Vision Battlesword [00:00:00]:
What's been interesting for you these days? What have you been thinking about?

Mandarin Man [00:00:04]:
Been thinking a lot about marriage and the future. I'm getting married, you know, in October, of course. And. Yeah, like, responsibility. I've been this idea that every time you upgrade you, there's like. There's. There's a connection between upgrading your life and selflessness. And in order to carry.

Mandarin Man [00:00:28]:
It's like, almost like in order to carry more of the world's weight, you can't be carrying so much of your own weight. And so you have to let go of some addictions or let go of some habits or patterns in order to level up to the next phase or echelon of life. And that's, you know, that's the idea I got. Jordan Peterson talks about it a lot, and it's biblical in some sense. Like, he's like Abraham. He was still living in his father's tent and then got called to this great adventure, but he had to leave the comfort of his father's care in order to go out into the world where it's dangerous to become, you know, the father of Israel. Right. And so that's been on my mind, you know, when I analyze my life and some old habits or patterns or addictions, frankly, is another word for it that I keep wanting to hang on to when I know that they probably not serving me.

Mandarin Man [00:01:27]:
You know, they're selfish in some way. Oh, I want to feel this way. So I want to eat this thing or do this thing or go to this place. Yeah. So I've been thinking about that.

Vision Battlesword [00:01:41]:
How does this piece about addiction, responsibility in letting things go, how does this all tie back into marriage or.

Mandarin Man [00:01:50]:
Sure. Well, with me personally, it's connected to cannabis and my use of cannabis. And my partner doesn't love that practice off and on. I just took a year off, but before that, I was 20 years on.

Vision Battlesword [00:02:08]:
Wow.

Mandarin Man [00:02:08]:
Yeah. I like the joke. It's like, I only use cannabis one time from 2003 to 2023.

Vision Battlesword [00:02:16]:
Yeah.

Mandarin Man [00:02:18]:
What was that like, being stoned every day for 20 years?

Vision Battlesword [00:02:22]:
Yes.

Mandarin Man [00:02:23]:
You don't see the water you swim in, right?

Vision Battlesword [00:02:25]:
Yes.

Mandarin Man [00:02:26]:
So I don't know. I think there are. I have listened to Andrew Huberman's podcast about cannabis, which is quite the first one, quite damning. And its effects and brain chemistry.

Vision Battlesword [00:02:36]:
Yeah.

Mandarin Man [00:02:37]:
You know, luckily, I didn't use it until I was 18, you know, a handful of times when I was younger. And so the whole connection to, like, schizophrenia and stuff, I'm not super worried about. But there is a tendency. I mean, it changes your vocal inflection, your. Whatever part of the brain that is responsible for movement, it affects that, and so you're less likely to take action on things. And so there is, like, this connection with laziness and being a stoner. Right. But, you know, I created a pretty good life for myself through all that.

Mandarin Man [00:03:09]:
You know, I had a career in the liquor industry. What you can say was that successful or not? You know, you can look at that both ways. But I built my own business, started writing a book, but finished it in the year I was sober. So I think there's something there, or the year I was off cannabis. And so in the Heberman podcast, they talk a lot about. Or a little bit. They talk about, like, state dependent learning. Are you familiar with this concept?

Vision Battlesword [00:03:37]:
Tell me.

Mandarin Man [00:03:39]:
So, basically, if you learn a skill under one brain state, then you'll replicate that skill most efficiently or proficiently under that same brain chemistry condition. Right.

Vision Battlesword [00:03:53]:
Sure, that makes sense.

Mandarin Man [00:03:54]:
And so if you expand that a little bit, it's like, okay, well, I learned how to be an adulthood, basically from 18 to whatever, under this state, you know, and there wasn't, like, I was smoking every day. All day, but definitely smoking daily, you know, for a very long time. And that's very powerful medicine, the cannabis, and really beautiful, and it kind of resets you, but like anything, you use it too much, it loses the power wanes.

Vision Battlesword [00:04:22]:
Yeah, I'm not a big fan.

Mandarin Man [00:04:24]:
Right. Sure.

Vision Battlesword [00:04:25]:
I used it daily also. I was more or less continually stoned for probably only about two to two and a half years, let's say.

Mandarin Man [00:04:36]:
And you're how old?

Vision Battlesword [00:04:37]:
I was a teenager somewhere between 16 and 18 ish. And. Yeah, I've got a lot of different thoughts about everything that you surfaced about state dependent learning. That's very interesting to me. And the age, like, being in a very specific state of awareness and medicine state, for that matter, for that long, but also for almost, you know, that's basically like a season of life. That's like your young adulthood, basically. If you think childhood zero to 20, young adulthood, 20 to 40, midlife 40 to 60, elderhood, 60 to 80, you're an entire season of. You had the cannabis season.

Mandarin Man [00:05:16]:
Sure did.

Vision Battlesword [00:05:17]:
Of your life, which was your young adulthood. Yeah, I had, like, a brief blip on my late childhood, but it went pretty deep. I went down the rabbit hole pretty far. And when I came up for air, I had. Have I ever told you about my formative medicine experience that happened when I was 18 and 19 years old?

Mandarin Man [00:05:39]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:05:40]:
Well, that was the experience that set me on a completely different life trajectory. And I sobered up in a night. I sobered up in a 24 hours period.

Mandarin Man [00:05:51]:
Because you overdosed or something. Tell me what happened.

Vision Battlesword [00:05:55]:
I wouldn't say I overdosed, and I don't necessarily want to tell the story right now, but I'll just say that I had a very, very powerful psychedelic experience that changed my mind, rewired my mind, in my opinion, rewired my brain, and I went in stoned, drunk, a substance abuser, and I came out of completely sober for five years after that.

Mandarin Man [00:06:14]:
Wow.

Vision Battlesword [00:06:14]:
Yeah, it's pretty interesting. And when I came out, it was really scary for a while. I'd say it was a good six months, at least, maybe a little longer that I was in the process of sobering up. Over that whole period of time, I felt like I was coming out of a fog that I didn't know I was in. Just like what you said before, you don't know the water you're swimming in, or you're not aware of the water while you're swimming in it. And so in sobering up, like, overnight like that, I suddenly became aware of the water. I suddenly became aware of the fog and realized, like, wow, I'm not as sharp as I used to be. I can tell now.

Vision Battlesword [00:06:58]:
Like, I'm trying to go for those. I'm in a different state. My state has changed, and I'm trying to go for those tools that used to just be right there, whether they be memory or clear thinking, critical thinking, quick thinking, that sort of thing, and realize it's like, wow, I think I hurt myself, right? And it came back slowly over time, but I realized it's like that fog. And I do think it's the cannabis specifically that fog. It's like it takes a long time to flush out of your body just the substance itself that's soluble, stored in your body for a really long time. That's why it's one of the substances that can be tested for one of the longest periods of time that they can still be detected. I think the influence that it has on your consciousness is similarly durable. It lasts for a long time, and it slowly fades away.

Vision Battlesword [00:07:58]:
And so, yeah, I became kind of a lot more suspicious and maybe had more of a negative impression after that. And later in life, when I tried it again, I didn't like it. I was, like, really confused in a certain way about why did I ever like this? Why did this appeal to me? What was I getting out of it? And, of course, being in a completely different frame of mind, stage of life, different experiences and different social pressures, different peer group, all sorts of different things like that, of course, can have a set. And setting, as they say, is supremely important to what a medicine experience is going to be like. But yeah, in all of the experience that I've had with it in my adult life, I don't think it's good medicine for most people most of the time. And I do think that there's some reason why it's here on this planet with us and for us and why we have very specific receptors in our brain that seem to be just for it, which is weird when you think about it.

Mandarin Man [00:09:07]:
Well, that's not entirely true.

Vision Battlesword [00:09:08]:
No.

Mandarin Man [00:09:09]:
We produce our own cannabinoids, endogenous cannabinoids, but it's like a hundredth of what you would receive from one toque of marijuana, you know, and so, and a lot of those happen. And I only know this because I've recently listened to this podcast which helped me like that. I listened to it the first time right when I about a month sober, and I kind of was getting some tinges, some desire, and I was like, I need to listen to this to kind of re, you know, firm my desire to quit, you know. And yeah, it seems to be very early in life, though, those are very sensitive and you produce more endogenous cannabinoids, but it kind of wanes as you come out of like two, three, four years old. Yeah. But there's definitely affinity for it, you know? Yeah. Like you said in our neurochemistry, I.

Vision Battlesword [00:10:03]:
Think there's a use case for it as a psychedelic. That's. I put it in that category personally.

Mandarin Man [00:10:09]:
Definitely.

Vision Battlesword [00:10:10]:
Yeah, I think there's a use case for it. I think that there's a reason why it's here along with the other plant medicines. I think that there's certain aspects of that psychedelic state that can be very beneficial for enhancing creativity, certainly enhancing sensory experience. I think that it can create spiritual experiences. I think if you were to put it on the same table with ayahuasca and psilocybin mushrooms and peyote or huachuma and like put it, if you were to put it on that same table and use it in that same way, then I think, I'm a fan.

Mandarin Man [00:10:52]:
Right.

Vision Battlesword [00:10:53]:
But I think the way we use it in our society is a lot more like alcohol. And I also put alcohol on that same table with ayahuasca and the other plant medicines. I think there is a use case for alcohol medicinally. It's an anesthetic. It's a disinfectant. You know, I even think that there could be, you know, a role for it in achieving an altered state of consciousness in an intentional, ceremonial way of brewing or creating or distilling some type of an elixir that, you know, has a place at that same table. And I think there are maybe even some traditional forms of that. But, you know, I think it has the same dangers and the same pitfalls of alcohol in the way we use it, let's say, recreationally or unintentionally.

Mandarin Man [00:11:43]:
Yeah, I think what initially drew me to it, a couple of things. One, you know, I was in college freshman year, and I would just go in my roommate's room where he and his buddies were smoking. I would take just one little hit. They were a year older, wanted to be cool, and then I would go back in my room and listen to music, put the headphones on, and everything just sounded so much richer. And I was like, fuck, this is it. And it was just one token. I did that for months, but every night, and then I'd fall asleep. But then also the awareness around it that we kind of inherited from the sixties was counterculture, screw the man.

Mandarin Man [00:12:27]:
Freedom. A little anarchistic, kind of, and I really was drawn to that, which was kind of funny. And there's some dualistic twists there. It's like, oh, you're doing this for freedom, but then if you're doing it every day, you don't have any freedom from it. So it's now become your captor, in a way. So, yeah, I think the legalization of cannabis is a good step, and I think they've done studies that use in teens goes down a little bit, actually, once it's legalized, because it doesn't have this mystique or this allure of being something that's illicit or forbidden. Right. Yeah, but it's.

Mandarin Man [00:13:06]:
Yeah, it's an interesting, interesting thing in the culture that I think everyone has some kind of relationship with it. It is so similar to a lot of other medicines or drugs in that, yeah, a pinch is great in the right time, but a pound is too much. And, yeah, I think a lot of good li. A lot of creativity has been wasted. A lot of potential has been wasted, my own included. And, yeah, just ambivalence and I'm allaise and, you know, lethargy or unexcitement for life. And that was what. That is what I think.

Mandarin Man [00:13:43]:
And I remember thinking this when I was pretty deep in the habit for many years, I was like, God, why? Like, what if I'm old, 80, and I spent my whole life stoned? Like, your whole life. Like, you, more or less your whole adult life, you were never clean off of this. And I didn't want that. And so the year of sobriety, really, I think a lot of things like that. Abstaining is not, like, set your mind, you know, when you shift your mindset and you're committed and you're focused, it's not that difficult. There would be triggers, of course, like going to Zylker, hanging out with my buddy Connor on the slack line, like we always. That was part of it, you know? And so there's some trappings from the historical relationship with it that has a.

Vision Battlesword [00:14:28]:
Tie back to state based learning.

Mandarin Man [00:14:31]:
Yeah, right, right there. We're very, very mechanical, I think in a lot of, like, I wake up, brush my teeth, get the coffee, get the. You know, and then you're just. Your body knows.

Vision Battlesword [00:14:43]:
Yeah.

Mandarin Man [00:14:43]:
You know, dispensa Joe. Dispense. Like, your patterns are living your life. Your patterns are dictating your life. Because we just. There's safety in the routine. I think there's. The known is very comfortable, you know? But I don't think that's a way to live a responsible but also interesting life.

Mandarin Man [00:15:06]:
Like, on autopilot pilot, you know, and so. But there is, like, a love affair, you know? And I realize this, and I always realize this when I go now, because my relationship with it now is like every other week, or, you know, very, like, I have my foot on the brake because I know, and I just experienced this in Toledo when I was working in Toledo for a month. Like, I fell back into daily use pretty quickly. And it's supportive, you know, I've said this before, too. Like, the cannabis plant is feminine, right. I think, you know, the male plants don't produce bud, and those usually get eliminated. And so I think it's supportive when you know what you're doing and you've done it many times as a support mechanism. I think it's good.

Mandarin Man [00:15:52]:
For example, like, I'm in the house, I'm working. It's very physical work, flipping a house. And so by 04:00 you kind of toast, but then you go rip a bone and you've got a little more energy to do another hour of work because you kind of have the energy of the cannabis and some focus, potentially, which that's debatable, actually, how much it.

Vision Battlesword [00:16:13]:
Helps your focus or energy, for that matter.

Mandarin Man [00:16:16]:
Yeah, energy too. Yeah. You probably get this nice spike, but then when you fall off, you're lower than before you were when you started, you know? But if you don't have a plan and you just smoke, you're not going to develop a plan. Let's get a plan together.

Vision Battlesword [00:16:34]:
Step one, get stoned. Step two, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot.

Mandarin Man [00:16:38]:
Right? You stare at the wall, you know? So, yeah, and I wish, you know, wish as a society, and this is true for alcohol, too, we had better guidelines about when we use this. What's the purpose? When is it supportive? When is it not? You know, I think it's really good for sleep, cannabis, you know, to help people sleep, even though it definitely messes up your REm cycles after you're asleep. You don't recall dreams, really. A lot of people don't, including myself when I've smoked cannabis, which I think is probably connected to the short term memory effects that cannabis has. Right. So you may still be dreaming, but you don't remember them. What's the point? But, and I, that's another, it's funny, as we're having this conversation, I have all these, like, axioms about cannabis, and one of them is that, you know, dream, the dream state is a very, it's a gift from the divine, right? Like, and maybe you're even closer to, you leave the physical body and you go up closer to your true essence and who you really truly are, the non physical being that we all are. And cannabis snips that off, it removes that.

Mandarin Man [00:17:46]:
And so I had an idea that one time that people who smoke cannabis are very, very arrogant because they don't need the help from the dreams or the insights they might receive or the guidance they might receive in the dream state, because they're completely foregoing that when they use cannabis.

Vision Battlesword [00:18:02]:
Do you think it suppresses cannabis? That is to say, do you think it's. I'm hearing you're saying that it suppresses the dream state? I think that's probably right. Do you think it also suppresses visualizations in psychedelic states?

Mandarin Man [00:18:14]:
Um, you know, I. I don't know. I think that my visualizations with ayahuasca were better when I was using, but it could be that I had this entity, and I've heard, you know, our shaman has talked about this, like, they don't get along. Ayahuasca is a very jealous lady. She play well with others.

Vision Battlesword [00:18:35]:
Yeah.

Mandarin Man [00:18:35]:
So if you come in there and you just got high the day before, two days before, you're going to have a difficult ceremony. Now. I have experienced that. And while my ceremonies now are last year when I wasn't on canvas, the two that I did weren't as visual. They also weren't as difficult. Now, with mushrooms, psilocybin, rather. I'm not sure about the visuals. What are your thoughts?

Vision Battlesword [00:19:04]:
I'm not sure either. I just know that there's a general. There's. Well, I know about the ayahuasca thing, at the very least. Like, it's commonly said that cannabis will suppress ayahuasca visuals. Does it suppress visuals on other psychedelics? I don't think I could speak to that from experience, but I can say that my experience has been that cannabis has a tendency to take any experience to a darker place, whether that's with LSD, psilocybin, or anything else. I don't like to mix it with anything at all, actually, because for me, it's just. It has a very dark energy to it.

Vision Battlesword [00:19:45]:
Cannabis does.

Mandarin Man [00:19:46]:
Do you think that's the plant itself or the societal awareness that's followed?

Vision Battlesword [00:19:51]:
It could be my own relationship with it, for all I know. I don't know. I know that everybody certainly doesn't have the same experience with cannabis. Additionally, there's 1001 strains of cannabis that have very different effects, all the way from an almost completely embodied type of indica to a highly visual inducing sativa and everything in between. I think it's very much like mushrooms, actually, in the sense that the strains have a character and a personality. And then there's also the difference between, like, when we say cannabis, we could be talking about a form of just a. Just a pure form of THC in the form of a, you know, a vaporizer oil, or an edible product. Are we talking about delta eight, delta nine, right.

Mandarin Man [00:20:49]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:20:49]:
Et cetera, et cetera. It's a weird situation, I think. So when I'm talking about cannabis, I think for me, I'm referring to combusting the plant, and I'm talking about my later life. In the last ten years or so, I've had a lot of experiences that felt darker, more paranoid, unpleasant, generally, although I've also had some really, really peak experiences when I'm using it very intentionally without. Not in combination with other things and especially in the realms of sex and music, as far as, like, a really beautiful way to enjoy sensual, loving, intimate communion with someone, especially in a sexual. In an actual sexual state. It's off the charts. It can be off the charts.

Vision Battlesword [00:21:54]:
And also, like you said earlier about appreciation of music, there's just something. Something it does to your brain.

Mandarin Man [00:21:59]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:21:59]:
Where it's almost like if you're looking at, like, let's say, a beautiful painting or visual art piece. In a normal state of awareness, you kind of see the entire picture. And then. But this is an analogy to music, but it's like if you are in a very. You know, if you're in a positive feeling, heightened, cannabis induced state, it's almost like different elements of that picture, like, separate themselves from each other. And you can see the layers. You can experience the complexity and the richness and the layering of the sound in a completely different way.

Mandarin Man [00:22:38]:
And, yeah, it's almost like you weren't listening to it before. Yeah, you weren't hearing it.

Vision Battlesword [00:22:42]:
You weren't hearing it. You're just listening to it.

Mandarin Man [00:22:44]:
You're not hearing it, right. And then you smoke, you're like, oh.

Vision Battlesword [00:22:47]:
Yes, this is right, right? Yeah. It's like it takes something that feels like one layer, and now all of a sudden, it could feel like a hundred layers, like they're all hitting you in different ways and parts of your experience.

Mandarin Man [00:22:59]:
We've arrived at another joke.

Vision Battlesword [00:23:01]:
What's that?

Mandarin Man [00:23:02]:
What did the widespread panic band say when he ran out of weed?

Vision Battlesword [00:23:06]:
I give up.

Mandarin Man [00:23:07]:
This music sucks.

Vision Battlesword [00:23:10]:
I was gonna say something like that.

Mandarin Man [00:23:12]:
Yeah. God, his music sucks. People say it about fish or whatever. A million bands, but one positive. Because I do want to spend our time in support of my sobriety knocking on cannabis. But I think one positive, other than the music, other than the sex, is the sense of companionship from. Especially a daily user. Really? Yeah.

Mandarin Man [00:23:37]:
I think that's why I held on to it. There are two reasons why. I think I personally had kind of leaning towards. It was one, I grew up in a fairly chaotic home structure. I mean, it was. There was a lot of love, but there was a lot of arguing and this organization, too. Right? And so, as an adult, the discombobulating state, while high, is reminiscent. Like, I'm more comfortable in a.

Mandarin Man [00:24:06]:
In a chaotic state, in a way, because that's how I was raised. So I think there's. There's that component of it, which may be a stretch, admittedly, but also when I was, like, traveling or spending time, you know, when I do the hostels, I'm alone for a lot of that time, staying in a house by myself in a city where I don't know anyone, the cannabis feels like a friend. You know, it's a familiar. Ah, there she is again. You know, and. And you take that to the shadow of that is that, you know, I'm getting married this year. I'm 40, never got close with one.

Mandarin Man [00:24:43]:
One or two women maybe before, but never been married before. And part of me thinks is, yeah, because you were already married to the cannabis, you didn't have space for more feminine energy in your life because you already had this thing that satiated your desire for companionship or romance, which is kind of sad. And I do think another situation that happened this past year is I was in Chicago with my partner. She wanted to get some edibles to help her sleep, you know. So we went by the cannabis store, and I kind of got triggered when I went in there. Like, I can't use this thing anymore. Everything in all these substances in my life, like alcohol or even tobacco, I use them so much that I ruin them for myself, and I overuse them. And so now.

Mandarin Man [00:25:33]:
So I kind of. So I said, you know, babe, I want to go out. I'm just going to sit in the car. And so then I just watched. I. The people walking into that store, like, these are not my people. No, no judgment, but just a little sloppy and a little disheveled and, you know, haven't had a haircut in a while, you know, just loose energy, just loser energy. And so.

Vision Battlesword [00:25:57]:
Yeah.

Mandarin Man [00:25:58]:
And that was kind of like, aha. Not that every. I mean, there's plenty of CEO's that smoke every day, and high performance people that smoke every day, course. But I think. I think they're outliers. I think the majority of potheads and stoners are people. And when I look at my own life, you know, I have a large group of people I know and friends and whatever. When I look at the people who are stoners and have been stoners for 20 years, their manifestation cap is lower than those who don't use cannabis.

Mandarin Man [00:26:28]:
And that's loose. That's a very. That's a small study case or study group or sample size, but it's real and in my own life, and I can look at that and say, yeah, I really like you asked me earlier in the conversation, what's been getting you off or what's been exciting you lately. And this quote that I may have gotten from jJ, actually, is every action is a vote for who you want to be, which is really empowering, because every day we can choose, okay, do I want to go exercise, or do I want to sit on the couch and eat donuts, or do I want to, you know, and you're casting a vote for who you're trying to be. And cannabis. Like, you cast that there are compounding effects, because you cast that vote at 02:00 in the afternoon. Well, you're not going to be casting too many more votes after that. And if you do, they're not probably going to be the most productive, you know?

Vision Battlesword [00:27:26]:
So I think I'm just imagining all of the votes that you cast while you're stoned. It's like a scrawl on a piece of paper, and instead of putting in the ballot box, you, like, put it in the toilet.

Mandarin Man [00:27:38]:
Yeah, well, you know, another. Yeah, another. I mean, another story I was thinking about recently. You know, I went to this really beautiful rafting trip through the grand canyon, and I was not using cannabis at this time. This is a few months back. And, of course, one of the very important lesson or rules in the canyon is you do not get on the boat without your life jacket on. Right. If you're on the boat, you have to have your PfD on at all times.

Mandarin Man [00:28:04]:
And of course, yeah, no problem following that rule. And then on the third day, it's a five day trip. On the third day, I was like, man, this is amazing. Wonder how it will be uninedible, you know? So I took an edible, and, yeah, after lunch, like, jumped on the boat and someone's like, fry, you forgot your jacket. My jacket. My life jacket is still on the beach. Like, oh, shit. And so for anyone to say, oh, it doesn't affect you, or, oh, it's not that big of a deal, that's hogwash.

Mandarin Man [00:28:35]:
Like, you're stoned, you know, and your faculties are diminished.

Vision Battlesword [00:28:40]:
Well, look at the word. Look at the word.

Mandarin Man [00:28:42]:
Sure.

Vision Battlesword [00:28:43]:
Stoned.

Mandarin Man [00:28:44]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:28:45]:
I mean, you could say high. You could say that. But stoned, like, the connotation is correct. It's like getting hit upside the head with a rock.

Mandarin Man [00:28:54]:
Right? Blitzed. Barbecued. I mean, there's a lot of words. One of my issues is, like, I just love smoking. Like, I smoke cigarettes for ten years. I like cigars. And so sometimes I don't want the cannabis as much as I just like the tactile, physical sensation of smoking something which, you know, another thought I've had about smoking and cannabis is, you know, we talk about, of course it's bad for your lungs. But I think something that's interesting is that I'm assuming that because we evolved around campfires for thousands and thousands of years, our lungs are very good at regenerating themselves because we were breathing campfire smoke.

Mandarin Man [00:29:40]:
And so I think our lungs, for that reason, are quite hardy.

Vision Battlesword [00:29:44]:
Do you suppose that's how we figured some of these things out? Like throwing whatever weeds happen to be laying around on the campfire, and then all of a sudden it's like, oh, hello.

Mandarin Man [00:29:53]:
Right, put some more of that on.

Vision Battlesword [00:29:54]:
What do we got here?

Mandarin Man [00:29:55]:
Well, have you ever seen the video of the fireman? That grow house has caught on fire and he had to put it out and he comes out, he's fucking banked. It's just secondhand. He's just breathing. So obviously, yeah, that'll get you there. I mean, I think that was probably how he figured a lot of things out. Yeah, throw it on the fire and then can we eat it?

Vision Battlesword [00:30:16]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mandarin Man [00:30:17]:
You know, does it make it better?

Vision Battlesword [00:30:19]:
That's always been something that I've been a little bit curious about, is how that, how that process would have gotten started. Because when you're talking about, like, oh, I just enjoy smoking, it's like. But I wonder if you would enjoy smoking if you hadn't learned through state based learning that it gets you high. Like, would you enjoy smoking if it was just like drinking water in this, in terms of the effect that it has on, like, if you're getting. You're getting the whole experience of it, except no nicotine buzz, no cannabis.

Mandarin Man [00:30:51]:
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I shouldn't.

Vision Battlesword [00:30:53]:
Probably not.

Mandarin Man [00:30:53]:
Probably not. I mean, I was one kid, Damiana, before, and it's kind of like, eh, I can take. I can take it or leave it.

Vision Battlesword [00:30:59]:
I only think. I think that we, and certainly I fall into this category myself. You know, I smoked for several years and had that same association with it. Like, oh, I really enjoy this product process, this action. But I think we almost force ourselves to learn that, to create that association by, like, going back to it over and over and over again or seeking the actual medicine experience. But then in the process, it's like guilt by association or our brains and bodies learn that, oh, this action has a payoff, right?

Mandarin Man [00:31:36]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:31:36]:
And so then it's like, have you heard of the cargo cult phenomenon, bro?

Mandarin Man [00:31:43]:
Yes. And I have a thought on that.

Vision Battlesword [00:31:45]:
Great.

Mandarin Man [00:31:45]:
It's not related at all to cannabis, but that's okay. Okay, great. Yes, I know. I read a great novel about cargo cults, but, yeah, maybe for the audience, you should explain it.

Vision Battlesword [00:31:57]:
Yeah, I will explain it. And I'm trying to say that this thing that you're saying, like, well, I just enjoy the act of smoking, I think, is really just a cargo cult phenomenon. The cargo cults are. I hate to tell this story because I don't know the details precisely. And so I hate to, like, misrepresent a culture or a people or a specific place in the world where this was happening. But to the best of my understanding of it, during world War two.

Mandarin Man [00:32:27]:
Right, World War one or world War two? Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:32:29]:
In the Pacific islands, when I, Americans or allied forces were staging airstrips, runways, airfields on different islands where, you know, we're trying to capture or invade, we're doing these island hopping invasions and whatever would stage equipment, gear, build runways and do these things on all these different islands where maybe some indigenous people lived and would provide material, medicine, food, equipment, or whatever to them, kind of as a way of keeping the peace. Then when the war was over, packed up and left, and the people who were there who didn't necessarily understand everything that was going on, just formed these associations between, okay, well, these magical materials show up and bring benefit to our lives. And they come because there's quonset huts and there's runways and there's radio towers, and they form the association of these things happen and then the cargo shows up. And so they would attempt to rebuild the airfields in an attempt to, like, entice these gods or whatever to come and bring the cargo. So I think that's what's happening with the mechanical act of smoking, is it's like you're trying to, you're building the airfield hoping that the cargo is going to show up, but it's like, that's not really the point.

Mandarin Man [00:33:51]:
Yeah, I mean, I definitely smoked cigarettes long before I smoked cannabis. And, you know, it's funny, like that hit, that nicotine hit, is for a child who's 1413 or 14, he's never had it before. It's not psychedelic, but very impactful.

Vision Battlesword [00:34:08]:
It's a big deal.

Mandarin Man [00:34:09]:
It's a big deal. And then, of course, everyone, to your point, the first thing they do when they inhale a cigarette is cough.

Vision Battlesword [00:34:15]:
Right.

Mandarin Man [00:34:15]:
You know, because it's a foreign object that's not naturally supposed to be in your lungs. And then you kind of get over that.

Vision Battlesword [00:34:21]:
You force yourself to get over it.

Mandarin Man [00:34:23]:
Yeah, yeah, well, I think. I mean, a lot of stoners, you know, if you're not choking, you're not token. Like they want to cough because gotta.

Vision Battlesword [00:34:29]:
Cough to get off, gotta cough.

Mandarin Man [00:34:30]:
That's right, because it opens the capillaries in your lungs and you get higher, et cetera, you know, but I think all of the culture around smoking, you know, cigarettes were put in every movie and cigars are masculine and, you know, we have these ideas about it, too. And so part of that is probably at play play, but there's a relaxing kind of casual component to smoking that. Yeah. I'm either attracted to because there's going to be some payoff I'm waiting on, or society has said this is what people do to relax. So I'm not saying it's totally natural.

Vision Battlesword [00:35:09]:
But I'll bet if you smoked, I'll bet if you got a hold of some herbal blend, some non tobacco, non nicotine, not even damiana or blue lotus, but just like some, like, tasty herbal blend of some sort and rolled some cigarettes and smoked them, you'd probably go, this is kind of dumb.

Mandarin Man [00:35:27]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:35:28]:
I'm just guessing. I know there are some people who enjoy that because there's a market for it, apparently. Like, you know, there's people, there's. These blends exist and you can buy them. But I don't know, man. I just think that smoking as a pastime is not really the point.

Mandarin Man [00:35:45]:
Yeah, well, we've. I think culture bears that out, our current culture. Because now people use Zen.

Vision Battlesword [00:35:51]:
Right. Well, more snus for that.

Mandarin Man [00:35:53]:
Yeah. Or snus. You know, but Zen doesn't even have tobacco.

Vision Battlesword [00:35:56]:
What's Zen? I don't even know what that is.

Mandarin Man [00:35:58]:
Zen. Funny branding, but z y n. And it's a little can, and it's Nicki swipe. Little white powder.

Vision Battlesword [00:36:08]:
Oh, it's nicotine, though.

Mandarin Man [00:36:09]:
But it's nicotine.

Vision Battlesword [00:36:09]:
Yeah.

Mandarin Man [00:36:10]:
And there's like three milligrams or six milligrams.

Vision Battlesword [00:36:12]:
There's a comedian that's very popular. Okay. Yeah. There's a comedian whose podcast I listen to keeps talking about doing zins, and I've never understood what it's all about, but it sounded really trashy.

Mandarin Man [00:36:23]:
Yeah, it is.

Vision Battlesword [00:36:25]:
Yeah. Okay.

Mandarin Man [00:36:27]:
But it helps with. I mean, nicotine helps with focus. I mean, nicotine is a good. Is a great compound, I think. Great molecule or whatever substance.

Vision Battlesword [00:36:36]:
Why do you say that?

Mandarin Man [00:36:37]:
Because I like it. No, but it helps with focus. They've said they've done studies with dementia, and it helps people who have dementia kind of have better cognitive abilities, temporarily, of course, only while they're using it, but, yeah, I don't know if I want to segue into my cargo cult thought or not, because it's. Well, it doesn't have anything to do with cannabis. I probably got. I may have gotten this idea. Well, hi.

Vision Battlesword [00:37:03]:
But other than that, that's close enough.

Mandarin Man [00:37:05]:
Okay. So, you know I have this fascination with catholic cathedrals.

Vision Battlesword [00:37:09]:
Yeah.

Mandarin Man [00:37:09]:
Buildings and tartaria. Right.

Vision Battlesword [00:37:12]:
Yes.

Mandarin Man [00:37:12]:
But it came to me recently that our use of these buildings and Christianity to a large part, but mainly the use of these buildings, because I believe that they were possibly here already. And we found them, and that's why we cities were founded, because we found them. And that's when it was founded, because that's the year we found it. And they dug them out of the mud and cleaned them up and started using them as worship halls, never knowing what they were originally used for, which were maybe, like, healing centers and frequency centers by a civilization that was at a higher consciousness than we are now. And so we, on a societal level, are like a cargo cult that use, we use these buildings, but we have no idea what, you know, what the original use was. So that was a fun, that was a fun one.

Vision Battlesword [00:38:09]:
Hmm. I just saw something on my news aggregator site that, like, the large, the world's largest pyramid has been discovered in Croatia or Bosnia. Bosnia, yeah, Bosnia. That's.

Mandarin Man [00:38:25]:
Yeah, yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:38:26]:
And I saw a picture of it, and it's. It's like, obviously a pyramid. It's like, what do you mean, you discovered it?

Mandarin Man [00:38:32]:
Right.

Vision Battlesword [00:38:32]:
It's like there's this giant ass pyramid covered, just. It's just covered with land or covered.

Mandarin Man [00:38:38]:
With trees and foliage.

Vision Battlesword [00:38:39]:
Foliage, yeah. But it's clearly a geometrically correct pyramid with this, like, town just at the base, like, around the base of it. Like, did they, what did they just think that's just a normal mountain? Like, come on. What do you mean discovered? Like, I don't know, but anyway, that's pretty interesting to me. These pyramids. I don't know about you, but I certainly don't remember learning as a kid that there are pyramids all over the world. Like, I heard they were just in Egypt or whatever. Maybe ziggurat here or there in Mexico.

Vision Battlesword [00:39:15]:
Maybe some mounds or something. But, like, these huge, massive, like, great pyramid sized or bigger pyramids all over the world? That's weird.

Mandarin Man [00:39:28]:
Yeah. Why do you think they built them?

Vision Battlesword [00:39:30]:
I don't know. I mean, that's, but that's the thing.

Mandarin Man [00:39:33]:
Did you hear the bosnian pyramid that they're like. Well, it was on your newsfeed, so maybe they didn't get into that. The healing properties, like, a lot of it's made of quartz, and people are going in them and their ailments are being cured. If you stay in there longer, it structures your cells, and. Yeah, they're fascinating.

Vision Battlesword [00:39:52]:
So here's where we diverge into mandarin man vision. Old familiar territory. Okay, how do we know any of this shit is real just because we see it on our screen?

Mandarin Man [00:40:04]:
Oh, sure.

Vision Battlesword [00:40:05]:
How do we know any of this shit is real now, you traveled the world a lot more than I have and actually seen some shit. You've seen some cathedrals, seen some pyramids.

Mandarin Man [00:40:13]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:40:14]:
You've seen the actual pyramids in Egypt two years ago. All right, well, that's real.

Mandarin Man [00:40:18]:
Went in one of them. It's real. They're there. They're awesome.

Vision Battlesword [00:40:23]:
But, like, I don't know. Do you ever get. Do you ever get paranoid? Like, what is. Brett Weinstein and Heather heying are calling it the Cartesian crisis. The Cartesian crisis is basically like the breakdown of our ability to know truth.

Mandarin Man [00:40:46]:
Yes.

Vision Battlesword [00:40:47]:
To know reality, because we already know. We can't believe a lot of shit that's coming through the screens or wherever it's coming from, coming through the computers and all that stuff. But, like, how do we. And we've had this con. We've. We've had variations of this conversation before, just the pollution of the information ecosystem, and how do we decide what's true?

Mandarin Man [00:41:13]:
Yeah, well, my mom always said, don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you see because, yeah, there's just so much falsehood, you know? And, yeah, I think the Internet has exacerbated that, and authority has always lied on some level to keep the peace, and now we just do that digitally and largely through pacification. Right. You know, watch this football game or whatever. And I think that's why it is important to get out and, like, go see things, you know, put your hand on these objects or these relics. Yeah, but, I mean, yeah, I don't know where to even start with that. Like, because it's. Yeah, I think it's scary for a lot of people. We all think we have a pretty good handle on the world, and I think that's the benefit of psychedelics, is, like, takes that handle and loosens it a little bit, you know, and.

Mandarin Man [00:42:15]:
Or gives you an extra handle. Right. To kind of hold your. So you have two handles. You have two hands, you know, but so what are. I'm actually more of a fan of Eric Weinstein. Don't know Brett's work. I know he has a podcast with his wife.

Mandarin Man [00:42:31]:
I mean, what is their remedy for this?

Vision Battlesword [00:42:33]:
They're trying to puzzle it out. You know, you're right. They don't necessarily have a slam dunk answer for it, but they're trying to puzzle it out. And, you know, it has to do with fighting back against censorship. It has to do with creating communities and lines of communication between people who are earnest truth seekers and really want to just use the best critical thinking faculties at our disposal. And say, like, okay, this is what we know. This is what we don't know. This is what might be true.

Vision Battlesword [00:43:03]:
This is what still needs to be verified. You know, it's really just going back to old school empirical reasoning.

Mandarin Man [00:43:10]:
Yeah, because it could get a lot worse with deepfakes and AI and. Yeah, a lot of that.

Vision Battlesword [00:43:17]:
See, I'm, what I'm thinking is that actually we're a lot further down the path than what we think we are. Meaning, I think technology is actually a few years, I don't know how many, five or ten or 20. I think technology is actually several years ahead of what the mainstream is allowed to.

Mandarin Man [00:43:40]:
Okay.

Vision Battlesword [00:43:41]:
To realize.

Mandarin Man [00:43:42]:
So is that what you think the uaps are? They're our own?

Vision Battlesword [00:43:46]:
I don't know. I don't know about that. I don't. I don't know.

Mandarin Man [00:43:49]:
And so the way that the iPhone, the way they make the functional obsolescence are, they only increase the technology incrementally on purpose so they can sell more phones. They're doing that at a larger scale.

Vision Battlesword [00:44:01]:
So, yeah, yeah, I'm thinking, and I don't think this idea is even particularly controversial. I think that military organizations, government organizations, maybe even corporations that are trying to maintain a competitive advantage. I think there's a lot of different groups and areas where technology may actually have advanced substantially, but it's not being released publicly or widely, but it may actually be being used in secret. Like, for example, I'll give you an example, like this AI large language model thing. I worked in the information technology industry for 20 years. I can tell you that from my experience, the way this so called AI, and I've got a lot of strong opinions about it, but the way this so called AI suddenly came on the scene doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm not saying that we didn't see it coming. It's been predicted for a long time.

Vision Battlesword [00:45:06]:
It's even been, in my opinion, hyped, you know, overly hyped, extraordinarily hyped for a long time that, like, we're going to reach this particular point of general artificial intelligence. And there's been developments, there's been breakthroughs and things of that nature. But the jump in terms of the tools that were generally available or even, like, known to exist happened way quicker than what I ever experienced as the normal technology development cycle in it. It was like one year. One year the tools are super dumb and pretty bad, and the next year, all of a sudden you got chat GPT and it's like, wait a second. And I'm not saying that I actually think chat GPT is very good. I actually don't. And I think more and more, the more and more exposure that these LLMs actually get and being pressed into all kinds of service that they're, in my opinion, not really ready for.

Vision Battlesword [00:46:11]:
Not actually, like, fully developed or fully baked technology to be getting just shoved into every search engine, you know, every chat, you know, website, everything under the sun. But they're not like, I don't know, I'm about to go down a whole rabbit hole in terms of what I think of AI. But I want to stay on the main point, which is just that no matter how good or bad they are now, that was, that happened in like a blink of an eye, technologically speaking. Or, like, we're like, in terms of, like, computer development. And that just seems really strange to me. And there seems like there's a lot of that kind of thing happening now where it's like all of a sudden there's this reveal and, oh, all of a sudden we've got this tech is available or that capability.

Mandarin Man [00:47:00]:
I totally agree. I mean, that's part of the big tartaria idea, is they antiquatech? And they had these, like, zeppelins, for example, were very low cost travel. They were huge. They were luxury. You have plenty of rooms. And we quit using them. One incident, and now we're all shoved in these little airplanes where no one's got any leg room and everybody hates it, basically, air travel, there's definitely a suppression of technology.

Vision Battlesword [00:47:31]:
That's all I'm trying to say.

Mandarin Man [00:47:32]:
You've heard there's so many stories. Oh, so and so built a car that runs on water, and then the dude's dead in, you know, two weeks. Oops. You know, and you know, there's patents for tires that you never have to change. But Firestone and Goodyear, they own these patents because they're not going to ever put them out because then there goes the tire industry.

Vision Battlesword [00:47:52]:
Yeah, that's like the flip side of what I'm saying. I think that's also true, or I think that's also happening.

Mandarin Man [00:47:58]:
I see what you mean.

Vision Battlesword [00:47:58]:
But the flip side of what I'm saying is I also think they're holding back. And I think. I think there's stuff that's actually being used to today that is like, what we would consider to be future technology or stuff that doesn't yet exist or hasn't yet been developed, but is actually being used with, among and on us that hasn't yet been revealed.

Mandarin Man [00:48:23]:
Right.

Vision Battlesword [00:48:24]:
But then I also think there's things that have been held back for a long time that are now being revealed suddenly. Like, it's just hard for me to believe that this LLM thing came, came out of left field this fast.

Mandarin Man [00:48:37]:
Yeah. And from a private company.

Vision Battlesword [00:48:38]:
Yeah.

Mandarin Man [00:48:38]:
And not the federal government.

Vision Battlesword [00:48:41]:
Yeah. And it also makes me think that like, whatever they're giving us today, as far as LLMs are concerned, you know, whatever we're dealing with right now, chat GPT four or four and a half or whatever version it is, they probably holding back six, seven and whatever stuff that might actually be comparable to true artificial intelligence, which again, I don't think these toys that they're letting us play with, they're actually not that great if you've really interacted with them that much.

Mandarin Man [00:49:12]:
Well, I saw something the other day. It's like, okay, if you ask chat chpt it takes 3 hours to dry three towels. Do you see that? How long does it take to dry 9000? Like, it takes 9 hours. It's like, no, it doesn't, you know, still 3 hours.

Vision Battlesword [00:49:26]:
Yeah.

Mandarin Man [00:49:27]:
100 towels if the line's long enough.

Vision Battlesword [00:49:29]:
It basically does act like an intelligent person of an iq of about 60.

Mandarin Man [00:49:37]:
Right, right. Yeah. You know, which is. It's learning from those people. Exactly.

Vision Battlesword [00:49:43]:
It's like, well, you gave it the Internet to learn from, like, what do you expect?

Mandarin Man [00:49:46]:
Yeah, yeah. It's so bad. My number one love now, especially in the conspiratorial realm, is tartaria.

Vision Battlesword [00:49:54]:
Yeah.

Mandarin Man [00:49:55]:
And I mean, it was something, it's on tons of old maps. You can see it right there, grand tartar or tartaria or just tartar. And even in the Vatican they had, I was there two, three years ago. There's this huge hall. You know, you walk down to where da Vinci did the, the ceiling and I forget what that particular room is called. But then when you leave, there's like this massive hallway filled with relics, you know, I mean, everything's gilded and gold. And they had this old massive globe and right there in black and white torteria, you know, and so, and this globe was from the 15 hundreds and one of a new, a new thing I discovered on it was like the great Wall of China, I guess they're called like battlements or the little cutouts where you would shoot through. They're on the wrong side.

Mandarin Man [00:50:49]:
They're facing China. Yeah. And so it's not the great Wall of China. It was the great Wall of Tartaria, meant to keep the Chinese out that the Tartarians built or the Mongols built someone built. I mean, it's an incredible feat of engineering. And so, yeah, as far as, like, what is truth? I don't think we have a fucking clue. Like, you know, and his, his story history is in fact someone else's story that they've told us and. Yeah.

Mandarin Man [00:51:24]:
For control or just to, just to, you know, who know? Who knows? You know, a lot of people think there's been a reset and actually probably a couple of resets. And so the last few hundred years, you know, we have these stories and these ideas about this country and how it was founded and. But how much of that? Because in a pre Internet world, you could change the story in one to two generations if you wiped out all the young people, changed all the stories, and then 2030 years later had birthing forms or orphan trains, which they had, and created this whole new population and sent these children out and raised them in your schools to learn your story, they never know what really happened. And. Yeah. So did that happen?

Vision Battlesword [00:52:16]:
I'm not.

Mandarin Man [00:52:17]:
I don't know.

Vision Battlesword [00:52:17]:
Yeah, but can't they do that even more easily now in a post Internet world? Yeah, yeah. That's why I've got my printed copy of the Oxford English Dictionary in my library, because they're changing the words, changing the words, changing the language.

Mandarin Man [00:52:33]:
Then what, what do we have? Nothing. Not much.

Vision Battlesword [00:52:37]:
You know, it's like, go read 1984.

Mandarin Man [00:52:39]:
And, but we. Yeah, yeah, and, but I think on a, on a soul level, and we've talked about this before, we kind of like that.

Vision Battlesword [00:52:46]:
We do.

Mandarin Man [00:52:46]:
Yeah. Please tie me up and throw me in prison again. I had so much fun getting out and, and just play the game.

Vision Battlesword [00:52:53]:
You're saying the earth game is just a bit big? Escape room.

Mandarin Man [00:52:55]:
Yes. The biggest escape room. That's funny. Escape planet. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:53:01]:
Who are you, mandarin man?

Mandarin Man [00:53:03]:
Who am I? I'm a curious cat. I am a lover, I'm a fighter. Third generation conspiracy theorist, lover of fruit. I'm a bit of a consumption junkie and substances. And, you know, I just love, I love life, love to eat it up. And a bit of an experienced junkie. Like I, you know, when I was younger, I went and ran with the bulls and, you know, been to 38 countries and lived in Guatemala. Like, I just like to get out there and see what is what.

Mandarin Man [00:53:40]:
And because I think those experiences really, like, I like this idea that we're kind of like USB plugs. So you plug yourself into your family and your community, you download all that information. Then you plug yourself into high school. They download a bunch of books and nonsense, good things and bad things to you. Then you go plug yourself into a university, and then you go plug yourself into your first job, and you get their code of conduct and ethics. And so the more situations you can kind of plug yourself into, you draw information from that experience that bolsters your overall being. So, I mean, I think we're all like a little cell or speck of God trying to experience itself and play, play this game, which is probably the best game in the universe. One of, like, people tend to love it.

Vision Battlesword [00:54:28]:
Okay, well, that was fun.

Mandarin Man [00:54:30]:
That was good.

Vision Battlesword [00:54:31]:
Yep.

Mandarin Man [00:54:32]:
They're always better when you listen back.

Vision Battlesword [00:54:34]:
Yeah.

Mandarin Man [00:54:35]:
Isn't that funny?