Kaizen Asiedu Beyond Political Correctness

(0:00 - 0:24) Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to the Here for the Truth podcast. I'm Joel Rafiti, got my co-host Erasmus with me as always. Another amazing episode in store. We have Kaizen Asiedu joining us. He's someone who's gone quite viral on social media lately. He's got Elon Musk reposting him. But essentially, he's speaking common sense. He's speaking truth. He's speaking rationality. (0:24 - 7:09) And he's had a big ideological turnaround in his own personal life, which I think has definitely led to fruitful results for him. And he really just breaks down the mind of the extreme leftist and liberalist ideologies in really clear, coherent, and powerful ways. And I think this is an amazing psychic cleansing conversation that we have and the kind of content that we definitely like to deliver. Right before Kaizen jumps on, I want to let everyone know that the 12th round of Rise Above the Herd, our 10-week group coaching program is now open for enrollments. And based on discussions, Erasmus and I are quite confident that this will probably be the last live action round of Rise Above the Herd. So if this has been something that's been in the back of your mind or piquing your interest, or if you're brand new to who we are and our work, basically Rise Above the Herd is 10 transformative weeks with myself, Erasmus, and Sophie Fletcher, a nervous system expert who is also Erasmus' wife. And this is really about becoming who you were born to be. It's about tapping into your deep, unique essence, deconditioning from the things holding you back, and really aligning with your highest potential. It's an incredibly unique program in terms of I don't think there's any program that blends the modalities on the psychological, philosophical level, esoteric level, and somatic level that Rise Above the Herd does. Over 120 graduates, insane testimonials, and everything can be found at hereforthetruth.com forward slash R-A-T-H, hereforthetruth.com forward slash R-A-T-H. 10 spots only. If you're ready to unleash the fire within, we'd love to see you inside. All that being said, here is Kaizen. You are now listening to the Here for the Truth podcast, hosted by Joel Rafiti and Erasmus. Kaizen Asiedu is a life coach and political commentator who cares about empowering people breaking down complex political and social issues into simple messages that leave listeners feeling informed, empowered, and appreciative of nuance. Kaizen, welcome to Here for the Truth, man. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, of course, man. I'm happy that we connected. A friend of mine, a couple of weeks ago, you and I were dealing with the fires here in Los Angeles, and a friend of mine shared a reel. I just really loved what you had to say, and I loved how you communicated things, and I felt like we were aligned. I'm happy that I reached out and that you're here. We start with all first-time guests. We want to get into your personal story, your personal hero's journey, the major rites of passage that you went through in your life that have guided you to who you are and the things that you stand for today. Cool. Yeah, I guess I'll start from the beginning. I'm 34, and I was born in the Bronx, New York. I went from New York to Harvard to working in tech, and I'm Black. The reason I'm mentioning all of that is because I've been in liberal echo chambers pretty much my entire life, and primarily, I live in California, which is also very blue. Somewhere around 2020, I started just becoming more skeptical of the mainstream media. At that time, I voted against Trump twice, and I thought he was a bad guy, and bought all the narratives about him. Then 2020 hit, and I quit my job in tech, so I didn't have the influences of being in a workplace where a certain set of values was reinforced. I started paying attention to my New York Times subscription, because I was a subscriber at the time. I noticed one day that every single email they sent to my inbox that had anything concerning Trump was negative, every single time. The way mainstream media manipulation and bias works is, it's not that they're reporting things that aren't true, it's the way that they're framing it is meant to present a certain worldview. But ostensibly, these organizations are supposed to be presenting the most nuanced, most objective worldview possible. I knew enough to realize that even if I didn't like Trump at the time, if I'm only being told negative things about someone, I'm probably not being told the truth. It was that combination of having quit my job, we had the lockdowns for COVID, and George Floyd riots happening in LA, that caused me to just take a look at, what am I believing versus what am I experiencing? So I experienced that with Trump, and then during George Floyd, I was told that as a Black person, I should be afraid, and I should feel oppressed, and I simply didn't feel that way. And then COVID was happening, and I didn't feel any fear, I didn't feel like I needed the vaccine, but I knew I was more afraid of the social ostracization that would happen if I didn't get the vaccine that I was of actually getting COVID. And at that time, I didn't think that deeply about these issues, especially in the political arena, because historically, I wasn't a political person. I didn't pay attention to local politics or national politics at all. But then fast forward to 2024, so what had happened in 2020 is when I quit my job, I kind of wanted to find my own purpose in life, and was exploring, hey, what do I actually want to do that I would do that I would do irrespective of whether someone told me to do it? And at the time, I realized I had achieved a lot of my goals, you know, I'd gone to Harvard, I'd won an Emmy, and I was still really unhappy. And that forced me to look at myself, which is the first place that clarity comes from. And I realized, yeah, I'm unhappy, and it feels like I'm doing a lot of things to try to fill some sort of hole. And that set me on a healing journey of a lot of plant medicine and retreats and inner work. So fast forward to late 2023, I was at the point where I felt a lot more clear on who I was as a person. And I ended that year by actually going to Egypt. So while I was in Egypt, I thought I was just going to go on like some spiritual adventures, see my past lives or some shit. And I got there, and it was actually, I think we landed October 10. So that was three days after October 7, which was very close because it was Egypt. So it's very close to the Gaza region. And it was a huge wake up call because not only was a personal impact on us, like we literally didn't know if we'd be able to leave the country. It was a wake up call to all the conflict that's happening within the species. (7:09 - 8:30) And that elicited a desire to help more and just be more engaged with the outside world. So I've been more focused on my inner world. I'm a life coach, I've been focusing on helping people transform their inner world too. So then come the start of the year, the first six months of the year, I was just kind of starting to pay attention more to politics, all the things I've been told about what's going on in America and seeing all the lying and seeing all the mismatch between what I'm being told and what I'm experiencing. And then I started paying more closely to Trump, and specifically what was being said about Trump. And at first, I still had a lot of resistance to him and what he represented or what I thought he represented at the time. But a few things started to divorce me from the Democratic Party. The first thing was seeing Biden's email on the debate stage. I thought to myself, how is this happening? How's this guy been in the Oval Office, ostensibly calling the shots for years? So that just showed me, look, either you people are manipulative or you're incompetent. Either way, I want nothing to do with it. And then they replaced him with Kamala through a completely undemocratic process. So I just washed my hands of the Democratic Party after that. I got tuned more into RFK Jr. because I just liked him. And about that, okay, this guy, his heart is clearly in it. He doesn't talk like a politician. (8:30 - 9:30) He's really trying to do something. And he's saying something that I directly experienced, like about real health, like not possibly medicalizing everything, but real foundational health that we can all experience. And then on the day that Trump nearly got assassinated, that's when things really flipped for me because what I felt was a visceral reaction in my heart to seeing the moment where he got up and said, fight, fight, fight. Because I thought to myself, you know what? I had a lot of mental resistance to him at the time, but I know courage when I see it. And when I saw that act of courage, it really forced me to confront that fact that I was actually just afraid that he actually is someone who not only do I think is the right solution for the country and moves us forward out of a lot of the insanity we've been experiencing the last four years with woke nonsense, but he's actually someone who I believe it and actually genuinely think his heart is in it. I think he's a good person too. (9:31 - 10:52) So that all comes back to the original impetus for us meeting, which was the LA fires. And when the LA fires happened, it was really interesting, right? Because a lot of the political stuff I had been following, but that was still abstract and kind of removed from me in a sense. But I live in LA and I've lived here for 10 years. And I remember originally when I wanted to move to LA, it's because I thought it was awesome. And we didn't have rampant homelessness and CVS locking up $10 goods because they're afraid of them being stolen and the straight up degradation of society in Los Angeles. And then when the LA fires happened, because I now pay much closer attention to what politicians are doing, I realized, oh, wow, these politicians are saying this is just about climate change. And what they're doing is misdirecting our attention from their own feelings and responsiveness to what was probably always going to be an issue. Like we've always had fires, but it didn't need to be handled, mismanaged to this degree. And when I saw that, because now I have a much clearer understanding of how a lot of these dysfunctional far leftist governments, especially operate in America, and there's issues both in Republican and Democratic Party, but I think the Democratic Party has lost its way far more than the Republican Party has in this moment. (10:53 - 11:20) I felt inspired to speak out because I think a lot of people are walking around thinking, oh, it's just climate change. Nothing we can do about that except solve climate change. And the climate is changing, but the politicians are responding. And when they're responding this poorly, that needs to be called out. And I think people are allowing themselves to just buy bad excuses from lying politicians who are people pleasing and saying the polite thing rather than doing the right thing. So that's why I spoke about that most recently. (11:21 - 11:56) Yeah, man. Thank you for all that. With this whole climate change thing, it just seems like it's this like, I could just absolve myself of any responsibility as long as I say and speak these two words, no matter what question I'm being asked. And then everyone just, yes, all the minions. Yes, it's climate change. It's climate change. We have to save the planet, tax us more, do whatever you have to do. I care about the planet. It's wild, man. It's so wild. This is like intelligent people that we know that I feel like their virtue gets hijacked to support these grand issues. So I'd love for you to talk more about that. (11:56 - 14:27) Yeah. So I mentioned before all the environments that I was in, right? So New York and Harvard and working in tech and being black. This is the way mind control actually works, right? Mind control sounds like this conspiratorial thing. But what actually happens is it's emotional control. And what I mean by that is when the incentives are sufficiently strong to just go along with the narrative of the tribe, people will default to going along with the tribe rather than thinking for themselves. So if you're in an environment where you're told that you have to believe that climate change is real, which it is, I mean, the climate is changing, but you also have to buy every narrative around this is primarily man-made. You have to buy every narrative about how quickly it's happening. You have to buy the change from, oh, it's global cooling to global warming to, no, it's climate change now. And when you're told these things, what incentive do you have to go against the green if it means potentially losing the approval of your family and your friends and getting fired from your job? Yeah. And your funding. Yeah. It can actually ruin your life. And it used to ruin your life. I mean, cancel culture is not that far in the rear view. And I totally get why people don't want to question the narratives that they're given because it's so dangerous. And it's getting better now. And I think Trump getting elected has actually been a stand for saying what you actually believe rather than what you believe will get you approval from the community around you. But yeah, that's why people just go along with it. And they go along with it, even if it's to their own detriment, even while houses are burning down around us, people will still say, yeah, the politicians couldn't have done anything. And implicit in that is the assumption that, oh, these are the best people for the job. Like Gavin Newsom, Karen Benz, these are the best people for the job. And surely they did the best preparation for the job. It's insanity. So it's like, even if you want to concede that, yes, climate change is a thing. And even if you want to then say that climate change is primarily manmade, do you really believe that these people are the best positioned to deal with it? Like they're not even the best people to solve the problems that they're pointing out. But a lot of it is just fear. It's just fear. No one wants to be excommunicated from the tribe. And we've seen vicious examples of what's happened over the last few years. I mean, me merely saying what I'm saying now could get you banned off YouTube a few years ago. (14:28 - 14:38) So that's how bad it was. We were banned off YouTube in 2021. Like one year, I think less than one year into our podcast, we got deleted off YouTube. (14:40 - 14:59) Everything you're saying, Kaizen, brings to mind one of my favorite quotes by Krishna Murthy, which is, it's no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Love that quote. And I think that's the thing with Trump, okay? Like, hate him, it's like he's behaving in a way that is so foreign than any other president in the past. (15:00 - 16:26) And I think people just don't even know what to do with that. They just think it's the most horrible thing. Because again, like the quote says, you're so used to a certain paradigm, and someone comes in and completely represents the antithesis to that. And it's like code red for so many people. Well, people are so used to fake niceness and political correctness that anything that is against that is viewed as hateful. It's insane. I mean, literally today, I tweeted about, there's this woman, she's like 500 pounds. And she called for a lift to pick her up. And the lift refused because I don't even know if she could fit in the lift, let alone worrying about the car bottoming out because it's not used to carrying a 500 pound person. So the driver said, No, sorry. And now she's suing. She's doing this multimillion dollar lawsuit. And all I tweeted was, this woman made bad decisions about her life. And now she wants everyone else to bear the weight. What you know, bear the weight was like, I knew what I was doing. I like words, right? And I was making a point, you know, it's partially funny, but I was making a real point. It's like, this person, if she's 500 pounds, that means she's made bad life decisions. Is it possible that she grew up with poor nutrition education? Probably. Might she have a thyroid condition? Possibly. But what we know for a fact is she made bad decisions. And we can see that evidently, because she's 500 pounds. (16:27 - 16:41) Yeah. And most people just, you know, thought it was funny or insight. And, you know, I had one person response saying, Well, you don't know what her conditions were. So don't be judgmental. And it's like, what? There's nothing judgmental. I'm simply stating she clearly made bad decisions. (16:41 - 19:33) By bad, I mean, not healthy. And now she's suing people because she wants other people to bear the weights of the consequence. So what happened, though, is we become so conflict avoidant, and so unwilling to just say simple factual things, that when someone does say simple, factual things, and they say it with their chest, immediately, we start to label it as hate speech, they're hacking people. And we become so unused to healthy, real truthful conversation and healthy conflict. Yeah. And this kind of brings up, I guess, the whole discussion and dichotomy of self responsibility versus collective responsibility. And what people, you know, some might be catching on, but generally speaking, what the left represents is absolving one's autonomy and personal responsibility for the preferences of the collective, right? Absolutely. And rather than preaching empowerment and excellence, it preaches entitlement. Yes. So what this far leftist ideology does is it actually inverts the dominance hierarchy. So in a state of nature, the person at the top would be the most competent. So the chief of the tribe would be the strongest, the fittest, the smartest, the fastest. And the benefit for the rest of the tribe is you have the best leader in charge. And as a result, they get high social status. But instead, this far leftist worldview, which is fundamentally Marxist in nature, inverts that and says, no, in fact, the least performing person is deserving of the most status. So the person who is the most depressed and the most disadvantaged is the one who should be celebrated the most. And it leads to some really wacky outcomes because then instead of focusing on mutable characteristics, like how much you add to society and how hardworking you are, we focus on immutable characteristics like sex and race. Or it gets even crazier where we'll celebrate people going through gender transitions, which is clearly a sign of mental illness. And we'll say, well, because they're the person who would, under normal circumstances, be considered the least healthy and least capable, we're actually going to celebrate that as empowerment and freedom. And who is it helping exactly? It might help people feel better about their life decisions in a moment, but it's not helping them make better life decisions. So it's not like both hierarchies are equally valuable, at least in one. Look, meritocracy sucks when you realize you don't have merit. Straight up. You've experienced it. I've experienced it. It sucks when you realize someone is just more capable than you at something. It sucks when you get outcompeted at something. (19:34 - 20:14) But that reality check gives you data that you can work with to then make yourself more capable and make a better life for yourself. But if instead we're constantly telling people how oppressed they are and how entitled they are, and it's white people's evil, billionaires are evil, men are evil, it's patriarchy that's evil, then eventually everyone just starts to believe, you know what? I'm not responsible for my life. Everything that's happened in my life happened to me, and I might as well give up and just get angry. It's a very, very dysfunctional, disempowering world, Viet. Yeah. It's propping up victims instead of encouraging people to seek greatness and to seek to be the best of themselves. (20:14 - 20:29) Have you ever read a book called Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand? It's funny. I just started reading it like a week ago. And you know why? It's been like a banned book, psychologically. (20:30 - 20:43) Don't tell your liberal friends you're reading Rand. Yeah. I remember growing up, and I didn't really know that much, but I heard Ayn Rand, and then I don't know what people told me, fascist, Nazi, far-right, whatever people told me. (20:43 - 21:25) So I didn't even get curious. And that's how these beliefs work, right? There's enough social incentive and fear to even consider alternative views. So you hear someone, someone applies a label, and then mentally you just put them in the don't engage box, and you never get curious about it. And now I'm going back and reviewing a lot of the people who I was told I should never associate myself with. Or even this idea of don't platform people, most ridiculous idea ever. It's like, someone has a bad idea, why wouldn't you want to eviscerate that idea in public? So yeah, I haven't read Atlas Shrugged. I'm not familiar with Ayn Rand now, but I'm starting to familiarize myself with a lot of stuff that I was told I was not allowed to read or consider. Yeah, man. Incredible. (21:25 - 21:44) She basically predicted the state of society today, 60 years ago, and she in detail outlined the trajectory of what happens when we put productivity, effectiveness, efficiency, greatness, and we demonize all that. And we just prop up this collectivist bureaucratic culture that we see. And yes, it's all very interesting for sure, man. (21:45 - 23:00) Yeah, we're definitely fans of her work. I'm not going to say she has the answer to every single issue, but she's a brilliant mind. And I think when it comes to that, as an individual, wouldn't you want to be able to take in information that challenges you? To have the intellectual humility to go, maybe I don't know everything. Maybe there's something here. Like you said, why is this person demonized? Why is all the coverage on this individual negative? Instead of like, yeah, cool. Everyone in my social group, everyone I work with thinks Ayn Rand or Donald Trump or whoever is a bad person. So that's it. I'm not going to go on my own journey intellectually or psychologically to explore these. And then to deal with what comes up when your beliefs are challenged. Because that leads to the growth. That leads to building self-esteem when you're navigating difficult situations and grappling with the tension of opposites and being like, where do I go from here? As opposed to like, no, I'm just going to take this kind of like the road most traveled, where I'm not going to challenge myself and then just see what happens. Yeah. And it just creates weak, unhappy people. And that's what this is really about at the end of the day. There's a difference between being nice and being kind. (23:01 - 23:13) I think nice is usually just people pleasing as avoidance. And it's saying what sounds good rather than doing what is good. Being kind is saying the truth as kindly as you can. (23:14 - 23:56) But being kind requires saying the truth. And we become so uncomfortable saying the truth that we're allowing people to be in their delusions and farm themselves. And we're celebrating it. Which is unkind. For me, what'd you say? Which is unkind. Which is unkind. I mean, for me, the clearest side, I think this is when I was like, if we can't set a boundary here, we have no boundaries as a species anymore. It was a child trans movement. I was like, if we can't agree that minors getting sex changes and risking sterilization and cutting off their genitals, and instead of learning to love themselves are being told there's something naturally wrong with the body that they're in. (23:57 - 24:56) If we can't agree that that is evil, then we've lost the pot entirely. Like literally anything is permissible at that point. But people don't want to bear the social cost of being thought of as a bad person for saying that. So if you're not willing to be thought of as bad, then you're not going to be willing to do the things that are good. Yeah. Kaizen, as you started kind of shifting your views and speaking out more, what's been the impact on you personally from family and your friend group? Yeah, it's been interesting because the reason I spoke out, I didn't expect my message to get as much traction as it is. Honestly, I just, the day that Trump nearly got assassinated, I just felt like I had to say something, especially because I knew that some people would be celebrating that kind of behavior. And we're celebrating people, violence being used against our own citizens. That's when we know we're in a really dangerous spot as a society. (24:56 - 25:26) And you see that with UnitedHealthcare killer situation as well. So I just, I literally needed to get it off my chest and I didn't know where it would go. But the first thing I noticed was just internally, I just felt right with myself. Like, I just felt a sense of clarity in my thinking and peace in my body that I want. And now that I experience it, I'm like, there's nothing better than this. Like, I would rather be at war with the world than at war with myself. (25:28 - 28:15) So I'm just going to say the truth, even if people don't like it. And I'm going to say it as kindly as I can. And I think that's where the nuance comes in, right? Because I think people sometimes say the truth and are unnecessarily abrasive about it, but you can't sacrifice the truth fundamentally, even if people's feelings are hurt. So around me, what I've noticed is, you know, it was very scary because I was going against a lot of the beliefs of my friends and family. But A, I got to really see who my real friends are and why. Like, I got to see what loyalty actually looks like. I got to see that my family genuinely loves me, even though they all disagree with me. Although I think they're starting to shift their views. Hopefully, I was doing no small part to my influence. I think I have empowered people who actually know me to, if not speak out about the same things I was speaking about, at least think about it. Like, there have been many people who approached me and said, thank you for saying this. Like, I've been thinking, I wasn't sure if I was allowed to say this kind of stuff, or you've actually shifted my perspective on stuff. I think people feel safer to just think for themselves, which feels really good to experience both with strangers online and people in person. So that's helped. It's changed the kind of people who are attracted to work with me now. And it's actually helped my business. Because, yes, there's some people who want nothing to do with me, but there's some people who really respect me and really like, like, even though I'm helping them change their life, they understand that, hey, if someone's speaking clearly about the world, they can probably speak clearly about themselves and help you do the same. So it's helped with my business. And yeah, it's very quickly changing my life. Like, it's massively raised the, you know, my stature now. And now Elon Musk is like, big supporter of my work. And it's just helped introduce me to a lot of people who I would have not to be connected with anyway. And now it's happening without even trying. Yeah, it's amazing what happens when you when you stand by your convictions, and you speak your truth. And even for us with the work we do in our in our coaching work, like when people feel aligned, and they feel like they share your values, like that connection goes to a whole different level. I mean, that was one of the reasons I think, even in 2020, 2021, 22, people chose to work with us, because they're like, you know, we we feel similarly about the things that are happening in the world. So I just feel like when you use your voice, when you speak your truth, you know, the people that aren't meant for you fade away. And the people that are just come into your life. And you just build deeper, more fulfilling, enriching relationships. And, you know, that's all that's happened the last four or five years in my life. (28:16 - 29:10) Yeah, nothing, nothing feels better than internal coherence. You know, and nothing's worth sacrificing that at all. It doesn't matter what the world does. Like you said, I'd rather the world, I'd rather be at war with the world and be at war with myself. I think that's just such a profound statement. And like, it really embodies the heroic that I think each individual kind of needs to move towards. Because so often, we sacrifice individual coherence, we sacrifice the pursuit of our genuine desires, we sacrifice the pursuit of rationality to just fit in and to blend in. Because on some level, we've been sold the idea that the most moral thing that I can do is just to be nice to everyone else and have platitudes with everyone else, at the cost of really knowing who I am, and walking my personal authentic path. And that's why we have the masses out there just living these completely inauthentic lives, they have no idea who they are, they've got no idea what they really want. (29:11 - 37:03) And it's a disaster. And everything that we're seeing reflective out there is just really, to me, is a reflection of what's happening inside the individual. And especially within the masses, which are just leaving these extremely contradictory lives. They've been on a deeper level, it's hatred and it's envy that's driving this kind of ideology. Absolutely. And sometimes I think people think they avoid saying the truth because they think it's hurtful. But the truth isn't hurtful, lies hurt. And the truth just exposes the lies, right? Because it's so kind of rips the bandaid off. But when you're exposed to the truth, it has a global impact on your life. Because you just see everything more clearly. You see what your actual boundaries are, you see what your real desires are, you see when you're holding back rather than claiming what you actually think and want. So that's a problem with lies, like even little lies. It's like it throws off your GPS. And then when it throws off your GPS, maybe it's not a big deal over the course of a mile, right? Maybe it's just off by one radian, right? But over the course of 10 miles, 20 miles, 100 miles, you're going to end up in a completely different place and you're gonna have no idea how you got there. So lies, they ruin our calibration and they make it extremely difficult for us as individuals to pursue the light that actually would be most fulfilling. Very, very, very well said, man. And the thing is, we're all programmed and conditioned to kind of value the lie over valuing the truth, which might be painful in the temporary, but obviously leads to far more fruitful results on all levels when it's sincerely adopted. You know what's the funny thing about Trump? Is that before he entered the arena, liberals loved this guy. Hollywood loved this guy. He was adored by everyone in media, in celebrity culture, et cetera, et cetera. And the moment he threw his hat in the ring, it's like this entire machine turned into turning this guy, the most hated demonized human being on the planet. Nonstop, second after second, everyone was programmed with this idea that Donald Trump is equivalent to Hitler or to Satan, which is even just that in and of itself should be a wake up call for so many, you know? Well, yeah. And I mean, I'm sure maybe it's the same for all of us, but when I go down my Facebook feed, I'm seeing a lot of people that I know from my past because I grew up on the East Coast, Kaizen. I grew up outside of New York City. I lived in New York City for 10 years. I was an actor for over a decade. And so a lot of my old actor friends, I mean, they're just posting like, this is the worst thing ever, the pictures of him and Hitler and Satan. He's the Antichrist. And it's like, man, so many people are living completely different realities. Even just on January 20th, the posts of people like, this is the darkest day of our time. And then obviously on the flip side, this is the greatest day of our time. And so just from someone who's curious about human psychology and human motivation, man, what gets a person to that place where that's their worldview or that's their worldview? And I just think it's really interesting to see. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm actually going to pick on something you said not to attack you, but it's a pet peeve of mine. I actually think it points to a deeper thing. So you said like speaking your truth, right? Which is an innocent phrasing, but I don't believe in your truth or my truth. There's just the truth, right? Like you have your opinions. I have my opinions and our individual opinions are in relationship with an objective truth that doesn't belong to any of us. And unfortunately, we've kind of enforced this culture of like absolute relativism, where it's just like, oh, there's just different opinions and they're equally valuable and we should honor everyone's opinions. It's like, there's right and there's wrong. There's truth and there's lies. There's factual and there's not factual. So what I see, and I can see this with a lot of clarity because I've been on both sides now, is yeah, one side has just been lied to a lot and they don't know how much they've been lied to and they're repeating the lie back and forth to each other because it's socially reinforced. But a lot of that stuff with Trump, it's just factually incorrect. And you know what the first real opening that there was for me? It was the whole Trump said, white supremacists are very fine people. Hoax. It's literally not true. If you watch the full five minute flip, not only does he explicitly denounce white supremacists, he does so twice in the same speech. But what the mainstream media did is they took a small clip out of that whole speech and they presented it. Right. So it's like, oh, that's one incident. Imagine that happening near daily since 2015 for almost a decade. And people are only listening to that information source because they trust it because it's a three letter acronym, CNN or NYT. It's like, oh, well, that's what I've been told. And they don't even realize why they believe what they believe is based on a very biased representation of reality that is just not true. So, you know, psychologically, it's like, yeah, you're what your beliefs are going to be informed by your information. And they're going to be reinforced by your surroundings. So many of these people who are posting memes on Facebook talking about contrary Trump to Hitler, they're literally believing lies, their beliefs are built on lies. And it's not hard to disabuse them of those lies, but they need to be serious and open minded enough to even listen. And that's ego threatening, right? Like people would rather double down on their position than change their position. It's genuinely ego threatening. It's genuinely scary to imagine, oh, wait, I've actually been wrong the whole time. It's humbling, as you said, right? It requires a great degree of humility actually to change your mind. And it takes courage because you're going to get attacked for it by the people who agreed with you prior. And I know my what my hope is that is over the next four years that this is what I believe will happen. Trump just makes life better for everyone. Like let's get prosperous and start winning and have things that we're excited about and get to Mars and let's do shit that makes us proud to be American. And if we do that, then it's like results are undeniable because results are just based on truth. You can't deny them. Yeah. Well, I'm curious to see, like, let's say in four years, all of a sudden, like, you know, women aren't thrown into like, you know, a concentration camp and all these other things aren't happening. Like all these people for the last six months that have been saying these things, like what is what is going to be their response? Now, of course, if that does happen, I'll be the first one to say, damn, OK, things didn't turn out how I thought they would. But like, I'm always so curious after the fact. And do they do these people even get exposed to this so-called truth or does the propaganda spin continue even with the whole covid thing? You know, it's like five years in and it's like people are still just like, I got my eighth booster. I think you're going to have protesters declaring that we want to play. We want to pay income tax. Right. Yeah. People literally protest against their own best interests. Like I don't understand how someone can go. No, no, no, no. I want to give 40 percent of my income away. I want to get rid of it. Like, yeah, yeah. I mean, again, it's when when you've been lied to so much and you accept it, it just becomes so difficult to leave that entire edifice of lies, because then then because the next thing that happens is, well, now you need to replace it with something. And that's scary, right? Because maybe it wasn't working very well, but at least it was a somewhat functional model of the world that you were operating on. (37:03 - 37:36) So if that model is removed, it can feel very unsafe and destabilizing. I totally get it, because if you if you have a stable lie. The truth can be destabilizing, of course, and yet necessary for your personal evolution, you know, and even collective evolution. You know, this is also, I think, where I think can play a role, even though it can be biased at times, is that like, do people have enough time to see a stimulus like a post or a meme or whatever and go, hold up, let me wait a second. Let me just put this in and give it a prompt. This is something I do to go. (37:36 - 39:14) Wait, is this meme even real or this thing, this passage? Like, can you share some thoughts around this? Because I just see people over and over again just sharing memes that are complete bullshit. And these are like intelligent people that like at times in my life, I was like, oh, man, you're amazing, creative, intelligent person. And yet just because it feeds this like bias of this like ideological constraint you're in, like they just immediately share it, even though from a more objective standpoint, you're like, there's no way this was there's no way this is real, you know, and yet it's shared. It's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll say one thing on intelligence, right? I don't think the dividing line here is between intelligent and unintelligent people. I actually think it's genuinely about being connected to one's senses versus not. Because we live in such an online world. And I think this is particularly the case in the coasts where the laptop class is dominant, like people who aren't just on phones and screens all day, me included. It's so we're so disconnected from our senses that it becomes hard to see something that clearly is fake. Yeah. And be able to like that's fake. Go ahead. Yeah. Well, no, I'm saying when I say intelligence, too, I'm trying to integrate like intuition and the senses and other things as well, like overall. But yes, I agree. Just general intellectual capacity. Like that's not the deciding factor often. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's different types of intelligence. Yeah. And, you know, yeah, I'll have people send me clips like you could clearly see that this was edited. (39:15 - 41:30) It's so obvious. But if someone's on their phone all the time and they're on antidepressants and they're unhappy and they have low attention span because they're constantly taking information from a variety of sources and eating crappy food, they're reading crappy air, they're drinking crappy water. We're literally desensitized. So we're in our heads constantly and we can be just led despite all the obvious indicators of what's false, led to those falsehoods and mistake them for truth. So I think it's very helpful because if your question is good, you can get you can revolutionize. It's revolutionizing the ability for the citizen to stay informed. Genuinely. I mean, I make content every single video I make. I use AI for I use it a ton. However, there's no substitute for one's own critical thinking and discernment, because unfortunately, when it comes to political stuff and news, the AI, it doesn't have a first person perspective because it's just aggregating perspectives from what a bunch of news organizations are saying. And those news organizations are heavily biased toward the left as well. But that said, if you prompt it creatively and you ask, you try to do stuff like ask it, hey, don't stop. Instead of asking, is Trump a racist? You can say, hey, what are some things that Trump has been accused of that the left is considering racist? And what is Trump's response or justification for saying those things? Give me the best argument for both sides. Or, you know, recently there was this thing with Elon Musk endorsing AFD, which is the second most popular political party by the way in Germany. It's not some fringe political party. And some people have said, oh, well, it's affiliate with neo-Nazis. And people love to do this. Like, oh, it's connected to this thing. So it must be bad, which is like it's just built by association. That's a logical fallacy. Right. But I remember trying to do some research on AFD myself because I was curious. And I asked, is AFD a neo-Nazi party? And basically AI basically said yes. And I said, well, tell me what AFD says they are. (41:31 - 42:17) Right. Don't tell me what people are saying AFD is. Tell me what AFD says they are. And then we can get a more nuanced analysis. And then you might still conclude that they're neo-Nazis, but at least you're hearing directly from the person. So, yeah, I think AI helps. I don't use any substitute for primary sources and long form and just listening directly to a person rather than settling for labels. Well said. Kaizen, another topic I want to get into just because it's obviously like in the media and has been for a while is the whole DEI. I don't want to call it a movement, but just like what impact has that had on people? What impact has it had on the black community? I would love to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah. Well, first, I don't even think DEI is serving the black community very well, at least not the American black community. (42:17 - 43:56) So I'm a first generation immigrant. My parents came from Ghana. I was born here and I'm very fortunate that my parents did what they had to do to move from Ghana to here. I mean, that's that's lineage changing stuff that they just did. Right. And I'm very grateful that I live in America. I love America. I believe it's the greatest country on earth. I think that's justified by the fact that we have both the highest rates of illegal and legal immigration. And at the same time, I don't think I need DEI. I don't need affirmative action. My lineage doesn't have slavery in it. So even the thing that they're trying to correct for with DEI, they're misapplying it because most of the black people who are going to these top universities and benefiting from affirmative action are not American black. I mean, I'm American, but, you know, in their lineage, they don't have a lineage that goes back to slavery. Even look at some of the DEI officers, 75% of DEI officers are white. OK, something like I think like 8% of DEI officers are black, which is mean that black people are underrepresented among DEI officers. Look at the insanity of this. So what's actually happening is people who are virtue signaling and telling everyone that they're oppressed and they need entitlement and that they need affirmative action are not actually creating the results that they want. And moreover, I just don't think that top down, let's just call it what it is. In a lot of cases, DEI is just affirmative action. It's literally saying, hey, we're going to prioritize a brown or black person over a white or Asian person and call that progress. (43:57 - 44:57) And there's a limited number of spots. So you're picking one person over the other on the basis of the race. It's discrimination. Right. Not only is it not I'm not convinced it's even helping the communities that it's at least ostensibly intended to serve. It is also just sowing more resentment and the people who are now getting discriminated against in present day. So what happens when you discriminate against anyone, they become resentful. And I've seen this, I see that, you know, it's like I see a lot of white resentment and white guilt. And I totally get it, because if you're told that, well, you're you have privilege and you have the evil from your forefathers and you need to now give away present day equality to correct for past inequality, then there's two reactions. Either fuck that, which is resentment or OK, yeah, you know what? You're right. I'm bad. My skin color makes me bad and I should give it to someone else with other skin color. (44:58 - 47:50) So I think what's been happening in this country, you know, people say, oh, well, the Trump movement is racist. You know, I think they're they're technically incorrect, but I think there's some directional accuracy to that, because I think there are a lot of white people who were resentful because they felt like they'd been told that they're wrong and they're bad and they should be ignored. And we need to give out entitlements to all these other people in the country, too. And as a result, it just perpetuates a cycle of racism, because now there's a lot of resentful, genuine racists who have been created because they feel they were discriminated against. And it just goes on and on and on. So, you know, there's this well-known critical race theory theorist named Ibram X. Kendi, who is a professor at Boston University. One of his most famous quotes is, the solution to past discrimination is present discrimination. The solution to past discrimination is present discrimination. The solution to present discrimination is future discrimination. Well, if that's the case, you're always going to be discriminating. And if discrimination breeds resentment, then you're always going to be creating more resentment. So it just fails on its own face. If you want to stop discrimination, you stop discriminating. Full stop. That's just what you do. And if there's a minority group in the population that is still suffering in present day, regardless of the reasons why it happened in the past, let's help those people. Let's help people who are at the bottom of society by empowering them, not by telling them that they're victims and they need to be given handouts on the basis of the color of their skin or the shape of their genitals. Yeah, because as you've been speaking out more and more, do you get pushback from the Black community or people from your past that you have internalized white supremacy or something of that nature? Yeah. Yeah. I've heard all of it. I've heard it. Uncle Tom, Coon, Tather. I mean, I'm just learning new terms I've ever heard of. Tather, all of this stuff. And I'm like, ironically, Uncle Tom was actually the hero in Uncle Tom's cabin. So it was actually genuine racist white people in blackface who took a hero, a hero of the Black community, and they actually made him the villain. So it just shows you how deep psychological manipulation can go. But it's like, bro, I love being Black. I love myself. I actually get particularly excited when I see a Black person who understands what I'm saying, because I'm saying this because I think it's beneficial. I think I'm saying this to help people be raised up. I don't want to see people be told that they're victims and be told that the only way they can succeed is that if they get entitlement and be told that everyone is racist and everyone's trying to keep them down because that's just going to hurt the individual. So does it hurt when people call me names? Of course, because I'm a sensitive being and I'm a human. (47:50 - 50:03) But at the same time, I'm more interested in doing good than sounding good. So it sucks, but I'm just going to say the truth. You know what's interesting too? I've been having this conversation with my brother over the last, I don't know, however many years is like, you know, we followed football, you know, growing up and like the whole Rooney rule in the NFL is like, if you're an African American coach and like you get called in for an interview, you're like, do they really want to try to potentially hire me or are they just trying to fucking tick a box? And I just don't know how that's beneficial. You know, I'm not saying obviously there are African American coaches, but if you get brought in to be interviewed, you're in the back of your head, you just got to be like, all right, I'm going in. They're just not really going to hire me. But because of this fucking rule, they have to. Yeah. Yeah. And so what does that do? That creates a situation where even if you benefited from affirmative action in the short term and the long term, there's always this question in the back of your head of did I succeed on my own merits or did I succeed because I'm black? And what a horrible thing to implant in someone's mind. Horrible. And you know what's funny, the same people who are pushing for affirmative action and D.I. are also condescending in the same breath. You know, I had someone who actually knows me start mouthing off about me on X without approach. They didn't approach me first. They didn't like say, hey, guys, I have some concerns about some of your views. Can we talk about that? They just started mouthing off. And you know what they said? They said, oh, well, you benefited from affirmative action by going to Harvard. And I was like, hey, you don't actually know what my grades were. Be a top one percent score. So I was definitely qualified to go and more qualified than many other people got rejected. See, I don't know if I benefited from affirmative action, but I do know that you implying that I benefited from affirmative action doesn't make me feel more powerful. So if your goal is actually to help people who have genuine intergenerational trauma, you don't do that by giving them advantages on the basis of their skin. No, you give them empowerment. You help them see how powerful and capable that they are. You raise them up. (50:03 - 52:02) You celebrate other examples of people who have overcome great odds. You focus on pride and self-love, not constantly focusing on history. Yeah. You know, the thing is, man, like genuine progress and even, you know, I would say real capitalism, which I think is another triggering word and people are very misconstrued about because it's been so loaded and weaponized. It doesn't give a fuck about the color of your skin. It doesn't give a fuck about your sexual orientation. Doesn't give a fuck about any of that. It's just who is the best person to do this job in the best way to lead to the best outcome. And like, that's it. And yet we've had this complete moral hijacking of everything else, which is meant to define progress and meant to define the right way to do something instead of looking at what gives me the best results. And none of that has anything to do with racism. And you know what people will say, they'll say stuff like, oh, well, studies show that diverse teams are more effective. Okay. So first I'd be questioning like diversity in one context. Yeah. What studies, what context is diversity always good? Should we always go for the maximum amount of diversity, right? Even the claim on his face, it doesn't really mean anything, but let's even assume that diversity in certain degrees is good in certain places, which is certainly the case. Okay. Well in a free market where everyone's competing and they need to shave seconds off their time to win. If diversity is a genuine good, then people will adopt it of their own volition. Yeah. So we shouldn't be forcing diversity. If diversity is genuinely good in a competitive environment, the people who are smart will want to have more diversity and they'll have the right kinds of diversity, not the top-down diversity that's only met to accrue social points. Yeah. Well, if you're a black lesbian, you want a black lesbian firefighter to show up to your house to put out those flames. (52:02 - 55:33) Insanity. The best and right thing will be adopted by the most people with zero force required and simply based on rationality. The moment that you need force to tell people what the right way to anything is, you know, what's flawed from the get-go. Yeah. Yeah. And I think fundamentally, it's like a lot of these policies, they're just infantilizing black people. They're infantilizing women. They're infantilizing everyone. They're just treating everyone like they can't help themselves. So it's like, let's help people help themselves rather than prescribe what help looks like and force it upon people and actually just create even worse second-order consequences and then call that progress. So yeah, I think a lot of this is fundamentally a lack of faith in the human spirit and human capability. And if we actually looked at people as the best versions of themselves that they can be and encourage that, we wouldn't need any of this stuff. Yeah, that's right. I've got a popular post that says, society demands every diversity possible except for diversity of thoughts. And what you just said there and what you're hitting at is really getting to the root of the problem, in my opinion. And this is the thing, the tenets of Americanism and what made the West is individualism, freedom, laissez-faire capitalism. This is what made America great. This is what led to some of the most incredible innovations and most extended progress in human history. And then all that, we're taught to hate, we're taught to resent, we're taught to believe that these are the things that makes America wrong, makes America racist, right? So the question needs to be is like, why is the inherent philosophical premise of America being hijacked and being weaponized against Americans? So I think the real agenda behind all of this is to tear down the West and is Western hatred in terms of Western ideas, not Western people. And we're seeing it, we're seeing it take place. And we will see that people that adopt these ideologies and from, yeah, sorry, you're supposed to say. No, no, no, no. Kaizen, have you ever seen the 1984 interview between G. Edward Griffin and Yuri Bezmenov, the KGB defector? No, but that's a great year to have that conversation. I'm going to, I'm going to send, I'll send you the link to the interview, man. It's probably one of the most shared videos that I've shared with people in my life over the last decade. And I think you'd really, you'd dig it. Yeah, well, to that point, and to what Joel was saying, you know, it's hard, sometimes people ask me like, why is all this stuff happening? Like, what is this insanity? Like, is this intentional? Is it just incompetence? Is it stupidity? And the answer is, I don't know. Like, I genuinely don't know. I feel like it's good versus evil at the highest level, like spiritual warfare, and then at a lower level, maybe it is KGB propaganda, and it's a gigantic psychological operation to undermine the West. And there's something to that, because it's not just in America, this is happening. This is happening all across the West, this insanity. I don't know, I don't know where it's coming from, but it's very clear how it operates once you see it. Right? It's like, we undermine all structure, we undermine the idea of objective truth, we undermine the idea of objective morality. (55:33 - 56:41) We say there's no God, we say that family, you don't really need it. We say that you should hate your country. And then all of these core systems, once they're removed, people will buy anything, even if it's actively hurting them. So yeah, there's an attack on the West. And I think Marxism generally, it's an envy-driven ideology, right? It says billionaires are evil, success is evil, anyone who's at the top of the dominance hierarchy is evil, and workers of the world need to unite and take back the good from these evil people. And of course, then invariably what happens is you just change the people who are at the top, and you delude yourself into thinking that you're free now. And there's a reason why I consistently build in the 20th century. It's not because it wasn't done, right? It's because it can't work. Think about it, man. Individualism is only like a 300-year-old idea. Before that, we have thousands of years of feudalism and collectivism, and this was non-existent whatsoever. But in the 300 years since its inception, we've seen more human progress than probably the rest of history combined. (56:42 - 57:25) Yeah. And like G. Edward Griffith shared when we interviewed him a couple of years ago, what is he, 91 years old now? He was like, listen, the greater good for the greater number, I'm all about that. But what's the way to get to that? Do we honor the individual rights, or does collectivism take the steering wheel where the person or people who have the most influence within the collective decide what is right for everybody else? And I'm all about collectives and people coming together, but from a place where we honor each other as individuals, and we choose to do no harm to the other person. And then we grow, and we evolve from there. And so I'm curious, and I'm excited to see how things are going to unfold in the next five, 10 years, that's for sure. Agreed. (57:26 - 59:01) Yeah. Because that's the thing, man. What the birth of America really was, in many ways, even though obviously it wasn't perfect by any means, but it removed the shackles from man's mind. For the first time in human history, man was free to think for himself. And in that freedom to think for himself, we saw the rise of the entrepreneur. We saw the rise of human society on a level that we've never seen before. So at a fundamental level, what this is about more than anything else is, am I free to think for myself or not? And we've had this incredible subversion of that idea to the point where there's so many people out there now that don't trust themselves to think for themselves, right? And so that's why it becomes so easy to buy the lie and to believe the lie and for the lie to take root, because people need to be told what's right. We've lost, like you mentioned, over a sliding scale, we've lost our moral compass. We've lost our intuitive compass. We've lost sight of what leads one towards progress. And so we just buy these ideas left, right, and center in terms of what it means to be right, what it means to be moral, what is the right way to think. And it's a painful process to decondition from that and be like, oh shit, I'm a man on an island and I need to learn how to think for myself. I need to be the person that navigates my life. I need to be the person that decides how to treat each person and what leads to results and connection and health for me in my life. And that's what we're all being called to do on a deeper spiritual level is to learn how to be individuals within a collective. (59:02 - 1:00:54) And for the most part, man, this leftist idea is wanting to degradate that autonomy. And it's saying, why ever leave the womb? Why ever leave the nest? Why ever think for yourself, right? Big daddy government, big daddy pharma, big daddy education, we've got you covered. You don't need to go on that hero's journey. And that hero's journey is a human spiritual right. That's what leads to psychological health. And they're chopping it off so people aren't inclined to go on that adventure that requires going through challenges, going through adversity, going through pain. And so by providing this, what I would call an insidious convenience, we stifle people from their real human right and their real human spiritual journey. Yeah. And I think, you know, as you were talking, I was thinking about the role of men in particular here, because over the last, at least the last decade, I think masculinity itself has been under attack. And again, going back to the question of like, why is this happening? Well, if I wanted to undermine the West, I would attack men first. Because men are the ones who hold the boundary and protect women from the harsh realities of the world and from invaders. So if you undermine masculinity and men are told that masculinity is toxic and they become softened and become feminized and emasculated, then the men who are not suffering from that contagion from other countries, they can take whatever they want. And that's what's happening in Europe, especially, by the way, right? Like Europe, we've been told, hey, you need to be multicultural. And if you're not multicultural, you're bad and you're a bad man. If you're okay with any man from another culture coming in who doesn't respect the women in your country, use them as chattel. (1:00:55 - 1:01:15) And what's happening is you have Western values being presented against Middle Eastern, not even Middle Eastern, like Islamist values. And I want to distinguish Islamist from Muslim, because by Islamist, I'm talking about the Islamic Republic and some of these factions of Islam that are more extremist. And there's a culture clash. (1:01:15 - 1:02:39) Is jihadist? Yeah, and Sharia law and all this stuff. And there's a culture clash. And when people even call that out, they're afraid of being called racist, so they don't call it out. And what's happening is these countries are getting overrun. And all the wealthy people who can leave these European countries, they're leaving. Because they don't want to be in these countries that are just being overrun while they're being told that they're bad because they want to preserve France and keep it French or Germany and keep it German or Italy and keep it Italian. So yeah, a lot of this stuff is like, as men, when we're told that we should be ashamed for being a man, be ashamed for taking a stand, be ashamed for setting strong boundaries to protect our women and our communities and our children, then yeah, men who don't care about any of that nonsense come and they take. So in a sense, it's actually kind of like tribal warfare, but abstracted into the psychological domain. So I think men in particular need to pay attention to this stuff, because my observation is that women are more emotionally susceptible to manipulation, because women are more emotional beings. And that's one of the beautiful things about women, because it also eclipses them to be better caretakers in many ways, better at a lot of societal functions that I think women excel at. And there's other things like protecting and providing that men are uniquely equipped for. But when you undermine masculinity, then all of a sudden it's open season and your civilization is in danger. (1:02:40 - 1:02:49) Do you guys know what the most popular boy's name in England has been since 2023? No. Muhammad. Really? It's what? Muhammad. (1:02:50 - 1:03:15) Of course. That's wild. Yeah. Interesting, right? Yeah. You know, the hatred for America is so strong that you have the left and you have Islam uniting over this joint hatred of America. Two factions and two ideas that couldn't be further apart on an ideological level are joining forces and marching through the streets together because of how strong this West hatred is. (1:03:17 - 1:04:09) Yeah. Well, I was just going to say before, and again, I think it's the responsibility of the individual to even be mindful of the media they're consuming. And I don't mean media like the news. I mean, the movies. I mean, what role does Hollywood play in this? When you look at some of the characters that are portrayed, like the masculine characters, they're not these heroic beings. I mean, sure, you'll get your occasional epic film, but usually they're like portrayed as these freaking losers. So what impact does that have on the male psyche, on the teenage psyche that are watching these movies? And so being really mindful of the media, the music, the movies, the TV shows that you consume, or if you're going to consume them, do as best as you can to consume them with a critical eye. Of course, there's still ways you can be programmed subconsciously. But, you know, we've had multiple episodes on that, on like media programming and Hollywood programming and how that's impacting gender roles. (1:04:10 - 1:04:14) Yeah. And I mean, you say the masculine characters. I'm like, what masculine characters? Yeah. (1:04:15 - 1:07:07) Right. Like, it's like it's a it's a male body, but it's like it's a it's a feminine being in a male body that is getting presented. And then to get even farther, we get celebrated as that's progress. Oh, this is a better man than the hulking brute from before. But when shit's going down, don't you want the hulking brute? Like, you want a strong man. And yes, you want to be emotionally intelligent. And you want him to be a safe presence for his women in the tribe. Of course, you don't want to sacrifice the masculinity, though. You want to enhance it. And that's what we've been doing. We've been celebrating sacrificing of masculinity. And we've been told that masculinity is bad. And to go back to something that Joel was saying earlier about Mohammed being the most popular name in the UK. It's like when people point that out, it's almost like I even feel it now. Like, oh, God, I don't want people to think that I'm like anti-Islam or a xenophobe or racist or this. And it's like, it's ridiculous. It's like, can I just say what I actually believe? That's what we've created, though. But it's very simple. This is not even about cultural superiority. This is about recognizing that cultures are different and not all cultures are compatible with each other. And to the extent that you want to allow any immigration to a country, you want to make sure that it enhances the country and you want to make sure that it's not rapid, open border immigration. That's destabilizing. So in America, for example, the right amount of immigration is not zero. It's also not infinity. And it's not infinity over a short period of time. Certainly not. But yeah, in England, it's like, yeah, if the most common boy name is Mohammed, meaning most boys are being named after a Muslim prophet. Yes, you're probably losing something of the original culture. And you need to be very careful about that, too. So, yeah, we shouldn't have to be afraid to just name these things or be called a racist. And this is recently what was going on with this UK. Do you guys care about this UK child grooming scandal? Vaguely. Okay. So I'm just going to trigger warning. I'm just going to call it what it is. Child rape. Right. It's not grooming. It's child rape, mass child rape. So basically, since the 80s in the UK, in Britain, there have been thousands, maybe tens of thousands of kids getting raped by Pakistani Muslim immigrants. And the reason this was not handled is because law enforcement and politicians wanted to avoid being thought of as racist because they observed that many of the men were Pakistani immigrants, not all of them, but a disproportionate amount. So what happened? Literally, you know, there's this one horrifying incident where a little girl went to the police station to report, like, hey, I'm being raped and I don't know what to do. (1:07:07 - 1:12:05) And they turned her away. And then a man picked her up in his car and he raped her and brought her to a place where a bunch of other men also raped her. And it's like, look, racism is bad and it's not as bad as rape. Okay, so if we need to call out rape at the risk of being thought of as racist, so be it. But we're getting told, no, no, no, don't do that. Ignore the patterns that you see. Don't discern about like, hey, are there things in this culture that are not compatible with this culture? Because there are cultures where you're allowed to marry little girls and stuff. And it's like, I find that completely morally apprehensible. I don't want that in my civilization. And I guess if they want to do it in their civilization, it's their civilization. But I don't want that shit here. Yeah. Yeah. But that's what's going on. Like, that's how that's how much this whole structure breaks at the extreme. Yeah. This distorted moral virtue, you know, supersedes something so horrific as child rape. Like, yeah, if we keep like this is the shit, man, that fucking gets me like if we can't fucking protect our children, we have lost our fucking way. You know what I mean, man? And like, I mean, let's not get started on just like the pedophilia and all this other shit that's been going on in governments. And like, I mean, even even the UK, you go back to Jimmy Savile, you know, you look up Jimmy Savile, like former entertainer, like the connections that he had and all the horrific things that he did, you know, and then didn't come out until like the year after he died. And this shit was going on for decades, you know, and it's like, why isn't this shit talked about? You know, but if you do talk about it in our current culture, you're far right, MAGA, Trump, or horrible human being. You know what I mean? Like, it's. Yeah. But the ideology has such a stranglehold that people place their own fear-based barriers before anything real actually happens. Like they self-flash themselves for thinking I should say something or for speaking out before anything ever goes on. They become their own prisoners. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the reaction that you're asking us just had is the reaction that any red-blooded male should have. Like when children are getting raped, everything else is secondary to that. OK, and should we be measured in our response so that we don't create an additional problem of racism? Of course. And it's not as important as stopping this abomination. It's just not as important. So if there's a risk of people thinking that we're bad for addressing true evil, so be it. But we've created a culture where it's like it requires more courage than it should to speak out against this stuff. Same thing with the open borders. Three hundred thousand missing kids, kids being sex trafficked, kids being brought in over the border. Who will be sex trafficked? And we're talking about Trump, talking about a percentage of them being violent criminals and saying, oh, he's racist. It's insanity. Right. So rather than understanding there's a clear moral hierarchy, there's clear moral objective truth. There are things that are evil and there's good and there are things that are more evil and things that are less evil. You know, everything is just wishy washy. Oh, can't be racist. It's insane. It's literally not sane behavior. Yeah. Meanwhile, Selena Gomez is hysterically crying and videotaping herself, you know, crying and then posting it. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm interested, was she crying when Obama was doing the same exact thing, which he was five and a half million or 5.4 million based on my last investigation that he deported over his two terms? Yeah. He deported more people than Trump. Now, you know, people argue, well, Trump was only a one term president. Sure. I think they're both doing the right thing, by the way. I think they both should be deporting people who came here breaking the law. There's no logical argument for allowing people to stay here illegally. It's just emotional. And I get it because who wants to deport a human being? Yeah, I get it. Of course, it feels bad. You see people crying. Of course, that feels bad. And at the same time, there's tens of millions of people waiting patiently to get into the country legally. Yeah. Everyone else who is here. Go ahead. No, you go. You go. You go. Yeah. Everyone else who is here legally is paying for people who are using our services, who are here illegally. Okay. People will say stuff like all these arguments that they'll make are like it just requires a little examination to see how illogical they are. They'll say stuff like, oh, well, there's a labor shortage and we need them to work jobs that Americans won't work. Okay. So you're saying that we should allow people to come here illegally. (1:12:05 - 1:15:54) We should allow companies to employ them illegally. And then we should allow companies to pay them substandard wages illegally rather than paying people legal wages or here legally to do those jobs. And if we still don't have enough people, we can import people legally to do those jobs. Yeah. I mean, there are temporary work visas where people from other countries like Mexico could come in and work during the growing season and then go back. So more focus can be put on that as well. Yeah. So what's happening is people, they're not thinking for themselves. They're emotionally committed to a conclusion and then they try to rationalize that conclusion with a bunch of bad arguments. And I'm not here saying, fuck your feelings. The feelings matter, but the logic is supporting the feelings. We should not treat the emotion as the logic. Emotions are not logic. And if we create a logical society based on law and order and fairness and trust and cooperation, that everyone's emotions are going to be better. Yep. Your emotions become more coherence if it's based on logic. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, man. I appreciate you, man. Just appreciate you doing what you're doing. I want to ask you this, Kaizen. Before you had your final change of mind or your final awakening to this kind of reality, what was happening within you between, I guess, 2020 and 2024 when all the woke-ism started ramping up and all these insane ideas, trans ideologies, etc. propping up, was there any time where you found yourself rationalizing this stuff before it was like, oh, okay, something else is happening here? Oh, for sure. The whole way. I was rationalizing this shit. I was buying it, eating it up, repeating it with my communities, having it repeated to me. I was confused. I was confused. And that was part of my healing journey, right? I was really blown open. To give you a little context, I had my first psiological experience in 2020, and that really blew things open. I felt a level of peace and real happiness that I'd never felt before. And I did a lot of healing. There was a lot of blasting over my subconsciousness. So there's confusion with that. And I also wasn't paying that much close attention to what was going on in the world because I was focused on myself. Actually, the your listeners, I think it's the oldest plant medicine. It's an African plant medicine. That shit brought me back to reality. But even after that, that was a six-month process of putting my psyche back together. And that was one of... I had awakenings along the way. And I think once I started having awakening to my personal suffering, I got awakening to the world's suffering. But yeah, I was definitely buying into confusion. And just to be clear, I don't think I'm perfectly clear now. I'm sure there's areas where I'm confused now. But I'm a lot clearer than I used to be. And I think that's all we want from each other. Let's just be committed to truth and clarity. And you get there progressively. But it starts with acknowledging that there is such a thing as the truth at all. We're not even bought in on the idea that there is a truth, then we're not going to get closer to it. (1:15:54 - 1:16:31) How would you go about deconditioning a willing individual who has bought into wokeism and liberalism to this extent? How would you start that process with such a person? Yeah. You mean if they were open to it first? If they were willing. They're actually willing. Yeah. So look, when clients come to me, it's because something in life is not working. And if something in your life is not working, it's because you're not aligned with the truth of reality. You're just doing something that doesn't work. And maybe it's a belief that doesn't work. Maybe it's a behavior that doesn't work. (1:16:32 - 1:16:44) But you're caught in a lie. You're just caught in a lie. And before I help people even see the truth of reality more clearly, they need to see the truth of their reality more clearly. (1:16:45 - 1:17:17) And one of the things I've observed is people who are caught up in this far leftist ideology, they're not happy. They're not happy. There's a whole bunch of shit in their life that's not working well. So once I help people see what's not working well in their life, invariably that's tied to their views on the outside world. Because there's no distinction between you and the outside world. You're part of the world. I don't force my views on anyone. My clients are like, hey, I'm here to focus on you. But once you see yourself clearly, you see the world clearly. (1:17:17 - 1:20:52) So a lot of it is just shame and guilt. People think, oh, there's something wrong with me. I'm bad. I'm worthless. I'm a piece of shit. I'm a loser. No one's ever going to love me. All of these are just lies. They're just personal lies. So when people see these personal lies, and they get to see the truth, it's like, no, you're a divine being. You're worthy of love. There's nothing wrong with you. You're just a child in an adult's body who somehow has the belief that there's something insufficient about you. Then that's actual self-love. And when you love yourself, it becomes easy to see the truth a lot more clearly. So both of you have commented on how a lot of this is just an inner game. And it is. A lot of it is just an inner game. And people are walking around confused and unhappy. And then they're buying these lies in the outside world that reinforce their lies about the internal world. And they're justifying their unhappiness. They're fighting for their own unhappiness. So yeah, that's where I start. It's honestly really simple. I just tell people the truth. And I start with the thing that they've been telling themselves that are lies and are not aligned with the truth. And then from there, it gradually starts to unfold. Yeah. As in, Acedo is here for the truth. Here for the truth. That's true, man. I released an article earlier today. And one of the key components of that is on all levels and all dimensions of our lives, the truth is the ultimate healer. And where there is distortion, it's a lack of truth that's present there. It's something that we're unwilling to face. And I get it also, because sometimes the weight of facing the truth after years of adopting the lie, telling ourselves white lies, telling our partners white lies, telling our friends, the collective white lies, that's a fucking painful process to then go and make the decision to put the truth on the pedestal and to live by the truth at all costs. And your reality is going to shift the moment you make that decision. Existing structures, existing paradigms of your life that feel familiar are going to crumble. There's absolutely zero doubt about that. And again, this goes into this whole paradigm of short-term gratification versus long-term gratification. The lie might feel great in the short term, might get you to the next day without you completely breaking down. But what do you want? And this comes back to the question of why are you here? And if you're here living, breathing, listening to this as an existing human being, what choice do you have but to value the fact that you live? That should be number one. I value the fact that I live. And if I value the fact that I live, then I have to value truth at all costs. If I value my potential, if I'm interested in what's possible for my existence as a human being, then the truth has to be my ultimate ally. And regardless of the cost, regardless of the pain, we need to recognize on a deeper level that the truth is always the highest path in every single situation. 100%. And it comes down to having the courage to trust the truth. And just holding it axiomatically true that the truth is always good. Always. No exceptions. And we lie when we think that – actually, lying is just a form of arrogance. We think we know better than the truth. So we'll just lie. It's like, oh, it's just a white lie. I can't really hurt anything. I'm not even going to tell my kids that Santa Claus is real. (1:20:52 - 1:21:51) Like, we can celebrate him as a cartoon character. I'm not going to tell my kids Santa Claus is real. I don't want to throw out their GPS. Because oftentimes, the truth might not seem good, because it takes a while for the good outcomes to play out, especially in a world of lies. And that's where the faith comes in. And I have faith that God is truth, God is love, so telling the truth is godly and loving. And there's nothing – it will win in the end, always. Yeah. Yeah. What is it? The Buddha quote, only three things can remain unhidden, the sun, the moon, and the truth. I like that. Three things that won't remain hidden long. Yeah. The sun, the moon, and the truth. The sun, the moon, and the truth. And it may take 100 years, it may take 150 years sometimes, but it's only a matter of time. Yeah. But I mean, and often things turn around quicker than we might assume that they would. (1:21:51 - 1:22:49) And if we believe in these universal principles, as above, so below, as within, so without, then you recognize that internal coherence, internal congruence that is powered by the truth is going to impact my external life, is going to impact my external reality. And I can only speak for myself that since really making a radical decision to turn to the truth at all times that every arena of my life has improved 100 times fold as a result of that decision, as a result of refusing to hide on any level. Self-development in essence is really that simple when it comes down to it. What is your capacity to let the truth in? Can I share my pet theory with you guys? Yes. Yeah, sure. So it's interesting observing Biden, right? Just like decline into senility. (1:22:50 - 1:23:03) Versus Trump, who's just four years younger than him, be like a clearly high energy person. I mean, it's crazy. He outworks me, right? He outworks people well under half his age. (1:23:03 - 1:23:33) The dude has crazy drive, right? In the first week, it's like he went to North Carolina, he went to LA, he signed all these executive orders and found the time to play golf. I mean, the guy is a specimen. And I've been speculating, I was like, why is this guy so high energy? And it's like, I think it's because he's a truthful person. I genuinely believe that when you tell lies, it's enervates you, it sucks you of life force, it makes you small. And you can see this. I mean, you guys are tapped in, you guys are sensitive enough to see this. (1:23:33 - 1:23:41) You can tell when someone is like, there's life force pouring out of them. Oh, yeah. And if it's a direct correlation between that and truthfulness. (1:23:43 - 1:23:52) So I also, I've had the experience too, it's like, I feel more powerful. Like, I just feel it in a moment to moment basis. I feel more capable. (1:23:53 - 1:23:56) I trust myself more. I speak more clearly. I speak more confidently. (1:23:56 - 1:24:16) You can go back to my old videos and you see there's a difference between how I communicate now and before. And when you're connected to the truth, it's like, you don't have to figure stuff out so much. You don't need to be in your head so much. You're just kind of pulled to do shit. Now, these days, like I make videos, the videos I make, I think because I love them, man. I just love, like, I love spending hours researching them. (1:24:17 - 1:24:21) I love recording them. I love making them beautiful. I love releasing them. (1:24:21 - 1:24:30) I love engaging with people who disagree respectfully about them. And so it's not, I don't, I'm not here thinking about like, what's my purpose? I'm, I'm just following it. Yeah, yeah. (1:24:30 - 1:24:41) Again, it comes across, man. Like, yeah. Like when I was sent that video, like I get sent videos all the time. I'm like, all right, whatever. I was like, oh man, I dig what this person's saying and how he's saying it. Like a field of passion. (1:24:41 - 1:25:08) Yeah. Like a field of coherence. That genuine pride in your creative output is also a symptom of letting the truth into its greater capacity, you know? And to your Trump points, I think, you know, this might click more as you dive deeper into Rand, is that to make money in a free market, largely fair capitalist society, it requires you to be incredibly moral. (1:25:08 - 1:25:20) Okay? It requires a certain essence of truth because that's what people buy. That's how trade works. Like to make money means that I value my life. (1:25:20 - 1:26:04) It means that I value productivity. It means that I value rationality. And making money requires an immense degree of rationality. If you get rid of all the bureaucrats, all the liars and et cetera, et cetera, sure, you can make money in corrupt ways, but to make it in a genuine way, it requires you to be attuned in a certain capacity towards truth. Love that. And this is one of the things that confounds me about when people say billionaires are evil. Because are some billionaires more evil than good? Yes. Just like some people are more evil than good. I don't think anyone's 100% good or 100% evil. It's a spectrum. But what we know for a fact is if someone is a self-made billionaire, they've clearly figured something out. Yes. (1:26:05 - 1:27:41) Okay? They're clearly aligned with the truth in a crucial dimension and they're a winner. By definition, if you're a self-made billionaire, you are a winner, at least in one of the games of life. And rather than being curious, like, hey, what can I learn from this winner so I can win myself? And in fact, how can I align that winner with the interest of America so that we all win more like Elon Musk? Wouldn't you want the most winning person in history of winning to be helping America win? But instead, we settle for these nonsense labels like billionaire, like billionaire has become a swear word. It's insanity to me. It would be like looking at and saying, well, all NBA players are evil. It's silly. And as a result, we push away excellence. We push away people that we can learn from rather than being discerning and say, okay, but something this person's figured out, can I align that with the collective good so that we can all figure it out together? Ayn Rand, when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing. When you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors. When you see that men get richer by graft and by pool than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you. When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you know that your society is doomed. Pathetic. (1:27:41 - 1:27:46) Yeah. And another more simpler one. Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters. (1:27:46 - 1:29:00) The man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably. The man who respects it has earned it. And what do you see in the higher ups, in these big collectivist, liberal ideas? It's the damning of money. It's the promoting of equality. Everyone needs to be on a baseline. Money is evil. The rich are evil. Yeah. And if you think money is evil, you're certainly not going to have it. Yeah. Very true. Exactly, man. All right, bro. Such a pleasure to connect, man. Thank you for being you. Thank you for walking your path. It's been awesome to hang out with you these past 90 minutes. Yeah. I agree with everything Joel said. Cool. Thanks for having me, guys. It's always refreshing to speak with people. I just sensed it. I was like, all right, cool. We could have a real conversation. I sensed that pretty quickly. So thank you for creating the platform to have truthful conversations. Thank you for having me be a part of it. And my invitation to everyone in the world who listens to this is just be truthful. It's always good. And it also will take you on an adventure to places that you couldn't have even imagined that are better than what you were expecting. Yeah, for sure. And how can people find you and support you? Yeah. So you can find me on Instagram or YouTube. That's Kaizen. So T-H-A-C-E-S-K-A-I-Z-E-N. (1:29:00 - 1:29:18) If you're interested with working with me as a coach, you can click the link in my bio. So there's an application form. And that's it. Yeah. By the way, I didn't bring it up. I love that your name I don't know if it was a given name or not, but Kaizen, as you know, means continuous improvement. (1:29:18 - 1:29:23) So I love that. There's a men's circle that I go to once in a while. It's called Kaizen. (1:29:24 - 1:29:29) Cool. Yeah. I actually renamed myself legally in 2021. (1:29:30 - 1:29:36) Awesome. Cool. I did. Thanks again, everyone else. Thank you for listening. Take care. (1:29:37 - 1:31:30) Thank you so much for listening to that episode. It was incredible to meet Kaizen and to connect with him. And I just love people making their journey towards truth, towards rationality, towards common sense, and seeing the way that it impacts their lives. And this whole concept of turning towards truth on a radical level, this really is the inspiration behind the Rise Above the Herd, our 10-week group coaching program. I'd like to read a couple of recent testimonials from the round that just finished round 11. Actually, one's from round 10, one's from round 11. Nick says, this course truly changed my life. Despite external success, I struggled with self-worth, confidence, and addictions. Rise Above the Herd helped me uncover and address deep unconscious patterns and trauma. With the expert guidance and support of Joel, Erasmus, and Sophie, if you're on the fence, don't hesitate. This will change your life. And Adam, who just finished round 11 with us, amazing human being from Tasmania, he says, absolutely life-changing. This course gave me a profound understanding of my unique psyche and the tools to break free from autopilot behaviors. It helped me build a deeper, more authentic relationship with myself and the world around me, revealing a new inner reality waiting to be born. And there are hundreds of other testimonials just of the same vein for Rise Above the Herd. So if you're down to claim one of the 10 spots in what likely will be our final live round of Rise Above the Herd, you can head to hereforthetruth.com forward slash wrath. And new thing, if you want to subscribe to our list, we're dropping articles now every single Friday called Here For The Truth Fridays. And you can join our mailing list at hereforthetruth.com forward slash Friday. And each Friday, fresh in your inbox, we'll have brand new insights, recommendations, and revelations from us.