David Whitehead, Trigger-Proof Warrior |475|

David Whitehead used martial arts as a springboard into truth seeking.

David Whitehead: [00:00:46] When it comes to triggers, these are informants for you to take notes and say, why is that so triggering for me? Why is it so hard for me to look into this? What if I find something valuable about this? Even if I find that what I’m looking into is something I don’t like, or I find out that there’s something to it that needs further investigation, you’re still learning.

The average man is hooked to the other average, man, the warrior is hooked to infinity.

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Alex Tsakiris: [00:01:12] Welcome to Skeptiko where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris, and today we welcome the Truth Warrior himself, David Whitehead to Skeptiko. Dave is just a really interesting guy. And we were just chatting, you know, he was a nice enough to kind of co-host and episode we did a few, I don’t know, a couple of years ago on the Unslaved podcast with Michael Tsarion, and we met through that. But just in the last couple of weeks I contacted him about, what I was doing with the Evil project and boy, I was just telling Dave, I’m just blown away with the extent of your work. Just excellent stuff.

For folks who don’t know, you will have seen David on the Ancient Aliens podcast. And if you’re really into kind of geeky reality TV, like I am, you’ve probably seen him on The Curse of Oak Island is well. A show I watch. But this guy, Dave, at this point buddy, your IMDb is looking pretty stout. I mean, here we go. Ancient Aliens, The Curse of Oak Island. What about these other ones, a travel special and that stuff?

David Whitehead: [00:02:44] Yeah, to be honest Alex, I don’t even know what shows they threw me into. They just bring me down and interview me and then I find out later people are like, “Hey, I saw you on this show.”

So prior to the lockdown, which we’re going to get to, I was doing regular appearances on Unexplained with William Shatner, which was a fun new show that they’re doing. And then Ancient Aliens, I’ve been in multiple seasons of that. And the I think they put me in a few The Curse of Oak Island’s and sprinkled me here and there. So I didn’t even know I had an IMDb page, to be honest, this is the first time I’m seeing this.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:03:17] Oh good, good. Buddy you’ve got to be sending that out there, that’s impressive, it’s a good one.

So we’re going to talk about that in a minute because, again, as way of an introduction, the other thing about Sensei Dave as he’s called by his students and other fellow practitioners of martial arts, he is quite an accomplished guy in martial arts. And he is just a vid, I was just going to run it just for a minute of him working with students, which is really cool. He’s very accomplished, multiple black belts, not a guy you’d want to cross paths with, in the wrong way. You’d probably have to provoke him pretty hard, but you wouldn’t like the results. But we’re going to talk about this more in a minute and I was telling David before that there are so many things to talk about, I don’t even know where we might begin.

But one of the things that I thought was really intriguing about this is that for people like me who are upset with the plandemic aspect of what’s going on. “I live in a bubble man, it don’t affect me.” But here’s a guy where the state literally just came in and shut down his business. Just said, “Shut it down. You can’t have a business anymore. You can’t bring those kids in. Even if their parents say that it’s okay, you can’t do it.” And then they’re not giving any… there’s no reasonable expectation you could have for when that might change.

So, I like how you kind of steer it down the middle of the road with the COVID plandemic thing, where none of us are 100% sure of what’s happening. But in your case what’s obvious is that it’s a case where the government in Canada where you live has far overreached, in just reaching into someone’s life and just saying, “No,” shutting it down and not feeling any obligation to offer any explanation for that, any recourse for that, any scientific explanation for that. Good for you for staying strong and still doing the podcast, still staying out there, still keeping your voice going because I think would have brought a lot of people to their knees and good for you for not.

David Whitehead: [00:05:51] Well, thank you so much, Alex. And first of all, I love talking to you. It’s been far too long. I hope you’re doing well. I know this is a crazy year for all of us, and I actually was feeling a bit emotional watching that old video clip that you put because it’s got some clips from my dojo that I ran with my wife in Toronto for just over eight years. And then also some clips from the dojo that we had moved our dojo to in Western British Columbia, Canada, where I am, which is the dojo that got shut down at the beginning of this plandemic. And yeah, it’s been quite the roller coaster. I mean, I lost half my income overnight. I got a call from the producers of Unexplained and they love working with me, I love working with them, they’re good people, and they were upset because we have this issue with quarantining. If I were to leave the country, even if I were to follow all the silly guidelines or whatever, they still quarantine you for two weeks. And so they were like, we can’t do it. So they had to replace me in the next season of Unexplained. And I was like, ah.

It’s kind of interesting though, in a way, when that happened it activated something in me and, on top of that, right at the beginning of this, sadly my mother passed away suddenly. It wasn’t from the rona, I made sure they didn’t put that on the death certificate. She had a lot of medical conditions for quite some time and she had some heart failure and that’s something that just kind of hit me on top of everything. And I was faced with a moment of asking myself, is it worth it to continue doing any of this public work? You know, should I just go and get into contracting or something or just leave it all behind? Because it gouged my soul, all of that.

And then I realized I’m like, no, I’ve been doing this podcasting work on Unslaved, I work with Michael Tsarion on Unslaved, I have my Truth Warrior podcast that I’ve been doing since 2008, which was just sort of constant video blogs and shows and ideas and compilations of research that I’ve come across, sharing my ideas and that used to just be a hobby but now it’s my full-time gig. And it’s interesting how sometimes Alex, I’m sure you can agree, that when you get pushed up against the wall or when everything gets taken away from you, you’re left with that choice. Do I continue? Do I try to find a new gear in myself, a new dimension to myself? Do I keep striving forward or do I quit, do I give up, do I give up hope? And something inspired me to watch the Lord of the Rings film, it’s one of my favorite films. I’ve always drawn comfort from it. I’ve always drawn empowerment from it. And a friend of mine or a nice lady, her name was Laura Lee, she reached out to me and said, “Hey, I do full-time lecturers on Lord of the rings and Tolkien and all of that.” And I went, “Wow, that’s interesting. I was just watching this film and it’s been reinspiring me.”

So we ended up putting a series together and it really just kicked me back into gear. And to be honest, I think I’ve been producing my best work as of late and I’ve been covering the pandemic, I’ve been covering all kinds of subjects, pulling out all the philosophy that I’ve been putting into my notes for years on martial arts on the warrior tradition, on philosophy, on politics, on, you know, many of the subjects that you cover. And it’s really reinvigorated me, and it’s been quite the roller coaster, but I’m actually really glad that I made the choice to continue. And I love what I do. This is very important and it’s important for all of us to not give up, even though we’re being pushed up against the wall and we feel like we want to give up.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:09:29] Yeah. That’s a great point. And I’m hesitant to follow up on that too far because it leads into a bunch of personal decisions that people I have to make. But having said that, I think we need to dive into that I guess a little bit.

One of the first words I had to kind of throw on the table in a discussion with you is this idea of triggering. And I recently was on an interview with a guy I really like, and I really respect, but he pauses to give a trigger warning, to anyone who might be triggered. Because we were going to talk about the sexual abuse of children used by people in power to blackmail and otherwise control both those kids, but a lot of times other people who are engaging. And the trigger warning, and I was like, man, I don’t like trigger warnings. That is not the way of The Warrior to me, because I so relate to what you’re talking about in your excellent podcast. I really enjoyed those interviews and we’re going to talk more about those in a minute.

But you know what, the way of the Truth Seeker, the way of The Warrior is, don’t be triggered. I’m not going to warn you about being triggered, don’t be triggered. If you are triggered figure out how not to be triggered. Figure out what it is in your makeup, in your ego, in the way you think that the world works, that you think that’s a viable choice for you to make, to choose to be triggered and not go forward.

And if we want to get a little bit conspiratorial, just imagine for a minute what is the agenda of the people who would be behind such a thing? Would they want you triggered? Yeah. Would they want you to feel helpless? Would they want you to feel like my friend who hosted this show, “Oh, should I feel triggered or should I not feel triggered?” No one can tell you that. You decide whether you’re triggered, you decide whether you’re untriggered. But the way of The Warrior, The Warrior doesn’t get triggered, The Warrior builds the internal fortitude to resist that, right? To go forward when you’re knocked down.

David Whitehead: [00:11:56] Yeah. Well, all of your emotions, all the triggers that you feel, we all feel triggered. I mean, I feel triggered when Justin Trudeau gets up and starts speaking in public, you know? But the thing is, you have to understand that you are the master of your universe and you have to live with that, and you have to know that. And a lot of people haven’t done the things in the training and they don’t have the experience with themselves to have that confidence in themselves. The lack of inner constitution, specifically today in men I must say, I always do a call out to men to remind them of who they are. Women as well, but hey, I can’t comment on that, I’ll leave that. But you know what I mean, when it comes to triggers, these are informants for you to take notes and say, “Why is that so triggering for me? Why is it so hard for me to look into this? What if I find something valuable about this?” Even if I find that what I’m looking into is something I don’t like, or I find out that there’s something to it that needs further investigation, you’re still learning.

So I think The Warrior looks at things differently. It’s like, Carlos Castaneda said, the average man is hooked to the other average man, The Warrior is hooked to infinity. So there’s a different spectrum of play here, and you need to gain that self-identity, the self-knowledge, the self-esteem, the self-understanding in order to be able to face the world like that.

It’s kind of like when I talk to my kids, I have two beautiful daughters. My wife is currently doing the homeschooling session with them right now. And I always talked to them about this. We talk about bullies, because my older daughter was experiencing some bullying. And I said to her, I said, “The only time a bully even exists is if you allow them to exist. They can do whatever they want. People are going to make an opinion of you. They’re going to find ways to not like you. And what they’re going to try to do is they’re going to try to poke you with like a stick and they want to try to trigger you to try to provoke a reaction that’s a pretty predictable response that they can build on, and that’s how it works.”

So think about how to deal with that. Do you just knock the bully out? Well, maybe sometimes, but the way that you win that from the beginning is to not give them any space in your mind. Don’t allow them to control the way you think, because otherwise you’re giving your power away.

So if people are so easily triggered by all these different subjects and they don’t want to talk about these different things, everybody can do what they want. But don’t shout us down for having that passion to want to get to the bottom of these very, very important questions, these important subjects. And if people get triggered by things I say, or you say, or whatever, that’s up to them to deal with. And I’m not the kind of person that just goes out and starts insulting people, even though I’m getting censored like crazy on social media. You can go look at my posts and you can see I’m censored because of my opinion, not because I’m out there calling for the death of people, or I’m a racist, or I’m a homophobic person, or I’m a this or I’m a that. That’s not why, that’s not why.

So we have to remember there’s the artificial, social engineering aspect of creating the sort of cancel culture, trigger culture. There are even legitimate psychological conditions that relate to different forms of what we used to call hysteria, but then it got compartmentalizes and turn on all these different conditions. There are a lot of factors at play. We could even get into the chemical alteration of things like the food, the water, the air supply, etc. that changes how sensitive people are. And then we’re just blasted with all these different inputs, 24/7. The media is triggering us on so many different levels.

So if we’re in a world, in a society that’s very divided, we’re fighting with each other, we’re not able to have rational discourse, we’re not having good debates, we’re not having intelligent discussions, we’re just throwing feces at each other. That’s a recipe for disaster.

So we need to have some thick skin. We need to be brave enough to explore these subjects. And it’s also crucially important, especially in my work. If I’m a martial artist, it’s important for me to always check myself. And the great thing about the science that I study in the martial arts is that I have the perfect lab where I can experiment and find out if what I believe is actually true, when it comes to just the martial arts. So it’s a great test case for me. And I can draw on a whiteboard, you know, how to do a kick and how to do all these different things, but unless I can prove it to you, and prove that it’s effective, and that I can do it, even when I’m under duress, I’m basically just making up theories. And I feel like that’s the direction science has gone, that’s the direction our culture has gone.

And then we’re triggered based on lies. Like, we’re not even triggered based on legitimate things anymore. At least we used to just maybe get offended when something real was thrown at us, but now we’re getting triggered based on lies that other people concocted specifically to trigger us.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:16:59] I want to get into that more in a minute, but I want to backtrack before you get into that, because there’s something else about your martial arts practice and it is a practice, it is a discipline, it is a way of knowing.

I was really struck by some of the videos I watched of you when you were talking about how you see kids transformed and you will do it again because we’ll find a way to get through this and we’ll get you back in that sensei role, and we’ll get these teens and preteens that need that.

But I thought it was really just incredibly insightful. And I just wanted you to tell people what you’ve seen, particularly working with boys, because you had such a great insight when you said you were reframing this idea of boys who bully, and you were doing it in a very thoughtful way. It’s almost like the other, the leftist kind of soy boy kind of thing has a different way, but you’re doing in a very positive warrior kind of way, about talking about that energy and how that energy needs to be honored but can be redirected. And it isn’t even that hard to redirect it, because that energy needs to come out, it just needs to be shaped a little bit differently.

I think, you know what I’m talking about because this is you man. So can you talk to that a little bit? People need to hear that on the level of their kids, as a parent, but they also need to hear that, I think personally, because I think it’s going to relate to people in terms of what they’re going through.

David Whitehead: [00:18:38] Yeah, I appreciate you bringing this up. This is important. I’ve had the honor of working with children of all ages, various backgrounds. I’ve been doing this my entire life. I was a kid. I remember what it was like. I’ve experienced bullying in my life. And I got to the point where I started to say, alright, there are all these campaigns out there that are just sort of these airbrushed, you know, just kind of illusory fixes for this problem of bullying, where they’re like, we’ve got parents against bullying and we’re going to do marathons to stop bullying, and we’re going to have mass awareness campaigns and wear pins and do all this stuff about bullying. And I’m like, yeah, but you’re not teaching the kids about bullying. We’re not learning about the bully and we’re not learning about the person who’s being bullied and we’re not seeing what’s really happening here and how to fix it.

And I’ve been fixing bullies in my dojo for years. And basically I’ve had many stories where I had parents come up to me with their children and say, “My kid is being bullied. He’s got, this kid that’s stalking him at school. I just want you to show my kid how to kick this bully’s ass,” and all this kind of stuff. And I was like, “Look, there’s a better solution. I’m going to raise this kid up when I bring them into my dojo and give them some self-awareness of what they’re really capable of.”

The issue we have is that a lot of kids now they’re just plugged into their iPhones, iPads, the television, most of their brain time, the waking conscious state time is taken up in an illusory device. So we’re not having honest feedback from nature.

So in the martial arts setting, we create a safe space, a real one, where we can actually practice dealing with these different challenges and try to pull the potential out of these kids. And they often walk in, you know, shoulders down. They don’t want to look at you. They’re shifty, they’re very uncomfortable. And I always get excited because I know I’m like, give me three months and this kid is going to have their shoulders back, they’re going to have their chest out, they’re going to look at you in the eyes when they talk to you and they’re not going to be getting bullied. And it’s not because they go and Van Damme everybody in school, it’s because there’s a different look in their eye. There’s a different look in their eye.

There’s something we talk about in the fight world called the eye of the tiger. And what that is, is it’s not an aggressive thing. It’s not something where you’re asking for fights. It’s just a look that’s says I am not easy prey, so move on.

And so there’s that one side of this spectrum, one side is these children that lack self-esteem, they don’t get proper feedback from their environment because they’re probably in daycares. I don’t know what the issue is, whatever the issue is, they don’t have that self-esteem and self-awareness. So we try to bring them up to that level.

The bully has an inflated sense of self, because they are also lacking self-esteem. They’re just looking at it as, if I can pray on these other kids and get them to be subservient to me, that’s how I gain my self-esteem.

So in both cases the child is sort of projecting it externally. They’re thinking nobody likes me, that’s why I don’t like me. But the truth is we need to teach our kids, regardless, even if everybody in the world, doesn’t like you, you need to like you. You need to know who you are. You need to value yourself. You are valuable. You’re a microcosm of the universe, what have you got to worry about Johnny at school pushing you around?

So, I’ve had experiences Alex, where I’ve had the bullied kids in the same class as the parents who signed up their kids who were bullies. And I’ve even had scenarios where, I had this one scenario where there was this cute little girl, she had little pigtails, she was like nine years old and she wouldn’t hurt a fly. She was such a lovely little kid, but she was getting picked on at school by older kids. And her parents were talking to me about it quite a bit. And all I did was start showing her that when she would do her fighting stance, you know, don’t hunch like this, don’t have fear in your eyes practice bringing out that inner lion, you know, just raw, like just bring some spirit, have some posture. And we would have fun doing it, we would practice.

And then one day this bully started pushing her around in school and all she did was jump into this fighting stance and just kind of what, “Hey, stop pushing me around,” and just said it. And apparently the bully just backed away. The teacher came in. They had the parent/teacher meeting, of course, because the teachers are trained to think that bullies are like terrorists or something, and we’ve got to lock the school down or something like that. And then it turns out that this girl came back, she tested for her yellow belt. She passed with flying colors. And then the next week, that bully that was bothering her, signed up at the school and started training in the same class and they became friends.

So here’s the thing, is that I basically took a kid from one end of the spectrum who was being victimized because they believe they’re a victim, the other was victimizing other kids because they also believe they’re a victim. It’s the same thing it’s just expressed differently. And I was able to even out the playing field, because the good thing about martial arts is you don’t have to actually beat the hell out of some bully for them to understand what’s up. But in martial arts, it’s a controlled, safe environment, where we practice training, then we do some sparring. You know, there’s people watching. Nobody’s getting hurt, but we’re practicing that chaos. We’re practicing how to deal with these scenarios.

And when you go through that, it humbles you. It does two things. It humbles you because you realize you’re not going to win every time, and there are bigger, stronger, more developed students out there. And in the other sense, you gain confidence because you do learn how to win. So you lose and you win, and you keep playing back and forth. You learn how to go back to the drawing board, take notes, improve yourself. And by improving your performance on the training mats, you’re improving your performance internally. You’re improving your inner dialogue. You’re getting rid of your limiting belief systems. You’re shedding the old skin of, I’m a victim, everybody’s picking on me, to, I’m not allowing people to pick on me.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:24:41] there’s another part of that as well, David, because that is excellent.

Everything you said is excellent. There’s another thing I heard you say both a little bit here and in the other presentation is that. I don’t think sometimes we give enough attention and respect to the energy of the bully because the other, the other energy of the bully is I want to flex. I want to, I want to compete and.

That gets, that gets misdirected into, I want to dominate, I want to go, hookup with Jeffrey Epstein and see what, you know, 12-year-old girl or boy I can, you know, that is misdirected energy. And what I hear you saying is. Let’s direct that energy and not try and deny it or hide from it. Let’s say, yeah, you’re a man.

You want to flex, you want to get out there, you want to compete. And let’s find a way to do that. That is within a system, which is yours, but also within a framework that is going to help you grow in this deeper way that you don’t even realize, do you. I’m hearing you on that. Right.

David Whitehead: [00:26:01] And you’re man, you’re right on it.

Like that’s, that’s exactly, the right. Point to go to here because the bully is misunderstood. Um, it’s, it’s misguided energy. These kids just have energy. They’ve got their own stuff going on there. They’re developing, um, our society’s extremely constricting, especially today with young boys. I mean, for crying out loud, I walked by the school.

Um, Last year. And I was walking by the playground and two boys were just playing. They picked up a couple sticks and they were pretending to be pirates. And they were just doing some sword fighting. It was, they weren’t angry. They were just playing. And the teacher blew the whistle and rushed over. And she’s like, you boys are not allowed to touch each other.

Drop those sticks right now. And I’m just, it reminded me of the fact checking websites. That kind of just pop up every time you post something and I’m just like, why are you, why are you stopping this? Do you realize that if you start repressing this natural instinct that these boys have to, to play around with their aggression, to play around with their energy, to play around with their strength and, and test, and this is all part of development.

And you’re censoring that process and you’re going to make them go sit in detention and they didn’t even do anything wrong. What, what kind of feedback are you giving them? You’re making them even into book, bigger bullies, because you’ve repressed that instinct. So what I do, I bring them in, and I had this one kid that he was, he was kind of bullying some kids at school and then he was.

Bullying other kids on the mat, like he was bigger and stronger. So he would just sit there on the mountain, just start smacking their face and laughing, and he’s getting a kick out of his power. Right. And so I said to him, I said, Hey, when was the last time you actually want to fight against somebody bigger than you?

And he just kind of sat there and looked at me and he was like, well, you know, and I just looked at him. I said, why don’t I train you? How to beat somebody bigger and stronger than you. And I think the parents were kind of looking at me like, what are you doing, man? You shouldn’t be teaching kids how to beat people up, but I understand how these kids think and you got to get on their level.

So I said, how about this? I got a tournament coming up in six months. It’s the nationals. So it’s your first tournament I realized, but I want you to train with me and I want to put you in this tournament and I want to let you have the opportunity to show me just how strong you really are. Cause I kind of feel like you’ve been holding back and I kind of played to his Eagle a little bit.

And so he was like, okay, dude, within the first month of the training camp, I had him going up against some of the bigger guys in the class and. You should see the look in his eyes changed from this like cocky little kid who thinks he’s got it all to just sheer terror of reality is hitting me in the face right now that there are bigger bullies than me or bigger people than me.

And then he, but funny thing is. He trained. He kept showing up. I started seeing him improve his character was improving. His training was improving because a lot of these kids actually turn out to be incredible competitors. And then we went into the tournament, he won a gold medal in his first tournament.

He had some really tough fights. He had a couple of, they had to do some round Robin matches and you had to fight a few guys a few times, but they were big. They were strong. They were tough. He was bloodied. He was sweaty. He was, he was sore. And after he came up to me and he was like, Sensei. I did what you asked.

I beat people bigger than me and I looked at him and I said, so how you feeling now? You want to go pick on those little kids? And he’s like, Nah, they’re a waste of time, at least improve that. Yeah. And guess what? He actually eventually stuck it out and he became a black belt under me. He’s a fantastic kid.

And, um, that’s an experience that I’ve seen many, many times. Um, I’ve even seen it with adults that come in with a chip on their shoulder. I’ve had these big guys, all juiced up, walking in my dojo and go like, ah, I’ve been in lots of fights. I’ve tapped all black belts, no problem. Like, Oh really nice.

You’re going to fit in. Well, come on in. And they can’t even get past my white belts. I look over, I start coaching them and I’m like, no, no. You know, I think he needs some work on these things, but don’t worry. We got a lot to work on. And sadly at the adult level, those guys never show up again because the ego gets too much of a hit.

At least with kids. I’ve got some room to prove myself to them when I prove myself to them. And I show that I’m a good example and that I’m someone that they can trust. And that I do what I say. I’m going to do all of a sudden. There’s a different dynamic that happens. And then because of the martial arts setting, there’s no room for bullshit in lies on the mats.

There’s no room for it. There’s no big diatribes about theories and ideas and PhDs on the wall. It doesn’t matter. You could be, it could be a. You know, wall street banker that makes millions of dollars a year and some construction worker is going to give you a lick. And every Tuesday, you know what I mean?

Like, so it equal it. It’s a different playing field. And you know, we live in this world now, Alex, where on social media, everybody’s a sniper. Everybody’s, you know, we get in there and everybody’s tough on social media. Cause there’s no feedback. It’s just, you can say what you want. You can pretend you’re somebody or not in the dojo.

All that fakeness goes away. It doesn’t matter who you are. It’s like you’re walking into another dimension of reality. And now you are, it’s like the matrix you are here and I’m sitting there going, do you think that’s air you’re breathing now? And there’s something magical about that humbling process that at the same time might seem like a paradox.

It’s humbling, but it also is empowering. And that’s where we achieve. I think that balance right down the middle.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:31:12] Yeah, that’s really super awesome. And I think we should add, you know, I, I’ve never participated in a mixed martial arts. I played football. That was kind of my outlet when I was younger, but both my kids, but my boys, I have two boys and two girls and I felt it was important for both of my boys to experience that because I also wrestled, I wrestled in high

David Whitehead: [00:31:33] school.

Um, I love wrestling.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:31:36] Well, there’s nothing like saying, you know, nothing like going out there. And it’s just you and one other person, you know, team sports are great, but when it’s just you and that other person at that level of combat, but what I wanted to add and get your opinion on is, you know, since then, I, I mean, I do yoga right.

It’s the same shit. It’s really the same shit it’s confronting yourself, you know? And it’s, it’s getting in the physical to transcend the mind. Cause the other thing I always do is I go to do an ice bath. I do an ice bath everyday. People just freak out 30 degrees, there’s ice 30, you know, and every, almost every day when I’m done with yoga and I’m getting rid of, I’m like, no, man, you can skip it today.

You don’t have to do it today, every excuse, you know? And, my, that’s the process of kind of cutting through the bullshit. Dialogue that we’ve created in our head and it’s our creation, but it is, I think, as you just so accurately pinned, it is influenced by all these other forces. So it’s influenced by the people around us, but the culture by the messaging, but all this stuff that says.

This is who you are and when you’re confronting going on the mat or, you know, going in the wrestling match or just facing that ice bath every day, it’s it cuts through the bullshit Headspace chatter kind of crap. And we need that and we need to challenge ourselves in that way. So hats off to you for that.

What an awesome, what an awesome teacher you, that reframe that you did, but that kid was so brilliant. I don’t know how you came up with that to say, Hey, you know, let’s look to get him to. Confront, what was really going on with him by facing tougher competition, which is what you really did. I think that’s, that’s quite brilliant, but I guess I want you to speak to the fact that we can find this opportunity in so many ways in our life beyond, you know, if you’re not into MMA, I mean, it’s,

David Whitehead: [00:33:50] you know, There’s so many ways.

There’s so many ways you’re right. And I mean, in the end, what is, what is martial arts? Everybody asks me this, your number one opponent is you. And that’s the main point. And so I liked the martial arts for its specific focus on combat. All right. Now, a lot of people get squeamish with it because of the fact that it about related.

We’re dealing with violence. Now we’re hurting people, right? Training out of hurt people. But it’s not that for me, for me, it’s an archetype for me, it’s a metaphor for me. It’s something that’s an expression of a part of your psyche and your being that needs to be tempered. It’s like the way that they make these Catana blades, they developed it over a long time and they take, you know, thousands of folds and under fire and they put it through all this.

pressure, and, and then you get this perfect blade that is both flexible, sharp, you know, it’s weighted perfectly, and it’s amazing to see what kind of craftsmanship goes into that blade. And I look at our development or personal development journey, or you could say just our, our, the process of self-actualization that journey.

Um, you need some kind of pressure to give you the challenge that’s going to help you find out just how strong you are, the people who are flexing. and they’re, they’re doing that to other people for the purpose of that feedback. They haven’t had enough challenge in their life. They haven’t really been in a real fight in their life and that doesn’t have to be physical fight.

We all know, especially this year, what it’s like to go through internal battles. Right. And so if you can find some kind of expression, expression or art or something that you resonate with that works for you, that helps you. It challenges you like for you it’s that ice bath or for some people it’s that long run that they do in the mountains, or, um, even just intellectual work that you have to do to, you know, go and read your opponent’s books.

If you have a different view than them go read what they’re, it’s hard for people to read outside of where they’re comfortable reading. Right? And so these are ways that we challenge ourselves and I find it valuable. And I find that this. But this idea, this, this, this notion of how challenge creates the strength that is needed to develop the human being and that we actually thrive in challenge that deep down we want challenge.

It’s essential for our survival in every way, but it’s being cut away in our culture and it’s being censored from our culture completely. They don’t want any challenges for these kids. They want the bubble wrap masked, standing on Xs, not talking to each other, no touching. Do what we tell you to do sit up straight in that chair, listen to the teacher

Alex Tsakiris: [00:36:26] that’s where I think your work with the conspiratorial side of things is so vital.

And I always bring it up in these. Interviews I do with people who are kind of stuck in one side of the space or another, but particularly because I started out talking to so many science people and I love and respect the intellectual rigor that scientists bring to problems. But if they don’t understand the conspiratorial part, if they don’t understand being played and why someone would want to play you.

And sometimes it’s just for kicks. We don’t know why bill Gates is doing this crazy shit. Right. I mean, he’s got all the money in the world. Why is he doing that? Why did Epstein do that? Why did all these it’s it’s, it’s something different and we have to, at least I just, this is a long way around the barn to what we’re talking about.

But I don’t think it is that long way around. I think it is so much about the energy thing that you’re talking about and finding a way to direct that energy in a positive way and putting yourself, which is what I hear you saying, putting yourself under the pressure. Of seeing where your blockages are seeing, where you’re re misdirecting that energy.

So you can direct it. I thought what you just said was, was really quite, original about intellectually. If you’re intellectually oriented, why do you have a problem reading that other person’s paper? Why can’t you even get through it? And I always remember, interviewing. Rupert Sheldrick, you know, that Cambridge biologists and just a brilliant guy, super, highly respected.

And when he was publishing, what seems so tame now? You know, but he was publishing his research on morphogenetic fields and that we are not just. In this meaningless universe, we are real powerful beings. And, but his research was purely scientific. I think it was why dogs know how dogs know that their owners are coming home kind of thing.

David Whitehead: [00:38:31] Right. But

Alex Tsakiris: [00:38:32] the guy who opposed him turned his back to his presentation, crossed his arms and uttered probably the greatest. Expression in that if you can imagine in that British accent, because we hear it echoed over and over again is I wouldn’t believe that even if it was true. Is what he said. Wow. That has become the catchphrase for what we’re in right now.

So they’ve managed to jury rig science. We get that. We, we kinda got it. When the global warming thing was rolling out, but it happened over years and years and we kept, and there was good science that was coming out that was opposing it. And we’re like, gosh, guys scratching our head. Why don’t you see that?

You know? And the da and what we got was a lot of people who were so convinced that I wouldn’t believe that even if it was true, kind of thing came out there. But the other thing that came out was that. They have figured out how to do that manipulation, to get people to shut down and not intellectually pursue the other side and for people to feel good about that.

So now the next time, when something rolls out like the Corona crisis, we are, we’ve been so many people in our culture have been trained to. Follow the trigger follow the, Oh my God. My energy doesn’t feel good when I hear someone else’s opinion. That means like the opposite of what we’re saying. Right? So what you’re saying is, Hey, when, when I feel that way, when I feel anxious, I feel scared.

I feel threatened. The warrior says, I look inside and say, how do I overcome that? Because I don’t want to feel scared. I don’t want to feel threatened. I don’t want to feel always like that little. Sheep. It has to run away. I want a few more than that. So I kind of want a long way around the bar, but maybe you can help rescue and put those things together because I do feel like that’s what we’re living in real time.

David Whitehead: [00:40:39] Yeah. Why, why are we not geared towards wanting to see why we’re triggered by things? Like we don’t ask that question. We don’t ask the why we know the, what we can maybe think about the, how or the who, but the why is always the big question. Isn’t it? It’s the number one question. People send me whenever I do podcasts, when I do cover a world events and I put a conspiratorial angle on it, people go, well, well, why would they do that?

Why would they lie to us? And you go, why are you lying to yourself? Why do people lie? Why do people steal? Why do people cheat? Why do people murder? Why don’t we want a bunch of examples of evil in the world? I feel like that’s the job I had to do was prove that evil exists. We live in a culture where it’s not even up for debate in science anymore.

They’re like evil. It’s just an old religious trope. There’s no such, it’s just, it’s just, it’s all relative, you know? And you go, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, hold on a minute. Okay. Let me roll out my cult series and, prove that evil exists. And so I did that process and it was valuable for me. And I had to read a lot of opposing views in order to come to the conclusions that I came to.

And I don’t stay in those conclusions. I’ve learned a long time ago that every time I think I know something, there’s something else that comes in that I missed and I have to revisit everything and start from the beginning and, um, you get comfortable being uncomfortable. And that’s something that I learned from martial arts was that don’t run away from the discomfort.

Don’t run away from your fear. Don’t run away from, the, the pressure go into it, run forward into the flame, right? That’s the old warriors model. And so that’s the idea that I think is missing in the intellectual world right now in, in science and for, to see a prestigious science do what you just said to literally cross their arms, turn away and say, I won’t believe any bit of it’s true.

That’s what the entire world is doing. And now we’re dealing with psychology. Now we’re dealing with trauma. Now we’re dealing with, um, something that I think it was Socrates or someone that said we view the lens. We view the world through the lens of the self. So if there’s, if there’s a crisis going on within you and there’s blinders that you’ve put up to protect yourself from your interferes in your inner demons, then how can you see clearly?

How can you see clearly you’re seeing through, you know, something that’s obscuring your vision that is not allowing you to see the objective truth right in front of your face. And, people call it cognitive dissonance, you know, all these different things and actually speaking of cognitive and this plays into it.

If you think of cognitive dissonance as the idea that you’re holding two opposing beliefs in your head and believing them both simultaneously, what we’re seeing is that’s just the, that’s just the opposite of the true way of, of what I think is a true scientist or thinker, is that you are capable of holding two opposing beliefs in your head while not investing deeply into both of them, because you just need to have all the puzzle pieces on the table so you can organize it and sort it until you see the big picture.

So we need to see each others. I need to see different opposing views when I started doing the coverage of the pandemic thing. Um, and, and concluding that this is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the human race. I didn’t just come to that conclude by only going to conspiracy theory.com or whatever they think I did that by listening to hundreds of thousands of top experts.

Why I didn’t listen to every single one of them, but we’re now at that level of hundreds of thousands of top experts around the world that disagree with this little group of scientists that work with the world health organization or whoever. Right.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:44:00] there’s a lot to be pulled apart with that carefully pulled apart and we gotta be the ones to do it because to throw, you know, everything on one side and say, Oh, you know, it’s a plan DEMEC and we got it.

And we know how it was rolled out and orchestrated no. We don’t to say that they’ve, you know, never isolated the virus and it’s all just fake and it’s in your mind. I interviewed David Eick and I love and respect David Ike. I don’t think he’s correct. I think you know that guy in Saskatchewan best I can tell.

He’s been working with viruses in animals for a lot of years, he knows how to isolate them in a lab. It’s not like the, he wouldn’t have had any reason to fake the isolating viruses in camels for last 10 years out in the desert that he did.

David Whitehead: [00:44:51] We should pull it apart a bit. And just so you know, where I stand on it, I’m not one of the, this is a fake virus people. I think they, I think that this, I’m, I’m more on the side of this came from a bio weapons lab in Wu Han, and we’ve actually got, documented evidence of that and it’s worth considering, and it’s not so easy to push aside, but the pandemic, the, the.

The, the level of hysteria, the fear, the, the resulting draconian laws put in place by all these governments around the world simultaneously. Um, that, that is something that to me is where I’m talking about the fraud. The fraud is in the fact that we are now dealing with a virus in a way that we’ve never ever dealt with a virus before we have all of these, um, doctors and medical, they all seem like, you know, everybody’s going to say.

Well, Dave, if, if this was some kind of big conspiracy, there would have to be millions and millions of people in on it. It’s impossible. And I always go back and I say, well, what if I told you that each and every one of us is conspiratorial by nature. Especially when we haven’t earned understood how to earn legitimately and we don’t have that proper self-esteem image and we don’t have that ability, then we’re going to turn to manipulation.

Aren’t we to get our way. So on a, on a basic level, we might not be all part of the Jeff, you know, the, the whole, The death cult that runs Hollywood or whatever, but we’re, we’re on individual levels. We make those little concessions daily. When that scientist turned his back, cross his arms and said, I don’t want to believe it.

Even if it’s true to me, that’s an act of internal conspiracy against your ability to see through the lies that you’re telling yourself. So if we start with that, that opens up the ball of wax that says, I will say to you, and I can prove this. That for me, when I look at history, And when I look at the history of a lot of these organizations and institutions, conspiracy is the rule, not the exception.

We’re not talking about some exception all once in a while. Yeah. Maybe they shred a few documents and there’s a few that are no, no, no. This is a, you can like, like I said, you can achieve power legitimately or you can achieve your status legitimately, or you can earn your wealth legitimately. Or you can cheat and you can cut corners and you can manipulate and you can massage data and you can achieve your aims illegitimately.

Okay. So criminality exists. I’m sure we can all agree with that. People lie, people, cheat, people steal, you know? And so when we think about it and we go, all right, well, aside from the motive, why do we have some of the top for ologists, top biostatisticians, even Nobel laureates doctors, nurses from all over the world.

That are coming out and raising their head that they know is about to get chopped. Cause they know what happens in the scientific field. So they must really believe in what they’re saying. They’re coming out to say what I’m discovering, the data that I’m seeing. This is no worse than the flu. We didn’t do this for the flu.

We don’t this thing. Why are we masking children? Why are we doing that? That’s causing psychological damage. That’s irreversible. Okay. Um, why are we doing that? We’ve never done it. This virus doesn’t have the same death rate as it does with the flu when it comes to children. So why are we doing it with this?

So the hoax is the government policy that’s coming about that just so happens to meet a bunch of criteria that they wanted to achieve. Before the pandemic that I start to go, okay, I’ve got some questions. And then that’s where this unfolds from there. So I’m just sitting. I’m the critic. I’m the one critiquing what the news is saying.

What Doug Ford is saying. Justin Trudeau, bill Gates, Ted DROS, Antonio Gutierrez, all these people. I’m looking at their statements and I’m finding contradictions with other people. And what I’m seeing, this is the big one for me, Alex. If they’re standing on the pillar of truth. If these people telling us this is what it is, why are they censoring the conversation?

It’s they’re not even having the debates. They’re not showing up to the debates. The debate gauntlets have been laid and they’re not answering the call just like they did with the climate stuff. Um, they’re not. And not only are they not showing up to the debate, CNN is not hosting live debates between different experts on different sides of they’re censoring all.

Let me finish the statement though. Let me just finish this. They’re censoring the conversation. So that’s where I go. Who sensors? I don’t want a sensor. I don’t want a sensor bill Gates. I don’t want to censor the other side. I want to hear it loud and clear, and I want to be able to compare and contrast.

So why are they censoring? What’s their motivation to sensor top scientists from bringing their data to the public.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:49:13] I mean, I’m just too much in agreement with you to even like, spend any more time on that. And anyone who doesn’t see that, I just don’t even have the energy right now to really engage with anyone who doesn’t see the fact that.

They’re burning books. They’re burning books. They’re saying no, we’re not publishing on Amazon was the latest, I mean, I interviewed Tom Cohen, former doctor, but I disagreed with him on all the points that I made earlier, but I said, how the hell can they, can they ban your book on Amazon? But you’ve had other bestsellers on Amazon.

This was just taken down. So we get that. We get the cancel culture. And the reason I want to kind of hijack that conversation, if you will. Because I want to bring it back full circle to what we’re talking about, and this is something I just don’t hear people talk enough about, but the truth seeker warrior that you are, will get what I’m saying and my hypotheses.

And that is that if we don’t understand the desire to conquer. Which is a real feeling that we have, and that what you’re talking about in your practice and working with kids and working with adults, that feeling the need to conquer the need to flex. And if we allow that to be misdirected, it manifests itself in ways that we’re witnessing right now, this is my opinion,

David Whitehead: [00:50:48] I agree with you on the fact that there’s the psychological underpinnings that we need to look at when we analyze, the actions of.

Criminals or people that are cheating or lying. Right. we need to know why, you know, that that’s where we got to get into it. Um, I’m going to have to disagree on your assessment on Donald Trump, but that’s another debate for another time. Um, but either way, whatever example we want to throw up in front of our, in front of the audience, we have to remember that much of what we think we know.

Comes from very few sources. Right. And that’s one thing I always try to do and everybody should try to do, and nobody’s perfect at it. But the idea here is like when we form an opinion about something, what was it that plugged into us that produced that opinion and is that opinion flexible to change when new information comes to the bear?

So if we swing back to the pandemic thing and the reason why, and the whole thing, we have to understand that there’s. There are, there’s a geopolitical chess game happening in the world right now. We’ve, we’ve known this. I mean, that’s, that’s not a conspiratorial thing. Okay. That’s just knowledge that, you know, people use strategy in order to achieve their aims.

Okay. It’s been going on since Gangas Kahn and Hitler and Stalin and everybody else. Um, and so when I talked to people about the fact that, Hey, The media is, is basically they’re reading a script that was given to them who gave the media the script, because we know the media doesn’t exist with like real journalists that actually go research information.

It’s, it’s a script and a narrative that they’re given. And we know that because we don’t see diversity coming from the media. I can talk to people in, in the UK, in Germany and Canada and the U S and they can say, yeah, my news is saying the exact same thing. And so that means that. There’s central control in the narrative.

And I personally believe that the real battles are not just for land resources and control of people. The real battle is for control of the narrative, because if they can control the narrative, they can control the minds of the people. And if they control the minds of the people, the people will give up their land resources in their, and their servitude to you.

Right? So the control of the narrative is key. That’s why they spent millions and millions of dollars into MK ultra project sign, all these different, classified programs. And they’ve done it in every country. So they have your psychology, your psychological profile, and the manual of psychology sitting on the desk.

These people also have a deep understanding of crowd psychology. Which has to be differentiated from individual psychology. So I have my psychology, you have your psychology. And then when you and I go to a soccer game and we’re cheering, Oh my God, go, go. We’ve merged into this crowd. Psychology of everybody that cheers for that soccer team.

Right. And unfortunately with the crowd consciousness, it’s not intelligent. I mean, it doesn’t have an IQ above room temperature, right. It’s just, it’s this weird thing where we come together. We link our minds in this one belief cause or whatever, and there’s no rational thought. And this was what inspired me, Alex, to go and research a lot of these cults and get into studying cults and tell me that is a dark rabbit hole to get into.

It’s the exploration of the nature of evil. Unlike. Any other explanation you’re going to do. Um, and it’s still an ongoing series that I’m working on. It’s, you can see most of these episodes are like two, three, four hours long, um, and it’s even scratching the surface. And so the nature of evil, th this is why we get into the why.

And all I can come back with is, well, there are people who are in one of two categories, the way they solve problems is either by destruction. Or by improving. So you have destroyers and you have improvers people that want to improve. They’re going to use legitimate means to improve. They genuinely want to improve the situation when it comes to whatever the problems that we’re facing.

Then there are people who only know how to blow things up. They only know how to seek and destroy. And I always wanted to know what, what is it, why are there two different species of human beings? You know, those people that you could call good people that are moral and they, they do things on the up and up.

And then there’s these. What you call evil people are people that achieve their means through manipulation, through criminal activity, through espionage, and all these different things. And when you’re competing for power, Obviously, there’s a lot of people out there that feel fully justified in cheating to get that power.

Like if I go back to this, martial arts mats and, you know, go into some of these tournaments, I know so many of the guys that are doing steroids and they’re, they’re, they’re breaking the rules of the tournament. And I always was asking them like, why would you do that? Like, Don’t you want to win for real don’t you want to don’t you want to actually put that gold medal on your wall and say, I had to work my ass off and fight through hell to get that thing.

Or do you want to just cheat, take an easy win, put it on the wall for other people to give you that praise. And if you’re so hooked into the opinion of the masses that are stuck in that crowd thing I was telling you about.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:55:50] Y,

David Whitehead: [00:55:51] Y that’s not a respectable opinion. The only respectable opinion can come from you, knowing that you did it.

Through your own effort, you did it legitimately. You went through the fire, you made sacrifices and you became stronger as a result of pursuing that aim. And then those are the kinds of people, Alex, that if they do it legitimately, they don’t, it’s not like. Oh, well, my life is over. If I lose, they are just like, there’s another mountain to climb.

There’s another goal that I can achieve. And so there’s a lot to pull into this, but basically we need to understand the why and the only way to understand the why about why evil exists and how people that fall into that category operate. Is to understand that we ourselves are capable of great evil.

And this is a lesson that I learned from reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. I’ve been reading a lot of him lately and I highly recommend people check him out. Especially in the times we live in to give us that warning that says. The worst tyrannies are put together by the do gooders of the world by the utopians of the world.

But the people that want a better world and you go wait, well, wait a minute. I want a better world. I want to, I would want to make things happen, make things better. Right? Wouldn’t we all. Why is it that some of the most horrible evil things came from on the surface things that appear to be for the good of everybody.

And that was a big question as well. So it actually led my series. You’ll see, we start with cults. Um, I start with, some of the modern cults, you know, like Jim Jones, heaven’s gate process, church of the final judgment, solar temple, you know, more modern calls. And then we went into ancient cults cause there’s nothing new under the sun.

And then we. I actually, I found my way going into political cults and that was the fourth episode was going, Hey, I’m seeing the same typologies the same. Um, The same basic blueprint in people that are running these little cults in LA. And then in that I’m seeing in like political movements of the head of history.

And the reason I say that is because there’s the cult leaders. You have these charismatic figures that come up and basically say, Hey, I’m the new Jesus Christ. I’m going to save you from yourself. Follow me blindly. And then. But there’s also the followers. And that was what I was really curious about, because think about this, Alex, none of these cult leaders, none of these political tyrants, none of these Epsteins, none of these, you know, people who are lying to you in the media and getting paid millions of dollars to do it, they wouldn’t exist.

If there wasn’t a massive audience of people that were plugging into them and believing them and putting there. Minds into their cattle, into their camp. So that’s where I started to focus and go, okay, we need to do a crash course on crowd psychology and group think so. I ripped out the Edward Bernays Gustaf Labon, some of them greats, the Pavlov experiment, all that stuff, and started really co-leading it and going, wow.

So there’s something in us that is so afraid of reality. So afraid of the powerful force that’s within us. so afraid of all the consequences of life. Afraid of death, but also afraid of life, Alex, that’s the thing we don’t talk about. We talked about the fear of death. We talk about the fear of public speaking.

We talk about all that, but we don’t talk about the fear of life that people have, which is basically a fear of nature. And so there are people who love life, embrace it, take it by the horns, go on the hero’s journey. And then there are people who are. Desperately afraid inside. And when you have those two different people in the world, you’re going to start to see which one has scores of bodies in their wake and which one is creating a better world.

So the Buckminster Fuller’s the NYCLA, Tesla’s the Wilham rice is the, you know, Walter Russell’s the Bruce Lee’s the, the people who are creating and changing and improving the are the improvers in the world. And they make the world better. And then there are the people who are the destroyers and it’s because they have destroyed their own inner life force.

They are the dead, the walking dead. And they’re trying to recruit you to become a part of the walking doctor. The zombie is a really good analogy. When you think about it, you got all these zombies walking around the mob, right. That you know, not, not, not thinking very independently and then they. Get on, they latch on, they bite you and then you become one of the zombies.

And that’s what we’re seeing in the world right now. And I think this is a highly organized agenda. I think there is a geopolitical move, going on right now that is, we’re just seeing the effects of that this year through all this crazy stuff that we’re trying to scratch our heads, how could they possibly be reporting this, you know, murder Hornets, like what’s next?

And then you realize, okay, they are trying to. pass on the real virus that exists in this world, which is hysterical, contagion, it’s deep seated fear. They want you in their frequency and I’ll finish my little thing on this. There was a great bit from Carlos Casta, NEDA. Who wrote about this Don Juan character who was sort of this Sage that was talking to him about the nature of reality and Don Juan talks about how, you know, in the ancient times, the people well used to talk with the, the sourcer is in Mexico, used to talk about this predator that came from the depths of the cosmos and it basically.

Turn this planet into a farm. And we became like chickens and chicken coops and it, it, it, it suppressed our natural desire to grow and evolve. And it, what it did, the, the way that it, effectively, was able to take over the planet and people can just take this as a metaphor or however you want.

This is the way they were able to take over the planet was that they gave us their mind. They gave us their fear. They put us into their way of thinking, what is the media doing? Opinion, generators, what are these hidden persuaders doing? What are these fact-checkers doing? Coming in like hall monitors, blowing the whistle and saying whole free thinking.

That’s illegal now. Why are we burning books? Why are we burning ideas? Why are we destroying people’s careers? Well, what’s behind that. It links into everything that I’ve just been talking about. And, that’s why I think that this is an organized criminal conspiracy is because I know the capability that each and every one of us has to lean towards that dark side.

And so if that happens, if we’re in a world where morality’s dead, the scientists are telling us philosophy’s dead. religion is dead. Everything’s gone and we’re in this whole new way of thinking. People have no foundation to go back to. And so we go immediately back to our more primitive side and we go, well, it’s, you know, it’s survival of the fittest.

Take what you can smash and grab black Friday. The world is for sale. This is the opportunity and lo and behold burning and looting in the streets by the party of love and tolerance. What an interesting time we live in.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:02:36] You know, there’s there’s again, and we’re gonna, we have to talk more often, Dave,

David Whitehead: [01:02:42] we do, you

Alex Tsakiris: [01:02:43] got some great stuff.

I think this fear of life, fear of nature thing is quite profound, just quite profound. And I also saw another quote. I don’t know if it was directly from you or for someone else, but it was, there’s a stillness in nature. That is inescapable and indistinguishable from spirit. And I think you’re tapping into that with that.

You know, our fear of life is our fear of nature is our fear of spirit of our unlimited spiritual bang. And I just want to circle back to some of the things that you said. Cause I think we are so much in agreement, but I also think the ways that we’re we’re coming at this. Slightly differently can be super informative to people and they can pick a side.

That’s totally fine. I don’t care if they pick your side, I’m totally down with what, with all the things you’re saying. I mean, whenever somebody proposes a problem and you go, gosh, the only way we could solve that is through some kind of global man or red bell ought to be spinning in your head. You know, like, Oh my gosh, I, the whole planet is gonna heat up and well, we couldn’t solve that just ourselves to the whole, you know, anything or whatever.

UFO’s, if all the UFO’s got together and attacked us, well, we couldn’t handle that ourselves. We’d have to, you know, so anyway, I won’t go on that rent, but here’s where I was trying to go. With this other thing. And I was making a couple of leaps there that I want to fill in the blank. And then we’ll, we’ll wrap this thing up in a little while my investigation into evil.

Was kind of driven by some sensibilities I had from kind of a yoga perspective and their philosophy. And I always liked the way that that’s been brought to the West by different thinkers. I think they do a better job. Superior job. They’ve added value. Add on it. So Mickey singer. It’s one of my favorites, Michael singer untethered soul.

I like him cause he’s a fucking billionaire and he made all his money and then he just, during the process, he just walked away from, it said, I don’t want it. I don’t want a piece of it. I’m here. I’m a shepherd of it. But no, I don’t look how I live. I don’t buy stuff. I don’t do things. But. Dealing with that foot in this world and conquests and manifesting being part of this world.

I like that Ecker totally is another guy I respect. And even he talks about money, all the money he’s made from his book. He goes, my wife and I call it the money. Not our money, it’s little money. And I bring it back to, I bring it back to money. Cause, cause especially now that’s part of this deal is they’re trying to put you in a situation where you’re really scraping for money and you’re getting to that.

I love the way you put it, that black Friday mentality of, I just have to scrape and grab and take, you know? And so people that are able to manifest, I like as their Mo there was one of my go tos in terms of saying, okay, You’ve kind of figured that part out of it too, but here’s, I guess what I was driving it, because the other thing that’s impacted me in my investigation of evil is this interview that I had.

And I told this story, maybe people get tired of it, but I was kind of the year end of the project. And I got an email from a skeptical listener. Fantastic. Guy’s guy’s name is dr. Tom Zinzer and he’s a clinical psychologist, Kalamazoo, Michigan now retired, but he said, Alex, you don’t know shit about. Evil and about darkness.

And he said, what you got to understand, first of all, is that one, this is a game. This is at the highest deepest, most spiritual level. It is somewhat of a game. The really is light. The darkness of being a force that is anywhere equal to light. Doesn’t even make sense. The darkness made sense as. Part of the playing field that we’re able to operate in to me ultimately make sense.

It’s what comes through to me over and over again, from the near-death experience, science research, you know, hundreds and hundreds of peer reviewed papers. It makes sense from the transformative spiritual experiences, people come back and they say, I understand the evil part of it. I’m not drawn to it. I don’t feel like it’s.

An opposing force that is going to, you know, dominate me, but I get it. I understand it. But back again to Tom, Zinzer what he said. What I didn’t understand is kind of what I’m spinning to you is that when we see people. Doing stuff that clearly is morally reprehensible, not in the gray line. Cause we all have gray lines that we have to kind of work and figure out, but are clearly of just a dark and evil nature.

They have found that the only way they can deal with that energy is by misdirecting it and that they have been. Guided at some point in that process, it’s been amplified by some force that we could get into and talk to talk about, but is just like your buddy, just like your buddies back at school, man, you know, you shouldn’t be hanging out with those guys, you know it, but you went back and you did it again and you hung out with them and they, I’m not saying they’re bad, but.

When you were around them, you did some bad things and same here. So it’s like as a, as a broader understanding of what’s going on. Um, I think this works, this makes sense to me, yours thing makes total sense. I don’t know, you know, which one of us has kind of more, right. I think we both have kind of a piece of the elephant here, but I think until we start having discussions about.

This energy in the spiritual nature of this energy beyond this world. I don’t think we have a chance on this.

David Whitehead: [01:09:05] Great. No great insights, Alex. I appreciate it. And I always love getting feedback and you know, sometimes when you prepare presentations and you do it live, you, you hope it comes across the right way.

Um, I’m with you on that. I think that this idea of materialism has completely been thrown out. You know, that’s just where I’m at. People can call me bias, whatever you want. I mean, but I I’m with you. I don’t think we’re just brains and just meat suits living in a mechanical universe with no meaning. Um, I’m not a determinist I’m not a psychological determinist.

I, I. I think that notion can be debunked easily. Um, and so when we understand that freewill exists, that does bring the question of Eagle back into play and the choices that we have and the question of morality. And I think the people arguing for this idea of determinism. Um, are looking for some kind of scapegoat in some way, deep down inside.

Maybe they’re not even aware of it, but they’re looking for a way where there’s no personal responsibility. Now. It’s all determined. I mean, what I’m going to do is just determined by the first seven years of my life and that’s it. And I would say, well, it could be if you choose to remain in a mechanical mode because human beings can operate in a purely mechanical mode, right.

Look at MK ultra experiments. They know how to turn you into a robot. Right. Um, but that doesn’t mean that’s the only. Depth of what you are. That’s, that’s the end of it. There’s many dimensions to who you are. And we do have this force of, of freewill, at least in some places, right. I’d say most, but when you talk about, and so the reason I, if I remember correctly, it’s been a while.

The reason, the point I would make now about that, bringing that researcher up was to actually expose the flaw of looking at evil, purely mechanically was to basically use that as an example and say, Hey, here’s the guy that gave, I think a pretty decent definition of a psychopath just from a scientific perspective.

But then I thought it was interesting that he found out that he had the same brain scan, whatever that all the psychopaths did, and yet he’s not out there killing and murdering people. Um, so you start to wonder, okay, is this guy ever going to wake up and realize that evil is so much more? And then that’s where the rest of the series comes in and we get into freewill.

So when I present, sometimes I’m trying to bring in, I’m trying to say, Hey, this is what the scientists are saying. This is what the Christians are saying. This is what the Buddhists are saying. This is what the jujitsu guys are saying. This is what the karate guys are saying. And then. You decide, right?

Like that’s kind of the presentation, right? But when we get to eval, I had an amazing, quote that inspired me a long time ago, comes from showing the film, the German philosopher shelling. He’s got two statements that changed my life. One was about the nature of reality and the nature of spirit where he said nature, like what we see around us, all the rocks, the trees, the water, the, the tides, the sun, the moon nature is visible spirit.

And spirit will be called. Spirit is invisible nature. And the reason this quote affected me so profoundly, it was actually brought to my attention by my colleague Michael cesarean, who was like, yeah, check this out. And I was like, what? I had to sit there. Four months contemplating it and I would do it. I would go to a place I live in a beautiful place in British Columbia have lots of nature around me.

So I’d go sit by this waterfall in with these big trees. And I would sit there and think about that, what that statement and I would meditate on it. Just think nature’s visible spirits, spirits, visible nature, and what really, they just came to me is just how he was able in one little sentence to bring the whole spectrum.

Together. And then when he commented on evil, this is what he had to say. And I’d love to see what you think about this Alex, where he said all evil consists in a striving to return to the chaos out of which the order of nature has proceeded. Think about that for a second. So w he’s getting to the underpinning of nature or of, of evil, right?

The nature of evil. If we understand what he was saying, if we go with him on that and we go, okay. Yeah, nature’s visible spirit spirits, visible nature. We’re both material and spiritual. Spiritual is not just in some other, a dimension. That’s just in our imagination. Nobody can define it’s actually.

Inextricably linked to the body, to the nature, to everything else. This is the hermetic view of the world coming from Egypt. Right. And then he comments on evil saying that all evil is, is it’s. It’s a striving to return to the chaos out of which the nature of order proceeded. If you remember what I was saying earlier about how there’s a fear of life and a fear of nature, does that put it out into some more context as to where I’m coming from maybe, but what do you think about that?

Alex Tsakiris: [01:13:32] I read that and I was. Stunned. I really was it’s, it’s incredibly profound and I’m almost a little bit reticent reticent to comment too much. Cause I don’t know exactly where he’s coming and my nature is to find something to pick at. So, I think there’s a deep, I think there’s a deep truth there. I guess I bounce something back to, to you on that and that’s that.

The, the moral imperative, you know, this idea that you’re down with and I’m down with, and anyone who isn’t, I don’t know where there has been mine talked, but we all know there’s a good and bad. We feel it from the time we’re little kids. You can go watch a meme and just share with a family the other day, a dog who, you know, the guy is.

Poking the teasing the dog by giving them a bone, taking away, giving a bone, take it away so that he puts the bone down and the other dog comes up, picks it up and gives it the dog that was being taken. We even, we see it in animals more and more. That they understand good. They understand what it means to be aligned with a goodness.

And then I take it to, again, the near-death experience research where they say no, there isn’t anyone there to judge you it’s just to help gain help for you to gain the perspective of you. Judging yourself and that’s all you’ve done. Your whole life is just judged yourself. Try to do the right thing. The moral imperative.

The implication of that to me is that there is a hierarchy to consciousness that there is an ultimate goodness that everything emanates from. And so that’s my only. Pull back a little bit on shelling is when he says the chaos of nature. I hear a kind of Gnostic battle of two evil, two equal forces, which I get that some people see it that way.

I don’t see it that way. I see it as the light is. Really all the risks and the darkness as oppressive as it seems as, um, the present, as it seems is really in the larger picture, such a small part of the picture and the bigger part of the picture is really the light. So, okay. Then that’s my little sermon on the Mount.

What do you think?

David Whitehead: [01:16:16] Oh, that’s a good perspective, and I would just say that I think what, when Schelling’s talking about chaos, it’s interesting that he’s calling it that. And remember we were saying about how people who are not ordered within themselves, maybe they don’t even understand who they are, they are completely reliant on the input from other people. There’s no original thinking. They haven’t been able to define who they are, so this is why they’re in chaos within. Those are the types of people that end up going into the criminal world, into being easily triggered, you know, these kinds of things because of the fact that they’re seeking the light, but they’re handicapped within themselves, and so they’re living in the chaos and chaos is an element of nature on the spectrum somewhere. So it becomes like a path that you go on, it’s like a domino effect and it’s a downward spiral and you can lose control of yourself completely. And I’ve had moments where I lose control of myself. And you feel that, and you look back, and if you have the ability to reflect and go, “Man, I really lost control, I lost my temper, I lost control of myself for a minute there,” this is something we always are confronted with and that loss of control is the chaos. Right.

And maybe, if we’re emanations of nature, if this is like a microcosm macrocosm scenario that we’re in, we go back to the old concept of, you know, as above, so below, as within, so without, as the universal, so the soul. We’re just a small reflection of a bigger grand picture. Then if there’s chaos that’s producing order all the time in nature, then possibly that dynamic is going on within us and then we’re seeing the effects of that as coming out as good and evil or right versus wrong, etc. It’s just an idea.

But about the idea of… there was something you were saying there that was… Oh, about the dark. If we go to the yin yang concept, there are different ways to look at dark and light, right? To me it’s a balance, and dark doesn’t automatically mean evil. And that’s interesting that we always use darkness, the dark side, and I do it, we’re all guilty of it because people understand that language. But if you think about it, is the world evil when nighttime comes? The only reason we see evil at night is because that’s when the predators come out because that’s their time. Humans, we have horrible night vision, so we’re deeply afraid of the dark. So we’re kind of biased as to the way we view the dark, because the dark is scary because I can’t see, so if I can’t see, I must… So we compare darkness to ignorance or ignorance of the mind in darkness.

So it becomes really easy with these words, but we get lost in the words. And I start to think, well, I trained an art for a while called ninjitsu and ninjitsu is the dark art of martial arts. It’s the idea of strategy, deception, espionage infiltration, because the Ninja were really just, you know, bandits who were trying to fight the imperial armies and they were outranked, outgunned, outmatch, so they had to use strategic deceptive tactics in order to survive. They weren’t all criminals, a lot of them were just fighting for their villages or whatever, and they rebelled against the emperors.

So the art of ninjitsu is the art of stealth, and you become comfortable with the dark and you use the dark to help your objectives. If you’re coming from the Christian perspective, like, “Oh, those are the evil guys, they’re the ones worshipping the devil because they always work at night and in the dark, and the cover of darkness.” So you go, okay, hold on, there are nuances everywhere, isn’t there? Darkness isn’t evil, darkness is an opportunity for you to see more clearly through the darkness. So if we really look at the big picture here, as much as I fight evil and hate evil and despise it and will work endlessly to eradicate it, especially when it comes to the evils done against children in this world, you start to see that evil is kind of like, it would be like a mold that grows when you don’t tend… or weeds that grow in the garden that grow when you don’t tend the garden, or the cockroaches that infest. Are cockroaches evil? Are weeds evil? Well, they produce the result of strangling life, so you could say, I guess, maybe. But when it comes to humans we possess this thing called, I believe, will, we have the will, we have the free will to decide how we’re going to treat ourselves and how we’re going to treat others.

So, it’s the absence of light that is the darkness of the mind. So if people believe that they don’t have any light or maybe they’re afraid of the light within them, or there’s something that they don’t like about that, then they’re going to go towards the other side.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that… Well, what did Socrates say? The only evil is ignorance and the only good is knowledge. So if you really boil it down, people that are committing evil, they don’t believe they’re evil. Did Mao Tse-Tung believe he was evil? Did Stalin believe he was evil? Does Bill Gates believe he’s evil? Does anybody? Jay Jeffrey Dahmer didn’t believe he was evil. They believe what they’re doing has a purpose for them. They’re subjective. So it’s only when you come to the objective and you go, well, it’s evil because you’re harming people, we have to define that.

So I go back to the thing, well maybe evil is serving a purpose, just like those weeds do, just like everything does. Is it serves the purpose of strengthening humanity, so that we learn the lesson of the light, the dark, the yin and the yang, the good, the evil, the up, the down, and we evolve through that chaos towards the order. And so it serves a purpose.

I’m not recommending we stick with it, a lot of it is something that we would rather do away with, but I just think that we often just pretend like we’re not evil, it’s everybody else that’s evil. I wouldn’t have been saluting Hitler in Germany, not me. I wouldn’t have been the one cheering while they were putting people to death publicly in the square. I wouldn’t be me. I would be the one that would resist that. And then you start looking around and you go, but you’re the one wearing a mask in your car and telling everybody else and calling the police on your neighbors who are having more than six people at Thanksgiving dinner. So you are saluting the Hitlers of the world, you are doing it, and why? Is it because you’re evil or is it because you’re afraid, because you’re in ignorance of the truth, that you’re operating because you believe you’re believing a lie? And believing a lie, whether it’s a lie you’re telling yourself, or whether it’s a lie someone else told you, produces the effect of what we call evil, because it’s not built on the foundational principles of the nature of reality.

So, so many places to go here, man, but geez, this is a big question. I don’t pretend to know all the answers to it.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:23:28] It is a big question, and as we kind of move towards… Well, I didn’t want to say that, because I don’t want to cut the conversation short, it’s been a fantastic conversation. I hope people are enjoying it as much as I am. But this is why I do Skeptiko, because I just love talking to people that have thought as deeply about these things as you have. And the bravery to think in these ways in these times cannot be underestimated.

Again folks, this is a guy that, I don’t want to say lost everything because that sounds dramatic, but imagine them coming in and just shutting down your business, them being the government. And they did. It’s not debatable. They came in and they said, Sensei Dave, you’re done. You can no longer… And parents, I’m sure parents were up in arms, like, hey, my kid needs this. This is part of our family. We all know when we have kids it becomes not only your routine, but imagine if you…

David Whitehead: [01:24:28] Can I just jump in real quick? You know what’s sad, Alex, you know, what’s sad? Not a single one did, not a single parent. They all thought, yeah, we understand this must happen. We must do this.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:24:41] I’m sure you’re right. I’m sure you’re right because that’s your experience. So I got to believe, I hope those good people on Vancouver Island… You’re on Vancouver Island?

David Whitehead: [01:24:52] Yeah.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:24:53] So at some point, maybe not the first week, the second week, but said, “Wait a minute, what has this done? What have we done when we took away Sensei Dave and we can no longer… This is not right.” I’ve got to believe they… do you think they…

David Whitehead: [01:25:10] I’ve got to be honest, I got lots of messages of love and support and we support you guys, we miss you guys and we wish we could have this dojo, and are you going to ever open again? So the sincere understanding that they lost something and that their children lost something, and their children missed it and it was positive for them. Definitely that was there. But to have anybody fighting for my ability to keep the dojo open and being on my side with it, I mean, that’s where I’m saying it was crickets. And I know why, and I feel bad for these people because a lot of people, they mean, well, Alex, right? We have a whole bunch, a world full of people, of people who mean well.

I come from the martial art tradition, so my message is always, meaning well just doesn’t quite cut it when you’re fighting evil. So nothing against them, they mean well, they’re good people, but unfortunately they’re led by the fear of being pushed through the media. I mean, when they’re putting headlines that say “killer virus, sweeps the globe”, and “this is the apocalypse”, like the shit that they’ve been saying.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:26:12] “33 million cases”.

David Whitehead: [01:26:15] Yeah, why haven’t the media been putting on psychologists and people to talk to people about how to better their health and boost their immune system and maybe should take some vitamin D, and there’s positive things you can do. That hasn’t been there, it’s just been like just a constant barrage of fear.

So I know people that are plugged into the media matrix, I empathize for them, but I ask them, I beg them, I say, turn the TV off for a bit, and go look at some source material, and go watch some debates, and go watch some discussions and presentations, go listen to these doctors that are trying to bring out different information. Open up your mind, realize that the government is the last entity that you should be just trusting blindly. The media is the last entity you should be trusting blindly. And let’s just ask ourselves, what are we saving? What are we preserving? What are we doing? We’re going to bubble wrap the world for the rest of the time? Like, what are we doing?

So we can’t live in fear. And look at the effects of living in fear. Now scientific journals are coming out, doctors are coming out, even the media is reporting this now, that the lockdown, the results of the lockdowns have been worse than the virus. And so look at it, we’ve made it, the cure is worse than the disease and that’s because of fear.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:27:31] Yeah, again, I agree with you. Until you slip over and say, what if that’s part of the plan? What if that’s an implementation of the conquest of the evil?

So, I just want to return to the evil thing one more time because I want to plant this in your head because I’d love to team up with you and help see that evil series and the cult series of yours kind of make it to the next stage, whatever that is. So we can talk about that maybe later.

You know, a while back a Skeptiko listener contacted me and he was going to help me with my YouTube channel because I had kind of not paid much attention to it, and he had some skills. And there was a heaviness in his voice I could tell, and the more we started talking, he started telling me about his family problems and particularly with their son. And one thing led to another and he said, “You know, my wife and I did some occult practices, we were just kind of playing around, but I think we might have invited in or we’re complicit in contact with an entity which is evil, an evil entity.”

And I flicked that back to my buddy, Dr. Tom Zinser, he’s retired now, but he was a clinical psychologist, Grand Rapids, worked with hundreds of people. And he said a lot of the people that wound up at his door had suffered satanic ritual abuse from a very young age. And again, that’s another one. If you don’t think that stuff happens, if you think that’s a joke, you need to just go and do a little Google search. And you can start with the interview we did with Anneke Lucas who was sold by her mother into a satanic cult when she was six years old, and it’s all in the Dutroux case in Belgian and you can go and look up all that horror.

But dialing that back into the clinical psychologist, Zinser, he had a slight different tweak. He was totally with what you’re saying about darkness. Darkness is a force, darkness, it’s not evil, it’s a force that defines the parameters within which we’re operating with our free will and our little lesson that we call life down here. But there are some people, he said, that the only way they’ve found to function, to deal with their stuff, to deal with their growth process, they fallen into a trap, and that trap is to be drawn to the darkness in a way that it manifests its way as evil. And he said here’s the definition of evil. Anything that impedes a soul’s development, that is trying to destroy a soul’s progress, that’s what evil is. If you inadvertently are just trying to do your thing and someone gets hurt, he would say that’s not what evil is. Evil is the intent to intentionally pull down someone’s soul in an extreme way.

And the one message that I got out of that, that I always want to share with people, is that if you take the conquest mentality, which again, isn’t evil, it’s just part of who we are, especially as men, and if it gets misdirected, and if it gets drawn to the darkness, and then drawn to the evil, and then if you accept the reality, which we take another five hours and watch your videos, the reality that there is this extended consciousness realm that some beings exist in, and there are angels there and there are demons there. I’m not a Christian, so I don’t put a Christian lens on that. I’m just looking at the data and that’s how it looks. One of the deceptions that I wanted to dispel is that if you feel, like back to my friend who has helped me on the YouTube, if you feel you’ve made some kind of bargain with one of those entities, it is null and void. There are no such bargains because there really isn’t this balance of power where this darkness has all this power and can kind of control. No, man, the game is all about the light, and the light is all forgiving and it always shines. And this is the only way that will make sense to me, is that you can, at any point, decide to do good. You can decide to change your entire being. And part of the deception is join my team or that team. And that’s one that my research has suggested to me is not a fair characterization of the way that it is.

Everyone’s going back to the light sooner or later. And if you want to fuck around and play darkness and play evil and do that stuff, I don’t know what your motivation is for doing it, but you don’t have to do that. Even if your parents did that and indoctrinated you into that, even if you slipped into that, even if you bullied people for 10 years of your life, if you come to one of Dave’s classes and you see a different path, you can choose a different path. Your destiny is not predetermined in that way. And I’ve given more sermons in this show, there’s a record number of sermons today.

David Whitehead: [01:33:09] That means we’re activating some stuff, Alex. That’s good. These are great conversations to have, they need to be had. And what you’re actually highlighting, the way I took it is that it brings us back to the nature of free will, doesn’t it? It brings us back to that question, that there is a choice involved. We often start to believe we’re victims because we feel like we’re oppressed by these evil forces or these people or these tyrants or these governments. Right now the whole world feels like, especially the people that have sort of woken up to what is really going on, they’re feeling helpless, they feel helpless. They’re like, “I’m just one person, I can’t change anything. I’m helpless,” and right away moving into that victim mindset. There are limits to what you can do, obviously there are things you can control, and there are things you can’t control. But don’t forget that there are things you can control, and what you can control is you, and you can work on you, and you’ve got enough work there, than before starting to go out and try to save the world.

What I found valuable about looking… and even for people out there that have a problem with the subject of conspiracy, and some of these deep rabbit holes that we could discuss, just remember that it could also just be a useful tool for you to have a contrast, to have another perspective on the world. There’s more than one way of seeing the world. There’s more than one way of interpreting world events, which implies that, you know, we do have this free will to look at the same event and come to different conclusions based on it. And there are all kinds of forces that get involved with what is there, creating your opinion on these things. But this always comes back to the will that you have, the will that you have to activate your mind and use it or to dull your mind and avoid looking at things and avoid thinking about things because it feels safe.

And I think we’re seeing a major example of that in the world right now, this year. This year is sort of like where everything’s coming out from behind the surface, all the walls are coming down, the drapes are opening up. We’re seeing more behind the curtain than ever before. There are more whistleblowers coming out. There’s more truth coming out, I believe. And I believe there’s also a pulse happening in each and every one of us that is calling everything into question. And as hard as this year has been, and as catastrophic it has been to so many people that I talk to and to myself, and I’m sure to you Alex, in your own right, it’s an opportunity for us to learn these lessons and really think, not just about how can we uncover what really went on on the Lolita Express and Epstein Island in Hollywood and in these cults, and the fact that we’ve got human trafficking networks around the world, or the exposures to the frauds happening in science, and how they’re not really looking at the truth and there’s all this manipulation. Whatever it is, that’s a reflection back on you. Just like I said, in the beginning with martial arts, it’s you against you at all times.

So when I’m analyzing tyrants, cult leaders, the dark side, when I’m looking down those dark hallways, I’m not just looking at them and going, “Look, see, there’s some evil, Alex, let’s go squash it.” It’s more about, well, I’m learning about me, by learning about these Jeffrey Dahmer’s and these Jim Jones’ and these Adolf Hitler’s. I’m learning about me because I’m learning about what happens when your will gets applied against life, against the good and you need the contrast.

So as dark as the subject matter is in this cult series that I do, and the content sometimes that I talk about, there’s a value to it because it provides your mind with the challenge of looking at things from the other side, and then coming back and then looking at it from a different angle, and that’s how you come upon the truth. You come upon the truth by eliminating the untrue. Krishnamurti used to say, it’s only through the painstaking process of eliminating the untrue that the truth is revealed. And we’re not doing that anymore, we’re just accepting things on face value. What CBC is telling me is the truth. And it’s like, well, wait a minute, let’s dissect it.

And that’s all I’m trying to do on my show, is dissect it, present my opinion. Yes, I have my biases. Yes, I have my worldview, but isn’t it valuable to have people like me that have a different worldview? I think people like you, Alex, or even you and I can sit here and have a civil discussion and have a few disagreements and tease things out and share ideas, that’s beautiful, that’s, that’s what it takes to come upon truth.

So, if we get rid of those things in our society, and we don’t teach our children to question things, and we just go, “Go line up, six feet apart, wear the mask, don’t question, do what you’re told, don’t think outside the box at all,” what are we doing to our kids? We’re not creating free-thinking minds. Which means down the road, they’re going to be able to have a better argument to say yes, so you don’t have any free will. You don’t have any free will because you’ve not had any practice knowing that you have free will. You don’t have the confidence in you to possess free will and apply it correctly and see what’s what.

So these are just so important conversations that you’re having on your show Alex. I’m honored to be a part of it. I’ll come back any time. And I really appreciate this opportunity, man.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:38:21] Hey, see folks, I told you at the beginning, this was going to be a good one. And it was Dave Whitehead. The Truth Warrior. Is it The Way of the Truth Warrior podcast or Truth Warrior podcast?

David Whitehead: [01:38:37] I think started calling it The Way of the Truth Warrior, but it’s just too much of a word salad. So it’s just Truth Warrior.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:38:43] Okay. So either way, check him out, check out his podcast, check out his YouTube channel. We will have more conversations. It’s just vital. I hope it’s as invigorating, as uplifting to all of you as it was for me.

Dave. Great, great work, please continue it. And thanks so much for joining me today.

David Whitehead: [01:39:06] Thanks brother, I always love talking to you, keep doing this great work and I really, really appreciate it. And thanks to all who tuned in and listened to me rant about my ideas. I always put the disclaimer out there that I’m not here proclaiming I’m the authority on truth, not what I call it The Truth Warrior. I called my project Truth Warrior because this was my personal project to pursue the truth, to seek the truth. I might not have it in all times and places, but I realized right away, if you’re going to go on the path of seeking the truth, you need the spine of a warrior to be strong enough to go on that journey. And so, that’s all I’ve been trying to do, and I hope it adds some value. And I really appreciate you having this talk with me today buddy.

Thanks again to David Whitehead for joining me today on Skeptiko. One question I’d tee up is, what does it mean to you to be a truth seeker warrior? There’s a lot of kind of macho flexing kind of stuff going on. I think there’s reality to that, but I don’t think it’s the whole story. How do you see it? What’s your picture? Join me on the Skeptiko Forum, come over and tell me your thoughts. I’d love to hear it.

As always, I’m trying to cook up a bunch of new shows for you, I have many, many coming out. I just get kind of overwhelmed with all the stuff, but I will be getting them out over the holidays. So stay with me for all of that. Until next time, take care, bye for now.

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