Finding a Sense of Community During the Coronvirus Pandemic w/Duncan Trussell | Joe Rogan

But this is a good time for people to recognize the importance of community. It's a terrible time for humanity, it's a terrible time for us, and terrible time for the people that are sick, but it's a really good time for us to understand why community is important. We live in this illusionary world that's provided to us by the culture that we've created where you can just buy things anytime you want. You don't need people. You come home, you watch Netflix, you don't engage with anyone, you get in your car, you barely say hi to anybody at work. We're detached from each other. And this is the only time ever in life we've been detached from each other, and we're being detached by these goddamn electronics. They're sneaking up on us. Electronics and cars, which is also a creation, a mechanical creation, and now more than ever they're driving computers. Yeah, man. It's true. What I'm trying to say is Ted Kaczynski was right. Oh my God, we all know that. He was right. Did you ever read his manifesto? No, I'm scared it's catchy. Yeah, man. It's so fun. I went through a period of doing ketamine and trying to watch the worst thing, like Charles Manson, Kaczynski. And yeah, it is a little bit kind of interestingly not that off, but then the tone is so imperial or something when you're reading it. It's a manifesto. That's how you have to write it. But the one thing my wife is part of, it's called a mommy group, so it's like a connection online of all these mommies all over LA. And what they do is people will post shit they need. So one of the moms just had a kid. They don't have any wet wipes. And so then all the other moms will be like, oh, we've got wet wipes. And then right now they're just leaving them on the door. So people come and get them. I think the community thing is exactly right. But also people have to maybe transcend money for a second and figure out ways to set up in their community, like, what do you need? What do I have? And then start some form of like trade or just giving people. There was someone who set up a toilet paper exchange in LA where he was just like, if you have extra toilet paper, bring it. And then he had toilet paper and he was just giving it out to people who were, I think that's the sort of thing we're going to have to start doing if we can. It's like right now there's old people who they can't do shit, man. They can't do anything. They're terrified. They can't even get online. If you know them, you've got to help them. And this is a weird time for us, but it's a time for us to reset. It's not good. I'm not saying it's good, but I'm saying we can get a positive out of this. The people that make it through, we can get a positive out of this. And the positive is community is important. It's really important. And it seemed like it wasn't important because it seemed like we had everything set up so you didn't have to engage with people. It's not the right way to do it. It's not good for anybody. No. That kind of life is not good. And the detachment that we have, I mean, that's why do you think people have road rage on the highway when they're locked in their little box separated from people in a way that they wouldn't have it in person? It's only a thin piece of metal and glass separating you from these people. With that, there's the other added factor of the heightened senses because you're driving fast and you realize you might have to make quick movements. So dumb things people do are elevated. They're even more dumb. But it's also that you're detached. You're in these boxes. Right. It's like a weird dream. We've done weird shit to each other because of that. We're all gummed up in that way. It's like a fungus that grew on the circuitry of society. Or it's like when they talk about the dolphins and the whales being fucked up by the high-tech sonar they're using and washing up on the beach because the sonar is messing up their ability to communicate with each other. It's like there's this kind of technological sonar that has completely made us disconnected from the earth essentially. Our earth connection has been replaced by a technological connection. Technology comes from the earth, but we're talking about a secondary thing compared to your feet touching the ground, being around another human and recognizing them as having exactly the same thing you have, which is they want to be happy. Feeling the connection between people when you're with someone. I don't know if you've ever done that, but just like the next time you're around anybody that you're buying shit from or that you normally just kind of go by, feel that connection. You can feel it. There's an energetic connection that you can feel there that's easy to overlook. Yeah. We've lost the biggest one, which is through light pollution. I think every night people were humbled and reminded of the majesty of the universe when they looked up and saw the infinite skies on a clear night. The infinite stars, just the whole Milky Way. You could see the whole thing. There's parts of the country where there's plenty of darkness and you could literally see the whole Milky Way. It makes you think like, oh, our ancestors saw this freaking shit all the time. We decided to shut off the greatest art the world has ever known because we want to be able to see better at night. The greatest art, an art that literally not just has inspired science and wonder and fueled it, right? But also has kind of always put people in place. Always just understand this is not a backdrop. It's not a tapestry. The up there is madness. It's forever. And you're not protected. There's just a thin layer of gas between you and the universe, which is infinite. You're this tiny little speck of nothingness in this impossible to understand spans of planets and stars that just goes on forever, literally forever. And we're one little tiny piece of it. And we're being held here with a spin and some air. And there's a giant fucking fireball in the sky that keeps us alive. And it's a million times bigger than the Earth. Yeah. And it's right there. And this is this is the reality that we live in. It is almost too crazy to put in your consciousness on a daily basis. So we forget about it all the time. It's the one of the most important things about our existence here is that we're a part of the universe. Yeah. It's not just that we're in, you know, fucking Sherman Oaks or we're hanging out in Montana. No, we're right there connected in the universe. And it doesn't get brought up. And one of the reasons is because we don't see it. We don't fucking freak out. If you go to the country camping, you fucking freak out. You're like, wow, you see the stars like this is fucking nuts, man. You can see them all. It's it's a reset button. It changes how you feel about life. Yeah. Yeah. Well, also seems like a lot of us have forgotten that we're going to die on top of all that. I mean, not only are you like looking up at this void filled with stars, but the thing you are is temporary. And that to me is, you know, the other day I'm like just washing dishes during this fucking pandemic. And I'm thinking to myself, man, I feel so lucky to be washing dishes right now. I'm alive. I'm healthy. This is fucking it was a different kind of washing dishes than a week ago when I was able to or two weeks before the shit started when I could order anything I fucking wanted off the Internet. It is suddenly I'm in a different world. Like this is a world where we got to wash these dishes because man, if I get like if bugs come, I don't know if I want to call an exterminator right now. I don't know how many people I want in my house right now. I don't know what this shit is. So it's like suddenly these are what you're experiencing is this kind of like, well, what does this say in the Bible that we both love so much? Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And I think you could easily translate that to understanding your place in the universe should produce a kind of positive fear and trembling. Not like you're anxious or terrified, but just to kind of like, whoa, this doesn't last. Nothing about this last. And right now, everyone around the planet is getting a firsthand glimpse of that very truth, right? Yeah. All at once. One big dose. One big dose of it all at once. One big dose for people to recognize how much of what they concentrate on a daily basis, how much what fills their consciousness is shit. It's utter nonsense. Yeah. And we got tricked. We got tricked into thinking it would go on forever. And now we know it's not going to. Now we know, hey, look, this is a terrible thing. But relatively speaking, compared to supervolcano asteroid impact compared to something solar flare, something really crazy that can happen and blow out all the power, which is 100 percent a possibility. Solar flares are 100 percent a possibility. And for people to not recognize that and just go through their life, it's just because we look at life as if what we've experienced while we're alive is the norm. But it's not. It's not the norm. It's just hard for you to recognize that your life is so short. Your life is so short that when they're measuring all the different catastrophes that have happened over the earth, whether it's proven sites of asteroid impacts or proven sites of volcano eruptions or all these different things that have happened for sure and wiped out millions of people all over the world. They happen over a time span that's too big. Our head doesn't get in there. Our head doesn't go. What is 13,000 years is just some scratches on some paper in my head, my stupid head. I don't know what 13,000 years means. I can't. I can't do it. But 13,000 years ago, they think – and there's more and more evidence every day – that there was some big impact on earth. And who fucking knows how many of those humans have gone through? Who knows? I think scientists believe – what is it? It's like 300,000-plus years we've been this, right? Is that the idea? Homosapien? Something like that, yeah. Something like that, right? Bro, that ain't shit. That's so short. That's so short just in the time that the earth has been here, in the four-point whatever billion years the earth has been here. And that's so short in terms of the almost 14 billion years the known universe has been here. All of its madness. Every single step along the way is madness. But we get stuck in these little time periods where nothing changes. And so we think that this is life. So we've built all these houses that only can work on electricity. How many fucking people have a real fireplace in their house that live in cold places? They're banning those now. So if they're banning fireplaces because they don't want to start fires, that's great as long as you can ensure the gas and the power is going to stay on. And I don't think you could do that. We just think you can because you've done it for 100 years. That's the thing. 100 years is in shit. 100 years the Industrial Revolution, the roaring 20s from then to today. Let's go 150. Let's get crazy. That ain't shit. That ain't shit. To say this is how things are every day is so dumb. It's especially to say in terms of the earth, natural disasters, space anomalies, not even anomalies. Things that happen. Like solar flares. They haven't all the time, man. Yeah, man. Well, I mean, and shit, we don't even know. That's the other thing. We don't know all the some all the data in the universe. We don't know that there isn't something called like a quadresean ripple that happens every, you know, 16 million years. Call Sean Carroll right now. I need information. You know, do you know that poem? Ozzy Mandias? Ozzy Mandias? Yeah. It's by Shelley, I think. It's like I don't have it memorized, but the basically it's like the poem is about someone who sees the broken left. The legs of a statue in the desert and written on a plaque is my name is Ozzy Mandias, ruler of rulers, king of kings. Behold my works, he mighty and despair. All of you motherfuckers who think you have power, who think you have all this control. It's like we don't like I guarantee, of course, like in ancient Egypt. Probably I'm not talking about the Pharaoh, but there's at least like 1000 dudes who are like I'm like the hot shit in Egypt and they're going to remember me for a long time. It's like we don't know who you are. It's all gone, eradicated, wiped out. And this to me is like one of the really side effects of this thing, this technology thing, is we've all become completely self obsessed, self absorbed, putting our images out there, making sure that our profiles are updated. And that's what I mean, like we have this insane idea of like we're so deeply rooted in our identity, instead of in the connections between our identities, that we're all the only way that we can finally see how connected we are is some motherfucker eats a bat. You know what I mean? It's really crazy man. Think of this. If technology really did have an effect on the programming of human beings and if human beings interacting with technology think we're innocent, we're interacting with a non sentient thing. But all the while, this technology and you could call, we get confused, we think the technology is like a digital clock or a television or a computer. It is, but it's also like a fish hook. Right. So it's innovation. Someone had to figure that out. And imagine creating an ape that is aware of its environment. Like this is like really the perfect storm. Aware of its environment, but obsessed with itself. Knows in the back of its head that it's temporary. It's got a finite lifespan, but lives like it's gonna live forever and lives in the moment. And wants to acquire things. It seems the number one goal for the uber wealthy or the uber successful, the Jeff Bezos type characters, right? Or on top of the food chain financially. They want to acquire things. They're always acquiring things, which means people have to make things. Which means they're like they're a big consumer as well as someone who's making a shit ton of money. Right. And this also fuels innovation because you got to keep up with these people. Got to keep giving them bigger and better things every year. So it all this, all these resources go into innovation of technology. It's the thing that progresses quicker than anything. Right. Look at cell phones every year. I need 150 megapixel camera or you're a loser. Yeah, you're a loser. Yeah. You know, these fucking Samsung phones that are like seven inch screens now. Everyone's going crazy. Right. But what is the goal, though? The goal is to make better shit. And the goal along the way of like this goal is it's working. But you know, be even better if we've made it so they don't touch each other anymore. If we maybe if we could come up with a disease where they can't shake hands, they don't they don't come close. Right. And yeah, just keep them a little further apart from each other. It'll make them more interested in the things more interested in the technology, more, more separate from each other and encourage technology that connects them with each other. So through technology, they'll they'll find this human longing for contact that they're missing in their life. They're going to get an emulated version of it. But that emulated version of it. Just going to keep getting better. And it's going to keep getting better. And it's going to get to a point where it's better than real life, way better than real life, because you're like Jumanji. You get to be the rock. You know, you get to be like a superhero, like in you could you could live a magical life with no boundaries of physics. And that they're going to do that. People are going to do that. They're going to give in. If I was a life form that was trying to haunt another life form and trick it into giving birth to me, that's I would create a person. I'd create people. I would create people. I would create people. I would create people. I would create people. I would create people. I would create people. I would create people. I would create people. I would create people. I would create people. I would create people. I would create people. I would create people. I would create people. I would create people. I would create people. I would create people. We put like some fucking ant. We're like some ant that's manufacturing our successors. That's what we are. And we don't even know what we're doing. Just showing up every day. Look at my fucking watches. I got all these diamonds. Chain, chain, chain. Yeah. Bling, bling, bitches. My house is bigger than the rocks. The rocks house is just big. My house is just big. That's what people are doing. That's what we're doing. We're just buying more shit. And one good thing of something like this, anytime a tragedy happens, people bond together afterwards. It's a terrible thing that it happened. But for the victims and the family members of the victims, we all know this. But it can be a good reset for us. Economically, people are going to have to get through it. That's going to be the most difficult part. Yeah, it is. But I think there's going to be an opportunity for us to just assume a nicer stance towards our neighbors and towards our friends and towards our community. And instead of embracing this idea, like you better get guns because they're coming, maybe we can all come together. I think people need to find if that's going to happen, then we've got to find a better metric for whether things are right or wrong than the news. Yes. We need something to re-tune ourselves. Right now, we're tuning the guitar of our identities to the most terrifying shit, which is the news or what people are saying. And so if that's... And I think many people have become so accustomed to getting their idea of what's happening in reality from the TV, instead of from how they feel inside, what's going on with their friends and their family. That puts people at an incredible disadvantage because their pond is being rippled by shit. I was thinking it's like, what are those little... Not prairie dogs. They stand and look around at the hawks. You know what I'm talking about? What are those things called? They're like, they're social little marmots or something like that. There was a show like Lemur Palace. I don't remember what they're called. Something, but they're like... They're really cute. A seam of the zoo. They're fucking adorable. One of the most adorable animals ever. They stand and look. Somehow they ignore all the humans around them and just look in the sky for a hawk. It's kind of sad, but... That's their life though. But imagine if that one looking for the hawk had the internet and could see hawks thousands of miles away. How anxious all of them would be because he would always be like, get underground, get underground, get underground. So I think this is what has happened is that we're all constantly being told... I mean, I remember when I was growing up in the old days, when the news had an alert, that was some serious shit went down. You'll be, what the fuck? Fox News or any of the news stations, they have an alert like every four minutes now. Alert, alert, alert. And it's all telling us just what you're saying. Get underground, go inside, go inside, danger out here, danger out here. And so we're all like, even before this shit, we were huddled up a little bit. Now we can rationalize the huddling, you know, and that's what we're doing. We're just huddling inside right now. That's an incredibly vulnerable place to be. I mean, I'm not going to get conspiratorial here, but...