Kraig Smyth// Analogy of societal addiction and related topics, hope for future change

 Join us for this lively and educational conversation comparing our modern world problems to an indivual with addictions.  So many related topics come up.  Aniexity, shame, denial, freedom, narciism, healing, and recovery.

(challenge)
Can you identify the 12 steps of recovery, or some of them, hidden in these conversations?

Kraig Smyth/Wellness Advocate & Educator
"The Business Of Being Human"
www.MyBizGuide.com

Transcript

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Hi, this is a she able today I have with me Craig Smith. That's Craig with a K and Smith with a wife. Who has a series of his own podcasts, and we got to chatting and realized that we have very similar views on a lot of things, important things that we want people to hear about. So we are recording this conversation for you and I hope you enjoy it as much as I've enjoyed my other chats with Craig. Welcome Craig. Hey, how are you doing? Good, things are good. So some of where we left off with some of the other conversations was comparing our culture and what's happened in our society. As an analogy to an addict, and there's a lot of parallels there. Yeah. Do you want to jump in with yeah. And, you know, I think this is a long conversation. And, you know, You know, if people think about how far behind the curve our species is right now, and specifically I'm always talking about relation to environmental impact because that's where we live. And if we start talking about foundation, it's pretty tough to ignore the habitat that we're in. And from that aspect, I have a background in fisheries, forestry, wildlife, natural sciences. And so I point to a lot of that. And one of the main theories to understanding wildlife biology is that you don't understand an organism unless you understand the habitat or the environment that it evolved in. So we know a lot about our mental habitat and our, our close in habitat with the humans that we're in, but I think a lot gets lost to just our connection with the natural habitat. Would would you say that the have some of the habitat you're talking about that influences our society today and some of the problems is how colonialism was presented and how we perpetuated a lot of that. Yeah, because I think that colonialism is a construct of a disconnected mentality. So here's how I think it goes, is that first there's a disconnect from our own personal development, just straight from the, straight from the get go. And you know, we've all got challenges, we've all got naturally occurring challenges. insecurities, frailties, if you will. Of course, if we understand that, the challenges is what grow us. So to not embrace our challenges, to not interact with our own inner ecosystem, the direct reflection is disconnect from the external ecosystem. And then we've got a pseudo system, i. e. colonialism, that's superimposed in the natural ecosystem. Did we follow all that? Say that last part one more time, okay? Yeah, colonialism is a pseudo system. It's not functioning. I like to use pseudo because it's not a functioning system. It's a hodgepodge of ideologies thrown together that are they're psychotic. It's delusion that we can have a system inside a system and not recognize the system that we're in. Again, the natural environment, the natural planet. I understood better that time. So you're saying that is superimposed. And the reality of it is that the construct of colonialism and our modern society is only over our natural environment, which is the earth. And that's what we need to be. Connected to and using as our habitat as we look at this, correct? That needs to be our baseline because that's our biggest foundation. You know, when we start talking it out, it all gets pretty silly and pretty simple, pretty quick because how do we ignore where we live? Yeah, we can, but yeah, it's obviously it's a D. We're talking some, some real deep mental issues that are perpetuated in colonial society. And if we look at what we're talking about the addiction, there's so many reflections of addiction in colonialism, capitalism. And I'll add racism, misogyny, all those things. And of course, narcissism, which is a lot about what I, what I speak on. One of the key things with addiction is a denial. And that's a key thing in colonialism, what we just talked about, the denial that you're in a certain situation and the things you are doing are adversely affecting that situation. So colonialism, here's the system that's adversely affecting the system that it's in. So it's a cutoff. It's a way of being cut off from ourselves that the system is cut off from realizing the harm that it does, and it's perpetuated in the individual. So could, can you also define how you're using the term narcissism for us today and how it relates to some of these topics and not necessarily narcissistic personality disorder? Well, the way I use it. And I don't know what our time frame is here. Yeah, we've got a little bit of time. The way I use it is that it's, first of all, it's a misnomer. It's not truly in line with the concept of narcissus and so self absorbed. That's just the reflection and, and the projection that we'll see that we're seeing in the individual. Because at the core, it's not engaging with self. And the first thing I mentioned to people is that think about conversations with a narcissism. The reason you can't talk to a narcissist is because they're not talking to themselves. They don't have that connection, that relationship with themselves. And so they're, like I said, disconnect from self disconnect from planet, all these factors of disconnect and more to speak to the. relationship with a narcissist that our own emotional habitat is sacrificed in relationship with narcissism. That's like one of the hallmarks of narcissism. If you think about how our energy feels. So, so if we zoom out for just a second and talk about the, the colonialism and, our modern society as well, and how there are things that happen In this society that cut us off from ourselves, and how being cut off from ourselves, like, denial is one aspect of that. It's not the whole picture, but it's one aspect of that. And how being cut off from ourselves is what creates this very self centered point of view and this me, me, me. And I, I feel like consumerism is tied into that too. And, and other, Things that our culture perpetuates that are just take us further and further away from ourselves further and further away from the earth and and further away from where we need to be in that natural environment is, is all of that in line with what you're saying. Yeah, 100 percent and that's addiction it's filling the void. And the first void is that lack of connection with self. And if we think about. are our wants. And if we think about value, what do we really value? Well, what we really value is in our peace. That's like the biggest value is is peace, our wellness, our well being right. The wellness economy. We've probably heard some of those kind of things. So when we talk about what real value is, colonialism, capitalism completely disregards the biggest values that Our species that our humans have, and that's our individual wellness. So that lack of individual wellness, and you only get that from growing, from relating to yourself and going through that objective thought process. Hey, you know, self really, how do I feel? And on down the line. So all the materialism and and capitalism is focusing on things other than what needs to be there and that's back to the addiction is classic examples of addiction is filling those voids. So one of the things that occurs to me when you're talking about that are conscious choices like we go about life being generally. unconscious because we are in such a hurry in this culture, like, like people can step right out of the shower, but not explicitly remember washing their hair. They know they did it, but they don't remember doing it because they're not present while they're doing it. So when we talk about, you know, making choices as a consumer, when we talk about making choices and how we speak to each other and how we on purpose conduct, you know, relationships and business. We can't do any of that unless we're conscious and we can't really be conscious unless we're present. And I feel like that's part of this conversation, too. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And if we think about the construct, again, this is how we feel, right, our emotion, emotional intelligence. And I'm going to try and step out just a second here, because our brain, our cognitive thought process is processing our feelings from our synapses in our brain. It's processing, energetic reflections, energetic imprint. So emotion is what our is really what we are. We are emotion. And then our brains processing that it's always processing how we feel. And it's how we feel about, you know, infinite grayscale things there. So yeah, if we, if we feel about, if we think about how we feel, In relationship with individual narcissist. And this is why I like to use this example. And if we think about what it's like to be in contemporary society, it's that same rush, rush, rush, go, go, go. Our consciousness goes and that's of course, that lack of emotional wellness. It's You know, we're just herded along too quickly to really think about things to really say, I, you know what, I don't really agree. I don't really want to go this way. And of course, we've all been, you know, born into, you know, colonial systems who are so far down the line. And everyone's got that tunnel vision. And really that domestication. And I think there's a few other words that can go in there. There's a lot of pressures that go along with that, that take away from us being able to be our authentic selves. It's not just a lack of consciousness. It's pressure around us from other people who have bought into these myths and false systems. And the thing that comes front and center to me is just consumerism. And this whole, you know, idea of. How much we need to buy how many things that we things that we need like I saw this beautiful quote and I think I reposted on Facebook and it said, things are to be used, and people are to be loved, but we are using people and loving things. And that's kind of the root I think that's exactly what's going on., when you say people have bought into it, well, sort of, but how conscious are people, you know, from the beginning, how conscious is the average individual, because there's been generations and generations in this pseudo system. So, I think that if anyone would sit down and take stock consciously of, oh, disconnect from the planet, disconnect from wellness, disconnect from this, disconnect from that. Okay, great. But there we are back to addiction to say, just don't do it and just quit is a whole nother ball of wax that takes real intention. That takes taking these things that well, what's it doing? It's getting us back to ourselves and it reintroducing us to ourselves. So, See, here's a natural cycle that's occurring, that's pushing us back to our introspect and back to our autonomy and back to creating ourselves as individuals and to say, you know what, this is not right, or this is not what I want to be, this is not what I want to go along with, because I think most people like you say, that have bought into it, what level of consciousness is that? I would Say that there is actually no consciousness there because a conscious person won't have bought into it in the first place. So the layers. of unconscious behavior, the layer, the level of addiction that people are in, right? Does the addict choose to be an addict? No, but they're perpetuating the same behaviors, the same going through the same negative cycles. And of course, keep doing the same thing, keep getting the same thing, except for it compounds and gets worse. So on an individual level, the addict is behaving the way all of us behave On a socio 100 percent sociological Yeah, so we're on the logical level. Yeah, yes. I'd like to insert this example. I met this man at this workshop probably 20 years ago. And he struck and inspired me because this man lived off 3, 000 a year and he showed up to this workshop in homespun fabric homemade pants that somebody had hand sewn for him. So he bought all of his clothes at thrift stores. He got a lot of food, which was when you could still, you know, get food outside of restaurant garbage cans. It was still perfectly good and he would bring it home. And that was where a lot of his food came from or he foraged. And I mean, granted he did, he did end up meeting a woman at the workshop and moving in with her and she had a good job and she ended up supporting them. But because he lived on three thousand dollars a month and he likes to talk about it and he liked to say I'm doing this consciously. You know, it can be done like he was an example, and he inspired a lot of people by being that example. Sure. It took a lot of a lot of gumption. It took a lot of conscious decision making, but that's what it takes people like that and being willing to make adjustments in our lives. Maybe not to that extent right away, but being able to say, do I do what is the effect on the planet if I buy this? Versus that. If you, you know, use sand, clay and straw to build something rather than concrete. What is the effect of that? And until everybody starts to realizing some of these conscious decisions and making decisions for the planet, we're going to be stuck here, you know, and if we don't make this decision for ourselves, it will end up being made for us eventually. So we may as well get started. Yeah. And also the thing is, is that it, you know, the first steps is a change of mentality. Yes, that's and that's, you know, addiction. I think that there's lessons going on through everything. And I, I have another talk called lessons from addiction. And part of that is it starts with our own mental ecosystem again, embracing our own mental ecosystem and starting to make those changes and starting to really. Put some good things in our mental ecosystem. If we talk about, you know, the analogy of our of our mind being a garden, start planting some good seeds there, plant some seeds of change and some things that hate. Look, this is the reality. is crazy. The reality that our species is destroying the planet is crazy, but that's something that needs to be, understood. Like, that's a fact. When people try to neglect those big facts, oh, back to addiction again. You know, the parallels to addiction is that it's right in front of you. It's a glaring error. You know, I'd like to say, you know, not addressing the elephant in a room just gets a stepped on and shit on. Right? So, and when you talk about addiction, you have you have some personal experience with coming out of this. And so maybe, maybe you can speak a little bit to what your experience was in being able to make those shifts for yourself and light bulbs that must have started going off. You know, my own addiction? That's a good question. I'm not sure I've actually ever been asked, asked it that way. And feel free to redirect me if you, if you want to, but to help other people understand, I think that addiction, so many people have been through it and I can explain it to someone who thinks they haven't been through it and it's as simple as this and it, and I say, solve your problems without written law, printed currency, or clock time. So most people, if I had enough money, or if we make a law, if I had enough time, Solve your problems without that. And then that'll show you what addiction is, because that's where people are going to keep wanting to go back to. So addiction, understanding the, what the what's going on in our mental habitat, from a feel standpoint, what's it like, what does it feel to us? Not what science says that, Oh, this is going on this part of the brain. That really doesn't help us. How does it feel? Cause at the end of the day, we have to go by feel and which gets us back to how people live forever. understanding that anxiousness and that that uncomfortableness and to be able to sit with that and here's the meditation part and push it out and keep it at arm's length and not just keep going forward doing the same thing. So that's a key part in establishing and then when we're working with that mental ecosystem with that mental habitat saying yes this is wrong I don't agree with this this is wrong I don't agree with this and really A big part of that I went through just when I was young, and I think everybody goes through it. And you know what? I don't really agree with, you know, this part of what my parents have been telling me or what society is doing and getting our own individuality, getting our autonomy, because we're going to need all of that to face this biggest challenge, which, of course, is ourself and ourselves. grow through these habits. They're just negative habits at the, at the core of it. And yeah, in contemporary society, we're used to saying addiction in conjunction with physical substance. But I think that's just the, that's just so we can see it easily. But the core is what's going on first, right? Because there's, whether it's a physical substance or an ideology, And those are the difficult ones, because yeah, there's not a physical substance attached. Just like, you know, alcohol's easier to get addicted to because there's not a stigma, but if there's no physical substance, how do we say, well, this is just us having to understand our, our thought process, our mental habitat, like actually understand it on an individual level. And that's, that's the way out. Because once we understand, then these things will. Become no longer acceptable in our growth cycle. Yeah, I, I agree some work to do at the core. There's some work to do as individuals and everybody starts looking for outside things to do. What can we do outside? Oh, there's, there's the addict again, saying everything around me, I want to move everything around me and there's colonialism again. How can I just adjust this to, to suit my needs? And there's ego, right? Right. And I say ego is want without context. What do I want? But we have to have the context of our relation to everything. How, what do I want and what, what do I want? And then put that through our cognitive thought process. How does it affect the people next to me, the other organisms next to me, my future the planet as a whole, you know, am I encroaching on these things? If so, then how can I achieve this without encroaching? And I think that is. A huge part of our growth and understanding that when we're actually aligned with the concept of sustainability and reciprocal relationships with everything around us, that's an alignment tool. That whole concept of reciprocity is an alignment tool. If we can't do what we want to do with fair trade, then we don't do it. But when we're on that path, we, we grow and who knows our wants. That's great to have wants to have goals and everything. But if we pay attention to our, to our real path, to say it that way, what the universe is wanting us to do that's where our lessons come. And that's where we really, that's where we really grow and grow into ourselves. Because we, there are parameters, there's parameters within everything, everything it has in, in natural science and understanding habitats and environments, we have carrying capacity. Basically, everything's got a carrying capacity and Oh, understanding our, our external environment, huge understanding to our internal environments. What's our physical, mental, emotional, spiritual carrying capacity. How much it can hold? How many? How many trout can 100 yard section of stream hold? And it depends on the stream, and it depends on the trout, and it depends on all these things. But the core is that it's not infinite. And so colonialism is disconnected from this foundational understanding of the planet that we live on and carrying capacity. And what's carrying capacity of our emotional ecosystems? Yeah. That's getting walked all over. And that's, that's part, that's the part of the, the previous conversation that I was interested in. I remember what it was now. It was about like an addiction counselor will most addiction counselors, I believe these days we'll talk about the individual addict being in there, what they call primitive brain or the place in our brain that's responsible for fight, flight, or freeze. And. that once you're there, whether it's the idea of pulling the handle on a slot machine, or you've taken a drink, if you're an addict or done some drugs, whether there's a substance involved or not, even somebody addicted to shopping and ordering stuff on Amazon, supposedly they will be thrown into their brain where a lot of the reasoning gets shut off from the frontal lobe. At least this is what is said, right? And that's responsible. But when I said this to you the other night, you came back at me with a with a challenge that I really appreciated. And I began to realize that you were right, because just from my own experiences, I know there are things that I should be in fight, flight or freeze. But you know what, I still have rational thinking it, I'm not going to going to pretend to be a brain expert, because I certainly am not. But it makes sense to me that this must vary greatly with all individuals. And when I think about challenging the thoughts, challenging what the scientists say and realizing it from a different perspective, it makes more possible. Yeah. And you know, you say you're not an expert, but you have a brain. We all have a brain. And this is what I'm saying is we need to know our brains. It doesn't do us any good for to say, Oh, science says that this is the part of my brain that's this flight fright or freeze thing. You know, we can't hold up a road map as we're driving. It's like that. That's interesting that science says that it's this part. But, but if our brains attached to our emotion, it's Our, our motion and everything attached to energy and all around us. If we think of our brain as a connection to everything else around us also same with our instincts. So to say that our brain is just this one part separate from everything else. Well, that's not in line with understanding that all our ecosystems are connected and interconnectivity. So what, again, what are we feeling? We need to know how we need to know how we work as individuals, not what you know, triple peer reviewed study says that's not really helping us. It's really not doing anything for us. So there's that. And You know, that thing you said about the psychology, and I have a lot to bash on contemporary psychology because they're looking at the organism in the moment, not the evolutionary trajectory of the organism. The organism is sick. The human species is sick as of the past. You know, I'm just going to make kind of a blanket, maybe, maybe 10, 000 years. Total and I mean sick is in unsustainable as in these unsustainable things really started getting out of hand. And that's a whole nother conversation. But let's just use that. So when people say Oh, you know, tribalism and this primitive brain. Well, those brains were functioning and the people in those cultures were, very conscious of their thought process and things needed to work. And they were in life and death situations all the time. So I would submit. That the, that our ancestors, 10, 000 years back to, you know, science is going to say homo sapien three, 300, 000 years, a homeless species, 3 million years, all those people were smarter than we are. They weren't killing their environment. They had to know so much about their environment and actually they had to know about each other. And if you look at being in smaller groups, we know more about the individuals and where the individuals fit. So people say tribalism and I say, no, I know what you're trying to say. That's colonialism. Is that example of. That example of hyper warring and racism and that sort of thing is more perpetuated in colonialism. So, and that is colonialism to shift and it's narcissism and it's addiction to shift the blame. It's not really. Oh, it's not me in classic addiction. It's, it's everything else. Classic narcissism. It's everything else. And colonialism does the same thing. Oh, we're Americans and all these other people are bad and just perpetuating this false narrative. That's where all those things. And a lot of, and a lot of that boils down to the individual over what's good for the collective. And, you know, I've been saying seriously since I was in the sixth grade that the problem with this country is that we have too much individualism and that in the, in the end that can't be a good thing because it does, it perpetuates this, this self centeredness and then, and this narcissism that other, other cultures that have survived a lot longer don't. don't have that. You said something else the other night that I'm interested in that relates to this a little bit. You said that people with addictions are living closer to the truth than the rest of us in the culture. At least that's what I understood you to say. Yeah. Yeah. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, I can. Let me just step one step back though and say that That this notion of individual, individuality of hyper individuality, that's a false narrative because the individual, the individual can't be healthy if the collective's not healthy. So healthy individuals makes a healthy collective and vice versa. And those things work off each other. So the individual's healthy when they understand their purpose. in the collective. That false narrative it's not so much about autonomy. It's about denial. It's so that the individual can say, Oh, well, I'm an individual. I get to make my choices and disregarding everything else is what's going on there. So it's that scapegoat narrative. And it's just Wrapped up in a bad marketing package, you know, it says freedom, but it committed genocide on real free people, enslaved other people misogyny and how do you mandate freedom with laws? All the laws say what not to do. Well, that's, those aren't reflections of freedom at all. So it's just, I mean, anyone can say it. It's just bad marketing. It's like, here's the rapper. Right. I mean, I've heard it said the more laws you have, the more rules you have, the more rule breakers you have, and that that just perpetuates itself and it's not, it's not the answer what, what does occur to me, I did ask you a question about Let's go back to the question that I didn't ask you and that was the thing about addicts living close to do the truth. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because addicts, you know, we're speaking generalities, right? Right. We're speaking in generalities. We're speaking about demographics, the overall demographic of the stereotypical street addict to use these broad strokes and situation is, disenfranchised from society. They know society is not working for them. They are not involved with society. They are not bought into the system. And for wellness. We have to disengage from, from those delusions, from these delusions of freedom. I think when people say, you know, America or Russia or whatever, they're aligning with a colonial government that's not, that's not encouraging wellness in the human population. They're just not. All those, all those governments, all the big colonial governments are there because they conquered and killed. And that is not a nurturing growth mentality. So, so there's a start of all that. It's not, you know, is an example of some of that. There's a, there's a man that I knew in high school that had some trouble, ended up becoming what he describes as a tramp. And he rode the trains around for 17 years, drinking wine out of brown paper bags and whatever, and had this. Well, we, his sister was my best friend. So we ended up catching up years later. And I said like, how, how did you live like that? How, how was that? And he, what he said, he said, do you pay house insurance, home insurance, and car insurance? And I said, yeah, he said, think about for a minute, how much you've paid in the last 20 years and have you ever used it? Is it now? No, tell me who's, who's not living right. You know, and as an example of the constructs that you're talking about, like there are people on the street that are very conscious of what they're doing and they don't want to be part of the system. Yeah. And they don't want to be forced into, they don't want to be forced into the system. Well, nothing does. Nothing wants to be caged. No biological organism works good in captivity, but that's all colonialism is. It's captivity. And we're all, you know, circus, we're all part of the circus act and the governments are set up in the pseudo system with print currency that we just manufacture that we just manufacture. So the whole thing is the whole thing's bunk, the whole thing's bunk. And that's why and there's also some nuances too, is that, you know, using drugs, it makes that veil really thin, you know, there's not a lot, there's not a lot of space. For there's a lot, there's lots of denial, but there's not a lot of space for, for lies and deceit in the addict. If that makes sense, it might sound like a contradiction, but on the big picture spectrum, we're just because the people are so raw and their feelings are so raw, you're talking about loss of inhibition. Well, there's a loss of inhibition. I think it's just that our, our consciousness. When we're. you know, abusing substances doesn't have the carrying capacity to hold all the BS. And I think that there's a thing there. And I think that also with a lot of these substances, it gets rid of the BS. I mean, that's some of the classic and it can be a substance. It can be you know, a thrill seeking rock climbing. I mean, it can be it could be a lot of Strenuous activity running when the organism is doing something that needs focus on survival, all the existential things and contemporary life get kicked out. And. There's lots of examples of this where people say that the worst thing that happened to him was also the best thing that happened to him because when the human gets into a challenge of life or death, and I'll say physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, our core essence kicks out all the light bills and the car payments. And the windows that need washing and toilet handle that needs fixing and the boyfriend and the husband and the kids and all this and it's just in survival mode and our core essence remembers what it's like in survival mode and says, Oh man, there is like too much. existential stuff in my life. So people get this freeing effect and they say, yes, they say, Oh, now I see what really matters. And they get this, they get a clarity. Mostly you'll see about it for people that have gone through extreme physical. Challenges, you know, like they had everything. They had a great, they had on the, on the outside, it looks like they had a great life. They were making money. Then they got in a car crash, lost it all, had to learn to talk again. And then that was the best thing that happened to him because it gave them a reset back to that's our primal brain. Right. Okay. That makes sense to me now that a lot of what's the same is you're in survival mode and that you come in and out of that and being in that you're living closer to the truth and the way humans are meant to live in this environment on the earth, which allows the non essential things to be pushed out. And even though there may be an an element of self centeredness and focus on the next, you know, the next more, everything else falls away so that there is a purity and an authenticity that we don't have running around busy in our culture. Yeah. And to say self centered versus growing the individual, again, growing the individual grows the collective. So there's a natural ebb and flow. That we're focused on internal, then we're focused on collective. I need to grow myself in order to give back to the collective. That's just how it works, right? Pretty, pretty basic. There was another, oh geez, you just said something else too. But just another false narrative in, in contemporary, in contemporary society. But There's a bunch of them. So anyway, but yeah, so growing the individual grows the collective, but the individual has got to be growing, not just doing, not just chasing egocentric pursuits. So there's, there's alignment, there's things, you know, we have to understand about our, about how we actually function as humans. What are some of the things that you think people can do to make shifts? What are some of the choices? that we could make in our daily lives that can make a difference. And what do you think some of the ways, but let me start with that, because then the next question is about businesses, which I know you're going to have a lot to say about. It's not a, short conversation. It's going to take some work. Here's more lessons from addiction is like people need to buckle down and, and heal. And the first part of that is in the mental habitat and work on the mental habitat and get clear about, get clear about some things because our physical actions, people want to say, Oh, what can I do? This, this, this, and a physical, but all the physical things, all the physical. Problems in contemporary society are symptoms of a sick mental, emotional, spiritual habitat. So it really is when we grow our mental, emotional, spiritual habitat, the physical is going to follow. So we will act. better. We will make better choices if we're conscious, if we keep our consciousness intact. And so that means all the, all the little things don't take in the false narratives, right? Quit doing the drugs. It still gets back to that. Quit doing, quit taking in the false narratives. And I'll say it. And I say this from a point of what I like to think is just plain intellect as a species. And like, Don't call yourself American. It's just a, it's just a fabricated concept of colonialism. You don't need these labels. So disengage from these labels. And if you feel like you're stuck on that label, ask yourself, why, why do you need that label? Let's, let's be clear about this. We're human. Let's be a species. We're a species. Be a species. And if you're not aligned more with being a species than you are American, then that's a cognitive disorder that you need to sort out. First, we're a species and we're all on the same planet. Are there subspecies? Yeah, sure. But let's look at ourself like that instead of perpetuating all these things. Oh, I'm from, you know, Idaho. I'm American from Idaho. Idaho's that's just the made up. That's just the made up. Overlay and all the and all the government and laws people lived without these things. People lived without jails forever and they were better at nurturing and they were also better at boundaries that included if someone was a real shithead, you're done. And, you know, that might seem stark to some people, but that's the natural, that's natural challenge of life or death. Not all organisms make it. And we need to know more about how organisms live on this planet, not just humans, but how life lives on this planet. And then, because we're on the planet, then we follow suit. We're not above The natural laws and natural alignment tools that this planet has for all organisms. I know you'll know who said this quote. It's the earth does not belong to us, but we belong to the earth. It's been said a lot I can't remember exactly because when it's good, you have to repeat it. Yeah. Yeah. So true. And it's what you're talking about, right? Like identifying with we belong to the earth. And that's, that's point one. And the organism, what's our relationship to other life on this planet? You know, we, we get stuck in the human to human and that's right. The humans have the challenge. That's where the challenge is. It's easy to understand that, but also we breathe air. So we've got the trees we're standing on the ground. So we've got literally soil, we eat plants and animals. So we've got those, we've got all these other relationships. that we have before the next human. And how's our relationship with all those things? So at the core, this is relationship building with external is relationship building with our internal. And I like to think of it as cross training. So grow these relationships and diversity too, because people get stuck in the relationship to other people. And not themselves and not other organisms. Right, we all evolved with relationships with everything else because we had to know how everything else functioned in order for us to get along. And we still do. And I, you probably have some other podcasts on that as I do at the Horse Human Connection Matrix podcast on being in right relationship talks about how we are needing to be in right relationship with plants, with animals, with our food, and with each other. Yeah. Science will prove that if it, if it gets a chance, but the thing is that science can prove everything at once. That's not the problem. The problem is people. People being able to take that in, because here's the narcissism part, is that if someone agrees with one part of a fact, That mirror is going to show up. They're going to have to look at themselves for truth also. So that's where we get this. We get this thing about, well, what's truth and alternative facts and all this kind of stuff. When, well, people don't, people don't have that, that instinctual knowing people don't have, people don't know themselves, so it's easy to say, Oh, well, what do we, we don't know anything at all. And that's getting truer and truer because. It's really, it's an affront to our objective thought process, and our intelligence is what's going on now. I think when we talk about objective thought process, one of the things that comes to my mind, and it's a practice that I'm not 100 percent at, but I try, and if I slow down enough, and have some meditation in my life of one kind or another. As the thoughts come in, I can ask, is that true? With every thought, like I give this example a lot, like the idea that you're not supposed to walk behind a horse because you'll get kicked. Is that true? Well, no, there's a lot of reasons. It's not. It's not. An absolute truth. And if we keep asking ourselves these questions about how we do business, about how we interact with each other, about how we may do things that are not in right relationship with the earth, that people perpetuate, and it goes back to that, that pressure that other people who are unconscious are putting on us, you know, and And that businesses put on us and that consumerism puts on us. So I'd like to circle back a little bit. If you think we have time and touch on on businesses like when you talk about the business of being human and how we might enact some change on business, or maybe that's such a broad topic. We should save it for another time. I don't know. Doesn't matter to me. I would say I'll, I'll, I'll take a step back and then, yeah, we can do a quick thing about the business of human being human. Cause that's kind of a plug for me anyways. But you know, is there, you know, there's no, there's no definitive right way to do anything. It's all. And then here we go. We need to hold diversity in our minds. We need to, we need to have balance in our minds and objective is, you know, under the circumstance, under the circumstance too, You might not want to walk behind certain horse, a certain horse, and you might need to walk behind another certain horse. That's a variable. And so that scarcity mindset's looking for definitive, and there's really no definitive. It's all, it's all, this is where we need to hold these understandings and be accountable. Oh, what's it doing? It's keeping us conscious in the present. What are the variables in the present? And that's objective thought processing. And, and that's going to be, we don't know. But that's, that's the present and that's our instinct and that's understanding these things. So we have a good diversity of aspects to call upon when we're in a situation. A bear, a bear is charging in the woods. Do I stand my ground or do I play dead? You know, there's a lot of variables to know. So that understanding and what you are asking again is what people can do is check ourselves, you know, get like emotional. We are emotion. How does your emotion resonate when you're looking for answers? The first thing is don't look for a quick fix. And there's addiction looking, looking for a quick solution. There's not just understand if you're, if you're wanting to grow, are you wanting to grow? Are you wanting to get out of growing? Cause if you're wanting to grow, you're not looking for a definitive. If you're looking for understanding, you're not looking for a definitive. We're we're gathering, we're gathering understanding and we can't get anxious about that. And this is a good part where it says, you know, everything's not stuffed inside our brain, like it's only a, you know, 12 gig hard drive. We've got infinite capacity to, to have information. And I think that this part of the. Brain relates to, you know, what we call the cloud. We've got an energetic cloud that's all around us. And really, I think our information is all around us and our brains just picking that part out. Our brain's not so much a storage center as it is a processor. And, but whenever we have experience, whenever something resonates with us, that's all part of our intellect. That's all part of us growing that mental habitat. So make sure that we're not looking for quick fixes, making sure, make sure we're not looking for. Definitive solutions. So both of those things and not being in right relationship with each other and the earth and looking at things or being addicted to a substance. All of those things are anxiety causing. And if I look at the way we treat anxiety and my own, like, again, I'm not a doctor of any kind. But what I've observed about people in my life that have anxiety is it seems like it happens when they're not in right relationship with something. They're doing making choices that go against themselves, or they can't seem to get enough emotional regulation to make choices that make sense, or they can't sit still and be present. All of those things. seem like they cause anxiety. And if that's true, the converse or the reverse should be able to help alleviate some of that anxiety, maybe lessen the drive towards addiction. I mean, I can't Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And addiction, you know substances, medicines have been around forever. So the, the addiction is relatively new thing. And Gabor Monte talks about that a lot and people know him. So I like to refer to that. And really it's, it's a tool, right? And it's the use or the abuse of a tool. We wouldn't use a shovel to pound a nail, right? And written, written laws and everything like that. Well, those can be useful tools. I'm a writer. I like to write. I think there's, there's a lot to be said for writing, but where's the threshold of use versus abuse of saying, here's some written things that we think are pretty good ideas versus mandating them because mandating behavior doesn't work like that, that's a faulty concept in itself. So if it's mandating behavior. Just throw it out the window. It's wrong. It's people grow and people have cohesive societies because they engage in their own volition. Because in a holistic level, we know that holistic holistic relationship with our societies, with each other, with everything around us, that helps us grow. And when we grow, we help it in that reciprocity and like actually understanding these things. That's really well said and really important. Yeah, really? Like that's base. Yeah. We have, we have to understand some, we have to like start from scratch at this point grow some core understandings. Plant some seeds of some core concepts. In our mental ecosystem and that about that anxiety. No. When you have anxiousness. Now, some people that live with anxiousness. That's a longer conversation. But the, the terms compulsive reactive and conscious responsive, there's that threshold again. When are we slipping from conscious responsive to compulsive reactive? And that's anxiety. So, so we sense when we start to get anxious about something, and then we sit with that anxiety and we need to learn how to transcend that anxiety. And that's a, that's the art, that's a skill that comes with. That comes with work. It comes with experience. But to be able to sit with anxiousness and say, okay, now what actually am I anxious about? And it's not that we're alleviating nervousness altogether. It's that it's down to an acceptable level. And here's another lesson from life science. There's pathogens. And In nature, everything's got a place and anxiousness has a place anxiousness. If we think about what the universe is doing, it's right. It's showing us pay attention to this. And when we feel bad, that saying, pay attention to this. Cause if we just felt good all the time, if there weren't any challenges, why, why be here? There's no modality to grow. And everything grows. So everything, that place of challenge, another key thing is recognizing the challenge, recognizing the challenge of life or death. People haven't been in challenge of life or death, so it's really foreign to them. But it still exists, but it's not super present in physical form in contemporary life. Think about how we You know, lived before modern medicine, before all the predators were eradicated, when we had to go out and do all these physically demanding tasks. And that's how basically everything lives. But I know what I want to say, that, that stroke, that survival, being in survival mode has a negative connotation and it shouldn't. Because it's survival. We should be surviving. We should always be in survival mode. If you're not in survival mode. Whoa. Hello, everybody. Where are you? That means you're in non survival mode. That means you're probably not surviving. Welcome to America. This is the whole system is not a survival mode. In survival mode, as we're talking, you're absolutely right about that. And as we were talking about anxiety and how it relates to addiction and, and relationship, especially with ourselves, I think shame, I think it's worth mentioning shame too. And I think Gabba Mata has something to say about that, that the way we handle shame, shame and belonging to me are two sides of the same coin. And the fact that shame registers. I'm told, you can challenge it, but I'm told that shame registers in the part of the brain where physical pain is registered. And it's there as a warning that when we were living in smaller groups without so many rules and laws, if you did something that caused shame, it meant you might be outcast, which meant you would die. And so the misappropriation of how we respond, because you were talking about responses and having a choice in responses, is responsible for, I think, what leads a lot of people into addiction because they got triggered in a wrong way and the people around them didn't know how to hold the shame and it ends up becoming a button. So shame and anxiety are human organism warning systems. That we are ignoring that are responsible for some of the plight that we're in as well. Yeah I think that people have always had tools. to help each other grow. And, you know, fear is one of them. Fear of being outcast is one of them, you know, not saying, you know, no, no, we're, we're growing, you know, we're growing. I think that our ancestors, you know, we're, we're in line with a lot of, with a lot of things and they had to be you know, did someone consciously say, Oh, hey, let's, Let's just not worry that we're on the planet. You know, this is just an evolution of a lot of, a lot of little things that's added up to get to where we are. And now they're big things. And now there's big things being perpetuated. You know, shame mandating behavior. I don't know. There's, there's a lot there to unpack. I will say this, though, is that the core of narcissism is fear of shame, fear of being considered less than, because I think the, back to the narcissist thing, the core of a narcissist is is ego in the classic sense, To not be good enough. And so then when we talk about narcissism, it's another hallmark of narcissism is the false bravado. So instead of, instead of being like, ah, you know what, I'm just really not good at this and I'm not good at it and I'll find something else to be good at. Versus being afraid that we're not good at something and stating the opposite. And this is when we start talking about emotional intelligence, this is the hot button for the narcissist, right? Hallmarks of narcissism talk about emotion. Well, they're either like they're void of emotion is what the false narrative commonly is, which is just, I mean, that's, there's no such thing. And when we start talking about personal development, this is the conversation that the narcissist doesn't want to have. Why? Because they haven't had it with themselves. The only reason we know these things is because we've done our introspect. The narcissist isn't doing their introspect and now they're in the catch 22. Now they're in the addiction because they started the false bravado that says, Oh yeah, I don't need to do that. Because I'm okay and there's not really an end to that. We're not okay. It's an ongoing thing. So as we understand our introspect journey, there's no, there's no end. It just, there's just more to add to the situation. And again, here's another huge thing for people's wellness is don't put a timeline on your wellness that the clock in your wellness do not have a relationship. That's it. That's an inorganic object. And we just grow the things that we need to be as individuals. And there's just such a huge lesson there, but yeah, that narcissism. That anxiousness about being considered less than in the eyes of peers and gets back to that insecurity in a, you know, the culture that we want to understand it. Yeah. Everyone's got their got their aptitudes and adeptness and what some person has here, another person might have here, and that's where we all mesh together. So it's, and, and it's just so critical that we nurture each other's individuality. Whatever, whatever that is to really nurture our individuality. Cause that's just so, so important. People bring different things to the table and, you know, even things like autism ADD, ADHD, all those kinds of things, which I hate those labels too let's try and understand more than just say, Oh, people don't fit into the common because the outlier, the outlier affects the average more than. what would fall into the average. And ultimately the average might not even exist. If you write, for example, you got a group of fives and a group of tens, the average is seven and a half, but, but there's no seven and a halves. So when we start talking about the average of humanity, there's another false narrative that's being perpetuated and no one fits into that. So there's a big tail chasing. That's definitely, that's definitely a myth. You know, a couple of times in this conversation, my mind has gone to the story of the emperor's new clothes. And I think how valuable that little kid who is willing to call out the lie that everybody else is perpetuating is. And he does so, so innocently, like how could anybody possibly believe all this bullshit, you know, and the courage that it takes to do that. We all need to have a little bit of that in us, I think, to make some of these shifts. The answer to the question is gaslight. So the gaslighting. Keeping the false narrative in front of someone, only exposing someone to a false narrative, time and time again, America freedom. That's a gaslight. That's narcissism. When I say narcissism, colonialism, that's what it is. You just said something that I think can be a whole other episode talking about the myth of freedom in America, just like flashed for me. So I think I'd like to, if you, I think this might be a good time to wrap up and maybe you could tell people a little bit more about where they can find more of your podcasts and what else you have going on. Yeah. So Craig Smith, my biz guide, M Y B I Z G U I D E. And my biz guide is Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. Yeah. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, all those. YouTube has mostly content. There's actually like over 130 videos. We're finishing up the narcissism series. There's like seven narcissism, EDU narcissist in the mirror, scarcity, mindset, addiction, racism, misogyny, colonialism, capitalism. All those are, you know, our 15 minute workshops that we've done. And then just random things random notes, random topics, lots of things about addiction and And wellness, and I'm writing a book called the business of being human. It's not done yet. It's probably still got another year out, but I've been working on it for two in writing another book at the same time. So yeah, that's what I'm doing. That's kind of the short version. And yeah, I always appreciate these conversations, but anyone can reach out to me and you know, the website of course, the contact information. And I do personal wellness, corporate wellness, addiction, trauma. Great. And I am Ishi Abel with the Horse Human Connection Matrix, which is a lot about horses a lot of interviews with people and things that, you know, affect horses in equine assisted practices and equine therapy and autism.