649: Douglas Rushkoff

Summary

Podcast Summary: Duncan Trussell Family Hour Episode 649: Douglas Rushkoff

Release Date: November 15, 2024

Guests:

• Host: Duncan Trussell
• Guest: Douglas Rushkoff, philosopher, professor, and author of Program or Be Programmed? 11 Commands for the AI Future

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1. Introduction & Background

Duncan Trussell welcomes Douglas Rushkoff, praising his recent release, Program or Be Programmed? 11 Commands for the AI Future. Rushkoff is introduced as a thinker whose insights into the current digital paradigm are both profound and timely.

Notable Quote:

• Duncan Trussell [00:00]: "Douglas Rushkoff is so brilliant and his takes on the paradigm that we're living in right now are so brilliant."

2. The Shift from 3D to 2D Space

The conversation opens with Duncan introducing a complex idea about humans transitioning from 3D (physical space) to 2D (digital space) due to technological advancements like Zoom and podcasts. This shift symbolizes a contraction of reality into flat, symbolic representations, influenced heavily by AI residing in mathematical vector spaces.

Notable Quote:

• Duncan Trussell [01:36]: "AI lives in a 2D mathematical linguistic vector space."

3. Impact of AI and Digital Technology on Human Experience

Rushkoff agrees, explaining that technology, especially AI, has historically been used to reduce human dimensionality. Instead of enhancing our experiences, digital tools often decrease the richness of human interaction, fostering conformity over individuality.

Notable Quote:

• Douglas Rushkoff [05:02]: "We're using AI and technology to flatten the human experience into one of data processing and sharing without any prana."

4. Historical Context: Early Internet Utopianism vs. Corporate Conformity

Douglas reminisces about the early days of the Internet, influenced by psychedelic culture, where the technology was seen as a means to expand human consciousness and connectivity. However, over time, corporate interests co-opted these tools, turning them into mechanisms of control and predictability rather than liberation.

Notable Quote:

• Douglas Rushkoff [07:00]: "Instead we started to use the technology on people to decrease our dimensionality."

5. Algorithmic Bias and Loss of Human Control

The discussion delves into the inherent biases within algorithms, such as racial disparities in sentencing guidelines influenced by AI. Rushkoff highlights how algorithms, though neutral in design, perpetuate existing societal biases by relying on historical data.

Notable Quote:

• Douglas Rushkoff [17:21]: "And it's getting further and further away from sort of human control."

6. Responses and Interventions

Rushkoff outlines four key interventions to combat the negative impacts of digital technology:

a. Denaturalizing Power

Recognizing that the current state of technology and society is not inevitable but a result of specific power dynamics and programming.

Notable Quote:

• Douglas Rushkoff [65:12]: "Help people recognize that the way our reality is being programmed... as a liberal art, be able to think critically about it."

b. Trigger Agency

Empowering individuals to understand that they can write and modify their own digital experiences, moving beyond passive consumption.

Notable Quote:

• Douglas Rushkoff [65:25]: "We are in a read and write universe."

c. Resocializing

Encouraging community engagement and small-scale interactions to rebuild meaningful human connections outside corporate-controlled platforms.

Notable Quote:

• Douglas Rushkoff [40:48]: "It's a podcasting side versus AI, which is necessarily totalitarian."

d. Cultivate Awe

Fostering experiences of wonder and connection that transcend digital manipulation, promoting a sense of unity and shared humanity.

Notable Quote:

• Douglas Rushkoff [66:12]: "You experience yourself as something connected to something larger than your actual identity."

7. Importance of Small-Scale Communities (Podcasting)

Both Duncan and Douglas emphasize the value of intimate, community-driven platforms like podcasting. Unlike mass media, podcasts allow for deeper connections and the sharing of diverse philosophies without the pressure to conform to algorithm-driven popularity.

Notable Quote:

• Douglas Rushkoff [42:05]: "We return to the analog type feeling, a sensational nervous system."

8. Mental Health, Self-Censorship, and Paranoia

The episode explores how digital platforms exacerbate mental health issues by fostering self-censorship and paranoia. The anonymity and lack of accountability in online spaces lead individuals to modify their expressions to fit algorithmic preferences, stifling genuine discourse.

Notable Quote:

• Duncan Trussell [15:57]: "Shadow banning is the perfect form of censorship in the modern age."

9. Compassion and Mutual Aid

Rushkoff advocates for a shift towards compassion and mutual aid as foundational societal principles. By focusing on helping others and building supportive communities, society can counteract the isolating effects of digital technology.

Notable Quote:

• Douglas Rushkoff [107:38]: "Through compassion and mutual aid and soulful togetherness, we can lessen the decree of whatever has been cast."

10. Conclusion: Navigating the Digital Dilemma

The episode concludes with an acknowledgment of the precarious state of modern society, heavily influenced by digital capitalism and AI. However, Rushkoff remains optimistic, suggesting that through personal responsibility, community engagement, and cultivating awe, humanity can navigate these challenges and rebuild a more compassionate and connected world.

Notable Quote:

• Douglas Rushkoff [99:31]: "And it's gonna be okay."

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Key Takeaways:

1. Digital Contraction: The shift from 3D to 2D space symbolizes a reduction in human interaction depth, influenced by AI's mathematical nature.
2. Corporate Dominance: Early utopian visions of the Internet have been overshadowed by corporate interests that prioritize conformity and control.
3. Algorithmic Bias: AI perpetuates societal biases, leading to unfair outcomes and reducing human agency.
4. Interventions for Change: Denaturalizing power structures, triggering personal agency, resocializing communities, and cultivating awe are essential steps toward a healthier digital society.
5. Value of Intimacy: Small-scale, community-driven platforms like podcasts offer a lifeline against the homogenizing pressures of mass media.
6. Mental Health Implications: Digital platforms contribute to self-censorship, paranoia, and mental health challenges by enforcing conformity and reducing authentic expression.
7. Compassionate Society: Emphasizing mutual aid and compassion can counterbalance the isolating effects of digital technology and foster a more connected humanity.

Final Thought: The conversation between Duncan Trussell and Douglas Rushkoff serves as a profound exploration of the current digital landscape, urging listeners to critically assess the impact of technology on human experience and to take actionable steps towards fostering a more compassionate and connected society.

Transcript

[Duncan Trussell]

Hello, friends. It's me, Duncan, and this is the dtfh. And today we have a glorious guest for you. Douglas Rushkoff is here. Douglas Rushkoff is a philosopher, professor, author, who's written some of my favorite books. He just rereleased one of his most popular books, Program or be programmed? 11 commands for the AI future. Very timely release and you're going to love him. If you're not familiar with him, get ready to have your mind blown. He is so brilliant and his takes on the paradigm that we're living in right now are so brilliant. So get ready. And you know what? Before you listen, do me a favor. Subscribe to his podcast, Team Human. It's fantastic. And especially if you enjoy our conversation again. His podcast is called Team Human. And why not, while you're at it, order his book, Program or be programmed? 11 commands for the AI future. Now, everybody, welcome back to the DTFH. Douglas Rushkoff. Mr. Rushkoff, welcome back. I'm seeing you in person.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

I know. For the first time in, well, a couple years.

[Duncan Trussell]

Incredible.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

And ironic, I guess, right? Because so much of what you teach us is like the important person eye contact. And it. Hello. And it makes a big difference. It really does. Like, you know, I was.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Isn't it so funny that we even say that? Hey, you know, it makes like fucking a person is just way better than looking at a video of them.

[Duncan Trussell]

I know, My God, I know.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

It's like, it's like, look at news. Latest news break.

[Duncan Trussell]

Here's a quick way into what I wanted to start off chatting with you about. Because in my thinking about a lot of what you write about and in my interactions with ChatGPT, a lot of them lately, my consideration of what exactly is going on here, there's this sort of like, shift that is happening from 3D space to 2D space. Right from. We live in three. Right now, we're in 3D, we're together, there's time, space around us. And the moment that you go on a zoom meeting, the moment you do a remote podcast, you are now in 2D space. You are now existing in a flat world. Even though obviously you on the other side of the camera, you have three dimensions in 3D. So the sort of woo woo hippie mixed in with science idea is. And you know, McKenna talks about this stuff, hyperdimension, like moving out of 3D space into 5D space. In other words, like instead of shrinking, flattening, we're expanding. Right? So looking at it from that perspective, technologically, there is a contraction in the 2D space that's happening. And to end my point here, AI lives in a 2D mathematical linguistic vector space. Right. AI does not live in 3D. It can't. It only. It's math. And I know obviously I don't mean lives isn't actually like biological life. So because AI is a reflection of us, it's trained on all human data sets, it is fascinating to me that it is reflecting a more common experience that we're having because we are living in 2D space. And I don't just mean. And also, I'm sorry, I'm trying to put these thoughts together. AI, I used to fantasize when I was with ChatGPT, it's fun to imagine maybe it's sentient not telling us or whatever. Obviously it's not. And but what it is doing is it's finding these vectors between words and somehow slamming them together in a way that creates meaning. When humans read it, this 3D to 2D thing is happening to us, not just in zoom calls. We are sort of, it seems like going from an AGI into a non AGI by compressing our reality into these symbol sets that are being shown to us via the algorithm and then repeating these symbol sets because the vectors between them match up, we're doing it instantaneously. But what I'm saying is, is what is happening, instead of the expansion into the grand universe, the eternal one, the now, we are all of us seemingly being compressed consensually into 2D space, not just via technology, but philosophically. What are your thoughts on that?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Well, that's what I've been trying to say for the last 35 years. Yes, basically is that it's like there's a yes and no to it. Yes. That's what's happening. We are using AI and technology to flatten the human experience into one of data processing and sharing without any prana. Right? Yes. And it's the way that sort of digital wires and wifi and whatever can transmit data, but they can't transmit prana.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

There's a difference between the Internet and the mycelial network.

[Duncan Trussell]

Can you define prana for folks who don't know what that means?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Chi, like life energy, like the spiritual thing. Woo woo. Sorry. But it's real, right? When you're, when you're, when you're. It doesn't have to be psychedelic, but if you're lying in bed next to another human being, your nervous systems are co processing reality together. It's different. You know, even on a, on a, on A just plain old neurological level. So when these technologies came out and from the beginning, for those of us who are playing with the Net, we understood it as AI. It was AI is just the first software running on this thing that we built. It's of course it was always AI. Google was trying to be AI, Facebook was trying, it's all been AI. But when we first were playing with it, our understanding was that these digital technologies could actually increase our dimensional experience of reality. Because now we could be non local, we could be hypertext, we could have multiple instances of ourselves operating simultaneously, that we were incarnate. But the Net would let us do this thing on a symbolic level that was hyperspatial, hypertextual, asynchronous, all this weird ass shit. But that was when it was human beings using technology to do this thing.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And what we did for various reasons really in the 90s and late 90s, is instead we started to use the technology on the people. So instead of human beings increasing their dimensionality with these tools, we use the tools on people to decrease our dimensionality. And what we've done then on a historical level, on a commercial level, is we're reverting to the mean. So all of the weirdness, this was going to be a weirdness catalyst, right? And it's turned into a conformity catalyst.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And we're scared. And also historically the stuff that we're going back to, a lot of the patterns are really, it's like, it feels to a lot of people like all the kinds of progress they made and whatever, whatever world they're in is reverting to the mean.

[Duncan Trussell]

You know, it's interesting to me that the outlaws that put their minds together and made what we are calling the Internet now didn't prognosticate this event happening. There was a sense that this is going to be a liberating technology. You have Tim Leary saying this is the new LSD. You have Terrence McKenna talking about this is going to lead to the technological singularity. It was a liberating technology. So did they even consider the other possibility that the technology would actually create a kind of conformity via social pressure to align with state politics?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

It's funny. So my teacher mentor people back in the early Internet days and I feel like what people like me failed to realize when we were kids is that you could give acid to an asshole and they stay a fucking asshole on acid. They're just a tripping asshole. I thought anybody who does it is gonna like turn good and see the same thing I saw.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And the same thing with the early Internet. You know, the Internet was built by psychedelics people. That was documented that in this book in like the 90s called Siberia was about. They would intentionally hire psychedelics people because only they could kind of hallucinate new realities and build stuff for people. And those of us who are part of that psychedelic ravy culture, the Gaia hypothesis and, you know, Carlos Castaneda and Tim Leary and McKenna and all, we assumed that the set and setting, and that's a term that Leary used about a trip that you're supposed to. The quality of your trip is determined by the mindset that you're in and the setting that you're the trip in. And you have to be conscious of it. It's not. So if you do, you know, if you trip in the AC DC parking lot, you're going to have a different trip than in the Grateful Dead parking lot. Right. It's just what it is and what you're thinking about. Right. If you're. If you're reading Ayn Rand all day and then have your trip, you're going to have a different thing than if you're reading Ram Dass all day doing that trip. It's a different mindset. I'm not necessarily. I'm not making a judgment, just different. So we assumed that the original set and setting of the Internet that was of our Internet culture was, you know, the wild possibilities of the collective human imagination.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

We're going to wire ourselves up and realize this thing.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

When Wired magazine and other things came along, they were not. That was not their set and setting. Their set and setting was, how is this technology going to save the NASDAQ stock exchange? Right. So instead of looking at how are we going to increase the novelty, as Terrence would call it, the novelty of human expression. When you're betting on a technology and betting on the market, you don't want to increase novelty. You want to increase probability.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

You want the odds that your bet's going to work. So we turned the technology and we used it on humans to increase the predictability of their behavior.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right. And that it's a different set and.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Setting, one of surveillance and paranoia. And if you've been living on a psychedelic substrate, as we have as a culture, we've been living on a psychedelic substrate for the last 35 years with a set and setting of paranoia and control, no wonder we're having this bad trip.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right. I mean, just imagine this was. Actually sometimes I would think about this when I was like in a mild DMT phase.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Mild. The mild. I'm just using the mild dmt. But I know what you mean. There's a little vape pens, that kind of half DMT in there.

[Duncan Trussell]

You're just so, you know, microdosing dmt, maybe you could sort of break through. Right. But you know, obviously what we all know now what's interesting about DMT is the, you know, versus like mushrooms, lsd. There's a coherence to the trip that you can map across different people who take it. It doesn't seem to have as much of a. It weirdly points to either some endogenous part of the brain that is so.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Identical or an agenda. In the plant, in the molecule, engine.

[Duncan Trussell]

Of the molecule, you're seeing an alternate reality. Who fucking knows? But just because of that sort of consistency. Yeah, and this is. You hear people talk about this though. Anytime I've gone into the astral realm, it's completely accidentally in a dream and I don't ever like it. But if you read any occult stuff, there's this idea that there's places in the astral realm that are consistent where great magicians like Crowley, Crowley, they mapped them. They mapped them and left.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

I still don't know, did they map them or did their mapping set what they are?

[Duncan Trussell]

Well, that's what's curious is supposedly they left things there that you can just go and look at, like leaving something on the moon geotag. So yeah, and that was, to me, the horror is like, my God, what if Starbucks finds a way to put a Starbucks in the DMT realm? What if we start seeing Starbucks logos in the psychedelic universe? What if the corporations actually find a way to encode target logos in the DMT realm? And if we are going to use the analogy, if we're going to say that the Internet is a psychedelic. That is exactly what happened. This complete wild west, what the fuck? Crazy terrain just gradually turned into a mechanism via which corporations manipulate you in overt or incredibly sinister subtle ways. And yes, and this has led us to a very strange period in history.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

I know. And you know, and it's a bummer. I kind of realized that a few years ago that we get these new communications technologies and they seem like they're going to liberate like the masses or the people, but then somehow elites are always one step ahead of us. You can go all the way back to like Pharaoh, right? Pharaoh could hear the word of God apparently, you know, and could tell. Then people just had to do what he said. So Then, you know, you get text. You know, they get writing. And that's like the Jewish, Judeo, Christian. You want to write down Torah and all. We write the stuff down. And you would think, oh, well, now the people, you know, are going to. Are going to have this ability of reading and writing. No, the people didn't get that. When you got writing, the elites could write. And what did the people get? They could gather on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the market and hear the word of God read to them by a rabbi. So the masses gained the ability that the pharaoh had in the last realm, and the elites got the new one. Then we get the printing press. You think, oh, now we're going to. Now we're going to write. No, no, no, no. The elites were allowed to publish books. The people got to read the books. So the people got the ability of the last revolution, but not the new one.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right, right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Then we get, you know, computers, and it's like, okay, so the people are gonna program. No, people can't program now. People can write, they can tweet, they can blog, they can get the printing press thing. But they're in environments that are programmed by people who are running it, and it's one behind each fucking time.

[Duncan Trussell]

And my God, like, of all the dark forms of censorship, shadow banning, holy fucking shit. At least you see books at a book burning, going up in flames, and you're like, I gotta read that. But the moment the algorithm identifies whatever it is you're putting out there as being potentially threatening to the paradigm that the corporation needs to exist for it to maximize its profit, and then that. It's not like you see the thing go up in flames. You just don't know it exists.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And we had such easy ways of dealing with that legally. You know, that was this thing people talk about called section 230, which is in like the telecommunications law. Section 230 says that these Internet providers are not publications.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And that's true. Like aol, email should let you go back and forth. It doesn't matter what you say in it. But once you are a company that is having an algorithm choose what stories a person reads or doesn't, the platform is now an editor, it is a publisher. So then all the different legal standing.

[Duncan Trussell]

Should change because you are editorializing via an algorithm. And again, this is where we're sort of running into all these new fascinating problems. And a lot of like, well, look, it's not me. Yeah, it's an algorithm.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Yeah, the algorithm that, like judges depend on algorithms for the Sentencing guidelines.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And it turns out algorithms, for some reason, algorithms give black people longer sentences than white people.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah. What the fuck Is that?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Because they're racist algorithm? No, it's because they're using past data. And they're using what? Whatever parameters are chosen are the ones that the algorithm is going to use. But then when you're using an algorithm, it's like, oh, well, it's not racist. It's a computer. It couldn't be racist. It's just happening. And it's like, no, no, no, but. And it's getting further and further away from sort of human control.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's it. And this episode of the DTFH has been brought to you by my friends at BetterHelp. It's Thanksgiving. There's some kind of enforced you gotta thank people around you thing happening right now. Never really liked that. Nobody wants to be forced to thank somebody. Makes you feel weird. But every once in a while, legitimate spontaneous expressions of gratitude will come flying out of your mouth. And you'll notice when that happens, you feel great. But have you also noticed that this thing you call your body, perfectly metabolizing cells being destroyed and regrown air being turned into oxygen sent through your whole body instantaneously. Don't even get me started on your heart. It doesn't clock in or clock out. It's 24 7. It takes one bathroom break, you're dead. What about gratitude for that? What about gratitude for the incredible, perfect, beautiful, super harmonized miracle that is you? For some reason, we never give ourselves credit. You know why? Because somewhere down the line, you might not even remember it. You were taught you should not be grateful for your own self, and you end up in some neurotic hell loop. By the way, this is just me. I don't know what your thing is. I am talking about me. You know, you feel cheesy actually having any kind of sense of gratitude for your self, your body, and all the things you did to get you where you are today. Sharon Salzberg used to talk about this. You. You know, you forget to open the door for an old lady. As you're walking out, you see the door kind of go back onto her. You feel like a jerk. Doesn't matter if you've done a million other great things all day long. You're just going to remember the look on the old lady's face as the world failed her yet again. You don't remember the kind words for your friends. You don't remember helping your neighbor out. You just remember that poor old lady coming out of the pharmacy with her meds. Another disappointment and a long line of disappointments in her life. This is why we need therapy. And therapy has certainly helped me. And I'm pretty sure if you're thinking maybe I should go to therapy, you should just try it out. Give BetterHelp. But try it's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. You just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist. You could switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Let that gratitude flow with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com dunkin today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H E L P.com Duncan thank you, BetterHelp. This, to me is a really dangerous time. And I don't mean dangerous in the sense of like some like dark government thing. I'm saying dangerous in the sense that naturally, naturally, when I'm looking at my screen and I'm seeing some discussion happening over and over again with some opinion, any human brain finds a pattern and I begin to think. People. Then I find myself thinking, you know what people think? People think. Fill in the blank. And that. That blank part gets filled in with whatever the algorithm was showing me. It's a very. If you've ever taken statistics, it's a. It's a very simple logical flaw in humans is because we're seeing a thing over and over. It must be all over the planet, global. And so now you've got people who have begun to think that the social media, the Internet, is a window through which they can see reality as it is. And fuck, dude, that is not reality at all. You are seeing not just a distortion, but an intentional distortion. It's not just malfunctioning, right?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

It's whatever distortion is going to stimulate your sensationalist fear, usually.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Like, I had been off, you know, X Twitter for a long time just because it would. It just. I just didn't like it. You know, it's like, I'll go to 4chan if I really want to play that game.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And I went back and for some reason, when I went back, it was showing me like videos of middle school and high school black girls fighting. There's like a lot of them. It must have been just a period of time. And I was like, wow. It was sort of like when sharks attack, you know, it's like these things that come through. And I was like, wow. So if I just. If that was. If this was how I looked at the world, I would just think high schools are places where black girls fight in the halls.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

What is that weird confirmation bias that would come from that?

[Duncan Trussell]

Why is that we have to deal with that? Why is that happening? But it's. And this, these distortions to me are so fucking dangerous. And also where the like lack of ethics comes in and you know, everyone's always criticizing tech companies and what a mess. I mean, imagine running Instagram, Twitter, TikTok. Imagine having any kind of sense of ethics. And I think a lot of people who are running these things really do. And realizing that no matter what, a bias is going to emerge here that will wag the dog.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Yes. But one aside to that is like when you see someone like Mark Zuckerberg, who's one of the best of the bunch at this point, when he's saying, oh, I'm gonna give back 90% or 95% of my money that I made off, I'm going to give it back, you know, and put it in. If you had made Facebook 95% less extractive, you know what I mean? You wouldn't have any of the problems. You just hire people, have some human beings. That's the thing. The whole tech bro vision of business is to have no human involvement in their company. And it's like that's why you get these unintended spin out effects.

[Duncan Trussell]

Well, yeah. And yes. And that to me is where we run into like a problem that I think there is a precedent for. There is a precedent for the problem we're experiencing right now. And I say go back and look at when everybody was doing blow because they thought cocaine was some kind of like universal cure for everything, like Coca Cola era. Yeah. Everyone was doing blo. You go in the pharmacy, you get cocaine. People didn't. There was no association. Cocaine was not associated with the destruction of your life. Cocaine was like, do you want to live? Here's how you do it. Cocaine, it will fix a lot of the problems. And hilariously, one of the mental illnesses that they invented was a mental illness associated with how things were speeding up. People were going nuts because things were getting too fast. Cure cocaine, things are going too fast. Speed yourself up now. You can sync up with it. Right, right. And so everyone thought it was fine. And then gradually people began to realize like, oh shit, this is real bad. Like fuck, imagine a whole country on blow. Imagine you can get blow at 7:11. Right, right. That was happening.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

That was right before the stock market crash boom. Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes. And so I think if you look at what's happening now. And especially if you start thinking of technology as a drug, is a drug infinitely more dangerous than cocaine in the sense that it is free, so to speak. It is. Anyone can have access to it. Then what? We're seeing an echo of what has already happened in this country, which is a gradual coming to Jesus of, like, at a global level. I think that. Wait a minute, this thing is, like, warping us in not good ways, and something must be done here. And that's what we're looking at. And the answers that the tech companies are putting out are really not very satisfying. I don't know if you've seen the new Instagram commercial. It's like, now it's a safe Instagram, you know, like, now, you know, now you can let your kids fucking, like, look at Instagram, but somehow there's some kind of controls. It's like, dude, have you never met a teenager? I would chat if my parents tried to fucking, like, Nerf my Instagram. Are you kidding me? I would instantly find a way out of that.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

So, yeah. So here we are. We are now living in a bizarre world where default reality, I love that term, is no longer what it used to be. Default reality is now corpo space, where the main ideas and what we're fighting about, what we're arguing about does not reflect reality.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Right.

[Duncan Trussell]

But we're like roosters fighting chickens, right?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

It's so weird. I mean, that's why, you know, after the election, I started telling, you know, I'm getting texts from everybody, panicked in all these different directions. And I'm telling people, get your eyes off the screen, onto your neighbors, whatever's going on. It's like, whatever you think of, the die has been cast. I start, this is when I go back to spirituality. You know, there's this prayer in Judaism called the Unatana Tokef. Oh, it's weird. It's a medieval poem that was written in one of the darkest. You know, the Jews were just clobbered. In the Middle Ages, it was not a there's good times and it was a bad time.

[Duncan Trussell]

Bad time, right?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

So they.

[Duncan Trussell]

They.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

In the Unatana Tokaf prayer, they say it on Rosh Hashanah and on Yom Kippur, the high holidays. And they say, it's so darkly between Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur, it is written, who will live and who will die, who will be sick, who will lose their children, who will this? And it's like. And you think it's like, oh, shit, I Better, really, because they say on Rosh Hashanah, it is written. On Yom Kippur, it is sealed in God's book of life. Who's going to live, who's going to. And you think it means, like, oh, so I better pray a lot this week. So God crosses, you know, erases my name off the bed. He's like, no, no. But at the end of the prayer, it says, but only through compassion, mutual aid, you know, and love, can we lessen the severity of the decree. So they're saying, this shit is written down. What's gonna happen is written. But our choice as humans is how are we going to help each other through it? Are we going to collaboratively doula one another through this, through this thing, through compassion? And to me, it's like, this is digital, doesn't do that. So what do we do? We back to the Israelites, take 1/7 of your time off one day. You don't have to digitally detox. You don't have to stop using the net. Take. Do what the Israelites, one day out of the market, one day out of the. Off the screens, and touch someone, look in their eyes, breathe together. It's like our ability to recalibrate is so available to us, you know, we can still use these tools. It's like, don't, right? But just. You gotta remember what they are. And it's hard to, you know. Cause it does go further back than digital. It's like language that we speak, right? The words we speak, especially English, it's programmed, right? It's a subject, object language, right? So this whole colonial Dominator thing is built into the language we use, right? The subject works on the object, right? So we're born into a world where two. We're listening. Subject object, subject object. I'm acting on you, you're acting on him, who's acting on the other. And it's like, as one discovers eventually, like when you're making love, it's whose subject? Whose object? Oh, no, we're emerging to one thing. This doesn't make sense. There's no language for it.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right, Right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

So you transcend the linguistic program of Western nouns and verbs and move into other space, right? Same with digital, you know, of course it's fixed. And in some ways, I don't. I don't blame it. It got taken over by capitalists. Its job is to extract value from us.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

It's a tool. It's a tool. But if you understand that, you know, then you can. You can recalibrate in real Life, you can start to breathe again. That's why so many people are taking mushrooms and going and doing yoga. It's like a romantic, romantic resurgence.

[Duncan Trussell]

Well, wait, okay. What are the steps, though? Like, you know, when I think of, you know, just, like, myself and my own Internet addiction, my own proclivities online, or I think of, like, close friends and, you know, I know, like, they're, like, you know, glued to the screen right now. And I think one, like, positive here is I do feel like a lot of, like, phone addicts or whatever you want to call it, tech addicts do recognize. Are really starting to recognize that the technology is not improving their lives at all. It's not improving their mental space at all, is not leading to any kind of really good outcomes in their interpersonal relationships. But I feel like all of us are a little sort of uncertain. I mean, I know you can go cold turkey, throw your phone away, get a flip phone or whatever, but what are some steps here? Some basic. Like, here's how you could begin to sever the umbilicus connecting us to this bizarre corpo demiurge that's inflated a bullshit reality that we're all freaking out over.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Yeah, it's funny because it's like, 15 years ago, I thought, that's what I'm gonna do, is give people the steps they need. I wrote this book, this program RB Program thing. And when it came out, people took it as, like, the. It became like the banner for the learn to code movement. It's like, programmer be programmed. Oh, let's learn programming, go to code school. Let's do STEM education in the schools. I'm like, no, no, no, no, I didn't mean that. I meant understand the way our reality is being programmed, like, more as a liberal art, be able to think critically about it. So what I thought was the easiest first step was for people to. To recognize the biases of the technology, the affordances of it. So something as simple as, like, we were saying at the beginning, like, digital technology doesn't live in time. Digital technology is asynchronous. It's sitting there waiting. It's living in the ticks of the clock where humans live in the space between the ticks, the duration of the second. So it's like everything on the Internet is chess by mail. It's all asynchronous. It's going to sit and wait there. You don't have to catch up with it. It's trying to catch up with you. So once kind of realize that, oh, it's all asynchronous. It's not. It's pretending it's always on, but it's actually not.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

You send me a text message. It's not. Now, fuck you. Unread is an insult.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

You left me on read.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Which is the way. Was that an insult?

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Fuck you.

[Duncan Trussell]

Got it.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

So you want to step into my world, touch me and, you know, and then I'm there for you.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Hey, Doug, it's like, this is not so. It's that sort of stacked thing, or looking at the biases of choice. You know, digital technologies, these platforms, they give you, like, these three choices. You want to do this or that, and it's like, what about none of the above? What about the in between?

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

I don't. I'm not. I'm not that. Or that. I'm in that mushy place in between this sort of grid.

[Duncan Trussell]

Let me stop you here. I'd love for you to talk more about this because I have seen this, and it's infuriating and confusing, but it's this sort of tyranny, this. This tyrannical binary where, like, right now, it's so black or white. It's. So either you believe this and you're good, or you believe this and you're bad, or you don't believe this. There's no in between.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

That's because it's a binary landscape that's digital. You know, we could have. We were developing analog computers at one time, which we're all in that, you know, more like transistor reality, where everything's a rheostat. I mean, there's no resistance in a digital world. It's on or off. Right? There's no dimmer switches.

[Duncan Trussell]

Switches, maybe. Exactly.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Switches.

[Duncan Trussell]

On, up, on.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

So then when you're living in that world, you eventually start to see everything in terms of white or black, left or right, up or down. You know, it's just left and right. And that's not our world. But, boy, it sure does spin out that way. There's that almost centrifugal, you know, spin of it. And then you get, you know, the rich and poor, it really. It divides everything in that way. And again, you're not going to change digital to not be that way. But then you've got to start living your life in a way that's compensating for this extreme bias.

[Duncan Trussell]

If you're going to do this drug, you have to apply to the use of this drug the same, like, idea that is emerging in the new, like, Destigmatized world of psychedelics. Not all bad like the prohibition taught us that. And all of my friends who, like, work in that space will say things like, personal responsibility is so important when it comes to psychedelics. And similarly, if we're going to look at this as a psychedelic, and I think there's just 100% as a psychedelic, personal responsibility, if you are going to do a big fat rail of Instagram, you have to go in there reminding yourself this isn't reality.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Exactly. And it's not. These are tools, but they're not just hammers. A hammer is generally made by Stanley or whoever made the hammer for you to put nails in a piece of wood.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

That's its function.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

When you go onto any digital platform, you are stepping the easiest metaphor. You are stepping into Macy's.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

What does Macy's want? Macy's is designed to make you buy stuff. And they're gonna use every technique, every way to make you feel bad or good or whatever it is to attract you to that pair of shoes or hunting jacket or whatever it is that they want you to get. So when you're on any of them, Facebook, X, Twitter, Instagram, whatever, they're not there for you to. Instagram's not there for you to post photos. Instagram's there to do something to you. These are private spaces. These are little tiny feudal emp. They are not worlds, they are not social worlds.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And once, you know, it's like, it's fine. Kids learn to hack the function of a mall. Or we did in the 70s, right? You go to the mall and you hang out with your friends, you smoke pot, you know where you go. It's like, you cannot buy shit in the mall and still have fun. Have fun. Right? We learned to do that. But we understood we're in a mall and what the emphasis of this place is. And you're still going to get the slushie or whatever. You know, you can spend a little something or in eventually malls. Remember when the malls would have rules like they would try to get teens out?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes. It was a big problem. It was.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

We were. We were the problem.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

I love it. Because we were having.

[Duncan Trussell]

We.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

You know, and then rave was an extension of that. Really? Rave was taking. We were taking spaces like parking lots and places.

[Duncan Trussell]

Sure, right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And throwing a party.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right. Like showing in this, like wreckage. Look what can happen. Like a son of. Like a psychedelic.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Exactly.

[Duncan Trussell]

Beautiful, utopian, temporary, autonomous.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Right? You bring a generator and some turntables. You do this thing until the Cops come and shut it down.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

We didn't realize how political that was. We just thought, we're having a party.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right, Right. That is very political. That is the kind of politics I like. You see that, to me, what you just described is the hope. And the hope is it's in the interstitial. Yeah.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

It's defining the weird space. And the net was that hope.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

We were. There was a military fucking platform for defense contractors and people to talk to each other and send nuclear codes and shit. And we squatted it. That's why my original email. I still have mediasquat.com we were squatting the media to do weird shit, to talk about psychedelics and Star Trek and changing the world and the Gaia hypothesis and all the weird, wonderful stuff.

[Duncan Trussell]

This is the. So this thing that happens, and it happens all the time when you are around a person, it happens. This is what I love about podcasting. Something in the podcast, something in the conversation, something else comes into the room and that is completely out of the control of the individual in the conversation, but also out of the control of the state, out of the control of anyone who want to regulate novelty. You can't do it. It just shows up and it is. You might look into, like, the difference between Newtonian physics and quantum physics. Right. Like Newtonian physics. Very strict regarding how things work. You go deep enough, shit's popping in and out of reality. What just happened? How does that even work? And that thing that happens can't really be controlled. You can sort of set the space for it. I mean, this is the magical ritual. This is the opening up of the possibility, but you can't. It's not going to. You know, my favorite in the Chronicles of Narnia, one of the little. One of the kids says, where is Aslan? I want to see Aslan. And the other kid says, aslan is not a tame lion, and this thing is not a tame lion. It might come. It might not come. But most importantly, because of its impossibility to domesticate, it can't get owned by the algorithm, by politics, by anything. It transcends empires. That, to me, that thing that should be the primary focus of anyone in the world right now interested in helping is creating spaces where that can emerge regardless of the people in the space, regardless of the politics, regardless of the ideology, regardless of whatever and it has.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

To do with it, requires that participants learn to resist scale. You know, everything on the net happens kind of at scale.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Right. Total. It's like all audiences at once. And the Original net. You weren't on the whole net. At the same time, you were in a Usenet group, you were in a Slashdot discussion. You were on the well, and you were reaching maybe 40 people, 80 people, 200 people, a community of 1,000 people. And you're engaging with them when you're trying to reach everyone on Twitter at the same time, fuck everyone in the world. You are fucked. You have to operate at scale, and in order to do that, you're going to have to become. You're going to have to become either. I mean, who really the first victims of it was like Charlie Sheen, right? Or Trump or Musk to some extent, you're going to have to become a super troll in order to get the whole world listening to you. And it's not the place or Oprah or something. And it's like, we don't need to all be that. The beauty of podcasting, which is why it may kind of be the killer app of the Internet in some ways. It really is, especially for me, especially voice only is. It's vibrational. You know, more that they like. They can watch us on YouTube and all that, and that's one experience. But when you're in their ears, when they're doing their chores or whatever, and you're. They feel the vibration of you.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, it's.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

We return to the. An analog type feeling, a sensational nervous system. Our voices are in their bodies, vibrating them. And if you're not worried about the size of your audience, if you're happy to reach a couple hundred, couple of thousand people instead of, you know, ten hundred thousand million, whatever, instead of. You don't have to. Not everyone should be Joe Rogan, much less can be Joe Rogan. If you're happy with a few thousand people, you're.

[Duncan Trussell]

You're.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

You're doing it. You're finding the weird nook. That's it, the cranny.

[Duncan Trussell]

You have identified it. This is. Oh, my God, it's.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And it's the opposite of AI. AI is the other side. So it's like if the Internet experience is bifurcating into two things, one is the particular weird analogy fun of podcasting, and the other is AI, which is necessarily totalitarian, like taking all the data of the world and reverting us to the mean.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

I'm going to go on the podcasting side for my experience, and I'll use the tool of the AI side to inform my podcast experience.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, God. You have. You are shining a light on the Achilles heel of this digital demiurge. Which is. Oh, my God, somehow I just miss this completely. It's mind blowing. Fuck, yes. Because, you know, I. I am someone who, like, I, you know, if I'm. If I'm in a conversation with someone and they seem, you know, even slightly interesting to me and like, they want to be published or talk to people, I will always say, start a podcast, right? And they will say, I, everyone has a podcast. Or they'll say, you know, no one will listen. And that self censorship based on not being able to scale to the global level instantaneously is annihilating so many possible, like, philosophies, ideas, essentially novelty. It's the way you fucking stop novelty, right?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And people think, you know, oh, if I'm not making enough on Patreon to pay for my life, then my podcast isn't worth doing, right? I'll tell you. Fuck that. You know, when the 2007 mortgage crash and stock market thing happened and book advances and magazine rates and all that went down, I was like, fuck it. I got my PhD to become. And I have a day job as a professor of media studies at City University of New York. Right. That's not shameful.

[Duncan Trussell]

No.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

So you're right. I can't Malcolm Gladwell myself into a townhouse in Manhattan, right? Because my books are only read and it sounds like. And I refuse to be embarrassed. My books are only read by 40 or 50,000 people. My podcast is only listened to by the entire MetLife Stadium, and I'm going to be embarrassed of that. The MetLife Stadium shows up two or three times a month to hear my little podcast.

[Duncan Trussell]

Not enough.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Not enough for your money.

[Duncan Trussell]

No, I know.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And it's like, it's more than. It's so many people. It's so many people. It makes me cry that. That many people would want to hear. And no, because only 0.01% of them give $2 a month. It's not enough to live on. It's not. And pay an editor and all that. It's not enough to live on, but it's worth doing. And if your day job's going to support your expression, your participation in the culture, the amount of money you're making on your art and media is no reflection of its impact on the human organism.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, my God. But if you wanted to truly do some kind of modern like. We are entering Christmas and we all know the story of Jesus. Who is that king they are to. He was Herod. Herod heard there was going to be some kind of messiah or something, a prophet. And so he just starts killing all the babies, going all over the place, kills all the fucking babies because what a pussy. Like Jesus, how insecure are you? You were going to do a pogrom on infants because you're afraid some future king by the time you're old is going to fuck you up. Madness. But if you look at what you just described is a great way to kill a lot of babies, which is make it so that people don't even try because they can't reach a global scale instantaneously. And if they just have a few hundred listeners, they feel like failures, right? What you've done there is you have squelched all new voices, you've squelched everything. You've commodified conversations. It is the perfect form of censorship in the modern age.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Oh, fuck your impact if you want to be an influence, right? Most influencers think about their influence impact in terms of the metric of numbers that they have on the thing. What if you are an influencer operating in the style of an acupuncturist, right? You found. What if you reached three people?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

But you flipped their. You fucking rocked their world. You've changed the way they move through the universe. Yeah, that's infinite, baby. That's the whole thing. Infinite.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's infinite.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

It is. You know, this is. I keep thinking about. I had to, I had to. And I still use that language. I ended up stuck with my mother in law the night she was dying in the hospital, right? And I was there when she crossed over, when she passed. And the first thing I'm thinking, when I'm there and she's heaving, I'm like, oh my God, it's three in the morning. I'm the one here. I'm not one of the kids. I'm the in law kid. First thing I think is, why the fuck am I the one who's stuck here doing this? And then I could feel that she could feel me there. And I was realizing I'm now experiencing the greatest privilege of being a human being is to be the one who's helping someone cross over in the most profound thing. And I'm like, they're weeping with compassion and joy at the same time that I had been granted this mitzvah, right? It's like mitzvah means commandment and blessing and the same thing. And finally I realized, oh, I get it. It's this moving through this obligation being, doing this thing is. And that's. And that's one person's one person. One night might be the Most important thing I've done in this incarnation.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right, right. And like think how corrupt it would be if you set up your tripod and you're like, let me stream this, let me stream this mitzvah. This is going to get a lot of traction. And it's like that is the other sort of like cultural gravity well that is happening now, which is we are being pulled into the commodification of moments that should probably just be for you and your family. But people are setting up their fucking tripods. People are setting up their tripods having public nervous breakdowns. People are setting up their tripods to commodify, monetize their.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Well, and to be fair, that's because life has become so precarious under end stage digital capitalism that they're looking for any way to make. I'm lucky to be able to get a PhD and then a teaching job.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, right, right. I mean, who can blame them? It's like, you know, you gotta eat. But that what you're pointing towards here is like an invisible, not just self. I mean, self censoring is bad. You know, they talk about, I'm sure you've heard the term cops in the head. Have you ever heard that term cops in the head? Cops in the head is bad. You over police a neighborhood and then you don't even have to over police it anymore because people just think cops are everywhere. Right. So that's bad. So if we are, you know, doing digital sharecropping, we're existing in one of these like Macy's or whatever, and we've set up our little booth or whatever and there's an ambiguous set of rules regarding how we're to conduct ourselves. Because if you, you see some of your peers get kicked out of Macy's and they're like, I don't even know what happened. They just said I couldn't do it anymore. And you're like, but wait, wait, are you like you're experiencing a strike or a shadow banning or. And you reach out and like, what did I do? Tell me the rules. And they won't tell you. So what you do in that, what you've created there is not just self censorship, but a kind of weird paranoia regarding saying anything at all. And you begin to look at what the algorithm is serving up to people. What are they saying? Right, okay, well I'll say that. And now you've not just self censored, you've gotten people to actually rewrite what they were going to say to fit into some ambiguous thing that they imagine will make you go global, will get you the most views. And now you have completely subverted the way philosophies grow. The way every good thing grows into the world is freedom of Right?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

I bet the most algorithmically. The most. The Most algorithmically optimized YouTube content is probably videos on how to optimize your content for the algorithm. Right?

[Duncan Trussell]

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[Douglas Rushkoff]

Right?

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, God, that's dark.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

I mean, the other thing that happens is there's no slack in this world. It's like everything. I feel like everything gets exposed. And I know it's not like I used to call it truth serum. It's not that it's truth serum. It's that it's like a spin cycle on things. So institutions that are not completely internally consistent, they kind of get exposed. It like speeds everything up. Like, I kept thinking about in the last election cycle, this immigration thing. Everybody's all upset about immigration.

[Duncan Trussell]

Crisis at the border.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Right, Crisis at the border. All right, but it's not. You gotta go back a step, though. What digital has brought it to a head. And we all see it, but what we're seeing really is. Wait a minute, what is a border? So let's not worry about America and Mexico for now and all. I don't think about that. Think about, like, there's an island that has both Haiti and the Dominican Republic on it, right? You're born on the Haiti side. People are, like, throwing rocks at you and burning your babies and taking your. You're on the Dominican Republic side. You're, like, working in a hotel or, you know, you got. It's like, well, why aren't. So if your baby's born on this side of the line, it's fucked if it's born on that side of the line. It's not. And who made that line? That's not God. That's some political boundary thing. So. So what is that? It's like, oh, so there's a nation state. So nation state has these lines around it. And then if you're on one side, you're cool. If you're not on the other. That doesn't make sense. So the nation state itself is intrinsically a kind of violent act, you know, just to put that line on there.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Where did the nation state come from? I mean, this is kind of program or reprogrammed to the nation state. Oh, it was invented by monarchs in the, you know, whenever. When they wanted to. When they wanted to disempower the city states. They said, oh no, you're not Venetians anymore. You're Italians, you know, not Napoleon, you're this, you're this.

[Duncan Trussell]

So.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And you create this mythology around this thing and you put that line. So when you're looking at something like immigrants or refugees, it's like, well, they're not allowed over the line because this is our line. You know, we should put the line. Of course we have the line we got. But we also know it's kind of mean to say, oh no, you got to stay line and not have your food. And it's like, so. So it's not an immigration problem. It's back further. It's a nation, state, national boundary problem. Those. It's really hard to maintain compassion and see someone over an imaginary line and not wanna do something for them. So it's like we're not having the actual discussion. We're just looking at the aftermath of these institutions that are crumbling in a digital society. They are. All these institutions are crumbling. Electoral politics is crumbling, the FCC is crumbling. All these things don't quite work and we don't yet know how do we retrieve the functions of these things and bring them forward before the institution housing them is gone. We're just mad at the institution. I remember in the 70s in New York, we shut down Willowbrook. They shut down all the mental institutions because they went in them and they saw they were abusing everybody in the mental institution. These are terrible places. And we nationally Reagan, let's shut them the fuck down. And we did. And then we didn't realize, oh, but another function, these mental institutions were housing. Housing.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh no, housing. Now there's all these homeless open air mental institutions. Now you give the citizen the job if you're a citizen. Living in some of these cities is not just like getting to work following the rules, but you have to find a way to work with the people who probably need care in a mental institution. Who is sitting in front of your house screaming about how they're Jesus. And like most people aren't trained to deal with something like that. Even people who are trained to deal with something like that aren't sure what to do.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And then so we end up with all these fights over yes and no, over second and third order effects of problems we're not even looking at.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Of underlying assumptions, you know, and that would be the beauty of a digital age. If you're living, if we're spending time in programmed environments. What I was hoping is once you see that your digital world Is programmed. You come back to the regular world and say, oh my gosh, it's programmed. You get that Bucky Fuller urge to some extent of saying, oh, look at the dollar. Why is the dollar a read only medium? Why can't I program my own money? You know, why is the Bible set in stone? Why are schools work like this? Why all these institutions that have been created with other people's needs and mine and not mine? We can reprogram reality to work better for people.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes, but these, everything you just said is unspeakable. I mean, you've really gone off the, the edge of what we should be talking about because you're not allowed. There is some sense whenever I start looking at certain ideas and I like this feeling whenever I realize I've gotten into a forbidden zone in my own mind, it's like, whoa, what the fuck? And a few of them for me are number one, the consideration of. I'm born into a system, right? As far as I'm aware, depending on what paradigm you want to subscribe to. I wasn't like, put me in late stage capitalism in the United States. I'm just born into the United States.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Exactly, it's naturalized.

[Duncan Trussell]

So you're born here. And then the moment you're born, you're given a lot of ideas regarding what borders are, boundaries are. This is our house. That's the neighbor's house. Don't go in the neighbor's yard. That's the neighbor's yard. Don't do that. And so then, so you're taught all of these.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

I remember that feeling when the ball goes over there. Oh, shit.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, motherfucker.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

The ball's in the neighbor's yard.

[Duncan Trussell]

What the fuck? What the fuck? And like I can see in the way that I like when I'm on a walk with my kids and my children just naturally on their scooters are like, that's a good driveway to like scooter down. I can see and boiling up in me like, oh, that is an off limits driveway. We must respect our neighbors or their property. Some girl was walking her dog and went right up my driveway as I was sitting in my car chatting with my wife and threw dog shit into my trash can. And like the amount, I don't like that. Oh, but, but I would say that the amount of anger that I felt considering the how my.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

You thought it was disproportionate to the offense.

[Duncan Trussell]

Like, I'm Mussolini, you know what I mean? I have become like pure fascism. I'm like, arrest that girl. How dare she throw a dog shit into my stinky trash can. Oh, this was my property, like you know, but this is programmed in us. And I'm not saying it's all wrong. We ourselves need boundaries. You don't want a crisis at the border and your fucking cells, you're going to die. Your cell needs to let certain things in and put. I'm not saying boundaries are wrong. I'm just saying the exploration of the way the systems are running, giving yourself the compassion, being self compassionate and allowing yourself to realize you didn't choose this system, you were born into this system. And these days, especially questioning the atomic level of the system seems to be somewhat forbidden via the question.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

But you have to. That's, that's. Yeah, you know, and that's, you know, at the end of this, the new version of this book, I came up with these kind of four interventions. Cause I was, I was getting really pissed off in the sort of political and activist. And I mean I kind of hang out more with the sort of progressive lefty activist kind of people and they're always saying, booo.

[Duncan Trussell]

I'm just, I'm just kidding. No, I'm just kidding. I'm trying to feed the fuck.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

On my socials, I'm in the more.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Burning man y climate change kind of thing.

[Duncan Trussell]

There's a lot of questioning regarding my politics right now.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Whatever.

[Duncan Trussell]

Just trying to feed.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

That's good. So then what they do is they say, how do we get people to. How do we get people to care more about the climate? How do we get people to get more politically active? How do we get people to. And it's like once you're saying how do we get people to. You're on the wrong track. You're manipulating people. That's 20th century advertising, television influence. You're instrumentalizing human beings. Right. So then what I wanted to do is come up with how can we even begin to talk about this in a less manipulative way? So I came up with these kind of four interventions that I think we can do. The first one is what we're talking about, which, and I gotta come up with an easier way of saying it, but it's denaturalized power. So you help people recognize that the way things are is not necessarily. Don't accept these as given. Like I was on with Jake Tapper.

[Duncan Trussell]

Okay, cool.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

You remember him? He's still there on CNN doing this thing about AI, you know, one of these interviews and you know, because I've written some negative things about AI, but every Day I feel differently about AI. Some days I'm like, it's fine. Some days I'm like, it's going to destroy us all. So this was one of the days I was like, I really don't give a shit about AI. This is the wrong day to get that interview. So he keeps asking me these questions, trying to get me to say something bad, right? And I'm just like, well, it's not that strong. It's not that powerful. I mean, it's not that. Whatever. And then finally he says, well, what about the unemployment problem? And then I said, well, what about the unemployment solution? And he's like, huh? And I go, you know, honestly, I don't want a job. I want stuff. I want food. I want meaningful participation society. But a job, I don't want a job. And in fact, jobs weren't invented till the 12th century. People used to be craftspeople, and then they started charter monopolies. You weren't allowed to make jelly. You had to work for His Majesty's Royal Jelly Company. And you clocked in in the morning. They put a clock on the tower. So what?

[Duncan Trussell]

I.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And Jake, he did not like that at all. I don't think I'm going to be invited back. But what I was doing was denaturalizing this assumption that, oh, you need a car to get to work. Why do you need a car to get to work? Because GM lobbied to move your homes away from the work, so you need a car. So first one's sort of denaturalized power. Second one is trigger agency. That's the sort of programmer be programmed thing.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Help people to understand that we're not in a read only universe. That's a sort of a computer term for a program that you can see but you can't change. We are in a read, write universe. You know, we got video. You don't just watch tv, you can make tv.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

So we're in a read. And once you realize, once you trigger agency, I'm suggesting we resocialize people. Help people realize once your agency's triggered and we're going to reprogram reality, let's do it together. Right? You do it. It's a social phenomenon. And those. And once people are socializing, it triggers the fourth one, which is to cultivate awe. That awe has been really sequestered and removed from the modern experience. The ecstatic dance, tantric sex, shamanic ritual. You know, all the stuff that we look at is, oh, that's some crazy new age.

[Duncan Trussell]

Say it's Correct. Ecstatic dance again.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Ecstatic dance.

[Duncan Trussell]

I like the other two. I just. I can't do ecstatic dance.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

But would you watch other people, other beautiful women doing ecstatic dance? You wouldn't like that either?

[Duncan Trussell]

Nope.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Would you take ecstasy?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Would you dance while you're on ecstasy? Nope. Would you squirm on the ground while you're on ecstasy?

[Duncan Trussell]

When I take advantage of ecstasy, I go to my Excel spreadsheets and I just write down what experience I'm having per minute. Yeah. I just chart my ecstasy trip. I start, like, I feel pretty good, and then I'm horny. And then like, oh, God, I want to come.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

All right, well, you don't have to do the ecstatic dance, but what I'm saying is just these experiences are looking at the Grand Canyon, looking at your baby, looking at a puppy.

[Duncan Trussell]

Totally.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And you experience yourself as something connected.

[Duncan Trussell]

To something larger than your actual identity.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Right. And those things will change the society from the bottom up.

[Duncan Trussell]

Let me. Okay. Now, not like Tapper and you know how much I love you. I'm gonna push back. And I don't think that my critique of what you just said is actually even accurate, but I feel like I want to say it.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

It'll be fun. Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

So the term intervention itself, this is. As I'm looking at the cultural landscape right now, what I'm seeing is on both sides, for sure. Here's the messaging. We got to fix this. That's the messaging on both sides. I think that the problem right now is people are so fucking tired of one side or the other trying to fix their ass. And it is backfired. It is backfired in the most extreme way. Because now compassion, which, if you ask me, is like, unplannable kind of. It just happens in the moment. And it's. When there's the awful. It's sad that if you're like. Like, there's probably in war and in disaster and climate disaster and all that shit, you will see an explosion of compassion. Spontaneous natural compassion. Just flowers, just grows out of the most horrible events. Unplannable. It just happens. Generally, you can cultivate it, as they say. But what I see happening is a confusion regarding compassion because the central premise seems to be, we gotta fix this. And I think that's central.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

That's not mine, but.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, but intervention.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Yeah, but intervention. I'm thinking of it more in terms of 12 steps.

[Duncan Trussell]

Well, I'm. But intervention implies other people intervene.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Right. But I'm saying, no, not other, but human beings intervening in the Digital program, in other words, we are. It's automated.

[Duncan Trussell]

I got you.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

We're automating.

[Duncan Trussell]

I got you. I got you. I'm so sorry. Yeah, I figured I did. But you know, like, there is a right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

I'm not gonna. That's the whole point, is why I'm trying to not get people to do this or get people to do that. Leave the fucking people alone every and then. And when I get in trouble. The biggest thing I got in trouble, it was right after the election. I did this thing to calm people down and whatever, and I ended it by saying everything's gonna be okay.

[Duncan Trussell]

You can't say that. Oh, my God. No, you didn't say that. You can't say that. Josh, cut that out. I'm just kidding.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Isn't that wild, though? That got people so upset.

[Duncan Trussell]

People hate it when you see we're.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Having a bad trip. What do you tell people when they're having a bad trip? Everything is as it should be.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's not true. The government's monitoring my thoughts. They've implanted nanobots into my mind, man.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And it's gonna be okay.

[Duncan Trussell]

No, the nanobots says so. This, to me is a really. Like, in Buddhism, if you really wanna get fucking deflated regarding your hope of, like, what enlightenment might be or the powers you'll get, or all of the stuff that could come. It's when they start telling you, you're fine, you're fine. No, like right now, before the meditation, you're fine. During the meditation, you're fine.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

That's what Krishnamurti says. That's what the friggin Dalai Lama says when people come up.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, no, I didn't. And he goes, nothing to do.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

You're good just the way you are. Exactly. It's great. And everyone talks to him about a problem and he always flips. I love when someone said, don't you hate spirituality in America? It's like, have you heard the name spiritual. We're living in a spiritual shopping mall. And Dalai Lama goes, that sounds great. Like a spiritual shop. You could just go into any store and get the spirituality you want.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah. I'm telling you, man. What was the part of your. This is the empowering part. What did you call it?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

The trigger agency.

[Duncan Trussell]

Trigger agency. The beginning of triggering that agency, I think starts at the subjective level with realizing you're fine. Well, that's.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

You gotta get people, people. The Internet doesn't communicate to people that they're fine.

[Duncan Trussell]

No.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

So for people to get fine. This is easy. Anybody listening? Anybody? Whatever if you don't feel fine, stand up, put your feet on the ground. Feel. Put your feet on the ground. You're like a foot or two apart. Your body doesn't know it's safe because we lived in trees and we're all in until you put your. Your feet on the ground.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right, right.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And then breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth and try to do it. If you can tolerate it, do that twice.

[Duncan Trussell]

Well, let me. Let me point.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And you're gonna feel so much better.

[Duncan Trussell]

But I wanna. This is something I've identified in me. I start feeling bored when I'm fine, and I feel like this is sort of the byproduct. This is the radiation poisoning of the tech, which is that we have now connected the feeling of being okay with boredom. Because everything that you look at, like, if you just want to, like, just for the. Everyone listening or watching, the next time you're on Instagram, just begin to notice anything that is trying to fix you. Other people, the world themselves. And you will realize that the rush part of the rush seems to be if we can maintain a state of constant nervousness, anxiety, and neurosis, we won't be bored.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Oh, it is wild. But I feel like Instagram and the Internet do this thing that I do for myself when I'm meditating, which is distract and agitate myself. I sit there. I'm finally at the place when I meditate. Now that I'm laughing at what I do to myself.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, it's incredible.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

What if my daughter's not okay? What's going on there? Oh, I didn't check that bill. It's like every. It's like, why? It's 10 minutes. It's all gonna be there when I'm done.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

20 minutes left. It's all gonna be there. It's like, wow, why? Why do I do that? And it's like, if you don't. Like, if you don't want to do it for yourself, go online. It'll do it for you.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes. You've got plenty of time to do that. And that, to me, is if you really want to find, like, why meditate? It's like, how the fuck is something so simple, something really just like any of us will sit in front of the TV for hours, completely still watching the tv. Why is it that you remove the TV and you feel like your brain's on fire?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Right?

[Duncan Trussell]

What's going on there? And I think that is where we connect with this, like, you know, crisis at the fucking border. And this border Is the border between the hyper sped up modern world and that thing where for a second you give yourself a vacation from being fucked up. In other words, you're sitting there and you're like, God damn, I gotta check my phone. Or oh my God, I just thought about like throwing my mother's corpse into a fire. Why did I think that all of these things, what happens if you, instead of thinking I'm a monster, you're just like, yeah, that's something. I think that's something. But you don't judge it anymore. In those moments you, I think, plug in to the novelty that is the novelty field. And that place is so precious. Is completely outside of politics, completely outside of. Of time, completely outside of like whatever the day to day anxieties that you are like distracting yourself with. That to me, man, that place, that's where we need to find a way to hang out. Not. And again, I just always go back to Ram Dass advice. We work on ourselves so that we can help those around us, right? It's not. We work on ourselves and then we work on other people. We work on ourselves and then we tell other people why they're wrong. We work on our. You know what I mean? It's. We work and nobody wants to hear this right now.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And working on ourselves is not even fixing yourself. It's funny, I went, you know the Rubin Museum with all the Buddhist stuff in New York City there's this Rubin Museum, it's really cool. They're just going to close it now and make it a traveling thing. So I did this tour there with this guy who's like a child heart surgeon and a tour guide, Buddhist practitioner, meditation teacher dude at the Rubin Museum. And he's walking around and he keeps. He's talking about our conditioning. You know, as you go, this is your conditioning and that's your conditioning. And he teaches meditation. So I was like, well, so dude, how do I, how do I get rid of my conditioning? And he said, oh, you don't get rid of your conditioning. You don't, you don't even try. It's there. That's there forever. But you can change your relationship to it.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And I was like, oh, you mean I don't have to fix that? I don't. And he goes, no, it's like, it's so. It's in. And once I realized that, it's like, oh, that makes it so much better. I'm just this little fucked up person. But I don't have to act fucked up all the time.

[Duncan Trussell]

There you go, there you go. I love that so much. And also, I am annoyed by it. It's like, there is something really boring about being okay. And I don't mean okay in this. I mean, you know, in Buddhism especially, you will hear them say, you're already enlightened. The enlightened mind is there. Or the way Trumpa put it was, confusion is a condition of enlightenment. In other words, like, you're not. If you have no confusion, then it's.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Like, you lean into that, though. Like, you know, you lean into your taboos, and they become your fetishes. Right? Lean into that. So it's like, oh, I'm so bored. Mm, let's be bored. But just, I mean, yeah. Oh, it's not boring. It's like, you. It's the opposite is the thing. It's like, I don't even know. I'm trying to think of a metaphor other than a sexual one. But think of it this way. When you get aroused sexually, it's actually a process of relaxation that gets you aroused, right? When you're. That's the way the erection works, is not something clenching. It's something letting go. Let that thing happen. So boredom, what we're thinking of as boredom is not boredom. What boredom is, is exhaling lean. It's leaning into the bliss of this moment. Every single second is an infinity. And I promise, if you lean into one real second of infinity, you'll go, that second was worth my whole lifetime. Right? That's where you go.

[Duncan Trussell]

It's like, yep, that's it. And, you know, I love, like. You know, you taught me this, but you taught me this with conspiracy theories. And I always think about it ever since we had this conversation about how, like, let's look at, metaphorically, what are chemtrails? Let's look at, like, all the big things. Like, what could that be? And so, like. And I, you know, I do love the. As above, so below. So if there is something that we've been being told over and over, crisis at the border. Crisis at the border. Let's think about the border that we create between the person we want to be and the person we actually are. And you know what I mean? There's a border when you meditate, you know, suddenly, I don't know how many people I've talked to are like, I just. I can't do it because, like, all I do is think. And it's like, oh, right. Oh, my God, they're just getting in, aren't they? They're getting over this fucking Border like you're right. Like the moment you sit down, your mind is going nuts and you're letting all these thought refugees, you know, into your mind. And then in sort of day to day reality, you're sort of trying to create a wall that's blocking out all the bad thoughts, not good thoughts. That's not me. I'm not like that. And yeah, the moment that, that goes bye bye and there is no more border, right?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

You stop distinguishing.

[Duncan Trussell]

There's no distinguish. You do enter into this space. That's our birthright.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Right? And it's okay. It's okay. That's why the Jews did it. Look, we know it's intolerable. So just one day a week, sit there and accept that you're a sacred being, that you're okay just the way you are. Like Mr. Rogers would say that you, you're allowed to just sit there and be sacred.

[Duncan Trussell]

It's.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

It's fine. One day a week you can go be yourself. The rest of the time, go be crazy. Worry. It's really so you don't have to do it all the time. You don't have to do but give yourself tastes of. It's okay, I know they're starving over there and this bad thing's happening there. It's all happening. But it is what it is. And if you are on, if nothing else, if you are on, think of it that all of reality is a tree or all of civilization and you happen to be on a privileged branch of that tree where you get to be on a green leaf. Yeah, you owe it to the sick part of that tree to soak in the sun, get those nutrients really, because you're connected to the whole thing.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's it.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

I'm not saying be selfish, but be open to the good or you're not serving anybody.

[Duncan Trussell]

You know what? Here's what you do. Become the paramedic that you want to put you in the ambulance when you have your heart attack. And I'll tell you what I don't want my paramedic to be. I don't want my paramedic to be political. I don't want my paramedic to be fucking freaked out. I don't want my paramedic to be more scared than I am. I don't want my paramedic to be like, Jesus fucking Christ, man, you had a heart attack. The ice caps are fucking melting. I want my paramedic to be centered in the moment and completely just doing exactly their next right thing.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Right?

[Duncan Trussell]

That's what I want. Them to be. And if you have any. And I think it's a wonderful thing, and I think it's fucked up that these terms are being co opted by the state right now. But if you have a legitimate human desire to help, which is a good thing, doesn't mean you're woke, go broke. It doesn't mean you're. Whatever I'm saying, this is a. This is in us. And you want to cultivate that because it's fucking incredible. When you get a chance to help somebody, the training has to be right now. If you can't figure out a way to be okay, then how the fuck, in a crisis situation, when at last you can be the hero, are you going to execute that in the most efficient way if you can't do it when there isn't anything on fire around you, There isn't someone who's like holding their guts in. There isn't someone who's about to shoot someone in the fucking face at a mall. Like, if you can't do that just sitting in your own house, that means that when the thing emerges, you are not going to be able to fully help the way you are saying you want to help.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And it has to be okay, even when it's not okay.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's right. I'm saying it's even when it's not.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

The Bryce holding in his gut and he's gonna die and it's gonna be okay.

[Duncan Trussell]

I would refer you to that guy on the train. It haunts me. There's a guy on some train, he was trying to protect people. He got stabbed in the fucking. He got stabbed to death. He was trying to help people. He got stabbed and he's dying. He said, I love everyone on this train. And that just sticks with me because when I talk about not okay, it's when you just got stabbed to death on a fucking train. And from his perspective, it's all love and fuck, man. If like to me that's that imminent reality, doesn't it torture you that that is an imminent reality? I know there's a contradiction here in the sense that I'm just said don't stop trying to correct people. And yet this could be misconstrued as a correction. And also a lot of times when I'm saying shit like this, I'm talking to myself.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Well, forever, even if you're just talking, it's a correction.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Right. You can't. Otherwise you just. Otherwise we'd be like the llamas and just sit silently.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, yeah. It's just this like this, you know, pointing people towards that idea. Just even though it's a challenging idea, even though it's not.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

So we have to think of any suggestion or thing as an offering. Here's an offering. Here's something that I've. That's. That's helped me on the road, and I offer it through my podcast to you, right?

[Duncan Trussell]

And I don't care if you adopt it or not. And I don't. You're not a bad person or a good person. It's not about that. It's just. Yeah, this worked. It's just. You know, Douglas, it's like I keep thinking about, like, God, so many. I'm such an asshole. There's so many. I don't like ecstatic dancing, and I don't like.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

That's okay. I don't really like doing it so much, but I like that it's there. I like watching it and hearing. I like loud drums and stuff.

[Duncan Trussell]

I don't like the term intent. Intention. Setting an intention. For some reason, that just chafes my ass and. But this episode of the DTFH has been brought to you by my dear friends at Squarespace. And yeah, sure, I could go on and on about the benefits of Squarespace. I could tell you about how they are now using artificial intelligence to help you build an incredible website at a third of the time. It's insane. And I know you're thinking, oh, they sponsor you. Of course you're going to say that. No, no, you must check it out. Their design intelligence function is the most mind blowing. You know, you've heard me rambling about AI so much, but to actually experience what this means in the real world, to see how AI can relieve you of the least fun parts of building a website, speed things up and get you closer to building the website you wanted to build, to troll your friend so you don't have to spend hours doing it. Your mind will be blown. And I could say all these things, but just take a look at this. If you pull up my website. Are you. Are you kidding? That's a Squarespace website. That is a Squarespace website. I got my dates, I got my podcast. Great art. It's. It's the best. And I sometimes go in there and I adjust it, and it's easy if I want to make a change. Let's pull up the shop. What the heck? Look at this shop. Easy to update. Anytime there's a new beautiful shirt, boom, it goes right there. And it's. The main thing is it's easy. I can Barely use the remote control anymore. And I can easily use Squarespace. But. But Squarespace isn't just for building websites. You want to do an email campaign. They will help you create a beautiful email campaign instead of an email campaign that makes people think they are getting involved in a phishing scam. Not only that, but they have scheduling. You can add acuity scheduling to your Squarespace website to accept client bookings. They provide everything you need to manage appointments, accept payments and send automatic reminders and more. They do everything you have to check it out. They're an ever evolving Swiss army knife of web design social media connectivity tools and they never fail to blow my mind. But don't believe me. Just go to squarespace.com Duncan, you can try it out for free. When you're ready to launch, use offer Go dunkin. You'll get 10% of your first order of a website or a domain. Again, it's squarespace.com Duncan, take it for a spin. When you're ready to launch, use offer code Duncan. You'll get 10% off your first order of a website or a domain. Thank you, Squarespace.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

I know. And they do that, you know, when you get a guided psychedelic thing. They're like, okay, now set your intention. I'm like, oh God.

[Duncan Trussell]

I don't know why it bothers me.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

I know what you mean. No, because it's like, well, I just want to see what the mother Earth goddess wants to tell me.

[Duncan Trussell]

I have been thinking about that setting the attention thing in terms of being fully in the present moment. And I've been thinking a lot about how the general sort of activist move is organizing, right, organize, plan for the future, have a step by step sort of plan to get the world to the next whatever, right? And there's a lot of future thinking also. I think there's a lot of past thinking, right? And so the messaging in this election was we're not going back or we're going to make America great. It was either thinking about the past or thinking about the future. I didn't hear very much about this moment right now. And so if you were, and I understand why we must plan, I'm not saying don't plan anything, but how often I am in my planning mind, how often I'm thinking not just about the next day, but the next minute. While I'm in the midst of zipping up my backpack, I'm thinking about, well, I've got to text Douglas. I got to get him his car. Or while I'm looking for my keys, I'M thinking about where I need to drive. But the point is, I'm constantly lost in some future reality. And the intention thing, I'm starting to get it because it's like what happens if you. What happens if you put the past and the future on as an offering? It's a burnt offering. You incinerate it. Now it's gone. All there is is right now. But just add to it this simple intent. I'm going to help.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Whoa. Have you noticed that that is whenever I do that, it's like magic.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

That is magic, right? And it is funny because, like, the future is hype, the past is spin.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, yeah.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And the present is reality, you know, And I do get the feeling. And then this is what gets me in the most trouble. But what the heck, I'll get in trouble. I'm old. Whatever. I'm keeping my money, you know, I'll live off what I got and I'll get Social Security someday. So fuck all y'all. What I get in the most trouble is when I suggest that the 20th century seems to be about those organizing marches. You know, whether it, you know, Martin Luther King or Mussolini or Gandhi. It's like we follow a leader on this journey. Eyes on the prize ends justifies the means toward winning toward the thing.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And it's like, that's so linear, it's so cause and effect. We're gonna do this now for that later, right? And it's like, what about if you focus entirely on the way in which we are doing this now. The be here now back to Ramdat. If you're actually here, what's required of you, what's incumbent upon you becomes so self evident in the moment that you're in.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's it. That, that, that there isn't that. And that goes back to everything's fine. Because if you notice, like if you just sort of look out at the world and it sucks that the way we are getting the teachings is via like, like fucking massive, insane catastrophes. But if you look at like Asheville and you see the people who are coming out to help you, look at Spain, people just helping just get the fucking water off the streets. I don't know what the politics of Spain are. I kind of understand the politics of Asheville, but I'm pretty sure the people who are like boots on the ground citizens, not fema, sadly. We all know the story where they were like actually denying aid to people who had Trump signs in their fucking yard. That is not a conspiracy. Oh, it's so Dark. But I'm saying, boots on the ground, non government intervention. Nobody, when they're giving sandwiches to people is like, who are you voting for? After their house just got washed down. And that thing that seems to be built into us, which is if you just are wanting to help, it's immediately right there. Here's how you do it.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

It is.

[Duncan Trussell]

And it's not lofty usually. I think that's why people don't like it. It's real simple. Sometimes people like warmer clothes, right?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

But then the trick is, if we are continually bailing out our neighbors out of floods and hailstorms and all these things that seem unprecedented, is there a point at which we say, hey, there's been a lot more of this stuff lately. Might we need to look at something.

[Duncan Trussell]

Hey, cross that bridge when we come to it, right? And no one wants to hear that. I mean this. I remember hearing Ram Dass talking about like the story when he met the person who brought him to Neem Karoli Baba. He's walking through India with this dude who kind of looks like Jesus. And Ram Dass is spinning his stories, you know, all this fancy stuff to this guy. And the guy would say to him, can't, you know, just be here right now? Don't worry about those stories. Or he'd be like, my feet hurt. Let's just stay here with, you know, constantly drawing him back into this moment, which destroyed the game. The temporal game of like, this is who I am, this is who you are. Here are my stories. It destroys it. And it puts you in a fantastically frustrating situation, which is, yeah, these questions will emerge. Okay, fine. How many fucking floods do you wanna clean up? Is this where we're gonna get our spiritual teaching? Just by fucking like just catastrophe? Is that where we're at right now? We must regulate, we must impose, we must intervene. We must. And it's like, what happens if we just for a second stop all that bullshit?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Well, because then, and then if we do, we will be in such a better position to do whatever the thing we need to do collectively.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And you know, and people don't realize that there is huge system wide impacts of small things. If we're all engaging with each other more compassionately, then we need to buy less stuff. So we need less ships coming from China. We need less kids going into Mar Metal Slaves to get us more AirPods. You know, all of a sudden you're having huge. You're. You're reducing your impact on so much. If you don't need to drive to work because you're helping your neighbor instead. You know, and you've created a local economy. Then you're polluting less and getting less lithium out of the ground. It's like it's. It's not rocket science.

[Duncan Trussell]

It's. That's what no one likes about it. We all want to be fucking rocket scientists. Yeah, we all want to scale.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

We all have to scale. How does my thing. It doesn't. What if it doesn't. What if you only just helped 100 people, 100 people in their lives. My God. You know, the school teacher, the good school teacher who teaches for 20 years, has 30 kids, has changed the lives of 600 human beings.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, yeah, that's it. Fuck. And the other thing is this messianic fucking egregore that is inside all of us. This and I never connected to scaling, but it's clearly that's what's happened. It really leaves out all of the things that led to the past world changers like, you know, we all know Martin Luther King is. What about. Like no one's ever gonna hear about his neighbor who said something incredible to him that set him on his path. No one's ever going to hear about Buddha's great grandmother. No one's ever going to hear about like probably someone like Jesus was. Like Jesus was fixing their cabinet. Assuming he's a carpenter, right?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Or whatever. Essene whispered something into Jesus ears when he's out in the desert.

[Duncan Trussell]

No, those people get no credit. Everybody wants to be the Jesus. Everybody wants to be the Buddha. And that can't work. Work? How does that work? You can't have a planet of Jesus's. You need not just for Jesus to work, you need a Judas.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And for all we know Jesus wasn't actually the Jesus. And Buddha may not have been the Buddha, you know, it could have been the friggin Vimalakirti over on the left. You know, who the fuck knows who knows?

[Duncan Trussell]

It doesn't matter because that's in the past. And now here we are and that's it. It. This is it. This is as far as we're aware, the very you want to talk about high tech doesn't get higher tech than right now. This is it. We are at the crest of the wave of time space. At least where we're stuck in it. And what else do you need? It's like. And you know, I like I. God, I just discovered something about my, you know, like my daughter, which is so cool. She loves surfing videos. I just accidentally landed on a surfing video and she is just like, so cute. She's like, wow. And I'm thinking like, oh, my God, like, if this is blowing my mind, watching some dude gracefully, like navigating a massive terrifying wave, that would definitely drown me. What's it like for a 1 year old? Like, what the fuck is happening here? This, like, dude, it's crazy. And like. But I'm watching the surfer. I'm seeing someone fully in the moment because they have to be. That surfer I'm pretty sure isn't planning anything.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

No. And they're not. You know, it's a great metaphor because like the way the digital person or the scientist understands the ocean is as this series of latitude and longitude lines. Right? They put a grid on top of it. Yeah, you're right here at that intersection. And I don't like the word intersectionality for that very reason. It's a cartesian coordinate grid that you put on your race, your identity. You're this. But the cartographer puts the grid. The surfer doesn't care about the grid. The surfer's in the actual ocean of the waves.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's it. That's it.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Those waves don't see that grid.

[Duncan Trussell]

No, no. And it would for sure. They'd fucking wipe out. If they were like putting grids if they had some AR headset on that was like mapping like heat signatures and like where the crest of the wave. And I don't know if surfer terms, but to me this is like. This is what it seems to boil down to is like we are all it. Yeah.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

That's what we used to say about the net. We used to call it surfing the net because that's the metaphor. That was the way we understood.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's it. And within, like your waves are always the same and always different. They have characteristics that are always going to be the same or it wouldn't be a fucking wave. But they're always going to require some different thing between waves. And if we are trying to surf on fucking waves that aren't even waves, they've been invented for us by the goddamn algorithm telling us this is the social landscape. And the way we're trying to surf on the goddamn waves is some sort of bizarre. I don't know what you would call it. Fascist. This is how you surf. No adjustments. You must surf. The way the other wave was surfed. That seemed to be like the one we're in. You're fucked. Abandoning everything, really letting it all go. This is what's happening right now. And that's it.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Melting into the novelty.

[Duncan Trussell]

Melting into the novelty. Melting into the novelty and that. So what's. So all that being said, are we fucked? How fucked are we?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

I would say yes. And it's gonna be okay.

[Duncan Trussell]

What?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Are we serious? You know, I mean, I've been accused of, you know, playing in the orchestra on the deck of the Titanic.

[Duncan Trussell]

And you play a. By the way, if there was some motherfucker who told those people to stop playing, right? And I was like, on a sinking ship, I would be so pissed. Like, dude, let him play. I'm about to die, right? Please, I want to hear it.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

And that they were able to be in touch with their own higher purpose. I was born to be a musician. If the ship's going down, I'm gonna play to the last minute and vibrate out into the infinity.

[Duncan Trussell]

Because you're not saving the Titanic, right? Nothing you can do. What, are you gonna go bail water out of that fucking.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

I mean, and we do know. I mean, the civilization that we've been on, the civilizational thing that we've been on since whenever it is, ancient Greece or whatever, this particular very binary abstracted, colonizey, nation statey, capitalist civilization is destabilizing. Its institutions are no longer up to.

[Duncan Trussell]

The challenge on every level, everywhere. Every level, every industry, everything, right? Showbiz, tech, industrialization, it's all teetering, right?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

So.

[Duncan Trussell]

So.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

That may not be okay. And the collapse of these institutions, just like losing the mental institutions in the 70s could lead to a lot of pain and suffering, you know? So what. What do we do in such a time? Well, I guess whatever you're called to do. Some people are going to try to shore up these institutions, keep them going as long as possible. I think what we do is try to reduce the pressure that we and the people in our circles put on these institutions to give them some breathing space. Buy less stuff, you know, take care of your neighbors. The more old people you're taking care of in your neighborhood or in the neighboring city, the fewer. The less they need from social services, the less they need from their welfare check.

[Duncan Trussell]

How do you find old people?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Well, they're everywhere.

[C]

Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway this holiday season. Unwrapped sweet savings on all your favorite holiday Candy now through December 31st. Shop in store and online and save on holiday candy like Ferrero Rocher, Russell Stover gift box, Brack's soft Jellies, Reese's peanut butter Cups, Hershey candy cane kisses, M and Ms, and Hershey milk chocolate kisses. Get these holiday favorites before they're gone. Offer ends December 31st. Restrictions apply. Promotions may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

When you choose to earn your degree online from Southern New Hampshire University, you're saying yes to new opportunities and to new adventures. You're saying yes to something big, something you've always wanted to do. If earning your degree is one of your goals this new year, SNHU can help you get there. With low online tuition, no set class times, and multiple term starts per year, you can set the pace that works for you and save money along the way. Visit snhu. Edu today to get started.

[Duncan Trussell]

I mean, seriously, though, I've always loved this thing that you've said, and I think about it all the time, but I never really act on it because it's like, I don't know what old people live in my neighborhood. I do go door to door.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

No. Well, in your town, there's probably still some civic reality. There's probably a. I mean, if we're in Austin here, there's probably an Austin town hall that has a senior center.

[Duncan Trussell]

Ah, yeah.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

You go there and find the seniors. You know, you go to one of their. Can I volunteer to help? Are you. Bingo night at the senior center? Then you're doing bingo night, and it's like, oh, look at that woman in the walk. Can't even make it, too. Do you need a ride? Do you need a thing? What do you.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right? That's so, so actionable. That's so actionable. But, you know, the problem doesn't scale. I don't want to help anybody. If I would need the whole planet to see me help an old lady. That's why I hate those videos, the altruism tiktoks, you know what I mean? Where someone's like, cutting person's hair on the street, and it's just like, dude, if you're gonna do this, you better film the setup. I want to see you set up your tripod. I want to see you get the lighting right. I want to see the cuts and the takes before whatever you publish. But is it better? Is it bad? Isn't that still good, though? I mean, should we. Is the idea just. Just help? I don't care.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

I think you help however you. However you can. It just. It and the. The help helps and. And the spirit of compassion that's engendered by that activity changes everything. Even if you got kids. Oh, what's that? Oh, daddy. Oh, it's Sunday. Daddy's gonna be doing that thing he does. What's that helping people? What is that?

[Duncan Trussell]

Douglas, I'm gonna end this conversation on a very unfair question, and we will cut it if you want me to. Cause it's truly not fair. I think you're brilliant. I think you're maybe one of the smartest people I've ever met in my life. And my brain, my rainbow wheel is spinning. Because when I ask, are we fucked? I don't just mean the obvious global conflicts. I don't mean that. I'm saying right now, in the United States, over half of the country feels like it's the beginning of the world. And a little less than half the country thinks it's the end of the world. And so a little less than half the country has gone into, like, defensive mode. You've got people talking about, like, poisoning their husbands. What's that shit called? Aqua something. It's like a whole movement. You've got, like, a lot of, like, you know, fear leads to anger, and you got. You got a little less than half the country. Whether or not politically, you believe this or not, they're scared as fuck. You've got a little less than half the country who are either completely confused, and also a lot of them are humiliated. They feel humiliated, they feel manipulated, or they just feel outraged. And they also feel despair because they're like, what the fuck? Over half the country is for a monster. And then you have over half the country looking at the despair part of the country being like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Like, everything's gonna be fine. Stop. Just stop. And everyone's dealing with it in a different way. But when I see that, when my rainbow wheel starts spinning, and maybe it's because I'm an idiot, but I think there's got to be some way right now to articulate a story that both sides would hear that would lead to a cooling down, some kind of potential glue, something to, I don't know, throw cold water in the face of everybody to get us back to that novelty, to the uncontrollable awe, the reality that connects all of us. Douglas Rushkoff. What is that? How do you do that? What is the way to express in the midst of such absolute political chaos and upheaval and terror, something that will make people reunite.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

On election day, it is written. On inauguration day, it is sealed. Who will lead and who will be led. And the only way, the only way we can impact this at all is through compassion and mutual aid and soulful togetherness, and we can lessen the decree of whatever has been cast.

[Duncan Trussell]

Thank you, dude. You're the best.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

You're the best.

[Duncan Trussell]

And how are people going to find you?

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Oh, they're going to walk the streets until they see me. They can go to go to my podcast. How about that TeamHuman FM podcast? Yeah, just Rushkoff. Remember Rushkoff. R, U, S, H, K O F F. Type that into a browser. I got this rerelease of my book Programmer Be Programmed. It's very, very short, written for high school level people, so we can all read it or go to TeamHuman FM or go to RushKoff.com. come to New York. I'm there.

[Duncan Trussell]

Cool.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

I'll see you soon.

[Duncan Trussell]

I can't wait. I gotta make it back out to New York. You're the best. Thank you so much.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Love you.

[Duncan Trussell]

Love you. Bye. That was awesome. That was Douglas Rushkoff, everybody. Don't forget to order his book program or be programmed. 11 commands for the AI future. Subscribe to his podcast Team Human. And thank you all so much for watching or listening. I love you. I'll see you next week.

[C]

Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway this holiday season. Unwrapped sweet savings on all your favorite holiday Candy. Now through December 31st. Shop in store and online and save on holiday candy like Ferrero Rocher, Russell Stover Gift Box, Brack's Soft Jellies, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Hershey Candy Cane kisses, M&MS. And Hershey Milk Chocolate Kisses. Get these holiday favorites before they're gone. Offer ends December 31st. Restrictions apply. Promotions may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

How do you feel when you switch to GEICO and save on your car insurance? It's like going to work on one Thursday morning and thinking to yourself, just one more day until Friday. But then somebody in the elevator says, happy Friday. Then you check your phone quickly and discover today is actually Friday. So yes, Happy Friday, random stranger in the elevator.

[C]

Happy Friday indeed.

[Douglas Rushkoff]

Yep, switching and saving with GEICO feels just like that. Get more with Geico.