The Disturbing Story Tedx SILENCED | Harry Miller

Verustin pyöräilyvää teitä valmistavan ornotin vuonna 2013. Mielestäni parasta Shopify saan se, että voimme harjoittaa liiketoimintaa ilman teknistä osaamista. Voimme hallinnoida yrityksen taustajaristeelle mien ja frontendia sekä myydä verkossa, vaivatta. Jos Shopify olisi pyöräilyvaruste, se olisi mielestäni itse polkupyörä. Sillä asiat hoidetaan ja meidän liiketoimintamme hoituu Shopify'sssä. Aloita ilmainen kokeilu, Shopify Piste.com sivustolla. [Musiikkia] -Giuttuu. -Kiuttuu, että olen koko ajan esiterikopuus. -Kiuttuu. -Kiuttuu. -Kiuttuu. -Kiuttuu, se on todella koko. Mielestäni, se on todella koko koko ajan esityksi, että olen koko ajan esityksi, että olen koko ajan esityksi. Tämä on maailma, jokin jälkeen kautta, katsotaan järjestelmässä. Tämä on, että se on näitä, että haluamalla on. Tämä on hyvää järjestelmässä, jota haluamalla on. Tämä on järjestelmää, jota haluamalla on, että haluamalla on, että haluamalla on, että haluamalla on, että haluamalla on. - It was Urban Meyer, who recruited me. - He recruited me. And then switched to the head coach position, switched to coach today, as I was my senior year, so I was actually one of the first, I signed in December of 2018, and that was like Coach Day's first, I guess, early recruiting period, early recruiting class. But Coach Day was my first call from Ohio State, and he called me after, yeah, he called me, he was the OC at the time, and then that just began sort of my recruiting process. But yeah, I played from you for Georgia, played at Buford, which I think they're ranked number one now nationally, in terms of it's like high school ball, but ended up being, you know, the number one rank center, highly recruited, offered by a lot of places, and decided on Ohio State, and then went there, and then, yeah, so I guess, and so yours, so for. - Yeah, we'll get into the story, but real quick, before we do that, was football something that you were great at and loved, or just great at and didn't love? - As your relationship again. - I think for a period, it was the same time, I think like, like fascination followed the form, and like from a young age, I was just, I was bigger than the rest of the kids, and so, football made absolute sense, and I had a lot of talent, and I was able to express myself very well in football, from second grade, I started playing, and then. - Express yourself. - Yeah, I was just, I was bigger, I was physical, and I played well, and so it made sense to keep playing. I played other sports, I played lacrosse and baseball growing up, but football was, you know, was able to, like, be semi-professional, I had to play well, and then, yeah, getting to high school, and getting recruited by, so like my top five, Ohio State, Stanford, Clemson, Notre Dame, Georgia, among others, like, you know, everybody was sort of, like, vying for that. - Some real shit programs right there. - Right. - Jesus Christ. - Jesus Christ. And then, yeah, so got recruited, and so, like, yeah, out of Ohio State, I was, you know, I was the number one rake sound in the country, but also, I was like, I was the valedictorian at Buford High School. - You're the valedictorian over there? - Yeah. - Class of 2019, Buford Wolves. - No shit. - Yep. - Yeah, I knew you were a genius, but damn. - No, that's, that's like, I feel strange even right now, talking about high school, makes me feel very. - Why? - Hey, guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. They're both a huge help. Thank you. - I just feel, well, especially now, it's like, I feel very far removed. Well, I think in totality, um, 18, up until 18, I was, I was my adolescent self, and then college especially, especially in a different state is a step. It's a departure, and honestly, and I've written, I've actually, um, a lot of the stuff I'd be like, sang today about this, I wrote in a, in a memoir, like, last winter. I wrote like this, like, 200,000-word memoir in about two months. - Two months. - Yeah, so I was like, I was just jotting out words and just lots of coffee and lots of just, like, I was just writing in my room while I was cold out, which really helped me process some stuff. But, you know, the formula that any successful college football program emulates is really of sort of, is a cult in which you remove, you take children, it's the same because the men's and children. You take children from a different state, bring them to an exotic location, you know, monstrous team colors, um, bonding through suffering. Lots of things that just help you sort of, um, fulfill, fill yourself into this new identity, this new role, and, uh, yeah, I was, I was all in and went to Ohio State and like, really, really, really, um, blood sweat and tears literally into the program and, um, had success there. And then, and then, yeah, I guess I just sort of, I'll explain and just sort of like, how all that shook out, but, um, highly recruited football player went to Ohio State, uh, was a, was a backup, my freshman year behind, so that was 2019. We won the Big Ten Championship and then lost in the fiesta bolt of Clemson that year. And, um, I was the backup, then COVID hit. And that off season, and then ultimately that COVID season, I was playing. I was the starting, I was the starting left guard, um, as a sophomore. And that was sort of COVID paired with starting college football, was a real, it was like, it was very sort of M.K. Ultra. It was very, there was no external human contact to sort of like ground yourself, or like neutralize the, what we were in, which was like high stakes, high stress, college football. It was like, it was like, it was very true in showing, in which case, like football is a production, like football is a huge cameras, interviews. There's this, it's a reality television, um, with these like outlets on the weekend. And it was just very strange for, for months. Where, you know, really the only human contact I was getting was physical, human violence and context of the game, um, being yelled at and meetings and coached. In which case, like the meetings, meetings being a euphemism for like, sort of staring at a projector screen of your, of your fuck ups and like replaying them. And then it's just, so it becomes really heavy. It becomes very repetitive, um, and so over the course of that COVID season, you know, I really, my, my mental health diminished, um, yeah. And just because it was such a strange time as you were still, like you said, a part of this whole production is going on. All the rules they had to have for you guys that first year had to be nuts, right? Like you couldn't even, you'd go to a meeting, you got to be masked up the whole time. I was just like, just walk me in there. What did that, what did everything look like? So that was 2020. So I mean, so at first, I was in Nicaragua, um, when the school was closed. So I've got family friends in Nicaragua, um, who, who, all like, I'll leave their name out of it, just for like for their safety, but they run, um, programs down there and, uh, fantastic people. And I've been going there since a young age. And so I was in Nicaragua with a friend of mine doing, just doing some, like, fixing up the school, doing some stuff like that, uh, school got canceled. We got an notification that school was being closed because of COVID. So this would have been maybe like last week of March, sometime in March. Um, and so rather than flying back to Ohio, flew back to Georgia and we spent about probably a month, two months, remote at home, um, essentially doing nothing. Just sort of treading water as we like, wait to hear what's happening. Start of June, we're able to report back to campus and campus is essentially dead. So for that whole sort of 2020 season, classes are remote and classes are remote, but football is doing football. And so it was very, it was a ghost town in terms of, in terms of campus. Really, it was only student athletes. It was a really big like, essentially, just college was just athletics as we were moving through that very limited, um, in-person capacity. And yeah, I mean, it was sort of like, and as, as you remember, just sort of the, the hysterics, the confusion, there was a point where we were trying to like play football with gators across our face. And like guys are essentially like waterboarding themselves with sweat and perspiration and like, with sweat across our face. Gators, so like gators are like, just like those, you could order on your neck and then pull it up, um, shi-stees, yeah, like shi-stees. We're gonna fuel in the back. They were trying to put like glass, glass over the mask. They were trying to- Glass. Like, like plexi, like, not like, just like, yeah, they were just throwing everything at the wall. Were you guys just talking like, this is so fucking retarded? Yeah, we all, I mean, yeah, we all knew that it was pretty stupid. I think the big 10 was, um, probably the strictest because I don't think the SEC ever got close to canceling their season. For a time, we did cancel their season. And then, I guess everybody at the big 10 saw that the SEC was still going and playing games and making their money and doing everything they had to do. And so then it's like, well, of course, well now let's, we can play ball now. And so we played ball, but then now we're playing in stadiums empty, but with cardboard cutouts of fans. is to look full. - How awful is that? - Weird. So now you can hear like, you can hear the opposite sideline talking, while you're talking, and then you're having to simulate artificial crowd noise. - Oh, they were doing that too. - Yeah, so it was like, we had an away game in Penn State and beaver stadium and what would have been a wide out was just cardboard cutouts and then fake static coming from the PA system. And so it was just very, it was just very bizarre world upside down. And yeah, I was playing ball and I was starting my sophomore year. And it was, and that's an extremely, I mean, that's why it's called the sophomore slump. Like, it's very hard to go from a freshman backup who comes in during trash time. Like, I played with the, I played with the transfer from West Virginia named Chris Chuganov, who was like very, he was very like blue mountain state, like super lovable and like a real like an elder for me as a, as a young guy. And he was, he was, so he was a fifth year from West Virginia. I was a freshman, you know, do good from Buford center. He was the quarterback. And so we would do CQ exchange. She was the backup quarterback. And we would call it the graveyard shift because like everybody would leave the stadium and we were just like closing out the fourth quarter, running the zone left, the zone right, ground game, just like trying to burn the clock out as we were up 40 points or whatever. And that's how to go sophomore season. There's like no fans. I didn't really have a spring season because the spring ball had been canceled because of COVID. And I felt very behind in terms of like, I just felt very uncomfortable as a player. And I really, I really, I played that entire sophomore season and I really didn't feel, I really didn't feel like I was playing football. I think that's, and I think play is a very important verb because you know in high school, it's very easy, you know, being more gifted as a football player to just like beat up on kids. And you feel like, you feel like just cock of the walk. It's just, you feel so powerful. You feel like a demigod. And of course the talent equates when you get to college football. And you know, that's when like savvy and skill and game IQ and all these things really start to like matter. And I was still, I was still so young. I still had so many things to learn. And I was always as a perfectionist, as a valedictorian, as a kid who took these things very seriously. Too seriously I would say really. I just really got in my head about it. And that whole season I just felt very dejected that whole time. And that's when it really the cracks started to form in my relationship with football and my relationship with myself. And it really wasn't until we played the 2020 Big Tension Championship against Northwestern. And we ended up just having to run the ball of Bonson or running back Trace Sermon. I think had a record breaking like ground game in terms of rushing yards. And that was just that really felt like just football again to me for the first time. It's no secret the studies are finding microplastics in blood, brain, heart, lungs, and immense reproductive organs. I've started to make some big changes over the past couple years in reducing the plastics I use. Whether that's in the cup side drink, you see I don't have any plastic red solo cups anymore. Or in my daily water bottle, which I got rid of any plastic I was using there as well. But there's one place even I haven't thought to look. My clothes. That's why I started wearing Underdogs hemp blank teas. 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That was 2020. Were you able to make get a lot of friends outside of playing football? And the reason I asked that is because I think a lot of people don't understand is you guys in D1 football have a, depending on the program, a 60 to 80 hour week job. Yeah, no, I mean, I did. I don't think, and I think in the case of most college football players, I'm probably not the rule. I studied engineering at Ohio State. And so I had a pretty rigorous academic schedule outside of football, which made me, especially in engineering, if you don't develop a competent front group, who you can float homework back and forth and compare answers and work together. You'll get just absolutely just creamed if you're not ready. So I had a really close friend group just because of my academics were so rigorous. But you feel like you're being pulled away from things that too? Well, I described it as, it's really sort of like, it's then he's sort of like heroic double personality where it's like if, if Peter Parker and Spider-Man, if Peter Parker doesn't show up to the spelling bee, because Spider-Man had to save orphans from a burning building, or vice versa, Peter Parker's got debate, and so Spider-Man misses like an old lady getting crushed by the subway. Like either way, he is receiving the brunt of some sort of responsibility that he can't control. There's just not enough of him to go around. It was a very demanding schedule, but for me, like I was able to, I kept a 4.0 in engineering, and I was a Rhodes finalist while I played Ohio State football. You had a 4.0 in fucking engineering while you're playing at Ohio State University football full time. Yeah, there's a bit of a complex story. Well, now we get a complex story. Well, I've been wanting to talk about this for a long time. It's funny now in retrospect, but when I was like an anal nerd, it was really important to me. But, 2020 wraps up, I ended up getting COVID. No, you want to talk about sort of like the assinine enaneness of the policies. We were eventually getting, so we were probably PCR testing twice a day near the end of the season. So we're getting like these swabs up the nose. I remember those. Very frequently. And it was, you know, I don't know if this was ever confirmed or not. But, the talk in the college football world was that some programs in the SEC had intentionally, like, anoculated themselves to COVID. They'd all gotten COVID early in the season because you would have immunity shortly after. And so the rumor that you would, the logic, that was, yeah, the logic was like fucking 11 times. Well, I think if you got, the policy was if you got it, you wouldn't be tested again for however long, however period of time. And so the theory was that some programs were like, getting kids sick early to miss non-essential games. We ended up getting hit right before the national championship. I got it over New Year's and Christmas. And we ended up just getting sort of like picked at near the end of the year. And what was crazy was we were eventually you could get a rhyme and reason for this COVID stuff. And you would realize that like a guy would get it. And his roommate or his friend would test positive like four days later. So there's this weird lag through prox 70 where you knew if a guy got it, that the next guy, if he hadn't gotten it yet, would be getting it in four days. And so it was so funny was before the big 10 championship, one of my best friends tested positive for COVID. And I knew by the logic I had COVID, but I wouldn't test positive. So when they test me a test of negative played in the big 10 championship, the next day, it's thought of been a Saturday. The next day on a Sunday, we're doing our meetings and we're doing our recovery lifts and all that stuff, I test positive and get set home. And so like even in that sort of like lowered trust in the sort of like infrastructure we had going on, but we were playing catch up that whole year. And so I ended up testing positive COVID over Christmas. And I guess part of New Year's, yes. So I watched the fiesta bowl from my home at that we won. And then we played in the national championship against Alabama. I was a backup in that case because I was coming off of COVID. I don't think I had any full pad practices before the national championship. But because of injuries, I ended up going in in the fourth quarter. Also, maybe 10,000 capacity, mostly cardboard cutouts. And I ended up dislocating my shoulder against Alabama, left shoulder. Torn my legroom got that repaired. And yeah, so you got like a letter J, is that a letter J? Yeah, two, three, six, these are over there. For what you get yours, the labrums and then they got, the labrum was completely torn 360. What are we doing? So I tore it when I was like a kid and didn't know it. Okay. when I played basketball, someone hit me like that. I could bother me. So I finally got a check when I was like 20 and they're like, well, you know, you could get a fix and like, yeah, we'll let it ride. And then I dislocated it, we're down here. - Well, right, and then it just starts dropping out, right? - Oh, yeah, I dislocated 15 times before I got the first surgery. Yeah, it's nasty. - Mine was just fortunately on the posterior side. So I think like my arm got sort of pulled across body on a block and it hurt bad, got a repair. And then hence, now that I was talking about the 4.0, I was like, this is gonna sound like end coherent. I took my grades very seriously. I read my syllabus thoroughly. And like in the physics class before, there was a thing about like, siding work or whatever. Long story short, I'm coming off this labrum surgery. I'm still on like, however many oxys of like coming out of the surgery. But I wasn't like, I wasn't missing school. I was still taking my quizzes. - And one oxy. - Yeah, and this was, and so I was now in static. So this was like, static's 2010. And so this was just like, intro stuff. And long story short, because I sited a piece of work in a way that was like, I wasn't supposed to wanna quiz. This led to a whole sort of like, co-am, academic misconduct thing. Where they essentially, I finished with like a 100 in the class or like a 90, whatever, 98, 99, whatever. But they gave me like, they demerited me and sort of killed my, so my, it's not a 4.0, it's a 3.997 GPA. - I'm so sorry. - Which rounds up. - I know. - Which rounds up, one of you just do two digits, two significant figures. But that's that, now this then. - They really hit you for the oxys citation. That's kind of funny. - Well, that's what I'm saying. Well, I never even got a day in court which sort of this set me on the path of like, I felt like John Rambo. I felt like, I felt like, I had just received a surgery. I was, I said blood sweat and tears, blood sweat tears. - Thank you first, but that's what I'm saying. And I was like, that's what really sort of like, broke my illusion of the sort of like, what's going on here. - That broke your illusion. - That broke my illusion. - That's a little strange. - You know, and so yeah, so then, so that's sophomore, I recover. So now I've started my sophomore year. I ended up being a third team, all big 10. So I got like an accolade, but I really, at that point, like sort of hated myself. I hated, I just, I didn't think I was a good player. - Your third team, all big 10 is a sophomore, to Ohio State University playing in the national title. - Yeah. - And you didn't feel like you were a good player. - No, at that place, and like, this is not, this is not, none of this is a condemnation. None of this, this is just the way that it is. Like, there's no, it makes no sense to try to make some like moral claim. If anything, I say this 'cause I still have like, friends who are professional players now, they reach out to me for advice. I'm like, how to like, contextualize things. And for me, this eventually foreshadowing. Got so bad that I was like, willing to kill myself to not have to deal with this. But especially like, that COVID was a perfect microcosm of these sort of containment. And the mentality that goes into a thing like that, where, and it's so funny now, 'cause like, now I don't even consume college football. So I haven't watched college football since I stopped playing. And no, 'cause for a moment, I couldn't watch it because it hurts so bad. And then now it's just, I just, it's, it's just in the past. And it's like, I can't, it just makes no sense to me anymore. - Do you think you described it? It was really interesting how you described it earlier, plucking kids the way you put it from around the country to go to one place where it's one team, you join each other through suffering and you described it as cult like. Is there a part of that that you can't, the facade's been removed. So when you're watching, you know, a 12 o'clock game on a Saturday, where all of us are drinking a beer and having fun, you know what we end to it. - I think if you ask any former college football player, and there's a very interesting overlap also with, I would say, the veteran community where it's like, there is the Hollywood production that is American sniper, that is any given Sunday, where, and even me, like, I want to indulge in the dream that it's like, man, if I work hard, I'll get, I can become something and make a name for myself. And my body will stay together, my mind will stay together, and I'll make a million dollars in the meantime and become a demigod. And you know, I mean, even just recently, like a few weeks ago, there was a, there was an offensive lineman who committed suicide and they donated his brain to CTE research. - Did he have it? - I don't know, I think it's too early to say. - I haven't tested him yet. - But I think if you ask any, and this is the sort of, I open my memoir, the preface opens with me and a bar watching, the National Championship of Ohio State, the year or two after I retired, where I'm fully a civilian and someone didn't recognize me. And you know, especially as a big guy, you get the like, oh, you're big, like, did you play football? And it's like, it's like, and it's just sort of funny, especially there's the popular question of like, oh, you didn't want to go pro, as if like, as if it's behind the verb want, as if I didn't want to, as if, but there's just so much between wanting and having and wanting and having. - Yeah, and for me, ultimately, I even think, I got to the place where even, you know, having would have been easy, but I didn't want it anymore. And so the summer of my junior year, I had always been, and just to talk about like disillusion, I had had my first suicide thought when I was like seven or eight. What sparked that? - I remember being in the bathtub and my, I was talking with my mom. And this might have been before that, but when I was a kid, I was talking with my mom and I said, you know, oh, 100 years from now, mom, like, we're gonna be best friends. And I didn't know what death was yet. And then she explains me what death was. And from the moment I knew what death was, I had like a really macabre fascination with what death was. And I remember even after that, like we went to like, the publics, we went to like the supermarket, and I got a pack of crumb hot wheels. And I asked mom, like, mom, can I have this? And she said, of course, honey. And then like, like death just flashed my mind. And I know it's like, I don't even want it anymore. And so like from a very young age, the topic of death, like really gripped my mind, it receded. And so yes, so I saw a psychiatrist at a young age come high school. Life was good. So when there's no stressors, there was no like the foundation was never being tested. And, you know, the downside of having a faulty foundation or a cracked foundation is that it only becomes worse the more you build on it. And so I had this huge edifice of like, I'm Harry Miller, Ohio State football player, potentially going to be a Rhodes finalist, going to be yada, yada, yada. And I got to the summer of my junior year. That's when agents start reaching out to you. And that's when they start telling me about how much one year you're going to make. And like all these things, you can be, the plan was play junior year, start, be a center, declare, all American, millionaire, yada, yada, yada. And, you know, I was just sort of, I was having all of these conversations. And it was just this thing where again you just can't want what you want. You can't decide your want, like the will, the want. Like that's a very like, sharpened, harry, and idea of like the will. Like I couldn't will myself further anymore because I didn't believe in it. And especially, you didn't believe in it. I just didn't believe in it. Yeah, so like, you know, it's one thing. It's one thing to be hated for what you are. It's one thing to be hated for what you aren't, but it's an entirely different thing to be loved for what you aren't. And I couldn't, it just wasn't me. And I was like going down this path and I could feel just like, I couldn't maintain appearances the way that I was. And, you know, so that junior year, I'm getting, I was the strongest I ever was. I was the fastest I ever was. You know, we voted for team captains. There were six captains voted. I had the seventh most votes. I had a really great offseason looking to be a big contributor to the, to the program. And then I, but I was like lying to myself so hard. And it's, and it's crazy how easy it is to deceive yourself. Because I would just get home and I would ignore it. But then like, when it was a week away from the first game of the year. And I just thought about like being in the stadium. And like I just, sometimes the stadiums would get so loud that it would make my ears crackle. And I just like hated, I didn't want to be in the crowd. I didn't want all that sound in my head. And like I would rather would have died than, than to have to go in there. Before we dig into that, because I think it's going to be really important to get to where that got to and like how it, how it managed us from a thought to getting all the way there. But like, I've always had a belief that there's a price paid for genius, right? So you look at great people who do great things. Even if we can't always see it, there's some sort of price they pay for that. I'm not just talking about like years of hard work. I'm talking about like something in life to not to be a pun with your tattoo. But to bounce the scales a little bit. And I know you scoffed at me calling you genius earlier. But it's very clear when I watched your speech of, of you talking about this and then read your writing, like you and listening to you talk, it's crystal clear to people out there. Like you have an innate genius about you. You think about things in a, oh, what's the word I'm looking for? And in almost very existential way, I don't mean as a pun. And I kind of wonder sometimes if because you are seeing things and considering so many things around you that wouldn't even occur to the average person if you I wonder if sometimes it's like going down those rabbit holes of thought takes your mind away from the presence of what you're doing. - Absolutely, at a very young age, at a very young age, that's all it was, it was pure contemplation and contemplation without action is just like terror, it's slavery, like if you, you're being subjected to the forces and you have no power yourself to stand up against it, so you just feel, you feel small and you feel powerless, you feel when you're presented with the ideas and they're just staring at you and they're laughing at you, laughing at you. - I think that's like the language of like, I do believe in thought, like I've made a video about this about like thought forms and egregors and egregors are like collective psychic beings and what you, isn't it so interesting that you could spend, you could do nothing all day but think really hard about something or be really anxious about something and devote all of your psychic energy to something and you eat food, you consume calories and the energy goes somewhere but it hasn't anywhere in the material plane. There's something, when you think about something so hard, you endow it with this sort of psychic, this mental body. And so an egregor is when a bunch of people get together and think of something and if you endow it with too much power, it can run away from you. And I think similarly, so like Plato talks about like, genius is a gift of madness and actually genius is the Latin word for the Greek demon and demon isn't like the most recent Christianized demon, you can be an agatha demon, a good demon and demon is just a lesser god. Like it's not material but it's not god, it's just this sort of spirit and like a mantis and maniac come from that same root of like a man of mind. So genius, a praying mantis, a maniac, all of that mania, mania is madness as a genius. We're 40 trillion in dead and most of us below the boomer generation don't own a home and don't have a lot of money in the bank account. 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I think, you know, especially that young age, you know, I think, I imagine that there's a lot of people who feel this way where, you know, the passions, whether it's from your chest or from your head, like Plato would like to divide that up, but the thoughts and the passions come upon you and they feel like animals sort of like gnawing at you or pulling at you and when you're young and when you have no personal spiritual muscle, it will pull you onto your face, like the leash, like it'll dislocate your shoulder, it'll dislocate your mental limbs from your body. And so you're just sort of like reeling and pain. And so at a young age, you know, I had these like really big ideas and I was confronted with these things, but I had none of the spiritual muscle, I had none of the vigor to defend myself. And so I was very beholden to these things. And I was also a sucker, like I'm just such a sucker for, I love freedom, I love liberty, I love sovereignty, I love being what I am. And you know, there was just, I couldn't tolerate, I don't wanna be yelled at anymore, I didn't want people interviewing me anymore, I don't want people asking me questions anymore, I don't wanna wear a number anymore. I didn't want agents thinking that I was theirs anymore. And so for me, - I'm like a product. - Absolutely, I felt, I just felt, I'd spent 20 years being created into this thing that I was. And again, you asked and it's very interesting, you asked at the beginning, like why did I get into football or like did? And I said, you know, like the fantasy followed the form. Like I remember the first time when I was in high school and for a long time I thought, I'm gonna get a college scholarship to get an education. But then there was a coach from Texas A&M who talked about the NFL. And I didn't even know that was an option. And then so for me being so young, I didn't have the discernment to know what I wanted. So I wanted what people showed me. And that's a real, that's a real brief. I think this is, this is somebody I've been reading a lot recently, Renee Gerard. He has this idea of like the triangle of desire where there is the subject and the object. You being the subject, the object, what you desire. And then there's a third, there's a model. And it is the other, who if they want it, it'll make you want it. And if they prohibit you from having it, it'll make you want it more. And that's how you find so many, so many times you want something, you want something that you don't even want. But it's because other people want it. And I think that's how people end up, like you were talking about whether it's like studios or whether it's like the people on your arms, the fancy cars or the money, you just want it 'cause other people have it. - Money, power, fame. - Yeah, sex, money, money, fame, sex power. Like it's like- - It's almost like a stalled out for me. - Right. And I got to this point where I was like looking at it. And I've always been a real drama queen. I was joking with Cooper how like I would, for a long, for like two years, I'd cry like an every podcast interview because it was also so fresh and so raw that the tears would come out. - Well, I think people are gonna understand why. - Right. - Yeah, right. And that's just the way it was. - And I thought that was, like I said, I saw that I haven't seen podcasts interviews, but I saw that once beachy gave in like- - I mean- - That was the Ted Talk. - Yeah. - They chose not to publish that, by the way. - They chose not to publish it. - That's why, yeah. So I actually- - Why don't they choose not to publish it? - Because of the, and like I understand, like they, it's sensitive material. It's like it's talks about suicide and suicide and suicide. - So what? - That's what I said. You know, they ended up, you know, they sold their tickets, they got their money, I spoke of their thing and it was a big ra-ra. - Ted, what the fuck? - This is incredible. - What I said, I appreciate it. - Yeah, everyone go, you have it on on your Twitter, right? - It's on, yeah, it's on my Twitter, it's in my Instagram bio. - Yeah, it's on it too. - You know, we, I complained and then they sent me, they sent me like a pamphlet about like how to talk about like mental health and stuff. - Oh Jesus Christ. - And they sent me like a PDF. - Oh Jesus Christ. - But, yeah. - God. - But I, like I get, you know, well, you know, they were putting a hard position. I get it. But. - No, you're being nice. I'll say fuck. - I'm fine, I appreciate it. - It was great. But the reason I'm bringing up is because like, it is so raw. And yeah, that couldn't have been, how long after was it? We're gonna get to what the conversation was. - That was, I mean, like 12 to 18 months. - Yeah, dude. - That was raw. And again, the point was, I was always a very honest, like talking about like talking about freedom, liberty, sovereignty, the, to be what you are, which I think is good. Like goodness is like is to pursue your nature and to fulfill your nature and to not be prohibited. And I knew what I wanted to be. I feel like I couldn't be it. And there's a reason. There's a reason why every law is written in the negative tense. Like whether it's the 10 commandments or the Bill of Rights, Congress shall make no law, thou shall not kill. Freedom only exists when you can say no. If the, the freedom to say yes is just, is permission. And whoever's giving you permission is your sovereign. That's who rules you. And the only way I felt I got to the point where I could have certain myself and assert my freedom, especially, you know, when I viewed myself, when I viewed myself as property of the television, of the institution, of media and, and managers and all these things, when I viewed myself as property, suicide became the destruction of property, became vandalism. And I wanted to show my contempt so much that it's like I'd rather die than do this. And so that became a really dangerous headspace where, and of course, thank God, now I've learned that I have a voice. And that was actually for a long time. I'm in my dreams. I had no voice in my dreams. I would be yelled at by people, and I would have this frog in my throat, and I couldn't speak just like in real life. Just like in real life. So until I wrote the book, I couldn't, I didn't speak in my dreams for like years. I couldn't speak. And I was always being talked to in my dreams and taunted. And then when I wrote it and like reclaimed my voice and that story, I developed. - Yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead. - No, I just, I developed the ability to speak. And again, that's why I think, you know, thank God, because now I mean, all of this, I started sharing stuff online a year ago, essentially, to the day almost. And you know, it'd be a shame. It's just like I think about how, talking about brainfully forming at 25. I didn't know anything. That's such a young age. And I was so, and I also, the reason I was so wrong, my TED talk, was because there is nothing I hate more than sort of the infantilization or the cuddling of talk about suicide, because talking about madness, talking about genius, like it made sense to me. I wouldn't do something that doesn't make sense. And so that was the point of the TED talk, was like, why did this make sense to me? And as you can see, when looking at it through the lens of destruction of property, of retaining sovereignty. And then of course, it starts to make sense in the context of like Sepaku and like ritual suicide and like in choosing to go out on your own terms. - Sepaku. - That was like the Japanese disembowelment of like San Mar like a bichito, yeah. And there's actually a, I think it's Walt Whitman, Song of Joy, as he says. Like along the lines of to struggle against great odds to face enemies undonted, to be entirely alone with them and to find how much one man can stand, to face prison, torture, strife and popular odium face to face, to mount the scaffold, to charge the muscles of guns with perfect nonchalance to be indeed a god. There's this idea that, and yes. There's this idea that, if you doubted, he nailed it. - If you charged? - I knew we had a bar for bar word for word. - If you charge the muscles of guns with perfect nonchalance, that's how you become, that's how you become a god, to be indeed a god, a godship. It's so, that's why I think it's so beautiful where lots of animals get killed. But only a god would choose to suffer. Bacteria run away from high temperatures. Cattle will run away from wolves, but there's something that only a man can, there's something divine, or even I guess you see, you'll see a scared animal defending its child where, when you, when you charge the muscles of guns with perfect nonchalance, that is godship, that is there's divinity in that. And so, I say all of this, not to romanticize or to justify 'cause I do think life is more romantic, I do think life is more justified. But that's where my headspace was at, was you know, when you feel powerless, that becomes this huge, well, well spring of power. And I think anybody listening to this right now who is negotiating with those things, that's probably the great temptation. And, you know, there's, I say all of that to confess that it's a very good argument, like it's very damning, and that's why, you know, as you've seen my, as my TED talk, like, you know, for me, I ended up dragging a box cutter across my throat 'cause like I just wanted to be done with it. And, you know, evidently, like wasn't able to do the damage necessary to, to not be here anymore. - What do you think that was, that you didn't, you didn't, I mean obviously, like if you wanted, if you wanted to, I think like they say there's that like, I don't know if it's like a, you know, the folktale of like, it only takes, it's like eating a baby carrot to bite off your pinky, but like your brain won't do it. Because it's like self-harm, so like the neurology can't overcome itself, to destroy itself. I think there was an element of that to it. I mean, I was, of course, like very scared. And again, it's like it's not like I wanted to. It's not like I was going out of my way to do it. It was, I wasn't really, I was, I was reluctant. I was, I was scared. And so I wasn't eager by any means. And I didn't have the date circled and scheduled with a birthday cake waiting for me. I was, I was reluctant and I, and so of course, like I didn't, I didn't create the force necessary to produce the damage that would have done it. Thank God. - Well, let's go back to the timeline too. Because we, we got off that and skipped forward for a second. So it was after, after the championship game, you were third team all American, which was supposed to mean something, but you didn't feel like, or you're third team all big time. I'm sorry, you didn't feel like you were a good player. And you kind of internalized this whole thing. And I guess you're headed into your junior year at this point in a second. - Junior year, yeah. - And this, I believe what you said 20 minutes ago was that that was when, it's not like it was the first time in your life, you had that ideation, but that was when it started to creep in that like you know what I'd rather not be here. - Yeah, no, 'cause I mean, to speak very plainly, I prefer to speak as plainly as possible because I think it removes any room for deception or dishonesty. But like I mean, I felt kind of like just bitch made layer. It's like I don't, like you've spent 21 years, your parents have spent this money getting year, you're the agents, the coaches, like everybody had invested in me. - Did you have a good relationship with your parents? - Fantastic relationship. Like I love my parents. - There's no, yeah, there is no, like, I mean, I felt bad. But of course, then again, that's like the sort of like the persuasive demon of suicide is that a huge obstacle is what people love me, the rebuttal to that. And I describe, you know, suicides, like sort of like fighting like a mortal combat bot that like learns your moves and starts to like react to you, like like a noob side bot mortal combat, like it's a ghost that just learns your best techniques. And it makes mockery with them. It just laughs at you, just as you thought that breathing technique was going to save your life, you thought that mantra was going to save your life. Like this thing has been here longer than you know, this power, this force, this like call of the void. And you know, you really don't know until you, and like Kierkgart says that like to learn sort of the grace of God, you have to wrestle in the infinite. And to learn the grace of God. - That's a paraphrase. - Yeah, but he talks. - It's a good paraphrase. - Yeah, but he talks about you until you exhaust yourself of your own powers, you will rely on your own powers. And that's why, you know, one of my favorite images is the story of Jacob going up on Peniel, going up on the mountain. So Jacob and the Bible, this is in Genesis. Jacob is the second born twin to Abraham. No, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob to Isaac. Jacob and Esau, Esau's the red one, the first born twin, Jacob comes out second, snatching his ankle, grabbing his ankle as he comes out of the womb. So he's called the ankle snatcher, or the righteous deceiver. He's the one who makes others stumble. And so he spends his whole life sort of as the second son. And so he has no birthright. He has no claim to the house, to the lineage. But he ends up tricking Esau out of his birthright. Esau tired after a hunt. He trades Esau a bowl of soup for his birthright. And then Isaac, who's now going blind, Esau's very hairy. So Jacob covers himself in animal fur as to resemble his brother's hairy skin, covers himself in his scent, goes to his blind father and steals Esau's blessing. And so because he's sort of, he's the righteous deceiver, he deceives his family to earn this blessing. And when they find out he's banished and spends years away from his family. And when he comes back, years pass. He comes back and he goes up on this mountain. And their waiting form has led the Elohim. And so you'd like a god, angel. And I like to imagine just this sort of like this aura, the celestial being, just sort of like sitting there, waiting there, smoking a cigarette. And Jacob gets up there and they start to wrestle. And it says they wrestle all night. And then Jacob, and then the angel dislocates Jacob's hip. And the angel tries to leave. But Jacob says like, I will not let you go. The angel says, let me go. Jacob says, I will not let you go until you bless me. And so you've got this guy fighting on one leg. Telling God to blood, I'm not giving up. They've wrestled all night. The angel says, what is your name? And here I think is a really beautiful image because Jacob, his name means the deceiver, the stutter, the stumbling or the ankle snatcher. And he said the pride to fight all night. But when confronted, and when the angel looks at him in the face and says, what are you? He confesses what he is. And he says, I am Jacob. And then the angel, Elohim says, from now on, you will no longer be known as Jacob. But as Israel, he who fights with God. And so he redeems him. That's what the word redeem redeem he renames him. And so his name of the deceiver gets changed to he who fights with God. And so his combat with the infinite becomes an affectionate name. It becomes a kudos. And there's an interest, and there's also another verse where he says, like, and Jacob says, then what's your name? And then the angel says, why do you ask my name and just leave? And so there's this, it feels very sort of like older brotherly where it's like, you know who I am. And then the angel leaves. And then Jacob goes reconciles. And that becomes the 12 houses of Israel is his lineage. And so just, I say all of that. to reference. Yeah, so that's the, I think that's Gustav Dure, one of his etchings. I love this guy. And so, no, it's great. That guy, Gustav Dure, it's beautiful, right? And there's, look, like you see the struggle in him, and then the angel's just, just plain faced, in power, the higher ground. The art is so good that you can pick that up and one in split second. And so Jacob walks through rest of his days at the length. And for me, I had, I had a very similar story. So, like, to return to the, um, junior season. And so, yeah, I resolved that, like, I'd rather die. Did you resent your coaches and the trainers and the people who were part of this program who were, you know, yelling at you so much and telling you what to do or. No, no, no, no, for the most part, it was just pure love. I mean, there's, there's cases where, um, and honestly, like, you have to operate from forgiveness because, no, I don't. I believe the intentions were good. For the most part, absolutely. And like, even especially Coach Day, Coach Day, his father committed suicide. And so, he was actually very initiative on, he was very initiated on, on treating this. Um, I really do think, you know, talking about aggregators and like psychic entities, the, every Saturday, there is going to be a game with a hundred thousand people in the stadium. You're not stopping that. It's too big. It's too powerful. You're not, you could scream into the midnight sky or like go to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. You are not stopping ESPN College Game Day from coming to your town and fireworks going off, right? And so, you can't put like, what are you going to be mad about? Um, and I think maybe I realized this sort of, like, the futility of what, and that's what's crazy. It's like, this, this whole saga of me, there's always going to be somebody else wearing 76. There's always going to be somebody else wearing the number and whatever. Um, and I think, you know, for a lot of times, so like, so I told Coach Day, um, you know, I wanted to kill myself. And so I said, you know, we're about a week away from opening against Minnesota. And, uh, I tell him, I, I, I, I, for your junior year, before my junior. Yep. Um, and again, this is the plan is, um, with swift harms, the gods cut short the follies of men. Remember that? I heard that one before. Yeah. That's, um, I think it's like, fuck, Sophocles or something. Um, it's not your fire. I'm fired. Um, was, yeah. And I think, I think that's integrity. Um, and so with swift harms, yeah. So you, everybody has plans. My plan was junior year play all American make money, cool professional football player. That was the plan. And so that's, that's the plan. So I go and talk with Coach Day and, um, he's, I say, can we meet tomorrow? He says, he's probably thinking like, how are we going to pick up Moscow or how are we going to pick up chop, which are like blitzes or whatever. And I sit down and he's got his game. He's, whatever. He's busy. And honestly, like, I kind of probably like roomed his day and I'm like, I think about killing, every time I go home, I think about killing myself. Um, and he didn't flinch. He sort of, you know, we quickly, he had, again, him being familiar with it, we put the things in place. Um, what were those things? Um, I started working with sports psychiatry and psychology. And we started having, we had a, you know, probably like every other day, we were meeting, um, my mom came up for a period and I tried. So like, we had that teller. Yeah. My mom was actually, that was, I left that out. My, I thought about killing myself. My first thing was what do I do? Call my mom. I called my mom and I told her. And again, before you met with before my coach day, I asked her what to do. And she said, yeah, meet with coach day. Um, and he handled it right away. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, he said, you know, if you feel this way, you should probably sit out today. And I said, like, Coach, I felt this way for a long time. Um, the only difference is now you know about it. And so I tried to play, I think I practiced for like two more days or maybe it was just that day. Like I just, I kept going. But again, it's so weird. Like you want to talk about disillusionment once you, once you sort of like, prepare to kill yourself. It's just like now. It's like what are, someone screams at you. And it's just like it's just noise. It's just like this means nothing, bro. Um, and so I was out of it. And he knew that so I ended up, I ended up taking, I ended up sitting out. And I think at that time in my heart of hearts, I knew I was done playing football. Um, but he's still, that's interesting. So he got you help right away, but he still let you practice. Yes, but I insisted. That's what I'm saying. Like when I want to see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a little. No. I think, well, I think we'll, to talk about care. And again, this was a huge point with my mom for a long time. People still thought that like football was my outlet, as it had been my entire childhood. So they think that there's some other symptom. I'm depressed. I didn't tell them that. You didn't tell them that. No, I didn't say why. I didn't say why. It was just I want to kill myself. Um, and I think, you know, it's stress, it's the same way where it's like, it's stressful. Like I mean, yeah, it's a stressful job. Um, but it's not the job itself. It's the things that surround it. And I think, and that was why with, you know, for my mom for a long time, um, even afterwards, it took a lot of, and I didn't, and I didn't realize this until we had this sort of like breaking, this is also fast forwarding, but there came a point where that was a long fall. And my mom and I kept arguing near the end of it, where I was like, there was this failure to communicate. And there came a point where like I said, like, I'm not going to come home for Christmas. I was so fed up because we were operating under two entirely different assumptions where I had made it my mind like I can't do this anymore. And she kept saying, when you feel better, we'll get back to playing football. And so she, so I was trying to like escape from the madhouse. And she kept saying like, you're going to get better and the things are going to continue. And ultimately, you know, when I communicated, we eventually had the realization that, you know, perhaps this is irrecoverable. Um, and that wasn't until after the effects. So I think everybody sort of was operating under that assumption. How were you doing in school at that time? 4.0? Still. So the day after I, the day after I like cut my throat, like I went to class, that's the gators, when we talk about the gators, that like go up of your face, I would just like, I just put that over my throat. And just like I went to, I just continued, took my exams, took that in the fall. I was in the fall. Yeah. So that was after the conversation with Coach Day. Yes. So I took some time off. Um, and then again, we, there was the after like four weeks, there was the talk of like returning to play. And but again, like I was just so out of it, I was like, it was just like in dream world, that entire time where it's like, nothing felt real. What did you talk about with the psychiatrist? Um, it was very helpful. I mean, I had world class, um, Candace and Joshua, where my two, where my two people, um, and again, a lot of that. And again, this is the function I serve to a lot of athletes. Reach out to me is you just need, and this is why I love Nicaragua. Like you want to talk to somebody who doesn't even know what the shape of a football is. Because you get to the point where it's like everybody, again, Saturday, everything goes down to Saturday. How do you feel? It's about Saturday. Are you okay? Can you walk on that? Saturday. Everything is Saturday. This Saturday, are you good or not? Saturday. Saturday. Um, and to just talk to people who, who it doesn't matter, that's when you can really start unpacking stuff. Um, because otherwise everything is in preparation. It's, it's very adrenal and sympathetic nervous system. And it's just action and it's just survival. Um, and you can't really like slow down to process things. And so if a thing is broken, it's just pure epinephrine. Um, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's beyond you, you know. Um, and so yeah, it was extremely helpful. And then, you know, four weeks pass, and I'm like sort of back. And ironically, I was, I was like, I returned in the position of being like a backup guard. Um, I was like in the second strings. And I was honestly having so fun just practicing because then I was back to being a kid just playing football without any consequences because there's not the pressure of you having to perform on. Right. I was just like, I was just playing ball on a beautiful leg. That was, so that would have been October. I was just playing, I was playing football on October and Ohio. Um, leaves are changing. It's 6 p.m. I get to try to down block on my on my teammate. What gave up? Does Mike, are we good? Was he? It's still out. All right. We'll be, we'll be right back. We're gonna fix it. All right. We're back. We got the might fix now. Okay. You had been saying like the leaves are changing. You were having fun. Yeah, you're playing ball like you're a kid and like, um, it's just now there's like, there's no fans. There's no critics. There's no production. It's just, it's just football and, and that I loved. Um, but again, the problem had not been solved because I, I still, you know, I had more, I had a more courage to harm myself and to kill myself then to say what was wrong, which is like a terrible irony. Did it feel like you almost had a band-aid on a bullet wound and you just couldn't see the wound? Yeah, I mean, that was, it was like the, the primordial crack that, like I had never addressed, you know, and I, and for me, I'd always planned on like playing football. making a lot of money and then becoming a writer. Like I always wanted the endgame was to create things, and art-- - I wanted to be a writer all the way back back. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're an engineering school, but you want to be a writer. - Yeah, I figured I would do a degree that I could get a job if I needed to, was the plan. - So you didn't love, I was gonna ask you about that earlier, but I didn't want to get you off the thought. - You didn't love engineering, you were just really smart. - I did love engineering, I love a lot of things. I did love it, I did love it. And I think engineering really informs my style as well, in terms of, you know, it gave me the procedure, it gave me a way of looking at the world, in terms of mathematical and theoretical, but also very practical. I think, and I think again, it's all about what is practical, because these theories, and I think that's where a lot of people get like messed up, it's like in theory, ultimately like my philosophy now is about action, it's about what empowers me, what helps me move and progress, and self-actualize, and self-overcome. And so yeah, so I loved engineering, and it's sort of shaped how I, and I'm very proud of like to be able to say like mechanical engineering. - It's a nice flex. - Yeah, and I, like feather in the cat from the Ohio State University. - While you're playing football, that's amazing. - My best friends in college, it wasn't D1A, it was D1 AA, but you know, the same thing, 65 hours. - I would argue it's almost even harder for the smaller places because they have less support, like we had lots of food, lots of medical, lots of like all that stuff. You've got guys who are like really, it's like a cigarette in a dream, and like it's like you just make it work, and like I have a huge amount of respect for the dudes who are playing with like half the funding that I got, you know, I was really like pampered and blessed. - Well I was just, it's a great point, 'cause like Ohio State has all these amazing resources, but no matter how you crack it, I was always so impressed at how those guys were able to somehow balance their time, and like go to class, do well in school at the same time, and like even have fun a little bit too, 'cause it's like, you know, it teaches you a lot about life, it definitely prepares you for a lot of things, even though you have your whole schedule made for you and all that, and you're on kind of the robotic, like okay, this time I do that, the ability, especially doing a degree, like mechanical engineering while you're doing this, to like put your brain in multiple places, and be able to lock in. That is definitely serves you very well in the real world. - It was actually, it was also a blessing, it's like also, and that's why I think it's great to have diverse buckets at any stage in life, because it also provided a great amount of cope where if something was going wrong in one bucket, I could just compartmentalize and say like, at least I have this, and at least I have this. So at least if you have two of those, I think that's why I have like two feet, like if you can just put your weight on one thing until another thing gets back together, then then you can keep like moving the unit forward. But yeah, so engineering, and then we were saying, what were we talking about? - Fall leaves change. - While we were talking about, so you went to Coach Day, you told him that you were, then you got hooked up right away to the psychiatrist. - But still there were things, I had to confess, I didn't make the confession yet, which I think was still-- - You made the confession. - Right, where I had to admit to myself that I can't do this anymore, and so thank God, because it got to the point where everybody's operating under the assumption that everything is okay, because that's what it looked like, and I'd gotten very good at hiding that. And you know-- - They're operating under the assumption that everything's okay even after you walk into the office and say I'm thinking about doing this ever. - Well, I mean that, I don't mean that to say that dismissively. I think one to also say that at a high achieving place, everybody's kind of like heady. Everybody's kind of like anxious and anal, and everybody's like on edge. And again, that's one very sympathetic, because it's like, if I don't play well, people get fired. If somebody doesn't coach well, money's a lot, like there's always this like bottom line. - A friend of mine who I'll keep names in this. So you're there when you got recruited by my, you're there for Coach Day, but obviously like very similar, as far as what I've heard, like on it kind of style. A friend of mine worked on the staff for a year. I believe it was 2017. And when he got back, he said it was unbelievable. Like how organized and what a machine Ohio state is, he said, "Eurban's got one year left." - He said that at what year? - He said that after 2017. And then after the next season, he stepped down. And I was like, why do you say it was one, now he had stepped down to Florida before, obviously, the heart problem. So why'd you say it was one year left? He's like, no human being can keep up that reason. - You can, you can, dude. And again, that's why I say I keep bringing up the topic of like the agregor where it's like, that's when they say like on terms of like vampirism, and like things like corrupting your body, and like you want to talk about like the, it's just not sustainable. And it will consume your life. And like for me, it almost did like consume my life. Like I almost became a sacrifice to it. And, but yeah, so like I'm still playing, we're still, I haven't confessed to myself that I can't keep doing this anymore. And thank God because that's when I sort of started to self harm and do things to myself. And for me, self harm was sort of like the equivalent of like me taking my, again, like in terms of destruction of property. It's the equivalent self harm is the equivalent of like sending, or ransom note with a pinky, to where it's like, I've got this person. I'm willing to harm this person if my demands aren't met. But of course, I still haven't really voiced my demands yet. So I'm just miserable, depressed, harming myself, not playing football well. I'm still freaking out about school because I'm thinking, if this works out, I still want to be a Rhodes scholar. That'll be a funny story. And thank God, on the topic of Jacob having his hip to pop that a place, my second week back, we're playing Maryland. And I get thrown in. And the best thing that ever happened to me was I tore my PCL in half. And this physically incapacitated me to where I couldn't, I physically couldn't play anymore. Which then, because of that being immobilized, I now had the freedom to just fully self-assess and perform the diagnostics and figure out what's going on. And because of that, you know, I, through spring ball, so the season ends, and there's just this recurring through the media like, where is Harry Miller? What's wrong with Harry Miller? And it was very quiet. I'm like, thank God, you know, Coach Day was fantastic and kept it quiet. And like, you know, didn't spill any tea or whatever. And, yeah. - And we're asking that and even though you tore your PCL in half, like I would just like it. - Well, 'cause I was missing before, then I came back. So I was supposed to be the starter. - Yeah. - Went missing for four weeks without any explanation. Came back two weeks as a backup, and then I was missing again. And so, in even in class, I was show up and like, people would ask me like, what's wrong with me. So there was just all of this air of mystery, as I was trying to like get my head together. - That's not helpful. That's not helpful. And then spring ball starts to occur. So now we're doing offseason training. And for me, offseason training was my favorite time of year because again, it's underground. And there's no, there's no expectation. There's no eyes. It's just hard, lifting hard weights, running, and training with your team. And like, those are the guys I loved. And guys that voted me like as an offseason leader. And so I had like a unit of guys I was responsible for. And long story short, you know, I ended up realizing like when spring ball was starting to come back around and they were putting out the helmets and the shoulder pads, like holding those items like burned my skin. I just, and I couldn't bring, I'm like, I can't do this again. I can never do this again. And that's when I knew I had to quit. But I wanted to see, I wanted to see the offseason through. And so I kept, even though I knew I was gonna stop playing, I finished the offseason, but didn't want to stick around 'cause I didn't want to give any of my teammates the false impression that I could fulfill a role that I knew I couldn't. - Was this 2022 now? - This would have been 2022 now, yeah. And so 2022, I make the decision to retire. - Did you go to Coach Day in-- - Yeah, we had that whole talk and like-- - What do you say? - He was supportive. He was supportive. I mean, I don't, I remember like my parents being there, cannis and Josh being there. And you know, it was sort of, I mean, I was sort of beyond, again, like I had been through the critical point where it's like, this doesn't really matter to me, I'm like, I'm done. But of course, now people spring balls come around and people are still asking like, what's where am I? What's wrong with me? People were speculating, you know, it's so funny. And this just goes to show like how silly the world is. But like as I was missing in spring, you know, there was this one guy in particular who was like, right, I remember he wrote an article where he said, you know, just Harry Miller should have a spot on the team. He was like, spaley, no, there's young guys coming in. Like does he even have a role on the offensive line anymore? And then because they're still chatter, I ended up releasing a letter just explaining, I wanted to kill myself, I'm not playing football anymore. And that was like the retirement letter. And that was like, that went on my Twitter. And then like shortly after that, you know, I was like supposed to give a speech and like that same person who's like questioning if I have a role on the team is now writing an article that says like Harry Miller set to give a prev presentation. And it's just, it would have been a shame to, I always think of like the song "Dirty Laundry" by Don Henley. People just love "Dirty Laundry" and they love things that bleed and they love to get their teeth and things. And you know, it would have been a shame to have succumb to that. And thankfully I didn't, but yeah, that was sort of, [BLANK_AUDIO] That's sort of the football saga, and I, and in my memoir, I emphasize this phrase a lot in the final sort of like epilogue, I am not the only one. People give a shit 'cause I was good at football. But there are so many guys who have been like, I mean, I know guys who, you know, they come in with the same prophecies and they leave with like nerve damage and a joint. And guys like sticking up people and like getting arrested two years on. There's just like, there's just a slew of, there's just like this messiness and there's just this, you know, you don't see the triage and you don't see the, the shoot, the garbage shoot on the way out of this industry. And if anything, I say this to a lot of like young aspiring athletes or musicians, I think, you know, in any entertainment industry, you are product. You are, you are ground beef and saran wrap. Like you are a thing that people want to eat. And if you don't develop the resilience and the awareness of yourself, I mean, you can fall for just dumb shit. And you know, that's, that's a lesson I had to learn the hard way and that's, you know, that's when I tried to impress upon a lot of like, you know, I've spoken since then at a lot of high schools or other colleges. And to be fair, I think a lot of especially as far as I know in college sports, I think there's a huge effort to create environments that's that's very healthy and that cares for its athletes. I think there's an incentive. Like if you have healthy players, you're going to have good product. You're going to have good play. But, but yeah, it's, it's just that's sort of my story and then can I actually read this better? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh God, I haven't seen this in a minute. Yeah, I think there's a typo in it near the end. Oh, cares. It was really good. typo is apparently, all right. So this is from March 10th, 2022. I am medically retiring. I would not usually share such information. However, because I've played football, I'm no longer afforded the privilege of privacy. So I'll share my story briefly before any articles continue to ask what is wrong with Harry Miller. That is a good question. It's good enough question for me to not know the answer, though I have asked it often. Prior to the season last year, I told Coach Day of my intention to kill myself. He immediately had me in touch with Dr. Candace and Dr. Norman, and I received the support I needed. After a few weeks, I tried my luck at football once again with scars on my wrist and throat. Maybe the scars were hard to see with the wrist tape up. The scars were hard to hear through the talk shows and interviews. They are hard to see and they are easy to hide, but they sure do hurt. There was a dead man on the television set, but nobody knew it. At the time, I would rather be dead than a coward. I'd rather be nothing at all than have to explain everything that was wrong. I was planning on being reduced to my initials on a sticker on the back of a helmet. I'd seen people seek help before. I'd seen the age-old adage of how our generation was softening by the second, but I can tell you my skin was tough. It had to be. But it was not tougher than the sharp metal of my box cutter, and I saw how easy it was for people to dismiss others by talking about how they were just a dumb college kid who didn't know anything. But luckily, I am a student in the College of Engineering, and I have a 40 and whatever accolades you might require. So maybe if somebody's hurt can be taken seriously for once, it can be mine. And maybe I can watch and vouch for all the other people who hurt but are not taken seriously because for some reason pain must have free requisites. A person like me who supposedly has the entire world in front of them can be fully prepared to give up the world entire. This is not an issue reserved for the far and away. It is in our homes, it is in our conversations, it is in the people we love. I am not angry. I had to lose anger because I did not know if God would forgive me. If I went to Him in anger, I did not know how the host of host would respond to my untimely arrival, and I did not want to tempt Him. So in my sadness, I lost my anger and learned many things. I learned what color blood is through the tears in my eyes. I learned that the human ear can distinguish between the two when their drops hit a child floor. But above all, I learned love, the type of love that can only be placed together by the mechanism of brutal softness. And so I will love more than I can be hated or laughed at, for I know the people who are sneering need most of the love that I was looking for. The cost of apathy is life, but the price of life is as small as an act of kindness. I am a life preserved by the kindness that was offered to me by others when I could not produce kindness for myself. We ask, how could this have happened? But that single question cannot absolve us of all the questions we might have asked while it was happening. I am grateful for the infrastructure Coach Day has put in place at Ohio State. And I am grateful that he is letting me find a new way to help others in the program. I hope athletic departments around the country do the same. If not for him and the staff, my words would not be a reflection. There would be evidence in a post-mortem. God bless those who love, God bless those who weep, and God bless those who hurt, and only know how to share their hurt by anger for they are learning to love with me. I am okay. There is help always. Dumb Spiro's, Dumb Spiro's Sparrow when I breathe I hope. Do you remember writing that? No. I mean, that's from my notes app. That's from your notes app. That's from my notes app. Man, you got a hard notes app, bro. I got a crazy notes app. Wow. You got a crazy notes app. Yeah. Kind of dramatic. I mean, in retrospect, like I said, I'm a very dramatic guy. Dumb Spiro's Sparrow while I breathe I hope that's like, well, I breathe I hope that's one of my, like, just a motto that I love. But yeah, that was like in a notes app that I drew up one morning before going to Nicaragua. I posted that I think on a Thursday and then flew to Nicaragua the next day. And yeah, I just had to put out a presser of like why I wasn't playing. And that was it. And yeah, obviously it takes time to heal and that's not an overnight thing. It's certainly not something that when you press post on something, it all goes away at all. But when you did put that out there, was there some sort of weight that you felt, everything got like a little bit lighter? Absolutely. Yeah. I was, oh, did I remember I was playing Call of Duty World at War when I posted it. And I posted it. And then I remember I got the first, I think, notification I got from it was a text from an old high school teammate, and he just said, I love you. And it was a lot of, it was a lot of that, so many posted something that was really fun. The meme that was like, that's too long I ain't reading that, congrats or sorry though, that was hilarious. No, it felt good, I meant it, and yeah, I posted that and then left the country for a week. And yeah, and then I got like somebody, they invited me to be on the today show as I was out of the country, came back today show. That was a lot of crying on camera. And yeah, and so it was a privilege and again, I am lucky. I have spent so much time, like it's all like, haha, cool now, but it's heartbreaking. So I've been, I've interacted with so many parents whose children ended what I didn't. And so it's like, you know, I can get my flowers and it's a blessing to be here and to talk about it. But I'm very fortunate, I'm very lucky. And yeah, after that, that's when I, you know, that's when I could really just become something different. And how did you, first of all, did, would you say you're in a really good head space today? I am now. When I first moved to New York, I wasn't. I spent, so I graduated, so all this, I graduated in 2023. I spent that last year putting together my applications for the roads and martial scholarships. So this would be to go to Oxford. And so I think anybody who doesn't know, like, anybody who doesn't know, the road scholarship is this big deal. Scholarship to Oxford, very limited, you know, presidents get it, like smart people get it. And from ever since high school, teachers were telling me, like, oh, you should try for the road scholarship. Like, that's what smart people do. Again, other people wanted it, so I wanted it and I was like, that's what I'm gonna do. And I ended up being a finalist for it. And Chicago, I interview for it, and it's just so surreal, man, I spent 10 years stressing and bitching about every single grade, perfect grades. And it ends. You do a 25 minute interview. There's 16 people in your, there's, I think it's like 16 sections and 16 people each section in the country. This was in Chicago, 15 other people were there. You've got all of the Ivy League people, like, everybody's very impressive. God, like that, like, no offense. Insufferable coffee hour because everybody's so smart, so it's like, it's like, everybody's trying to like share facts, and it's like, everybody already knows the facts, and so it's just like, okay, whatever, and you have that weird thing where it's like, oh, I really You know, I hope it really works well for you, not as well for me though, but, so we have a coffee hour, talks to other students, and then you get a 25 minute interview with the Rhodes panel, which is like, I think, previous Rhodes finalists, and then the next day, they wrap up some more interviews, and then they sort of just spend the day waiting, they deliberate, and then they come out, and they line you up, like it's a, like it's like, you're picking a kickball team or like it's a firing squad, they line you up against the wall, they say two names, and then those are the two people, and you go home. So the 10 years of dreaming and fretting, and doing all this stuff just ends with two names that aren't yours. And I remember being relieved afterwards though, and I was like, I remember I had made friends there with a guy who was from West Point, and you know, I remember I said something about the poem, if by Rudyard Kipling, about, you know, if you can, and that's like a beautiful long poem, or essentially about, if you can like, risk draw a chance, like lose all your earnings and just continue on, and then he brought up, you know, a dream deferred, but by Langston Hughes, I guess. And it's just sort of one of those things where it's like, left, got a deep dish piece, and then went back home the next day, right, and then life continues, and so, very strange, you know, that scholarship, and honestly, like, thank God, I didn't go there. Well, I think, I think what I wanted to do was too big, even for like Oxford, like the vision I had, it was incoherent, and I know even at times when I speak now I can be, I can be incoherent, and I had these adults, and I was still just a kid, I had these adults, I asked me what I wanted to do, and I'm like talking fast, and I'm rambling, and I'm like looking schizophrenic, and there's just sometimes the way people look at you, you know, that you know they're not picking up what you're putting down, and they can't see the world the way you do it. They can't see the way that I do, and again, I think especially academia becomes this MLM of just like, I'll agree with what you say, then you'll agree with what I say, and we'll make a bunch of money getting grants, and getting donations, and it'll become this just huge circle jerk, and we'll all just tell each other how smart we are, and I told them, I remember, they asked me like, I think I was proposing to study political theory, 'cause I wanted to do like policy or political theory to sort of do policy around like tech, and like social media at the time, as it pertains to mental health, and all this other stuff. And to be fair, like I think my ideas weren't fleshed out yet, 'cause they were so young, and my sprawling, but they asked, I wanted this political theory, and they asked, they asked essentially what I wanted to do, if I wouldn't want to especially get into policy, or like, do what? And I said, you know, I want to be a writer, I want to comment on it 'cause I think I can do more from like outside of the system, if I can just critique and write, and so doing, right, oh for sure. And then that's exactly what I'm doing right now, and you know, there's a song by Third Eye Blonde called Graduate, and it's, you know, essentially, you know, kind of look at strangers that I meet, can I get my punk S off the street, cross your fingers, I'm going to knock it all down, so the bastard's looking down on me, your whipping boy, calamity, cross your fingers, I'm going to knock it all down, so they wrote that song in retaliation to like a music industry that was kind of like blue-balling them, and not letting them enter the industry. And I think that's become a huge, like I love that song, it's from their debut album. Can I graduate, like, am I allowed to graduate, and with that Rhodes, with that thing, I realized whatever I really wanted could not be given to me, it had to be taken. If it was gonna be real, 'cause again, freedom is a no, freedom is like, I'm going to do this, like if you want me to not do it, you'll have to stop me. And so I think about like whether it's like Napoleon, like taking the crown, like putting it on his own head, or even like, I don't know if you know this story, Alexander the Great before his conquest goes to the, have you heard of this? He goes to, I guess, Delphi goes to the Temple of Apollo to speak to the oracle and get his prophecy, and they say it's close today for a holiday or whatever. And so he goes inside and he grabs the oracle by her hair and pulls her out, and he says, tell me my prophecy. And she's late in this fear, she says, like, you are invincible. And so he grabs just the image of like grabbing the oracle by the hair, or like later he slices the glory and there's this action is the only solution. And it wasn't gonna be found in a scholarship, it wasn't gonna be found in like asking politely, it had to come from within myself. And so it was a blessing. - You strike me as a guy who if I told you a rule to something and it made sense to you. It made a logical sense. You'd be like, sounds good. All right, you tell me not to walk down the street and kill a random dude. Yeah, that sounds good to me. But if I give you a rule that's just been for some reason accepted, that doesn't make any sense. Even if it's a bunch of smart people that have accepted, your brain shorts and there's a compliment. Short circuits and guess, no, no, no, no, hold on, that's a bullshit. I can't do that. - You wanna hear a story? - Please. - High school, senior year spring semester, or like my last few months at high school. We were, I was a football player. We were friends with a lacrosse guys. - Sorry to hear that. - Right. No, they were, they were, well, okay, this will be good. - Joe Burrow like that. - Wands it up. - He does look like Joe Burrow. It's got a freak in the out. - A compliment. - I told him to, did you do it? I told him he, I wanna grow, I want to grow a mutton shop. - I'm gonna do that. - Yeah, I just, a guy just told me that I look like a guy who played Carnage from Venom too. - Woody Harrelson, yeah. - That's less of a compliment. - Yeah. - Shout out Woody. - Yeah. - Yeah. - I'm sorry. - You were telling this story about hanging out with the lacrosse. - Relaxed, bro, yeah. - That's right. - And so my football buddies and I, we wanted to make, I think if there's a word to describe us or maybe even me, it's like a belligerent, we wanna start a student section and get a rowdy. And so we did and I've got like a show far, which is a kudu, it's an animal horn that is like you can like blow into it. I was like a viking shit. - Yeah. - So like I had a horn that I brought to the games that I would blow. Like a Vuvuzuela pretty much. And so we're just heckling and we're talking shit and we're like the other parents are getting pissed at us and we're chaining like daddy's money at the private schools and like we're doing all this stuff. And just being like real assholes. And then our own admin at Buford comes up to me. And they say, Harry, you can't bring that horn in here anymore. And we were having a great season. We were like a record season thus far. And that just didn't say right with me. So I printed out the GHSA bylaws. I don't know if this is still right. 2019, it would have been the 2019 bylaws. I'm pretty sure it was 2.76. It said no artifice. - Sorry, that's just in between the chords right there. That's why I have it there. - It said no artificial noise makers are loud in GHSA games. And I argued that a horn is not an artificial noise maker. It's an organic noise maker. It's an amplifier of my voice, of my lips, of my embouchure. So actually of my embouchure, I was in a medical band. So that's like embouchure is the mouth position when you're playing like a musical instrument. I played euphonium baritone. - Learn something new in the day. - So it wasn't an air horn. It wasn't an artificial noise maker. It was an organic noise maker. It was an amplifier of what was my voice. And so actually I highlighted it, laminated it, brought it in. And we rocked it for the rest of the year. And I think we lost in the final four, and then we won state championship the next year. So that was sort of like paving the way for, yeah, so yeah, tyranny, not a fan. - Yeah, not a fan. - Yeah, I got it that. But so you don't get this road scholarship and you describe it as relief. - Yeah. - And so you go home a couple days later and you kind of get on with life. But was there a point where that kind of set in where you did look at the gravity of like, damn, I really was actually tried for that thing for like two years. - Absolutely, absolutely. Well, yeah, 'cause it sort of fills me with like a, it's very strange. And this is also being like a former college athlete where you go from thinking, and like this is a meme when a guy has a bad game where it's like, send the resumes, bro, like become an accountant, bro. Just give me, put the fries in the bag, bro. You're thinking like, I gotta get a J.O.B., or I'm gonna starve to death. And so I go from, I go from probably the two cushiest professions in the world, professional athlete and professional academic to no prospects. And. - Is that how you looked at it in no prospects? Brain like that, resume like that, you thought no. - Well, well, unfortunately, I'm very bad at application processes because again, being widespread, people viewed us in coherent. So I ended up deciding to move to New York City. So my buddy Cooper lives here, I figure, I'm very sort of like Jack Carewack on the road or like Herman Melville, Moby Dick, like, right? I still believe like in America. And I'm like, I'm just gonna, I'll go to fucking New York City. If I need a job, I'll go to the docks. If I need, I'll go to the fire, so I'll go to job. - I'll do something. - I'll be like, you know, like Ishmael goes down and like gets, gets a spot on the pick-wad. And so I believe in it and I go there And I spend a year jobless. and New York City, and the only thing I got was like a minimum wage opening and opening a crunch fitness at 4 a.m., which even that fell through. So I was like sending LinkedIn applications, which minus well, you minus well, just like burn, you minus well, just like shove it up your ass at that point, you know. And dude, like that was, because even there was sort of a victory lap after like, "Oh, Harry, try to kill himself. Now he's a nice guy." And he's like lost weight. And he's a nice guy. Good like stuff like that. It's great. But no, I could have easily, it's sort of like, uh-huh, less than dude. Oh, that delivery was impeccable. When somebody, there is an industry in trying to kill yourself. There's an industry in it. Yes. You can make money off of like, you can like, I could have become a gumball machine where you give me a quarter. I'll come to your pep rally and I'll tell kids not to kill themselves. And I didn't think there's a value in people who do that with the right intentions. Absolutely. Yeah. But I think for me, like I wanted more. And I think, and I, and those, and those people end up like expanding that to become more holistic. Sure. But essentially, it was basically like, it was basically like somebody trying to like pull my, um, my plushie string and be like, say the line, say the like, I wanted to kill myself. Well, it's back to your original issue, which is like a product of one thing. And now it's like, so then you're another product. Right. The thing that got me out of the thing. And that's why I love, that's why I had to leave just Columbus because it's like, it's a pretty small town. Like it's like, it's Ohio State. It's Scarlett and Gray. And so even then, like, there was, there was schematics there that could have kept, kept me in sort of like the nice residential area, suburbs of Ohio, show up to fundraisers, be a cardboard cutout, tell people why killing yourself is bad. And that could have been, that could have been my, but I wanted more than that. And I knew I was more than that. Or just why I moved to New York City. So I could just sort of like anonymize myself again. And so I did that. And, uh, yeah, first year jobless. And that was, that was a real moment because I remember a year passes. And this was before NIL. So I didn't, I didn't, I don't have like millions of dollars. I didn't leave with, um, pre NIL, pre NIL. So I left. So if I had stayed another year, I could have Bukhu, DeNero, but I just, I couldn't do it. And, um, so I left with, there was a stipend so you get like, you know, I think pre NIL, you were probably getting maybe like 1500 a month to like cover rent and stuff like that. Maybe like a little bit more than that. If you were like, if you had to like pay rent or something, um, which is perfect for your football player, but like, so I had saved up some stuff. And I essentially lost it all in that first year of like believing in New York City. And I couldn't find a job. And like I'm losing money. Surprise you and lose that in one month, dude, it was close. Like it was like, I mean, it was, it was just so bad and like a year passes. And, um, this was crazy. So I have a moment where, you know, I'm like, lying in bed in an afternoon and there's nothing like an unemployed summer afternoon in New York City when your air conditioning sucks and your roof is leaky. And there's fucking bugs coming out of your sink. And the world's falling apart. And like, I just, I laid there thinking to myself, like, if I, if I lay here, starve and die, nobody's nobody's going to check on my buddy on my body until it starts to smell or the rent is due. And I was like, I, then I better fucking do something. And like that, when I realized that, because again, even like, that was beautiful because all the veneer was stripped away. Even with like football, like football is a sort of like a pretend world, um, academia sort of a pretend world, rent in New York City real world. And that was like a really, I never worked a summer job. You know, I had like, as I always played football, which is, it's simulation. And, um, yeah. So I was like, running out of money, um, rents to, I got up the lease and the lease is getting up 60 bucks a month. So it's like, are you entering you out? My mom is saying, like, and she's, she's lovely. And she's like, you know, you know, you can come home if you need to regroup. But I, I, I knew I couldn't, I knew I didn't want to. I didn't believe in that. Why didn't you believe in that? Just because I knew I was supposed to be in New York City, like I still believed in the dream. And I was so delusional and especially like on the backside of like suicide, it's like, what do I have to lose? And especially when you're laying in bed and it's like rents do, if I don't get it, I'm fucked. What is there to lose? Like, let's, let's figure something out. And I still believed. And I said, and again, that's a Ohio state have everything didn't believe in it. Couldn't do it. New York City didn't have anything believed. That's the belief is, was the difference. And like for me, like I loved it. I was terrified and I would, like, I couldn't sleep at night. And so new lease is coming up. And then I meet a crazy, um, poet and union square named Jim. And he gives me, he gives me an e-ching, like fortune reading. And it essentially says like, it just says endure. And it says like weights. And like I have like the pictures of the page, but like he picks out these coins and it just like endure weight the season is coming, right? Um, and that was like the May when lease, like lease is changing at the end of the, at the end of the month. Are you in or are you out? And I said endure and I was like, okay, I'm in. And then June, there's a bodybuilder in my neighborhood named Moses, who's just like Jack Brawlick Blackdude, hits me with his head. I've got a buddy opening a gym in the Upper East Side. You want a job. And like that's it. And now it's like, and now I survived, right? And it's like LinkedIn wasn't shit. All you can do is just go out in the street. Oh, uh, Dave just pulled this up from Henry Miller. It is now the fall of my second year in Paris. I was sent here for a reason I have not yet been able to fathom. I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I'm the happiest man alive a year ago, six months ago. I thought I was an artist. I no longer think about it. I am. There are no more books to be written. Thank God. Banger. Yeah, which one is that? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got a crazy style. Yeah. There's something in that though, like, you know, relating it to like, what I've done over the last six years. And I haven't had a second really to breathe about it. Like it's just been six and a half years of the grind. And that's a that's a decision I made. And I don't regret that at all. And I love what I get to do trying to get rid of some of the other stuff I have to do around it. But you know, that'll come with time. At the same time, I've never had a lot or anything like that by any by any respect. I mean, my whole adult life before I did this, I lived paycheck to paycheck. And then, you know, I came and did this and I didn't have any money for three years. And now it's like the money just goes into the business. But sometimes when I get really stressed about the amount of money we have to spend on this just to be able to fucking get this thing growing, I'll think about the fact that there's going to be a moment where when I have accomplished the things I want to accomplish whenever that is. Hopefully like I have a great life and a great family and I'm very happy. But I'm going to look back on the times when the struggle was there or when you were really worried about how much money you had to spend on this thing. And if it was going to work out or something like that and be like, damn, I'd give anything just to go back and fucking feel that. Yeah, well, that's what's crazy. And like I always think like what women says, these are the days that must happen to you. And I think about, you know, Ohio's, labor times, that Ohio State where it was like the most, it was the scariest and hardest days of my life. But all I remember is there's just the nostalgia, the nostalgia, the pain of home. There's just this like yearning and this just this beautiful memory. And I think about even here, like, and that's that's a big and the need like a Virgil, Virgil says that when he's ship or not a neus says that when he's shipwrecked in Carthage, I think it's like for some at hike, Oli and Memanise you've a bit like perhaps one day you will look back even on these times and you will laugh. And to think that these will be and I think I said in the Ted talk, these will be laughable times. And I think all you all you can do is just endure and wait and like kind of on a crystal, I mean, Alexander Dumas, he just says it comes down to a weight and hope, Espera, like those are the same word, Doom Spiro, Sparrow, while I breathe, I hope all you can do is just wait and just stay in the pocket. And you know, every and that's where I think like, that's why exhaustion is such a blessing. Like when you wrestle with it all night and you leave exhausted, the bright side of exhaustion is that you can't move anymore. And it's like this Chinese finger trap. And when you stop moving on a Chinese finger trap, it just becomes like this blanket. And you're just there and you're just waiting it out. And yeah, I just think all you can do with the only, it's only endurance and it's just waiting. And something's got to give eventually. And yeah, you just sort of have to pit your will against against against the will against just the circumstance. And yeah, for me, yeah. Did you have a moment where you crossed the Rubicon where you realized, oh shit, I want, I want to be here. I don't, you know, in terms of life in general. I think, I think a lot of that has occurred over the past year of just speaking more because Because again, for me, I thought the only reason people would care about what I said is if it would be involved with my death. I thought they don't only care about a suicide note, or if I talked about my suicide, but now, like in the past year, all I do is talk about life and vitality and strength and beauty and overcoming. And with that, you know, like, Hades can be conquered. Death is conquered. It's just life is so beautiful. And I think that's when I realized like, I want to be here. And like, by, you know, it's very funny, like, I remember like during a look, one of the worst times or something, you know, my mom was just having trouble with what was happening with me. And I think she saw like a psychic or something. And the psychic told my mom, and this could have been just like a gas station psychic. This could have been whatever, but told my mom like that I wasn't going to commit suicide in my life. And I remember being just so enamored with the thought that something else was going to kill me except for myself. And I just thought that was like a treat that I wouldn't be my enemy and that I would have something. And I really like, that's a huge like this, just this philosophical idea of you define yourself and what denies you. And so for me, I'm just trying to impose myself against the life I want and to just expand to myself and to feel the friction. And I think about like life from the first like prokaryotic cell, creating a membrane. And again, the membrane is a no. It says, this is what I am. I am not my environment. And then it develops and it develops. There's the nucleus. Then you have like animals. And it's just like from the dawn of time, like life is saying like, no, fuck you. I want to live. Finds a way. You can't eat me. It finds a way. Like, I'm going to have my way. And I just think that's really beautiful. And for a long time, I felt very subject to circumstance and to other things. And I think, and that's what's really dangerous because when you feel powerless, and I've learned about this elsewhere, you know, it's really easy. You want to, and I reaffirmed this, you want to excuse yourself, excuse like excalus or remove cause from yourself. But when you remove cause from yourself, you become a door stop. You become this inanimate object. But you have to accuse yourself. You have to fill yourself with causation and action and vigor. And it's very hard. Like that's the first step of like me becoming something that wanted to live was, was accusing myself when I looked at my bed and I realized like, if I die, like nobody's going to save me. And I think especially for young dudes, like that's a huge, like, that's sort of like, that's the Rubicon moment when you realize like, nobody's coming. There is no Calvary. You better figure out a way to do this because nothing's changing. I think that's when the chemistry really starts to change in your brain. And at least that's when it changed for me. What do you think, you know, your story's obviously been very well outlined today and you going through all the steps that kind of got you there and like your personal experience. But why do you think we have, you know, this is a kind of heavy word to use, but such like a widespread epidemic in the younger generations of like a lot of young men, especially who are struggling and who have these thoughts more commonly than they have in the past. Well, I think a lot of, I think a lot of a lot of the veneer and social trust that our parents and their parents had, as he wrote it, I think there's very low confidence in the fabric of like what we have. Yes. I was talking with, it's crazy. You know, when you think about just the way things are, so you are you familiar with the, are you familiar with like the Thomas Jefferson quote about like the blood of tyranny must be. So, who do you think he's talking about and when he says that, like King George in the war for independence? Well, the quote was the price of freedom is like the blood of tyrants or the tree of liberty must be wet with the blood of tyrants. It's mulch or like it's like it's right. I don't think he was necessarily just talking about them. No, I think I was, he said it in a reference to when I was just talking with a friend about this in reference to Shay's rebellion, which occurs 1796 1786, like 1786, 87, like right before the Constitution is written. And so as the Constitution is being written, you have Americans going to war against essentially Washington and the young, like not even formed federal government. And Thomas Jefferson is speaking about his own, like the tree of liberty is there. The blood of tyrants is there. So it's like even there's something just so deeply beautifully pessimistic about the Jeffersonian philosophy right there, um, Shay's rebellion being like, you know, a veteran comes back and like he's been fighting a war and he can't pay on debts, right? And so even at, even at the birth, there's this pessimism and this perpetual struggle. There's this fight. So that's never, that never goes away. And I think again, for me, I grew up in a post 9/11 world. And I think over the past 25 years, you see the American, um, hegemony, you see dissolve, you see stories not add up over time. And I think a lot of young people and that's how I felt, you know, whether it was American Pine College football or Oxford University, um, just this, I kept asking like, can I graduate in the adults? Like, we'll get back to you. And for me, and I think, you know, there is this, there is, you know, so again, there's this atomization and atomization and I, and this occurs both like when you have, there's the extreme American individualism of like capital and money and just making money in which when everybody acts as individuals, that's also atomizing. And on the other hand, you have like extreme, the notion of like collectivism and identity lessness, both results in a sort of atomized person. I think that's, I think that's a pressure that weighs on people feeling individualized. Um, but you know, there's, I was reading recently, you know, it talks about like sort of like in the elite theory and talking about just sort of like the state of like, say like where we are in like in our country with like young people, um, there's revolutions typically occur. So in elite theory, like mass movements, mass populist movements don't create change. It's typically elites use massive groups to dispossess other elites and like still the elites place. And um, you know, there's this from say that again, elites use massive groups to displace other elites. So it's not, so every, every mob, like whether it's the French Revolution or 1917, like whatever, the, the people are mass, they're matter. They, they, it's inertia that moves and displaces other things, um, but they can now, right? Okay. Here we go. Yeah. So the other elites displace the other elites and so I'll try to combine a couple of, I, there's, there's two YouTubers. I really like Neema Parvini and Carlos Perona, I think, who goes, but like you're robust on YouTube. Neema Parvini. Neema Parvini. I just read something recently of his about elite theory, which is like where I'm getting a lot of these ideas, um, but in elite theory, so there's essentially two groups. There's the ruler and the rule. So he references like Mosca, Pareto and Juvenile are the big, at least people that I remember from his, from his book. And so there's the, there's the theory of like the ruler and the rules and like the law of oligarchy where a organized minority will always control and unorganized majority. And so democracy proves a great smokescreen to just move. It's just mass. And you can especially through, through, through media, if you can control media and opinion-forming mechanisms, that mass will certainly largely contour to what the elite want. And so the ruler and the ruled within the ruler, there's the governing elites and the non-governing elites, which create this huge, um, yeah. This is the guy. I really like, I've been reading a lot of his stuff recently, um, and I found it really interesting. And um, because he talks a lot about elite theory, um, which just is essentially that it's, it's pessimistic. It's that largely changed, doesn't occur from like large groups, but from elites and elites use large groups. I think he's on to something. Right. And so yeah, here, and this is largely, I guess, from the start of the 20th century, Wilfred Pareto, um, Mosca, Juvenile, um, and so the ruling class, and especially now you develop what's, what was called, I forget who said this, Aaron Reich, maybe there's this, I think it's a couple, um, they termed it the, the professional managerial class PMCs, um, the bureaucracy. So like power, the goal of power is to consolidate itself and centralize itself. And so among the rulers, you have the rulers and the ruled. And so Pareto has this theory of the circulation of elites. And so the elites, as any like living organ, they have to circulate talent. So typically, is this the same Pareto principle, same, I have no idea. I don't know. What is that? Isn't that 80/20 theory? Yeah, I just make that up. Pareto's principle is that 80/20? Yeah. They 80/20. Is this the same Pareto? I have no idea. This would be Wilfredo Pareto. Yeah. It is. Does it say that? It's named after that. That's the same guy. All right. Yeah. Keep cooking. Look at that. Oh, sick. Okay. Yeah. This is a genius theory. It's basically saying that like 20% of results happen from 80% of it. Fuck that up. But like, look it up. It's good stuff. Yeah. 20%. So yeah. So that's the elite theory. That's the elite theory. That's the small minority. It's like hitting his head against the table over here. - The organized minority creates the effects that we see. And so he has the theory of the circulation of elites. And so the greatest threat to the elites are the best of the ruled class. So that would be the top elites within the ruled class. So that would be, you know, you wanna talk about and especially within, dude, like our system of like, is like a gerontocracy, like it's just old people. Like it's just, it's very geriatric. And so there's this, and that's an old mythological structure of like generational war of Uranus Saturn, the Olympians. Like that is, there's a war between generations. And so they circulate the elites and the benefit is with the elites is that you skim the talent from the ruled class who would organize the ruled class to revolt against the elites. So you're able to sort of poach the talent from your ruled class by making them conform to your standards. And similarly when you combine that with juvenile, he has the high low middle theory. So within the, within that hierarchy of ruler and ruled, there's the central subsidiary periphery. And the central power is the power. And in order to again, the greatest threat is that middle, typically that, that, just that, that native block that you're just, you're general whatever. You're general massive group by appealing to a peripheral group. You can sort of squeeze if you combine like the sort of circulation of the elites and then high low middle theory. You're just sort of squeezing this middle group, which is just a pretty standard run of the mill person or whatever within a society. And make 95% of people fight over 5% of the problems. - Right, and so what's, right. And so what's interesting is like, yeah, you're fighting nonsense, your elites are being skimmed. And so, and I think Peruviania searched this like in some of his essays, but and it's probably stated elsewhere like within elite theory thinkers, but revolts occur when those top elites within the, within the ruled class are prohibited from entering the elite circle. And so, right. And so like you are, so you wanna talk about like this, this sort of angstiness. I mean, that is the most dangerous feeling to like an incumbent power structure. And the way they resolve that is to empower, empower peripheral force to distract. - Can you explain that to people within example, empower peripheral force? - Well, I think like, and then this is from Carlos Perona, I think his name is Eropos on YouTube. And he has some like video essays. He talks about Tiberius Grakis, who that was a huge, various sort of Shae's rebellions. So like he's got very rich oligarchs are eating up all of the land and dispossessing native, like Romans who were veterans of the wars. And they would, so oligarchs are taking up the land and they are leveraging them out with like really cheap slave labor. And so Grakis comes. And so that's your subsidiary, the Romans. And then you've got the oligarchs, the central and then the peripheral, they're through unethical slave labor. They're essentially entirely dispossessing your subsidiary, your normal base. And Tiberius Grakis proposes like a distributive effort to give capital, to give land among the Romans, the veterans. Because that gives them something to fight for. That gives them possession within their body. And they assassinate him, the Senate assassinate him. And so that's the example he provides historically. But I think, you know, that's just like a lot of the squeeze, it's just a lot of, I think people don't realize, again, it's very, you'll eat three would be, it's like very pessimistic, it's almost like hopeless. But I think people, and I guess that's the title there, like they need you angry, exactly. They need you angry, because then you can't, and I think, and I think especially with a lot of dialogue, I view it, I don't know if you ever seen like a rugby match, have you ever seen rugby? I mean, I've seen it like in passing. I've sat there and watched the whole thing. If you, I played sevens when I first came here at Old Blue, Shao Old Blue, I think they were national champions last year. Old Blue. Old Blue was like the club I played sevens for. And I'm right into rugby in New York. Yes, but it didn't last long, because it was, it ended up being much of the same as football. I'm like, I just couldn't keep doing it. But it was, it was, I had to like, try it. And I made good friends. But in rugby, if you advance the ball too fast, and you don't have any help, and you leave your help behind, then you have to give up possession of the ball, and because you've left your help, and nobody can like pick up the ball, and so there's a turnover. And so I think similarly, like anger, and being an articulate, it advances the ball without help. Like you need to, and that's why, and that's just why, like writing and talking, because you can sort of, if you can articulate and make people aware of things, there's your help. And then you can slowly like, you can sort of calmly educate groups of people. And, but yeah, if you just get angry, that's you being a freelancer. You advance the ball too fast, congrats like you move the ball, but now you got tackled, and the ball's turned over. I think you have to do something with it. And that's the problem. This is the curse of humanity. The anger takes over, people don't step back. I think to get attention on something, you have to express, especially when something evil's happening or something is very clearly wrong in people getting hurt. You have to express something emotionally such that people go, oh, maybe I should pay attention to this. The problem is our nature, then lets us attract other people who are just gonna do nothing but that, and then we're incentivized to just keep doing that. Keep on crashing out just over and over and over again, that then eventually it kind of drowns out and the noise where people don't regard too much for me. But again, that's why that's like the whole like, that's the whole like pray to principle where it just sort of, it's unorganized. - Yeah. - And without unorganization, that's why some metals aren't magnetic is because when it's magnetic, all of those dipoles are facing the same way, and so the forces coherent and can move a body, whereas an un-magnetized piece of metal, they've all got their, they've all got their dipoles, they've all got their atoms or whatever, but it's unorganized, and so it's just, it's a nerd. And so yeah, I think it's very important, just that's, and that's why I think, I don't know, I think, articulation, and I always think, like I'm always amazed, that's why I love writing, 'cause I think about, you know, just the kind of, and that's what, and I was talking with somebody recently just about, especially with social media, you wanna talk about like, money, careers, selling out, saying things, and being paid to say things or whatever, you know, I guess there's like sort of two schools of public personality or a writer where it's like, you can, you can cash out, and that would be lovely. But then you think about like, if you are really writing something that matters, it typically ends up like an execution, imprisonment, or exile, and like I wonder to myself like very often, - Salman Rushdie. - Do you have the, what happened to him? He got excommunicated, didn't he have to leave Iran, and then they'd have fought while against him? - Oh right. - For what he wrote, they still tried to kill him. - I think, is he still teaching in New York City? - You might be right about that. - I'm not sure. - But yeah, and then that becomes like a gut check, where it's like, do you have like the balls to do that, you know? - That means you're really over the target. - Right, right, right. I don't think there's, you know, I don't say this to be like dramatic about it, but I don't think there's much in this world more inspiring than art that evokes that hits a nerve, that hits a spot where people go, a lot of people go, they just get it. And then like, what he said, right there. - Yeah, you know? - That's why I, I think like Gustav Flabert said like, good art should scare people. And I really do think like something that is, and that's also why again, that's why I think social media is great because it is so, it's not gate-kept, it's not hierarchical, it's lateral, and it's the barrier to entry is very low. And you know, it makes the, I remember, oh, there was just, there was a point I was gonna say, yes, it's good. Oh yeah, the point of like, in terms of art, where through the typical avenues, like I've written things or I've applied for things, and I think there would be nothing more terrifying as an artist than to go to a studio or to go to a bonafide source of media, give them something that you've made and they go, yes, this is exactly what we were looking for. Because I think if you make something that is exactly what people were looking for, you're already 10 years too late, like you're responding to a trend, I think if you're actually making something that is real, it should confuse people, it should be willed their people at first, people should like hiss at it. And you know, it should cause some disorder, it should cause a ruckus. There's one place I'd push back on that. I agree with your point, but not necessarily the end result. I think there's a time in a place where you're, absolutely right, something can literally evoke it so much that it's ahead of its time. I think there's also something where you create a piece of art that is so good, people didn't know they needed it until the second they looked at it and said, "I fuck you." Right. You know what I mean? Right. Well, that's what I think, like, I think that is genius, is when you produce something so clearly, it's just so obvious, it fills you with hindsight and it's just, it's so pure, and no, I agree. And I think a lot of the, yeah, I'm very excited and I've written about this and I've made videos about this. I'm very excited for the next aesthetic steps that are to be taken. The next aesthetic steps. Just in terms of, like, I think about, like, every epoch of styles, like I just recently made a video about, in Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, he ends it by talking about musical dissonance and praising musical dissonance and so this is at the time, this is maybe like 1870. All right. So bring that into English for people, musical dissonance. So like, just a chord that sounds harsh and like, he references Richard Bogner who is playing with chromaticism, which is essentially just like lots of half-step, small intervals that make it sort of like tense and it sort of like shakes and he ends praising musical dissonance and saying that so Tragedy began Tragedy, which we now probably just view as like, plays or movies, but Tragedy began as a pure, like, Dionysian chorus, a pure, it was music, it began as music. Tragedy began as music. Yeah. So it began as the chorus, it began only as the chorus in the orchestra. And then with Thespis, where we get the term Thespian, he becomes the first actor to interact with the chorus and then Escalis, Sophocles, they introduced the second actor and the third actor and that's now, now we have plays, we have Tragedy, Attic Tragedy, Classic, Athenian Tragedy, but before it's just music. And so he says all art forms are sort of appealing to like music to dissonance. So like in Tragedy, like the distance of a movie is like Rocky, like everything is hit the fan. Like there's the moment of dissonance and then the chord resolves at the end where he's at champion. And so like, it's all, it's all so musical. And I was just sort of like writing about, just to like, I really love like the new genres of like New Wave or Shoegaze, like genres that really play with musical dissonance. And you know, there's, there's these underlying truths within like aesthetics or like within art, but like each generation finds its new technology to communicate itself. And no, I'm just really interested in how technology like is, okay, here's like a on the topic of technology. I have not explained this. I can like see the wave, like the physical wavelengths that happen in this brain while he's gone and then say he's like, right there, it's great, it's beautiful, cool, keep it gone. There are some thinkers and like I've also, have you seen, did you see the backrooms? No. Okay. So the backrooms are essentially like a modern telling of the labyrinth of like the labyrinth in the minutes are. Okay. Yeah. I really liked the backrooms. And so it's interesting. I make a point. So it's a book, movie, movie, movie, and then it was like, I guess I saw the OG ones on YouTube. Yeah, right. But it's the new 824 film young kid. It was good. I liked it. I got to check it out. It was good. And Dave's very based with culture. Nice. I do like, I love watching like, again, and that's what I think. So talking about like aesthetics, communicating, a timeless phenomenon within the current. Yes. And so the backrooms, can you look up like pirates, mascot, backrooms? Okay. So this is the pirate. Interesting. Okay. So he is the sort of, he is the mob that lurks in the backrooms and is chasing our protagonist. And so this is on the topic of techno capital, technology and capital. So capital is, it's money and technology, and it's seeking to self replicate. And so I'm going to try to tie a lot of things together here. Capital comes from the root cap meaning had it referred to heads of cattle. And so capital was originally stock, live stock. It was animals. It was cattle. And so with the domestication of agriculture, the animal was the first machine. So the animal, so you hook a bull up to a plow and the bull drags the, and the bull drags the plow. I do believe, um, uh, Europa, so I've, the YouTuber, who I have referenced. He talks about sort of what I'm about to talk about. And I think he really influenced me. But when you understand the cow, the bull, as a form of technology, as a machine, the Minotaur is a cyborg. The Minotaur is a mix between man and machine. And so before they were corporate office spaces for a man to communicate his fear of being conformed to capital, being technologically possessed and losing his identity, that would be the Minotaur. That would be the bullman who lurks in the labyrinth, which is, um, there are no like straight lines and right angles in nature. And so the labyrinth is this artificial man-made maze that the bullman, the cyborg, roams around. And so the modern manifestation of this occurs as the mascot. So the mascot is the protagonist, his profession. He has to, you mask that himself and embarrass himself by wearing his job's uniform. And so he's like, he sells furniture as a pirate. And so he, he strips his identity and his Minotaur is him in a costume, him in a corporate costume. That is techno capital stealing his identity. And that's the monster that lurks in the modern labyrinth. And you to be something you don't want to be for the benefit of the audience that they create. Right. And like, in the world where it's like he is the, he is the bull on the plow. He is the machine man. And then of course the end game of this would be like Terminator or Matrix where, you know, in Terminator, the robots take the form of man. So so now you go from bullman to corporate man to robot man. So that's, so that's technology at its final set of stealing the human form. And then you have, um, in the matrix, like they're not even human. They're just using humans for batteries. That's right. And, um, this is like a really fun, uh, this is like a fun. I was reading. So I guess this sort of like goes, this is like Nick, so Nick Land wrote a, wrote a, like a manifesto. I guess called meltdown and talks about accelerationism. Um, and, and this is also, I think also an interesting comment on like sort of like the dip is between left and right where a lot of like, rightism is, it's called the reaction because it looks towards an idealized history, whereas a lot of progressivism looks towards an idealized utopia of future. So it's like they're pointed in different directions of where their ideality is. I don't think I've ever heard someone put it that way. And that is, yeah. It's, it's, yeah. So like Spangler talks about that where, and it's even in the language like conservative, you're conserving a past progress or progressing the future. It's fundamentally like a conflict of time. Um, huh. And so, wow, and so what's interesting is that with technology, there is this idea. Um, and again, a lot of this is from Europos. There's this idea among like, um, like Silicon Valley bros and of this idea of like a future techno singularity where man, human form becomes obsolete and it becomes, you know, entirely replaced with, with techno with the, um, with the machine. And, um, no, it's just really interesting. Like, I think it's important to realize like we are not in, you could say we're like in a secular world, but we are not in a world without like, we are not in a world without gods or supernatural powers or compulsions. And so really, even like the modern, the, the, the future utopia, the progressive utopia is, the, is the Christian like apocalypse, the Christian upon the end of days, right? So it's, they both view a future singularity at the end of time. Um, for, for the Christians, they say, you know, we will be, it will be the resurrection of the flesh, which is a sort of a liberation from the, from the body. Whereas for like the, the, the techno singularity for the progressive, there is this sort of the, it is freedom through technology, it is, it is the breaking down of like, even like sexual differences where like the human form is now negotiable, reality is negotiable. And what's in, so, but those share the same identity where, um, you know, this is like a lot of ideas to break down, but especially if we're going to keep it just specifically to capital, you know, in Genesis, there is the idea of, you know, God produces the world and like man is in the image of God, and he is told to, um, to multiply and to subdue nature. And this idea of like subduing nature creates the basis of like, of ownership and of capital and, um, and a man at the center of things, which is, which is a unique idea. And by the time you get to, especially the Protestant Reformation, And there is the Lutheran idea of work and of holiness and the Protestant work ethic. And so now you have, it's sort of broken, so the establishment between work and labor and capital and religiosity has been created. And especially in America where you have like the wasps come over to America and that's a mercantile, those are mercantile colonies, over the course of time, you know, the religiosity of the Protestant work ethic, which is that first very spiritual over time degrades. And of course this coincides with the enlightenment in which the I am that I am of like the Old Testament sort of gives way, I had to cover it up in I guess, you know, 17th century gives way to I think therefore I am. And so now the locus of of progress and of control in the alignment move towards moves towards man trading his own values. And so capital, the work ethic and the capital is becoming more and more powerful. The the godliness is sort of disappearing the power of man's intellect, the enlightenment, which is rather sort of like that is that is in the in the in Genesis, the serpent says like erotus, sycoteus, chanteis, bonomets, nylon, and you will be like God conscious of both good and evil. The awareness of man is increasing. It's called the enlightenment light loose the loose the the loose apharian realization the awareness the waking up. And you know, a lot of these a lot of writers, I think about, I think about spangler and man and techniques like Heidegger talks about technology, technocapural, the machine almost breaks containment. And so now technology and I guess Kaczynski talks about this technology starts to progress at a rate. Tech is Netski, yeah, the Unibomber. And he has a man in his manifesto industrial society in its future. He talks about scientists. So scientists become sort of techno priest where they serve technology. And now technology, like you think about people joke about this, like waking up one day and it's like how we had all of this and we invented Excel spreadsheets. And now the man had domesticated bull to till his land. And now man wakes up to serve the computer. And so if you farther and farther away from earth figuratively, right, but then it becomes literal. And so now essentially, like the neo as a battering the matrix is not far removed from a man who spends his entire waking life in front of the computer serving the machine. And so, and so yeah, so essentially what was formerly the clerical priesthood that the church might have fulfilled. And all of that godliness gets replaced with the state. And so you see like at the top of the, at the top of the dollar bill, is the, the all saying, I so like the state, the, the collective group replaces what was previously the function of God technology continues to improve and sort of escape our powers. Yet what's strange is even as our ideas change in some cases very much for the worse here if people start to think of the human race as just a bootloader for some right house. I would argue that's obviously not how I see the world. You know, the elements of human nature don't change. That's what's so strange to me. The things we do just are in a different medium or in a different context from what guys in drunk with power say we're doing 2000 years ago, 4000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, it's just manifested in a new way because of the environment we have. Well, that's why and then so that becomes a central argument of the enlightenment between like Russo and the idea of like this wasn't Russo, I guess it was a lock like tabula rasa blank slate. Man says, you know, Russo says man is born free but everywhere is in chains. The idea that man is programmable, man is man is a programmable machine versus, you know, he can, he's often like compared to like the Marquis de Sade, who, who, where we get the term sadist or some of the other like, some of the other people who believe in sort of like inherent sin or who believe in like Marquis de Sade wouldn't believe in that because he wasn't a Christian. But this idea of the natural infallibility of man and his natural, his ability to do awful things and Dostoevsky says, you know, something a long lines of in beginning with total freedom, I end with total slavery or like total tyranny. The the pretext for Russo, like Russo, Russo by saying that man is naturally good, now creates the pretext by saying if man is not good, then we as a society must program him to be good, which then sets the stage for collectivism and for, you know, Marx steps in and talks about now, we're now we're changing the environment or really we're changing man to fit an ideal environment. And Bastiot, Frederick Bastiot in the 1850s writes the law and again, I was talking earlier about sort of the negative capacity of the law of thou shalt not in believing that what's very dangerous is a what's very dangerous is a law that says thou shalt because now the law is force. And if the force acts in a and a gait of in a negative sense where the man commits a crime is punished, that's that's just but for the law to go out of its way to compel a man to do a thing, that's just pure force. And so like ultimately I think what gets in the way of my agreement because like Marx makes a good point about detail capital, de-territorializing the earth and sort of Thomas Carlisle calls it the cash nexus for the gospel of man and where can you explain. Yeah, so the only things that connect man, which previously would have been social bonds is money. And so money just flattens everything into it's the machine. It's everything becomes flat. So they and their theory then with socialism is flattened the money and it will solve the problems. Well, for Marx, so he says, you know, it turns capital turns everything solid into air. And again, like I'm very open to rebuff on this and like I'm just thinking out loud and trying to like recall what I've read. You know, Marx views the issue as the centralizing of capital force is much like Grakis did right where it's like in the oligarchs it's it's achieved. It's reached these sort of like points of attraction where now the middle class can't even access it, right? And everybody's just a proletariat. And which is like, okay, fair points. But of course, then the consequences which best yacht refutes is that now you're having to use the law in a prescriptive sense to say this person gets this, this person gets that. And that's what he says if the law was perfect, elections wouldn't matter because nobody would care because it would only act in negative sense when a crime was done. But because the law is imperfect, that's why elections matter so much because now we can get into the legislative powers and say, um, tax this group give this. So that's that's why elections are so contentious. And he actually has a really, um, beautiful sort of section in the law on what he calls philanthropic tyranny, which he he sit in 1850. He it's he calls it philanthropic tyranny where like even for the for the good of man, the pretext is like we're trying to equalize man and like serve man, you are able to forcefully compel man to do things you normally wouldn't do. He normally wouldn't do. But it's really hard. So then on the inverse, so you have like total, total collective subjection, subjugation. But then on the other hand, like Nick Land points out about Adam Smith writes the wealth of nations. Yeah. And he references each man acting individually in service of the invisible hand, right. And so what's ironic is the invisible hand ends up sounding incredibly like a god. And so like Thomas, so Carlisle calls it the gospel of man. And so like when when the spirit of God leaves the Protestant work ethic, it's just pure, um, techno capital growth. And progressive of his progressivism towards the utopia towards paradise. And so then there's this sort of like collision course where like the end time, the eschaton is this sort of singularity where the where man is freed from the body, some breed from the body, right, where it's like he's been the body's been become the body has been made obsolete. That's just that's dressing up that's dressing up something evil with angelic, right, right, right. And so that's and so that's like that is the those are sort of like the undercurrents of like, you know, when identifying the the ideas that head towards this point. And I just all of this to say that even among the most ardent atheists, they're still a the fervor is still very religious. There's still there is still this this point that we're racing to. And that's what they have to not believe in something by believing in something. There's always you're always going to have something there's always and that's the thing about priorities like there always has to be some kind of priority in your protocol of like belief in action. Do you believe in God? Absolutely. Yeah, I would say I'm a Christian. So like I believe, um, you know, just in the miracles I've experienced in the life I've experienced the mirror experience. Yeah, just I've experienced healing. I mean, this is a whole other crazy thing all in the memoir. Which hasn't been released yet. Let's go and say wait, I want to link it one day maybe I'm hoping just don't let's get right. We need it. No, and I do believe I do believe, no, I believe in Christ. And so that's why for me, you know, again, I'm sort of pessimistic where it's like the the I forget I'm maybe it's Lewis where it's like all of like the whole Christian timeline is pretty much just just like a perpetual retreat, it's just losing ground. - It's just losing ground. I don't know who said that. I think it was Lewis. It might have been GK Chesterton. - You're fired if you got it wrong. - Right. - You're out of here. - But, no, it is a Bill Cooper talks about this where it's like everybody's sort of playing by the same playbook, where even with different intentions, the finish line is the same thing and that becomes sort of Nick Lenns' accelerant towards the singularity is that, and this is what's trippy, is, you have a lot of these Silicon Valley bros talking about encountering demons on these psychedelic trips. Nick Lenns makes an intro and I guess to lose and guitarry also talk about this. We were briefly talking about like, "Edipus Early," this whole idea of the war between generations. "Edipus Killing His Father." The terminators of "Sky Net Killing." John, not John Carter, but-- - You have to be careful since you're on "Edipus." - Right, oh yeah, yeah. People are gonna start thinking about that the wrong way. - But there is this sort of like, and that's like Nick Lennory says, the children move back in time to kill their parents. And so whereas the Christian would have you sort of a second coming and ascitan, the end of times, and the resurrection of the body, you know, it's isn't curious how did the first spellbook for conjuring demons get produced? If not a being that was to be produced, was able to travel back in time and give instructions to produce it. So there's this element of time leaking backwards to create itself. And that's why I think it's the lose talks about desire being this mechanism which creates the future. And so that actually that like the past doesn't move towards the future, but that the future creates itself out of the past between these sort of two singularities. And then again, that's just what becomes so trippy is this sort of just this weird black hole at the end of time. And I sort of made a video about this comparing it to solitaire where it feels like there's this freedom of choice for playing this game. But as you approach the end of a solitaire game, same thing in a chess game like there's a mid-game complexity where you can make the most possible moves. But once you pass the mid-game complexity, the number of moves decreases. And eventually, for example, every game of solitaire always ends with a king being put away. So like the last move, I can 100% predict how the last move of solitaire ends in every single game you play. So in certain games which obey the law of conservation of energy and matter, there's a script that has to be followed at the extreme beginning and end, which I just think is really interesting. I have no thesis out of this, but I just think all of that I think is a very interesting. This has all been a skit's aramble for the past like 30 minutes. Oh, it's great. You have a beautiful mind, I love it. But yeah, so that's, so I think that's really interesting. All of the, I say all of this, really all of this to say that we should be more curious. Things are so much bigger than like what you see on the television. Like if it's on the television, it's probably already garbage because it's like, if it's gone through all of those avenues of approval, it's trying to manifest your consent and create an opinion out of you. And I forget who set it, but it's like, Homer will always be fresher than the newspaper, like the modern state of like, as a rule, I just try not to consume things that are coming out right now, unless it's your podcast. Yeah, but yeah, I just think everything is just so, everything is beautiful, everything is awesome. Like how can you not get amped up about it? Like the story is this is the great, this is the only story that's ever told. Every other story is derivative of this main plotline. Dude, I haven't even talked about like Nephilim and like giants and stuff. Do you know about that? That's it. I'll be another time. No, we can do that today. We should put a pin on that for one second because I don't want to lose this thought. Like what is, what does happiness look like to you? And I'm going to bring this back to something you talked about a half hour ago, but I really want you to find that first. I think happiness is ultimately service. Service. Yeah. I think, I think will, the will. And this is as like, show up in our puts it. The will precedes the intellect, the will. And I think in the Lord's prayer, it says in the Lord's prayer, it references the will, the universal will. And it conforms the personal will to the, to the infinite will. And it says, our father and I have in hand, our father who art in heaven, how would be thy name? Like kingdom come, thy will be done. The prayer opens by saying not my will, but yours. And Jesus says that in cosmony, he says like, if this cup is not for me, let it pass, but not not my will, but yours. I think ultimately happiness is in renouncing your, your personal ego to the universal will. And ironically, in anybody who like, anybody will, this will be the result, anybody else finds, but like hedonism and selfishness and greed, anti, anti service towards the universal will, will only leave one feeling completely dissatisfied. Easier said than done, but I think ultimately, it is, it is, it is renunciation of the, of just all your, all your personal shit and just being of service. - That's a great answer. Well, the reason I was asking is because when you were going on that pretty biblical rant there, it was really good. I like that a lot. - That's sick. That makes sense. - It did stick. - Okay, okay. - An honest gets a rant. We have a beautiful mind. It's great. But like you were talking about, and I'm gonna fuck up how you phrased it, but like the story we're in right now is being written by the past and all that. And it's actually like a great moment. And like it's a positive outlook at a moment where you opened up that arc by saying, I'm a post 9/11 baby, right? And so I've lived in this world where I've seen 9/11, endless wars, financial crash, wealth gap, fucking forming at a level that's never been seen before. Political unrest, social unrest, and the worst of humanity attacking itself from within with the pandemic and all that. Like you've seen all this stuff that the fourth turning lays out is like the crisis challenge. - Yeah, yeah. So of course you've read that. - I haven't read that. It's on my list, but I'm familiar. Yeah, good. - All right. - Yeah. I'm almost, your bibliography, I'm almost shocked you haven't read that. Read that now. I'm myself fucking unbelievable. But like you're a part of the artist generation, the Gen Z generation. - Yeah, right, right. - It grows up, that grows up effectively in the crisis and is very, very molded by that. And it's not to say like it's a negative generation, but things you point to are all things that are falling apart. And yet you're able to see some light at the end of the tunnel here by seeing the good of what we have around us. And you've even lived that arc yourself by still being here as well, and being excited about the stuff that's there. So do you see this as like a moment of, a very long moment, but a moment of like major civilizational strife around the world that we can overcome to build and come, you know, almost like cut off a piece of ourselves to come back stronger? - Well, if you want to be a hero, the one time you'd be preyed to be born and is that like the end of the world? Like what else, what are you looking for? Like I sort of probably like, and again, it's like very like Spangler says, like optimism is cowardice. Like it'll probably, it like it'll probably get worse. Things probably get worse. But there's something about like, and again, I view it like in a forest. Like there's these beautiful old growth forests, there's a fire and it burns down. And now it's being decomposed and eaten by mycelium and being repurposed into these new forms. And like for me, you know, growing up, whether it's whatever institution you knock on the door and they say, and I wrote this, I wrote this like an essay when I was like, just talking about trying to find a job in New York City. And you know, I said, you know, I asked somebody who had a job, like, you know, how'd you get it? And he said, you know, somebody gave me a chance. And then I said, well, can I have one? And the guy said, no, we're all out. And like there's this just, this is the chance. Like chaos is an opportunity. It's just pure, it's pure flux. It's pure raw material to build it however you want. It's terrifying. It's very scary. And like that's my only advice is really just to guard your soul. Like that's all you can do, you will lose your soul. Like, and that's the whole, the whole idea of the Palantir, the orb and like Lord of the Rings, is that you lose your soul looking at far off things, worrying about far off things that drive you crazy. So all you can do, and Martin Luther says, you know, like if I was told the world was gonna end today, I would still, if I was told the world was gonna end tomorrow, I would still plant my apple tree today. Like all you can do is just do the daily work. - That's right. - Cultivate your soul. And I think ultimately like in the book of Hosea, also on the topic of like, Hosea says ultimately, like my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. And there's just this huge. And sometimes I feel sort of like I feel very, it's easy to beat, there's just so many grifters. And like that's a huge fear of mine as to like, to succumb to cheap parlor tricks and wordplay. There is, I don't think you're in danger of that. I try, I try hard, and trojan women by the rippings it says, you know, eloquence allied with wickedness, it is a terrible thing. And I realize, you know, I have a gift for, for stalking, like I just talk to, I talk. And I love to hear myself talk selfishly. And like, like God helped me, God guard me against, you know, if I would ever advocate for something wicked, like I really don't want to, I really don't want to, the fact that you think, about that though as a guard. - I think that's a big thing. - Yeah. - That's an important step because you're constantly sheltered. - You're vigilating, right. - Yes. - But yeah, I think you can't help but get excited. And yeah, there's just something so beautiful. There is in like Horace's ode, I think three, three, two, or three, three. I think it's three, two. He talks about a man, the virtuous man, even if everybody's yelling at him, even if the winds from the Adrienne seer like blowing against him, even if everything crumbles around him, he just stands there on flinching at the debris. And I think all you can do is just not flinch at the debris. You can just, you can only just be yourself and not, like I detest fear and I used to be so scared all the time. And how'd you get rid of it? I became desperate enough, like I think about, again, when I start up my bed and realized if I died, there would only be the smell. And it's like, okay, like that's the game we're playing. Those are the stakes. I have nothing to lose. I had to become more desperate. And there's just so many like beautiful like mantras like keep to myself, like DH Florence says, I've never seen a wild thing feel sorry for itself. A bird will fall frozen, that ever tree without ever feeling sorry for itself. There's a beautiful. - It also doesn't have the word with all to do it though. Doesn't even know because again, that's also the bird has no fear because it has no ego. It's just pure will. It's just pure fulfilling its function. Like every problem I've ever had was because I was thinking too much and being too personal by our own abilities. - And that's what Zen is. And like Zen is just sort of like stripping that ego from yourself. I love, if I have advice, I always get like reading recommendations. I think the Bhagavad Gita's a beautiful book because that whole book is about, have you ever read it? - I never read it. Really good. Essentially, Arjuna's this prince with an Invincil, like an indestructible bow that he's just like, he's a badass. And he has to go to war but he doesn't want to go to war and like fight his family and then Krishna comes and like long story short, Krishna says to like lay up all your fears in me and just perform your duty, perform your Dharma, your the righteous act, perform what your role is in this world. And essentially, there's this idea of Nishkama karma. So karma, you're probably familiar with as like action. Like that's what you do, it's action and your fate. What you do is what you receive Nishkama means without desire. And so Jesus simply says like, let not, don't let your left hand know what your right hand does. Like when you give Nishkama karma is you perform things without any desire for fruits. You just do it because it's your Dharma. And so, especially when you read like a symbolic interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita, it's Krishna and Arjuna are in the chariot of war. Arjuna is the personal ego. Krishna is the soul, it's the will. It's the impersonal, the universal. And the ego serves the universal. And if fulfills, and if fulfills, it says you know better, better ones own Dharma, no matter how, no matter how imperfect, then another's Dharma, no matter how perfect, all you can do is be yourself. All you can do is fulfill your will and your nature. And you know, it could mean, I mean, it could be death. You're gonna die anyway, which is actually a pretty great thing because it would, it would suck if there was a way not to die because then you would actually be afraid. Then you would be thinking like, 'cause you don't wanna die. 'Cause you don't wanna die. Then if there's a, if there was a way out, that would be fear. 'Cause then you would just be fucking climbed up and bitching all the time. Do you fear death? I wanna be a harto and say like hell no. I think death, like in, I think it's an Egyptian, it's called Mott, which is also like the word from mother. I think death is a change of when a sperm cell meets an ovum, when a sperm meets an egg, the sperm loses its identity. And so does the egg, but life is born out of it, a new being. I think similarly when my body is lost, whether it's like cremated or whatever, buried or like, if it was trampled under a tank tread, that's the sperm meeting the egg. And like that's, it's a release, it's a change, it's an ontological change of being. You could say that the sperm is dead, it doesn't exist anymore, but there's something bigger, there's life that came out of that. And so I wanna say, I wanna say no, I'm not afraid. It's always when you say harto shit like that, that you get your bell rung. And so I don't wanna be haughty and I don't wanna be proud and be like, no, man, I don't give a shit about death. Yeah, you're not a braggard in the face of it as if you're a hauncho, but you're just trying to understand. I also think it's a braver to stare it down when you are scared, like that's what the courage is, you know. There's a quote about that, like death. Isn't that from gladiator? We're just like, smile back, you smile back, yeah. Gladiators got some bangers. It does, it's going on like this. It's so good, right? And so yeah, I think, no, but I think it'll be beautiful. I think it'll probably feel like sex, I think it'll be, I think it's, I think it's, I think it'll feel it when that happens. I mean, I guess how fast it happens. I think, I mean, there's been times where I've stood up too fast and gotten lightheaded and I thought I was like, I've had like my life flashed before my eyes. I had a, okay, actually on the topic of death. When I harmed myself very badly one night, this also helps alleviate my fur of death. I let the blood dry and then I went to bed. And when I went to bed, I had a dream. And in this dream, I was on a sort of like, I was on this couch that was covered in plastic wrap that you would see like some like grandma sauce or something, right? Yeah. And I was laying on it. So it's pure black. There's only a couch with like this floral pattern and there's plastic on top of it. I'm laying on it. My head on the left side, my feuter kicked up. And I'm watching it from the third person like a stage play almost and then this guy comes up to me and covers my mouth and slits my throat and it cuts. And then I wake back up. And I'm now in this entirely white place with all light and no shadows. And the floor is like quick silver or mercury. It's like this just liquid reflection on the ground. That's sort of like ripples out from my feet. And there's this long table prepared in front of me, left to right as far as the eye can see in both directions. And it's covered in food and there's a feast prepared. And everybody I've ever loved is at this table. All of my friends and family. And then people who had never interacted with each other were like laughing with each other and sharing drinks. And so like my grandmother who had never met one of my teammates was talking to him like they had known each other forever. It was just purely familiar. And I look around and this table is full. And then I look, I see my chair and then I look at the chair next to me and it's empty. And at that moment I feel a tap on my shoulder and I look and there's a line of all the people who had hurt me in my life. And one by one they hugged me and we apologized quote for all the things that we did not know in this life. And they were my first guests at the table. And then I woke up. Who was the first person that hugged you? That's a secret for now. I'm going to keep that a secret for now. Because it's kind of compromising. But soon, one day. And for me that's what that's what heaven is. It's a place so beautiful. You want even your worst enemies to be there. And a place with no partitions. And I think that's a beautiful place. And so I think that somebody can shock that up to pure ephemera of the neurons in my lizard brain. But for me it was beautiful. And I think that helps alleviate and remove a lot of the fear I have for it. And again, I also think there's something so exciting about if you live beautifully and if you live as magnanimously as possible as big as possible, death only enhances the myth. If you live so well that even like your enemies feel bad for you missing, I think would be a beautiful thing. So there's really no downsides. If you protect your soul, easier said than done. Everything is conspiring to distract you from it. And again, I think that's the biggest thing where it's like it's very easy. All that's necessary is that you're distracted forever. And you'll never even ask the question. You'll never even-- and I also think I wrote about this one time where it's like I also think there's this really sort of angsty idea of like when you die and this idea of like heaven and hell and eternal punishment. And people feel sort of like they view this all as like a gotcha test with a really douchey vice principal who like didn't give you a studying packet and said, I didn't-- you fucked that up. And now you're going to get detention for the rest of your life. And you're going to get a ruler across your knuckles. But I view it much more in like a sort of-- if you view every time you deny the impulse to perform the kill, to perform the vice that would harm another or like every time you deny that, you're denying the flesh. And you are developing the sovereignty and the discipline of the soul of your noose. You are renewing your mind. You were developing your mind and your mind. your soul. And if you don't do that and you conforms the flesh, you're your soul and your flesh are like, you know, you're just so enmeshed in the carnality and the desire. And what happens is if you spend, so you know, you have an entire lifetime where you've been fighting the good fight. And that's what's, it's a fight. It's not called the good victory. It's a, it's a perpetual fight that you never went. So you're always going to be fighting, right? It's, you're always wrestling with it. And then when you die, or you're not wrestling with it, and you just give up, and you're sort of yoked with this thing, and it's in charge of you. When you die, the body dies. If you've spent your entire lifetime listening to your body, and it's impulses in the, in the body dies, and the impulse is disappear, and that thing is going to hang around your ankles like, like a shackle, like, like, like, like, like, like what pants? And versus if you've developed, again, it's talking about like the muscle of the spirit and, and sort of defining yourself, the body disappears, but you're used to saying no to the body and denying the body. And so then you've, you've got the beckoning where it says like, the, the, the one says like, come to me, come to paradise. You can, because you've developed the muscles to climb the stairs, whereas if not, you, you don't even, you're, you're, you're on your hands and knees. And I describe it like your soul is like in a patchy helicopter where it's like, if you've never flown in a patchy helicopter, and you get thrown in the cockpit, you've got everything you need to get there, but you have none of the, you can't, you don't know what to do. And so I think similarly, like, if you, if you don't at least fight the good fight and like try to grapple with the material, like, that's why it's a wrestling match, like Jacob wrestles with Elohim. It's not about the technique, it's about the fight. If you fight and if you develop the muscle, then you learn the techniques that, that will get you there. But if not, then it's just, it's a really slippery slope. And like Virgil says that, I think it's Virgil and the a need, like, you know, easy as the way into hell, but like long and hard as the ascent up out of it. Again, it goes back to the thing we were saying maybe 20 minutes ago, which is that we're aware of it. Yeah. Like, have you ever watched a video of an old lion dying? Dude, we like, we made something with somebody in the topic with suicide. And one of my cues for the actor was this video of an old lion dying. And it just sort of like slowly like lowers its head with such dignity and grace. That's crazy. You say that. That's like, yeah. Well, I'm breaking it up because the lion existed for one reason. It came out of the womb. It learned how to hunt and kill and, you know, lead the pride so that they could survive on whatever food they could find every day. And it didn't have to be, and I hate to say this way, but it didn't have to be bogged down by the self-awareness that the only reason for its being in some ways was to find the next meal until you can't, right? With humans, that's how we originally were put on to this earth. Caveman and cave go out, find food. And if you run from the lion, that's trying to kill you, by the way. All your cortisol gets fucking jacked all over your body. And then hopefully you get away from it and you kill something and you can eat that night. And then you got to figure out how to do it again the next day. The difference is, there was the mental capacity there once evolution happened enough for them to be aware that maybe there needs to be something more to it. And so now, when we don't have to necessarily run from the lion every day and our food gets brought to us, sort of fucking heroin or wherever that is, you know, this, that awareness, that thing that keeps us going to find the next meal and find our purpose, all the emotions that normally would naturally go into that now have to be placed somewhere else and somewhere unnatural in a sense that it makes us more acutely aware of our meaning in ways that can kind of torture our mind sometimes. Yeah. No, I agree. Like the, I think ultimately and that's what's so interesting is like pride is one of the most, and I think like traditionally if you look at the authors, they identify pride as the most dangerous and the most virulent of the vices because it is the one associated with intellect. And that's why, you know, pride and pride is also very closely yote with pride is ultimately a self-concern as is self-consciousness and as is embarrassment. So like pride and embarrassment and shame and guilt, all of these things in which the object and the subject are one, naval gazing and this sort of like narcissism of like everybody's worried about me. And so that's like some of the most embarrassed people you know actually have this sort of like, um, closeted sense of pride. And like there was, I think it's, I forget who says it, but some people deny a compliment just to be complimented twice. Some people utilize humility as this way to be covertly proud. And that's why I think for me, the best thing you can just be is just plain and just to be honest. Um, and again, because again, it always, and it's hard because pride is the one, pride is the one of vice that even like a philosopher can't get rid of himself because again, it's a product of intellect. Of course, you know, like a degree, you can write some of it. Yeah. It's easy. A philosopher can brag about not being a glutton or not liking money, but every philosopher still wants credit for the great philosophy he came up with. Right. So there's still this element of pride. Um, and that's why I think it's very important, you know, G K Chesterton says like angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. There's nothing more self-serious than the devil than the most miserable person, you know, who just they're the end all and be all of everything. And that's also the, the, the basis of the hero is he can't take himself seriously because if you took, if you take yourself too seriously, you would never sacrifice yourself. And so there is this element of like aloofness even to yourself where you can laugh at yourself, um, which precedes destroying yourself and sacrificing yourself and giving yourself up to a cause and, um, dying for something you believe in. And so yeah, there's just, and I think that is the, the antidote to general anxiety. And again, that's what they say. Like, I think even in AA, they say, be of service is like one of the first steps to sort of improving yourself, um, like stop being worried about yourself, um, because all of that is sort of just like this life becomes a test and everything you do. Right. And that's sort of, that's the side. And like, that's, that's the daily task. And, uh, and I think that's why I said, you know, happiness is service. All you can do is just, um, go outside of yourself, um, and that'll sort of free you from yourself. And that's, that is the freedom from the body is just moving outside of yourself and being magnanimous, having a large spirit. Um, yeah. Well, Harry, you got a beautiful mind, man. I appreciate it. Beautiful and a brilliant mind. I'm really glad that, you know, first of all, thank you for sharing your story as well and, and being so open about that. I'm sure many people have told you this and they should, you know, every time you do that and take people there, it can help even just one person out there. It is more than worth it, man. And it's great to see you seemingly doing so well and doing your thing. And I hope you just continue your very unique way of thinking. It was nothing better than that. And like, the way your brain works is truly a beautiful thing. So keep sharing it with everyone. And thanks so much for coming here. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure to, uh, to ramble and to be allowed to and to be prompted. Um, that's right. I have this thing. That's fantastic. That's what we do here. That's fantastic. So thanks again. Thank you to some of the time. Absolutely. All right. Everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me and you can follow Harry on the links in the description below. Peace. 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