Latest / UK Column Radio / Finding beauty and living authentically | Jerm Warfare
Transcript
- 0:30Speaker 1: My name is Jim. This is Germ Warfare, the Battle
- 0:33Speaker 1: of Ideas. Okay, we are recording. Michael was just saying
- 0:37Speaker 1: before I hit the record button, you look crumpy.
- 0:43Speaker 2: Crumpy.
- 0:44Speaker 1: I am not grumpy. Okay, I'm not grumpy. I'm going
- 0:47Speaker 1: into the bush this week, so I hope you are.
- 0:50Speaker 3: Very I suggest I suggest you stay there.
- 0:55Speaker 2: Wow, because I record the hell of a hard card, right.
- 1:03Speaker 1: But you know, you know, I mean, I can't say
- 1:06Speaker 1: jokes aside because it's still is it still is humorous.
- 1:10Speaker 1: But walking the talk is something that I am trying
- 1:15Speaker 1: very hard to do, you know, the last five or
- 1:17Speaker 1: six years of pushing back against a lot of these
- 1:20Speaker 1: these establishment narratives that are designed to depress us and
- 1:25Speaker 1: to confine us, and to make us feel worse than
- 1:29Speaker 1: what we are, you know, make us feel like ze bugs.
- 1:34Speaker 1: And I know that it's difficult for perhaps you in
- 1:37Speaker 1: the UK and others, maybe in the northern parts of
- 1:39Speaker 1: Europe or whatever. I have the opportunity to go into
- 1:43Speaker 1: you know, the bush and to the sunshine and all
- 1:44Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. I wonder there obviously are ways
- 1:49Speaker 1: in which people in you know, your rainy, snowy kind
- 1:52Speaker 1: of environment can still find happiness in terms of nature, Arthur.
- 2:04Speaker 4: Well, when it stops really look, I'll be honest with you,
- 2:07Speaker 4: I never objected to rain. I mean I grew up
- 2:10Speaker 4: in Northern Ireland, as you know, and rain's there pretty
- 2:13Speaker 4: much permanently, so you know, going out for walks in
- 2:17Speaker 4: damp really days is I always actually quite enjoy it.
- 2:24Speaker 3: It has its own appeal, it.
- 2:26Speaker 5: Does absolutely And as the as the adage goes, there's
- 2:29Speaker 5: no such thing as the wrong weather, just the wrong kid.
- 2:34Speaker 5: So I think, you know, people who are unable to
- 2:38Speaker 5: see beauty in conditions that aren't clear bright blue skies
- 2:45Speaker 5: are just missing out, especially if they're in the British Isles,
- 2:48Speaker 5: because predominantly those aren't the conditions that we have. And
- 2:51Speaker 5: I think part of part of the joy of being
- 2:55Speaker 5: here if you were to take joy from it, which
- 2:56Speaker 5: of course I think you should not just with that,
- 2:58Speaker 5: but with everything in life. Otherwise, what's the point. Part
- 3:01Speaker 5: of the joy is the is the changeability?
- 3:03Speaker 4: I mean.
- 3:05Speaker 5: The stereotype bri it's talking about the weather. Well, I
- 3:08Speaker 5: mean the reason for that is because you can't unless
- 3:11Speaker 5: you are particularly good at your own sort of personal forecasting,
- 3:15Speaker 5: You just you can't tell what's going to happen next,
- 3:17Speaker 5: and you might easily get four seasons in a day
- 3:20Speaker 5: or four seasons in an hour, and there is I
- 3:23Speaker 5: think there is a pleasure to be derived from that.
- 3:25Speaker 5: But also I mean again it depends what you're surrounded
- 3:28Speaker 5: by and what signs you can see elsewhere, I mean
- 3:31Speaker 5: personally by being in the countryside. I think the signs
- 3:36Speaker 5: that one gets from nature as to what is happening
- 3:39Speaker 5: are just totally and utterly fascinating. And every you know,
- 3:43Speaker 5: every year, something will happen differently or in a different
- 3:46Speaker 5: order or at a slightly different time, and there is
- 3:50Speaker 5: huge joy to be taking from that. And I think
- 3:53Speaker 5: the same absolutely applies in urban you know, most urban areas,
- 3:57Speaker 5: because there are of course parks and trees and bur
- 4:00Speaker 5: and this that and the other, spring visitors and whatnot.
- 4:03Speaker 2: So there's always something. It's just a question of being
- 4:07Speaker 2: able to find it.
- 4:07Speaker 5: And I think that's I think it's really indicative of
- 4:09Speaker 5: the way that lives, people's lives have gone that actually
- 4:13Speaker 5: a lot of this is shut off. There's UK Columns
- 4:16Speaker 5: about to publish an article by Neil Harrison, another absolutely
- 4:19Speaker 5: fantastic article, but it deals with what's called cognitive well
- 4:23Speaker 5: actually what should be called cognitive degeneration, but often isn't
- 4:28Speaker 5: because that's deemed to be a bit sort of much,
- 4:31Speaker 5: a bit heavy handed. But it's this, you know, we've
- 4:33Speaker 5: talked about it quite a lot, the brain being shut
- 4:36Speaker 5: off by all this stuff that just works for you
- 4:39Speaker 5: AI being the most obvious example, but by no means
- 4:42Speaker 5: the only one. I mean, just think the number of
- 4:44Speaker 5: times that people have now foregone trying to memorize a
- 4:48Speaker 5: route somewhere, or not even try and look on a map.
- 4:51Speaker 5: You just get a gizmo to tell you, you know,
- 4:53Speaker 5: our turn left here, turn right here, no idea and
- 4:56Speaker 5: these things. You know, we we can have these conversation
- 5:00Speaker 5: where it's not really taken very seriously, but in actual fact,
- 5:02Speaker 5: there absolutely is an effect to all of this, and
- 5:05Speaker 5: I think this is part of it, just not being
- 5:07Speaker 5: aware of what's around you. And again the reason it's significant,
- 5:13Speaker 5: and I think particularly for our audience, is that it
- 5:16Speaker 5: explains to us in large part why, for example, in
- 5:20Speaker 5: twenty twenty, so many in the population just believed what
- 5:26Speaker 5: they were told because they weren't looking at the signs
- 5:28Speaker 5: around them. So I think there was a really serious
- 5:30Speaker 5: message to be brought out of this.
- 5:34Speaker 1: Just for clarity, because this is a slightly differently timed conversation.
- 5:40Speaker 1: You said an article about to come out. By the
- 5:41Speaker 1: time this comes out, that article will probably have come out,
- 5:45Speaker 1: that will have come out.
- 5:46Speaker 5: Yes, absolutely, that is true. Well done, good point. Yeah, yeah,
- 5:50Speaker 5: But of.
- 5:50Speaker 4: Course, Jahn, what we don't have that I'm deeply envious
- 5:54Speaker 4: off in a certain sense is the skill of wellness
- 6:00Speaker 4: that you have in South Africa and the skill of
- 6:02Speaker 4: the animals that inhabited.
- 6:05Speaker 1: Look, I was obviously being a bit facetious, but Charles,
- 6:09Speaker 1: you were saying that. Well, you were making the point
- 6:12Speaker 1: about adapting to what you have. For example, in the US,
- 6:15Speaker 1: I was reading a statistic. If it's true not, I
- 6:19Speaker 1: don't know, but let's just assume that it is right
- 6:21Speaker 1: around twenty five or twenty four percent of all American
- 6:25Speaker 1: women on antidepressants or on some form of mental stability medication,
- 6:31Speaker 1: and I think round to ten to eleven percent of
- 6:33Speaker 1: American men. Now, the US has a lot of sun
- 6:38Speaker 1: generally speaking, this is obviously, in my view, I think
- 6:45Speaker 1: a top down attempt to also suppress happiness and enjoy
- 6:50Speaker 1: because I think most of those prescriptions are completely unnecessary.
- 6:57Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, as to the rest of the statistics,
- 7:00Speaker 5: I wouldn't have a clue, But let's just say for
- 7:02Speaker 5: the sake of argument, that they are near enough to
- 7:04Speaker 5: the mark. I mean, I think the impression that I've
- 7:08Speaker 5: always had is that the American population is medicated beyond
- 7:13Speaker 5: any other on the face of the earth. I think
- 7:16Speaker 5: that's the case, And actually I can't believe these days
- 7:19Speaker 5: that the United Kingdom population is too far behind.
- 7:22Speaker 2: So I think it plays into both things.
- 7:24Speaker 5: I mean, like any of these sorts of ranges of
- 7:28Speaker 5: products that we shouldn't really be going anywhere near they are.
- 7:34Speaker 5: Pharmaceuticals are perfect, of course, because for every one, you
- 7:38Speaker 5: can probably guarantee that you're going to be able to
- 7:41Speaker 5: sell another two or three, because the side effects or whatever,
- 7:45Speaker 5: you know, whatever conditions result from the taking of the
- 7:48Speaker 5: first one must obviously be balanced out by the next
- 7:52Speaker 5: ones and so on forever and ever. But yes, I mean,
- 7:55Speaker 5: I don't think it can be any coincidence that as
- 7:57Speaker 5: part of that, you know, you're absolutely tapping into people's
- 8:03Speaker 5: very sort of core sensitivities and sensibilities and shutting them
- 8:07Speaker 5: downs first of all, so they never realized that the
- 8:09Speaker 5: drug that they're taking they shouldn't be taking. But yes,
- 8:11Speaker 5: also so that all those things are true, and that
- 8:15Speaker 5: they probably don't derive the joys from life that they should,
- 8:19Speaker 5: which again I think makes them makes people much more
- 8:23Speaker 5: susceptible to all the sorts of narratives that are used
- 8:27Speaker 5: primarily to control people. And fear, of course is the
- 8:31Speaker 5: is the greatest, and it's very easy to put fear
- 8:34Speaker 5: into somebody if they're not going to properly appraise what
- 8:37Speaker 5: it is that you're saying and consider its own merits
- 8:40Speaker 5: and above all think is that true. So yes, I
- 8:44Speaker 5: mean that's a terrifying statistic. Sorry, Mike No.
- 8:47Speaker 4: I was just going to say, of course, it's not
- 8:49Speaker 4: just the human population which is the most medicated on
- 8:52Speaker 4: the planet. That's also the farm actual population as well.
- 8:56Speaker 4: And of course that's where the problem probably starts, Charles,
- 8:58Speaker 4: because people are conssuming products that are medicated, not just
- 9:03Speaker 4: animal products are there, but that are medicated.
- 9:05Speaker 3: To the degree that they are, then.
- 9:07Speaker 4: They probably have a greater need for, or at least
- 9:10Speaker 4: they perceive that they have a greater need for the
- 9:12Speaker 4: pharmaceutical product. And it's it's a massive cartel, perhaps Goscha
- 9:18Speaker 4: in fact.
- 9:19Speaker 1: Just to feed into what you're saying. Varmit Angus, who
- 9:21Speaker 1: has often made this point, This says, around ninety percent
- 9:25Speaker 1: of all antibiotics and vaccines go to agriculture and only
- 9:30Speaker 1: ten percent go to humans.
- 9:31Speaker 3: Think about that, Mike, Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's.
- 9:39Speaker 2: Yes.
- 9:40Speaker 5: If actually was just just on that given the sort
- 9:43Speaker 5: of the ratio of people to animals. Again, and not
- 9:49Speaker 5: sorry because having mentioned him, his other work is springing
- 9:52Speaker 5: into my head. But another excellent article of Neil Harrison's
- 9:57Speaker 5: was about the just the amazing con that's pulled on
- 10:01Speaker 5: the climate change front with farming being you know, the
- 10:04Speaker 5: demon because via the breeding and keeping of live stock,
- 10:12Speaker 5: we're we're emitting all this stuff, all these warming gases
- 10:15Speaker 5: into the environment. And of course the point he makes
- 10:18Speaker 5: is that, well, we're only able to do that because
- 10:22Speaker 5: we've basically cleared away all the natural herds of animals
- 10:26Speaker 5: that existed in such large numbers. So I mean, you know,
- 10:28Speaker 5: let's think of your trip to the Krueger. Now, yeah,
- 10:30Speaker 5: you will see, one hopes, a great array and great
- 10:35Speaker 5: quantities of wildlife, but nothing like there would have been
- 10:38Speaker 5: one hundred years ago, and nothing like that it would
- 10:40Speaker 5: have been two hundred years ago and so that, but
- 10:45Speaker 5: go back far enough and the planes, you know, what
- 10:48Speaker 5: we'd referred to as planes game now, would have been
- 10:52Speaker 5: absolutely it would have dwarfed farming, farm, livestock in all likelihood.
- 10:59Speaker 5: So therefore, how is it that we're saying that that
- 11:02Speaker 5: the whatever gas is coming out of these ones are
- 11:04Speaker 5: completely different from you know, all the other ruminants that
- 11:07Speaker 5: would have existed. I mean, anyway, the whole thing is
- 11:09Speaker 5: just it is just just nuts. But of course, like
- 11:13Speaker 5: you say, with the very many ways in which people
- 11:16Speaker 5: are sedated, either by chemical inducement or the sort of
- 11:24Speaker 5: visual or audio cues, that it's it's easy to see
- 11:28Speaker 5: how we've ended up in this predicament.
- 11:30Speaker 1: Okay, So I pulled up something while you were talking.
- 11:32Speaker 1: Just you were alluding to antidepressants and depression or whatever
- 11:36Speaker 1: in the UK. So this is data from the BMJ
- 11:39Speaker 1: and Cambridge. So it says, y'ah. Whilst the UK shows
- 11:42Speaker 1: approximately eleven percent of women on antidepressants based on twenty
- 11:46Speaker 1: eighteen data, the US reports around twenty four to twenty
- 11:48Speaker 1: five percent of American women are currently being treated for
- 11:51Speaker 1: antidepression or there's an over prescription going on here. So
- 11:58Speaker 1: the UK's overall prescription rate of nearly twenty percent of
- 12:01Speaker 1: adults represents one of the highest antidepressant usage rates in
- 12:04Speaker 1: the world.
- 12:07Speaker 4: So they're not just prescribing antidepressants for depression. They're also
- 12:11Speaker 4: just prescribing antidepressants for things like irritable ball syndrome, which
- 12:15Speaker 4: is like a casual term which means we don't know
- 12:18Speaker 4: what the issue is. But let's say one of your
- 12:20Speaker 4: symptoms of IBS is stomach cramps. They have discovered that
- 12:26Speaker 4: antidepressants reduce the crampiness of stomach cramps, so they're starting
- 12:32Speaker 4: to prescribe those for that as well. So there's people
- 12:35Speaker 4: on this type of medication that aren't, you know, clinically
- 12:40Speaker 4: or otherwise depressed.
- 12:44Speaker 1: But this brings up yet again the importance of understanding
- 12:49Speaker 1: how the pharmaceutical industry is keeping people sick.
- 12:55Speaker 4: Well, that's that's that's its business model. It can't exist
- 12:59Speaker 4: without sick people, yea, and all that, right, But you are, of.
- 13:06Speaker 1: Course, yeah, but it has it has repercussions. It's not
- 13:10Speaker 1: just like that, for example. So in other words, the
- 13:12Speaker 1: reason why I was looking up these daughter points is
- 13:14Speaker 1: because I was having a discussion with somebody saying, but
- 13:17Speaker 1: why would you want to bring up kids now in
- 13:18Speaker 1: this in this world? You know, look look at what's
- 13:22Speaker 1: going on in Run and these all these wars and
- 13:24Speaker 1: and with COVID and all this. I mean, it's just
- 13:27Speaker 1: it's just it's the end times, you know. And now
- 13:30Speaker 1: we see that Trump is being prayed for, and now
- 13:33Speaker 1: they've turned this whole thing into a religious war, and
- 13:36Speaker 1: there's so much fear mongering that it's so difficult to
- 13:39Speaker 1: have a discussion with somebody saying, well, actually having a
- 13:42Speaker 1: family is still a win.
- 13:46Speaker 4: Not only that, you know, it's not it's not just
- 13:50Speaker 4: I mean, part of the problem here, I think isn't
- 13:54Speaker 4: the fact that kids are being brought into a terrible world.
- 13:57Speaker 4: It's it's the fact that kids are being brought into
- 14:00Speaker 4: terrible world and then kind of just.
- 14:01Speaker 3: Left to it.
- 14:03Speaker 4: So, you know, the the the passive parenting that goes
- 14:08Speaker 4: on these days is a big part of the problem.
- 14:12Speaker 4: And of course, if we want, if we want a
- 14:14Speaker 4: better world for the next generation, we've got to bring
- 14:16Speaker 4: up kids that actually have an understanding of what that
- 14:19Speaker 4: better world might look like. And we can't do that
- 14:22Speaker 4: if from the age of eighteen months, we shove an
- 14:25Speaker 4: iPad in their hands and say have at it.
- 14:28Speaker 3: That is how it works. And so you know, it's this.
- 14:33Speaker 4: Unfortunately because you know, we're sort of coming back to
- 14:36Speaker 4: the same type of conversation we've had before. But this
- 14:38Speaker 4: comes down to the choices that we make personally, not
- 14:42Speaker 4: even not just about whether we have children, but how
- 14:45Speaker 4: we're then going to bring those children up. And you know,
- 14:48Speaker 4: you know, if if the answer to that is well, yeah,
- 14:52Speaker 4: internet and mainstream school is a solution, then of course
- 14:56Speaker 4: that's no solution at all.
- 14:58Speaker 3: Probably better not to have them. But if if.
- 15:00Speaker 4: The if the the attitude of the parent is well,
- 15:04Speaker 4: you know, there is value in having children. There's value
- 15:08Speaker 4: that they they will absolutely have a great life if
- 15:10Speaker 4: there if they have the right you know, views of
- 15:14Speaker 4: the world as they're growing up, and then you know,
- 15:17Speaker 4: I think that's uh, absolutely still a legitimate thing to do,
- 15:22Speaker 4: because there's still an opportunity for for you know, making
- 15:26Speaker 4: a difference.
- 15:28Speaker 1: I mean, Charles, you you live out on the countryside,
- 15:30Speaker 1: I mean if you if you just switch off from
- 15:33Speaker 1: social media and you go outside with your kids when
- 15:36Speaker 1: the sun is shining, it's still it's still a good time.
- 15:41Speaker 2: Yeah, it's always a good time.
- 15:44Speaker 5: I mean, I think I look at it the other way, right,
- 15:46Speaker 5: My my default position is absolutely to be switched off
- 15:52Speaker 5: from social media. So it's a it's a it's a
- 15:55Speaker 5: conscious decision too to look at it. And I think
- 16:00Speaker 5: that it's something that I have found very noticeable ever
- 16:03Speaker 5: since the advent of email, which, you know, being old
- 16:08Speaker 5: enough to remember what it was like when stuff just
- 16:11Speaker 5: came in the post is a great privilege because my
- 16:15Speaker 5: thinking on it is that when the post physical post arrives,
- 16:20Speaker 5: it is basically up to you to decide when you're
- 16:25Speaker 5: going to open that and when you're going to deal
- 16:26Speaker 5: with it. But what it I mean, I think sort
- 16:30Speaker 5: of from memory. What it helped to do was to
- 16:34Speaker 5: create a conscious process by which you would you'd open
- 16:38Speaker 5: your posts and you'd respond to whatever it is that
- 16:41Speaker 5: needed dealing with, right then you'd put other stuff into
- 16:43Speaker 5: a separate thing, you know, sort of pending for later
- 16:46Speaker 5: or whatever it is. Email, if not immediately, certainly fairly
- 16:51Speaker 5: quickly utterly changed that. I mean, first of all, because
- 16:56Speaker 5: things that should really have been telephone calls turned into emails,
- 16:59Speaker 5: which was one of the greatest robbings of our time ever,
- 17:03Speaker 5: but actually then it was stuff that should have really
- 17:07Speaker 5: come in a letter in a paper letter was then
- 17:09Speaker 5: sent by email. And the problem is that now we
- 17:12Speaker 5: tend to have this constant barrage where you are in
- 17:17Speaker 5: the middle of doing one thing and then something pings
- 17:20Speaker 5: or something rings or whatever it is, and you get
- 17:22Speaker 5: completely disrupted from whatever from what that is. And of
- 17:25Speaker 5: course because everything is now last minute, because everyone's lost
- 17:28Speaker 5: the ability to plan and think ahead, then there's a
- 17:33Speaker 5: sort of battle of priorities. And all of this is
- 17:37Speaker 5: terribly terribly confusing, but it does mean that there is
- 17:41Speaker 5: If you don't watch it, you are totally a slave
- 17:45Speaker 5: to all of that. And so to go back to
- 17:48Speaker 5: your question, I try very consciously to do it the
- 17:52Speaker 5: other way around, which is that I will be disciplined
- 17:56Speaker 5: about when I do look at this or when I
- 17:59Speaker 5: do check that, in order that you actually to make
- 18:02Speaker 5: sure that your brain is in the right place. Is
- 18:05Speaker 5: it because you're actually much more efficient and much more
- 18:07Speaker 5: effective when you're mentally prepared for whatever it is you're
- 18:10Speaker 5: going to do, whereas if you're if you're in the
- 18:12Speaker 5: middle of one thing and you do get a ping
- 18:15Speaker 5: or whatever, and you you divert to the thing that's
- 18:19Speaker 5: disrupted you. In my opinion, you're not going to deal
- 18:23Speaker 5: with it nearly as effectively as if you go through
- 18:26Speaker 5: you know, essentially there's a methodology that sets out right,
- 18:31Speaker 5: I will deal with this and then I will deal
- 18:33Speaker 5: with that. I'm not talking about being totally rigid and unflexible,
- 18:35Speaker 5: of course I'm not. But but but I would say
- 18:39Speaker 5: that's the that's the way to do it. And so yes,
- 18:41Speaker 5: back to your if you are, you know, in the countryside, whatever,
- 18:46Speaker 5: you absolutely what, no matter the circumstances, you're able to
- 18:51Speaker 5: enjoy and appreciate and cryptically to observe and notice things
- 18:57Speaker 5: that are there, and that I think is what people
- 19:00Speaker 5: have lost. I remember I may have said this before
- 19:04Speaker 5: on the Banter Session, but one anecdote that encapsulates this
- 19:10Speaker 5: for me was taking a journey into London a couple
- 19:12Speaker 5: of years ago, and I was on a bus and
- 19:15Speaker 5: obviously you're high up, so you can you get a
- 19:17Speaker 5: very good view of all the people and the cars
- 19:19Speaker 5: and everything sort of downe blue and we sat at
- 19:23Speaker 5: we were sitting at traffic lights quite near getting into
- 19:26Speaker 5: the coach station, and there was a girl waiting at
- 19:30Speaker 5: a sort of crossing point where there was a traffic
- 19:33Speaker 5: light and there was a green You know, you have
- 19:37Speaker 5: to wait for the man to go green to be
- 19:38Speaker 5: able to cross. Just say, for people who don't know
- 19:42Speaker 5: the United Kingdom, there's no issue with crossing a road here,
- 19:46Speaker 5: either away from a crossing point or if the man
- 19:49Speaker 5: is not the right color. It's just that when you
- 19:51Speaker 5: see the green man, you know that the traffic lights
- 19:54Speaker 5: has stopped the traffic, so here you hopefully I'm not
- 19:57Speaker 5: going to get squashed anyway. I I stilldn't watch this girl,
- 20:01Speaker 5: and we were there for absolutely age of me classics
- 20:04Speaker 5: sort of London hold up the traffic thing, you know,
- 20:06Speaker 5: the red lights on perhaps anyway, she waited and waited
- 20:09Speaker 5: and waited and waited, and there was only one possible
- 20:13Speaker 5: way that any traffic could have been coming from really
- 20:16Speaker 5: really good visibility.
- 20:17Speaker 2: But she didn't even look.
- 20:20Speaker 5: She didn't think, Okay, how much longer am I going
- 20:24Speaker 5: to have to stand here before that little man turns
- 20:26Speaker 5: from being red to green? Am I going to do
- 20:29Speaker 5: anything at all to change the outcome here? And the answer,
- 20:34Speaker 5: to my astonishment was no. She just looked and looked
- 20:39Speaker 5: at the at the little red man and waited for
- 20:42Speaker 5: it to go green. In all that time, not a
- 20:44Speaker 5: single vehicle past her. So I know it sounds stupid,
- 20:49Speaker 5: and you know, I'm sure she's lovely and all that fine,
- 20:53Speaker 5: but one does wonder how the rest of her life
- 20:57Speaker 5: will turn out if she is prepared to to, you know,
- 21:03Speaker 5: sort of scrutinize a situation to such a pathetic degree.
- 21:07Speaker 5: But that that little anecdote, sort of silly as it
- 21:11Speaker 5: may seem, I think speaks volumes about the society that
- 21:16Speaker 5: we live in now and how we have been conditioned
- 21:18Speaker 5: by all these things, and how you know, if until
- 21:21Speaker 5: the computer says do this, you just don't do it.
- 21:25Speaker 2: I mean that we're talking pretty desperate.
- 21:27Speaker 1: Sorry. Sorry, Yeah, you mentioned receiving a Latin and male
- 21:33Speaker 1: and it made me realize also that that's something that's
- 21:37Speaker 1: not going to be in the future. So in our street,
- 21:40Speaker 1: this is a guy who imported one of those red
- 21:45Speaker 1: British post boxes. Now he literally imported from the UK.
- 21:47Speaker 1: It it apparently is an old red those round I
- 21:51Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know what you call him, but
- 21:52Speaker 1: it's you know what I'm talking about. It's the postbox, okay,
- 21:55Speaker 1: which belonged to a certain post office in the UK
- 21:58Speaker 1: that shut down. I don't know the full history. He's
- 22:00Speaker 1: got a lot of money. He decided he wanted that
- 22:02Speaker 1: exact post box, and so he imported it and he
- 22:05Speaker 1: installed it in the front of his house here in
- 22:08Speaker 1: our street, just as a as an esthetic. And I
- 22:13Speaker 1: remember as a kid watching Postman Pat. Now my kids
- 22:18Speaker 1: will probably watch Postman Pat too, but they'll have no
- 22:21Speaker 1: idea what it means, because letters will be a thing
- 22:24Speaker 1: of the past very soon. There really mostly are, and
- 22:31Speaker 1: there isn't really a way to stop that. But it's
- 22:33Speaker 1: kind of sad.
- 22:35Speaker 5: I think it's extremely sad, and I think I felt
- 22:39Speaker 5: like we talked about this before. I mean, my my
- 22:41Speaker 5: hope actually is that somebody will come from this sort
- 22:46Speaker 5: of a position and then get a grip of it
- 22:49Speaker 5: and create a service that is viable and that people
- 22:53Speaker 5: will get back into it, because I think, I I,
- 22:55Speaker 5: you know, we see this with a lot of other things.
- 22:59Speaker 5: I mean, it started. I'm sorry, no, it didn't start.
- 23:01Speaker 5: But if you think some years ago, there was a
- 23:05Speaker 5: there was a massive increase in interest in vinyl records.
- 23:09Speaker 5: You know, people wanted to have records. They were I've.
- 23:12Speaker 1: Got a whole bunch of Yeah.
- 23:13Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 23:14Speaker 5: I mean I've I've always had records and never never
- 23:16Speaker 5: got rid of any and they are absolutely wonderful.
- 23:18Speaker 2: There's no substitute.
- 23:19Speaker 5: But I think people had just got bored of the
- 23:23Speaker 5: just everything not really physically existing, you know, it's just
- 23:26Speaker 5: all this digital stuff where you don't you never get
- 23:27Speaker 5: to hold that, you never get to have it. So
- 23:28Speaker 5: I think we're seeing that we're seeing a similar movement
- 23:31Speaker 5: with with printed material, which is exactly why we're going well,
- 23:36Speaker 5: one of the strong reasons we're going back into print
- 23:39Speaker 5: with our magazine that's coming out shortly and all of that.
- 23:42Speaker 5: And I see it as a as an extension of that.
- 23:45Speaker 5: You know, you can't well, you're not gonna you're not
- 23:48Speaker 5: going to keep an email for posterity in the same
- 23:51Speaker 5: way a frame an email. You're not going to sort
- 23:54Speaker 5: of take care over how you respond to it. It's
- 23:56Speaker 5: just it is not the same. I think people are
- 23:58Speaker 5: really really missing out and and I very much hope
- 24:02Speaker 5: that as part of the emergence from this extraordinary state
- 24:07Speaker 5: that we've entered into, that this is one of the
- 24:10Speaker 5: things that pulls us back out of it. Actually, funnily enough,
- 24:13Speaker 5: oddly just on the desk in front of me, because
- 24:15Speaker 5: it wasn't stamped properly. I'm just going to hold up
- 24:17Speaker 5: a picture that you will recognize.
- 24:21Speaker 2: Look at that.
- 24:22Speaker 5: So that's the that's before it was moved or rebuilt.
- 24:26Speaker 5: That's the Eddy Stone Lighthouse. I'm just showing the what
- 24:29Speaker 5: is now Smeaton's Tower on the hoe in Plymouth, which
- 24:32Speaker 5: to all UK column viewers of course is iconic and
- 24:35Speaker 5: instantly familiar.
- 24:36Speaker 2: But you know that's the other parts of it.
- 24:38Speaker 5: I mean, stamps are so beautiful, there's so and again
- 24:41Speaker 5: this is like lost skills. If you look at people's letters,
- 24:45Speaker 5: particularly say letters sort of from the trenches or this
- 24:48Speaker 5: something that they always annotated with little sketches, and people
- 24:52Speaker 5: would sort of decorate the the fronts of their letters
- 24:55Speaker 5: with little sort of pen and ink drawings and all
- 24:57Speaker 5: that kind of thing. I mean, we are we are
- 25:00Speaker 5: just absolutely trashing our whole sort of skill base by
- 25:04Speaker 5: not doing any of these things. And I think that's
- 25:06Speaker 5: the other for me, that's the other really significant part
- 25:08Speaker 5: of it, because what is it that you do. You know,
- 25:10Speaker 5: with a letter, you're having to think onto the paper
- 25:13Speaker 5: with a pen or pencil, and that's that Again, there's
- 25:17Speaker 5: so many sort of cognitive and motor skills that are
- 25:20Speaker 5: being deployed in doing that, and we're just not We're
- 25:24Speaker 5: not entering into that zone anymore if we don't do it.
- 25:27Speaker 1: Can you still write in cursive?
- 25:30Speaker 4: I can't. I have to admit it is a regret.
- 25:34Speaker 4: But I writing my writing used to be, you know,
- 25:39Speaker 4: absolutely clear. I can barely write anymore. It is very,
- 25:43Speaker 4: very sad.
- 25:44Speaker 2: Okay, that is interesting.
- 25:46Speaker 4: I know.
- 25:46Speaker 5: I write everything down, as Mike will testify. And yeah,
- 25:52Speaker 5: I mean, Charles.
- 25:55Speaker 3: You the besttion of hope. Well, it's true. It's true.
- 26:00Speaker 3: Charles is the bastie.
- 26:01Speaker 4: And I hope you said earlier about Charles's kids going
- 26:06Speaker 4: out in the sunshine. How about that Charles kids Gouiet
- 26:09Speaker 4: no matter what's going on, and you know that they
- 26:12Speaker 4: are absolutely the some of the most how do I
- 26:19Speaker 4: put this? Absolutely their attitudes to life are absolutely right
- 26:25Speaker 4: as far as I can see.
- 26:28Speaker 5: Well, yeah, I mean I think the thing is it's
- 26:33Speaker 5: not this is not well, it is bloody minded because
- 26:36Speaker 5: this is done in the face of considerable pressure to
- 26:38Speaker 5: do otherwise. But I certainly don't adopt a particular method
- 26:42Speaker 5: of living life through simple bloody mindedness. I do it
- 26:46Speaker 5: because to me it delivers the greatest return I derive
- 26:52Speaker 5: or other. I know exactly what I derive pleasure from,
- 26:55Speaker 5: and it is all the things that we have just
- 26:57Speaker 5: been talking about. So yes, I will take in normal
- 27:00Speaker 5: pleasure in whatever the weather throws at me. And in
- 27:03Speaker 5: actual fact that the worse it gets, the more sort
- 27:07Speaker 5: of perverse enjoyment one can even take from. I mean,
- 27:09Speaker 5: there's always there's always something you can take from a situation.
- 27:14Speaker 5: So yes, And and you know, whether it be sketching
- 27:19Speaker 5: or writing or any of those things, I think it's
- 27:21Speaker 5: it's just it's because it's it's all still real and
- 27:25Speaker 5: and that that will never change, so you know, and
- 27:29Speaker 5: I think what's tragic is that younger generations, so many people,
- 27:34Speaker 5: even if my impier.
- 27:34Speaker 2: Group, actually have just lost sight of this.
- 27:36Speaker 5: So I think going back to what I was saying
- 27:38Speaker 5: about the advent of email and it coming in, and
- 27:40Speaker 5: it's just this, you know, it is the bald frog
- 27:42Speaker 5: where you look up twenty years later and you realize
- 27:45Speaker 5: you've just lost touch with all the sorts of things
- 27:47Speaker 5: that you used to do and that used to be
- 27:49Speaker 5: on top of and the skills you used to have
- 27:51Speaker 5: and I know, I mean, I think for me personally, Yeah,
- 27:54Speaker 5: it's a lot of it's been a conscious choice. A
- 27:56Speaker 5: lot of it's been sort of incidental circumstance, being in
- 27:59Speaker 5: places where I haven't necessarily had access to any of
- 28:01Speaker 5: those sorts of things. But no, I mean, isn't it funny?
- 28:04Speaker 5: And I actually I can still remember talking of Angus Macintosh,
- 28:09Speaker 5: farmer Angus, because I stayed with his family when I
- 28:11Speaker 5: first met Angus back in ninety six, And I can
- 28:13Speaker 5: still remember tapping away on the Macintosh family typewriter whilst
- 28:19Speaker 5: I was staying there to send some letters off.
- 28:21Speaker 2: So there we go.
- 28:22Speaker 5: That's a funny one, isn't it. But yeah, all these joys.
- 28:27Speaker 1: No, well, the thing is, I mean, I know we
- 28:28Speaker 1: are vending, but we actually are touching on I think,
- 28:31Speaker 1: very very pivotal talking points here, because this is how
- 28:35Speaker 1: you can not be defeated. I went for a walk
- 28:38Speaker 1: earlier before this recording with my son. I mean, it's
- 28:42Speaker 1: very hot yet it's currently thirty degrees and we stay
- 28:45Speaker 1: on a farm and I took him to the chickens
- 28:48Speaker 1: and it was just beautifully quiet. And until I've got
- 28:54Speaker 1: a WhatsApp from you Charles saying see you in a
- 28:56Speaker 1: few minutes.
- 29:00Speaker 2: Just use of social media.
- 29:01Speaker 1: Yeah, but that there, it's that sense of beauty and
- 29:08Speaker 1: serenity that still for me gives a lot of hope.
- 29:12Speaker 1: I don't know if it's the same in Stockholm or
- 29:14Speaker 1: in New York or whatever, but but for me, it's
- 29:18Speaker 1: still it still matters. And that's also why I love
- 29:20Speaker 1: living here, despite the fact that I have a completely
- 29:24Speaker 1: broken infrastructure, but I have a sense of freedom in
- 29:28Speaker 1: that broken infrastructure that makes sense.
- 29:31Speaker 2: I think it does.
- 29:32Speaker 5: I was already thinking about this or the things that
- 29:37Speaker 5: pertain to this coming back from the trip that we
- 29:41Speaker 5: made to China last last month, and.
- 29:47Speaker 2: There will be other.
- 29:48Speaker 5: Elements to it, but one thing that really struck me
- 29:51Speaker 5: in the airport coming back into Heathrow was an almost
- 29:56Speaker 5: tangible sense of tension that the word that came to
- 30:01Speaker 5: mind and that I feel is absolutely absent in so
- 30:06Speaker 5: many other countries, and it's.
- 30:10Speaker 2: A little bit hard to describe.
- 30:11Speaker 5: You just just looking around people's faces that he Throw airport,
- 30:14Speaker 5: there's just a sense of sort of anxiety or that
- 30:18Speaker 5: they've you know, people have got to get to this
- 30:20Speaker 5: place in slightly more of a hurry. Than they had to.
- 30:23Speaker 5: In say that I've flown back from Hong Kong. I
- 30:25Speaker 5: mean walking to the gate in Hong Kong, I mean
- 30:28Speaker 5: you pretty much need to put your your trainers and
- 30:31Speaker 5: running shorts on. I mean they are huge distances, and
- 30:35Speaker 5: yet coming back into he throw one of those poky
- 30:38Speaker 5: little terminals. There's just that sense that people are not
- 30:42Speaker 5: They're not calm, They're not they're not relaxed. They're not
- 30:45Speaker 5: just going about their business, confident in the knowledge that
- 30:49Speaker 5: all will be well and.
- 30:50Speaker 2: They'll get it done.
- 30:51Speaker 5: It's it's it's hard to describe, and I think it's
- 30:54Speaker 5: hard to even identify unless you're right there amongst in
- 30:59Speaker 5: really really paying attention to it.
- 31:01Speaker 2: But it is.
- 31:02Speaker 5: It is odd, and I cannot quite put my finger
- 31:06Speaker 5: on why exactly that is and how it does seem
- 31:09Speaker 5: to affect quite so many people.
- 31:10Speaker 1: But you see it, I can relate. You see it
- 31:12Speaker 1: everywhere I can relate to. I mean, just over the weekend,
- 31:16Speaker 1: you know, we were were friends and you know, just
- 31:18Speaker 1: out of nowhere, one friend says to me, sure the
- 31:21Speaker 1: thing that's going on you run? You know, it makes
- 31:24Speaker 1: me nervous, And immediately there's a sense of anxiety mm,
- 31:28Speaker 1: and then the conversation very quickly goes dark as a result,
- 31:34Speaker 1: and there's always something and this is also part of
- 31:38Speaker 1: the information overload.
- 31:41Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 31:41Speaker 1: Although although although Mike, you did say a week or
- 31:45Speaker 1: two ago that you don't think that we have an
- 31:47Speaker 1: information overload, or at least let me rephrase that, you
- 31:50Speaker 1: were saying that we are able to process.
- 31:53Speaker 3: It was no.
- 32:04Speaker 5: No.
- 32:05Speaker 4: Look, just coming back to Charles's earlier point, he made
- 32:09Speaker 4: the point that when he uses social media, it's a
- 32:12Speaker 4: conscious decision. I think this is this is probably the
- 32:16Speaker 4: one of the most important things to consider.
- 32:20Speaker 2: You know.
- 32:21Speaker 4: If I use social media for professional reasons, I do
- 32:26Speaker 4: not use it for entertainment. Most people use social media
- 32:29Speaker 4: for entertainment and they sit and they do them scroll. No,
- 32:35Speaker 4: my view is go and do something less boring instead.
- 32:41Speaker 4: Frankly so so for me, I've started fixing watches and
- 32:46Speaker 4: I'm slowly starting to because i haven't been I haven't been. Yeah,
- 32:52Speaker 4: i haven't been playing guitar for a very long time
- 32:55Speaker 4: because I've got this sort of tandonized thing. But I've
- 32:57Speaker 4: been just gently starting to spend a little bit of time,
- 33:01Speaker 4: slowly trying to get back into that again. But because
- 33:05Speaker 4: because you've got to find a way to just you know,
- 33:08Speaker 4: do something which is mind expanding rather than mind contracting
- 33:12Speaker 4: mind numbing, and something that actually inspires rather than instills
- 33:18Speaker 4: fear and these kinds of things. Now, you know, frankly,
- 33:21Speaker 4: the situation in Iran should be giving us concern, but
- 33:26Speaker 4: we should It's about finding a balance. You know, if
- 33:30Speaker 4: we're concerned about something, we should be trying to do
- 33:32Speaker 4: something about the thing that we're concerned about. But in
- 33:35Speaker 4: terms of our our life balance, this this is you know,
- 33:39Speaker 4: we've got we cannot fight a fight if we are
- 33:43Speaker 4: completely mentally screwed up. So we've got to find a
- 33:47Speaker 4: way to get a balance in life and to you know,
- 33:51Speaker 4: enjoy life at the same time. And so you know,
- 33:54Speaker 4: finding ways to and I'll tell you, you know, repairing
- 33:58Speaker 4: watches is totally stressful. It's way because because you're dealing
- 34:04Speaker 4: with very tiny parts, and you're dealing with tweezers and
- 34:07Speaker 4: they tend to ping off into towards the moon and
- 34:10Speaker 4: you never see them again, and you know, so it
- 34:13Speaker 4: has its challenges, but it's it's also it's also something
- 34:16Speaker 4: where you've got to be you've got to have absent
- 34:18Speaker 4: self control if.
- 34:19Speaker 3: Any any any shake.
- 34:21Speaker 4: In your hand, you're just got to just set it
- 34:23Speaker 4: aside and come back to the literally you've got to
- 34:24Speaker 4: It's it's something which I find, you know, in its
- 34:27Speaker 4: own way, massively challenging and massively rewarding that.
- 34:32Speaker 2: It is totally astonishing.
- 34:35Speaker 1: Let's just quickly, let's just stay on this. This is
- 34:37Speaker 1: an incredible hobby.
- 34:41Speaker 5: I've seen I've seen well no, no, I mean just
- 34:43Speaker 5: just to say I've I have seen some of the
- 34:46Speaker 5: fruits of Mike's labors and indeed some of the some
- 34:50Speaker 5: footage of what he has taken apart, and I mean
- 34:54Speaker 5: the mind boggles, it really does, frankly, to imagine how
- 34:58Speaker 5: on earth one would go putting that back to the
- 35:00Speaker 5: character seeing a video. Yeah it is remarkable. Okay, well
- 35:05Speaker 5: well I will do.
- 35:06Speaker 4: But but but i'd all something as remarkable as it
- 35:09Speaker 4: is to take these things apart and put them back
- 35:11Speaker 4: together again. Where the mind really boggles for me, Bearing
- 35:15Speaker 4: in mind that you know some of these things are
- 35:18Speaker 4: two hundred years old, some of them are fifty years old.
- 35:21Speaker 4: You know what boggles the mind for me is how
- 35:23Speaker 4: how these parts were made in the first place.
- 35:26Speaker 3: Because I just can't get my head round.
- 35:28Speaker 4: How pre you know, a pre modern Indus industry, people
- 35:33Speaker 4: were able to make that stuff. And it absolutely demonstrates
- 35:38Speaker 4: the skills that humanity has lost because because there's nobody,
- 35:43Speaker 4: very very few people on this on this planet that
- 35:46Speaker 4: actually would be able to take something which is you know,
- 35:50Speaker 4: the size of it to produce a screw that's the size.
- 35:53Speaker 3: Of a grain of sugar.
- 35:54Speaker 4: I mean, it's just incredible that that was that was
- 35:56Speaker 4: made in the nineteen hundreds, middle middle of the of
- 36:01Speaker 4: the or sorry, the eighteen hundreds, middle of the nineteenth century.
- 36:04Speaker 4: It's it's just amazing.
- 36:07Speaker 1: That is the definition of beauty.
- 36:12Speaker 3: Yes, and it is. It's it's.
- 36:14Speaker 4: It is something which which you know, the some some
- 36:19Speaker 4: of the complications that are available in you know, whether
- 36:22Speaker 4: it's moon phase or whatever it is, that are available
- 36:24Speaker 4: in old time pieces. And somebody has worked out how
- 36:28Speaker 4: to make a clockwork device show the phases of the
- 36:32Speaker 4: moon at the right on the right days, or even
- 36:34Speaker 4: just a calendar with the date on the with the
- 36:36Speaker 4: date on the day. It's it is and there's you know,
- 36:40Speaker 4: there are versions of most cheaper watches are less expensive watches.
- 36:46Speaker 3: You have to obviously, at the end of the month.
- 36:48Speaker 3: If the month is.
- 36:49Speaker 4: Only thirty days or twenty nine days or twenty eight days,
- 36:51Speaker 4: you've got to manually move it forward. But there's some
- 36:55Speaker 4: people have solved the problem of perpetual calendar and just
- 36:59Speaker 4: just to do that mechanically is just amazing to me
- 37:02Speaker 4: that somebody has managed to solve that problem, because you know,
- 37:06Speaker 4: I wouldn't even know where to start with the with
- 37:09Speaker 4: the mechanics of that, it's just amusing.
- 37:12Speaker 1: When you said you were fixing watches, almost made a
- 37:15Speaker 1: joke about Cassio.
- 37:19Speaker 3: Those digital watches.
- 37:20Speaker 1: Basically you're changing the batteries. But yeah, up to a point,
- 37:26Speaker 1: that's true, Yes, because that's what you think now when
- 37:30Speaker 1: you think of a watch, you think of a digital watch.
- 37:34Speaker 1: Funny enough, I don't wear a watch, but because I
- 37:37Speaker 1: don't like the idea of of just having something on
- 37:40Speaker 1: my arm. It just gets in the way. But I
- 37:43Speaker 1: mean I can see the absolute beauty in watches, and
- 37:46Speaker 1: particularly the old fashioned watches. Yeah, the poetry, you know,
- 37:54Speaker 1: the poetry behind the artistry of it.
- 37:58Speaker 4: Yeah, Like I just love watching I watched the back
- 38:03Speaker 4: more than I watched the front, not looking at them
- 38:07Speaker 4: from the from the time point of view, just just
- 38:10Speaker 4: just watching watching a watch movement work is just amazing.
- 38:14Speaker 1: You mentioned you playing the tolls. I mean that's also beautiful.
- 38:17Speaker 1: By the way, I think playing music or musical instrument
- 38:20Speaker 1: is such a great way to just to break out
- 38:23Speaker 1: of everything. Do you play ChIL.
- 38:27Speaker 5: I for years have wanted to play the bagpipe, so
- 38:30Speaker 5: I'm I'm making it.
- 38:35Speaker 2: Okay, nobody wants to play.
- 38:39Speaker 5: I don't know why that's any funnier than anything else,
- 38:41Speaker 5: but well.
- 38:43Speaker 3: It is, it is.
- 38:43Speaker 4: But but it has to be said that Charles does
- 38:45Speaker 4: live somewhere where he could play the bagpipes get away
- 38:49Speaker 4: with it.
- 38:50Speaker 5: Yeah, so yes, that's my that's my learning curve at
- 38:55Speaker 5: the moment, which is which is terrific.
- 38:56Speaker 2: There isn't There is no sound like it.
- 38:59Speaker 1: No, I mean sure, I agree with you, but it's
- 39:01Speaker 1: kind of like playing the drums. It's more for you
- 39:04Speaker 1: than anybody else.
- 39:07Speaker 2: I would disagree with you.
- 39:09Speaker 5: And also, bagpipes are rather easier to carry around than
- 39:11Speaker 5: the process.
- 39:13Speaker 2: That's very noisy, okay, yeah on a volume front.
- 39:16Speaker 5: Yeah okay, yeah, maybe maybe, although the learning you do
- 39:19Speaker 5: on a on a chanter, so you don't actually you
- 39:21Speaker 5: don't need the pipes to learn. You only need a
- 39:24Speaker 5: chanter which is not very low, so that is bearable.
- 39:27Speaker 5: But but you know, so for me that's the thing,
- 39:30Speaker 5: But it does I mean that the the brain, the
- 39:33Speaker 5: whole brain training thing is is absolutely fantastic. And I
- 39:37Speaker 5: think just you know, the same thing with whether it's
- 39:40Speaker 5: watches or guitar or whatever, the the many many things
- 39:45Speaker 5: you're doing that you just you don't really consider. But
- 39:48Speaker 5: of course it's not just hand eye coordination, but it's
- 39:52Speaker 5: it's you know, it's so much beyond that, and and
- 39:55Speaker 5: to get this comprehension of what it is that's actually
- 39:59Speaker 5: happening and how. And I think also the other point
- 40:01Speaker 5: I would make, you know, going back to having screws
- 40:05Speaker 5: the size of a grain of sand being made a
- 40:09Speaker 5: couple of one hundred years ago, that also is one
- 40:12Speaker 5: in the eye to the extraordinary arrogance that is just
- 40:16Speaker 5: put upon our generation as though we are absolutely at
- 40:22Speaker 5: the apex of development progressions civilization, that we can do everything,
- 40:29Speaker 5: as though all these idiots who lived before us were
- 40:33Speaker 5: completely incapable. And I would put it totally the other
- 40:37Speaker 5: way about. I mean, I can see, of course, I
- 40:39Speaker 5: can see that people who have designed technological platforms and
- 40:47Speaker 5: developments and whatever are clever. But also I can see
- 40:51Speaker 5: now that huge amount of the sort of progress that
- 40:56Speaker 5: we're told about is actually being conducted by the computers
- 41:00Speaker 5: that have already been made. If that's not oversimplifying to
- 41:03Speaker 5: too great a degree, you know, these aren't. We're not
- 41:05Speaker 5: talking about people sitting in workshops now designing a watch
- 41:08Speaker 5: in the way that would have happened a few hundred
- 41:11Speaker 5: years ago. And I think we are. We are very
- 41:13Speaker 5: foolish to forget the power of those those kind of inventions,
- 41:20Speaker 5: what I would call proper inventions.
- 41:23Speaker 1: It sounds like we are speaking very frivolously, but I
- 41:26Speaker 1: can guarantee you there are going to be people who
- 41:28Speaker 1: are going to feel inspired by listening to this, because
- 41:31Speaker 1: what we're doing here is quite literally talking about solutions.
- 41:35Speaker 1: To the opening segment, which was about depression and all that,
- 41:40Speaker 1: I mean, how do you how do you get depressed
- 41:43Speaker 1: when you're playing a musical instrument or when you're fixing
- 41:45Speaker 1: an old, beautiful watch. It's an incredible experience of going
- 41:50Speaker 1: into yourself and just enjoying that moment you become present.
- 41:54Speaker 1: And that is something that my wife, for example, has
- 41:56Speaker 1: said to me for years and years and years. You know,
- 41:59Speaker 1: Paul at your goots. I've also got a couple of
- 42:01Speaker 1: guitars and I like to play them, and you can
- 42:04Speaker 1: spend hours just in your own world.
- 42:09Speaker 5: Yeah, and again I think that's a terrible important thing,
- 42:11Speaker 5: and this ability, you know, I think these things have
- 42:18Speaker 5: to balance each other. Having talked about doing stuff consciously
- 42:22Speaker 5: and deliberately, whether it be social media, and actually that's
- 42:24Speaker 5: a good point Mike makes. I mean, to be proverly honest,
- 42:27Speaker 5: were it not for the work that we do for
- 42:30Speaker 5: UK column, I would never have gone anywhere near social
- 42:34Speaker 5: media and hadn't until that point. I can't see the
- 42:37Speaker 5: earthly point of it, but there we go. So this
- 42:42Speaker 5: idea of doing stuff consciously and being in that moment
- 42:46Speaker 5: and all the rest of it. The opposite of that,
- 42:49Speaker 5: which again is a necessity, is being able to switch
- 42:54Speaker 5: off and disengage and and I totally agree, so musical
- 42:58Speaker 5: instruments a great example. I think the thing, of course
- 43:00Speaker 5: that is a considerable part of our day is refreshing yourself,
- 43:07Speaker 5: restoring yourself and sleeping properly. And I think there's also
- 43:12Speaker 5: the great blurring of the lines now with people's constant
- 43:16Speaker 5: use of technology and sort of forms of what's described
- 43:21Speaker 5: as entertainment, this, that, and the other. That people are
- 43:24Speaker 5: not sufficiently reducing their cortisol levels because of course you
- 43:28Speaker 5: would just talk you know, we're just talking about the
- 43:29Speaker 5: anxiety thing. And that again absolutely plays into this cycle
- 43:34Speaker 5: where it is very easy to diagnose somebody with depression
- 43:37Speaker 5: and introduce pharmaceutical products. They're never going to get off.
- 43:40Speaker 5: And it is because people are not. This sort of
- 43:43Speaker 5: sounds a bit silly, but they're not. They're not sort
- 43:44Speaker 5: of consciously switching off in the way that you can
- 43:49Speaker 5: with a musical instrument or indeed just you know, reading
- 43:52Speaker 5: a book, and I do specifically mean a book, not
- 43:55Speaker 5: a screen, a physical book, in order to just take
- 43:59Speaker 5: away all that stuff that might be at the back
- 44:01Speaker 5: of your mind in order that you can sleep, because
- 44:04Speaker 5: if you're not, you know, if you're not recharging your
- 44:06Speaker 5: batteries properly, you are you are no use. And I
- 44:09Speaker 5: think a lot of people get through life, you know,
- 44:11Speaker 5: because we have so many kind of stimulants available to
- 44:14Speaker 5: our legal stimulants, it's very easy to convince yourself that
- 44:17Speaker 5: you're still cracking on. Everything's okay because you're getting this done,
- 44:21Speaker 5: you're still managing to get up.
- 44:22Speaker 2: And get there and get here.
- 44:24Speaker 5: But really, are you doing that to the very best
- 44:27Speaker 5: of your ability? Probably not unless you're able to sort
- 44:31Speaker 5: of complete that circle. And these two things do balance
- 44:34Speaker 5: each other. I think it's a serious point as well.
- 44:37Speaker 1: I mean, I do think that we're probably less healthy
- 44:39Speaker 1: than people five hundred thousand years ago, just genuinely speaking,
- 44:43Speaker 1: as a result of everything that's coming at us.
- 44:47Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, well, I can't see how we couldn't be.
- 44:51Speaker 5: It's almost everything we've introduced into our lives and bodies
- 44:58Speaker 5: and minds has been bad thing. I mean, Okay, sorry,
- 45:02Speaker 5: I mean I mean that, well, you know what I mean. Yeah,
- 45:06Speaker 5: I would agree with you.
- 45:07Speaker 1: Well, I can't. I still can't get the image out
- 45:09Speaker 1: of my mind when you're talking about playing bagpipes. I
- 45:13Speaker 1: can imagine on a Friday, on a Friday evening, sitting
- 45:16Speaker 1: around the fire, guyslet's let's let's do a little bit
- 45:19Speaker 1: of Hey Jude, and then there comes Charles and he
- 45:21Speaker 1: pulls up the bagpipes.
- 45:24Speaker 5: Yeah, it's not not quite hard work. You've never been
- 45:27Speaker 5: to the United Kingdom, GERM, have you?
- 45:30Speaker 1: I know, I've got my vis but I still I
- 45:33Speaker 1: still need to camp.
- 45:35Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, you're right, the campfire. Yeah, not quite a
- 45:40Speaker 5: camp fire thing, not yet anyway, but you know.
- 45:43Speaker 3: Maybe change not yet, When when will it ever be?
- 45:48Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know.
- 45:49Speaker 4: Watch this space, I'll tell you where Charles is going
- 45:54Speaker 4: to give his first his first back sorry, his first
- 45:57Speaker 4: bagpipe concert at the UK call the twentieth event in September.
- 46:01Speaker 2: Lovely.
- 46:02Speaker 5: That that is fake news. No, hi to spot fake news.
- 46:06Speaker 5: That is fake news. No, that's sorry.
- 46:09Speaker 3: That would have sold twenty tickets.
- 46:12Speaker 5: Tickets, Mike. Yeah, well, actually that's a good idea. Perhaps
- 46:17Speaker 5: we do have to have a sort of camp fire
- 46:19Speaker 5: kind of thing somehow. How are we going to how
- 46:20Speaker 5: are we going to do that anyway? Yeah, lots to
- 46:22Speaker 5: think about.
- 46:24Speaker 3: You know.
- 46:24Speaker 1: And part of this whole conversation is, as you said earlier, Mike,
- 46:30Speaker 1: it's also about countering the negativity. I mean, right, youre
- 46:33Speaker 1: in front of me. I've got us and Israel have
- 46:36Speaker 1: have now struck oil sites in Tehran, you know, and
- 46:39Speaker 1: every every single headline that's running underneath this is just negative. Right,
- 46:44Speaker 1: that's just negative, and you think, oh my word, everything
- 46:47Speaker 1: is just a catastrophe. And then if I can guarantee
- 46:51Speaker 1: you if I open Facebook or X or whatever, it's
- 46:53Speaker 1: going to be the same thing. It's just negativity, and
- 46:57Speaker 1: you have to you have to find the ability to
- 46:59Speaker 1: to to realize that you are being fed a series
- 47:05Speaker 1: of narratives that are designed to keep you in a
- 47:08Speaker 1: perpetual state of fear and anxiety. I mean, that's what
- 47:10Speaker 1: my tiers is. But it' said on my show back
- 47:12Speaker 1: in twenty one already it when you have free floating anxiety,
- 47:15Speaker 1: people become easily controllable.
- 47:19Speaker 3: And look, this comes back.
- 47:20Speaker 4: I think this comes back to one of the things
- 47:23Speaker 4: Charles said, I mentioned it already, the idea of doing
- 47:26Speaker 4: things consciously. Right, So you know a major part of
- 47:30Speaker 4: the issue here for people is that they are passively
- 47:35Speaker 4: consuming what is being fed to them by Ben's generally
- 47:39Speaker 4: mainstream press, rather than being active participants in the information space. Now,
- 47:47Speaker 4: if you're an active participant in the information space, you
- 47:50Speaker 4: go searching for the information, but then that maybe might work.
- 47:55Speaker 3: Up to a point.
- 47:55Speaker 4: Then you've got to decide if you're going to be
- 47:57Speaker 4: actively doing something with that information. And so it always
- 48:02Speaker 4: comes down to this separation between people who are producers
- 48:06Speaker 4: and people who are consumers. And if you're just a
- 48:09Speaker 4: consumer of what's going on, then you are beholden to
- 48:14Speaker 4: whatever agenda or whatever somebody.
- 48:16Speaker 3: Is feeding you.
- 48:18Speaker 4: If you're a producer, or you're at least actively participating
- 48:21Speaker 4: in the information space, then first.
- 48:23Speaker 3: Of all, you can control, or you can do a
- 48:25Speaker 3: lot better at controlling what your views are of that information.
- 48:30Speaker 4: You can do a lot better job of controlling the
- 48:33Speaker 4: type of stresses and emotions that you feel as a
- 48:36Speaker 4: result of it. But we've been said, you know, we've
- 48:39Speaker 4: always said this. The next step is doing something with it.
- 48:44Speaker 4: And the process of doing something positive with whatever that
- 48:48Speaker 4: information is is in and of itself therapeutic. And of course,
- 48:54Speaker 4: the more people that are actively doing something with the
- 48:57Speaker 4: information that they have ansciously obtained, the more likelihood there
- 49:03Speaker 4: is of changing the circumstances that we find ourselves in.
- 49:06Speaker 4: Because you become a campaigner of a type, or you
- 49:11Speaker 4: work with other people to try to make a difference.
- 49:14Speaker 4: This is how we go about changing situations. It's the
- 49:19Speaker 4: problem for us is that most people are passive consumers
- 49:24Speaker 4: of whatever is fed, and that result in at the
- 49:30Speaker 4: same time depression and other anxieties, which then result in
- 49:35Speaker 4: being passive consumers of the pharmaceuticals that they're fed.
- 49:38Speaker 3: It is just a never ending cycle. And and but
- 49:42Speaker 3: you know this is this is for us to break
- 49:44Speaker 3: this cycle.
- 49:45Speaker 1: But in many ways we're also own with enemies by
- 49:48Speaker 1: the time this conversation of ours is right. My recording
- 49:52Speaker 1: with Farmer Angus and Jim Girl would have aired. Also.
- 49:56Speaker 1: Both separate episodes are extremely uplifting, ASI orientated, but will
- 50:02Speaker 1: probably get very little traction. People choose to not want
- 50:08Speaker 1: in many ways to get solutions.
- 50:13Speaker 4: People will complain that they're not being given solutions, and
- 50:17Speaker 4: then when solutions are made available to them, then they
- 50:19Speaker 4: aren't interested in It is a fascinating bit of human psychology.
- 50:24Speaker 4: I would very much love to see much stronger engagement
- 50:28Speaker 4: with that type of conversation and most much stronger active
- 50:34Speaker 4: sharing of that type of information rather than the doom
- 50:38Speaker 4: scrolling and doom sharing that we see. But for some
- 50:42Speaker 4: reason that you know, people will complain about how that
- 50:46Speaker 4: stuff makes them feel, but it's always that stuff that
- 50:48Speaker 4: gets shared. It's quite an amazing bit of human psychology.
- 50:53Speaker 1: And I think Charles you'll agree with me. I mean,
- 50:55Speaker 1: Angus is probably one of the most inspirational people out there.
- 50:58Speaker 1: It's very difficult to have a commeation with him and
- 51:00Speaker 1: walk away feeling depressed.
- 51:03Speaker 5: Yes, I mean that that is absolutely true, and that's
- 51:06Speaker 5: that is entirely his his sort of spirit and bearing
- 51:12Speaker 5: and manner. But more than that, I think it's very
- 51:17Speaker 5: important that that comes from complete confidence on his part
- 51:23Speaker 5: in in what he's not just what he's saying, but
- 51:26Speaker 5: but what he's doing, because it does make sense and
- 51:31Speaker 5: it does work, and he absolutely owns all of that.
- 51:36Speaker 5: And I think that's the that's the great part of it,
- 51:40Speaker 5: is that to pursue a solution and translate that into success.
- 51:48Speaker 5: I think you can only do that if you own it,
- 51:52Speaker 5: if if it's completely within you, and therefore you know
- 51:58Speaker 5: that you won't falter if you So, if you hope
- 52:01Speaker 5: for a solution from somebody else, I don't think you
- 52:05Speaker 5: can ever be completely invested in that. And of course,
- 52:09Speaker 5: if it doesn't work out, learn and behold it's somebody
- 52:12Speaker 5: else's fault in the way that if it does work,
- 52:16Speaker 5: you probably congratulate yourself rather than the person that's put
- 52:20Speaker 5: you in that position. So, yes, I think Angus is
- 52:25Speaker 5: a fantastic example. I mean, I'm biased because I think
- 52:29Speaker 5: for those who are not familiar with him. He's farming
- 52:33Speaker 5: in South Africa in a way that is correctly described
- 52:37Speaker 5: as regenerative and not the sort of fake corporate regenerative
- 52:42Speaker 5: that does involve chemicals and fancy bits of kits. He
- 52:45Speaker 5: is rejuvenating land via livestock, basically doing stuff exactly in
- 52:51Speaker 5: the way that I believe benefits not just the land
- 52:55Speaker 5: but also the animals and the humans that end up
- 52:58Speaker 5: eating the products that come from those labors. And so
- 53:02Speaker 5: he I think has completely nailed it and he is
- 53:06Speaker 5: able to explain and articulate that very very well.
- 53:08Speaker 2: But yeah, just a in a.
- 53:10Speaker 5: Terrifically positive way, because what is there to be negative about.
- 53:15Speaker 5: I mean, it's you know, he's in an absolutely beautiful
- 53:17Speaker 5: place doing something he loves. And also he's making a
- 53:20Speaker 5: lot of other people very happy. I mean, he has
- 53:23Speaker 5: I don't know how many, but he's he's got a
- 53:24Speaker 5: lot of people involved in the setup working for him. Again,
- 53:28Speaker 5: as far as I understand, all of whom really appreciate
- 53:31Speaker 5: what it is that they're doing and how different that
- 53:33Speaker 5: is from simply plowing pharmaceuticals and chemicals back into the
- 53:38Speaker 5: ground and the livestock, you know, which of course, is
- 53:41Speaker 5: the absolute opposite of what he's doing, and that's that's
- 53:43Speaker 5: going into a downward spiral. Angus is in an upward spiral,
- 53:48Speaker 5: and I think there's you know, we have to be
- 53:50Speaker 5: very deliberate to make the connection between his state of mind,
- 53:53Speaker 5: which is entirely positive, and what he's doing. They are,
- 53:57Speaker 5: they are inextricably linked. So you know, Mike talks about
- 54:01Speaker 5: this a lot, but you know, the number of people
- 54:03Speaker 5: who just it is we didn't call it the daily
- 54:06Speaker 5: grind for nothing, people who just go into jobs that
- 54:09Speaker 5: make them miserable and just it is literally a case
- 54:11Speaker 5: of just sort of struggling through the day. Well you
- 54:15Speaker 5: know what falls out of that is obviously you're not
- 54:17Speaker 5: doing the right thing for yourself.
- 54:22Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
- 54:22Speaker 2: Gone, no, no, no, no, that's it. Gone now.
- 54:25Speaker 1: I was going to say, so you're saying, what is
- 54:26Speaker 1: it to be negative about? Well, I went and filmed.
- 54:28Speaker 1: I took my camera and I went to Angus's farm
- 54:30Speaker 1: and so we walked to his cattle. So you'll see it.
- 54:32Speaker 1: So by the time this comes out, you hopefully will
- 54:35Speaker 1: have seen the video. We went onto his farm, and yes,
- 54:38Speaker 1: what's to be negative about the government is trying to
- 54:42Speaker 1: vaccinate all cattle around the country because of this fake
- 54:45Speaker 1: outbreak which they've which they've labeled as a national emergency,
- 54:52Speaker 1: and he openly states they are not coming onto my farm.
- 54:55Speaker 1: His cattle will not be vaccinated. His animals are very healthy.
- 55:00Speaker 1: So the negative part is the attempt from the only
- 55:03Speaker 1: garchy to come and essentially poison his animals, and he's saying,
- 55:09Speaker 1: not a chance they are healthy.
- 55:11Speaker 2: Yes, well, I hope.
- 55:13Speaker 5: I mean, notwithstanding, we've just been talking about the preponderance
- 55:19Speaker 5: of people to sort of not get up and do
- 55:23Speaker 5: something and make a difference. But I do get the
- 55:26Speaker 5: sense that twenty twenty six, this year does have a
- 55:29Speaker 5: slightly different feel for it, and I think what has
- 55:32Speaker 5: just happened and is happening in Iran plays to that,
- 55:35Speaker 5: because I really do feel that an increasing number of
- 55:40Speaker 5: people are not adjust they really have had enough. And
- 55:45Speaker 5: I was just thinking, you know, specifically for the United Kingdom,
- 55:50Speaker 5: having been told by that, you know, in ridiculous terms,
- 55:55Speaker 5: utterly disingenuous, that we're as a nation year, we're not
- 55:58Speaker 5: becoming involved in the Nearran conflict. We're there for defensive
- 56:03Speaker 5: operations only, collective self defense, or I mean absolute rubbish.
- 56:07Speaker 2: Clearly the intent is that we do get drawn in now.
- 56:11Speaker 5: We are facilitating that, of course, because we have a
- 56:14Speaker 5: substantial United States, particularly air Force presence in the United Kingdom.
- 56:19Speaker 5: And if today's supposed to believe at the same time
- 56:22Speaker 5: from security service that Iranian terror plots being thwarted left,
- 56:26Speaker 5: right and center, what are we supposed to consider in
- 56:30Speaker 5: light of the fact that United Kingdom bases are being
- 56:34Speaker 5: used by the Americans to bomb Iran? Is that going
- 56:37Speaker 5: to make these supposed terror plots more likely or less likely?
- 56:41Speaker 5: And therefore anyone who's living in the vicinity of an
- 56:45Speaker 5: American air base should be asking themselves, why am I
- 56:49Speaker 5: accepting this? Why are we as a population accepting that
- 56:54Speaker 5: we are now part of a threat matrix that is
- 57:00Speaker 5: being enhanced by all of It's been okay, I'm giving
- 57:05Speaker 5: this sort of the official version of events because from
- 57:09Speaker 5: that you can argue, you can sort of argue the
- 57:12Speaker 5: point with those that have delivered it to you. But
- 57:14Speaker 5: you know, a question to the state is, seriously, you're
- 57:18Speaker 5: saying at the same time that there are more terror
- 57:22Speaker 5: incidents with Iranian so called Iranian backing in the United Kingdom,
- 57:28Speaker 5: and in order to try to mitigate this. We are
- 57:31Speaker 5: going to allow the Americans to bomb Iran from the
- 57:35Speaker 5: United Kingdom. So I think that there'll be things like
- 57:41Speaker 5: this that absolutely are going to push people over the edge,
- 57:44Speaker 5: because we are now far enough away from the sort
- 57:50Speaker 5: of COVID torture for people to have gathered their senses,
- 57:54Speaker 5: I think, And I mean, okay, I don't have any
- 57:58Speaker 5: evidence really beyond anadal and stuff that one does see
- 58:01Speaker 5: sort of out there, but I do just get the
- 58:04Speaker 5: sense that we are going to see a bit of
- 58:07Speaker 5: a sea change this year, and I really hope that
- 58:09Speaker 5: that does have a knock on effect on all the
- 58:12Speaker 5: people that have to date done the sort of yeah,
- 58:16Speaker 5: well look, I want a solution, but I don't really
- 58:18Speaker 5: want to grip it myself and push them into seeing
- 58:21Speaker 5: exactly what it is they can do and why they
- 58:24Speaker 5: should do it and what the benefits are because you
- 58:27Speaker 5: never regret it.
- 58:30Speaker 1: Well, that's what we are doing at yuk Kuanam, I think. So,
- 58:34Speaker 1: I hope so encouraging others hopefully.
- 58:36Speaker 2: Yeah, I really really hope so.
- 58:38Speaker 5: And and you know, we'd love to, like we always do,
- 58:40Speaker 5: you know, we'd love to hear from people as to
- 58:43Speaker 5: what changes they have made.
- 58:44Speaker 2: How that's how that's gone down.
- 58:47Speaker 5: I mean, I would love to have you know what
- 58:48Speaker 5: I've literally just said about my sense that people are
- 58:54Speaker 5: beyond the end of their tether and they are going
- 58:57Speaker 5: to actually do something. I'd love to hear back, what
- 59:00Speaker 5: are people doing? What have you heard about?
- 59:02Speaker 4: You know, we'd love to we'd love to actually feature
- 59:06Speaker 4: these Yes, actually, this is something which is missing at
- 59:11Speaker 4: the moment, and we would love to hear from people
- 59:13Speaker 4: that are doing stuff and and just to hear about
- 59:17Speaker 4: the changes that they've made in their lives and hopefully
- 59:19Speaker 4: because that is an inspiration to others.
- 59:22Speaker 2: So so.
- 59:24Speaker 3: Bring it on.
- 59:25Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, please please do get in touch because again
- 59:28Speaker 5: this you know, just think of it in this sense,
- 59:31Speaker 5: the more of this we can put out there, the
- 59:34Speaker 5: more we showcase it, the more people will be inspired.
- 59:37Speaker 5: There is absolutely a multiplier effect in doing this. So yeah,
- 59:41Speaker 5: come forth.
- 59:42Speaker 1: That is now a really good way to end this conversation.
- 59:45Speaker 1: Because I always joke and say on that uplifting note,
- 59:48Speaker 1: but this is an yeah all right, Yeah, Mike Charles,
- 59:57Speaker 1: thanks guys, all the chet you see