[Music] hi my name is Joel and in this unplugs I have got Jason Silva Jason is an emmy-nominated TV personality the filmmaker futurist public speaker and philosopher he hosted the TV series brain games on the National Geographic Channel which was broadcasted in over 170 countries with shots of awe he presents micro documentaries on futurism technology creativity metaphysics and consciousness to me Jason is a true artist enjoy the moments we captured on camera when Jason and I spent some time together in Amsterdam

what I wanted to ask you throughout the years you’ve been exploring many many different topics yeah within brain games within shots of all you’ve been talking about them you’ve been investigating them if your keynotes about them interviews but when you look at yourself now 20 20 20 20 20 what is the essence of what you are bringing into the world Wow beautiful question what is the essence of what I am bringing to the world in 2020 what am i bringing into the world okay well I recently came across a book the title by

itself really resonated with me and it was called technicians of ecstasy and it’s written by Mark levy and basically the book makes the case that artists and their very best are performing a kind of shamanism in their work that their art is a portal to divination it is a portal to altered states of consciousness it is an instigator of contemplative introspection and it is an attempt to agitate the sleep of man you know my background is philosophy and film I love ideas right philosophy means love of wisdom love of insight right

love of divination and then film is the desire to want to capture in media ecstatic truth in the words of Verner Hertzog so when I combine those loves you know the media that I make is reflects my desire to exteriorize moments of divination so I want to jolt people into awakening and so I think Mike my contribution is is the contribution of an artist you know hopefully with a capital a hmm or the contribution of a poet I think its capital a thanks bro and as Alain de Botton you know said a journalist which I am

NOT but a journalist may be more accurate in describing the details of an event than a poet that’s still kind of naive realism whereas a poet reveals truths of a deeper sort that are beyond the literal grid but I think we need to draw those boundaries real clear you know separate church and state separate empirical truth versus mythopoetic truth but don’t dismiss mythopoetic truth because it’s equally important it’s the truth that sets you free it’s you know it’s the it’s the truthful fiction right it’s

it’s when fiction is more truthful than reality and so I take poetic license in my content I am it artistically imaginative in the way that I convey ideas but I also put a big parentheses around it and say look this is art and it’s art that reflects things that are true and things that are imaginary but as long as I wear the label of an artist I think I can just get away with with sort of stretching my observations and being more elastic in my interpretations of the human condition as your approach as an artist

changed throughout time as my approach as an artist changed throughout time well I’ve been playing with video cameras since 1990s 1994 I was 12 years old when I had my first eight millimeter video camera I was obsessed with making videos recording videos sort of the deliberate and intentional stewardship of reality and I went to film school because I wanted to make movies I thought but I didn’t really want to make movies I wanted to watch movies and then I wanted to make short form videos in response to the movies that that show

coming so I really I fell in love with short form video early on and I think it was also good timing because with the advent of the internet and online video and attention spans being fragmented by the sort of constant interruption of so many social media apps and so many platforms competing for our attention that it kind of fit like a glove that I was doing short form but highly meaningful content like super dense compressed espresso shots of inspiration but all you needed to give me with two or three minutes four minutes tops

you gave me that much I would impact and I didn’t know if that was a monetizable thing I didn’t know if that was a legitimate art form like to call myself a filmmaker for making three-minute monologues feels a little bit pretentious but I’ll tell you what is true is that a lot of people seem to be getting a lot of nourishment from the work I put out hmm so that is very fulfilling I love your t-shirt can you elaborate on your t-shirt in a two to three-minute espresso shop well not to put myself on

the spot this t-shirt is the work of my friend Nick Philip and the imaginary foundation so they basically used t-shirts to trojan-horse psychedelic illumination mind revealing illumination and these Venn diagrams come from the series of shirts that they call the ven commandments not to do a play on words but the ven commandments is that through Venn diagrams they’re gonna make a series of t-shirts that all are pregnant with great truth this one basically says that between something and nothing there

lies the mystery how does nothing become something how does something become nothing again that is an unending mystery right how I mean we can sort of deconstruct it scientifically and trace the origin of life but still there seems to be some flash of divination some anti-entropic force in the universe that turns inert material into dynamic processes that move towards greater complexity and organization you know in a kind of teleological direction and for me that’s something that I learned too that’s something that I turn to when I

need nourishment and antidotes to the realities of the human condition which also include aging and death so how do you take that antidote how do you sink into that mystery well I think that reality subjective reality at least is coupled to perception and so our perception dictates the reality that we experience and finding some kind of agency over our perception of the world some kind of stewardship of our perception crafting a story that we tell ourselves about ourselves and about the world that if is self-serving I think is

a functional necessity Ernest Becker calls it a vital lie but you know sometimes fiction is more truthful than reality without the vital lie you might succumb to the despair of mortality which at least right now is still an undeniable fact of existence that makes the whole [ __ ] act dissolve into meaninglessness so you have to craft a story from the ashes of that existential dread and what is the story that I can craft from the ashes of the despair of mortality well that I am here to make a dent in the universe that life moves

towards greater complexity an organization that the sin tropic or ex tropic quality of life can eventually overcome entropy that we can infuse the universe with consciousness that nanotechnology and biotechnology will become a form of self divination and self-determination where human beings engender their own godhood like that’s a story I can get behind that for me at least excites me enough to the terrifying despair of meaninglessness and mortality that afflicts hmm man with all you’ve heard and seen what would would your take on

the consciousness be when you look at science when you look at the spiritual approach what what is consciousness well there’s certain things that are undeniable and that is that uh consciousness is mediated by physical processes you know my consciousness suffers and is narrowed if I don’t get enough sleep my consciousness becomes a tunnel vision when I’m hungry or my blood sugar is low my consciousness warps and distorts if I take some cannabis my perception of time changes what I notice in the world and my

perceptions are heightened so on that note it would be unfair I think of us to dismiss the physiological underpinnings of conscious experience it is a I believe an emergent property so potentially irreducible in that it’s greater than the sum of its parts but it still emerges from physiological underpinnings even though at certain moments it seems to transcend those physiological underpinnings I would describe it as a pattern of information I kind of fall into reycarts whales interpretation of being a pattern esteem

a cam aynd or how to build a mind we talks about these hierarchy of pattern making qualities that the brain has consciousness offers us at least self-awareness hofstadter in his book gödel Escher Bach he described the brain as essentially media hard drives and store patterns that mirror the world that reflect the world so we sort of mirror and model the world and the more complete that model of the world is eventually it crosses a threshold where the brains model of the world becomes complete enough to include

the observer in the world making the observation of the world and when that threshold is crossed it’s like an inevitable vortex of self mirroring whereby a causal I or a sentient mind emerges and he likens it to aiming a camera plugging it into a television and aiming it at a television and it creates an engulfing infinity of recursion and he says that’s a really good analogy to imagine explain consciousness and and the granularity really because then you can you can see that it exists on a spectrum

the greater the amount of self mirroring the greater of the more conscious of mind can become I love that explanation yeah it’s a good one right yeah so what do you think when you manatee keeps evolving its own consciousness together with technology or without technology what will be the next step in that evolution of humanity the next step in the evolution of humanity well you know first and foremost Carl Sagan said for small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love I love it at

a scientist like he says something like this yeah well he’s also a poet the best scientists of poets were the best scientists have the sensibility of a poet I think that the first thing that we have to really focus on is extending our lifespans you know III just we used to die it 20 then at 30 life was short brutish dark now we’re pushing 70 you know I think if we were to eliminate physiological disease from the human Enterprise through advances in genetics and molecular engineering biotechnology

that kind of stuff that would be amazing you know in terms of like self determination first and foremost eliminate physiological decay as part of the program I want we give ourselves more time to cultivate self development it will just open endless horizons it’s similar to what the airplane did you know it’s kind of like before the airplane the the sort of area of adjacent possibility for exploration was this and then the airplane was like just a whole phase change in adjacent possible spaces for exploration and I

think doing that to our lifespan whether it’s the work of Aubrey de Grey or once there is a breakthrough that death you know extend our lifespan to 500 years 600 years I mean that would be something well just imagine it I mean just imagine it I never thought about it but lifespan is a factor that is inhibiting cell development it was everything yeah it’s like oh when are you gonna have kids you know like oh when you’re gonna start a family I’m like dude I’m like on a quest for like divination and great truth and I hate the burden of

the 40s and the 50s the burden that it like you have to resign yourself to some final compromise when I just you know I want it [ __ ] what did Flo bear say human speeches but a cracked kettle in which we tapped crude rhythms while we long to make music that will melt the stars so it’s like yeah how do you work on your own exploration of your own consciousness well I kind of there’s sort of a series of steps and you can’t skip a step so the first step is I have to make sure that I’m physiologically

satiated so self-care right you have to sleep well you know and whatever demands you have for sleep in a quiet room a temperature controlled environment a place where you feel at ease and at peace to surrender all so you can get the restorative effects of sleep without that can’t do anything else food feed yourself well exercise there’s a basic physiological needs that must be satiated before I can indulge in any flights of fancy or consciousness exploration if you’re hungry the meaning of life is food now if you’re tired of

meaning of life asleep um I’m hyper aware of those things because when I hit the the ceiling of the lift my biological limitations and my biological limitations getting like hunger or dopamine depletion get in the way of further explorations of of poetry and consciousness I get really [ __ ] angry so I’m humbled into working with my limitations so sleep rest exercise all those things and then once those things are taken care of then it usually gives you an average day like if you rested well you ate well you exercise

well then you might have like five to six hours of pure cognitive building [Music] when you look back at the last year for yourself what would put us in next step is you’ve taken in your own development or your major inside of heaven there when I look at the last year yeah I think a big one increasingly is to practice self compassion hmm I passed the 35 year mark and so what happens is you start to experience a wistful longing for who you were when you were in your 20s because there seems to be a

romantic abandon about being in your 20s in the sense that when you were in your 20s you had so much time before you or even 30 something but when you’re in your 30s there like you’re almost in your 40s and so I’ve had to learn to practice them self compassion because you start to wonder if you’ve done the best you could mmm like wow I got past 35 like am i am i enough you know am i impressive as my contribution legitimate and and avoid the trappings of comparison to those that are more impactful more successful

more refined more cultivated have more wisdom to share have more books under their belt have more followers on Instagram you know that [ __ ] you know I think the the older you get the more you have to learn to accept yourself because there’s at least in your mind there’s this perception that like you can’t undo things and you have less time to radically change direction hmm that’s a big one yeah so for everyone yeah you do you have a goal for yourself in the next 10 to 20 years like that’s something that you want do what I have

you go or where you want to be why are you going with the flow in here and now I try to go with the flow I mean that’s that’s the way of avoiding the trappings of being caught up in your ambitions that they blind you from the treasures you have in front of you I guess I I I am a fan of momentum I am a fan of the feeling that you are riding a wave that you have generated with your art I’ve experienced that exhilaration several times in my career where I found myself caught up in the momentum of what I had

created and it became bigger than me you start to wake up to opportunities rather than have to look for opportunities your work is out there feeding minds and creating ideas for projects for you in the minds of others when you’re sleeping yeah so you’re waking up to opportunities and that’s the best feeling in the world because it finally takes care of the existential anxiety of what do I do with myself because you’re waking up to opportunities that are so obvious and so easy and such obvious yeses that that life becomes much more

of a trust fall at that point yeah like when a musician jumps into the crowd and they carry him it’s like I know that I go to sleep as all I have to worry about is sleeping well because I know I’m gonna wake up and something exciting is gonna be saying come this way so I want more of that hmm I get that one writing awake Oh synchronicity yes mmm ride that wave of self generated synchronicity yes yes yes so when you look back can you can you see how you sell generate that wave how are you doing where you know

the mechanism oh yeah generate oh yes yes so a lot of it has come from stop like avoiding over deliberation and just taking action and I’m talking about specifically creative action in my like just like making the video like do the recording like invest the money like hire the editor like do the thing you know like do the thing rather than be caught up in like is there an audience for this who’s gonna watch this or can I sell this or do I need a sponsor for this like like I have found that the stuff that has changed my world has has

come about from me just like them just like doing the thing getting out of my own way actually being a little more impulsive a little less guarded and typically that has happened when I am in states of elation so I I see a relationship between consciousness and action the state of consciousness that you’re in and how do you get the knit state of elation I think the same as the Romantic poets Romantic poets were less caught up in outlining their poetry than in outlining how to stage shift in consciousness and trusting that once

they evoked that reverie the poem the poem would flow mm-hmm and I think that’s that’s definitely true for my work it’s like oh okay so what I have to design for is the experience that gets me out of my own way yeah that’s what I have to design as soon as I get out of my own way the good stuff will emerge this has been my biggest learning in the last year that there is no end to this the more you get out of your own way the more you get into your own being out of the doing the more it will happen for

you and you can always take a next step or next level into that being yeah yeah at the same time though I have a lot of friends we’re very gifted minds creatives dreamers sensitive Souls and they’re very pure they’re beings and yet many of them at least creatively fulfilling career opportunities are not emerging for them there there is a part of me that it has a little bit of a hustler even though the hustle was not what it’s necessarily generated the things but but but it has kept me and has kept me in a state of like seizing

opportunities when they were in front of me hmm tell us about getting into that action mode hello yeah also hmm it’s like let the opportunities come but when they come seize them right you still have you still have there’s other responsibilities too we have agency and and just grasp grab it hmm and go all in yeah yeah yeah and that’s something that a lot of people were very passive and wonderful to be around and interesting can also be very frustrated because they you’re not it couldn’t beat it on the one hand side

you have the people who are the doers it’s the seizing opportunities which might not be in line with their surfing the way but they’re also a problem sir yep those kind of people you have the people who are in their being but that when those two come together you have in a way the ultimate life 100% I mean it’s George Peterson says toe the lines and chaos and order hmm flow is the Venn diagram between discipline and surrender to live a life of only discipline and seizing everything can be also constricting but leaving a living a

life of total surrender all the time can be a life where you don’t anything done it’s like Michael Pollan says the ego gets the book written so go have the ego dissolving experiences but then summon the ego to exercise agency and get the book written and get the project done I think if I didn’t have that part of me as well then all the content in my videos would have just been moments that I had when I was being hmm wouldn’t have gotten recorded it wouldn’t have gotten edited and they wouldn’t have gotten uploaded they

wouldn’t have gotten submitted to me like and a lot of people would have been inspired by what you do and that inspiration causes the acceleration of others as well of course I love it thanks man you [Music]