Nerve ontology
HOST
Sam. Sa. Bang was out on the lake yesterday. And I took a little glance.
There's like a gravel, sort of like beachy area oblique to the. To the structure. And I see a duck was paddling for his life, just paddling. And I've never really witnessed anything like this live.
Kind of seeing an animal struggle and kind of cling on to its kind of existential nature. And I looked. The water was translucent enough to where I could clearly see what was happening. There was a log that somehow got tethered to a fishing line.
And the complexity of the contraption was absolutely fucking absurd. I mean, this duck managed to get the fishing line completely like a noose around his neck. His legs were strangled. And then as he was kind of floating on all this detritus and debris from inside the lake was just tethering itself to the end of the cord.
So this motherfucker was basically towing driftwood. And he just. He just was in a fucking quagmire like I've never seen. I mean, this motherfucker was trapped in a Zen koan, in a Chinese fucking finger trap.
Every kind of trap you could imagine he managed to get himself into. Now, I am not an interventionist by nature. I'm just not. I've never been an interventionist.
But the. The spirit. The spirit, the fight within this duck, after a couple minutes of just watching this motherfucker doing his best, led me to intervene. So I got in the lake and I fucking pulled him out to the side.
And I had my girl with me, and she grabbed some scissors and some clippers, and I start disentangling this. I mean, I'm talking like it was a game of operation. I had to do some surgery to get deep into the feathers. This cord was so deep tucked in there, and I had to start clipping and making little incisions in the rope and trying not to hurt them.
And this motherfucker was playing dead, which was one of the most interesting facets of the whole experience. I mean, he. He literally was playing dead. He was just letting me go to work like a paramedic.
Long story short, I free him. And he was rattled. I mean, he. He was in a state of shock.
And he. He jumped back into the lake, and then he kind of drifted off and he went back on and. And beached on the side of the gravel. So three hours later, I'm smoking a cigarette outside, and it's.
It's about sunset now, and I'm puffing, and I'm just looking at the lake, and there's a huge variety of birds and shit, turtles, all sorts of wildlife. And I'm watching the same duck. And he was distinctive because he had that stormtrooper pattern. It was white on black.
He had those fucking. He was just a white on black color scheme. And none of the other ducks looked like him. So he's off to the side and he was just chilling.
He was just sitting there, no movement off to the side, recovering, and all of a sudden staring at him. A red tailed hawk comes dive, bombing down from the sky and eviscerates the duck. I'm talking in two seconds this duck disappears over the tree line. Gone, gone.
Can't save them all. Some just cannot be saved. Metaphor for life. I intervened in his biological destiny and that ended up in some kind of hawks nest, eviscerated.
And I was just sitting there in awe for like 20 minutes because I'm a fucking big city guy, been in big cities, cosmopolitan areas my whole life. So I've very rarely seen mother nature do these kind of tricks. And afterwards when I kind of processed it and just kind of downloaded the whole situation, what I came to the conclusion of is that was a sick bird. A sick bird, likely had a flu, likely had some kind of illness.
I could tell by just his sort of overall despondency wasn't a very lively, vivacious animal at all. Especially after the fucking surgery. This motherfucker was just chilling, literally not moving. So that metaphor, sitting duck, sitting duck, I did get a little chuckle out of that because sitting duck is a true fucking metaphor.
That was a sitting duck and he got evaporated in two seconds. But the overarching point here is that I do believe in humans and in animals that illness, illness as the primary function does lead people to getting into a lot of the quagmires that they find themselves in. I refuse to believe that a healthy, athletic, normal bird with perfect function finds a way to entangle himself in fishing line like that. Not possible.
So my point is, I think the reaper was already hovering over the motherfucker and it was probably game over anyway. And him tangling himself up was a second order consequence to just being a sick duck. Now this is true in humans as well. A lot of the mistakes that you make psychologically, a lot of the situations that you get into are second order effects of having poor health.
Gotta like this thing real quick, hold on. Red tailed hawk, just buzzing, buzzing through the skies. You know, these apex predators, especially like these aven species, these raptors are incredible. If you really, really like learn A little bit about birds.
Some of these birds of prey are absolutely majestic. And one thing that you learn from the animal kingdom which does translate perfectly to humans, all predator species really, is they're fucking dopamine junkies. They're dopamine junkies. If you think these apex predator birds are, are flying around detoxing and like that, no, no, no, no.
They crave stimulation more than a 14 hour video game streamer. All apex predator species are dopamine junkies. Humans are no different. All humans, all titans of industry.
Any successful man is absolutely in search of that dopamine refuel constantly. Constantly. Dopamine detoxes are for prey. Because I'll tell you something, every successful I know has a crippling phone addiction, music addiction, music on repeat 24 hours a day, constant raucous noises in the background, dealing with, you know, women in the household, fucking kids screaming.
Still getting work done, though, still operating at a very high level amidst the chaos. Amidst the chaos. Because dopamine just keeps you in search. And look, the reality of life is, especially modern life, is you will never be able to seize the premier opportunities that life has to offer you unless you have a crippling dopamine addiction, because it really does.
It forces you to unearth life's greatest, most hidden opportunities. That's what it does. So I ain't about dopamine detox whatsoever. I say you need to fry those receptors, cook those receptors pan fried.
Because that's ultimately what keeps you on your toes, ready to capitalize on the next best opportunity. That's how it works. How it works in the animal kingdom is how it works in the human kingdom. And so this segues perfectly into the tweet that I dropped today, which is that as a man, the only way to experience the full gravity, gravitas and weight and might and power of being a man is to have the experiences that you have in life settle in at the nervous system level.
Because men, unlike women, you can train the male hardware to endure a lot of different skill sets. You can drill very deep into the male hardware and implant skills. Not so true with women. Women, absolutely, by osmosis, can get a lot of surface level skill, but you can't train a woman to be lethal like you can a man.
You can, you can take an ordinary man and turn him into a warrior, right, A samurai. You can do that with a man because you can burnish and you can flame torch certain biological components in the male structure and hardware in order to make them interface with reality better. And one of the finest and grandest ways that men interface with reality perfectly is to have the nerve endings fringed. Fringed, lightly seared and toasted at the ends.
You know what I'm saying? And look, let me give you a good analogy to bring this in perspective. The only reason why men you can fucking. You can talk about aesthetics all day, whatever.
The only reason why men truly enjoy the gym and physical exertion, the goggins, the guys who, who masochistically bludgeon their body into the ground, is because of the exhaustion of the nerves. It has a phenomenal way of dealing with anxiety. Dealing with anxiety. You guys all know what I'm talking about.
If you're in, if you're, if you have athletic prowess or you're a heavy lifter, you know the feeling you get in your body when you go like four or five days out of the gym, you almost have this sensation that like blood is pooling. There's just. You get stagnant. You feel like you're a fucking stagnant lake.
It's a very disgusting feeling. You feel like you got to go out and exert again. And the reason why people are very addicted to weightlifting in these processes is because it absolutely has a sedative effect on the nerves. On the nerves.
It allows you to kind of settle into your being. And the after effects are magnificent. I mean, the after effects can last 24 hours. We all know what it's like to have a beaten up central nervous system as a man, to be absolutely fried and torched and exhausted.
And in those states, you are a lot more carefree and a lot less introspective. And you're able to just be, just completely be in the moment without that nervous, befuddled, flustered anxiety that the common man battles with every day. The samurai is just a motherfucker, believe it or not. It wasn't a mental.
There was no mental pathway to becoming a samurai. You ain't gonna think yourself into that kind of Zen. You ain't gonna think yourself into the warrior attitude where you're willing to die in a fucking battle of glory like those motherfuckers were. That.
That came from absolutely cleansing. Cleansing their dopamine receptors and nervous system in fire. In fire. There is a reason why there are so many metaphors surrounding fire being a cleansing.
People talk about how fire is a bath, right? Even metal, metal gets purified when you dip it in fire. You know what I'm saying? Burning.
That burning sensation, that burning sensation at the gym, that burning sensation when you're push, pushing yourself. That's all metaphorical. And if you've been paying attention, you will know that metaphors are a better representation of reality than reality itself. Because it's paradoxical.
Once those nerve endings from. From putting yourself from. From putting stake in the actual game. Once those nerve endings get those tips slightly burned, that's where the real metaphors kick in.
You know they talk about in flight school how people fly ice cold. They talk about how the greatest athletes have ice in their veins. Where the fuck do you think these metaphors come from? Ice in your veins comes from having calm nerves.
There ain't no shilajit, there ain't no methylene blue, there ain't no supplement on the planet that's gonna bake in to the cellular level of the nervous system to make you become a man. There's no steroid cocktail that's gonna make you become a man. I've told you this before and I stand by it. There is nothing that can replace being a man.
But being a man. Very profound. If you actually sit there and ruminate on that for a second. Very profound.
Let's take a. Let's take another detour into another room of the museum. How do I know what I'm telling you is true? Because if you look at the.
The highest symbol of femininity, right? It's the grace of a beautiful woman. Now if you look at the grace of a beautiful woman and you look at the converse and you go the exact opposite polar spectrum from a graceful beautiful woman, what do you have? You got a, with a thousand yard stare, right?
There is no spitting image on this planet that doesn't viscerally hit any human being. Than if you see in public, you guys have all seen this, you've seen a gorgeous woman sitting at a diner. Could be fucking anywhere with a man, literally, with that thousand yard stare affectation on his face. A man that you can just tell has been through the fucking war zone.
And you don't need to go to war to achieve that. It could be just a motherfucker who's fighting his own demons every day. Gets that sort of flat expression on his face. Thousand yards there most polar opposite configuration from that feminine grace.
And that's when men really settle into the game of life. And they can start playing the game, you can start playing the game as a man when you're quasi dead. A deadening of the nerves, a hardening of the nerves, nerves of steel, you know what I'm saying? It's a.
It's a derogatory term. You guys all know this. Growing up, you did something bold or audacious and some fucking school marmion pearl clutching teacher or maybe a parent said, you have a lot of nerve. Yeah, of course you have a lot of Nerf.
You're a man. The fuck else you supposed to do? The else you supposed to do? When your nerves are too green and you're too sensitized to the world as a man, that's when the gender lines start getting real blurry.
You guys understand? What separates a man from a woman is that an experience for a man. The more experiences that a man has, the more adventure, the more thrilled, the more this type of biological component seeps into the cellular level and deadens and hardens the nerves. Women are the opposite.
Women are the total and complete fucking diametric opposite. Experiences corrupt women, right? The fewer experiences that a woman has, the more innocent and the more pure. How do you defile a woman's femininity?
You expose her to things that men are supposed to be exposed to. Simple math. Simple math. And look, all these metaphors tie in seamlessly.
Seamlessly. If you've ever watched a basketball game in the NBA, you will know that announcers that announce the games are colloquial wizards are slinging some of the best, hottest metaphors on the planet to describe physical functions that are happening in the game. But one thing that you know, and this is a universal metaphor that we are all very acquainted with, is you will see a, in an NBA game, be on absolute fire, right? And what's the first thing they say when a guy's on fire and can't miss?
They say he's unconscious, right? That's what they say. They say he's gone unconscious. Now what have I told you about the unconscious mind?
This motherfucker's nerves have been deadened from playing in arenas packed with 50,000 jeering, jeering and shrouding him in negative energy. And all these great prototypical athletes thrive off the negative energy. All of them do. All of them do.
They hit the clutch free throws with 0.2 seconds left on the road, with everyone fucking cursing them out and wishing death upon them. The entire building is rooting against them, but they're unconscious. And what do they do? They make both free throws and win the fucking game.
Because that's what pros do. Pros do not need to perform in perfect conditions. In fact, they prefer to operate in imperfect conditions. Yet again, the dopamine junkie wins.
Yet again. All right, I gotta take a cigarette break. I'm gonna bring up. I'm gonna open the floor.
If there's any blockage of flow on the floor. Just so you guys know, I'm gonna be tyrann. Dude disappeared. Mr.
Marsetti.
CALLER 2
Yo, can you hear me?
HOST
What's up, bro? Yes.
CALLER 3
So I love your work, but nonetheless, I'm gonna get straight into it. So would you recommend operating from the gut, or would you recommend operating from the analytical?
HOST
The gut. No question. But that works for me. I mean, that's just what works for me, the analytical.
See, for me, the way I analyze things is I analyze things in the background. I look at intelligence as, like, an application that needs to run in the background of my life. I'm a smart enough cookie to where if I go unconscious and do things and turn off sort of the. The frontal lobe of my brain, I'm pretty much gonna be I.
So that's how I see intelligence. I see his intelligence is just sort of this extra computing power that just kind of hovers in the background. I don't really ever have to kick it into sixth gear and fucking get some extra horsepower out of it. You know what I'm saying?
Like, if you're, if you're a smart enough guy and you have a smart enough baseline, you literally cannot lose by tapping into your unconscious mind and putting most of that overthinking to sleep, Because it's just a more opportunistic way to live. You know what I mean? Like, you can capture the essence of culture. You can.
You can see trends, you can see the flow of life a lot better in this frame of mind. Good question. Anything else?
CALLER 3
Yeah, I was thinking one more question that I had was what? Let's say if. If an opportunity does look good on paper, but it doesn't align with your spirit, you would still go with your gut, right?
HOST
Every time. Every time. There is basically no position you could offer me in life right now for any amount of money that I would do that I don't want to fucking do, I, I, I cannot. There's literally no offer.
If you told me right now, if I sat at a cubicle for 40 hours a week, and you pay me a million dollars a week, a million bucks a week for me to sit 40 hours a week in a cubicle, I wouldn't do it. Not even close. Easy answer for me, because my time is that fucking valuable now. There's literally zero way to cajole me into doing anything I don't want to fucking do.
But you, you got to earn your stripes. You know what I Mean you got to earn, you got to earn the chevron pin on your lapel to be in a position to be able to do that. But the thing is it don't take money to have that attitude. You know what I mean?
It kind of goes back to the quote that I said on Twitter. I said if you want you. I said how much you money you end up with depends on how often you said you in the first
CALLER 3
place.
HOST
I have really not seen that Axiom fail.
CALLER 3
One billion proof. Absolutely.
CALLER 2
Great.
HOST
Appreciate you. I'm gonna keep it moving. Yo.
CALLER 2
Hey, yo, what's good bro? So I'm.
HOST
What's up brother?
CALLER 2
I'm trying to figure out how to weaponize this. I don't know if it's imposter syndrome or what it is, but essential my long term, I know my long term goal, my destiny. I'm raising a 20 million dollar venture fund and doors are opening up. Everything's easy.
That's easy. But in the meantime I'm trying to do like SMMA or coaching courses and I feel like a complete imposter. Like that is so hard to me and it feels ticky tacky to like ask for three thousand dollar courses or ask people to take on SMMA clients. So how could I, how about long term goal?
How could I work on the short term?
HOST
Just getting money in the door.
CALLER 2
That's kind of my where I'm at right now.
HOST
Yeah, that's a good question, man. Because look, I mean this kind of harkens back to some of this, this old school Michael Porfirio wisdom, which I'm sure some of you know, Michael Mason, he basically his whole shtick was he was talking about how you don't ever want to talk to small numbers. And that's actually been one of the biggest fucking pieces of wisdom that's flown over motherfuckers heads is everything that you get in life really has to do with how you calibrate in the denominations that you deal with. So I understand what you're saying.
If you're out here slinging thousand dollar courses or you're out here trying to make 500 bucks a pop every day and you never move past those denominations and you only think in those types of numbers you're never going to elevate ever. You're never going to elevate. And that's the thing that I've always talked about. There's this mysterious intangible quality about being a guy who's touched the tops of the firmaments.
And I've even if it's just briefly, like if you're doing a $20 million venture, look, I'm in the same boat, right? I've touched many, many, many tens of millions of dollars have flown through my hands in this life because of that situation and because my nerves have been deadened handling that kind of money. I have settled into a trough where there is a baseline minimum that I am unwilling to negotiate with. Like I am unwilling to sling $500 courses.
That's never happening. That is a denomination that I do not deal with. And once you change the way you look at the numbers in your head and there are certain numbers that you are unwilling to deal with, it's incredible the way the gears spin in the machine and the opportunities and doors and avenues that open that will calibrate with those figures. A lot of motherfuckers, like I've always said, play for low stakes their entire fucking life and they can never break out of it.
You know what I mean? If you, if you're only selling $20 products, you're always going to have $20 problems. That's my fucking point. And so I think one of the hardest things about being a man, especially in the modern world, is holding out for those marquee opportunities and not taking dog shit opportunities and getting the carrot dangled in your face.
And then you're stuck dealing with these low denominations again. And that's the biggest problem right now is you got a lot of. Who are basically have the golden handcuffs.
CALLER 2
Yeah, well that's, that's perfectly explained because I feel like, yeah, my, I never looked at it like that, but my dopamine receptors have been fried because I, I did a startup previously, I literally had a million dollars in my bank account.
HOST
Exactly.
CALLER 2
Got zeroed out. I'm, I'm almost at bottom, but I don't really care about making the bills, the money to pay the bills because I can't go back to not having less than a 15 million dollar valuation.
CALLER 1
Right.
CALLER 2
Like I did my last startup. So it's kind of a tough thing. I have another question. It's part, it's kind of random.
If I could ask that as well too.
HOST
Yeah, go for it.
CALLER 2
So I stopped smoking weed. Like May. Right. Don't even care to do it.
But I realized every time I smoke, I literally just want to work. I would get in these manic episodes where I'm just literally at my desk in flow state. Right. I don't care to smoke weed.
I make fun of my friends because they can't stop smoking weed. Actually I don't. But should you. You talk about not or not straying away from the things that get you in that peak state.
I don't know how you refer to it, but basically, what should I do with the shots? Smoke weed just to work and get in flow state, even though I don't really care to, but that's when I'm the most beastly at work?
HOST
I can't answer that question for you. But yeah, I mean, it goes back to the thing that I talked about where bad habits are synergistic with good habits. Like my bad habits fuel my good habits. For sure.
When I smoke cigarettes, I am extraordinarily productive. You know what I mean? I'm always banging phone calls. I'm always wheeling and dealing.
I'm making happen when I smoke. And that's just sort of like a trigger point for me. So for me, I have overpowered, in my opinion, the negative effects of smoking. And if that's the same for you, then, yeah, double down on it.
CALLER 2
Appreciate that, bro. Good luck.
HOST
Yep, The fabled Mr. E. Hey, man,
CALLER 1
thanks for having me. So on what you said before about dopamine detox, what do you think of the idea that as a dopamine junkie, you might want to detox, like starve yourself out of external dopamine sources just to find a way to produce this kind of dopamine effect internally? Because, like, how would you do this? You would solve problems, right?
Like, for me, that's what happens when I don't have anything to do. I start thinking and then I start solving problems that had been pending for a long time. So, yeah, just your thoughts on that,
HOST
on basically using dopamine detox as a springboard to. To. To generate some sort of creativity? I mean, look, my argument's the exact opposite.
What I'm saying is, is when you're overloaded and over cloaked and your motherboards running hot because you're saturated in. In dopamine, it actually, that's the creative juice right there. It's already kind of built into the game. Like, you don't have to.
This is the whole optimization thing. You don't ever have to intentionally walk away from something. Life will do that for you. Life will do it for you if you're.
If you're living at the edge. And what I mean by that is weightlifting is a great example. There are certain days where I literally just cannot snatch 300 pounds. Not humanly possible because I'm already at the brink.
So that could be, you know, how people will Program deloading into their training. How. Why do I need to deload when I walked in there and the best I could do today was 285. There's a natural, There's a natural downregulation and deload built into the game of life.
And the only way to get those Easter eggs and capitalize on those social glitches is to live at your maximum capacity. That's my whole thing is like you don't need to ever isolate these components of life. They are all there laid out before you.
CALLER 1
So let me ask you like this. If I put you in a monastery for a day, no music, nothing external, do you think I give you a pen and a paper and maybe like a phone to make some work phone calls, do you think you would be less productive or more productive?
CALLER 2
Less.
HOST
But if you gave me a pen and paper and forced me into a monastery, you bet your ass by the end of the day I got my own version of the Iliad written in full, ready to be released to the public. Because I would be infuriated.
CALLER 1
I see. So. So you do you do see the point that for some, for certain tasks you might want to bore yourself to death just to find a way to overcome this boredom in a productive way.
HOST
Is that right? 100 I've tweeted about this before. I said if you're a young and you don't have anything to your name, why the do you have a hundred electronics in your bedroom? I said if you're a youngster and you are low on the ambition scale, you need a barren ost to your bedroom with. With walls to stare at.
Because if you wake up as a youngster in a studio apartment with a blow up bed and you have no electronics and nothing to keep you stimulated, in about 10 minutes of waking up you are going to be infuriated that you have nothing to your name, no money in the bank, no one knows who the you are. And guess what? You're going to be forced to open your front door and step outside and start making happen.
CALLER 1
I got another one for you, if I may.
HOST
Go for it.
CALLER 1
What? So you've spoken about long term relationships a lot. What do you. How do you keep things from getting boring, like sexually?
Because like that's my experience that no matter how the hot, how hot the chick is, like at some point like two years go by, it's not the same. Or do you think that's just my experience and that shouldn't be the way this.
HOST
I mean look, I. I think Sexual boredom is actually a huge sign of health in the sense that I think the more the crazier the sex needs to be between a couple, the less they're attracted to each other. I think that's just been, been a time tested, proven thing. I think run of the mill vanilla sex is the best for.
Especially when you are an extremely attractive man to a woman. If a woman, if you are irresistible to a woman, she is going to go ballistic with just regular fucking missionary. All this choking and fake alpha bravado. It's for people who have a broken brain, number one, to the point where, look, the attraction is completely in those equations and that's why they constantly have to ramp up and do crazier and crazier to get off.
I, I think the sign of true power in a relationship is just right, run of the mill vanilla sex. I think it's a very good thing to lean into. No, no need to do crazy. No need.
CALLER 1
Yeah. Tell me if you agree with that. Like the way I see it is that like it's clear that women, I think you've talked about this, that women who are working a corporate job and they have a lot of pressure, then what's their way to release all that? Like their ways to be a huge whore.
Like one night they go out and they get gang banged, Right? So I feel that maybe the opposite end of that is that like if a woman really loves you, she doesn't really need you to dominate her sexually. Like if she's already mentally dominated, she doesn't need.
HOST
Correct. That is correct. So the whole love thing with women, the big secret to that whole equation is that it's all mental. If you have the mental authority and complete mental domination over a woman, which means she basically parrots you on everything.
She starts using your lingo, she eats like you, she starts talking like you, she fucking copies your lifestyle, she basically does everything you fucking do and follows you around. That is the mental authority that drives her fucking wild in the bedroom. Guys have it completely fudgeing, inverted and twisted. The more physical power you have to exert over a woman in the bedroom means you have a less psychological foothold in her overall life.
And you really want domination in the mental domain because the mental domain is completely infinite and it's far more encroaching. It's far more encroaching at the cellular level. Look, this is why when a woman gets her heart broken by a man that she was absolutely in love with, the first thing she does. Typically, if she was extremely in love is she'll put on like 10 or 20 pounds.
And the reason she does that, the reason she puts on the weight, is as a fuck you to the guy who taught her everything he taught her. It's her way of basically unprogramming herself and going tabula rasa, blank slate again, Ready to be basically be besieged by a new ideology from a new guy. So the only way a woman can truly mend her heart is to forget everything you've taught her. You see this in nature all the time.
You could literally mold a baddie. You could mold a chick and fucking rescue her from the fucking gutter. Teach her everything about life, get her behaving fucking correctly, keeping her in check. Four years goes by.
The day you end that relationship and terminate it is the day that she intentionally releases the entire culmination of the philosophy that you downloaded into her. She will do everything in her power to stop eating like you, to stop talking like you, to stop fucking walking like you. She will do it on purpose because it's way too painful. Way too painful.
Everything fucking reminds you of her. So women will put on weight as a fuck you to men. And that's how they go through their reset kind of molting phase where they. Where they blow up the shell and then they're waiting to be reconfigured by the next guy.
Which is why in the beginning of the space I told you, women do not really get drilled down to at the cellular level. The things that women learn are relatively at the surface level, because the board game can be reshuffled depending on what man is in her life. Right? A woman's politics are malleable.
Women's opinions will change based on who the patriarchal authority is in her life at that given moment.
CALLER 1
Great stuff, man. I appreciate it.
HOST
You got it.