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[Music] welcome to conscious politics part three the principles of conscious politics so in part one in part two we spent a lot of time talking about the fundamentals of why government exists and how it works and the various benefits that it offers so you can start to appreciate it and now we're gonna talk about what does conscious politics mean and how do we distinguish it from unconscious politics I mean we've already addressed some of these points but I want to condense it down into a list of of bullet points and I'm gonna give you 50 or so different bullet points here in no particular order except for the first one which is the most important and so the number-one principle of conscious politics is that all of politics and all of government is about maximization of consciousness love and truth and that that is the ultimate aim and we need to be very clear about that as we're designing our policies and as we're engaging in politics if our policies and our politics ends up not doing that but the opposite then that's how we know we've gone astray and also this distinguishes from just pure selfishness politics done purely for the benefit of me and my people really this is an expanded view of politics politics done for the betterment of all not even just people but the entire planet and really beyond that the entire universe when we get to that point we're not at that point yet simply because we're just locked on this planet but eventually we will be there and by that point we better have an expanded sense of of what we're what what our aims are so I want to take a point here too to explain what I mean by love in politics because a lot of people can misunderstand this and this can come off as a very woowoo hippie type of ideal that's impractical in the real world it's likely oh love doesn't actually do anything in the real world you can't actually solve real problems with with this love stuff it's just abstraction that's not true at all love is the most powerful force the problem is that most people who are engaged in politics have no idea what love is they haven't had deep mystical experiences of universal cosmic love and so most people treat love as some romantic things some sentimental sappy thing that's not at all what I'm talking about so what does love mean in the context of politics it means that you have a wide concern for all living beings it means that you appreciate the value and worth of all living beings not as just some sort of instrumental value or utilitarian value to you like well how can I manipulate that person to get what I want not in this way in fact that's the whole problem with politics is that is so manipulative but rather you understand that there's some deeper force within the universe which is guiding evolution and which is guiding all human action and the unfoldment of physical reality now the problem with this is that when I say this to people who have not accessed mystical states of consciousness where you do tap into infinite love to these people this is such a foreign notion all they understand as far as love is you know they get horny and they want to have sex and that's their notion of love or maybe they their notion of love includes their their children or their spouse or something like that or their parents that's good but now imagine that we expand your sense of love that you have for your family to the entire universe that's what I'm talking about and you really do need to have these mystical experiences of universal love because otherwise it doesn't work just as an idea it needs to move you we need to transform you when you have these experiences these are transformative experiences which change your whole relationship to reality so it's important if you want to do conscious politics that you actually access those higher realms of love and that they transform you so that then you understand right now you don't really understand well at least start by understanding that you don't understand it they you have more to discover mystics throughout human history the Buddha Christ Mahavira and and many others sages and mystics have talked about these these higher realms of mystical cosmic love the Sufi poet Rumi mystic and poet his whole teaching was about this love the whole Sufi Way is about this love Christ is about this love the problem is that we have a bunch of Christians these days especially in America here evangelicals and Catholics and so forth but their politics is very unconscious because even though they might go to church and listen to some sermon about Jesus's love they don't actually embody that in their own life because their love is only confined to their personal family and to their tribe may be at best to some patriotic ideal of America but even that patriotic ideal excludes black people excludes gay people excludes you know a bunch of other things doesn't include Middle Eastern people does it include Muslim people this is not true love I mean it is love but it's it's a very limited form of love and also it's important here to say that conscious politics is about maximizing love and consciousness as opposed to for example creating a better economy a lot of politicians these days they act as though all that government is for is to maximize the economy that is not what government is really about as to put the cart before the horse sure of course we need government to improve the economy but why why you might say well to feed my children yes but but why why feed your children you have to understand that all of it ultimately comes back to love it's because you love your that you need to feed them and it's because you love your company that you want to skew the policy to favor your company that you want subsidies for your company or some sort of favors for your company see it's all up and in fact conscious politics means understanding that all political action is done out of love and this is something that people have a really hard time understanding because it's it's quite twisted so what I'm saying is that literally all political action that has ever happened in the history of mankind has been out of love including the Holocaust including the dropping of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki including World War two and World War one and all the way back all the war all the slavery all the violence all of it all the oppression was all done out of love it's just a question of how expansive is the love or how contracted and dense is the love and if you're practicing conscious politics you have to see this because otherwise what's gonna happen is that you're gonna demonize all those other people out there who are doing things you're gonna demonize your opponents you're not actually gonna be able to love them to luck to be able to love your opponents and love all people to have this universal sense of love that I'm talking about what needs to happen is that you need to literally see the entire universe as this giant love fractal which is unfolding itself in a multitude of different different ways sometimes in very twisted ways including war and ethnic cleansing and all the sorts of stuff and all of it is ultimately happening due to love but because people are ignorant and their love is so contracted and so limited that oftentimes what they do for example terrorists they will commit terrorist act acts but they're doing it why because of love because they love their their family they love their their country they love Islam whatever and they want to defend it you see when you're defending something when you're clinging to something that is of its just a limited form of love a contracted form of love and someone who's practicing conscious politics understands this and this is what allows him or her to overcome hatred and demonization of others there is an understanding a very deep understanding of the ignorance of other people where you actually empathize with it because you realize that hey I to act ignorant sometimes and in the past I too have been extremely ignorant and I understand how difficult it is to overcome ignorance and I understand how difficult it is to have universal love and to embody use Universal love you know this is not easy to do at all times maybe it's easy when you're on some psychedelic trip but it's not easy in the real world when you have to deal with especially people with in political situations where there are tough choices and decisions to make it's not easy at all and often times love is very twisted and it can actually hurt us and we're afraid to fully love and so it's important to appreciate that and that even if you have conquered all these obstacles and you've become some Buddha that doesn't mean that the rest of your neighbors have so you need to appreciate their ignorance their fears about being loving their inability to see love in the way that you are able to and so therefore that makes you what to help them to understand and then ask what politics becomes about conscious politics is love based as opposed to fear based if you're not coming from a place of love you're coming from a place of fear and lack and that's mostly what our politics is right now it's fear-based lack based politics we fear immigrants we fear taking on difficult political situations like climate change we fear what's gonna happen with the economy we fear that our state or our local region won't get the money that it needs we fear other races we fear other ethnicities we fear the Middle East or we feel Russia or we fear some other part of the world fear fear and we we have a sense of scarcity it's not an abundance mentality we don't fundamentally believe that we can help to elevate everyone on the planet usually it's like well I'll try to get mine and deny you yours this this win-lose mentality conscious politics is love based fundamentally it believes that we're not lacking in anything what we're really just lacking in is consciousness love and truth and inner development which is an infinite resource and that of course is the beautiful thing about love is that it's an infinite resource it's not scarce don't underestimate how powerful this force is love is what allows you to move millions of people to rally them to inspire them to give them a vision to do something love is what allows you to land someone on the moon love is what allows you to tackle slavery or oppression of other sorts the love is what allows you to care about the environment clean up the environment to create better schools and that's ultimately all that people want what do people want in the world they want to be able to love to love their family to love their children to love their nation and then to go beyond that the problem is they get so wrapped up in a limited form of love that they are unable to expand their love to the whole world because they think that well I can't love my family properly unless I steal from those people over there unless I'm extremely selfish and I exploit people so love based politics does not exploit people's fears that's also an important thing watch political ads watch how politicians try to motivate you to get out to vote most of them do it using fear and it's not just the right wing of course the right wing is is a master at manipulating people's fears whether it's fear of immigrants or fear of social justice warriors or fear of gays or whatever but it's not just that left wingers also use fear fear of global warming fear of the conservatives fear of racism coming back this is also fear be careful the problem with fear as a motivation is that it tends to make one paranoid and unrest or SFIL and when you come up with solutions your solutions are not as good as they would be if they were love based fear tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy that manifests itself the old law of attraction idea another principle of conscious politics is one circle of concern is global and universal not personal not tribal not ethnic and not corporate of course Universal includes personal tribal ethnic and corporate but it includes all of it not just your corporation but all corporations not just your ethnicity all ethnicities not just your religion all religions not just your tribe all tribes that's the key difference so it's not that you're betraying your tribe or betraying your corporation or betraying your family by having a universal expanded circle of concern no it's just that you're again stop thinking with that scarcity mindset of like well I can only love my family or my corporation no the whole point of love is that you realize that you can love it all you can be generous this watt in this wider circle of concern allows you to care about all living beings and to care about the oppression of all beings that's very important you can't just care about the oppression of your personal tribe you have to care about the oppression of all tribes on the planet of all beings on the planet and you care about it because you have a sense that those beings are a part of your universal self and that really the only reason that you're not part of that tribe that's getting oppressed is simply because of circumstance you weren't born into it but you easily could have the next principle of conscious politics is awareness of developmental psychology and Spile dynamics the recognition that people are at different levels of development and that they have different needs and that really one set of policies cannot work for all people because people are very different conscious politics doesn't try to make everyone the same notice this most people their political worldview is such that they believe that hey if everyone just believed like me and adopted my ideology the world would be perfect capitalists tend to think this way socialists tend to think this way liberals and conservatives tend to think this way if only we could squash the other side everything would be fine this is foolishness reality can't work this way because people are at different levels of development and you learn that by learning developmental psychology and spiral dynamics then what you realize is that we need to build bridges to help people to understand each other and we also need to be tolerant of those who are at lower levels lower levels doesn't mean that they're bad or evil people just lower levels like different grades in school higher grades lower grades all of us have to pass through different levels some of us pass through these levels faster than others but that doesn't matter that doesn't mean that we can be arrogant about it and now deny or ignore or demonize those who are slower some people are just slower not everyone is born with the same capacities as you might have conscious politics aims to try to meet everyone's basic needs in order to help them to move up the spiral so conscious politics understands that people most people in the world are in such desperate situations that they can't care about love or consciousness or truth or have a universal circle of concern because they can barely feed and clothe themselves and take care of their children and so then our first job is about just mating to meet basic needs that people have by distributing resources in our society more justly and then what we're doing really is we're we're moving people up Maslow's hierarchy of needs as we meet there are more basic needs then we're gonna get them to the point where they start to care about self-actualization where they start to care about personal improvement where they where they can read books about history in politics and they can become better citizens and then they can raise their consciousness and they can care about meditation and then ultimately they can awaken and they can experience this Universal love which is the whole point of all of existence is to help ourselves to do that both individually and collectively so what's spiral dynamics teaches us is that you can't just go to a poor person on the street who is hungry and start preaching to him about universal love he's not gonna understand it he's not gonna care about it he can't at his level so we gotta be able to boil that down meet the person where he's at and help him with the needs that he has and so that's really what government becomes about but of course government shouldn't just be limited to be meeting basic needs it needs to be able to meet the needs of various people all along the spectrum of development so that means government does need to care about self-actualization and to help people with self-actualization because by helping people self actualize and transcend themselves that feeds back around and helps government because then those people what are they gonna do they're gonna go back into government or they're gonna do charity work or whatever they're gonna have a life purpose I'm gonna help society to evolve which helps government which helps people make meet their basic needs see that's what's happening in life is as you're meeting your own basic needs you're not so needy anymore you can go out and help others who are needy to meet their basic needs and then those who used to be needy who you have helped to not be needy anymore now they're not needy and they are inspired to do the same thing that you help them to do because they see the value you add it to their life and you show them a way out of their neediness so now they're inspired to go do the same thing and it becomes this virtuous cycle conscious politics is ecological holistic systemic big-picture and meta conscious Paul politics is about systems thinking not manipulating systems not finding a way to exploit a system for your personal benefit no it's about learning how the entire systems work works in all its nuance and complexity and then it's about figuring out a way to improve the entire system for the benefit of the whole system and all of its members not necessarily for me personally and of course I'm redefining what's good for me personally see as your circle of concern expands and as you experience universal love what's good for you becomes what's good for everybody else so it's not that I have to sacrifice myself per se no I get joy out of seeing everybody's boat rise not just my own and in fact I get more joy out of seeing other people's boat rise than just my own conscious politics is about understanding relativity which means that you can't have moral absolutes anymore you understand that morals are relative to various cultures and eras this opens up your mind to be flexible and not to get hung up on things not to get to moralizing of others conscious politics is about inner work and outer work it starts with deep inner work personal development consciousness work to expand one sense of self and then as one sense of self is expanded then once divet one develops a deeper sense of life purpose which is grounded in psychological maturity not just exploitation of the world but psychological maturity and genuine mystical insight and then from there we do the outer work of helping society so really in or work in outer work they go hand in hand because by doing inner work I can do better outer work and then my outer work becomes helping other people do their inner work and then they do their inner work allows them to then go and do better outer work and so on conscious politics is self-aware it's aware of things that we've discussed on this channel for for a long time now it's aware of self bias it's aware of self-deception and so we're of survival it's aware of identity issues or ego it's aware of collective ego it's aware of how projection works of how demonization works of duality of ego backlash all of these concepts we've talked about and we'll continue to talk about it's aware of all of these this part of what I mean by saying it's meta it's able to stand outside of its own perspective to analyze its own filters the problem generally speaking with conservatives and with liberals is that they're able to analyze and critique the various problems with the opposite perspective and they they can clearly see that the other side is a perspective with flaws and that it's is very limited and it's pathological in many ways and they can clearly see that it's a filter that those other people are looking through so liberals see that of conservatives but what liberals can't see is that their own liberalism is also a filter with limitations and flaws and pathologies and vice versa with conservatives and one needs to be able to stand outside and to analyze both filters that's really our work here that's the key that distinguishes conscious politics from unconscious politics unconscious politics isn't conscious of the filter that it's looking at the world through very importantly conscious politics is aware of how devilry works go check out my video what is the devil because there's so much devilry going around in the world but at the same time as it's aware that how devilry works it's also loving of devilry it doesn't demonize devilry it understands the devilry is a necessary part of life this is how survival happens through devilry and that the only reason you're here to begin with to be alive is through generations and generations of devilry of your ancestors that has gotten you here that's survival and so now our job is to clean up the corruption and the devilry which has gotten us this far but it only always takes you so far and then it starts to break down that's the problem of devilry so the work of every generation of humans is to clean up our survival strategies and our selfishness because we realize that it's better to live in a less devilish world then our ancestors lived in and so that's what we're doing that's what evolution is and to to eliminate all devil aureus is simply the same thing as to be totally loving and so that's what we're working towards we're trying to get every human on the planet to be totally loving and conscious totally free of self biases and clinging to their survival agendas and fear how do we do that well of course through self-improvement and self actualization work but also collectively we do it through building roads and bridges and electric grids and giving everyone internet access and helping to feed the poor so they can help themselves to to self-actualize at some point and helping people with mental illnesses helping people with health care helping people have decent jobs where they get paid decent living wages this is how it has to start the foundation is material once the material needs are met then there become higher immaterial needs and that's where life really gets juicy and beautiful conscious politics is non reactive non-judgmental non demonizing non moralizing non shaming and non blaming it takes radical responsibility for oneself and for one's society conscious politics does not turn politics into an identity battle you don't create this identity of being a conservative or a liberal because conscious politics is too conscious for that it sees that all identities are limited and that your true identity is totally Universal and all-inclusive it's about not self-dealing a lot of people go into politics to self deal that's unconscious politics conscious politics is also to willing to make some personal compromises or sacrifices so for example if you're wealthy and rich conscious politics means that you recognize that you know I have it really good I've benefited from the system that doesn't mean that I now squeeze the system for even a little bit more to get all the tax breaks I can it means that no actually I have to be honest and I have to say that you know what I've had some unfair advantages in this economy and that really I should be paying more taxes not less and I'm willing to make that sacrifice because for me really what's more important in getting a little bit more money five or ten percent more of my my money is for all of society to prosper and for all other human beings to be able to have all the luxury and opportunities and freedoms that I have with my millions of dollars that's what it means not to self deal and what it means to make sacrifices it's not just about your personal bottom-line or what you personally need oftentimes you have to vote for a politician who may not offer all the juicy stuff that you want but which is gonna make society more just and equal for other people and that's especially true if you've reached a high point in your own personal life you know at a certain point in your life you you have so much of everything that you've ever wanted that you don't need anymore and you have to know what to say okay enough is enough I've gotten everything I want at this point if I keep trying to get more for myself this is this is this is actually going to become pathological now my life needs to be about helping others to experience the success that I've been able to experience conscious politics appreciates the positive functions of government this is very important if you can't appreciate all the good stuff that government does for you and all you think of is how evil and wrong government is and how government enslaves you and steals your money you can't possibly have a healthy attitude towards government or towards society because under such a belief are you gonna educate yourself about government are you gonna look at policy proposals that could possibly improve things and don't know all you want to do is just tear it down and this doesn't work and you're not gonna win that battle you're not gonna tear a government down because government does too many useful functions so you're gonna be wasting your time if you're gonna go down that route down that road we've got to keep adding towards what we've already built you have to appreciate it it's taken many thousands of years to build up this technology of government that we have today be careful about trying to rip it all down thinking that you're gonna get something better chances are you gonna get something worse it's almost like an ignorant person goes inside their body who doesn't know what the organs do like the appendix or the liver or the the the pancreas or something and then he you know he's just like mucking around in there some ignorant surgeon and just like cut stuff out like well I don't think you need the appendix let's just cut that up I don't think you need one of your kidneys let's just throw it out it's like you have to appreciate that mother nature has a deep wisdom to it the same wisdom that went into evolving all of the organs in your body also went into evolving the organs of your society as well now of course granted there are a lot of foolish politicians who were getting in the way of that wisdom but overall there is a collective wisdom that is baked into government a collective wisdom in the court system a collective wisdom in in taxation a collective wisdom in the military a collective wisdom in welfare programs they exist for a reason because they solve serious problems that our previous generations had that you don't even know exists as problems because they've already been solved for you by these systems but if you remove one of these systems it's as foolish as removing your kidneys thinking you know better you have to really study carefully before you go removing something because there will be unforeseen consequences you know for example in America when FDR came into office during the the Great Depression and there was the New Deal and they instituted Social Security before Social Security was instituted a large percentage of the elderly population some ridiculous number like 25% or 30% were homeless living on the streets why is that because when you turn 60 or 70 and you haven't done proper retirement planning and you haven't been saving up you literally have no more retirement but also your health goes out you're not able to work the way you used to when you were young and then you have no choice but to live on the street so millions of people were living on the streets sometimes libertarians say well but Leo that's their responsibility too bad for them you know because if if if they didn't plan their a time I well look that's they deserve it they deserve to live on the streets but look at what you're saying look at what you're saying see the only way you can hold such a position is when you actually don't care about those people if that that person let me on the street was your mother or your child you wouldn't take that attitude you try to help them and you would be understanding that you know it's not easy to plan 30 years ahead and to save for your retirement that's not something that people naturally want to do people are poor long-term thinkers and planners so one of the functions of government is to help people to have pensions and something saved up they they did they would they do that for you for your own benefit now of course ideally everyone be responsible enough to be able to do it themselves but that's a fantasy in reality what happens is that if there's no government program to help you do it millions of people are living on the streets and then you have to deal with those homeless people on the streets they're gonna be begging you for quarters how does that make you feel probably not very good especially if there were ten times more homeless people than there already are conscious politics is not neutral it is aware of false equivalency it does not just take the middle point of all positions sometimes it's bold and it's assertive and it's ready to fight for what is right ready to fight for consciousness sometimes you have to fight unconsciousness with consciousness the way that Gandhi did for example or the way that Martin Luther King did or the way that the abolition abolitionists did against slavery or the women's rights movement or the gay rights movement sometimes you have to fight now of course ideally you're not doing it with violence peacefully ideally but even sometimes violence is necessary because sometimes the unconsciousness and the devilry can just get so out of hand a good example would be World War two that would be an example of a of a justifiable use of violence because that was a cancer of devilry that was spreading across Europe and even in in Asia and really throughout the whole world it would have spread if it wasn't put in check so don't get this idea that all love and consciousness just means that we just we just be nice we don't ruffle any feathers we don't rattle any cages no sometimes you have to be bold about it for example Gandhi was very bold but in a peaceful way Martin Luther King was very bold and assertive but in a peaceful way and that's power that's love if you want to see what love can do study the example of Gandhi study the example of Martin Luther King these were two of the best leaders in the last century which demonstrated the power of love moved millions of people in the case of Gandhi in India tens and even hundreds of millions of people that's powerful conscious politics is radical it can look very liberal and progressive this is not a mistake this is correct because when we're living in a devilish society which is selfish and oppressive that is the status quo ego and unconsciousness is the status quo so of course when the status quo is ego and devilry and unconsciousness when you propose conscious solutions loving solutions in a society which is crippled by fear and neediness and lack and scarcity mindset of course you're gonna be called a liberal of course that's one of the ironies of the teachings of Jesus his teachings the spirit of his teachings if it was embody today would be so radical and so liberal and so progressive that American conservatives and evangelicals would be disgusted with Jesus they would call him a social justice warrior a radical communist that's the irony of the whole thing because Jesus wasn't for the status quo Jesus in his time was a radical extreme radical he challenged all the all the dogmas and orthodoxies of his religion he was a Jew he created a whole new religion how do you think modern evangelicals would react if some prophet came along and said ok I'm starting a new religion because evangelicals are so corrupt they would call him a devil they wouldn't worship him and that's exactly what happened in jesus's time that's the irony of it all don't be afraid to be radical it's not about whether you're radical or moderate the true question is what leads to the most love to the most consciousness and the most truth and if that means you need radical proposals to get there that's what it takes too many people are attached to being moderate or to just be neutral to giving equal weight to both sides of an issue without thinking for themselves this is just reinforcing the status quo which is just reinforcing evil conscious politics is scientific and empirical rather than ideological this is very important we need to be open to split testing various solutions in a scientific empirical manner within the realm of politics and government the problem right now is that people have preconceived ideas about what some change in policy will do like people will think well cutting taxes as always it's always just good for the economy but is that true have you actually empirically tested it have you verified it by putting it into place and tracking all the indicators scientifically that's the proper way to verify that but see for most people they don't care about validating whether tax cuts will actually help the economy they just believe tax cuts will and then they don't even care about what happens after we do the tax cuts and if the tax cuts end up crashing the economy well they don't care about that because in their mind tax cuts are always an absolute good this this doesn't work and the same doesn't just apply to conservative ideas but also to liberal ideas for example liberals have the idea that that banning banning guns and especially assault weapons in America will help to stop school shootings now that's a that's an interesting and plausible hypothesis but it's just a hypothesis we don't know if it's actually true so if we were really smart we could be scientific about it and we can for example do the following thing we could we could pass an assault weapons ban banning all military-style weapons and maybe high-capacity magazines we could pass such a ban for 10 years but we agree at the get-go that it's only going to be for 10 years then after the 10 years rolls around you know we're gonna have scientists we're gonna have a jecht 'iv independent panel of Sciences we're gonna track all the indicators track all the school shootings and we're gonna see what happens does the violence reduce do things get better and how much better and then after those 10 years pass if we don't see a significant improvement then we lift the ban see this would be a scientific and empirical approach and we could do this and in fact by doing it in this empirical way this will help to bring both sides together because you know the Conservatives would be open to such an idea perhaps because if they truly believe that banning assault weapons will will not reduce any violence issues the way that many of them do then if the science actually validates that then we could settle this issue once and for all and we don't need to be bickering about anymore and then there won't be a ban and then you can have all the assault weapons you want if the science says that it doesn't harm society but if the sign says it does harm society you got to be open to the fact that hey you know what maybe I shouldn't be so selfish and I should be willing to give up my assault weapons otherwise thousands of children die every year from from shootings and so forth see this would be a scientific approach this is not what we have right now it's the opposite of what we have right now conscious policy is also educational which means that it actually helps to educate the populace about all of these different principles and ideas about the history of government the history of politics how things really work still about psychology all of this right so a lot of what we're missing is just education the government can have all sorts of education programs that help to spread this information for free through the internet through websites through YouTube channels for example government have a youtube channel which helps you to find your life purpose which helps you to understand spirituality which helps you to to take responsible well it would have safety protocols for responsible use of psychedelics and other other drugs this is one of the key functions of the government it can help to educate people on how to build high quality lives for themselves a government could have an entire free course on how to be an entrepreneur for example that would be really valuable and very easy to do it wouldn't cost a lot of money either it would scale really nicely there would be almost no downside to it another principle of conscious politics is that it's grounded in historical study reading of books about history psychology sociology political theory feminism about abolition about mmm ancient Greece and Rome and democracy in China and how government worked in China and all around the world multiculturalism spirituality ecology all of this reading studying this stuff and creating a culture where people are reading about these things conscious politics is about understanding the complexity of social problems it's recognized that there are no simplistic solutions building a wall for example to keep out immigrants is not going to solve the issue of immigration in America so if you really want to solve that problem that's fine it's a legitimate problem that we might want to solve but we need to go about it not in some stupid simplistic way but in a way that actually can address some of the root causes and issues you're never gonna be able to build a wall to keep people out people will tunnel under it people will throw ladders over it people will fly planes around it drones around it people will just come here for tourism then overstay their visa which is how most elite illegal immigrants come to America anyways not through the border by physically walking over it alright so this needs to be appreciated and then once that's appreciated then these complex social problems they can be solved by actually going to the root of the issue the root of the issue is the poverty and political instability in the countries that the people are coming from so if you really wanted to solve the immigration problem you would be for solutions to strengthen and improve the democracies of those Latin American governments which are the cause of why people are fleeing those countries and coming to America that would be the root solution conscious politics is aware of backfiring mechanisms and the counter intuitive nature of policy and regulation a lot of times putting in place and regulation has the opposite effect of what you think one of the best examples of this was prohibition in America prohibition of alcohol ended up just making things worse because it turned to crime and mafia and corruption and nobody really observed it anyways and we have the same problem right now today with the drug war it's been going on for like forty years now fifty years it's extremely ineffective harms many people we need to be able to see how even though our intentions are good like yes our intention is to stop children from doing heroin but by putting in place this drug war it ends up backfiring a lot of policies and regulations and a backfiring so you have to be very careful about when you're thinking through them we could have entire panels objective scientific panels of experts on various topics and whenever some politician or person proposes a regulation or a policy this panel sits down and analyzes it and outlines all of the possible backfiring mechanisms how can it backfire and do the opposite of what it wasn't intended to do this would be good for making us more aware of what we're really proposing and then we can actually test and see if those panels are right so it's not ideological but it's actually a scientific and empirical conscious politics recognizes the validity of both left and right perspectives without a false equivalency that doesn't mean that left and right are always equal or equally right but you can't just say that only the left is correct and you can't just say that only the right is correct both of those are just silly there's legitimate concerns on both sides conscious politics recognizes that both the left and the right can go too far but at the same time again it doesn't mean that we're just moderates all the time conscious politics recognizes the importance of an exquisite balance that exists within government if it is to be healthy and functional a balance between freedom and limitation between individual and collective between masculine and feminine between peace and use of force between capitalism between socialism all those things need to be delicately balanced and how do we find where the balances should lay through testing through empirical testing you can't do it through ideology the truth is that no human being knows what the proper balance is between capitalism and socialism or between masculine and feminine or between individual versus collective and also because it changes over time there's not just one static point that we find between capitalism socialism and if we find that point that's it we're done we've solved the problem for the rest of society forever no it might work out for the next hundred years but then as we get new technology as the population increases as consciousness rises as you know the environment changes the climate changes that balance will need to be changed again to accommodate for that that's what survival is survival is about balancing to fit in with one's environment but our environment as human beings were changing our environment all the time by creating new technology our environment changes so radically that we need new systems of government and we need to constantly rebalance various of these various equilibriums that go out of balance over time conscious politics is focused on root issues and systemic change sustainable solutions it cares about good government and it cares about policy rather than culture war issues what is the policy proposals it's not just about which politician looks like me or which politician comes from my region of the world or the state of my state it's not what the politician can do for me personally it's about policy proposals policy proposals these days aren't aren't taken too seriously when analyzing politicians on the evening news very rarely do they actually talk about the policy proposals it turns into a debate about personality and about identity and other things like this conscious politic is multicultural tolerant and open-minded it's multi perspectival it's curious about alternative points of view genuinely curious if you're practicing conscious politics you need to be willing to listen and to study other points of view not just have them debated to you against your will but you have to be proactive go out there to actually study different perspectives to see what you're missing conscious politics is non conformist it discourages ideology and cults it emphasizes critical thinking conscious politics emphasizes happiness development and health rather than economic growth right now the way that we measure the success of politicians and government a lot of times is with very simplistic and crude mathematical metrics like the GDP or unemployment rate but this doesn't accurately reflect what we're really trying to do with society we're not trying to lower the unemployment rate we're not trying to increase GDP what we're really trying to do is to increase happiness development consciousness love and health so we need new metrics to track these things and you can track these things there just needs to be a will to do it conscious politics is also economically responsible this is something that you conservatives will like balancing budgets not overspending these are important concerns and these are well one of the areas where conservatives are more right than liberals you can't just keep spending and spending and spending we have to find ways to actually pay for the or the welfare state that is important otherwise it'll come back to bite us rubber sustainable solutions over spending is not a sustainable solution conscious politics is about creative and innovative solutions it's not about doing business as usual the way we've done it for thousands of years or hundreds of years it's about innovating the same way that Silicon Valley innovates every year with new smart phones and new TVs and new technologies government needs to be as innovative to keep up with that right now government acts like a dinosaur and mostly it's just like legacy issues from a hundred years ago legacy laws that are that are very ancient and outdated this can't possibly work when our technology is advancing so quickly conscious politics takes wealth inequality seriously a healthy strong robust middle class is absolutely essential to democracy and conscious politics we can't have a large chunk of the population in poverty or barely struggling to get by while some top 1% is living on luxury yachts eating caviar this this is not a proper society this means the structure of our society is is out of balance if this is happening and that's exactly what's happening in America today conscious politics takes environmental issues very seriously conscious politics creates transparency and accountability within government the issue isn't big government or small government the issue is what is the proper size of size of government for the number of people that we have and also what's the quality of the government it's not about reducing government it's about improving the quality of the government and one of the ways you do that is by increasing transparency and accountability so that various kinds of agencies like the CIA for example they're not allowed to do various kinds of dark projects where they can go and manipulate other governments and spend billions of dollars interfering and in elections around the world and scheming and manipulating right without any kind of accountability same thing with NSA wiretapping and surveillance you know all of this needs to be made transparent and accountable to the people conscious politics is about building infrastructure starting with the very basic infrastructure of Bill of building roads bridges electric grid internet grid things of this nature because that basic material infrastructure is what is necessary to then build the more soft and Appstore spiritual infrastructure which we will need in the future right like you can't have free videos that educate people about spirituality and love and consciousness unless you first have an internet and a lot of rules parts of America don't have high-speed Internet to watch those videos if such videos were to exist they couldn't download some course about how to build a business or how to awaken themselves if there isn't first the right infrastructure in place so that's important conscious politics understands that altruism morality and good intentions can easily be turned into identity and ego so just because someone's acting moralistic or altruistic doesn't actually mean that they are that way it doesn't actually mean they're loving it could just be a sort of a cloak that they're wearing a wolf in sheep's clothing so conscious politics is very aware of that doesn't get tricked by those kinds of ploys that of course will be played by various selfish Devils conscious politics is intellectually honest which means that it's willing to admit mistakes you have to be able to admit that's some policy proposal that you thought would be good for society actually turns out not to be so good maybe you truly believe that universal health care is going to be good but then when it's implemented and it doesn't work properly you have to be able to admit that you know what I was wrong about that maybe we should change it back that's what we need intellectual honesty conscious politics is non militaristic that means one of its highest priorities is to avoid war at all costs unnecessary war aggressive war conscious politics is non exploitative non parasitic we don't wage wars in order to help ourselves economically we don't wage wars to get access to resources like oil we don't wage wars to get better trade deals on goods we don't manipulate other governments we don't try to control other governments or strong-armed other governments to meet our own survival needs all of this is unconscious politics but at the same time even though it's non militaristic conscious politics is not pacifist it understands that sometimes a defensive war is necessary to stand up against devilry fascism or corruption and so a military is still maintained but it's used very rarely and very carefully and strategically for defensive purposes and I don't mean justifying offense as defense the way that America did with with the Iraq war saying that oh well we're going in there to stop terrorism that that's not what I'm saying that's that's devilry that's unconscious politics truly defensive purposes that means you must be attacked first and of course attacked by the right people you can't be attacked by by the 9/11 hijackers and then the blame that on Iraq and say well Iraq caused it Iraq had nothing to do with it and of course you have to recognize that you weren't attacked by a state you were attacked by rogue individuals so you can't go attacking a country because some rogue individuals attacked you that's one of the difficulties about terrorism you don't want to conflate those two conscious politics is spiritual yet at the same time it's realistic and pragmatic that's very important people sometimes think that Oh Leo if your spiritual then you're so impractical no you can be very practical you can pass policies which are helping people with substantial real-world problems in fact that's what spiritual really means when you're really spiritual you understand that a person cannot rise to your level of virtual development unless they first meet their basic needs for food and shelter and basic education and so forth conscious politics is unitive rather than divisive tries to bring people together rather than pit them against each other because conscious politics recognizes the the common element amongst all people we don't try to divide people by race or by IQ or by gender or by geography or by religion because in the end all people really want is they just want to be loving and they want to be able to take care of themselves and their family they want to survive that's what anybody wants that's what's so crazy about war and violence and all this geopolitical struggle he said in the end everybody wants the same thing and that's precisely why we have all this war and geopolitical struggle it's because everyone's so so worried about just basic survival that all these survival agendas they they clash with each other but there's a way to handle your survival without having it clash the clashing is it quite necessary there are better ways to go about it conscious politics values expertise and experience conscious politics has a long time horizon it's looking very far back into the past studying history but it's also looking far forward into the future generations into the future so that we don't do silly things for example like ruin the planets environment for the next generation because we were so careless as to just exploit it for our own generation or to run up the debt to saddle our children and future generations with debt you know this this has only happens when you have a short time horizon conscious politics is the visionary selfless leadership leading by example the best examples of this would be Martin Luther King and Gandhi visionary selfless leadership that's what Gandhi was doing conscious politics is bold fearless and proactive it doesn't just sit around and wait for things to to solve themselves it's ease forward into the future it anticipates problems and tackles them head-on so that's the list of all the principles of conscious politics as you can see a lot of this goes against everything that's happening in government today in fact if you want to put it in a nice little nutshell conscious politics is the polar opposite of Donald Trump everything that Donald Trump is doing from the way that he's running his campaign to the people that he's appointing to government positions to the way that he speaks to the way that he tweets all of that is unconscious politics the problem with Trump is not that he's right-wing he's not even truly that right-wing the problem is that he's an obsessed narcissist operating from low consciousness low emotional development low moral development and low cognitive development he's practicing chakra wanna chakra to politics and what we need are chakra 6 and chakra 7 politics if you don't know what chakras are what those numbers means don't worry about it now some objections but Leo isn't this left-wing aren't you biased here you're just like creating a new left-wing ideology that's not actually what I'm doing what I'm doing is going meta I am biased but I'm biased towards consciousness and towards love so yeah in that sense I'm biased I'm not neutral in the sense that I treat every position indifferently because consciousness is not neutral when you become highly conscious when you start to awaken you're gonna realize that the point of life is to help everybody to evolve towards consciousness and love and truth you know Jesus Christ wasn't neutral Martin Luther King wasn't neutral Gandhi wasn't neutral they had some strong opinions about the problems of society in their time and they had some radical solutions that they proposed and all three of them were killed for it isn't that interesting all three of them were called radicals all three of them were opposed by the status quo and many conservatives of their time because what conservativism is really about is about maintaining the status quo so be careful about your own biases here the trick when you're trying to be objective with a biased person is that the biased person will call your objectivity bias because he doesn't want to admit that he's trying to defend the status quo he thinks the status quo was totally normal and unbiased but that's not true it's biased towards unconsciousness and devilry so be careful with that another objection is but Leo isn't all this very idealistic and utopian actually it's not utopian it's just advanced it's visionary is forward-thinking it's not just about the next election cycle so if all you care about is winning the next election cycle then yeah everything I say here is irrelevant it's it's not gonna happen within the next five years but also don't forget that society does change rather quickly and you can't stop it from evolving and changing so the things that I'm talking about will happen in the next ten fifty to a hundred years that's our time horizon here on the one hand it's very long compared to conventional political wisdom on the other hand you know a hundred years is nothing societies can be so radically different in the next hundred years you're gonna be hardly be able to recognize it historically government evolves through intellectual advancements and that's what we're doing here first we have to figure out what the right theoretical foundation is for government our culture desperately needs to go meta to be able to look at its own filters so yeah right now conscious politics can seem far-fetched but we need a vision for the future we to understand our root problems and the root solutions which is what this whole multi-part series is trying to get you to see because most people right now do not understand the root problems or the root solutions or really what government is even about and also remember that conscious politics is not an all-or-nothing affair it's not that either we implement everything I say here tomorrow or I failed and it's all pointless and hopeless it's always an incremental process consciousness comes in many degrees there are many stages of development for individuals and for societies so all that we're talking about here is making incremental 5% improvements in raising our consciousness and level of development we don't need to worry about perfection we don't need to worry about being perfectly loving and having a perfectly just society this is actually a very big problem that many unconscious people fall into is they say olio society is just so screwed up it's so corrupt it's so bad that it's just a hopeless and therefore I'm not even gonna vote I'm not even gonna study this stuff it's not it's it's just pointless this is the worst possible attitude that you can have this is sort of the problem of perfectionism Society actually is pretty great these days if you live in a first world developed country Society for the most part is pretty great we just need to keep making incremental improvements and you'll be amazed at how quickly we make progress we've already made enormous progress in America for example in the last 30 years you might think that all what what progress leo it seems like we're think backwards with Trump and it seems like everything's going to hell and it seems like we haven't made any progress at all but but actually we're always making progress we've made enormous progress with gay-rights there's been enormous progress with with race inequality of course there's still problems but there's a lot better than it was 30 years ago even with policing all the problems with policing that exist today it's still way better than it was 30 years ago you have to admit so things are always improving and don't forget improvement is not a consistent linear upward trajectory it always ABB's and flows with ups and downs so never get discouraged by losing one election to some to some devil you know yeah it's gonna happen it's gonna keep happening Devils will get elected once in a while stuff will regress once in a while but in the grand scheme of things we're moving upwards and in fact those regressions are necessary the whole function of Trump is to highlight the unsustainable nature of that type of governance it doesn't work what Trump is doing is unsustainable it doesn't work and the more he does it the more obvious it becomes for our culture that it doesn't work and that's exactly how progress has always happened you know for example with slavery the reason that slavery was ultimately abolished was become was because the evils of it became so apparent to people that they could no longer ignore it or deny it to the point where people just said okay enough is enough it has to stop and then there was a war and you know during that war things looked very bleak the civil war was you know killed like over a million people I think in that were killed and that seemed like a very negative kind of step backwards but ultimately and led to the next generation being a step forwards and that's exactly how progress works of course it works this way collectively but it also works this way in your own personal life you notice that your life isn't just a straight linear trajectory upwards towards an enlightenment if only it was that easy there's backsliding there's regressions there's times where you pig out on a on a gallon of ice cream or you you you go back and get addicted to porn again or whatever but all of those are necessary for you to learn your lessons the way that human beings learn lessons is by screwing up and making mistakes so the mistakes are not really mistakes they're all part of the drawing process towards higher consciousness and love those mistakes then lead to better infrastructure so all the mistakes that our ancestors made for thousands of years are baked into the wisdom of our government never forget how many millions of people tens of millions maybe even hundreds of millions of people died in order us for us to learn the lessons and to create the various kinds of governmental institutions that we now have today that prevent those same mistakes from happening you know you might say well Leo what was the point of the Holocaust it was just pure evil no it wasn't pure evil the point of the Holocaust was to show the world what that looks like what pure selfishness looks like and how self-defeating it is see so that then it doesn't happen again that's a very valuable lesson that people had to pay with their lives for appreciate that lesson and that's just one lesson out of thousands of lessons that were learned by our ancestors you can improve your politics significantly right now by adopting the principles I've outlined above but be careful not to turn these principles into an ideology if you do then you have turned conscious politics into unconscious politics remember that conscious politics is about the structure not the content so just changing the content of your beliefs and adopting all these principles as a new dogma structurally what you're still doing is you're acting out the dogma it doesn't matter what kind of dog while you're acting out as long as you're acting it out and you're clinging to it it's a dogma and the problem is the dogma not the content per se see so be very careful about this ideology business the whole point of conscious politics that you're able to to appreciate structure over content also understand that conscious politics is not optional it's going to happen regardless so if you say all the all this is stupid I don't care about it I don't like any of this I'm ignore all this it's still going to happen mankind is still going to evolve government is not going away it's going to get more complex it's going to keep evolving more conscious policies will be proposed various forms of corruption and oppression will be eradicated and expunged society will become more equal because that's evolution so what I suggest is that you align yourself on the right side of history on the right side of evolution rather than resisting it or ignoring it or denying it or sweeping it under the rug or saying that it's idealistic and impossible remember that if we travel back in time a thousand years or 2,000 years ago and we tell them about what society is like in the year 2000 they're gonna call you a crazy utopian hippie and they're gonna think it's impossible and I don't think it's totally idealistic and impractical from their point of view they're right because they're are so myopic they don't have a large enough vision and a far enough time horizon so make sure you don't fall into that same mistake today conscious politics cannot happen without you it all starts with you deepening your own understanding of all these principles and issues and starting to embody them in your own life there cannot be conscious politics without conscious and emotionally mature people like you so begin today begin with yourself if everything I say in this series would be understood by mankind at large we would experience a new golden age and of course I'm no fool nothing I said here will be understood by mankind of a high Lama at large so there will not be a new golden age precisely because everything I said here is gonna be deeply denied and resisted that's just the nature of our predicament that's what ignorant does is ignorance denies projects resists distracts creates excuses and rationalizations attacks lashes out and tries to bite the hand that feeds it which is why we can't have nice things that's it for this episode stay tuned for part 4 part 4 is gonna be the culmination of all this where I give you a giant list of specific policy proposals that's where we get really nitty-gritty and practical this is where you see all these lofty principles and you see just how practical they can be when they are implemented in the real world right now in our current time so not just policies that are gonna be in place 100 years from now but today you can certainly take all these principles and develop policies for today that can improve the lives and the consciousness and the love of the majority of people so you'll see that in part four you