Gabor Maté and Yanis Varoufakis | HOW TO HEAL FROM THIS TOXIC CULTURE | Podcast 4

this podcast accompanies the acclaimed new docu series in the eye of the storm which follows the remarkable journey of Maverick Economist politician and whistleblower Janis veracis both the series and podcast explore the connections between power democracy capitalism and the deepening crisis of civilization the series is available to watch now details in the description enjoy the conversation I'm curious if you and Janis have crossed paths before or is this the first time ideologically we have but not uh not personally U I've been very aware of Janice's work ever since the 2013 Greek crisis and then in

preparing my own recent book The Myth of normal I read his book about the weak shall suffer um and I've been very aware of his speaking on many issues including as a Jew I've been very appreciative of his speaking out on Palestine so yeah we've cassed ideologically uh but not not in person so it's a pleasure if I may but in to say that uh it's a great honor for me to be meeting you for the first time well even in two Dimensions uh having followed your work for many years myself your activism regarding mental

health especially your struggle uh to Dem medicalize to a very large extent uh what what what are social um effects on people psychology um for people like myself who are not Jewish but who are uh supremely cognizant of the major of the of the uniqueness of the evil that was involved in the Holocaust and who because we are sensitized by the Holocaust let's let's face it these days I cannot speak without being branded an anti-semite the moment I open my mouth for not supporting the genocide of the Palestinians so to have somebody like you it

gives us the strength and the opportunity to continue to fight they could fight simultaneously against anti-Semitism and against the genocide of the Palestinians I appreciate that you know I want to make a comment about the uniqueness of the Holocaust and you'll probably agree with this there's something colonialist about branding the Jewish Holocaust is absolutely unique I mean it was hor Anders and the technological bureaucratic doggedness with which it was pursued but let's face it um the belgians killed 10 million congales um just 50 years before the Jewish Holocaust nobody ever talks about that you know

and uh the first the first genocide by Germans happened not against Jews but in um I think it was is in Namibia now but somewhere in somewhere in Africa and those things are sanitized from history and it's a little bit like the current without getting into the politics of the Ukraine War uh in Canada for example Ukrainian refugees are welcomed without any conditions whatsoever but gazin they only accept a few 1,000 and they have their relatives living in Canada so there's a kind of a eurocentric view of who suffers who doesn't and uh not to

minimize what happened to my own people nearly to me actually as an infant but there is something eurocentric um about specializing the the Jewish Holocaust while ignoring the the mass killings of people all over the world under the colonial system and certainly the creation of Israel itself was almost a way of Europe um Outsourcing its guilt unto the unto the Palestinians if you said this you'd be called an anti-semite when I say it I'm called a self-hating Jew but we I I'll take it you know well I take it from the Greeks I'm a self-hating

Greek when I'm criticizing Greek ethnic lens in the north of Greece for instance but let me let me make the point that you're absolutely right there is no point and it is quite misanthropic to create a hierarchy of atrocities and to say well this is the worst the second worst is that one the third one okay there's no way you can compare and contrast the pain of people and to come up with a metric by which to measure which was the worst uh the reason why I insist that there is a uniqueness about the Holocaust

without meaning that it it was more horrendous than what happened to the algerians from the French or to the congales by the belgians what astonishes me and it's been astonishing me ever since I was a very young person and found out that this was what what happened was when the Nazis came to Greece which were they not they were not planning initially to come to Greece that that is important they were not initially come that that was they had subcontracted G melini and yet they had the address and sometimes the telephone number because there were

some telephone numbers back then of every Jewish Family living in Greece and what strikes me and that's why I think it's Unique was the the attitude of the uh the stum collector like a stamp collector will die if he doesn't find the last stamp of the collection if there's one stamp missing he's going he's not going to be able to sleep at night okay that's how the Nazis were with the Jews they had to get everyone everyone including people who had you know a tinely little connection with with with with some Jewish ancestry now has

never happened before you know the belgians were not interested in the blacks they were interested in Congo they wanted the minerals they wanted the wealth okay if there was if there was a way of Shifting you know millions of congales away there would you press a button and get rid of them to go somewhere else they would have press it they wouldn't they did they were not killing them instrumentally so that is why I'm saying that the Holocaust is unique I I agree with you in that sense it was my my main problem is the

justification for what's happening in in in Palestine and it's been so many decades now of of Oppression and and and occupation and ethnic cleansing and dispossession and repeated massacres and we're still invoking the Holocaust and it's appalling to see it being employed as a justification for what's been happening in Palestine that's my main um problem with it um I'd love to turn the conversation to your work though if I may I mean I have some questions for you sure um um in my book The Mython normal I I talk about the impact of um social

factors on on health and I referred to a study that was done in Greece in 2013 when when there was the economic crisis and um they they compared the stres horo levels of young Greeks with the young swedes and the stres horo levels of young Greece were lower than normal which means that their stress system had been exhausted and that's a major risk for disease later on and um this is what people don't realize is that uh politics and social factors have such a huge impact on health we think that health is just a isolated

um individual event in a discrete separate body but actually there's so much evidence now and I know you realize this that social factors impact not just economics and political movements or political events but also People's Health and here's what I want to ask you about Greece this is always fascinated me um you guys were elected serza that where you were the um Finance Minister the Greeks elected you guys with a firm mandate to oppose the economic destru ruction of your country your your party was elected and almost overnight it turned around and uh H what

happened there psychologically within your party but also in the Greek population that later on they just accepted this as inevitable so people so quickly gave up their hopes and their dreams and their point of view how does the system maintain such control that people have no individuality left they have no independence of thought or action left what what happened there I've never seen such a rapid turnaround you're quite right you're quite right let's take it from the top before 2015 you're quite right we had um a quadrupling quadrupling of uh suicides as a result of

the uh of the loss of Hope you see it's not poverty because you know Greeks have been poor for youngs poverty has been part and parcel of being of the Greek condition uh when I was growing up Greece was poorer than it was in 2012 2013 it's the substantial and very fast loss of um means to reproduce one's life that um drives people to um mental destruction uh the reason why I went into that government was because the young prime minister that had led the party and Lexis Tas had inspired me as well as you

know millions of people out there uh I remember walking to his Prim ministerial office after a swearing ceremony and you know we looked into one another's eyes we hugged and we said oh what are we doing now you know because we were in command of uh the most bankrupt State probably in the world in the weeks that followed he came to an agreement with our uh foes with the foes of our people with the creditors with the financiers with Angela Amel the chancellor of Germany it's clear that he came to an agreement um I was

a problem I was in his way because he wanted to surrender and I had you know all time is saying to me you know I've been through the the pain of the split of the Communist Party through the pain of the Civil War through the I can't have another civil war so lots of people stayed with that government giving them the benefit of the doubt knowing that they were doing the wrong thing because emotionally they could not handle it and that's and the last thing I want to say is this then tias after he surrendered

signed all the most awful pieces of legislation that were dictated they were sent to him from Brussels and Berlin and Frankfurt by email and and and gab I don't know whether you can understand what it it was it felt like to be in Parliament because I was a member of parliament I didn't resign from that obviously uh and we were getting pieces of legislation that were 1,000 pages long and it was clear that they were translated by Google by Google translate because they were written in in German or in in English and they was sent

to Parliament the night before through Google translate and Google translate was much worse than it is today say it was impossible to even read them you know but of course nobody read them because those who voted against voted against anyway and those who voted in favor the only way they could vote in favor is by not knowing what they were voting for so and then immediately after that two months later he stages an election and he wins it because the alternative was the right that was enthusiastic about the surrender I mean he was not enthusiastic

about the surrender so people had to choose between somebody who was surrendering unenthusiastically and the Bastards from the right who were very gungho that we had surrendered and and so they voted for him you know on the basis of the lesser of two evils logic you know a number of things come up for me um one is that there was a phrase by Berto BR um that you might recall where the great German playright where he he said that the the government is disappointed in the people maybe they should elect they should elect a different

people you know that's why I stole the expression that he overthrew the people yes yeah yeah yeah I grew up in Hungary as you might know and I was 13 years old when the Hungarian Revolution broke out and which kind of opened my eyes to the realities of that system but the ideological control in communist Eastern Europe was far more fragile and far more transparent and uh easy to resist at least intellectually the ideological control that we have here in the west I mean they had in one of your recent interviews to talk about the

Matrix and and and in Eastern Europe you know the to be this joke that you could uh you could be honest intelligent or member of the Communist Party in fact you could be two of those three things but not three at the same time you know um people could see through it here in the west people actually think they're free but as you said in the recent interview they're living inside a matrix and uh where inside the Matrix you think you're free but you're totally controlled and uh maybe you want to talk about this Matrix

that we're caught up in where we think we're free but actually we're so controlled uh my father was a communist he was in the in as old knows he met him he was in a prison camp um but he told me that um um and this is something I keep repeating for our audiences sake especially leftwing audiences who must understand that the left is perfectly capable of creating a lot of authoritarianism my father used to say to me that when he was in the prison camp a loyal communist I mean he died a communist nevertheless

he told me that he knew that had we won our side won the Civil War and gree was a Communist Party a communist country he would probably be in the same concentration camp with different guards that's what my dad used to say so that's that's that um on the question of uh technology okay my latest book I call it techn feudalism I think that the markets have been sidelined by something like digital thiefs and of course you are absolutely right it's not a technology has taken over um under capitalism it wasn't the steam engines fought

that we had capitalism the Lites were not smashing machines because they hated the machines because the machines were taking over the lit who by the way are probably the most misunderstood agents in political history um they were simply protesting the loss of their livelihood and they were protesting the distribution of income produced by the machines and labor and they were saying quite naturally uh well if these machines can make us all richer we want some of those riches uh uh so similarly uh my thesis my hypothesis in the recent book techn feudalism is that the

reinforcement learning Aid driven algorithms which live inside our phones on our laptops uh in this networked Capital which I call Cloud Capital because it's again it's supposed to be uploaded on the cloud it's not a cloud of course it's huge server Farms that look like normal factories um in the United States in China in Europe everywhere uh connected with Mater optic fiber cables and cell towers it's all capital right but I call it Cloud Capital to distinguish it from Steam Engines Railways electricity grids even very modern industrial robots because all the standard forms of capital

whether it is a fishing rod or or a very Advanced industrial robot they are produced to means of production machines produce to produce something else but the algor ormic Capital which I call Cloud capital is a produced means of Behavioral modification it doesn't produce anything it simply is an automated system for modifying human human behavior uh so it it does all sorts of things that machines could never do I mean until recently you needed a good Advertiser in order to create an advertisement that persuades people to buy McDonald's to buy Coca-Cola to buy mercedes-benzes what

whatever so you have the creative mind of a good Advertiser you know I use don't Draper from madman as an example right who is you know a service provider he provides the service to the conglomerate so that the conglomerate can can can sell more stuff to you than me okay uh but Cloud Capital today this algorithmic Capital which is inside amazon.com inside uh Google inside Facebook inside t to and a myriad of other digital platforms or Cloud fiefs as I call them what this machine does cloud capital is it arrests your attention like television used

to it inputs into your mind desires that you didn't have like advertisers used to but it does that through an infinite two-way regress advertisment used to be a one way street you watched something on television it went into your mind and you wanted McDonald and you went to the McDonald's you ate that was it it was one way now with Alexa with Siri with all of the devices it is an infinite regress because it you train it to train you to train it to train you to train it at infinit to know you so that

it gives you suggestions that inspire you to buy stuff that you would not have thought of buying and then it sells it to you directly bypassing every sing single market and does so by charging the owner of that cloud Capital who owns the produced the produced means of Behavioral modification he has the capacity to do two things at once to charge the capitalist who sells you the binoculars or the you know the electric bicycle or the book that you buy from Amazon com to charge them 40% that's a rent I call it a cloud rent

that's why I'm call talking about techn feudalism not techn capitalism okay and at the same time when you like something when you post a review on Amazon when you upload a video on Instagram or Tik Tok you are replenishing with your free labor I call that cloud surf labor you are replenishing their Capital stock their Cloud Capital so you're right it's not a technology that's taking over it's a new ruling class that owns Cloud Capital which is a mutation of capital which is skilled capitalism that's my thing it's also so um confident of its uh

control that even allows you and I to talk like this across uh thousands of kilometers and to have this talk broadcast to a lot of people but they're not worried that it's going to make any difference in your book Gabel you write about the toxic culture that we live in and how that is basically at the root of the the Health crisis the physical and mental health crisis I wonder if you could talk a bit about that and perhaps how that relates to this rapid technological advancement that we're seeing that that Janis articulated yeah well

the toxicity in the culture resides in the fact that it's um it's not designed to meet human needs is designed to meet the needs of those in control and uh that imposes certain condition s first of all it inculcates a certain psychology which is that of um passivity and acquiescence to power and as yanis was talking about a kind of passive consumerism where we're uh motivated to act not according to our needs but according to the desires inculcated in Us by the system and um it uh for that to happen from early in life we

have to be disconnected from our field feelings and our and our gut feelings actually and and and um be disconnected from ourselves and there's many conditions in this society that create that from from actually inudo onwards because uh the more stressed people are um already pregnant women who are stressed that's going to affect the physiology and the psychology of their infants in the womb and and afterwards and then The Way We R Kids um which is no longer like I was in Greece a few times and More in Greece still but much less so than

it used to be there still is a sense of community and communalism I don't mean communism I mean communalism the sense that we belong together um people Dan in the streets together and communities still know each other and they eat together and all that but that's falling apart in Greece I know that people are getting more individualistic more competitive um more isolated does epam of loneliness and loneliness itself is a risk factor for disease in the west particularly in the globalized um um precincts of North America but increasingly in Europe as well the less and

less of that sense of community more and more sense of uh isolation individualistic aspiration where our aspirations are no longer what's good for the whole but what's good for me in opposition to everybody else those uh ideologies and that way of being actually makes people physically sick and that suppression of the self that this Society from an early age on um actually has physiological implications for our health and not to mention and I talked about this earlier the stress imposed by the insecurity by the loss of control I mean you look at the major factors

that promote stress they loss of control loss of security conflict L lack of a sense of agency those conditions actually stress people physiologically which makes them more prone for illness so that what I'm saying overall is that the very nature of this system um functions to um disempower people to have them pursue needs that are not real needs as Yiannis was just talking about but but desires ingrained in them through a very subtle system of propaganda and control and that actually makes us sick and so if you look at the epidemic of more kids being

diagnosed with depression anxiety attention problems suicidality um more and more adults u i mean thean mentioned the suicide rate in uh in Greece uh after the fall of the Soviet Union there was a huge um uh because of the loss of the social network whatever you can say about communism I'm not here to advocate for Soviet communism but the end of it created a lot of insecurity a lot of suicides a lot more people dying of alcoholism in North America last year I don't know if you guys know this but in one year more Americans

died of overdoses twice as many Americans died of overdoses in one year then died in the Vietnam Iraq and Afghan Wars put together and so these are not individual problems they're the outcomes of a certain system and that's that's why I'm calling it a toxic culture literally poisons people if I may say that the especially in North America uh and in the United States there were four waves that led to these deaths of despair of U um Collective angst to a large extent you had the the collapse of the new deal with the end of

Breton Woods 1971 which saw for the first time um the working classro in the United States for the very very first time working Americans uh well I I think if I'm if I'm meup I think you said in one of your interviews that until the fall of the Soviet Union the ruling Elite had a reason to buy off the working class by better wages and living conditions because there was was kind of a threat a competition once the competition disappeared the gloves came off indeed and that's when you had fees being imposed on students in

Britain and in Australia you had uh the complete collapse of any attempt to show a civilized face for capitalism but besides that there was a major crisis of capitalism with the end of Bron Woods in 1971 which saw for the first time in the history of the United States a significant diminution of the of the living standards of the working class very first time you had even in during the Great Depression those who worked because prices were falling faster than wages yeah their spending power was not falling if you managed to hold on to your

job right and then rusell comes in the war very quickly um creates a a period during which inequality shrinks but after 1975 I mean even today uh median salaries in the wages in in in in hourly wages in the United States are lower than what they were in 1975 so you have you have this major that's the first wave the second wave comes when the social contract changes and what effectively the political class tells the American worker is okay you're not going to get more money from uh from work from labor from wage labor um

you'll get it from your home because your home is going to appreciate get your foot in the ladder get a mortgage early okay and then you sell it and then you you you keep the the Surplus value right and that created a lot of anxiety financialized the working class and then in 2008 their home is gets gets repossessed and they lose all that and then after that you have the FED printing all this money giving it to them to the few whereas the many have austerity under Obama and Beyond and then finally you've got the

rise of cloud Capital which uh because it it does away with markets it visualizes you know when you walk into into amazon.com is not like walking into a shopping mall when you want to walk into a shopping mall at least you are with other people and you choose who whom you talk to when you are in amazon.com the algorithm determines who you are allowed to see and speak to and exchange um you know money for goods whatever there is no socialization that is allowed outside the algorithm and where socialization is allowed like Twitter and Tik

Tok and so on the algorithm is primed to create consternation and to create discontent because that is what maximizes their capacity to sell things to you because agitated people you know look at the screen more intently uh so so the techn feudalism takes over from financialized capitalism seamlessly to enhance the despair of the vast majority and even if you're a capitalist you feel despair because you know a lot of the they are vassel capitalists now you know they are sort of surviving you know they're ones who've got a you know a small Factory they you

know they're being taken to the cleaners by the 0.001% uh and and that's why they all go to bed at night you know crying into their pillows and that's why you know there's so much demand for you know your uh profession across the well but one last thing if I make imagine if stazi or the KGB had access to the algorithms of meta Facebook Google I mean my good these people there are some people who still survive like Putin for instance from the old KGB they must be kicking themselves that they had to deploy such

crude measures for social control you know like you know killing people putting them in the Gul now as you put now people volunteer their people volunteer their sdom now can I can I jump in with um sorry gab just Just one thought it would be great to to talk about resistance in the time that we have left because Gabel I know I know in your book it's it's a very sobering powerful book you talk about the Mental Health crisis in such depth and you really get a sense of the scale of it but in the

last part of it you do talk about one of the paths to Healing can be social engagement political engagement activism so I'd love to hear your thoughts on that and there's something specific on that I I'd I'd want to ask too you often emphasize the importance of authenticity that some people lose lose that as infants to maintain attachment to their caregiver um and that that can lead to health problems and just related to that question of authenticity what do you think the role of anger is in in in resistance because tick nahan someone who who

I admire very much as Zen Buddhist monk who who you also mentioned in your book you know he talks very much about the role of transforming anger into compassion and that being a sort of more powerful effective fuel for social change um so yeah your thoughts on any of that I'd be really curious to hear yeah well anger is actually if you look at the emotional circuitry of the brain we're wired for anger not only we're wired for anger all mamals are wir for anger because anger is a boundary defense you know when two animals

enter each other's face and now they don't have to fight because the anger display will actually protect them from having to fight very often so anger is a boundary defense so there's such a thing as healthy anger and it doesn't need to be transformed in fact the suppression of healthy anger which happens to a lot of people growing up in ordinary homes is a risk factor for mental illness and physical illness autoimmune disease and so on because mind and body being Inseparable and the anger being a boundary defense so is the immune system so when

you rep repress healthy anger you're also messing with your immune system it's that simple I mean it's not that simple I could go into great detail but that's how it work so healthy anger is important healthy anger simply maintains a bond and says no you can't do this to me well that's essential on the political level because on a poli level things are being done to people all the time as yanis was just eloquently uh detailing it to us so there's got to be healthy anger there there's unhealthy anger which is um unbridled rage that

takes over the brain and you actually lose control and I've experienced that in my life um um it's not healthy for me or anybody else are around me so we have to make a distinction between three manifestations of anger there the healthy anger of no no more no passan you know you will not do this to me um both on individual and the political level there's the repression of anger which leads to which is which is which undermines physiological health and it it um enables political control and then there is the rage where suppressed anger

just breaks out of you and that's damaging to you and everybody else as well when it comes to resistance um resistance really is a form of healthy anger it says no you will not do this to me and furthermore resistance on a political level is breaking out of the individualistic isolated mindset that capitalism imposes on people and resistance and activism and a says that I'm not suffering alone my my suffering is part of a larger suffering and to break out of it I have to join with other human beings and actually when you look at

how human beings evolved it was not as the individualistic isolated um um competitive creatures against one another but as communal creatures we lived for millions of years and hundreds of thousands of years even in the life of our own species as communal creatures and activism on the political level um restores that communalism of belonging to something greater which immediately gives you more meaning in life so I remember there was that brief flouring of resistance the um occupy a Wall Street movement and I remember being in New York then and I was just seeing the joy

and the liberation of those young people and it was temporary I didn't think it would last uh of course by that time I was old and cynical I suppose but I didn't think it I didn't think it would maintain itself but I certainly saw the emotional liberation of a having a cause of having a just cause and of belonging to something other than in just my little Social Circle those are very healthy Dynamics so in that sense resistance just as the body needs to resist invasive bacteria or viruses we talk about resistance in that sense

political resistance is also a way of manifesting your immune system on a on a social scale that's what I would say yeah that's beautiful yanis it's why I am involved in politics because um it gives me it gives me joy I wake up in the morning and um and I look forward to the day I know that I'm going to be defeated politically there's no doubt about that yeah I've have no no no no no belief zero belief that um you know our movement is going to win I know that you know if you're on

the left you get a chance once every 50 years we got our chance in 2015 we lost uh but so what I know I'm going to die that doesn't mean I'm I'm not going to have a good day today similarly to you know be involved in politics for me in act activism not Politics as a career but as an activist is um to is is a it's a path to to to genuine genuine you demonia to genuine happiness to genuine satisfaction but I there's one provisor however because you know let's face it the Nazis also

had a sense of belonging and a lot of solidarity amongst themselves right some of them have been you know remarkable in the way remarkably hideous in the way that they stuck up for one another here the fascists in Greece I see them they are they are more solidaristic to one another than the leftists between you and me but what is the difference the difference is that they have they see their they tribal they see their group as an extension of their own DNA of their own very very narrow family the trick for being joyous through

communal action and and common action and Collective action is um to see the whole of humanity as one magma to which you belong and to be able to to to enjoy the successes of anyone you know however far away and how however different they may look to you or sound from you uh I think that is the key to genuine to genuine happiness I'm not making a moral point I'm making the point of what works in order to pacify your soul and to make you and to allow you to um to lead the successful life

in the sense of of of fulfilling your potential whatever your potential might be well you mentioned you demonia which you know is an ancient Greek phrase and has to do with joy that comes from a sense of meaning and and a sense of contribution I think um as for being a failure you know um i' I've resigned myself a long time ago to being a failure uh if you're going to be at all if you're going to have a conscience if you're going to have a conscience and if you're going to make that conscience evident

in the political sphere you're going to lose all the time uh whether it comes to to what's happening right now in Gaza I'm going to be in a minority you know and that's how it's going to be and but you know what Yiannis and and Ro I can think of some great failures in history uh Buddha totally failed you know how are we doing with the wisdom and love you know Jesus was a complete failure Divine love forgive you know for they know not what they do uh we're all Brothers turn the how's that going

you know call Marks was a complete failure you know so at least if we're going to fail maybe it's grandiose but we're in pretty good company as failures let me put it that way yeah one question on on the back of that because I think we're running we're running out of time um but just about the role of spirituality and all this you mentioned all those spiritual Titans of our history um and I think through your career gabo you've you've sort of mixed in different circles and spaces some of them spiritual some of them more

kind of medical some of them more iCal and it seemed increasingly obvious to me that we have to find a way of closing the gaps between these spaces to making our politics more spiritual and making our spirituality more political um and perhaps we could just end with your thoughts and then janis's thoughts on that relationship however you want to Define spirituality you know the gaps that you mention are more illusory than real because in real life it's all one and uh it's only to State a scientific fact that and not to mention a spiritual fact

that's been taught by the great teachers for thousands of years that it's all one that the universe is all one we're all manifestations of the universe and universe is the manifestations of us that's not fancy new age spirituality that's just actually how it is so the gaps that we perceive are created by our own ego and uh our own sense of separation and uh realizing those gaps are illusory and self-created um I think is essential and uh I'll tell you quite frankly one of my disappointments I don't know disappointments am I surprised maybe I'm not

surprised but with what's going on right now in Gaza and the horror of it is so clear to anybody with a conscience there's so many wonderful spiritual teachers and psychologists and healers I don't want to say the self-righteously I'm just noticing it with sadness they're not speaking up it's as if it's as if it was happening in Gaza was in a different realm from the spiritual or psychological Realms in which they make such beautiful contributions I wish it was otherwise because for me those gaps that you mentioned R are again illus and self-created and there

ought not to be ideally there would not be those um chasms between the political the social the personal the physical and the spiritual Realms and spirituality ultimately for me is not a religion of any kind but just just the Oneness the Oneness and I I'm far from manifesting that or or feeling it all the time but something in my bones I know it you know well as a hardened materialist Marxist and reconstructed Lefty um I started life um disdaining the word word Spirit spirituality because because it simply reflected in my mind the other side of

the same coin of power and exploitation you know instead of the emperor the bishop um with the sermons that um steady the hand of the killers of the exploiters but then again I have a um a deep deep love of music I consider myself to be a permanently failed musician um I'm not a musician that's why I'm failed as a musician because i' love a musician but the moment the moment I hear music I and the little bit that I play on the piano I forget who I am I genuinely forget who I am it's

not get amnesia I'm simply transported to a different existence one that is cleansing one that make when I come back to this life the music is finished um I feel Serene I feel a kind of happiness that no man can buy so if that's what you mean by spirituality then um that's everything but then again you know um it connects with what I was saying earlier about having a capacity to appreciate Humanity not just your tribe because this is the beauty about music whether you like it or not you know you're in the middle of

the Jungle of Latin America you hear uh a flute playing uh and it's a Melody that that gets you right or you are in China or you are in in Pakistan or wherever H and that's where you realize how stupid racism and how stupid nationalism is because it's it's you it's it's talking to you it's it's it's doing things to your own chemistry to your own Humanity um so yeah for me music music is the connection um well I think that's a really beautiful place to to end this um just from what you said there

Gabor about feeling disappointment with some people who are fantastic spiritual teachers again however you want to Define that not really speaking about Gaza and and such an obvious horror of our time I've shared the very same disappointment I don't quite understand it and I think everyone interested in those domains and Realms should should be curious about why that's the case because if we don't manage to close these gaps I don't I don't see a way forward as you say it it is all one in the end um but look we could talk for so long

there's so much I'd love to ask but I think for now we've run out of time I just want to say thank you to you both and particularly you know at a moment in history when so many people have been silent about what about the the genocide the war crimes that have gone on in in Gaza both of you have really had the courage to speak out very effectively wisely and and with compassion and so I just want to thank you both for that and I hope people enjoy the conversation as much as I have

likewise and I hope be honest that our paths cross sometimes physically as well not just across the E we have to organize this we cannot leave this to chance I'll take you up on this thank you as well very much well thank you thank you R thank you for organizing this thank you Gabor uh we will certainly make sure that our pass our PA's close yeah okay if you enjoyed this podcast please like And subscribe to our Channel