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Rites of passage....bitcoin....& underlying motivations

/ 33:24/E27
Rites of passage & underlying motivations of behavior




Speaker 0 (0s): Woo. Good morning, Monday, Monday, Monday, Monday. Well, you be go start another week, right? I'm going to try to be like a James Brown and get on the good foot. Right? Remember that song gotta get on the good foot. How'd you guys. We can do anything fun. 

I did. I did some cool stuff. I did some cool stuff. I got some time to think about a few things about, about our place in this world about interacting and transitioning and learning. Maybe judging, maybe some empathy. It seems to me that right now, our country, our world is in a pretty big transformation. 

In fact, when you start thinking about that, you go, yeah, there's a lot of things changing right now, but isn't that always the case. Isn't things always changing. It just seems that now things are changing at a pace that has picked up steam. And it's hard to, it's hard to understand where you're supposed to go. Unless you have a map it's hard to understand the right place to be at. 

Unless you have a guide it's difficult to know where you're going to end up, unless you can study about history or you can, unless you can understand where people before you have been in the same situation and what they've done. It also seems to me like there's a pretty big gap in demographics and, and intergenerational ideas. 

So what I mean by that is that people who are in authority positions tend to be, especially now, there seems to be a really big gap between like those people run in for mayor right now in Hawaii that are 90 years old, 75 years old. And while I'm not, I'm sure those people have a lot of good ideas. However, I'm not sure that there are, there are in touch with what the youth of today want the world to look like in the future. 

And it seems to me 

Speaker 1 (3m 0s): That you know, what, what it seems to me that a lot of the older generation, you know, they're living longer and they're, they're healthy. And they, they want to contribute to the world. They want to make their Mark. They they're beginning to think about their legacy and they, they want there to be a little bit of some of the great things in the future that was in their life. 

And so they're trying to make those things happen by clinging to power and staying in roles of leadership and, and leveraging their finances and their authority to stay in positions of power. And I think it's detrimental to the society at this point in time because the youth don't want what a lot of the older generation ones, you know, my, my nephew he's 10 years old and he was talking to his mom the other day. 

And he, this is what he told. This is what he told her. He says, mom, I don't understand why the people got to go and work so much and have so little, you know, why, why is it that corporations just don't hire twice as many people and give half the people six months off. And then the other people have six months off and you can, I mean, on some levels, it's a naive perspective, but it's pretty beautiful, right? Why not? 

Why not allow people the freedom to be creative? Why not allow people to have the ability to explore their inner nature and explore their own dreams. Now you can say, Oh George, when no one has to work for anybody, you're free to go out and explore and start whatever you want. 

Yeah. Kind of, kind of, but you don't get to pick who your parents are. You don't get to pick where you're born at. And if you come from a family that has it as well to do, it's much easier to go out and start something. Then if you come from a place of poverty, however, I'm kind of getting away from myself a little bit. 

I think that there's a, a road we could take where the older generation could maintain a high level of relevance and also, and also create a better place international bond. And I think we're missing in our society is like a Rite of passage. If you study like a lot of the Indian cultures and a lot of other cultures, you know, like in the South American culture is like a girl turns 15 and she has like a keen scene yet. 

All right, well, she becomes a woman like the Jewish boys have the bar mitzvah, come on, man. Some of the Indian culture, they had like a vision quest where they would go the men and they would, they would go out for their first hunt or they would be exposed to some sort of mind altering situation where it was signified that they were brought in to the next level of their life. 

And I don't think kids have that today. No, you could argue that the college experience is a of, but if that's the case, then not enough of our kids are getting the Rite of passage. And that's something that the older generation could do. They could develop a set. They could, we could develop as a society. As older generations, we could develop a Rite of passage that would simultaneously show the child. 

Hey, you've become part of the group. Now your roles have changed. You are no longer able to engage in, engage in activities that don't benefit the group as a whole. I mean, you can have your free time and stuff like that, but now you are going to, Hey, look, now you're a man. Now your responsibilities lay in providing service and providing for the betterment of the community. 

I think the Rite of passage serves a lot of things. It establishes a group cohesiveness. It establishes respect for your elders. It establishes, it establishes respect for, for the elder group, but it gives them purpose. It helps the younger generation to understand that, Hey, these guys that have gone before me have been in similar situations and are the best people to help me. 

It nurtures the mentor, mentee relationship. There's quite a few different ways to have a Rite of passage. I was reading this book and they were talking about how in this particular culture, when a boy turns 12, know he's free to do whatever he wants and play and learn. 

But when he turns 12, the men in the village, they dress up like demons and ghosts. And prior to the child's 12 year old birthday, the people begin telling the child, you know, there comes a time in a boy's life where his mom can't protect him and the spirits of the village come for him. And they kind of start psyching this kid out. And the kid's like, what, what are you telling me this for? And then on his 12th birthday, the men dressed up like spirits and goes, they come into the boys house and they, they awaken them. 

Right? And they start scaring them and they're like, the boy starts freaking out. So he runs over and tries to hide behind his mom and his mom. I mean, she knows what's happening. So she tries to protect them a little bit. But then the boy has wrestled away by the ghost in the spirits who are the men in his family. And they take him out into the forest and they, they then begin the initiation, the Rite of passage. And there's all these trials and tribulations that he has to go through for multiple days upon after graduating the trials, after being taught that the spirits and the people dressed up as demons are really the men in his family and the spirits and demons that attacked him are the forces of nature that will try to corrupt him. 

Then he begins to understand the nature of the Rite of passage. And it's beautiful in that the men are dressed up like the forces of nature, like greed and lust and corruption. And each man teaches the boy, be aware of this beware of beware of greed. You could have all of this, but you'll lose all that. And so it's just amazing what can be taught to a young individual's mind if five or six men or a female, mind to five or six women are able to take that child and show them the Rite of passage. 

Like, listen, you're moving onto this next spot of your life. Here are the things that are going to affect you, but not only tell the child, but act them out. So you, you communicate on a multitude of different levels. What's coming in life. How to be a better man, how to be a better woman. And it just seems to me that in today's society, we've gotten away from the right of passage. 

Speaker 0 (12m 50s): Let me ask you this question. If you, and I pretend that a tail is a leg, how many legs does a dog have? What are you thinking five Wrong? My friend, you're wrong. If you and I pretend to tail is a leg, Then a dog still has four legs, right? 

It doesn't matter what you and I have. Pretend it doesn't matter what a group of people pretend It matters. What people believe it matters, what people perceive the truth to be. And you can ask a child how many legs a dog has. And that's how I we'll say four, because just cause you and I agreed on something, doesn't make it right, just because you and I agreed on something, doesn't make it true. 

Speaker 1 (13m 59s): It's an important concept 

Speaker 0 (14m 6s): Too often. People in positions of authority too often us in our life, we decide to make a tail, a leg. We decide to perceive the world in a way that is inaccurate. We decide to come up with solutions that are not solutions. And when you do that, when you take the path of a non solution, it's going to lead you to real problems, regardless of what you pretend. 

I think that's something that is detrimental, not only in, in the individual's life, but in the life of a community, in the life of a government, in the life of a business. We just go down these, these rabbit holes of abstract thought, which it's amazing human mind has the capability of such abstraction. 

However, it sometimes keeps us from changing the harsh realities that need our attention. A lot of times I think about our monetary system and, and how it, you know, money is such an, it has become this abstract idea. I've heard people well define money as a store of value or a medium to exchange goods. 

However, I think it could be better described as a set of lies. Agreed upon. I often think of like, I've been thinking a lot about cryptocurrencies and what can that change the monetary system? And if it does change the monetary system, what does that mean for the individual? Does that mean that we're going to have more rights? We'll pay less taxes, we'll have more freedom to purchase things that we want. 

Okay. We'll be less able to be bought off by lobbyists and greedy politicians. That's the hope for cryptocurrency? However, I don't know. I don't know how it's it's, it's an, yeah, it's really abstract. And one of the major criticisms against cryptocurrency is that there's nothing behind behind it. 

If you, if you look at some of the debates, it seems to be the major criticism from the nonbelievers in cryptocurrency is that there's nothing behind it. And there's no, there's no value. There's nothing there. And on some level I get it for a long time. I was persuaded by the idea that I can shit changing the money. 

Some can change our value system. And so I, I want to believe in the revolution of cryptocurrencies. I want to believe it's going to take us there. However, 

Speaker 1 (17m 50s): The more I listened to some of the leaders in cryptocurrency, particularly Bitcoin, it seems to me that it's just becoming a convoluted tool of change. And by that, I mean, it's going to change one set of leaders with another set of leaders. 

It seems that the majority of, of products being used by the cryptocurrencies now are these tools of speculation. You know, I can take, I can buy cryptocurrency and then give it to this cryptocurrency bank. And then they load it to other people to speculate with. And then I get a percentage of that. Excuse me. That's no different than what we already have. 

And if, if the new currency can be used to speculate like the old currency, what's the point of getting rid of the old currency? I guess you could say to flush out the old guard, 

Speaker 0 (19m 6s): Which Lord knows we need to do. Let me try to tie this all together here, the motivations of the young and the old rites of passage money in its old form, potential new ideas of money. I think the underlying foundation of all these things are the ideas, thoughts, and beliefs that motivate us whether consciously or unconsciously, which is the foundation of behaviorism, which is also a principle of propaganda. 

I'd like to read to you. It's a quick couple quotes from the book propaganda by Edward Bernays. This general principle that men are very largely actuated by motives, which they conceal from themselves is as true of mass. As of individual psychology, it is evident that the successful propagandist must understand the true motives and not be content to accept the reasons which men give for what they do. 

It is not sufficient to understand only the mechanical structure of society, the groupings and cleavages and loyalties. An engineer may know all about the cylinders and pistons of a locomotive, but unless he knows how steam behaves under pressure, he cannot make his engine run. Human desires are the steam, which makes the social machine work only by understanding them can the propagandists control the vast loose jointed mechanism, which is modern society. 

So, so often the things we do have multiple motives. We can look at something like grinding our way to the top and tell ourselves we do it because we want to provide for our family. We tell ourselves I don't, I don't know exactly if this is the right thing to do, but the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. 

You know, we come up with these euphemisms or these things that we tell ourselves, you know, we come up with ideas like the tail is the leg, but if you take a few minutes, to be honest with yourself, I bet you can find a more deeper motive, a deeper meaning to why it is. You do the things you do. You know, maybe it's to have a feeling of power. 

Maybe it's a, an attempt to have the feeling of control over your life. And it's important to take time, to understand your motivation, because if you don't understand your own motivations, then there are people who will manipulate you because they understand your motivations. You know what I mean? By that, like a lot of times it's hard to see things when you're in the relationship, but it's easy to see it. 

If you're a third person, like everybody's had you ever had like a friend and they're in a relationship and you're like, Oh man, that's never going to work. And you just see all these red flags, but your friend in the relationship, they can't see him. And they don't understand like why these things are happening. And you're like, well, look, they're happening because of this. And depending on how much your friend cares about your opinion, he may or may not. Or she may or may not want to remain friends with you. But the point is it's, it's easy to see motivations from a third person, point of view. 

It's not easy to see him in a direct relationship. And the direct relationship I'm talking about is the relationship with yourself. There was a famous politician that kind of summarized leadership and politics in a few, in one statement, I'm going to give you that statement. And then I'm going to say it in a different way, but I want you to think about these two statements. 

I must follow the people. Am I not their leader? You see, there's a kind of a dichotomy there to say, I must follow. The people is absurd. I'm their leader. That's the statement that guy gave. So if he got criticism, like why are you not doing what the people want? He would say to them, why would I do those? Are I lead those people? I don't do what they say. 

The second statement is I must lead the people. Am I not their servant? So I'm going to read them both together, back to back. So you can just think about them. I must follow the people. Am I not their leader? I must lead the people. Am I not their servant? So it's kind of a fancy way of saying the same thing. 

And I think a lot, a lot of us have difficulty, truly interpretating interpreting that, that role of a leader. What does a leader do? Does a leader lead his people or does a leader do what's best for his people by listening to what they have to say? And at what point does the group get too big for the leader to listen to everybody? 

I would argue that most people begin to climb the ladder of leadership in an order to, I think it probably starts out as a need to want to help people. But I don't think you have to get too far up the ladder of leadership to realize that you're not going to make it to the top of the leadership ladder, unless you have a thirst for power and a thirst for power is a thirst that is rarely quenched. 

When you thirst for power, you begin to want power just for power sake. Right? Man takes the power power, takes the power power takes the man. When you start coming up with more ideas of, Hey, I'm the leader because people should just do what I say. Then you're surrounded by opulence. Are you surrounded by the means to create change? 

And you begin to think that, you know, more, you have more, you begin to think that you are in fact, the instrument of change. I think too many of our leaders have gotten to that place where they think I'm the leader. The people follow me. Therefore my ideas are what's best for the people. I think that's what God has gotten us into the conundrum we're in today. 

And I think you can protect yourself from that by truly understanding your own motivations. You can enhance your relationships by understanding the relationships you have with people around you, by understanding the motivations of the people around you. And that's why listening is so important. Like I catch myself all the time, thinking of things to say while people are talking and I'm trying desperately to end that pattern of nonsense because you know, you're not being fair to yourself. 

You're not being fair to the other person. And you're not being fair to the relationship. If you're not listening to what people say. And the more that I've cultivated this habit, the more I've been able to fundamentally change my relationships. You know, I was talking to some, one of my friends the other day and I feel I'm getting to the point where I can, where I am a better listener. And I actually could see my thoughts change, where we were having a conversation and I was listening. 

And instead of saying what I was going to say, I just listened. And that changed. That completely changed my rebuttal. It also makes you really aware of your patterns of thought. If you can do that, it takes a little bit of time, but just thinking about it now will become a seed that will grow into a pattern that will grow into a behavior. So if you pull anything from this lesson, just know that you should be conscious of your thoughts and be a good listener. 

So we've got for today, my friends, I love you. I'll be back tomorrow and we'll do it again. Aloha. 

Rites of passage....bitcoin....& underlying motivations

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