Josh Mortensen (00:01.791)

All right, Bill, welcome to the Explorer Poet Podcast.

Bill (00:06.222)

Hey Josh, glad to be here. I appreciate you having me on.

Josh Mortensen (00:09.811)

Yeah, absolutely. So as we were just talking about, I recently came across your YouTube channel, Symbols and Signals. And just some of the content that came up, I thought it was really interesting. And it’s kind of how I go about finding people is just, you know, who’s doing interesting things out there. And so I thought I’d reach out. I really appreciate you jumping on here with me.

Bill (00:30.936)

Yeah, for sure. I’m glad. Let’s get into it.

Josh Mortensen (00:33.181)

Yeah, absolutely. So I usually like to talk to people about, obviously we have a lot of similar interests, but I do want to just spend a little bit of time and actually get to know you a little bit better. What is your background? You’re posting about things that are kind of in the philosophical space, the esoteric or mythological space, psychology, but what’s your background and what got you into this stuff?

Bill (00:58.094)

Hmm. Well, my background has like literally not one thing to do with philosophy or psychology. Uh, I actually was a weightlifting, I was an Olympic weightlifting coach for like eight years and I still have some, do some work in that area for, uh, for a company, private company and also, um, as a bartender for quite some time. And now I’m actually decided that neither of those things are my passion. I’ve actually really started getting into engineering.

But at the same time, getting into this engineering and the electrical thing is I’m really interested in writing and in YouTubing. And it’s kind of not like a full-time thing. It’s just a side thing for my creativeness. The structure comes from the engineering. The creativeness comes from the writing. But the goal, essentially, is to be at least a semi-prominent Jungian YouTuber of sorts, Nietzsche commentator. But also, I would like to write

books that are kind of, guess, mythological and psychodynamic, you know, in nature.

Josh Mortensen (02:04.001)

Yeah, absolutely. When you say books, do you mean fiction, nonfiction? What are you thinking?

Bill (02:07.95)

So I actually have a bunch of different drafts because I’ve got a lot of ideas. But the number one thing is essentially a nonfiction book that is attempting to describe the underlying metaphysics of language and how emotions are markers of that and how they’re used to construct ideologies, philosophies, religions, even language itself. really enjoy.

Wittgenstein’s idea of language games. So I basically expanded that to try to understand all the individual context within all of these belief structures that we use, which obviously it makes sense that I would like Young because he essentially tries to do something similar to this. But then also I have a fiction book that’s about AI, but totally unrelated to Young or really anything like that.

Josh Mortensen (03:00.127)

Well, if you’re writing in any kind creative sense, I think there’s gonna be some kind of connection to Young in some way where it’s, you’re getting the kind of that personal side of kind of the collective. That’s way I think of creativity in essence is like we all have this collective understanding of reality, but then we all experience it on an individual level. And then creativity, art, writing, whatever it may be is

this effort to share with the collective, you know, this is how I’m experiencing it. And when it hits, it hits because all of a sudden there’s all these other people out there that go, yeah, that’s how I experience it as well. yeah, just found it, yeah, all this stuff is really interesting to me. When would you say you came across like this path? Like when did you start reading Jung or Nietzsche? What was the impetus for that?

Bill (03:52.847)

Yes. So, uh, you know, much like many other young men, uh, I’ve, heard of this guy named Jordan Peterson and I saw all of his lectures and I, I, I don’t really listen to as much as, uh, to his political content. Cause he started doing that maybe in like 2020, 2021, like his earlier lectures on maps of meaning on personality, that stuff is just like incredible. Like I, I’ve never seen a lecture like that.

I mean, ever. I and that’s kind of what I aspire to do with my YouTube videos is find information that’s useful for people in multiple different fields and combine it together like he did. And that really inspired me to see that description of religion in terms of psychological implications. So like, here’s a story of Moses. He goes out into the desert. What does the desert mean? Right. And that, and what are its implications? So then we say, okay,

here’s how we extract the morals from that, that tell us what we should do. And that essentially is what I’m trying to do is look into philosophy. So this is why I really like Nietzsche, by the way, is because Nietzsche said that essentially a philosophy is useless if there’s no implication for action. And, you know, I have some quibbles with that, but I think I actually generally agree that if your philosophy is just endless speculation, that, you know, that there’s no use. It’s like

Are you building great things? Are you building a family? Do people like you? Those things matter, not necessarily this incisive, just incessant desire to understand metaphysics, which may or may not even have any meaning. Does that make sense?

Josh Mortensen (05:39.937)

Sure, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I think that deep down somebody who, well, you know, in our time, we do have this challenge of the myths having fallen away. A lot of the myths just don’t have the same grasp over us. And so a lot of us, you know, it sounds like you and me, anybody who ends up listening to Jordan Peterson’s Maps of Meaning, they’re looking for something, they’re looking to try to like understand, you know, it’s this meaning making and this purpose. And deep down, I think,

Bill (05:53.878)

Yes.

Josh Mortensen (06:09.983)

what I want at least is to live a life based on some values, something that I really hold to be true so that even when outside forces try to push me in a different direction, I, as a person, I can stand firm to those values. But unless you go exploring for them, a lot of times, you just inherit them from your society, from your culture, your religion, your family, whatever it may be. And if you don’t go trying to figure out exactly who you are, then

the world is happy to tell you who you are. They’ll just like force you to comply with whoever they are. It’s interesting that you bring up Jordan Peterson and Maps of Meaning, because I actually agree with you entirely. Like when he gets into political stuff, a lot of the political stuff, I just kind of check out. think he’s a little, he’s kind of off the path there. But when it comes to the psychology stuff, those early lectures, Maps of Meanings was huge for me and

Bill (06:43.287)

Yes.

Josh Mortensen (07:08.339)

in particular his explanation of Pinocchio, that completely changed how I saw everything.

Bill (07:13.911)

Yes.

Bill (07:18.38)

Yeah, no, same. It just totally changed my entire perception of reality. Yes.

Josh Mortensen (07:23.539)

Yeah, yeah, and it changed the way that I saw my childhood. It changed the way that I saw myself, my relation to my family, my relation to the world. And then after that, every other book, story, movie that I ever saw, it suddenly came to me in a different way where I saw, I could see it. You know, I just started doing that analysis myself. And I think that’s what you’re doing on your YouTube channel as well. I think maybe that’s why it connected.

Bill (07:51.021)

Yeah, exactly. And that is, I would say that is, I feel the same way with the Pinocchio thing. He also did an analysis of Lion King, which I thought was pretty interesting. So I actually recently posted a new video where I’m talking about the Matrix. the whole thing is it was actually my first attempt.

to really do what Jordan Peterson did with Maps of Meaning, but in my own way, and to try to essentially dig into something that is so deeply embedded within our society and figure it out why it is that that is the case. And I’ve done this kind of a little bit with like, I have some earlier videos where I talk about like Inception or Fight Club. And the reason why I choose these things is because, you know, so there’s something that Carl Jung said. He essentially said that,

I’m paraphrasing here, I don’t remember exactly what said. But he said something along the lines of, you don’t choose your myths, they choose you. Which is why he disagreed with Nietzsche saying we should create our own values, of course. So then there’s a question, it’s like, okay, why is Fight Club, why is The Matrix, why is maybe even something like American Psycho, why do they stick?

in society, why do people repeat them over and over and over again? Clearly something is important. And to me, figuring out what it is there that’s important and figuring out what we can learn from it, what we can maybe change from looking at the critiques that it provides is something that’s totally invaluable and really lacking in the vast majority of society. There’s no, there’s no

introspection into how we should look at our myths to move forward in that way. And I think that someone needs to do it. And I guess, unfortunately, it has to be me. Or fortunately, but depending on how you look at it.

Josh Mortensen (09:51.649)

Unfortunately or fortunately, when I do that similar kind of thing with stories or movies, it’s actually pretty fun for me. But then the fact that you’re at

Bill (10:02.38)

Well, I find it fun, but I hate demystifying something, if you know what I mean.

Josh Mortensen (10:07.521)

Yeah, yeah for sure. The stories that I do that with is one is The Lion King and I probably picked a lot of that up from Jordan Peterson, but the other one that really jumps out to me is Peter Pan. I think Peter Pan is so insightful for our culture and our time period. Do you have a high level philosophy around why certain stories stick and why, like you were saying, we retell them?

Bill (10:21.655)

Yes.

Bill (10:37.794)

That is a really good question. actually do not, but if I were to answer such a question, the story’s at stick.

Bill (10:52.172)

I would say stories that stick are true in some way, because if they’re true, you can’t just dismiss them and shoot an argument at them, and that will just totally disintegrate them. And oftentimes, you can actually tell if something is too true if people actively respond to it viciously. Because what that means is that

Because if you conceive of humanity and say a society as a meta narrative, the narrative is predicated on certain foundations that people tell themselves to continue moving forward, right? So there are smaller ones and there are bigger ones. And say at the societal level, it might be something like we believe in freedom. So if you were to throw a

jab at freedom that was actually true, it would cause a lot of people to get really angry because it doesn’t just uproot their what you know, it doesn’t just uproot what they need to do for you know, making like a sandwich in the kitchen or what they need to do at work. It uproots everything and it says, I have to rearrange the entire way that I saw things. So

I think that would be a way that I’d go about assessing, I guess, the validity of these types of claims. Does that make sense?

Josh Mortensen (12:26.461)

It does make sense. I think I agree with you on some level. So you’re talking about these narrative structures that kind of they dictate how we see and experience the world and how we understand it. And I think that

I think that with those structures, we have this conscious experience, like very Jungian, right? There’s a conscious experience and there’s an unconscious experience. And when you come up against a story, I think a lot of the times the experience you have with the story is actually unconscious to you or it’s connecting with your unconscious. And so a lot of the times we enjoy a movie.

because of the way it makes us feel, the emotions that we experience, kind of the maybe bits of inspiration we receive, or maybe sometimes in a movie when it’s sad enough, it’s kind of soothing for us. So we have this emotional experience with it. And then what ends up happening is we enjoyed it. And so our conscious self has to come up with the reason why we enjoyed it. And oftentimes I think that that conscious reason

misinterprets the story or misses the point. So I mentioned Peter Pan before. Peter Pan is a very, it’s like a beloved story. We all grew up on the cartoon. It gets remade all the time and kids in school do like the Peter Pan play. And everybody seems to love this idea of Peter Pan and kind of the main theme being that we never have to grow up.

Bill (14:07.074)

Yes.

Josh Mortensen (14:08.331)

But I think when I read Peter Pan and I actually look at the, when I break it down and look at the different characters, the archetypes they might represent, and what’s actually being said in the story, the story of Peter Pan is actually about the necessity that we grow up. It’s like you have to grow up. And you can grow up in different ways. You can grow up.

and become a pirate or you can grow up and become like a whole adult who can still appreciate, you know, the child’s childlike side of life. But to not to get into Peter Pan too much, but we come up with these like reasons why we like a story reasons why we enjoy it. And but I think what’s actually happening is that our unconscious is connecting with it because there’s something in that story. Like you were saying, there’s a truth in there.

And if our unconscious can bring that truth to consciousness, then it can help us grow, can help us mature, individuate, heal, whatever it is, it can help us become adults, become more conscious. And I think for the most part, people miss that underlying truth because once the ego becomes aware that you like something, the ego comes up with a reason why it’s likable.

Bill (15:19.468)

Yes.

Bill (15:32.174)

Yes, no, I actually I totally agree with all that and I think I may have I may have arrived at a better answer to your question as you said as you as you say all that that might make more sense

Okay, Stranger Things was just released. Now let’s just not talk about the… Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (15:52.415)

Yeah, my wife and kids have been watching it. Yeah, I haven’t seen it, but my wife and kids are, yeah, they’re watching it.

Bill (15:57.986)

Yeah, so commentary aside on the acting, you know, we’ll just put that aside. Season one’s obviously still always the best. But acting aside, there was a particular scene in there that I think will help to illustrate this point. Actually, you know what? Maybe I shouldn’t say it because it might blow it for people who haven’t seen it.

Josh Mortensen (16:20.651)

Are you talking about season one? Yeah, season one’s been out. the new one. No, I haven’t seen that.

Bill (16:21.047)

Should I say it? Season four, or five.

Yeah, maybe not. Maybe I should just keep it. should just keep it. You know, look, Very, very general. Okay, you know what? I’ll speak about it in terms of Jungian archetypes. So basically, we’ll put it this way. There’s this character, who knows who, and this character did not have power before. They were just a person, you know, life was happening to them. And then essentially, they were told, you just need to…

Josh Mortensen (16:29.665)

Just keep it very general, I guess.

Bill (16:56.075)

You know, you’ve always been attached to the darkness or whatever. So why don’t you just say, you know, enough is enough. No, I control it. And I thought it was, you know, again, acting aside, the young and archetype was actually of shadow. The young and archetype of the shadow was represented by that, but the scene itself represented essentially confronting your shadow. So again, to correlate it again, to go back to the matrix.

There’s a scene in the Matrix, everyone’s seen this hopefully, that Neo is being interrogated by Agent Smith, and Agent Smith is obviously the Shadow, but he doesn’t really confront him, he just flips him off. And it’s like, that’s not confronting your Shadow, that’s just saying, I don’t care about you. And obviously, it doesn’t work well, he ends up getting his mouth sealed, he ends up chasing him, he’s still for hours later, hour and 30 minutes later, he’s still chasing him. But then at the end of the movie,

instead of just flipping off Agent Smith, Neo turns around to Smith and says, no, I’m going to directly physically confront you. the connection between these two things is that it’s both representing confronting your shadow. But why would that? Because both of those scenes, know, the scene in Stranger Things, season five, and this thing in The Matrix, are both really impactful emotionally. Because

I mean, personally, I I, and I assume if I got emotional watching it, like, wow, that’s so cool that a lot of other people did too. Um, so why then why? And I think it’s because. So there are different ways to enact an archetype, but when you see it enacted at a kind of. I don’t want to say meta level, but when you see it enacted, no matter when you see it enacted, if you see it enacted basically perfectly.

but in a new way, then it becomes highly salient. So when we say something is like cliche, like, you know, live, laugh, love, or whatever, stuff like that, we say it’s cliche because we’ve seen it before. Because there are certain parts of our brain that essentially adjust, that function as these prediction mechanisms. And when you see that in a household, you’re like, I’ve seen that a million times.

Bill (19:17.581)

Or when someone tells you, you just need to be brave. It’s like, great. Thanks. That’s excellent advice. You know, but when someone says, or when someone acts out how to be brave in a specific way that you haven’t thought of before that simultaneously enacts the universal archetype while doing it in a way that you’ve never seen before, that makes it highly salient, highly important, very easy to understand and makes it last longer. Does that make sense?

Josh Mortensen (19:47.105)

Yeah, I think so. It’s pretty much in line with the way I think about memory and how memory works. Where, you had so many experiences throughout your childhood and your early adult life, but the ones that you remember are the ones that happened like one time, or they happened in a way that was shocking. It was different. It was either extremely fun and pleasant and pleasurable, or it was…

Bill (19:52.62)

Yes.

Bill (20:04.417)

Yes.

Josh Mortensen (20:16.467)

shocking and terrifying and you know, and so you had this reaction to it and those are the those are the memories that you actually hold on to because everything else like you can’t you can’t remember every breakfast you ever ate because you eat breakfast every morning.

Bill (20:22.603)

Yes.

Bill (20:31.595)

Yeah, exactly. And so I was doing some research actually last night on chat GPT research. so I actually looked at the actual individual research that it showed me. I was looking at this concept, and I was like, this concept that I have, it’s very interesting. And why is it interesting? And I asked the chat, and he was like, you’re doing what’s called

schema It’s like schema breaking theory or something like that. Basically what it’s it’s Combining two things that shouldn’t be combined like if you were to combine Nietzsche and Jesus together and say these two people are saying the same thing people be like whoa What like what do you mean? Because that it breaks the prediction mechanism of your brain and if it’s true then it really sticks with them if that makes sense, so

That’s why like YouTube videos, a lot of them, like there’s just very obvious, essentially, I guess, meta framework where you say, most people think this, but I think this, here’s why. So it gives you the normal pattern, breaks it, and then it promises reward. So that I think is kind of a meta reason why a lot of these like unique

Archetypes that are represented in movie film culture and all that have their salience because they’re our brain is literally wired Like it’s it’s literally wired to spike your dopamine I believe in the in the in the ventral tegmental area, you know The neuroscientists you watch your podcast are gonna be all over me because I’m not a neuroscientist, but I’m pretty sure that’s where it is Definitely in the brain somewhere that basically spikes that dopamine says whoa Pay attention. That’s kind of weird. Does that make sense?

Josh Mortensen (22:27.391)

Yeah, yeah. It’s, yeah, it’s trying, like you said, it’s trying to get you to pay attention. And yeah, it’s interesting. So, so that makes me think about the matrix, right? And earlier we were talking about why, why do we like stories? Or, you know, I’d asked you if you have a high level kind of philosophy around it or thoughts around it. And when you look at, when you look at stories,

whether it’s like a religious story or a movie like The Matrix, it makes me think that you can look at almost anything as if it’s representing something literal, like it’s literally there. So when you read, when you go to a Christian church and they’re praying or singing to God, like they literally believe that there’s a God in heaven that is

in some way similar to the image that’s in their head of this God. And so then they believe that the world literally has demons and angels that are impacting the way people behave and the outcomes of things. But having read Jung, I don’t know if you’ve read a lot of Joseph Campbell at all, but Joseph Campbell has been really helpful for me in this point as well. But you can take all of that and kind of conceptualize it as a

mirror of the the believers psychology. And so then when you take something like the Matrix, it’s very easy to literalize it as well. And so this idea that they were that we’re all tapped into a machine that’s using us as batteries, and it’s giving us this false sense of reality. There’s like this literal interpretation of it. And I think a lot of people probably thought the movie was cool. Because of that idea, right? And like, what if and can we escape it?

But then obviously there’s like a different interpretation of it which is like more psychological which is we all are tapped into some kind of collective thing that is draining us and that it is possible to break out of when you do something like you described Neo doing, turning around and facing Agent Smith or facing your shadow in a way where you say I’m not afraid to engage anymore. And yeah, I just think it’s fascinating like.

Bill (24:33.558)

Yes.

Josh Mortensen (24:52.405)

this idea that you could take anything literally, but you can also take anything and examine it psychologically. And through doing that, you kind of, you learn more about yourself and you learn more about the decisions you’ve made and why you’ve made them. And hopefully you do gain a little bit of that control moving forward.

Bill (25:14.773)

Yes. So one of my favorite words is polysemic or polysemy. And for those who don’t know, basically it just means that there are multiple levels that something can be assessed at. So a great story is polysemic. Or I’m not even sure how to say it because I’ve never heard anyone else say it. Polysemic, polysemic, who knows. But.

Josh Mortensen (25:38.471)

So it’s one of those words that you know from reading, I imagine. If you’ve never… That’s a good indication that you’re a voracious reader. It’s good.

Bill (25:42.445)

Yeah, exactly.

Bill (25:47.468)

Yeah, exactly. No words that no one else has ever said. But yeah, so polysemy or polysemic, whatever. Any good story is that way. And you’re right that religion, know, a lot of these people, do have that that kind of propositional, they take it as a physical truth claim. Right. And I think that’s just totally incorrect. Now, I’m not saying that I actually don’t believe in a God in heaven because I do.

I just don’t think that I have a good visual representation of him at all. And the kind of funny thing about that, I was thinking about this the other day, most of our, I mean, all of our representations of God are like painted by us. So like your idea of God comes from like Michelangelo. Like it’s not even like from the Bible, it’s like literally like Michelangelo or like William Blake, who he did the one with God.

pointing down from the sky that’s yellow. It’s really nice. It’s got like yellow and black and orange. It’s really nice painting. anyways, so you can read things at multiple levels and you kind of have this issue where if you look at it from a psychological perspective, you could maybe explain that to someone. if you, but if you, if you try to put that in contradiction to the physical truth claim, you’re going to run up into some issues.

Um, so you have to kind of learn how to say these things. And I don’t say this to, to, you know, say you need to be manipulative, but like the way that people understand things is oftentimes not completely truthful to what those words mean. So like a very good example of this is like, so this is super well known in psychology that most people, you know, this is going to be

a little controversial, but most people, whenever they vote, they’re not voting because they’re like, man, like this particular tax policy, I read every single line and list that whatever. It’s like they’re voting because the people that say the things that they like, that’s their people. those words function as like an in-group signal, which is, is why I’m writing my book, basically about linguistics, because I’m very interested in figuring out how to contextualize

Bill (28:12.747)

when it is that someone is doing that, when someone’s going like, I believe in XYZ political thing, but they’re not saying it because they’ve thought it out, versus when you’re talking to someone who is like, yeah, I’ve looked into the budget calculations on this, that, whatever. And if we send XYZ to the military, we send XYZ to the Department of Homeland Security, then we won’t have enough money. Because I want to know who I’m talking to, if that makes sense.

It’s not that I don’t respect your opinion if you vote based on the words as a tribal utterance, because that’s really how humans have functioned forever. So it’s a totally valid way of operating in reality. this is a point that another controversial person, Scott Adams, said. But it’s like, if you’re a Muslim and you’re a Christian, you still go to the grocery store.

Like, are you like fighting over like Jesus in like aisle seven? Like it actually, your beliefs in these in group utterances are actually so far removed from action that it’s not necessarily a problem until you get into some very specific situations that most people are not going to be in that frequently. I know we’re kind of going all over the place here with these thoughts, but just what do you think about all that?

Josh Mortensen (29:36.289)

No, I don’t mind going all over the place. think it’s interesting. Yeah, yeah, first of all, Scott Adams, like, I think he’s going through cancer right now, so lots of prayers for Scott Adams. Yeah, he’s a good guy. People, yeah, okay, so you started off talking about politics and the language of in-group, out-group, and I see that all the time, so.

Bill (29:49.505)

Yeah, very unfortunate.

Bill (30:03.617)

Yes.

Josh Mortensen (30:05.491)

So one of the real challenges for me being the type of, I guess, truth seeker that I am, not to say that I found truth, but that I’m always hoping to find it. And I don’t wanna be satisfied with just like simple answers or group think. It’s actually really challenging because you don’t find a lot of people out there who can kind of, I’m not saying I’m perfect at it. I’m not saying I don’t sometimes get caught up in it.

Bill (30:16.417)

Yes.

Josh Mortensen (30:34.677)

but it’s difficult to find somebody who is truly kind of an independent thinker. And politics is one of these things that’s very obvious for me, where, yeah, like what you’re saying is somebody on the left will throw out some language about equality and equity and inclusion and simply because they make the group of people who those values are important to, they make them feel good.

because they’re repeating them, then they go vote for them. And the same is true for the right. They talk about small government, they talk about God, they talk about securing the borders. And then all of a sudden, they have that same kind of feeling of like, yeah, this is the person for me. And then once politicians are in office, they’re just like, that’s not even at all why they’re there is to do these things. In fact, I think a lot of the time, yeah, they’re just.

Bill (31:30.133)

Yeah, that’s the funny part, Love how that works.

Josh Mortensen (31:32.939)

They know the buzzwords, know what, yeah, they know what you wanna hear and so that’s what gets you to the ballot boxes. yeah, it’s an interesting thing because, I think it’s, like you were saying, I think it’s the way that the human brain is wired. I think we are genetically adapted to agreeing with each other on big ideas.

and just kind of accepting that because we share a reality, this unconscious collective that we all kind of operate within. it’s difficult because when you see it, you see it and it’s painful, but at the same time, it’s literally the thing that has allowed our species to conquer the world and be the most dominant technology driven species.

So we have all these amazing things because of it, but it’s also, you can see also if you look on a broad scale when it comes to religion and geopolitics and all these things, it’s also one of the things that hurts us so much because we’re constantly in conflict with each other. And for those people who are out there who are bad actors, it’s so easy for them to use that against the masses without most people in the masses understanding that they’re even being played or tricked.

Bill (32:58.783)

Yeah, know, Plato said that whenever the men of words get into power, you better watch out because they’re not men of action. They’re just trying to get more power. I think actually Eric Hoffer talks about that too in True Believer, another really good book. But I was so, you know, since we’re going down the politics rabbit hole, I was doing some research about persuasion because there’s a problem that I really want to help solve.

Josh Mortensen (33:07.755)

Yeah.

Bill (33:28.215)

So oftentimes, like we’re saying earlier, we have these people who express these kind of political utterances. And you need to know if it’s because they want to explore it in a kind of the manner of the logos, one might say, or if they’re just saying it just to figure out if you’re in their tribal group. And I hate to sound universalist because I’m actually not really a universalist. I I’m a universalist at heart, but I understand that it’s totally impractical.

for physiological reasons and environmental reasons. if you have, so let’s say you’re at the dinner table. Something I saw a lot of, and it actually kind of made me sad. I saw a lot of these posts on Instagram saying like, me when I talk politics at the dinner table on Thanksgiving. And it’s like, ha ha, like it’s kind of funny, but like, do really want to go into like your like family’s Thanksgiving, just like talk about like very extreme politics?

It’s actually, it’s okay for you to have extreme politics, but it’s actually not okay for you to go into your family’s Thanksgiving and just like totally ruin it for everyone because everyone’s getting all emotional and freaking out over, whatever statement you said. what I want to do is I want to like, to, at the very least unify the family. We don’t have to unify with everyone. could, but unify with your damn family. That’s really important. So then how do you do that? If there are family members who are like radically different than you and how do you do it?

without agreeing with them while directionally making them feel good. And I ran into this thing, I think Scott Adams has actually talked about this, it’s called the high ground maneuver. It’s something that like a lot of business CEOs and stuff have practiced. But essentially what you do is, because remember we’re all seeing things through the certain lens of perception, but there are levels of perception that we can kind of all agree on. So then you say, someone says something like,

You know, let’s make it like explicitly political they say something like You know, I believe that we should continue letting in like tens of millions of immigrants now So if they say that How do you if say you disagree with it? How do you avoid? Responding to it without saying that you know you disagree because you don’t want to make a big argument at Thanksgiving table You don’t avoid that as much as possible. So you do this high ground maneuver where you say

Bill (35:53.324)

Yeah, you know, it is crazy that there are all these people who live in these horrible places. Like, wish that they, you know, I wish that their country was better or whatever. That’s not completely perfect, but it’s good enough to where, like, you agree with them emotionally, so you validate their frame of perception. Because you have to remember, frames of perception are built in. They’re a priori. They’re based on your personality. So you’re not going to maneuver around their personality.

while disagreeing with them openly. But if you go up a level and say, I agree with human dignity, which everyone does, like literally everyone, then you can kind of avoid it and you can kind of agree with them in a way, but not agree with their propositional statement. Now, you could do that with statements on the right, statements on the left, but the point is to figure out a way to appeal to a higher value to maintain peace at the table.

Josh Mortensen (36:52.233)

Yeah, yeah, I think it’s worthwhile. It is a shame that you can’t just talk about it. But obviously, and I’ve seen it, not in my like, not in the family that I’ve created, but in my extended family, I’ve definitely seen some blow ups at holidays over just silly, silly topics that like, we have opinions on but none of us really have any influence in. And that’s unfortunate.

Bill (37:09.869)

yeah.

Bill (37:17.153)

Yeah, that’s the crazy thing too, right? It’s like you have no influence. So like, why, like, why do you care? Like that’s something that I, so, you know, just to briefly interrupt you here, I was actually a journalist in DC for like a year. And like, once you see like the inner workings of what goes on up there, you’re like, my God, like this, this place is just a total cesspool. Like it’s all influence here, influence here.

And everyone pretends like they’re the good guys. it’s like, none of you, you’re all activists. You all have your frame of perception. And I’m not saying that you’re right or wrong, because I think there are valid perspectives from each side. And so that’s fine that everyone’s, someone’s a leftist, someone’s a rightist. But what’s not cool to me is whenever you say, I’m this way, the other way, the other way is totally bad, and I’m a good faith actor, when like,

Clearly you’re not. And it’s hard to explain this to people who have not been to DC, who have not worked there. So this kind of brings it back to what we saying earlier, how like, because like when you look at Jungian archetypes, what you’re doing is you’re kind of peeling back how reality works, the ontology of psychological reality, as we talked about earlier before the podcast started, and you see the framework, right?

But it’s really, whenever you first look at these things, it’s super disintegrating because you’re like, like, that’s not how I thought it worked at all. So now you have to like rearrange your brain to be like, okay, this is, you know, this is important. This isn’t important. And you kind of have to like re mystify, but like, you have to really ask yourself this question, especially if you’re like, you’re saying like you’re interested in actually talking about these things. And I am too, but you have to really ask yourself the question.

Are you willing to go into a conversation and totally demystify something to the point to where it psychologically disintegrates someone for like a week and like they get all emotional and they have all these issues and like we don’t want to do that because like for most people it’s it’s very difficult to remystify something once it has been demystified if that makes sense

Josh Mortensen (39:30.975)

Yeah, for sure. the truth is that some people can do it for themselves. Like I think that I’ve done it for myself just through reading and listening, having conversations with people like you. And it seems like you’ve been able to do it to yourself as well just because you went and had those experiences and saw what was actually happening behind the curtain. It’s like this, a lot of people, they only experience life as what they see. They think that life is what they see.

Bill (39:58.988)

Yes.

Josh Mortensen (40:00.789)

but they don’t see that life is what they think. And so they just don’t understand the actual directionality of reality. so you can’t, so you could do it for yourself if you really want to, you can go dissolve these ideas. And for me, I’ve done that in a lot of different ways. Like I grew up very religious and had to, and I eventually stepped away from my religion. And then, you know, after that, it was like this snowball of, you know, kind of like a.

Nietzschean nihilism, like not trusting any institution until you, you know what saying? Yeah, So, but you don’t want to be a nihilist and so you got to kind of figure it all back out. And I think that’s part of the reason why I’ve gravitated towards Joseph Campbell and Jordan Peterson’s maps of meaning and Carl Jung, all this stuff. But then there is the other, there is going back to this idea of like, you don’t want to create conflict.

Bill (40:33.734)

Many such cases. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (40:56.265)

Say it doesn’t have to be politics, it could be politics, religion, economics, all of these things, it could be eating healthy. All of these things in some way create conflict when people disagree. And so you don’t necessarily wanna go around trying to convince other people that they’re wrong and you don’t wanna be creating conflict, but you also, something that kinda jumps out to me in the world we live in today is,

You also don’t wanna go around intentionally falsifying your preferences. So what I mean by that is like, you know, if you read like books like the Gulag Archipelago or you read the rise and fall of the Third Reich, you see the inner workings of these societies that get taken over by these radical movements. And a big part of it is people just going along, people just not.

Bill (41:29.738)

Yes.

Josh Mortensen (41:51.985)

what they actually think, people not standing up for something because the collective is moving a certain way. And that’s what you would call preference falsification. And that’s actually a really dangerous thing, especially in a society that’s supposed to be free like ours. So I think this idea that you brought up of taking the higher ground or whatever that strategy is, it’s probably really useful because you can achieve both things. You can achieve

Bill (42:03.98)

Yes.

Josh Mortensen (42:21.673)

a non-combatant kind of agreement where you’re like, yes, on one level we are agreeing, but I think it probably is important to follow it up with some statement around, but I think the way to handle it is this, even though the other person may disagree.

Bill (42:39.531)

Yes.

Yeah, you know, I get what you’re saying, right? So you have to never speak falsely in a way that is manipulative. Because that’s actually, was reading the Bible earlier today. something that always sticks out to me is Jesus attacking the Pharisees. Because he just totally reams them. Like everyone says,

Jesus is a nice guy. It’s like, dude, read Matthew chapter 23. Like, he is destroying the Pharisees. He’s like, your fake, your morality is total BS. Like, you literally just pretend like you’re a good person on the outside, but then you go home, you’re super resentful, you’re just trying to manipulate everyone else. And I think a lot of people do go about doing this kind of preference falsification with that intent. They’re acting moral, but really, they’re not.

and they’re not acting it out. And you know, I think the solution to that, those people in particular, they just need to be called out, dude. You know, like people are afraid to call people out, but like, again, Jesus went to the temples and he made a whip and he whipped people. It’s like, dude, this is like Mr. Nice guy, okay? Like, clearly you can, you can, you could be nice and you can hang out with the downtrodden and you can, you know, I guess maybe even feel pity for them.

But when someone is acting wrongly and you’re in a position to where maybe it’ll cause some social ills or whatever, like if it’s wrong enough, I think it is basically, you at this current time in our society, it’s basically time to just be like, no, dude, actually, like you’re being a bad person. Everyone knows you’re being a bad person. Like just stop. and that’s not a high ground maneuver at all. That’s like really like aggressive, but you know, this is something that, have you ever listened to PF young by the way?

Josh Mortensen (44:38.205)

No, I don’t know PFO.

Bill (44:40.109)

Okay, I recommend him. He’s very interesting. So PF Young talks about, he has a couple of series of videos where he says logic is, know, fake basically. it’s not exactly what he’s saying, but what he’s saying is that people get your vibe. So, and if you want to influence people, logic is very stupid. Like it is like, it’s like,

If we could list like a hundred ways to influence people, it’s like 100 on the list. Like it’s not a good way to do it. It’s only good to do it to people who are interested in that type of what I like to call the Logos game, which is extremely small. So you can throw facts and logic, so to speak, into your persuasive arguments, but they’re persuasive arguments at their core. You need to know how to persuade people, how to convince them that

your point of view is good and the best way to do that is to be a good person is to like be likable. It’s like to be like a person who’s like, yeah, you know, I look up to him and I want to emulate him. Like, you know, no matter how you feel about Elon Musk, he has changed politics forever without a doubt, like in indescribable ways. And why, but why, how did he even, how was he able to do that? Well, he became a

billionaire running seven different companies working 110 hours a week sleeping on the floor of his factory and people look at him and they’re like I want to be that guy he’s cool like he sends rockets to the moon he can do like satellite like orbit calculations in his head so then whenever he starts speaking about politics people are like well you know like it’s a little aggressive but at the same time he sent a rocket to the moon or not to the moon but you know he sent a rocket to you know outer space so like

that he’s kind of got some he’s got some he’s got some riz to him some bravado something that’s cool that you like that makes you kind of want to pay attention if that makes sense

Josh Mortensen (46:45.791)

Yeah, it makes me think of good faith actors versus bad faith actors. And so this idea that you’re talking about where the first way to try to influence somebody or persuade them is just to show them that you’re a good person. just, it’s like going back to this idea of the unconscious. There’s part, just some interaction that you have with them where they make you feel good just by interacting. So it may be that they’re just very friendly, they’re inquisitive.

Bill (47:14.476)

Yes.

Josh Mortensen (47:15.413)

They’re kind, they have manners and they’re polite. And that just makes people feel like, this is like a genuine person, this is a good person. And so it’s that unconscious side of you. The thing with politics today, and not just politics, but also just media, people in the media, whether it’s like the traditional kind of legacy media, which is

It just feels like just completely overrun with bad faith actors. And then even in the kind of the new internet media kind of podcasts and know, stack world, there’s a split where some people do come across as good faith and some people come across as bad faith. I think I would agree with you where when you see the bad faith actors, you have to call them out. But the thing is that

Bill (47:51.904)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (48:15.533)

that like when you go to Thanksgiving dinner and you’re sitting across from your sister-in-law, you may disagree with her, but like she’s just a regular person in a regular job. She has no influence, no control.

Bill (48:26.518)

No, yeah, and just for the record, I would not recommend calling your sister out. That’s not what I’m saying, but keep going.

Josh Mortensen (48:32.481)

Well, that’s what I’m getting to is like, you might disagree with her and you might think that, you know, or if it’s your brother-in-law or if it’s your uncle, whoever it is, you may disagree with them, but they aren’t, I wouldn’t consider them like bad faith actors because they’re just people who have their opinions or they have their new source. And whatever their new source is, whatever they’re consuming, that’s just their worldview. That’s what they think is real. And so there’s no

Bill (48:48.065)

No, not at all.

Bill (48:54.38)

Yes.

Josh Mortensen (49:02.027)

There’s no point in calling out that person and getting angry with that person and fighting with that person because neither one of you has any influence. But when it comes to people who have large audiences, when it comes to people who have actual power, who are in actual offices, when you see them being bad faith, I think it’s very important to call that.

Bill (49:21.388)

Yes, for sure. And I think a lot of people confuse epistemological, let’s say, inaccuracy or shoddy epistemology for bad faith acting. And no offense to everyone who thinks about politics, but they basically all have bad epistemology. It’s something that you learn as a journalist, because when you’re a journalist, although there is a lot of like,

There’s some linguistic games you’re playing, for sure. But you can never actually say something that didn’t happen. However, you can misrepresent it in such a way that when it is read, it is read untruthfully. And then the person who says it doesn’t investigate, so their epistemology, again, very shoddy. But that doesn’t mean they’re bad faith. It just means the average person just isn’t going to go like,

gonna like look at their news story and be like, you know what? You know what I need to do? I need to like look at every single detail of this and see if it like matches up with reality. Cause like to do that, it’s gonna take like hours and hours and hours. And it’s like, no, like no one’s doing that. Like that’s, that’s, that’s not the case. But however, when it comes to like, you know, a major political actors, like, buddy, believe me, they have done the research. Like they have consultants, you know, every single aspect of this. Like there are these, you know,

persuasive experts like, you know, Scott Adams, who were probably talking to him and saying, hey, I know this fact, this fact, this fact, this fact. If you place this fact up here, it’ll be perceived this way, this fact down here, it’ll be perceived this way, blah, blah, blah. So those are the people that you can really like, I think that it’s more appropriate to call out that Jesus, again, would, he would, he would crack the whip on them. And I think that’s what people like a lot of people misunderstand about Jesus and even like the hero archetype as a whole, that it’s not about

You’re not heroic for going after every single person who says something wrong. It’s actually oftentimes super counterproductive because you’re just throwing these narrative bombs that are emotionally disintegrating or physiologically even stressful. And that’s not helpful. That’s not very helpful at all. But it is helpful.

Bill (51:38.958)

when a local politician does something really messed up and then you say, you know what, I actually, know some of the details of that. Then you go to a journalist and say, Hey, guess what? Guess what this guy did. Like that’s, that’s helpful to call out.

Josh Mortensen (51:51.231)

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And I think it’s fascinating that there are so many people who have actually come across in this kind of Jungian philosophy, psychology, kind of esoteric mysticism, like peeling back the curtain kind of space, who still fall into like leaning politically in certain ways that are surprising to me. Because for me, for one, I would just, I think that

when it comes to a discussion of politics, it’s in the same way that when it comes to a discussion of religion or any other topic, it’s actually more interesting to analyze it than to argue like your opinion about one thing or the other. And yeah, and it’s interesting how much, I mean, think it’s just the way, again, that we’re wired, it’s our brains.

Bill (52:31.584)

Yes.

Josh Mortensen (52:48.833)

being like this collective species, being like a social species and really needing the group for safety and security and for your livelihood. And so you unwittingly, I think people just are always looking for that tribe that they can be a member of. And so it happens to everybody. I think that, I don’t know, it just surprises me sometimes when people want to argue more about specific policies rather than analyze

the broader picture or the characters or what they’re actually saying or what they do after they say the thing that they say. It’s just more interesting that way.

Bill (53:26.669)

Yeah.

Yeah, you know, I agree with you because, you know, I actually have like, kind of wanted to be a political commentator at first. But then once I realized, like, number one, I don’t want to die. Or two, like, you know, and I say that I say I laughed jokingly, but that actually did happen. And if you say anything like. Because it’s what I was saying earlier that basically.

If you say things and me personally, I would say things that are like crazily like narrative breaking because like I want to actually look for the truth, but like, does that, what does that get you? and maybe there will come a time where I will like shift into that, but I think that deconstructing the narrative to that much, that high of a level where throwing those types of bombs.

Maybe it is useful. Maybe someone does have to fall on the sword, so to speak. And that’s why I said earlier, it’s okay to have extremist politics because I look at those guys, I look at them two ways. For one, they meaningfully push the narrative forward in the way that the mainstream does not at all. And they tend to say things that are more true. And maybe they dive into some conspiracy theories sometimes, but it’s weird because they simultaneously are saying things that are super true.

but then things that are super false. But then you move towards the middle and it’s like, it’s whatever maintains the status quo, which is often like more false than it is true. So I think the extremists are actually kind of onto something there. But at the same time, the extremist ideologies like, you know, red pill, kind of some sections of the new right, maybe like wokeness is hardly even extremists anymore, but like maybe like super radical feminism or whatever. I look at all of that stuff as just shadow projection.

Bill (55:20.94)

like that’s all it seems to be to me it’s just like whenever you know I actually I’m writing a script right now and I’m you know I like to pick on the red pill guys a lot but the reason why I like to pick on them is because I’m a man and you know it doesn’t if if you’re a man like talking bad about feminism online it’s like it’s I don’t think that’s necessarily a great look even if I don’t agree with some of that stuff but

If you’re talking to men though as a man, I think you actually have more of a chance to influence them. So like if you’re a woman, I suggest that you, you know, talk about that, not to, you know, be the stereotypical man, tell your woman what to do. That’s kind of funny. But, so I’m a man talking to men and I say, Hey, look, you red pillars. You say something like, like, I don’t want to sleep with that girl. Like, she’s just interested in looks like.

Cause like one of the big things in the red pill and the black pill is this thing called Chad’s, which your audience may or may not be familiar with. essentially it’s just this guy who’s like super beautiful, six foot four, you know, chiseled, whatever. And they say, like only, only Chad’s get laid, blah, blah, blah. And it’s like, do you actually believe that? Or like, do you think that women actually believe that?

like they only go after Chad’s because like the statistics on this totally disprove that or is it just you that only wants to go after the very attractive woman and it’s like hey look fair enough I do too like I actually do want to go for like the eight nine ten woman whatever but like to me when they say that women only look for good guys they’re actually just reflecting their own mind with their ideology does that make sense

Josh Mortensen (57:11.805)

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, you gave one example, but I think it runs the gamut of, you know, politics and like cultural movements and, you know, all these social activists. think most of, yeah, so going way back to Jordan Peterson, I think one of the smartest things he ever said was, was that unless you can make your bed in the morning, like don’t go out and try to change the world. And I think a lot, there’s a lot of people who, who don’t make their own bed.

Bill (57:36.29)

Yes.

Josh Mortensen (57:40.779)

who don’t, you know, psychologically even, like they just haven’t dealt with themselves. They haven’t cleaned up their own space and they’re out there trying to change the world, but a lot of that is just shadow projection. And the thing with that is that going back to this idea of like bad faith actors, like that’s how they use you. That’s how they manipulate you. It’s just like being in a, growing up in like a toxic family that’s kind of like.

Bill (57:46.423)

Yeah.

Bill (57:54.658)

Yeah, exactly.

Josh Mortensen (58:09.793)

the family is orbiting this narcissist in the middle. And what that person is doing is like assigning labels to everybody and getting everybody to fight against each other and pick on each other so that they can just sit up here and be in control, have nobody challenge them. And that’s the same thing that’s happening kind of in the cultural, political, social space is that there are bad faith actors who are trying to get everybody to orbit them.

Bill (58:16.012)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (58:37.893)

And then in order to not lose that center space, they just get everybody to fight against each other. It’s so obvious like who, what your shadow problems are manifesting as in the real world, what you’re projecting out there. And so they just feed you that and then you go and fight amongst yourselves.

Bill (58:58.614)

Yes, exactly. And now, like I said though, there’s a weird kind of dual nature to that shadow because someone might interpret what we’re saying to mean, but like, am I wrong? Like, all of my criticisms about reality wrong? And it’s like, well, maybe some of them are, but maybe some of them are. Like, they are true. And I think that when we call it shadow projection and ideology shadow projection, well, then you have to ask yourself, why are there like millions of guys following that? So

there’s clearly something arising from the collective unconscious there, like saying, address me, address me, address me. Now, is it the case, like the Red Pillars say, that the feminists are all wrong? That could be the case on certain fundamental axioms of their beliefs. And it also could be the case that it’s kind of like a call to action, to a call to, again, make your bed, a call to get up. Like, just get up today. Leave your house instead of playing video games.

I know that’s like a cliche thing to say, but I think that’s a better way of looking at it. Instead of just looking at it as like, my ideology has all the right answers, maybe you should ask yourself, why do I follow my specific ideology? Because the ideology is constraining your perception. And perception, I think, is meant to kind of look at a wide array of things. And as it narrows more and more towards something, things are

things are going wrong. So there’s this guy on Twitter. He’s like, this is a pretty esoteric reference, but his name is Egan Robot. Many people may or may not know who he is. I believed his pin tweet is this. It says, everything is mono causal and caused by whatever specific thing I’m on right now. Yeah. It’s so funny, right? Cause it’s like, actually want to make a video about this cause it’s so true, dude. Like you see like these

Josh Mortensen (01:00:50.209)

Hmm

Bill (01:00:56.77)

these people that say, it’s all capitalism’s fault, the Marxists. They’re like, my god, capitalism did this. And one of my favorite things, so you talk about the Gulag Archipelago, I think in the earlier, maybe before we talked on the pod, but there’s a game that he used to play with these guys, basically the communists, basically saying, like,

like there’s not a lot of grain, like kind of crazy how the commissars didn’t know about that. And he’s like, what do mean? There’s plenty of grain. And it just keeps on going. There’s excuse after excuse. And the modern version of this is Cuba. So they’ll say like, so someone will say, Cuba is an example of socialism gone wrong. Right. And then it’s like, that’s just because of US embargoes. And then when you go into the economics of that, it’s like, wait, but it’s not. And they’re like, no, no, no. See, you just, you just have the math all wrong. And it’s like, look, dude.

If your perception is so constrained that everything is monocausal, everything is caused by this one thing, it’s like your perception has gone wrong. And to me, when your perception is monocausal, it’s almost certainly your shadow coming up and saying, yo, yo, I’m here, time to address me. And now people don’t think like that, of course, because most people don’t read Young.

but I think that that’s a fairly obvious thing to me. It’s calling to you specifically. And I think for them, they will probably get mad at me saying this, but it’s basically saying, look, for them too, specifically, take some damn responsibility. Because if you did, if you were like those greedy capitalists on Wall Street who work 80 hours a week, you probably wouldn’t have a bad life. That’s something that, especially growing up in a family where

just some brief personal details, but essentially, my pops, he worked like 80 hours a week and he wasn’t on Wall Street or anything, but when I was a kid, he worked at McDonald’s and I saw him just grinding and grinding away. And then eventually he became, he actually went into the finance world and he was still doing the same thing, like grinding away, grinding away. And eventually we went from, we lived across the street from this house.

Bill (01:03:11.022)

This is a really unlucky house, but they got robbed like 12 times. I don’t know what was in that house It’s like freaking, you know, Treasure Island in there apparently but We went from that to living in like a pretty damn nice house and he can buy nice cars now But it’s not like that was handed to him because he oppressed people like he worked like so much So much and I think whenever these like the Marxists are calling out these capitalists I think honestly the real explanation there is that

They want what they have. They want to actually be a hard worker. And they say that they don’t work hard. But I don’t think they truly believe that. I don’t think they actually believe that. Maybe I’m too hopeful.

Josh Mortensen (01:03:52.265)

You think it’s more, no, but that’s interesting, because you said they want what they have, and so my mind, before you had finished your sentence, went to like a material possessions have kind of, you know, the cars and the houses and the airplanes, but you then said they want that work ethic, they want to be able to be, so basically you’re saying they want to be able to be that person, to be the person that could do something like that.

Bill (01:03:59.394)

Yes.

Bill (01:04:08.781)

Yes.

Bill (01:04:18.796)

Yeah, well, it’s a bit convoluted, right? Because maybe they don’t understand that they want that work, but they want that thing. And their issue is, you know, what’s it in Timothy, the Bible, it says, the love of money is the root of all evil. Now, he’s not saying the love or I’m sorry, he’s not saying money is the root of all evil, because that’s categorically different than the love of money. So if you love money, you just want what that money gives you.

But if you want money to do things and to get things and to help other people, that’s totally different, if that makes sense. And I think maybe in their mind, they’re essentially making the mistake of wanting the thing. But really, their unconscious is telling them is that they want the work ethic necessary to get that thing.

Josh Mortensen (01:05:16.895)

Yeah, I think that’s pretty insightful. That’s very much in line with what I was saying earlier about why we gravitate towards stories. There’s like an unconscious part of us that sees the truth in it that could help us become more conscious. And then you feel that but you don’t have the explanation yet. And so you have to come up with like an ego driven reason. And man, yeah, when you talk about mono causal, I think the biggest thing right now that I see

Bill (01:05:24.173)

Yes.

Bill (01:05:36.503)

Yes.

Josh Mortensen (01:05:42.281)

out there is this Marxist movement, this kind of socialist movement to attack people who are successful. All of the problems in the world are the billionaires’ problems, like caused by the billionaires.

Bill (01:05:48.248)

Mm-hmm.

Josh Mortensen (01:05:55.605)

But it’s just so fascinating because we live in a time when the standard of living is, for the majority of people, is vastly greater than it’s ever been. And one of the reasons is because people have jobs and those jobs are at companies and those companies are owned by somebody. And the loop just doesn’t connect in some way. the, yeah.

It’s mono-causal, right? So they’re not seeing the bigger systemic problems that are caused by all the other factors. They just blame it on one thing. But I think your insight to say that that’s a shadow projection and then narrowing it down to this idea that what they really want is to be the kind of person who’s smart enough, hardworking enough, driven enough, risk averse enough to actually go after something and do it. To be a good enough leader, to be a builder, to be a creator.

Bill (01:06:26.072)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (01:06:53.477)

I think that’s really interesting.

Bill (01:06:55.534)

Maybe it’s a little too pie in the sky, I think that’s a plausible explanation.

Josh Mortensen (01:07:00.693)

yeah, I agree. I think it’s very plausible. Yeah. Yeah, okay, Bill, we’re over an hour. So I want to give you the rest of your day back to you. But this has been a really interesting conversation. I appreciate you going back and forth with me on. We just went down to every topic that came up and it was fun to just keep going down rabbit holes. So I appreciate it. If people want to find you, they want to find signals and symbols. Where would they go looking?

Bill (01:07:26.316)

Yeah, just go on YouTube, just at signals and symbols. And also, I am on YouTube. Or, no, YouTube. I’m on Twitter as Brandon P. Also, the at is the a priorist. I will be changing that soon, to my nickname, because it’s Bill, because it’s just so much easier. Brandon, you kind of stumble over it.

Josh Mortensen (01:07:52.96)

Okay.

Bill (01:07:55.604)

bill it’s like bang

Josh Mortensen (01:07:56.353)

Brandon, Bill, yeah. All right, well, I appreciate it and hopefully we can do this again sometime.

Bill (01:08:04.588)

Yeah, for sure. I really appreciate you having me on. You’ve been a great interviewer.

Josh Mortensen (01:08:09.089)

Okay, thank you so much, bye.

Bill (01:08:10.959)

All right, have a good one.