved in terms of like doing what's best for their child. And it's just, you know, we're seeing over and over again, that's just not the case. [Speaker 2] (6:10 - 6:29) But this shows you how powerful ideas are, negatively or positively. Like, very often our powers, our actions, our behaviors, they're a symptom of ideology, you know? And so, what are we inputting? Because that's ultimately what we're going to get out. And, you know, you can destroy your life with the wrong idea very quickly. [Speaker 1] (6:30 - 7:27) Seriously, man, the wrong idea can destroy people and even the idea of government itself. I know, I mean, we can take this wherever you want to go. But once I discovered that government has no authority over me, I got liberated, you know? And this is the idea of like, oh, I have to bow down to government because they have legitimate authority over me. And then I read a book from 1870 titled The Constitution of No Authority, which proved that I'm not bound to a contract that I didn't agree to, aka the Constitution. I'm sure this is a, you know, exciting document in history. But it's time that we evolve beyond that because these governments are out there in mass destroying children and innocent women and men, too, and war and these types of ideas. So, the idea of statism, that the state has a higher authority over your life than you do, this has been a diabolical idea in history. And so, I think humanity is evolving and this is what I get excited about. [Speaker 2] (7:28 - 7:48) Yeah, bro. I'm excited to get deep into all of that. One way I do want to kick this off, bro, I want to dive deep into your personal individual hero's journey. What are some of the major catalyzing, I guess, circumstances and moments and experiences in your life that led you down this path and really, you know, caused the evolution as to who you are now? Beautiful question. [Speaker 1] (7:49 - 13:36) I was raised in a small town, Mount Shaftesbury, California. There's one high school, one middle school, one elementary school. So, I grew up in this picturesque, mountain town. You know, hippies are there and, of course, regular people and such. But there's mountains in the winter and hiking in the summer. It's just beautiful. And so, I'm like, okay, I guess school tells me success is money. So, I'll just try to get rich, you know, and that was my original dream was just to make a lot of money and sit on the beach. And then as I got older, I started, I was working at a health insurance agency and the people around me were making some good money like between $40,000 and $80,000 a month. These guys were just banking it. And I started observing them and nice people, but I'm like, did they look really happy making all this money? And so, I started kind of thinking deeper and I did get back into church at that point and looking for truth, right? Because you would have all the money in the world, but then what? You know, you still have a life to live. What are you gonna do with your time on the planet? So, I started asking these bigger questions and then I asked a mentor who's very successful. I said, you know, how do you find your purpose in life? And he said, find an injustice on the earth and spend your life trying to correct that injustice. I said, oh, that's great. So, I started thinking of that for a few years and I found out about the history of the school system. And that was through John Taylor Gatto, the world-renowned school teacher out of New York, three-time city teacher of the year, two-time state teacher of the year in New York, very prestigious mainstream roles that the people vote him into. And he was documenting where the schools came from, for what purposes, by whom, and kind of this 100-year history of the system, which is based on compulsion, right? Mandatory attendance, mandatory curriculum. And I said, man, if this is true, then we got to get some solutions to the kids. Because I went to public school, maybe some of the audience members went to public school and you're just like, this is the way it is. I did. Yep. Yeah. And you had to get permission to go to the bathroom, permission to drink water. And I just felt it wrong in my spirit at some point. And then once I heard John Gatto's story and then Charlotte Isserbich wrote a book, Deliberate Dumbing Us Down, Deliberate Dumbing Down America. Anthony Sutton documented how the school system was connected to the Skull and Bones fraternity at Yale. And you're just seeing this incredible mosaic of why is it mandatory? Why is it 12 years? Why do parents have no say? So I decided, okay, that's my injustice. I'm going to spend my life trying to correct that injustice. So I started an expo called the Education Options Expo in 2014. And that was inspired by Buckminster Fuller and his quote, you never change reality by fighting against it. You got to create a new model that makes the old model obsolete. So I had these different schools show up and different speakers. And then that's how I learned to be a principal myself by one of the speakers there. And eventually I got into business with John Taylor Gatto. I reached out to him and I got to publish the Underground History book, Underground History of American Education, subtitle, An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling. And that book was out of print for like 15 years. And so I'm like, where are the heroes? Where are the people that are going to get this out there? And then little by little, I started to do that and speak at other events and meet awesome people like you and your audience members. And I started to realize that it's this huge political monopoly, the school system. Conservatively, it's a $700 billion enterprise at the city, county, state, federal levels. And so some people are making a lot of money doing it. If you sell the uniforms, the supplies, the computers, you make the buildings, you sell the buses, you make the food, the garbage. It's just like, this is big business. And if you have that contract from an economics perspective, you're good, man. This is a great contract to have. And my mother is a retired public school teacher. And I have family members that are in the system now still as well as good people, loving people, but they don't teach morality in these schools. And this seems to be the number one problem is that people can't tell the difference between right and wrong. They don't know who's responsible for themselves. And we saw this during the pandemic is people using coercion, intimidation for masks and jabs. And you're like, this is serious, man. If you don't know the difference between right and wrong, we're in deep trouble. And so the school system seems to be that area of it. And I just said, okay, then we are the children. I am the children. I remember being eight years old and just kind of looking at adults and thinking, man, tell me the truth, show me the way, help me. And some of them did, right? They were loving people. But in terms of freedom, self-ownership, and what we're doing on this planet as human beings, I find that most adults haven't gone that deep. And I think you guys probably have just hearing you guys at Music in the Sky. And this is where humanity is going, that community. And there's a handful of others that are like, hey, man, we're like spiritual beings and we're on some mission on this earth. And so that was my experience, just going to schools and then understand the origin of the school system sparked that hero in me that's like, let's live a life for beyond money. And let's make a lot of money too. Let's get rich. That'd be great. But let's live something for honor and righteousness and goodness and making a real difference in a real way, just beyond the finance, but actually empowering the next generation so that they can go out and live their dreams and not be controlled and tied down by these predator psychopaths. [Speaker 3] (13:36 - 13:38) Thank you, bro. Well said, man. Yeah, man. [Speaker 2] (13:38 - 13:39) Well said. Beautiful. [Speaker 1] (13:40 - 13:42) Now a short break from the episode. [Speaker 2] (13:43 - 14:53) Hey guys, just wanted to let you know that Jurasmus and I decided to extend the enrollment period for Rise Above the Herd. So if you're listening to this before the 31st of July, and you would like to join, then you can do so. After that, we're not taking any more students in, but if you've been contemplating on jumping into round 10 and you want to do this real intentional inner work to create a life of greater feeling for yourself, then you can join and we'd love to see you inside. You can head to riseabovetheherd.co or simply hit the link in the brief or the bio and you'll be taken to the website. You'll be able to jump in there. Back to the episode. John Taylor Gatto, man. This is like, people don't understand, you know, really like the, this name, dude, what this guy did. Like when I read a John Taylor Gatto quote, it's so potent. He's always like the Ayn Rand of like education truisms and, you know, tearing down this school delusion. It's so powerful. Can you speak into, you know, your friendship with him a little bit? And I guess, you know, more so to his nature, his character, what he was like, how he impacted you as well. [Speaker 1] (14:54 - 20:30) Yeah. He's got such an amazing story. He has one documentary titled classrooms of the heart, like 30 minutes on YouTube that goes into the depths. He taught eighth grade for 30 years in New York city. And he was from like a blue collar town in Pennsylvania where there were steel workers and coal workers and, you know, like soul people, like those are the heart of Americana, you know, put it in the nine to five and you love your family and do what's right. And if someone disrespects you on the street, you punch him in the face, you know, kind of like that old school, you know? And so he, that's where he was raised. And then he went to New York and studied at Cornell and Columbia. And then he was doing advertising sales and working there. And then that company fired or laid off a whole bunch of people. And he's like, Hey, let's, you know, see what working in a school system is like. And so he got this little, his, his roommates teaching license and started doing substitute teaching. And in the first day, he noticed something weird in this system. And then he got kicked out of that school as a substitute. And then the same thing for another seven, he's like, what's going on here? So he got intrigued with how the schools were just a zoo, just a mess. And then he started pursuing that more empowering students and teachers and long story short, he won all these awards. And one of his secrets was that at the beginning of the year, the eighth grade year, he would sit with the students and say, Hey, what do you want to learn this year? What's one project that you want to do this year? And then he would get permission from the parents and he would often go to the family's home, the parents home and meet them like a real teacher would. And then he would help the teenagers do a project that was of their own interest. That was of their own choosing instead of forcing the curriculum on them from the state. And there's one of the stories that's really great. There was a 13 year old girl and her dream was to become a Olympic swimmer. And so she says, Hey, I'm interested in swimming. And he says, okay, well, you know, what do you want to do? And she says, Oh, I want to find out what's going on about all the pools in New York city. So she decided she wanted to make a reference guide of all the pools in New York. And this is like the depths of the pool, the cost, the lighting, the, all the sizes, all this, this reference guide that hadn't been made before. So sure enough, she spent her eighth grade year doing that. At the end of it, she has this really powerful resource. They put it in the library and a local magazine heard about this reference guide and then contacted John Gatto said, Hey, you know, we would like to publish this in our magazine. You know, would you sell it to us? And he says, well, that's not my reference guide. That's his girls. They said, okay, let's talk to her. And they offered her $500 to publish this reference guide. And this is in, I want to say the late seventies. And she rejected him because they were not willing to put her name on the reference guide in the magazine. They were going to put their own writer's name on it. And she said, if they want to publish my reference guide, they'll put my name on it. So she rejected him and she rejected the money too, but that was just a sign that, you know, when you put something into an idea or a project that you love or interested in, you can't be bought off. You have so much pride in it. You have so much joy in what you've done for yourself. And this is a 13 year old girl. So he was just doing this over and over and over again. It's made such a huge impact in the community and they voted him, you know, the city teacher of the year state teacher of the year. And, um, pretty soon he had so much celebrity status that he couldn't even continue because these people are coming from far away where we're going to observe your classroom. And he tells another story when, because he knows like my school of valor academy at the, the world is the classroom and anything and anybody you can learn from can be a teacher. So he would ask them what they want to do. And he would let them out of the classroom to go roam in the streets of New York, but he would mark them present on the roster. And he said he felt the pressure when he had 30 students in his classroom, but excuse me, 30 students marked present in his classroom. But when these, you know, delegates would come around and observe him, there would only be like 15 students in the actual room. So he couldn't do his system anymore because there was so much attention on what he was doing. And he just was an honest and sincere guy in pursuit of the truth. He found these origins of the school system and illuminated it for so many people who became a huge voice in the homeschooling movement, speaking in all 50 States at homeschool conventions, um, nine over nine countries around the world. And just like many of us, he was that spark that said, Hey, there's, there's better ways to learn. And force and coercion is the worst way to learn. It's actually anti-educational. And he distinguished between a schooling and an education and education. And I kind of added to his definition to make it, you know, to improve it. He said, an education is what you do to yourself to create a good life. And a schooling is what someone else does to you to benefit themselves. And so it was distinguishing that an education is far from a schooling. These are not same terms, but they try to conflate them and make them same terms. And they're not, they're absolutely different. So that was part of his legacy. [Speaker 2] (20:31 - 20:41) Amazing man. What's most remarkable and powerful always is when it's someone who's so awarded by the system from within the system that then comes out and tears it down, you know? Right. [Speaker 3] (20:41 - 21:07) Yeah. Well, that's what I was curious about. It's like, so he's working in the system. Did he get any backlash and these awards that he won, like, are these families that are voting for them? Because if he's not following, let's say, the status quo of being an educator in a public school system, I mean, there must have been like talk within like the schools, you know, or in the county or wherever, where it's like this guy isn't following the rules. Like, how did that all play out? [Speaker 1] (21:08 - 24:52) What he said is that his classroom was like a laboratory for like 45 minutes with all the students. And he said he turned his classroom into like a seminar course at college. And he said, I started talking to these kids who were, you know, 13 years old, 14, as if they were students at Cornell, Columbia, even though many of them are, you know, poor Mexican and dark skinned kids. Right. And he said, I taught the rich white people and the poor brown people. And he said, after about 90 days of treating them like adults and respecting their time, he said something happened in the classroom and it became this great environment of ideas and sharing and inspiration. But he wasn't very public about it at the time. So, it was like he said he kept up a persona outside of the classroom to like let other teachers know, like, hey, kind of let Gatto do his thing. He was a 6'2 guy, you know, big guy, strong, courageous, you know, sharp dude. So, he said, I was the teacher like in the hallways. I'd be yelling at students in the hallways when this is in, you know, urban New York City. Right. So, it's like, who's going to do that? All the teachers are like, want to be quiet and be a mouse. And he's out there yelling around. So, he created this persona of just let Gatto do his thing. We don't agree with what he's doing, but just let him do his thing. And so, he was in that classroom. But then in the classroom, and you'll see in the documentary, then he's being very personable and very respectful with these teens. And he said, kids are very smart. If you talk to them differently than you do other people, they notice. But if you talk to them the same as if everybody's equal, they also notice. So, you just see this affinity and this love and adoration that the students had for him, because just like us or just like me, just tell me the truth, treat me like a regular human, and let's do this thing versus treat me like a child, talk to me like a child. You know, it's like, no, kids are ready to go. You know, when my grandfather was seven years old in Nebraska on the farm, his father said, hey, Elmer, today you're going to help me plow. And my grandfather's like, oh, yeah. Okay. And he said, after that, I was just working on the farm, you know, like busting my butt. So, there's a history in America where when you're seven, eight, 10 years old, 12, it's time to work, man, help out the family. And in the school system, what Gatto calls it is the artificial extension of childhood. So, that's where we have 18-year-olds, 25-year-olds, 30-year-olds now, they're behaving like children. And they're not accepting the responsibility of being an adult because the school removes that responsibility. And how it was for me, at least, you know, I graduated high school and they're like, well, great. What are you going to do now with your life? And you're like, do now? I thought I'm done. You know, it's like, no, now you're going to start your life. What do you choose to do? You're like, well, you were telling me what to do for 12 years. So, now, all of a sudden, it's on me. So, they teach us to abdicate our responsibility, wherein personal responsibility is the first sign of an adult. This is the requirement. And so, that's what he was teaching these young kids. And they just had great success, empowerment. And many of his students went on to go do great things. And just, I think he said, like a third of them would come back and, you know, thank him and appreciate him. But, you know, a 30-year career, I think it's like over 2,000 students, you know, he impacted. But I think with his speeches and videos, he's probably impacted millions. And his books as well impacted a lot more than that. [Speaker 2] (24:52 - 25:26) Yeah. Yeah, man. It's something that shrouds and blurs reality, you know, just as government does. And I think about, you know, you're asking us not to talk about self-esteem a lot, which is developing a friendly relationship with the reality. Like, this is something that disconnects you from reality and hence, you know, greatly impairs one's self-esteem as well. What I want to start with, if you can, man, I'd like to dive a little bit into the origins of the modern schooling system. If we can, if you don't mind sharing, I guess, how that came about and how it became implemented so universally across the West. [Speaker 1] (25:28 - 30:31) Yes. Well, the first mandatory attendance school was in Prussia, Germany. And I think it was 1819 that it actually got implemented. And as Gatto shows in the book, I'll pull it up here so people can see it. You have video out there. Your camera's on blur. Well, I'll blur it here in a second. I'll show you. But many civilizations had talked about the mandatory compulsory school system. And it was Prussia, Germany, who actually was the first one to implement that one. And in the book, Gatto attributes it to the Battle of Jena. And this is where Napoleon defeats the Prussian army. And Napoleon is French, of course. And the Prussians were like mercenaries. They were hired out to go out and kill people. Well, they lost. And so all the leaders, they get together after a huge loss and they said, hey, guys, what's going on? And they say, well, we commanded the soldiers to walk into the bullets and they all were running sideways. They wouldn't walk into the bullets. So they said, we need to create a school system that gets rid of the free will and teaches the soldiers to just obey just like they would a teacher. And they wouldn't do anything different than what a teacher would have wished. So that's how they implemented it. And then some two or three decades later, it's all implemented and all the other countries start to go visit Prussia and start to observe their system and say, look how obedient they are. And that was the goal of the school was to make obedient soldiers, consumers and clerks for the megacorporations and the state and these industries. And so that's what happened. And then 1852, Horace Mann went over to Prussia and he observed it as well. And he actually didn't observe it. It was summertime, but he said that he did. But he was just an ambitious politician. And I think he was funded by the Peabody's. But they're like, hey, we want that system here because of this industrial revolution. We need workers. We need consumers, factory workers on the line. So he went over there and got the idea. And 10 years later, it got passed in the United States, in Massachusetts. However, the people could smell a rat and they weren't like, government's going to save us. There was already resistance there in the culture to distrust government. So the government had to go around with horse and bayonet to bring the kids to school. And it wasn't for but another 10 years when another state passed a mandatory attendance law. So the historical context is that it wasn't just something that they were happy and cheerful about, but there was resistance. But after so much time, the government has unlimited funds effectively against the masses, and they weren't able to organize and resist against that. And then by 1921, all states in the union had mandatory attendance policies. And it was on at that point. And of course, in each generation, there's new additions to it, like the Rockefellers in the early 1900s had the General Education Board, where they're saying, we want docile workers. You're going to teach the children to do perfectly what their parents weren't doing perfectly. And that's exactly what they said. They want a population that is not able to think for themselves. They want workers. And it continued. And that's kind of the essence of it. And it's been going on for a long time. And it is, I think, the crux of the statist agenda. I think without the school system, none of the stuff that's been going on could occur and they wouldn't have any soldiers as well. So it was a diabolical thing in the beginning. And the people just didn't have the media. They didn't have the reach to get the ideas out and get the resistance out. And in fact, homeschooling was illegal in the United States up until the 70s. And it's actually still illegal in Germany now. I think Brazil as well. There's a few other major countries like it's illegal to teach your child at home because of what the state says. So this is just the evolution of where we are in this process. And that's how it began, you know, from Prussia, Germany. It's a Prussian model. And they eventually, of course, were a very obedient civilization. And Hitler inherited that system. And you can see what blind obedience does. It's atrocious. And we're at the end game of that now. And in America is where very few people can think for themselves. And it's quite alarming. [Speaker 2] (30:32 - 30:37) Yeah. It's essentially, from an eagle eye view, factory farming human minds as a resource. [Speaker 1] (30:38 - 31:26) Yes, that's right. That's right. And the term human resource is from the German, the Prussian origins, where instead of seeing your son or daughter or all children like a sovereign being or a beautiful soul or a gift from God or something higher than a resource, they call them human resources. And then in the early 1900s, Elwood P. Cubberley, the dean of education at Stanford, said children are resources and they're like resources of wood and metal that can be shaped and formed and fitted to our liking and our uses. And you're like, you guys put this in writing. You guys are psychos. But they didn't see them as souls and beings, but just as actual physical materials. [Speaker 3] (31:28 - 32:21) So wild to me. But back to what you were saying before, just when you think about unlimited funds and the propaganda that exists, I mean, I think back to my public school education and names like Horace Mann, they're hailed as like American heroes of education. And it's mind blowing. I mean, even when you think about the last however many several years, like even with Fauci, you know, like all the songs about him and people thinking he's this American hero. The songs about Fauci in American education? No, I'm saying you saw people that were like making the last four years. There were like choruses from different cities, like singing songs or praising Fauci. And it just goes to show you like, again, education, propaganda, how it impacts minds. Now, would any of that be capable if these people didn't go through the schooling system? [Speaker 1] (32:21 - 36:57) No, absolutely not. And that's so funny. You mentioned Horace Mann because I was in the Bay Area for like 15 years and there's a Horace Mann school and I think there's Horace Mann Street. And then I traveled to other places to other cities and I started seeing Horace Mann schools. And I'm like, what the hell is going on around here? Well, he's that figurehead, you know, father of modern education. But then as you just mentioned about what his original motivations were, he was an amoral man. He couldn't care less about what it was. So, that's when I reached out to Gatto. I said, hey, John, I see these schools that say Horace Mann on them. I said, I dream of the day of like seeing your name on these schools or even better, your name's on libraries or your name's on streets or something. So, he gave me permission to use his name. And so, this is one of the reasons that, you know, my intentions to make a lot of money in this lifetime. We're looking for investors and these kinds of things. But let's put Gatto's name up there, you know. And I wanted to actually ask John about doing like a biography about it because such an interesting guy. And he writes about the school system. He tells some stories in the books. And I said, so, John, you know, what do you think about a biography? And he says, I was raised not to brag about my achievements. I said, oh, okay. So, that's not going to work. He was such a humble man. He didn't want to brag about what he did, even though he did amazing things. So, then that's when we co-created the Gatto Project, announced the Gatto Movement, the acronym for his name. I got to get his name out there, man. Like more people should know about John Gatto as opposed to Horace Mann. It's like these, we see how they put up these false heroes. And to find the real heroes, you actually got to dive down in the gutter or in the ditches or in the grassroots. And then you find a gem and you're like, this is the guy versus, you know, they prop up Obama or Horace Mann or even Elwood P. Coverley or something like that. It's like, these are just mainstream guys. They were part of the club and you follow the money and you see exactly, they know exactly what they're doing. They were taking attack on the children's mind because a child can't really think for themselves. So, they'll just blindly accept what you tell them versus you teach a child to question things. Give them the, let's say the trivium or let's give them the, you know, questions, who, what, when, where, how, you know, teach them how to think for themselves. No, just blindly obey, blindly accept. You're going to be good consumers. You're going to be good clerks for the corporation. And that's when I actually, I took it personal. When I found out what was going on, I said, man, they actually stole 12 years of my life unwittingly. You know, the lower level people don't know what they're doing, but at the highest level, they know exactly what this is. And it's creating mental slaves to the government. And I'm glad Gow called it a prison because that's exactly what it was. You know, you can't leave without permission. Like what the heck's going on around here? And you mentioned Fauci. Could you believe that he was placed, I think it was on People Magazine as the sexiest man alive. And you're like, if you can think for yourself, you're like, that's propaganda. And they're using it against me to exalt this guy, this fake character who is injecting these, you know, these experimental drugs into children. And it's all connected because they're actually afraid of the powerful leader as a child. And that's what they would also do. Gow taught us. He's like, if there's a, let's say a black guy, black kid, or a Mexican at a young age, they will then give them scholarships to put them into their organization. Let's say like the Rhodes Scholarship. Bill Clinton was one of those guys. It's like a rising star high school. Then let's give them a scholarship and let's put them into our system. Another program is the IB schools that enter international baccalaureate high schools. So it's like a globalist school. They're teaching children about being a global citizen for the United Nations, world government, and all the stuff that they're unfolding now. So like they need leaders. And I think Justin Trudeau is one up in Canada, right? Like Klaus Schwab is, you know, yes, we've penetrated the cabinets, right? And he's bragging about it. So it's about the intergenerational component of it. And that's where it becomes so powerful is having the leaders be hand selected and then placed into positions of power and influence. And without the forced schooling system, definitely in my opinion, the pandemic could never occur. [Speaker 3] (36:58 - 37:05) Yeah. Yeah, man. It's kind of wild when you think about, like you said, like 12 years of your life taken away. [Speaker 2] (37:06 - 37:13) Like, I invite everyone to let that land. Everyone needs to let that land and what that actually means, you know? [Speaker 3] (37:13 - 38:06) Because I was fortunate I did well in school because I had a good memory and I had the ability to like memorize and regurgitate. So I did well, whatever. But like my love for learning, truly love for learning and self-education and curiosity really, really started after college, like after I went through the academic system. And I love my life. I'm grateful. I don't really have regrets, but I wonder, I wonder if this type of education started when I was five, six, you know, I was guided towards books that inspired me. Like it's wild. And when I see sometimes these kids that have been raised in a certain way or educated in a certain way, like they're like incredible. They're almost like aliens. You see some of these kids who haven't been in the public school system and they're like starting businesses at like 11. [Speaker 2] (38:07 - 38:15) There is a different sense of vitality and life force that emanates from children like that, man. And it's undeniable, you know? [Speaker 1] (38:15 - 44:11) Mm-hmm. That's right. Well, this is why I go so hard at these, the speeches for the families, you know, with the Luminary Village. There's only about 20, 30 people there, but I just put my heart into that because I want parents to know you guys are the ones, you guys have the new Jedis, you know, for the new world. And I used to think it was, you know, exaggerated or hyperbolic, but it's like, no, like I think Joel, you have like three kids or two kids, right? And- Two and one on the way. Yeah. We were talking about kids. I don't have any kids yet. I would love to have kids. I just got to find a good, voluntarious wife because if I have the kids of the wrong lady, I dodged a couple of bullets, man. But God bless those ladies. But like raising a child in the world today, in my opinion, we must know what's going on. There is a plan to enslave us. They've exposed it and the dollar is going to collapse in our lifetime. And I've, you know, kind of studying different characters. I did find a positive character, Martin Armstrong, who's a world famous forecaster. He has a great film about his life. Basically, he had AI about 20, 30 years ago already. And the government came over because he was predicting the collapses of financial systems. And the U.S. government said, Hey, give us your AI software. And he says, no, you know, kind of like the story with the swimmer earlier. He says, no, this is my software. They throwed him in jail for 10 years. And he's sitting there, Rod. He just got out recently. And so now he still has that software. He's a strong man, positive guy. He says, my AI software shows that the U.S. dollar will collapse in 2032. And he says, then we'll be able to rebuild civilization. And he said, then we get to choose, you know, how are we going to build it? So we're at this run up point where these ideas, I think it's urgent to get these ideas out about voluntary relationships and cooperating with people. But the point was that he has proven that this system is not going to last much longer. So we should move forward and empower these leaders. We need these leaders and mom and dads out there. And that's what I was saying, because you were there, Joel. So I just go hard. I want parents to know you guys are the ones you guys are. And just one son or daughter could change the whole world. You know, look at what Alex Zek is doing or Derek Rose or Mike Winner or Larkin Rose or these guys, you know, AT&T, La Boya Square, like these are people I respect. That's one guy. Imagine you have a whole family of these people. You have a whole neighborhood of these people. That's what they're afraid of. Afraid of the artists and the leaders and the filmmakers, the musicians, the comedians, these type of rising up where it's like, you know what? We're going to get these ideas out there. We're not going to participate in your system. And these kids are absolute geniuses. Like you said, you're awesome. Most is like, yeah, they're eight years old, already online, making videos, editing, you know, now they just learn an A.I., making this music and just taking it, you know, leading humanity forward. And our job is adults and fathers and mothers out there is to create that environment, that space where we don't necessarily have to be the teachers for everything and have them download all the stuff. But we create that atmosphere where their natural genius can come out. And Buckminster Fuller has another great quote. He says, all children are born geniuses, but they get genius trying to please their teachers and please their parents. And they forget that inner voice, that natural self-esteem that is there, which is what we had. You know, I remember five or six, you're like, life, you know, if mom's like, we're going to the grocery store, you're like, yeah, let's go. You know, every day is an adventure and it gets drilled out of us. You know, when we go to school, I think there was that study that's going around pretty viral. George Land did a NASA study and he basically found out like 98% of kids are genius at age five. And by the time they're like 18, it's like, it's like 3% or something like that because they learn to hate learning. Right. And the secret is to love learning. And there's a term called learned helplessness. And they've done a lot of studies on learned helplessness. So this is where, let's say like an elephant is attached, you know, big old elephant is attached to this rope. And you're like, why doesn't the elephant just run off? Well, when the elephant was a baby, he had a chain attached to his leg and it was attached to immovable post. And he tried and tried, tried and gave up. Right. Or the dog that's in two different cages and they shock the cage and he goes to this side and they shock that and he goes to that side. And pretty soon he just gives up and he just sits there getting shocked. So even though he could move to the side, that's not shockable. He stays there and you learn to be helpless versus learning to be inspired and empowered and actually have a vision for your life and a compelling future that you create out of nothing to pursue and to go for it. And you mentioned a great thing also, you're asking us about the after college is that's when you started to like learning. Me too. I hated reading growing up because they forced it on me. And then I got into network marketing and I was like, oh, they're like, read these books. And I'm like, okay, why? Oh, you want to get rich? You want to make some money? Yeah. Read these books. I said, okay. And like think and grow rich or rich dad, poor dad, you know, just in a few days, you're like, this book is awesome, man. This book is exciting. Well, the name of graduation ceremony is called the commencement ceremony. Commence means to begin. So that's when all these kids are throwing their hats off. Yay, I'm finished. No, you are beginning this process. So they've inverted the learning, the need to continue to learn. And they think getting a piece of paper is the achievement when in reality, that's just the beginning process. And it's probably unnecessary at this point. College may be too much and you can take out a hundred thousand dollars of loans and you can't even go file bankruptcy on that. That's another scare. [Speaker 2] (44:11 - 44:25) I'm so glad I never got into education debt. It's so normalized, man. It's so normalized. Everyone's doing it. Everyone's signing this thing. Everyone's going to university and signing this paper and accruing all this debt. It's ridiculous. [Speaker 3] (44:25 - 45:02) And then what happens is, well, first back to your thing about post-college, I backpacked Europe after college and I just packed my backpack and like seven, eight books. And I wasn't a reader. And like those eight books changed my life. And they planted the seed to just like keep wanting to read and read and read. They're the only eight books Jurassic World has ever read in his life. I'm joking. The joke's getting old, bro. I got 10 years on you, man. Anyways. So back to, I was going to say something before, but I lost my train of thought. Anyways. Sorry, bro. [Speaker 1] (45:02 - 49:37) Yeah. Just how college is unnecessary. I think that's a question I get because I do consulting for parents, homeschooling, consulting and graduation. As it mentioned in the bio, I graduate teenagers and they're like, yeah, I want my child to go to college. I'm like, okay. I say, well, this device, K-Thone, this is the most revolutionary learning technology in the history of humanity. You can literally go on and type something in and get instant tutorial right now for free. And AI is a whole nother ballgame where now you can command AI to write stuff for you. So now essays are out the window. So schools are going down. And I think, well, I should say government schools are going down. Private schools, voluntary schools are going to continue to rise. I was so inspired when I started my journey. I took a course titled how to start a school. And one of the assignments was to watch this movie about a voluntary school in England. It's been around for a hundred years. I said, there's no way. Sure enough, this school, it's a K-12 school in England. And you can watch the film for free on the internet titled Summerhill 2008. And here's how Summerhill works. You show up at Summerhill, they give you a list of optional classes. They say, hey, here's our optional classes. If you don't want to take any of these, no problem. We have 10 acres of land. We have a bike ramp in the front. We got musical instruments in the barn. We got a tree house out there. Go be free, go play, go be a kid. And so sure enough, kids are like, I can do whatever I want here. Like, yeah. And they go play and they go have fun. And eventually about 10, 11, 12 years old, they see their older peers who are 14, 15, 16 years old. And they're studying in there. They're like, wow, what are you guys doing over there? And so out of their own desire, they go and they start learning and pursuing their own questions, their own interests. And it's just a beautiful film. I cried multiple times during this film because I'm like, I knew there was a good school out there. I knew there was an option that was better, that would respect me and allow me to make the choices that I want to make in my life instead of you forcing it on me. So that's a good resource for parents to look at when you're considering taking your child to school or what to do. We're living in the most revolutionary time in history and schools are so outdated that my school is a virtual school. And I mentioned my philosophy is the world is the classroom. Class is always in session and anything and anybody you can learn from can be a teacher. So in some cases, a child is my teacher. In some cases, the elderly people are my teacher. In some cases, a book is my teacher, an app, my own maybe sixth sense, meditation and higher self is my teacher as well. So teaching adults to learn this is a little bit more challenging than young people who come out full of life, full of energy, full of curiosity and questions. And you don't have to know it all, mom and dad. That's another good thing. When your genius son or daughter says, well, how did the sun, stars and all this stuff get here? Or what's going on? You can say, that's a great question, honey. I don't know. But who could we ask? What could we look up? What do you know already about? What do you think about it? And allow this process to unfold. Because if you go to the root word of education, it means a duco or to pull from within to elicit. So it's already there, mom and dad. You don't have to do anything. It's just creating that space so that the environment welcomes the space and encourages questions. And that's how I define education, excuse me, homeschooling. Homeschooling is when a leader creates an atmosphere where personalized learning can occur. So that's you, mom and dad. You're the leader. And you just create that space of peace, welcoming mistakes. We want to redefine how we see failure and mistakes. Failure is actually very good because it's trial and error in real adult life. And instead of teaching children to be afraid of making mistakes, being afraid to fail, we want to teach them to fail quickly and to just wipe that off their shoulders. No problem. It's actually how we learn. Again, everything's been inverted and it's trying to be perfect and no mistakes. Actually, you want to make mistakes and still have self-esteem and confidence, knowing that you are not the mistake. The action is the mistake. And from that, you learn. [Speaker 2] (49:37 - 49:41) Yeah, man. Just quickly, what was the name of that documentary about that school? [Speaker 1] (49:42 - 49:43) Summer Hill. [Speaker 2] (49:43 - 49:45) Summer Hill. Okay, cool. [Speaker 1] (49:46 - 49:46) 2008. [Speaker 3] (49:46 - 50:36) Something I wanted to comment on earlier, and you used the word and I think it's so important. And it's a thing that the conventional schooling system beats out of children is curiosity. I feel like if, because kids are naturally curious. So, if you nurture that, if you foster that, it's their natural state. And so, that's going to guide them because on some level, each one of us is unique. We're this spark of the divine that's very unique. And so, you know what you're drawn to, you know what you're interested in, that you lean towards. And so, I think part of schooling and parenting is seeing that in your child and just kind of nurturing it and guiding it. And that takes care of itself. If someone can remain curious, that guides them along their path. Yeah. And this is the thing. [Speaker 2] (50:38 - 51:12) Jung, for him, intuition was just curiosity. Right? So, when you beat out the curiosity, you're beating out the intuition. And so, if the most successful way to grapple with life is to learn to trust yourself to the greatest degree, then the entire ethos of school is to outsource that trust and disconnect from trusting oneself and externalize it. Then it's literally instilling within one the exact antithesis of how to grapple with life and how to live a good life. [Speaker 1] (51:13 - 57:27) That's right. Yeah. It's great to phrase a good life because I'll ask parents, what do you think education is? And very few of them have thought about that, right? We talked about education and schooling, but the education is what you do to yourself to create a good life. And these are not new questions. This is what the Stoics were talking about 1,000, 1,500, 2,000 years ago, Marcus Aurelius. And so, this is what they would think about, how do you live a good life? And that's what I started to ask too, because that's a very exciting question. And some people's highest value is money. That's great. Some people's highest value is title or position. But what if it was living a good life, being an example? Like Marcus Aurelius said, he said, don't talk about being a good man, be one. And you're like, that's hard, right? Michael Jackson, the man in the mirror. And so, I started to see what's going on in the planet. And I would go to these freedom events and other seminars. And I'm like, well, where are the good people here? And that's great. Let's make a fortune. But then, who is the moral leader in your community on the planet right now? It used to be like Martin Luther King or Gandhi or some community organizers or pastors or community leader. And now I'm looking around, I'm like, oh, it's us. Oh, this is very interesting. No, this is not the position that I want to be in, but we need those people to stand up. And this is, I don't know if you guys know this or not, in Santa Cruz, I helped reopen beaches in Carmel, in Santa Cruz. They were locking these beaches down. We did 70 Saturday bonfires on the beach without permission and live streamed many of them. And I have this one on video, the county public health officers on video. She's got a mask. She says, we were hoping to keep the beaches closed, but the people are not willing to be governed anymore. And she said that on video. And so there was other groups, but our group was one of the most vocal groups out there. And the cops would come up at like 1030 at night and they say, hey, you can't be here past this time and you can't have any adult beverages. And we would live stream. We say, is this your beach? And they say, no. We say, who does the beach belong to? They say, the people. We say, excellent. We are the people. It is our beach. And that started happening over and over again. When it first occurred, I felt the power shift. I want to say this is March of 2020, right at the beginning of the lockdown. There was 12 of my friends and I had already started a Facebook group titled Santa Cruz Voluntarists because after going to Anarcopoco every year, and this is a great event. It's an annual event, but I want to hang out with my freedom friends more than one or two weeks a year. So I started a local community. Well, we were having a bonfire on the beach, same situation. And four sheriffs come up and they say, hey, it's past 10 PM. You're not allowed to have fires here and you can't have beers. And we all just stood there and he says, all right, who's going to take responsibility for this? And 12 of us all stood in silence and looked at him peacefully. And he says, okay, you guys all want citations? Give us your ID. And nobody cooperated. Nobody gave him their ID. This is all on video. And then I could feel the energy shift from 12 people being ruled by four armed strangers to 12 people ruling the armed strangers with non-compliance and non-cooperation. I could feel the energy shift. And all of a sudden, those four officers looked around at each other and they said, I could see it in their mind. The only way we're going to get these people's ID is if we illegally search them and they just left us alone. They said, all right, you guys have a good night. Well, they showed up at 2 AM again. There was only like eight of us and they left us alone again. So the non-cooperation is very powerful. And the reason I bring that up is because I was, like I said, going to these events, looking for the moral leader. Who is the leader around here? Who's going to do what's right? And it turns out courage and boldness has also been bred out of us through the school system, right? They teach kids to fear public speaking. They teach kids to be afraid to say what their real opinion is. And you guys might've seen the Ash study as well. The Ash study, right? It's like, all this conform. Well, we're just talking about a line on a paper, but inside of us, there's some type of, I don't know, animal fear, primal fear that if we go against the group, the group's going to beat me over the head with a stick or something. And I think now the spiritual power is rising and needs to rise even faster inside of each one of us so that we do what's right. And it doesn't matter what you do to me. I'm an infinite being, a moral being, I think, and my spirit will continue. My body will die eventually, but it's time to do what's right, no matter the cost, because we're facing these challenges now because of our parents and them or that generation who didn't stand up. And then their parents and their generation didn't stand up. So each generation where the adults don't do what's right, they don't stand up, at least talk, at least speak it. That's why the first amendment is so critical. It's not guns that are number one, it's speech. It's the right to gather, to assemble, to get together and talk just like we're doing this digitally. This is a big deal that we can make a video and audio like this without permission from anybody, without paying all this money. We can just get together, shoot the breeze and make some solutions because what's coming is, I think, some really big challenges. And we got to have these kinds of conversations and basically build everything independently, voluntarily. And that takes, that's a big burden. And I'm feeling that. I think some of the people out there are feeling it too, but many hands make light work. So we can help each other, we can collaborate with each other, and then we can get through this phase. And I think we're going to get to the new renaissance after this low point. [Speaker 2] (57:28 - 57:59) Feel that bro. The truth is the highest path, man, but it's hard to ground the truth when we've all grown up being punished. The truth and for embodying truth and for questioning and for speaking up and for, you know, following our own personal whims and instincts. Absolutely. Yeah. One thing you mentioned before about learned helplessness, I want to come back to a little bit. Isn't that like a credo of Marxism that I shall receive based on my need as opposed to my ability? [Speaker 1] (58:01 - 1:02:17) I know the Marxist idea is that, right? According to one's needs rather than according to one's ability. I'm not sure if it's connected to learn helplessness, but it's in the same vein because the Marxist ideas are what like a socialist collectivist society is about versus the individualist. And I don't even call it the American dream anymore because countries are just corporations. And America just happens to have the number one brand or corporation on the planet right now. And 200 years ago is Great Britain. So I think of myself as like an earthling. That's one of my jokes that is developing. But we're just humans on the earth. So the idea of the human dream is total freedom and total independence. You get to be free to live your life. I get to be free to live my life. And there's one rule. We don't harm peaceful people, right? That's the moral code or compass is you can call it the non-aggression principle. You can call it do no harm. I like to affirm what my ideas are, which is respect for self-ownership. So if I respect your self-ownership, then I would never use coercion or force against you. Even if you're drinking or doing substances that I don't think is healthy, you're allowed to do that to your body. That's your body. And that's a critical part. So the more specific moral code that I think humanity will get on board with is do not initiate harm against peaceful people or their property. That is the fundamental unifying principle I think of humanity that can take us to victory, take us to the finish line, because there's different religions. There's different educational philosophies, dietary philosophies or ideologies. But in terms of righteousness, goodness, right and wrong, do no harm. Don't use coercion against peaceful people, their property. I think this is the idea that can unify us. And I'll do that in some of my speeches. I introduced the idea of voluntarism, right? All human relationships need to be voluntary. And here's how you know if you're voluntarious. Can you make this pledge? I promise never to force you to do anything against your will. Do you promise never to force me to do anything against my will? Yes? Great. You believe in voluntary relationships. You're voluntarious. Great. Let's move along together. And then from that new evolution of freedom, I think this is where success lies and humanity is ready for it. Children are ready for it. There's another funny story. I think I mentioned it in that speech show on luminaries, and I'll mention it for the audience and for Urasamo's benefit too. I have voluntarist friend and mother, Roslyn Ross. And I was interviewing her and she was telling me her story, teaching self-ownership to her son. Her son's five. I said, Oh, tell me about this. She says, yeah, I don't just go pick up my son. I say, is it okay if mommy picks you up? Yay. And, you know, comes pick, pick, pick up, pick me up, mommy. Well, they went to a family reunion and at the family union, the uncle comes over, tries to pick up the five-year-old without permission. And the five-year-old takes a step back and slammed his elbows down on his uncle's hand says, Hey, you need permission to pick me up. And the uncle was like, Oh my God, so sorry. I didn't know. Is it okay if I pick you up? And the five-year-old says, no, thank you. And he runs off and starts playing. So kids can handle this idea of this is my body. You need permission and don't treat me like a lesser human. In fact, these are their most vulnerable humans on the earth. They're the most fragile, innocent, sincere humans on the earth. The most, I think the best thing, like you said, y'all truth is the highest path. Tell them the truth. The truth is we don't know how we got here. We don't know what we're doing here. We don't know where we're going. We have some ideas and here's some of the ideas. Here's some of the testimonials. Here's some of the near-death experiences that this guy's talking about or this people and there's stuff going on. But to be honest with the kids and say, I don't know, that's one of the best things you can tell them. [Speaker 2] (1:02:17 - 1:03:36) Yeah. And this is, in my experience, what's worked for me. This is what hasn't worked for me, but you can go and figure that out yourself. We can only ever really share from experience and see what they take from that. And I love what you said, man, about the consent, especially at that age, because that's something that is breached and damaged so early and sets a tone for a lack of boundaries, physical and emotional in the long run and leads to so much suffering. And yeah, man, that's how we raise our kids. And especially in my culture, Arabic culture growing up, there's no respect for boundaries for kids, man. They're just grabbing. They're just kissing. They're just doing whatever. And so often, the kids don't want that. They're disgusted by it. They don't want it at all, but it just becomes like, oh, the older person wants to do something to me. Like, okay, whatever. Like, I remember once, a few years ago, we're at my parents' house. My uncle came over and tried to kiss my daughter on the cheek. And she was like, no. And he felt so disrespected and all the rest of it was such a big thing. But I took her son. I'm like, what are you doing? You have to ask her. You don't just come up to a random person and kiss them. And that was a big thing. And I think that's something that's really, really fundamental and foundational to shift is like, we need to honor consent, even with kids. [Speaker 3] (1:03:36 - 1:04:15) I have to check myself because I grew up in a Greek family. So, like, I have to check myself because sometimes I just want to go and pick someone up and hug them. And I'm like, all right, like, I got to remind myself of that. But yeah, the other thing I want to mention when you brought it up before, but like this whole idea of like, well, doing no harm to another. This is why the truth about virology and the pathogenicity of microbes needs to happen. Because when people think that you can just cause harm to them because you sneeze on them or you're next to them, then all sorts of bullshit can be thrown out there. You know, because it's like, it's invisible. It's not like something like as obvious as, oh, you punched me in the face. You know what I mean? [Speaker 2] (1:04:15 - 1:04:26) Well, you saw how fucking deeply that was weaponized during the pandemic. It's like, everyone is capable of harm, whether they're conscious of it or not. So, we might as well all just enter into this self-protective bubble. [Speaker 3] (1:04:26 - 1:04:41) Because you can't invoke freedom. Like, well, I'm free to do what I want. No, because you're causing harm to me and you're going to kill my grandmother and blah, blah, blah, blah. And so, like, this is why the truth of this needs to come out, because then that is just, yeah, no, you can't pull that shit anymore. [Speaker 1] (1:04:42 - 1:08:46) Yeah. And they're planning something in the fall here, right? The bird flu thing, they're going to do something crazy town or whatever. But what I noticed, again, going to personal responsibility, well, if you don't have a moral code, that means you're amoral and you will do anything the authorities tell you to do. So, I noticed that amoral people may be more dangerous than the immoral people. Like, Fauci knows he's a criminal. Bill Gates knows he's a criminal. The Bushes, the Clintons, these dudes, they know they're bombing people, they're robbing people. They're just like, hey, these are lesser humans, the Darwinian ideology. Hey, we're more evolved than you guys. You guys are the lower people. But the unwitting Karens and Darens out there, they're coming up and they're like, you know, you're putting mom and you're putting grandma at risk. And we did another thing. So, we did those 70 bonfires and then we did free hugs, one hour a week for 40 weeks of Santa Cruz. And Santa Cruz is supposed to be a conscious place, right? So, we have a sign, free hugs, and we're out there waving to people. And it was mostly positive, but some crazy people, God bless them, would come up and say, I can't believe you guys are giving out free hugs during a pandemic. And we say, yes, I understand you. You're afraid. I said, can I ask you a question? I said, who's responsible for your health? And they said, well, the government and me. I said, no, the government's not responsible for your health. And another lady comes up. These are all on video too. And it says, I can't believe this. 300,000 people have died and you're doing this. Sir, who's responsible for your health? The community and me. It's like, no, I'm not responsible for your health. And then another lady came up with her husband. I said, ma'am, are you actually very terrified of this virus? She says, yes. I said, maybe you should stay home because I'm going to live my life. I'm not going to live in fear and terror. One day will be my last day. I'm happy if it's today, take me God, but I'm not going to live in fear. So they coming out into public areas, telling people what to do. So they literally think the whole collective is responsible for them. And I said, man, humanity's in big trouble, man. If, if so many people think that other people are responsible for their life and their health, it's like, dude, this is a dangerous place to be. So just something to be aware of, you know, this is why I think it's so important to talk about the moral code now, because in the future, I think we're going to get back to a moral society, a righteous society, but we have to go through this like dark days of seeing the zombies and seeing these people that are freaking out. And then when you ask them a question about basic self-evident truth, they can't even answer it because the schools didn't teach them. And the culture didn't, the movies, the books, nobody taught them these things. We're literally the messengers in my opinion to the world saying, Hey, you own yourself. You can do what you want. You're responsible for your life, but you can't use coercion against peaceful people anymore, man. That's just not okay. Even if you have a badge, that's the worst one where a cop comes up and starts coercing you. And you say, sir, if you weren't wearing that uniform, would you be acting the way that you are? No, because you believe that that badge and that uniform, that costume gives you extra power. It makes you exempt from morality. But in reality, that's not the case. We're all equal. We're all sons and daughters of the almighty, in my opinion, connected to source, whatever that means. And we're the children of the source of the creators here to live on earth and live a good life. But knowing the difference between right and wrong seems to be one of the most fundamental questions. And that's why I think people don't want to talk about it because they feel so sad that they don't know they don't have these answers. And again, that's the ego. That's the arrogance. That's a self-righteousness versus what Socrates said, one of the wisest guys of all time. He said, there's one thing that I know, and that's that I know nothing. And if he can say that, I think I can say that too. [Speaker 2] (1:08:47 - 1:08:51) But I don't know if all the Darren's out there consented to being freely associated with the Darren's. [Speaker 3] (1:08:53 - 1:09:08) You know, I used to say like, man, it's got to be hard to have the name Karen these days. Now, bro, now I got to be like, man, like it's hard to be called David. David has officially anointed Darren as the male Karen. Yeah. I had never heard of that before. So. [Speaker 1] (1:09:09 - 1:10:54) Yeah, we got to rhyme, you know, rhyme, make it fun and laugh. And, you know, there's some good Karen voluntarists I know also, and I'm sure there's some good Darren's out there, but it's this archetypical stuff that they actually exist. They actually are thinking that I'm responsible for them. And it's just so sad that we had it one guy's multiple times. We had eggs thrown at us, you know, at the bonfire a few times. My car got eggs. We got egg at the free hugs again on video. This guy with Antifa comes up, throwing eggs, throwing eggs at a group of like eight or 10 peaceful people because we're giving free hugs during the lockdowns and during all these things. And I'm just like, man, how far is humanity gone where this is happening? And who knows? Maybe he was a government plant. I don't really know, but it was a big indicator for me of where we are in humanity and what's going on. And the importance of shows like this, the importance of these kinds of conversations that we can put the flag in the ground and say, here's what we believe. And we might be right or wrong, but we think that voluntary consensual relationships, that seems to be a good thing. Freedom of choice, this seems to be a good thing. So that in the future, we can say, you know what, we were on the right path. And they're going to try to, as Derrick Brose calls it, the great inversion, which is they're taking this whole thing with Trump and to try to make him to be a hero. And it's like, look, they almost killed him. So now he's going to be your hero and savior. And they get you back into the left, right paradigm of the blue people versus the orange guy. Right. So it's like, you know, they want us to fight against each other versus find the common ground for each other. And it seems to be this moral code. [Speaker 3] (1:10:55 - 1:11:13) Yeah. You know, early in 2020, I wrote a story talking about like the health benefits of hugs. And I wrote free hugs and Topanga hashtag no masks allowed. And it got back to like family members. And it became this whole fucking ordeal, all because of a story post. Like, it just blows my mind, man. [Speaker 1] (1:11:14 - 1:15:34) Yeah. Hey, man, how about you guys? You guys have some families. You mentioned your backgrounds. I'm half Mexican. So I had the Mexican side of my family. I got the white side of my family. And I've noticed that this agenda last four years put a lot of stress on my immediate family, exterior family. And it seems like the family unit is under serious attack. And there's it's just hanging by a thread almost. And I'm this is why I go to these events. I want to make my new family. It's getting pretty intense. You know, like a lot of my family members could care less what I'm up to. And, you know, it's like we're doing, you know, important work out here for humanity. You know, this is beyond career. This is beyond cash. This is like ideas and planting things. And I think so many families are suffering out there. So, you know, to the mothers and fathers who feel like you're alone, you're not alone. There's a lot of people that are realizing this. Music in the Sky is a great community. The People's Reset, Anarcopoco, Path to Freedom by Jim Gale in Florida. Tag Meier has a community in Kansas. So there's a lot of different leaders out there that realize what time it is. And they can see the food supplies under attack. And, you know, who knows what they're going to do with these different stories and agendas, but never feel isolated. There's another documentary I want to recommend that helped me because it talks about the isolation is a technique of totalitarian regimes, communist regimes. They make the individual feel alone. They call it atomization, like an atom where you're an isolated atom. And that's what it was like to try to make you stay in your home. You're all alone when in reality we come together and there's safety and strength in numbers. And we can do a lot more than I. This documentary is titled How to Start a Revolution by Gene Sharp. And he's a big researcher and teacher of non-cooperation, civil disobedience. And he helped many dictatorships around the country, around the world rather, collapse. And he gives various peaceful techniques to use in community so that you don't use violence, but you also don't give them the most sacred thing that you have is your cooperation, your compliance. You know, what happens when these regimes no longer have their populations who are like, yeah, we bow down, we give it to you. They say, no, no, we're not going to bring our kids to school. We're not going to give you our money. We're not going to give you our attention. And we're going to do our own thing over here. He documents these things. And again, it's just so shocking to see as he calls it, he says, nonviolence is a more powerful weapon than violence because the state is an expert at violence. And if you put the gun up, yeah, they're going to put the gun up too. But if you bring the flowers, right, this is what he said, when the soldiers are out there in their riot gear, you don't give the big guys from the freedom people go, you bring the grandmothers, you bring the children and you give them flowers to the officers and you give them a bottle of water and you say, hey, the politicians are making you a victim. You're a victim of the politicians. You don't want to do this. I know you don't. You're probably a good guy. And the politicians are making us do this. So you are a victim of politicians. I'm a victim of politicians and victims shouldn't fight victims. Wouldn't you agree? So this is one of the techniques they said to co-op the opposing force. And there were pictures in this movement, this particular country, I think it was Serbia. They had a military uniform on, but under the uniform, he would open it up and it was the shirt of the activists, the peace activists. So you can co-op these people and bring them on and say, hey, there's room for you over here. We believe in team freedom, team humanity. We believe we're going to win. The system is going down. You're on the wrong team, but you're probably a good guy. So come over here. We have extra space over here. And if you're a real protector of property and human life, come over here, come protect us. But don't be extorting us out here, you know, doing speeding tickets and all these other citations things, taking our money, man. Do what's right and join the righteous side. [Speaker 3] (1:15:37 - 1:15:37) Inspiring, man. [Speaker 2] (1:15:37 - 1:17:23) Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I've shared this before when I was living in Sydney in the peak of a scam, received thousands of dollars worth of fines, harassed by cops for not complying. One time sitting in the park, having a picnic during a curfew where it was like an exercise curfew, we're allowed out one hour per day and we had to be inside for 23 hours. In this hour, I wasn't exercising. I decided to have a picnic in the sun and my family. And this Darren of a cop man came and he tried to arrest every single person there. So rash, so ignorant. Don't you guys watch the news? Don't you know what's going on? What are my ID, etc. And like in this instance, he was going to arrest me. I was very certain about that. My children are watching. So I didn't want them to have the experience and the memory of seeing dad get arrested. So I gave him my details and I ended up winning in the court against them. So I didn't have to fight that fine. I represented myself and I used their law against them. None of it was legal from the get-go. For them to assert a public health order, it had to have your name on it. You had to have had biomedical references, all the rest of it. It was ridiculous. Even based on their own law, what they were trying to get across was completely illegal. But yeah, man, I would have been a massive shot to my self-esteem if I decided just to bend over, roll over and comply over something that was rooted in complete bullshit. So I think it's really, really, really important. Can you talk to us a bit about Valor Academy, which I know is your education system or whatever what it is. And you're saying you're graduating teenagers as young as 14 years old. I'd love to hear more about that, man. [Speaker 1] (1:17:24 - 1:23:15) Yes, thank you. So the Valor Academy is a way I help parents pull their kids out of the school system. So I do basic enrollments. Sometimes they just want to enroll with me. And that way they can do whatever they want because I'm their umbrella school. And the main focus is early high school graduation. So 14 is the youngest. I'm looking to do a 13-year-old graduation if somebody has a 13-year-old. But 15, 16, 18, even adults who didn't get their diplomas. So in the state of California, the state has their own requirements for a public high school diploma. But a private school has its own requirements for a private high school diploma. And you get to make that up. So California sucks and many other stuff, but homeschooling is pretty decent. So I learned this from my mentor who came to my first expo. And he was the candidate for California State Teacher of the Year. And then he realized he was harming kids. And then he started doing this. He graduated over 2,000 students this way just out of the office in his home garage or his little homemade office over there. So I started studying it. And yeah, we give out diplomas. It's a very simple process. You do an exit essay. The student does an exit essay. There's a letter of recommendation they get from an adult, which couldn't be a parent. And then they fill out the enrollment form and then pay the tuition of $1,000. And from that, I can give a diploma. And then I also include some consulting hours because the next question is, OK, what are you going to do now? You graduate high school, you know, because we want a psychological impact where it's like, OK, high school is over now. And even if you're 15, 16, you're ready to move on. So you want to go to community college. You want to get a job. You want to start a business. You want to travel the world. You know, like you said, you're a small store. What do you want to do? And this is where you want to let them explore what they really enjoy doing, because we are in a time where artists are needed. Leaders are needed. People with a passion that it's beyond the career. It's beyond the money. Yes, you do something for five years. You stay committed to it. Even if you work for free, you will get some experience and you will become the expert and then you can start charging for consulting. But do what you love to do. Do what is exciting to you. And this is where the intuition comes in, as you said. Rick Rubin, one of the top music producers in the last 30 years, I just saw a documentary about him. And he said, pursue your interests. He said, you don't know what the outcome is going to be, but that is a very important thing. So this is one of the top artists and producers. By the way, he has no musical ability. He says, I'm really good at listening. I'm really good at reflecting back what somebody tells me and helping them be present in this moment. And so this guy's made hundreds of millions of dollars without no musical ability, but the listening ability. And he just says, I know what I like. And if I like it, then I can tell them and nobody knows what somebody else is going to like. But if I like it, I'm being true to myself. Maybe somebody else will like it as well. So Valor Academy is about empowering the teenager to launch their life with success and courage and to kind of ignore the voices around them, which again, it's going to be well-meaning parents probably or uncles, aunts, grandmothers. Oh my gosh. What are you going to do? Well, let me, let me ask you guys this. If you have a high school diploma or a college degree, has anybody ever asked to see it? Nobody's ever asked to see my high school diploma or my college degree. Like you, you're awesome. I did pretty decent in school because my parents forced me. They said, if you want to play sports, you got to have a 3.0 GPA, GPA. And I was like, ah, okay. So I understand why a lot of my friends, you know, didn't play or dropped out because it's boring, but I loved sports. I was a three sport athlete. I loved it. And they use that as the carrot to, you know, coax me into this whole thing. So in my school, there are no grades. It's a pass or fail. If you do the work, you fail because, because of the mandatory nature of government school, I literally consider it a day prison. I consider it a factory of child abuse. I consider it slave training. It is not normal to force the most vulnerable, innocent people to be in this environment. And Gatto has one of the top quotes of all time. He said, what could be more radical than handing your child over to total strangers for a period of 12 years while they work on your child's mind without your supervision? He said, if you propose that as an idea in the colonial years, they would have burned you at the stake. He said, it's a mad idea. And so it's just been so normalized through boiling the frog and incrementalization. And now parents don't even know what's going on. They just hand their child over to the system. And I have one of my friends who's a, he's a revolutionary guy too. He says, if you, if you take your kids to public school, I don't think you love your children. I was like, dang, dude, I don't have the courage to say that. Cause I know parents, they do love their children. They're just unaware of what's going on in the system. But what I would say mothers and fathers out there, if your child is in the system right now, we're going into fall of 2024, maybe you can't homeschool them this semester, or maybe you can't do it in the spring, but don't wait two years. Don't wait three years to be in the same spot, make a plan. And maybe it's a six month plan, maybe it's a 12 month plan. And we can do it. And you can email me and I'll give you a free 15 minute consulting. [Speaker 2] (1:23:16 - 1:24:10) I think part of the issue, man, part of the issue is that now the parents have also been conditioned to believe that they work hard for the first four or five years of toddlers, and then they get to earn this freedom by shipping them off to a school. And there's this conditioning where it's like, oh, now I don't have to like constantly be around my kids, get to have a break, get to go hang out with my friends more often, get to go have lunch with hubby, your wife, et cetera, et cetera. And that's what needs to be broken, man. Like is it takes effort to be a parent and to be conscious and to raise a conscious kid and being a conscious relationship and bring in an income and all the rest of it, et cetera. Like it's a lot. I'm not negating that whatsoever, but this is what you're undertaking and what you're signing to by agreeing to bring a child into this world. So I think we need to break the conditioning where it's like, you know, now my kids get to be shipped off and I finally get to have the freedom which I earned by being there for four or five years full time. [Speaker 1] (1:24:11 - 1:28:01) It's a great point. I think that starts with redefining what success is. When I do my consulting, I'll ask the parents this, I say, what do you desire for your child? What do you want for them? And then we try to unfold what they want and God bless them again, because of their programming and then even of their parents programming, they think success is a high school diploma. They think success is a college degree. And it's like, well, okay, let's say they have the degree. Let's say they had a diploma. Now what? And so because again, they don't teach us to be entrepreneurs in this life, right? They teach us to be consumers and clerks. And where this is going in my vision is everyone's born entrepreneur and everyone's born to produce. We like to produce, we like to create. And these are the three words that I put into my speeches too, is liberate, celebrate and create. Liberate yourself from mental slavery. Nobody has a higher authority over you than you. Celebrate this fact, celebrate that you're free, celebrate that you're the king or queen of your own life. And now go create something that you love, a book, an audio, a speech, a dance, something, a podcast, go out and create it. And from that, you get to impact other people. So teaching the kids from a young age to create, I think is very important. So I'll ask parents, what do you desire for your child? And then what's your definition of success, which they don't have. And I'll share my couple of favorite definitions because I've been studying this stuff too. I'm like, what the heck is success, right? I thought it was a pile of money, but John Wooden, the coach from UCLA, world-famous coach, he said, success is peace of mind, which is a direct result in self-satisfaction, knowing you made the effort to become your best. So peace of mind, knowing you tried your best. And then Earl Nightingale said, success is progress towards a worthy goal or a worthy ideal, but just progress. So just day by day, baby steps every day, you make progress towards this goal, that's success. And what is success? I don't know. These guys' definitions, you guys get to make it up to the audience. What's your definition of success? This is a better question because if life is about success, then shouldn't you have a definition of what that is? Or if you want your son or daughter to get an education, shouldn't you know what that is? Just beyond 4.0 and GPAs and all these things that make no difference. By the way, Harvard and Yale consistently reject valedictorians from their admissions. It's an 80% rejection rate, I think. And in John Gatto's experience and asking them, he says, why do you guys reject these people with perfect grades and dedicated their entire high school career to GPA and tests? He says, we found out that those people can't really think for themselves. They're good at memorizing and regurgitating. But in terms of being a huge success in life or making a lot of money or these kinds of things, they just kind of stay in this box, this one size fits all. And I think one of you guys mentioned it, that we're all unique. And Gatto says an education should be as unique as your fingerprints. So, my prints are different from yours, yours are different from ours. Everybody out there, your son or daughter is the only one on the earth of who they are. So, don't think that you can impose this curriculum or this agenda on them and expect them just to accept it. Let them be free, let them develop and let that seed grow. That's where the word kindergarten comes from. You know, like a garden of kids that you plant and they grow into their own thing instead of trying to force them into this cookie cutter, one-way system that is just demoralizing and dehumanizing them. [Speaker 2] (1:28:01 - 1:28:25) It's beautiful, man. You know what the thing is, man? In order to trust your kid to have their intuition, their own curiosities, walk their path, let their life unfold in a beautiful way, the parent has to trust themselves. But most parents don't trust themselves to life. You know, so it makes it very, very, very difficult for them to then trust their kids. [Speaker 1] (1:28:26 - 1:34:49) Yeah, absolutely. And that's, again, what do you want when your child moves out? Mothers and fathers, your child's going to move out someday, 18, maybe earlier, 20, 22, 25, whatever age, they move out. What do you want them to remember and feel about you? And you said it, Joel, which is, I want my kids to trust me and I want them to know that I love them no matter what. Those are the two things that I want when my children move out. That's it. Not that he was a taskmaster or whatever, just I can trust my dad and I know he loves me no matter what. He has my back, you know, because I felt that for my mom, you know? And I know that she loves me no matter what and she's got my back, you know? And so just knowing that one person has my back, and my dad does too, but he's more the Mexican machismo, you know, don't really express the emotion type thing, and he's a good man too, but my mom expressed it. So she over communicated with me and she would have a funny phrase. He says, now, David, if anybody ever asks, you let them know your mother loves you. And it kind of became this funny thing. And now I'm, you know, this age and she still says it. It's just like, mom, I'm so grateful you emphasize that fact because this world's crazy. You know, we get into relationships with girls and get our hearts broken or, you know, life in general is a very grief and loss and pain are part of life, just like gain and love and these things. But to know that one person loves me unconditionally was everything. So that's the fundamental of voluntary learning is demonstrating this unconditional love to your son or daughter. Making mistakes is okay. Breaking stuff is okay. You know, not knowing what to do is okay, but it's not okay for me as the adult to force you or coerce you, especially in the learning environment. You know, some parents will say, well, if they're running into the road, you know, tackle them. Okay. That's conversion. Yes. If their life is in danger. Yeah. Use your body, protect their body. But in terms of like learning, reading, thinking, doing all these things, don't force them. It might take longer. Yes. But they'll always remember my mother, my father respected me and I can trust them. And these are some of the examples that we see in the unschooling environment. And I'll give you the phases of homeschooling here. I know we're coming to the top of the show here. The four phases of homeschooling for parents to know about number one is school at home. This is where parents duplicate the school system at home. So it's 10 a.m. math time, 1 p.m. English time, chop, chop, chop. Right. It burns the mother and father out and it burns the child out, but at least they're home. Okay. So you want to evolve to the next phase, which is de-schooling. De-schooling is where you let the child decompress from the forced learning environment. Similarly, like a bottle of soda, you shake up a bottle of soda. It's under pressure. Before you can drink it, you have to open it up and let the pressure release. Your child's under pressure. And the rule of thumb is that for every year that they're in a forced learning environment, you give them a month of total freedom. So if your child's in the sixth grade, that means that six years of forced learning. So you give them six months of total freedom. What does that look like? That means if they want to sleep all day for six months, you let them do that. If they want to play video games all day, you let them do that. They need to come back to who they are, homeostasis, the peace, the inner peace, which is natural right now. Let them come back to that. The third phase is homeschooling itself. And I mentioned that that's when the leader creates an atmosphere where personalized learning can occur. That atmosphere of peace, that atmosphere of pro mistakes, the atmosphere of no judgment, and you know, mom and dad, we got your back. And then the fourth phase, and I'd say the apex of the homeschooling experience is self-directed learning. Some people call it unschooling. Some people call it child-led learning, interest-led learning, whatever you call it. I like self-directed learning. That's the apex. Now, mom and dad, you don't need to create the atmosphere anymore because they are 12 or 14, 15. And they're like, this is my life. I'm responsible for what I read. I'm responsible for what I consume, what I watch. And hopefully you facilitated the conversation about a dream, which is, you know, what's your dream? I mentioned before, one idea is finding injustice on the earth and spend your life trying to correct that injustice. That really inspired me. But maybe your child has a different vision or a compelling future that they see for themselves, but generally it's about service to humanity. And hopefully they can see that and then they can start pursuing that. So those are some of the four phases that parents, I think would be wise to be aware of so that you can identify where you are on this process. And self-directed learning is you fully trust your child and forced learning or school at home is you don't trust yourself, you don't trust your child. So you want to find a medium, ideally, let them self-direct, let them pursue, even if it doesn't make sense. It may make sense later. I have one friend, totally self-directed learning family, and her son was playing video games so much. And sure enough, he's like, I think he was 11 years old now. And he says, you know what, mom? I think I'm going to become a concert pianist. He says, okay. He says, well, what inspired you to do that? She says, well, because I'm good at gaming, you know, good on the keyboard and stuff. I think it will work good when I start to play the piano. It's good hand-eye coordination. Sure enough, this 11-year-old, probably 12-year-old now is out there learning the piano, playing these different pieces because his interest changed. He's no longer interested in playing video games, but he picked up a skill, which was focus and concentration and hand-eye coordination. And now he's out there playing the piano. And my guess is that this young man will become a concert pianist by the time he's 16 or 18 years old, and he's going to be a prodigy in the normal world. But what was he? He was allowed to be in this self-directed learning environment, no coercion, total voluntary living, voluntarism in the household. And that type of atmosphere nurtures and grows some of the best, most powerful humans on the earth. [Speaker 2] (1:34:50 - 1:34:58) Amazing, bro. Yeah, dude, you're so inspirational, man. Your energy is really impactful, dude. And so grateful. [Speaker 3] (1:34:59 - 1:35:06) Thanks, man. Thank you so much for coming on. I'm so happy we're able to make this happen. Before we end this, how can people support you? [Speaker 1] (1:35:06 - 1:37:40) How can people find out about your work? Yes, thank you for your kind words. It's an honor to be with you as well. I was very inspired by you guys at Music in the Sky and your interview with Alex Zek. Thank you. I'm working on a project right now, guys, producing a movie with Rene Perez, and we're looking between 80 and 350K. So that's one big ask. If you have interest, email me at info at davidjamesrodriguez.com. The early high school graduations are at thevaloracademy.com. And also homeschool consulting as well. Information is there. I'm speaking in England at the People's Reset in September with Derek Brose and John Bush and a bunch of amazing Dan Astin Gregory grant presidents. The tickets are available at my link tree at davidjamesrodriguez.com. And if you just want free consulting, I do 15-minute consults as well for the school or the homeschooling thing. But it's really significant that mothers and fathers get your kids out of school system. I know it's one of the most scariest things you'll ever do. You're terrified, you're petrified, but you can do it. The answers have been found. The solutions are there. Now it's just a matter of breaking through our own fears, our own conditioning, our habit forming ideas that were drilled into us before we had critical thinking. So I want you to consider the idea that you're limitless, that all things are possible, the craziest things are possible. And who would have thought that your guys' show would blow up after, I don't know, two, three, four years of doing this. You guys are on a trajectory of doing great stuff because of consistency and having an inspiration and a vision. And that's the same thing for other people out there is that you just start doing something that you love, you get better at it. And that's what it's about. So those are some of the areas that you can find me and reach out. I'm going to be starting a group coaching program for homeschool leaders as well. So join that Facebook group or find me and email me directly if you want. But it's time mothers and fathers and humanity out there to begin to develop ourselves and to pursue with faith and courage that we're going to get through this and to go to that inner place inside of us. I think that's what the Bible was talking about, like the holiest of the holies, this quiet place where nobody or nothing can touch. And then from that, you can start to develop from the outside. The great self-ownership awakening is not outside of us. It is inside of us. It is us embodying the sovereign man, the sovereign woman, the king or the queen that we are. And that's unfolding now. And this show is evidence of that. So thanks for having me. Look forward to do it again, brothers. [Speaker 2] (1:37:41 - 1:37:56) Definitely. Amazing, man. The kingdom of heaven within. I love it. Guys, thanks for listening. And we'll see you next time. Love David. Love that guy's energy. Just love, love the fire that he brings to the table, man. It's, it's enigmatic and it's contagious. [Speaker 3] (1:37:57 - 1:38:15) Yeah. What a legend, man. It is contagious and it's so pure. And it's so, it's so inspiring. And like, again, you could just tell when you're around certain people, like how genuine they are and that they care, like they care. And especially with a mission that he's focused on, you know, in terms of like creating a revolution of education. [Speaker 2] (1:38:16 - 1:38:56) Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, man. And I mean, this really is the most important work, you know, it's like having a child and raising a kid is such an intentional thing. Like you talk about responsibility, like that is one hell of a responsibility to undertake and then to do it consciously and do it so they have a foundation where they're full of self-esteem, they take pride in who they are, they look forward to learning and being creators and producers in this world. You know, that's a monumental task. And I think that's something that personally I take very, very seriously. [Speaker 3] (1:38:57 - 1:39:35) Yeah. And it, you know, just made me think of it right now. We were talking about like the academic system and conventional schooling and memorizing and regurgitating, like you even just see that just applied to child rearing. So, it's like we just, okay, this is what was done before. I memorize it and I regurgitate it. I don't intentionally, truly, really think about what is happening. Like you mentioned, I don't know if it was the quote, like, or he mentioned it with John Gatto, like, like how radical this idea that we like, we like bring these people into life. And then after a few years, we just go, yeah, here you go. I trust you. Government. [Speaker 2] (1:39:36 - 1:39:47) I don't trust my parents to watch my kids for like six to eight hours, let alone trust people that I don't even know to be with my kids for 10,000 hours. Like. Yeah. Yeah. [Speaker 3] (1:39:47 - 1:39:58) Trust like some, some 22 year old, 25 year old that just got out of college to be the teacher of your, of your preschool or, or, you know, like kindergarten. [Speaker 2] (1:39:58 - 1:40:10) You don't, you don't, you don't, you don't know this person. You don't know their psychology. You don't know their experiences. You don't know what ideas are propagating their, their, their life. It's like, there is, you don't know, you don't know how they were raised. [Speaker 3] (1:40:10 - 1:40:18) You don't know where they come from. You know, nothing about them except the school hire this person and they're going to be in the classroom with your child. [Speaker 2] (1:40:18 - 1:40:29) And that's, that's the first fallacy is expecting the government to do proper due diligence and who they're hiring to do like the most corrupt failure of an organization in history of the planet. [Speaker 3] (1:40:30 - 1:41:03) You're, you're in trustee, but again, ignorance, people know, don't know what they don't know. They don't know that there's other options or if they do, it's too much. It's too scared. The system has made it difficult because you know, you start adding all these rising costs. People are just trying to work. Both parents are trying to work two jobs now, you know, 40, 50 hours a week, each parent, the childcare. I mean, it takes a lot for a parent to create a paradigm shift, to reframe, to reframe and set new priorities and try to figure things out. It's just like, I have compassion, man. [Speaker 2] (1:41:03 - 1:41:08) I've got compassion. It's difficult. It is difficult, but this is where we talk about knowing one's values. [Speaker 4] (1:41:09 - 1:41:09) Yeah. [Speaker 2] (1:41:09 - 1:42:33) And really, really embodying one's values as well. Like I can't think of a greater value than consciously raising my kids in a way that's going to best serve them for their entire life. Well, you know, even after I'm gone and you know, this is why this work is so important, you know, to decondition from these lies and from these illusions and to reclaim and reclaim the trust in oneself and also the trust that, you know, things are working in my favor, that there's a benevolent force that I can walk alongside with and works with me when I decide to make decisions rooted in the highest truth. And that's something that I found in my life, time and time again, when I truly walk the path of the highest truth, when I don't let fear and scarcity dictate my decision-making process, like help comes, right? Like there's great reward on the other side of that. And it's scary and it's hard, but this is the call to heroism, which ultimately we are all here to answer. And so I want, I mean, my life, I want to leave no rock unturned. If I realize there's a truth that I'm avoiding, then I'm turning over that stone and, you know, bringing the best possible conditions to my children. So to learn, grow and develop, that's the boulder that I'm willing to move. [Speaker 3] (1:42:34 - 1:43:10) Yeah. There just has to be intentionality, man. I mean, I just, I even question again, I'm not a parent right now, but like how much intention goes even into the thought of like having a kid and like, we're about to bring this being into existence. What does it mean? It seems like so many people just have kids as another accessory. Like, oh, I have another accessory. Let's pass them off to everyone. The nannies, the tutors, the this, the that, you know, like there isn't, it just doesn't seem like, it's like what we talked about in the episode. Like, oh, well, I mean my, I want to be able to go out to dinner and drink wine all the time and do this and do that. Like, I need someone to watch my kids all the time. [Speaker 2] (1:43:11 - 1:43:11) Yeah. [Speaker 3] (1:43:11 - 1:43:14) Like, I'm not saying you can't have a life, but priorities. [Speaker 2] (1:43:14 - 1:43:15) Yeah. [Speaker 3] (1:43:15 - 1:43:22) What do you really want? Like, what is that plan? I love the 500 year plan, you know, that he brought up. It's like, well, I like it. I like it too, man. [Speaker 2] (1:43:22 - 1:45:19) I like it too. Cause it speaks into legacy. You know, it's like, what is, what is the impact of your life even after you're gone? And why shouldn't you aim to have such a level of impact? Like why not? And I think again, a lot of that, why not? And I can't comes from this inherent lack of self-esteem. You know, most people struggle to have a vision for this life, let alone a vision that's going to have an impact even after they're gone. Yeah. I guess what I want to share at this point is that rise above the herd. If you guys were this conversation, like, ultimately this is getting your dreams out, you know? So, if you liked what you heard, we have extended the doors. The official Iron Gate shut off date to answer is going to be the 31st of July. So, if you're hearing this before then, and you feel a deeper calling to step into purpose and to, you know, one student called this a deep clean and scale for the psyche. So, even to like undo a lot of the bad ideas that have been driving your life up until now and to be instilled with power, purpose, inspiration. And even for your children, my favorite quote, one of my favorite quotes from Jung, the greatest burden the child must bear is the unlived life of its parents. You know? So, for these little beings that are watching you, are they seeing you on purpose? Are they seeing you on fire? Are they seeing you as a self-directed adult who is dictating one's destiny? You know, who is the captain of their ship? So, if that lands and that resonates as a last minute thing, you can head to riseabovetheherd.co and jump in with us as we embark on this 10-week journey. you