Russell Brand, "My Morality is For Me" | Joe Rogan

Russell, why is it that when people start getting super spiritual, they start dressing like you? You dress like a guru. We circulate a memo. So it's now time to stop wearing socks, stop shaving, and make eye contact for a bit too long. Oh, uncomfortable eye contact. I keep a bit starey. How long are you going to go with the beard? I mean, that's like, you're full on like, you're a yogi now. I mean, it's gone beyond Jesus and into Moses and lesser prophets. Or a Navy Seal. You're in that range too. Like, you could be some wild man. That's a mistake that wouldn't... Like, if there was an assault course in front of us, the potential for me being a Navy Seal would start to break down. I once went on an assault course with some US Marines in that place near San Diego. I can't remember the name of that base. And climbing up that rope using your leg muscles, it was not good value. Didn't enjoy it? I like the camaraderie. And I really like... As I've written about and talk about quite a lot, when I'm around in very male environments, I kind of really like it. I really get off in it. But I have to watch myself not getting too excitable. It's even in this environment, as a matter of fact, I have to keep myself a little bit chilled out. Why? What do you mean, what does it do to you? Well, I guess what it is is, my early life, I grew up mostly around my mum. And I don't have brothers and sisters and stuff like that. So my male role modelling occurred later in life. And I think it probably relates to the spiritual thing. I think it meant that I'm very open to sort of spiritual experience, meditative experience. I didn't have a lot of grounding physical experiences or bodily experiences really, till adolescence and sexuality. That's the first time I really sort of got into the body. Didn't do sports as a kid. Didn't have men going, right, this is what we do. This is how we shave. This is how you treat people. This is, you know, I didn't really get that kind of education. So now, still, if I'm around like soldiers, UFC fighters, you know, I do BJJ primarily as a result of these confrontations. Conversations. Conversations, that's a much nicer term. So like, there's a bit of me that's, I get excited about the analysis of it. It's not homoerotic, because that doesn't happen to be the way that I roll out. You just enjoy a little too much. There's something about it. Yeah, you get fired up. And it may be... Well, what's bad about it? What's bad about getting fired up? Nothing for me, except like, you know, look, my, as you know, my model for life is a sort of a 12-step model about watching my impulses. My impulses have got me in a lot of trouble. My impulses to take drugs, my impulses to sleep around, my impulses to even eat food. I've got a sort of a tendency to get obsessive. But, you know, you would probably argue that if you direct that energy correctly, it can be kind of positive. I think it can, but I agree with you that it can get out of control. And I have similar impulses. I have similar problems. And I've just used discipline and hard work, especially working out to try to mitigate it. Well, that's what I pick up from you is that your early encounters with martial arts have meant that you've understood from a young age, it seems to me, physical discipline. And I think that's a very important thing. And I'm only learning that, like, now, because I've had, like, you know, drugs, then fame, then chaos. And I've only just emerged from, like, the sort of the fog of that madness. I love how you emerged, though, because it's very unique. You've uniquely emerged authentically. Like, you've this is who you really are. Like, you're not putting on an act. You've found yourself, which is like what everybody wants to do. They want to find themselves. I mean, it never feels like a completed task, right? It never, everyone's a work in progress forever. That's right. But you are you. Like, you are very comfortably you. And you've found what makes you you. That's a lovely compliment to get from you, Joe. I appreciate that. Because what I think about is, like, you're a very different type of person to me. There's things that in this world, in these polemical times, you and I would be supposed to, I would say, take adversarial stances on. I'm vegan now. You love hunting. But my personal philosophy is my morality and my spirituality is for me. It's not something I go around inflicting on other people and telling them how they should behave. I know enough now to know people are different. People have different experiences. And I don't let those things get in the way of how I evaluate other people. We should all be more like that. I really believe that. I mean, there's so many people that I disagree with that I have fine conversations with. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And I don't think that impulse to have antagonistic engagements with people that you disagree with is correct. How else are we going to consolidate? If, like, it's just like, I'm only going to deal with people that see the world roughly how I do. How are we going to form new tribes, new alliances, new relationships, new systems at a time when evidently it feels to me, at least, Joe, like things are breaking down. There's a lot of bitterness, acerbity and confrontation. And people don't want to talk to each other. I mean, I don't know how real that is of actual people. I'm talking, I suppose, about how the media landscape seems to present information. I don't know if that's true when you're, you know, when I'm around people, I don't sense, oh, wow, these guys are really tied up in Brexit or Trump or whatever. It doesn't seem that relevant to ordinary people. It seems to me that people are still operating on a personal. How are you today? You know, people are willing to get on like that. I mean, how are we supposed to take these ideas on board? It's almost too vast for us. These geopolitical ideas that we're asked to identify with. Right. And then your everyday life hardly ever affects you or affects you very little in comparison to things that you ignore because you're concentrating on Brexit or you're concentrating on Trump or you're concentrating on whatever it is. Yeah, that's right. The wall, build that wall, whatever it is.