Uncomfortable Conversations with Gregory

Danny Flood is a writer, entrepreneur, and world traveler who chronicles useful information about life through his website, Open World Magazine. He joins Gregory to discuss two recent deaths: a suicide by Gregory’s hometown friend and an adventurer named Justin Alexander who never made it back from one of his more dangerous trips.

Hope is the belief in random, positive change – the idea that the unknown future can be better than what you currently have. If you’re at the end of your rope, why not throw yourself into an experience you’ve never had before? What have you got to lose?

Our culture of death is to bury and get away from it as fast as possible because we cannot stand the reality of it. It doesn’t matter what people say about you when you are gone. It only matters how you perceive your own life. A better question to ask yourself is how the world will be different because you ever existed.

You forget 99.999% of the things that ever happen to you. Only the memories with strong emotional ties remain in your ongoing memory, whether positive or negative. What your brain decides is an important event worth remembering is mostly arbitrary.

You can figure out what you really care about by examining your strongest positive and negative emotional reactions, but only if you are willing to ignore social expectations of what you ought to care about.

Why do you feel like you need to leave a legacy after your gone? Why isn’t your life enough? Do you need to feel bigger than death?

Websites mentioned:

Justin Alexander, Adventures of Justin: http://adventuresofjustin.com/

Gregory Diehl’s podcast interview on Open World Mag: http://www.openworldmag.com/33-wandering-consultant-gregory-diehl/

Alexa Glo is a 28-year-old multinational seeker of identity and meaning in life. She and Gregory discuss the importance of putting down roots and solidifying your identity on earth through your actions, which often means your professional path in life.

Home is where you feel most like yourself. Being outside your home is what gives you the perspective to know your home. The contrast of being something other than what you are is ultimately what shows you what you are.

Purpose is a principle, not a specific task you perform. Tasks are defined by your culture, which is always changing. There is always another way to express your purpose. You perform your purpose because of the energy it gives you, not to fulfill a social role. You have to give people what they are ready for. They can only be ready for so much as any given time.

Professions are outdated concepts. There is no law of nature that says you have to spend your entire life in one kind of productive role, just as you do not have to live your whole life in one place. Being a professional just means you accept money for what you do. Your profession does not have to define you.

Psychological adulthood is taking full responsibility for your own life, when you can see the figures from your past as just ordinary things.

Today’s guest, Rolf from Germany, is a strategic consultant for expensive professional problems. Ironically, he does not trust his own subjective evaluation on some of life’s most important topics, such as the worth of specific human lives. He states that he would rather flip a coin on certain life and death situations that be the one to make important decisions and live with the consequences. Yet, in other more menial areas he has no qualm about choosing and standing by his decisions.

In the political domain people frequently use words like “human rights” to defer responsibility away from their opinions and acting as though their preference were a natural law. Thus, nearly everyone is constantly at odds with everyone else about their idea of the natural order of things, and conflicts go forever unresolved. If instead they could own their statements as merely their own preferences, a common solution would become more obvious and available to everyone seeking something different.

Accuracy is not always the same thing as utility. A high-functioning person must willingly adopt accuracy as his goal if truth is to become his useful ally. They must look beyond momentary and emotionally gratifying base level actions like lust and gluttony. Rolf uses the philosophy of the free masons as his principal philosophical toolkit for determining truth and his own values. The root of order lies in changing the map or toolkit that people use to conceptualize reality.

The fact that you think a thing important does not make it objectively so. It is often not practical to seek accuracy and truth in all things. You can always choose not to choose. Your preference can be to exert no preference.

Do you hold honesty and accuracy as their highest value?

Are you willing to stand by the consequences of your preferences and principles?

Gabriel Scheare is one of the co-founders of Fort Galt, an intentional community project in Valdivia, Chile that seeks to give its inhabitants optimal freedom over how they participate in society. He and Gregory discuss the project’s unfortunate origins in a similarly-named fraudulent operation known as Galt’s Gulch Chile, and aspirations of everyone involved to bring the power of society back to the hands of creative individuals instead of centralized government organizations.

Gabriel discusses the underlying philosophical implications of how his small team went from “Wouldn’t it be cool?” to “Let’s fucking do it!” to create a plan for their own micro-society in a world of in optimal social interactions. We cover how in a moral and reasonable society, individuals are free to form their own groups and associations based on what is appropriate for their goals.

In a right society, we can build long-term relationships on trust on respect instead of taking advantage of each other for immediate gain. But this is only possible if we are free to get out of each other's’ ways. There is a natural social immune system which encourages people to act in the right way toward each other, without a centralized threat of compulsion. The problem is that we all act like everyone else needs to agree with us and value what we value. Operate as a scientist and explorer who seeks to understand how

What is the principle motivating factor behind your actions? Have you surrounded yourself with other people who share your values? Or do you stay stuck in the conditions of the arbitrary society you were born into?

Websites mentioned:

Fort Galt website: http://www.fortgalt.com/

Fort Galt on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fortgalt/

The failed Galt’s Gulch Chile community: http://galtsgulchchile.com/

Bobby Casey works in the controversial “offshore services” industry helping people structure their business and manage their money with little-known opportunities around the world. These kinds of activities have earned great scrutiny from the mainstream financial world due to the misinformation, trickery, and illegal actions they are often associated with. Bobby shares stories from some of the less reputable contemporaries in his niche that have conned unsuspecting clients out of tens of thousands of dollars through phony passport or land buying scams.

“It’s important to be ethical with your personal brand.”

No matter what industry you work in or kind of life you lead, everyone is playing a character role in the narrative of life. Some get so good at telling the story of who they want the world to perceive them as that meeting after getting to know them through the false persona they create is often disappointing. The people who make the most effort to posture themselves in a certain way publically are often the most miserable behind the scenes.

“If you never tell a lie, you never have to remember what you’ve said.”

Authentic people don’t seek adoration from strangers. They aren’t obsessed with social stature or threatened by others’ success. Their only goal is to live genuinely. Many “professionals” today, particularly those who work online, are only good at promoting themselves as a figurehead for something. They cannot actually do the thing they promote themselves for. It’s important to find your own path, but be honest with that path.

“In the modern world, it does not take long to spread a bad message about someone, and a bad message will spread a lost faster than a good one.”

Global Wealth Protection:
https://globalwealthprotection.com/

Bobby Casey Twitter:
https://twitter.com/gwpro

Bobby Casey Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/globalwealthprotection/

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/GlobalWealthProtection/

“The only way you can determine who deserves to live or die is to know what the point of life is.”

Many have defined humanity’s essence or unique value by simple factors like consciousness, intelligence, or self-awareness. But what do these standards imply for the whole of human civilization?

Societies are organized around collective ideas about what the purpose of life is, or their utility in life toward each other. Every time you interact with another person, it is for a specific purpose. You expect a specific type of outcome. What determines success or failure? People need to migrate to circumstances or group settings where they will be found useful.

“If everyone were accountable for their own actions and nothing else, the world would be in a lot better shape.”

Who owns humanity? Who makes the decisions determining its fate? A dictator? Some other governmental entity? Or is it everyday people like you and me, each living out our own rules for engagement with one another? In the end, every comes down to the discretion of the individual in one form or another. Natural social selection will eventually wipe you out bad people.  

A young woman learns that the rejection she feared so much from other people was only a mask for her own missing self-worth.

Travis felt is a life coach from California. He felt that he was trapped on a singular path as a young adult, until he discovered that he was about to rewrite his own narrative however he wanted. This lead him to question what it was he would do if he had no social pressure to follow any specific path. Travis invokes the Japanese concept of “ikigai” - combining what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for - into something resembling a purpose for the narrative in your life.

Other people often impose mental barriers on us because they are either jealous or they simply do not want to accept that the way they view things is incorrect. Gregory expresses his frustration at experiencing diminishing returns in personal growth by running out of mind-altering new experiences to pursue. He challenges Travis to challenge him. Does everything you ever do have to be part of your singular life mission? Or can it just be something you philosophically support?

One of Gregory’s purposes is to disrupt the way people think, hence the existence of this podcast and nearly everything else Gregory ever does. He needs his own new form of resistance and great challenge to feel alive. Life is too easy, and he grows through engagement with pain.

How do you know you have removed all barriers to living authentically?

What remains true for you in all circumstances?

Travis Barton’s website: http://www.travisbartonlife.com/

 Is intuition just unexamined thought? Or something beyond rational analysis? Many believe that when we get a strong feeling, a “deep inner knowing” about something that is contains a supernatural element that warrants respect and validity. To know what you think you know, you must locate your axioms of interpretation - the fundamental acceptances you use to understand everything else. They hold a sacred spot in your life beyond doubt or analysis.

Michael Light (pen name of Michael Smith) is the author of the recent book Intuitive Leadership Mastery: How a CEO Doubled Profits and Halved Stress. He argues that intuition, if properly developed, can be one’s greatest tool for making effective decisions in business and life. Gregory takes the opposite approach, claiming that whatever true conclusions can be arrived at through intuition and feelings can be better refined through intense logical analysis of the factors in play.

The two attempt to determine at what point it becomes impractical to continue this analysis and just rely on feelings and “spiritual” awareness. Gregory wants to know if it possible to develop analytical abilities to be faster and better than intuitive abilities, while Michael encourages greater trust in the body’s own knowledge of things.

When does it become impractical to examine your conclusions?

How do you differentiate between reliable intuition and unreliable intuition?

Websites mentioned:

Intuitive Leadership Mastery on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2kVuUbI

Michael’s website: http://intuitiveleadershipmastery.com/

Twitter https://twitter.com/AbundantMichael
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/AbundantMichael
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/abundantmichael

Gaby Kamp is a “third culture kid”, originally from the Netherlands, who grew up living in many countries throughout the world full time (most recently including Nigeria, Argentina, China, and Northern Ireland). She works professionally to coach others looking to adopt this mentality and lifestyle. She and Gregory discuss how cultural borders (whether physical, mental, political, or technological) are growing weaker and more arbitrary with every passing year. At such an accelerating rate of change, it is conceivable that within a few generations collective cultures as we have always known them will cease to be relevant.

Every aspect of human life on earth is changing at an accelerating rate. Parents will not know how to keep up with their kids who live in a multicultural new world. Individuals must choose to constantly challenge their own comfort limits if they are going to keep up with the changes. Citizenship is supposed to define your allegiance to a country, just as where you learned your cultural values is supposed to define your identity structure.

Cultural homelessness is lacking this grounded support in who you are according to arbitrary standards. It means that you must choose these things for yourself. It means never being able to get everything you need to feel completely at home from one single culture. It means facing resistance from people who are firmly devoted to their initial culture.

When does a person leave the natural state of growth and begin the process of succumbing to entropy?

Are you afraid to go against society’s norms and contribute to a new manner of human existence on Earth?

Websites mentioned:

http://globalnomadcoaching.com/