Joe Rogan | Can We Self Govern? w/Russell Brand

Yeah, I start to wonder, you know, who is it that's involved in this stuff? I start to... what it's... where I'm at now is... are we even capable of belonging to groups, units, tribes of 300 million people or 60 million people with so many diverse ideas? Is this a time to look at federalism differently to start breaking down? Well, you know, I exist within this tribe of people, but I collaborate with all these other people. I don't know how municipal action gets done. I don't know how you run an army and build roads if people are starting to operate in smaller units. But I am thinking that we need to have a real sense of community and connection, and we've got to let go of looking for ways to object to and judge other people as some sort of primary way of forming our own identity. No, I completely agree. And I think we're probably moving towards some sort of understanding that a lot of these boundaries and these clans of, you know, states and countries, they were all established without our consent before we were born. And we're just... we're a part of a system that we just... we didn't agree to it. We just all of a sudden found ourselves in it and we're trying to make it fit us. Yeah, that's right. And there's aspects of it that are appealing, you know, like sort of during a World Cup, I really feel English and like I feel a genuine sense of connection and investment. But if I'm being asked to live according to rules that don't affect me, that affect me financially and don't speak to who I am as an individual, then I'm like, well, what is this? This isn't for my benefit. Yeah, yeah. And the inclination to form teams and to root for your team and a root against other teams, it's so deep seated in this. And it can cause so many unnecessary conflicts for no reason. It's just... it's so... it's so escapable too. It's so... if you can objectively analyze the way human beings behave and interact with each other and go, well, why do we do this? Let's just stop doing that. Let's just... if we disagree on things, how much are these disagreements actually affecting me on a daily basis? Not that much. Can't we just communicate? Can't someone say what they think and I say what I think and we just decide like what makes sense and what doesn't make sense based on our own interpretations? Isn't that possible? It seems like it's... that's the direction we've got ahead in. I did, as I know you have done a podcast with Candice Owens, who like on the subject of, you know, individuals, like when she says stuff like people should get over slavery or it's as if it didn't happen. I don't agree with that. I feel like that has a massive social impact that is that those statistics are not a coincidence. The number of people are certain ethnicities in prisons and in poverty or whatever. For me, that's not just a coincidence. But so I couldn't agree with her more profoundly on according to social criteria, some very, very important issues. Bonding in a personal level, I thought she was absolutely delightful, like sort of funny and sweet. She's very young, if you really start to think about it. She's only 28, which is amazing. Is that correct? She's so much smarter than I was when I was 28. She's certainly a lot more confident than I was when I was 28 or 29. Same thing. So when I was 29, I was a fucking moron, okay? And no one would ever listen to my opinions on anything in a world stage. People are listening to her. I mean, she's testifying in front of Congress. So I cut her a lot of slack with some of the things that she's made like missteps on. And I think sometimes when people say those things, like people should get over slavery, it's almost like you're saying things that you think other people want to hear more than you're saying things that are really rational. So whether or not we should get over slavery, sure, slavery was over more than 100 years ago, but the repercussions of slavery, the echoes of slavery still exist. And they exist in all these different southern states and cities and all these different neighborhoods that had been a part of systemic racism where they had literally forced black people to live in certain areas and didn't even allow them to buy homes outside of those areas. They made laws and those laws are in place in places like Baltimore. And, you know, I had this guy, Michael Wood, who was a police officer in the city of Baltimore. And one of the more profound things that he said was that they found papers that were documenting crimes from the 1970s in Baltimore. And they were in the same area, the same crimes that he was facing in the 2000s when he was a police officer. So he was looking at this going, what in the fuck? Like this is, am I just a part of something that's never going to be fixed and never going to be changed? And, you know, as he learned more about the city and the city's laws and how these systems were set up to keep people in certain places and how the crime and the violence and the drugs is all just in this one concentrated area. And it's always been there. And no one does anything to change it. You realize like, wow, this is a crazy echo of a horrible past. And that's what it is. I had a couple of conversations that made me recognize how powerful systems and institutions are and their ability to maintain themselves regardless of any individuals. It seems like what happened there with the man you were chatting to is that he's an individual woke up and oh my God, hold on a second. In some sort of weird grid. And like I spoke to this fellow called Ken Ross, who worked for the British diplomatic service at the time of 9 11 and was privy to confidential information about how that was handled on a military and geopolitical level. And he said, like, he's come away from that thinking, well, these institutions function and in a totally corrupt way to pursue their own objectives, disingenuity and dishonesty is just part of the system. And it was him that made me think about anarchism in a different way, saying that people, the assumption that people, if they were not tightly governed with big government and huge control would go around murdering each other and raping each other. Simply not true. That's one of the means by which the state continues to justify its existence. People will behave better the closer they are to self governing community, self governing community. And this is like, and I was interested in that because he's talking from this is what I saw on the inside. This is how I saw it was running like your cop friend there. And like another person I spoke to that had been inside a system and then woken up within it, who was that? Oh, yeah, Yannis Varoufakis. He was when Greece had that mad revolution. He was like one of the leaders of a party, Saritsa. And for a minute, it was like, Saritsa said, we ain't paying back all those debts. You screwed us financially. You screwed Greece. So he was there at the EU meetings telling like the German chancellery, we're not, Greece ain't going to repay those debts. And he just said that the way that the system reasserted itself was magnificent to watch in a way. And he said, none of those individuals have any power except the power that that role gives them. If you are the German finance minister, you've got the power that a German finance minister has. You can't step outside it and start going, right, listen, why don't we do this? And why don't we do that? The system itself is beyond individual decisions. You know, it's a self sustaining system. It won't come up with ideas or support ideas that threaten it. And that's why I continue to keep hearing and I'm sure you're having similar conversations that if you are really interested in changing the world, you have to participate in systems that are outside of it. Set up new ideas. Don't worry about trying to smash this one down with a hammer. It will atrophy on its own as it becomes less and less relevant. I think also change yourself. And when you change yourself, it becomes evident to the people around you. And if your change is beneficial and attractive, people, they gravitate towards that idea that you keep. That idea that you can improve yourself and you can change your perspective on things.