WBD504 Audio Transcription
The Bitcoin Awakening with John Vallis
Release date: Monday 23rd May
Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with John Vallis. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.
John Vallis is a Bitcoin podcaster who hosts Bitcoin Rapid Fire. In this interview, we discuss what freedom means, parallels between Bitcoin and religious values, living a meaningful life, psychedelics and their importance, and a new civilisation centred on truth.
“I think we’re at the precipice of really next-level civilizational change, and it’s probably going to be messy a little bit in the transitionary period. But on the other side of this, or as we move forward, I think more good is coming than bad, and that’s something to be hopeful for.”
— John Vallis
Interview Transcription
Peter McCormack: John, hi.
John Vallis: Hey, Peter.
Peter McCormack: How are you doing?
John Vallis: I'm doing really well. How are you doing?
Peter McCormack: Good, man. This is, I think, a record for our longest table!
John Vallis: It's a bit weird! I feel like I should be closer to you somehow, but…
Peter McCormack: You would have been on the other side but I think it's become a meme; we like it. But listen, I've been pestering you, what, for about a year now, do you think?
John Vallis: Yeah. I think, at the last conference, we talked about it and it's such a whirlwind that nothing got put together, and I've been buzzing around the world, as have you.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I wanted to do it in person. I don't like the Zoom interviews.
John Vallis: Yeah, it's better.
Peter McCormack: As you know, I like your show and I like the way you frame conversations, so I've always wanted to sit down and have this conversation with you. There's a topic that I really want to get into with you; it's basically freedom, keeping it as simple as possible because I, myself, am trying to explore what that means to people.
I've had a lot of conversations with people recently discussing freedom. There is some pushback I get that I'm seen as a sympathiser of the government, but I'm trying to fully understand what freedom means to different individuals and what the trade-offs are and what that means for people in different countries. So it's an area I'm desperately trying to explore in the most honest way possible, and I was reading your article, the one you sent me; it's a long paper!
John Vallis: Did you get through it all?
Peter McCormack: I didn't get through it all. The bits in the middle I kind of skimmed, but what happened was I kind of ended up reading yours alongside Gigi's recent paper on --
John Vallis: Law and language.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, rights, and I was just kind of reading the two together and I felt that was a great framework of conversation.
John Vallis: Well, I actually get the chance to speak with Gigi once a week for an hour, an hour and a half, so it's awesome to have someone of that quality and intellect to bounce these ideas off of and refine and stuff like. He's been on this before, right?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, he's been on before; I'd love to get him on again. I want to talk about his recent article with him; I want to get into that, because there are a lot of interesting things within his article. I haven't completely finished it.
John Vallis: It's a long one too.
Peter McCormack: I know. I'm about 75% through. But it was funny, when I was reading it, I was reading it and then I'd go back to yours, and then I was reading yours and go back; I don't know why. I was just going between the two of them for the last 24 hours. But I am trying desperately to understand what freedom means for different people because I'm trying to understand, if the freedom people want, they really understand the consequences. Also, certain pursuits of types of freedom, does that actually lead to less freedom? I think I want to dig into that with you and understand what it means to you.
John Vallis: Sure. What does it mean to you?
Peter McCormack: I don't think there is an individual simple way of defining freedom. I think there are multiple freedoms or multiple different spectrums. I think a good way of explaining it is, when I hear people talk about decentralization, "This is decentralized and this isn't", and people say, "Decentralization is a spectrum", I kind of think of freedom as a spectrum as well. I've always thought, "Where, directionally, is a project heading?" I would say Ethereum, directionally, it becomes more centralized over time whereas actually, I think Bitcoin becomes more decentralized. So, I'm trying to think of freedom in that kind of framework. Are we becoming more free or less free?
I don't think there is a universal definition of what exactly freedom is to an individual, or I struggle to come with it. I certainly think directionally, we're becoming less free in certain ways, and maybe in other ways, we're becoming more free; with Bitcoin, we become more free. For me, freedom is more like a pursuit; it's something we are, either individually or collectively, trying to pursue. But it's definitely something I'm wrestling with really, really in a hard way at the moment, and I'm getting a lot of pushback on it, but I cannot stop pursuing this topic. What does it mean to you?
John Vallis: Well, I think freedom is the ultimate; it's the thing that you want to figure out. There are so many different ways that you can attack it; there's the political form of freedom; there's the spiritual form of freedom; the idea of liberation, liberation from suffering, liberation from your ego self and all that kind of stuff. So, it's a big topic, but I think that's why it deserves so much attention.
The Sovereign Individual's a very popular book in this space, and one of the theses that comes out of that is, much as you might want impose a philosophy on your current era, whether it's now or 500 years from now or whatever, and your ideas about freedom, you're somewhat bound by the technologies available at the time and how much they foster your ability to maintain your independence and maintain your freedom. I agree with that and I use that as a preface to say, "Who cares what we think, basically?"
The second we decide to work together, trade, form a society, form a culture, you're giving something up as a result of being a part of that group, socialisation of various kinds. So, you could get granular like that and say, "The freest way for me to be is to live out in the forest my myself and hunt and forage and live off fresh water", and is that ultimate freedom? In my opinion, the answer's no. I think that freedom is not just your ability to do whatever you want, but it's also your ability to access more potential, more creativity, more ability to be a force for creation in the world, for the emergence of novelty in the world, whether that's ideas or products and services or writing or whatever.
So, what's so amazing about Bitcoin is, I think you're right in that, right now, for whatever reason, a confluence of technological, political, historical, even religious factors, we're in a period where the systems that we've relied on to interact and cooperate are seen to be under stress at least; whether they're at a breaking point, I don't know, but they're definitely under stress.
As a result of that stress, I think that, as those systems try to maintain themselves, they encroach upon people's independence and their freedom and their liberty more than, perhaps, they set out to do originally. As things break downs it's kind of like you're grasping for ways to survive, whether you're an institution or a network or an individual, you become desperate. I think that's what's happening, and Bitcoin, I think it's probably the most powerful, liberating force that we've ever come across.
Now, we could nit-pick; is it language; is it the internet; it this kind of stuff? But I think, by virtue of the fact that it allows you to establish such an inviolable property right over what is the highest external manifestation of you, let's say, in your money, because your money is the emblem of your previously sacrificed time and energy; we use that to trade and to determine the value of things and to work with one other. Up until now, that's been confiscatable, either directly or indirectly, by inflation. Most people, especially in this space, are aware of that. This allows you to have a freedom over that store of time and energy that we've never had before.
One of the things that I love digging into on my podcast and all the conversations we have around a conference like this is, it's evident that people are changing dramatically as a result of this. I mean, you started this by saying, "I'm grappling with this idea of freedom"; you only grapple with things because you think there's something relevant on the other end of that that will alter your perspective for the good, that will bring you closer to a value that you're trying to get to. I see that represented in so many people in this space.
People come up to me all the time at a conference like this and they're like, "I just want to let you know that, going down the rabbit hole and consuming your content, Peter, Rob's, whoever's has changed my life. I used to be whatever, addiction, substance abuse, bad relationships, aimless in life. Now, by virtue of my pursuit of understanding of this thing and establishing greater freedom in my life, and the corollary to that which is taking more responsibility in my life, and an understanding of Bitcoin and how fundamental money is to a culture and American society, has caused me to have a more hopeful vision for the future, I am way better off. I'm taking care of my health, I'm establishing better relationships in my life, I'm pursuing work that I find meaningful". It's outstanding.
So the piece I wrote, that you partially got through, makes some pretty bond claims there at the end, because I'm trying to figure out why is it that this thing is so meaningful to people? I think the feeling or sense, even striving that we all have for liberty and liberation, liberation from our own anxiety and suffering, liberation from the strictures of society that are imposed on us, is part of that pursuit. When you are able to transcend that in various ways, it's very powerful.
I mean to me, more so than the macro, more so than the monetary history, more so than the sic gains from being involved in Bitcoin, to me the most powerful thing is to witness all these people -- I've got my dad here, and what he remarked last night at the Beefsteak, he's like, "Everyone's so happy and positive and humble and respectful and polite; what is this?" That's the question I've been asking: what the fuck is this: what's going on here? I tend to think it's way stranger than we give it credit for. We're all just here grasping in the dark trying to figure out what it's all about.
But I think, to put a pin in your original question, is a greater felt sense of freedom because of the qualities of Bitcoin and what using it allows for is causing people to (1) take more responsibility, and (2) see a different future on the horizon than they had seen before. Just anecdotally, my perspective, prior to Bitcoin, I was like a gold bug type. I was always very critical of politics and government and all that jazz, somewhat of your typical gold bug, but what do you do? You look out on the world and you look at the revolving door of big business and government and all these massive forces that, at least from my perspective, were not serving the world broadly speaking, were not serving humanity.
Maybe I was a bit young and naïve and maybe I was overly critical; there's always some of that, we all have our biases. But the punchline was I didn't see how the mess of the world could get turned around, and I think there are a lot of people in the world today that feel that way; the nihilism, the anxiety, the depression, the substance abuse, all that's a part of that. As a result of that, I checked out; I worked, I made money, I didn't treat my body or my health very well. I probably wasn't as mentally with it and engaged as I am now, and I strive to be now.
But then, when you figure out that there might be something emerging here in Bitcoin that can help rectify some of those issues at a very fundamental level, then you don't have to have all these fights at a higher level. If you can fix it down here, as we often say, "Fix the money, fix the world"; but if you can fix that base layer then I think a lot of stuff, naturally, gets fixed. And the result of that, as an individual, is you start to see a more hopeful future, and that awakens something in you to say, "That's a future that I want to be congruent with or I want to be a part of. That's worth my effort; that's worth my energy". I think that's happening on a growing scale now. The fact that we're at a conference this week that's going to have 30,000 people in it, I think is a reflection of that.
I think it's awesome that we have these conversations and try to explore what's going on because there is a significant hunger for asking the question, what is this; what's going on; why are we being so transformed by it?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, that's a really interesting point you bring up there, because if I just think in terms of the shifts that have happened in my life over the last five years, I think of the Bitcoin I hold, and you've mentioned sic gains; but actually, I haven't really realised much of that. I just hodl and it sits there. So, really, the fundamental shifts in terms of my financial position haven't fundamentally changed from holding Bitcoin. Yes, the podcast generates a revenue, but it's just a job. I could have had any other job. I actually haven't realised hardly any financial gains from holding Bitcoin, yet there's this whole shift in parts of your life in a way that you think about things. I'm still to fix the health bit; that's the bit I do need to get a grip off.
That wider idea that the things you question about life or that pursuit of freedom; that freedom to make your own choices; that freedom to pursue ideas and discuss and have conversations; that wider collective group of people who are thinking about topics about to how to improve the world, it's this whole other benefit from Bitcoin that is hard to communicate with people.
When you meet somebody who's new to Bitcoin, you tend to talk about the monetary properties or the technology. I don't know, it might be different for you, but I don't really start from the point of, "Oh, it's shifted my entire thinking about life and how I consider family and friendship".
John Vallis: It's a tough place to start.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it is, but it's probably the most important part.
John Vallis: I mean, why do we do anything? Why do we go towards anything? Why do you strive to achieve anything? Because you think there's value in doing so. What does that mean? It means that you think your perspective or your life is going to be updated in some capacity that you deem worthwhile as a result of that action.
I think we're all pursuing this for that reason, and it's not always obvious, and you follow the market and you follow the price signals to some degree, but I'm not so interested in the economic -- for me, it seems like a foregone conclusion. I know this all might fail and there's a bit of hubris in that, but I think the economic and monetary case for Bitcoin is pretty ironclad. I think understanding what are the implications of the introduction of something that we ascribe so much value to, what are the implications of that in our lives and how we live our lives, and the things that we pursue?
To that point about we're always striving to go towards greater value; we want to experience greater value in our life. What does that even mean? So, this introduces questions about, well, what is value? And as you say, what is freedom; is freedom one of the highest values? Is truth one of the highest values? Is love one of the highest values? I think the answer to those three questions is probably yes, but understanding the nuance of what all that means and how it influences how you orientate yourself in the world, I think, are the most important questions.
I'll preface all this by saying I might be insane; many of us might be insane. It's a weird group of people, bitcoiners, right?
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
John Vallis: I introduced you to one of my buddies last night who I love dearly, Erik Cason, and he just lets it roll, heart on his sleeve; he'll tell you exactly what he thinks. To the point about usually you massage into the conversation about transformation, that kind of stuff, he just drops it all in there.
Peter McCormack: He came straight in, man.
John Vallis: Right, and God love him for it, because that's what he's seeing, and that's what turns him on, and that's what stimulates him intellectually, and that's the truth he's pursuing. For what's it worth, I think there's a lot of validity in his perspective and that's why I enjoy conversations with him so much. But, yeah, I think that's the rub; why do we do what we do, and why is Bitcoin influencing what we do?
If you want to look into the fundamentals of what value is and what freedom and truth and love and these things are, I think necessarily you end up in the domain that has previously spent a lot of time on this, which would be philosophy and religion, spirituality broadly speaking. What did the people in the past who were trying to figure out the most important or valuable or beneficial things to be oriented by in your life, the things to be ground your perspective in, what did they have to say to about these questions? They spent a lot of time on them.
There are 5,000 years of written history before the moment we're in right now. I think we, at a great disservice, dismiss the insights of the past because we find fault in some of the people that had those insights.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. So, when I came into this conversation, I was thinking we were going to spend a lot of time perhaps talking about political freedom, or how politics constrains freedom, or maybe enables freedom. But with everything you've said now and the question you asked me at the start, what does freedom mean to me, actually, there are other answers to that.
Freedom, to me, is control of time. Can I wake up every day and choose what I want to do? That's a really important theme because I've had really shitty jobs where I have a shitty boss and I hate what I do and it's monotonous, and I come home and I'm tired, I go to bed. I used to work in the advertising industry, and I didn't feel particularly free doing that. Now, I get up, I get to hang out with my friends, we get to make a show, I get to see you and have a conversation and then I can have some lunch and sit in the pool. That freedom is unbelievable, and I have the freedom to creatively pursue what I want; we could rename this show and next week, start interviewing different people.
I think the answer to that question you originally asked me, what is freedom to me; actually, the freedom to pursue my time, and use my time how I want, I can probably answer that question now that you asked earlier, that's probably the most important thing to me.
John Vallis: Yeah. Well, I would agree. But what's interesting about that circumstance, we grow up in a system -- we have different views on the educational system and the political apparatus and all that kind of stuff, but I think we can broadly agree that there's a lot of room for improvement in how we bring people up in culture and society today.
I think, by virtue of the fact that the money's been corrupted, and people are placed in an unnecessarily deprived economic situation as a result of the surreptitious theft of their time and energy through the money, as well as the institutions that benefit from that theft and then get to dictate how people come up through education, through institutions, etc, I think what it means is that people are rarely, or not as often, confronted with that question. So, people don't even get to experience freedom in the first place because they're so often in a deprived state.
So, the question I'd like to throw back at you, and it's probably the focus of this conversation, is once you have freedom, then the question becomes, what the fuck do you do with it? I think a lot of bitcoiners are starting to realise, if you accumulate enough Bitcoin, it'll be there for you in the future and nobody can take it from you. Like, if you honk your horn in Ottawa, doesn't matter; if you're fleeing Ukraine, Russia, Syria, whatever, it doesn't matter, that can be there for you. That's a very powerful sense that you can manoeuvre through the future no matter what, because at least you have a foundation, that degree of security and freedom.
But, because many of our lives have been, "Take this task; do this exam; follow this course; work, work, work because you need to because you don't have enough money to live, etc", when you're granted that freedom, I think a lot of us are starting to grapple with the question, "Well, what do you do with it?" Like, "Okay, you can do whatever you want now. What's most important to you? What's most meaningful to you?"
Peter McCormack: Well, it makes me think of Eric Weinstein when I first got a chance to sit down with him, and it was a really prominent interview for me and it really stuck with me; I really wrestled with it.
John Vallis: That's the one you did last year this time?
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
John Vallis: I remember it, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Really wrestled that for a long time when he was saying -- he was like an outsider holding a mirror up to us and saying, "I see you all with your laser eyes and your Lambos and your shit on Twitter, but what are you guys doing; what are you doing here? What's the goal; what are you trying to do?" We thought about that a lot, we discussed it a lot, I thought about it a lot.
John Vallis: He meant with this podcast?
Peter McCormack: No, no, no, Bitcoin as in general. Like, "What are you guys doing?" What fundamental changes are we making? If we just spend all day on Twitter arguing about freedom and property rights, okay, that's great, but where are we fundamentally making changes? I think you can look at some interesting stuff being done in the energy sector, and say, "Okay, that's a fundamental change that people are making", but where else are we actually fundamentally making a change? That stuck with me a lot.
So, when you ask me now, it's like, "Now you have this, what do you do with it?" I think there are a couple of answers. There's what I want to do selfishly for me, but also what I feel I have a sense of responsibility to do as well. So, selfishly, for me, I want to run a football club; that is my goal. I also want to be a writer. They're the things I selfishly want to do. But I also feel a sense of responsibility, say, with this platform because it's grown into something that I could not have prepared for.
I think I have a responsibility to allow as many people with different voices to speak and explain their perspectives, where they're coming from, what's important to them; try and draw people together to be a bit more empathetic to each other and to try and walk to more collective better ideas, which is why I always want to have people on I disagree with, rather than people I agree with. So I feel like, when you asked me that question, "What do I with it?" I do what I want to do for me so I'm happy and feel content, but I also feel like I also have to pursue things for other people because I feel that's my moral responsibility. Does that make sense?
John Vallis: It makes total sense.
Peter McCormack: What about you?
John Vallis: Well, hold on now.
Peter McCormack: Okay. You're interviewing me now!
John Vallis: So, you're saying you want to bring different viewpoints together?
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
John Vallis: You want to clash those ideas, presumably because you think something of value can be derived from that?
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
John Vallis: Maybe we can both come together, share our perspective and something new might emerge. What is the purpose of that new thing emerging? What are you striving for when you're feeling that impulse to do that?
Peter McCormack: I want to see less conflict.
John Vallis: Right, so maybe peace would be like a value, a virtue that you're seeking there.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
John Vallis: And union, unity of various kinds.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, by virtue of that, yeah. All I see around me at the moment is fight, fight, fight. It makes me think of this book; I read this book by this guy Jiddu Krishnamurti, he's this Indian philosopher.
John Vallis: Love him.
Peter McCormack: I've got a big portrait of him tattooed on my leg.
John Vallis: Do you?
Peter McCormack: Yeah. When I got divorced, I ended up just reading his stuff as a place to just ground me to make me not think about divorce, and I was just reading his stuff.
John Vallis: He's great.
Peter McCormack: He is great. I discovered him through this band called Stick to your Guns, because they always play quotes of his over their songs, and he was just saying about the world. It's, "Everything is fight, fight, fight. All around us is fight, fight, fight", and that's all I feel at the moment, whether it's out in Ukraine and Russia or whether it's on Twitter, all I'm seeing is fights, fight, fight, fight, and I'm like, "What? Am I contributing to that?" I certainly have. I can be a massive prick at times and create conflict and I don't want to do that anymore.
John Vallis: Well, it's interesting you bring up Krishnamurti, because he was one of the first philosophers that I started reading, and he was instrumental I think in my development in that. It's perfectively relevant to the conversation we're having, because I would generally characterise his approach to things as being like "I don't know the answer. Let's talk; let's talk honestly, sincerely, see what we can find".
He's not one of these prescriptive people like, "This the path to God" or, "This is what's true" or, "This is what's right". He was a very intelligent guy, there are all these great videos of him on YouTube. He just would often sit down and ask questions, like Socratic method sort of thing, and just see what might be elucidated through honest conversation, which again is why free speech is so important, and that's one of things that is under threat these days.
To your point about fighting, I'm of two minds of this. I'm a fan of non-fatal voluntary conflict, let's say. So, whether that's like UFC and martial arts, let's say that's the manifestation in the physical world, or if it's two people deciding, "Let's go head-to-head and have it out". I think the problem is is when the intention or the desire is to cancel, hurt, insult, like when it doesn't have a productive end in mind. When you fight someone physically, you don't hate them and want to hurt them, you want to see what you're made of. It's trying to determine and develop your talents. What I mean is, I think there's a role for conflict especially when everything today is so PC, everything is so censored.
When people get this sense of freedom that Bitcoin seems to be granting, even though I look at some of the rhetoric, on Twitter especially, and I'm like, "Well, I wouldn't engage that way, but I don't necessarily dislike it, because I can see where it's coming from when people have grown up in a culture where you can't say certain things; if you say this in your school, online, in politics, you're cancelled, you're derided, whatever". It's free speech in action.
Yes, it comes with the imperfections that everybody has because none of us are perfect. So, when you let that rip, when you express that degree of freedom that you have, maybe it comes with some baggage. But I try to see it as a positive in terms of, I'd rather see unlimited free speech with all the imperfections of the person who's saying it, rather than having taboo things that we can't say and we can't discuss, or ways in which we can't express ourselves.
It's destructive at times, but I also don't even know if I'm the one that should be judging that. I mean, how do I know that's destructive? How do I know that an encounter you might have with someone on Twitter, I mean barring the really egregious stuff which I've seen, you get certain DMs and stuff, physical violence is a total non-starter obviously, and that should be condemned fully; but when it's prodding and poking and all that kind of stuff, I kind of like it. You brought up Eric Weinstein before, and people like him have been dipping their toes in the space over the last couple of years, right? People from intellectuals, or people that have followings in normie world, they're coming in and they oftentimes will be like, "I'm new to Bitcoin, I'm here to fix Bitcoin", and Eric has a bit of that, to be fair, to call a spade a spade.
But I like that this space and the culture that's emerging around this is so intent on determining the character of people that there's this, whether it's intentional or not, if you can get through that, if you can sustain the barrage and still determine, "I don't care what you're going to say to me, I don't care of the language you use, I'm here to understand the truth of this thing and the value that it might hold, so you can go fuck yourself too, because I don't care about your opinion; I care about this thing and using it to strive for greater value in my life".
If you get turned around and block people and you say, "Oh well, that wasn't very nice, you said this or that", in my mind, it seems to bring in question how committed you are to understanding the actual thing, rather than having your ego stroked in some way or being treated a certain way, because outside of this culture, you're treated that way.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. I think for me, the point I was trying to make is, what is productive? I don't mind conflict, I like --
John Vallis: But how do we know the answer to that?
Peter McCormack: Well, no, I can only make a choice of what's productive for me. So, I'm not a huge MMA fan, but a huge boxing fan; I love it. This conversation could descend into an argument. It never does, but just say it did, I know afterwards, we'll still hug it out and say, "That was cool. I'm glad we got somewhere". But, for me, it was like, "Where can I be productive?" I don't think I ever help or change many people's mind in a fight on Twitter.
John Vallis: Fair enough, yeah.
Peter McCormack: But if I'm spending 10, 20 hours a week doing that, actually could I spend another 10, 20 hours a week reading, sitting down with people, having conversations, getting them recorded? They get out, 50,000, 100,000 people listen to that conversation, and that helps some other people navigate a topic or research further. Is that a more productive use of my time? I think that's what it is.
John Vallis: Almost certainly.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. So, I'm trying to avoid the unnecessary, unproductive conflicts that add little value. I still go and look on Twitter. I'm like, "What are people discussing this week?" A really interesting one was seeing Nic Carter fighting that climate guy; what is his name? Peter something. This guy came out with like an appeal to authority about his experience understanding energy and got in this conflict with Nic, and I was like, "That was a useful conflict". That for me gave an understanding of both characters, and that gave for me an understanding the topics being discussed and what was at risk, and I thought, "That's a useful conflict". But what is productive for me? This is more productive.
John Vallis: Sure.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's just about going back to your original question, "Well, what do you do with that freedom?" I don't think it's spending 20 hours a week on Twitter, it's spending 20 hours extra hours a week producing as much useful stuff for other people as possible.
John Vallis: Yeah, sure. There are probably more meaningful things you could be doing than getting in spats on Twitter. I guess, to sum up my point, I think conflict reveals character, and I think that part of what's happening in this culture is not only are we trying to discern everyone's character, "Can I trust you? What are you about? Do I want to be connected with you?" but also, our own characters are being refined and upgraded as a result of being a part of this whole thing. So, we're also wondering, "In what manner should I upgrade my character?" In order to do that, we have to get a clear image of what your character is like and what their character is like, and I think that's a big part of the process.
To your point about if we butted heads here we'd hug it out, I think that speaks to -- you brought up truth at the beginning and there's a concept we often talk about. I think if your allegiance, like your orientation for why you do things, and this is why I was drilling down a little bit on your motivations, if it is to the pursuit of truth, let's say in this particular case, it might be freedom, it might be love, it might peace, it might be whatever, but let's say truth is one of the big ones, then that's going to dictate how you engage in all this stuff.
If my primary orientation is my own self gain, the preservation of my image of myself, my ego, well then that will dictate how I engage with you. I may want to beat you and not hug it out after because I want to walk away and be like, "Fuck that guy, I won". But, if my allegiance is, "I don't care about any of that shit. I want a better understanding of the truth of whatever the issue, matter, subject we're talking about is", if that's the highest allegiance, then I'm going act as though I'm trying to get the best out of you. I want to know your deepest insights, because I want to see if they're valid for me and I want to see if I they can refine my perspective. Even if we don't line up on any of them, at least at the end I could say, "Thank you".
It's the same in martial arts and sparring. Like, "I don't want to pound your face in. I want to see how good I am at refining my skills". Then, at the end I want to say thank you to you, because you put yourself on the line. In one capacity, you've subjected your own ego to the truth, and another one you've subjected your body in service of the process that we're collectively discovering. That's a really interesting point. What does it mean in the former example? What does it mean when you subordinate your ego? Things exclusively accumulating to your conception of yourself and your gain to a higher value, in this case truth.
This is why we wind up in the religious and spiritual landscape when we talk about these things, because I think part of that enterprise is discovering what is the value that's most beneficial or worthwhile to subordinate yourself to for the production of a meaningful life? I think that's generally the religious enterprise. So, what all of these people throughout the ages have been doing is saying like, "Well yeah, okay, we agree with that question; what are the values?" I think truth, freedom, love are some of them. So, when we talk about freedom, the political aspects of freedom are interesting, but I think they come from a more base layer of how we understand those values.
I'm still as imperfect as anyone else, and still on my own journey, but I'm starting to, not even intellectually understand, but feel the benefit of subordinating myself to a value, or subordinating my conception of myself and my ego to a value higher than myself. I remember when I sent you that thing, you're like, "I'm not religious". I said, "I'm not either". I don't ascribe to any particular faith, because I think a lot of them are borne out of the same pursuits, this very one that we're discussing.
I know this is a complicated subject, but I think the notion of God, if we want to go there, if subordinating yourself to certain values, again let's keep going with this tract of truth, if that does lead to a better life for you and the people around you, and that's tricky to nail down, because in our world today, better life might be, "Oh, are you a billionaire? Is that the description? Or, is it waking up and feeling content and energised and having a lot of loving relationships in your life and feeling strong and all that jazz?" So, success is a hard one to nail down, but your own individual success, however we might come to a definition of that, and harmony with those with whom you're interacting and trying to strive forward with, what are the things that optimise for that?
Can we say that, if we gain any clarity on what those values are and we actually embody them and live them and they actually work, what does that say about this reality that we find ourselves in? Can we say that it somehow is constructed or resonant with those values? If we can, is that somewhere near the notion of a God that says, "If you align with certain values you will receive the benefit of having done so?" I don't know, but interesting thoughts.
Peter McCormack: Okay. No, no, I'm going with you here, because I'm not a religious person; my mother was. I was raised a Christian, went to church, but I'm just not religious. I'm a science nerd and I read a lot of science nerdy literature and try and understand how the universe works, etc, and for me, there's no role for God in that. But could you, in a similar way, subordinate yourself to humanity as a collective, subordinate yourself, "Am I doing the best to create the best environment for everyone around me and as far as that reaches?" could that be a similar thing?
John Vallis: Definitely, because I think that's one of the components of being part of a harmonious whole. But let's talk about this religious thing for a while, and we'll probably piss a lot of people off by treading sloppily through this territory, but --
Peter McCormack: I built a career on treading sloppily through topics!
John Vallis: I think it goes without saying that the religious institutions around the world, whatever they are and wherever they come from, maybe I think were founded on profound insight and a worthwhile enterprise and altruistic people. When they've become institutionalised, and in an attempt to be propagated and shared, they've probably become corrupted, possibly irredeemably so. We shall see. They've also grown up in a world where we weren't globally connected like this. So, they all grew up in isolation. You can look into ancient Indian religions, Egyptian religions, Native American religions, it's all there for us to study now.
I don't think that component of life -- this is what we're talking about; we're saying, "What are the best values to orientate yourself by?" I think that's what religion is. The answers to those questions have been codified, written down and then stewarded, but that stewarded has created a separation between the actual pursuit of those values by every individual and organisation that seeks to gain from guarding that information.
Much has been done in the name of "fill in the blank" religion; much bad stuff has been done. To be fair, we don't know that it would have been better had that not been the case. By virtue of the fact that all of recorded history, we have examples of it, maybe that speaks to its central importance. Maybe, as much as we've fumbled throughout our history, and all the war and conflict and all the other bullshit, maybe it would have been way worse if we didn't have a unifying value, something to come together on and say, "Yes, all the other things we might disagree on", again, this is the topic of our conversation today, "We believe that these values should be held up as the highest".
So, my current thinking on it is that maybe we're moving into a period where the religious institutions are going to dissolve in various forms, but I hope we don't throw the baby out with the bath water, because I think there's a lot of useful insight that they've come up with. So, let's investigate them in conjunction with philosophy, in conjunction with science, in conjunction with psychology, with all of it, and try to determine what values do we most orientate ourselves by for a good life.
The final point I make on this is, we can't act without that. You deciding to go here or go there, there's a value judgement inherent in that. What's guiding those decisions? I think the recognition of the central importance of that, let's say, the membrane of value that exists in between you and how you act in the world and determines your action, what's the most valid one to have or what's the most valid group of ones to have?
I think this is why I keep coming back to truth, freedom, love, peace; I think we've determined over the last 5,000 years that those are some of the best ones to get down with and to be oriented by. We were talking about liberation and freedom at the beginning, and I like looking at the idea of liberation, whether it's Buddhism or Hinduism or all these different cultures, the final act of liberation is often sacrificing yourself, subordinating yourself to a higher value so that you are directed by that and your actions are in service of the higher value. You kind of already said that that's the case. You're saying, "Well, part of my actions at least are to foster the improvement of humanity, to help educate people, to help create less conflict and more peace". What is that but you subordinating your action in service of the value of peace?
So, for whatever reason, the emergence of Bitcoin and how it seems to be changing people, is causing people to ask these questions more. Maybe it's because they have more time and freedom on their hands to ask the questions. Maybe it's because Bitcoin itself seems to be instantiated or an instantiation of truth, an immutable truth that grants freedom. I think that, in itself, is a very profound reflection of insights that we've seen in various religious traditions before; the truth that grants liberation.
Peter McCormack: I think that wraps us all the way back to what you said at the start. Only since going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole and having to deal with a certain amount of truth, undeniable truth, that you question other big decisions in your life based around those truths. There is also this collective community pressure to be a better person. So, it's not just, "Oh, I've got some Bitcoin now".
John Vallis: Is that good or bad though?
Peter McCormack: Oh no, I think it's great.
John Vallis: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: I think it's great, but, at the same time, I still think we need some individualism within that and we need characters. We don't want to be just the homogenous group of people who all act the same.
John Vallis: Absolutely not. The answer is, I'll listen to you, I'll have these conversations, I'll thank you for holding me to a higher standard, but the buck stops with me. I'll decide, at the end of the day, whether I value your input or not and whether I'm going to integrate it into who I am and the actions that I choose or not. I think you can have both. You can say, "Thank you" and, "Fuck you", at the same time! That's what all this is about, right?
So, I really value the fact that it's easy to criticise a culture, the purity test and all that kind of stuff, it'll be easy to criticise; but I see it as a mirror, and I don't take it as gospel. If it happens to me, I say, "Oh, that's interesting feedback. Now I'll decide, I'll integrate it, I'll put it through my own value framework and I'll decide what's right for me", and that's what we all have to do. If we don't, if we just follow the crowd, if we're subject to other people's whims, if we do things under pressure, we've lost ourselves; that's the opposite of freedom. You're doing what other people dictate for you, not what you dictate for yourself.
I think the thing that allows us to have greater confidence in rejecting the masses and the pressure that comes from them is having more conviction in why we make the decisions we make, which is very much in line with the discussion of values we've been having. A final point about why Bitcoin is almost like a teacher in this regard, and I know this sounds kind of, "What would Jesus do?" the phrase, well, what would Bitcoin do? Bitcoin is this thing --
Peter McCormack: Bitcoin is the guru.
John Vallis: Well, it doesn't violate itself, it doesn't violate its own truth. So, knowing that, how much pressure does that put on you as an individual to say, "I'm not go to violate my own truth. That seems right and so maybe I should embody that same principle"? Way harder for imperfect people in the chaos of life.
But I'm coming to be more and more convicted that that way of approaching things, that determining the values that bring the best world about as we interact together and then subordinating my own interests to them by some weird metaphysical whatever things that we don't understand, is the way to achieve the world that we would probably all agree we want. It may not serve us in the short term. There may be some short-term gain, but how many things in life are there that hurt in the now but are beneficial later on? I mean, working out is super simple one; it sucks, right, it's painful and you're lazy and all that jazz; but if you do it enough, you benefit in the future.
Peter McCormack: What are saying, John?
John Vallis: I'm saying we've got to go do sprints after this!
Peter McCormack: Mate, if my back could take it, I would love to sprint.
John Vallis: How is your back? I thought you got surgery.
Peter McCormack: I did. I was good for three months, I was back cycling, going to the gym, popped again.
John Vallis: Fuck!
Peter McCormack: Now I can't run for a minute. I can swim, and I can walk, and a small amount of cycling, but I'd probably have to have another surgery.
John Vallis: Dude, where's your personal trainer around here? You've got all this crew, a fancy house, where's the trainer that comes with you, cooks the meals?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, Emma, where's my personal trainer?! That'll be the next one. Yeah, I'm probably going to go have another surgery, an actual fusion now.
John Vallis: Shit!
Peter McCormack: But I don't mind that. I mean, Tiger Woods has a fusion and a car crash and he's about to compete in The Masters.
John Vallis: One final point that comes to mind, it's easy to think we can control so many things, and like, "If I just make this decision, it serves me now, then I'll make this decision later and then this decision later". But if you look back on your life, certainly, you don't get, for example, to this stage with everything that's going on around here without some intentionality, but I think we'd all admit that there was a lot of happenstance or there was a lot of serendipity, all that kind of stuff, spontaneity. So, what allows that to happen; what's happening there?
I think, if we try to construct a world purely based on our intention and connecting all these dots out into the future, we'll probably be disappointed and we'll probably not foster the best life for ourselves and others. If we direct our lives and subordinate it to certain principles, maybe we have a better chance. I guess that's kind of the point; determining which truth to subordinate yourself to in any situation is tricky. If you're someone in Nazi Germany and you're hiding Jews and the guy comes to your door and says, "You're hiding Jews in this house", well the truthful answer is, "Yes", but that's not the best truthful answer. So, how do you determine what's right?
So, even though you can't always have an easy layup answer like, "Well, I'm just going to subordinate myself to this value and I'll figure it out"; it's not that easy. I think the answer involves considering that process.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and there's a lot of ego wrapped up in some of these decisions as well.
John Vallis: Always is!
Peter McCormack: How's this all evolved for you, though?
John Vallis: How so?
Peter McCormack: You said you were previously a gold bug. What was your Bitcoin year, you origination year?
John Vallis: I bought Bitcoin in Bali in 2014 for the first time.
Peter McCormack: Right, okay. How different are you now from then?
John Vallis: The short answer is, I've always been somewhat of a contrarian, black sheep. I'm sure my old man can reflect on that afterwards a little bit. But I always thought there was something more, and I've also been insanely curious, to a fault, because you need to able to focus on things to build a career and a life and that kind of stuff, and I've also just been so consumed with the questions. And part of the reason why I was lost, I referred to earlier, was for a few years, I was living in China for a decade, pursuing a career in finance and then in natural medicine, I didn't know how the world could be improved.
So, I still always took care of myself; health has always been a priority; intellectual refinement has been a priority; spirituality of various kinds; big interest in psychedelics and the role they play for individual discovery and stuff like that. That's always been a part of my schtick, but it was lacking that mechanism for all that being relevant in the world. I actually think that's one of the things that -- we talked about the energy and the happiness and the positivity of bitcoiners earlier, I think that's part of it. I'm generalising, but I think it's a group of people that were kind of outcast a little bit, and they were like, "This doesn't feel right. There's something missing from all this. I don't really want to be a part of this", and you withdraw and you go in different directions.
Now something is emerging in the world that's kind of reframing your conception of the world and what it can be and saying like, "That's way more aligned with who I believe I am. That's way more aligned with the world that I want to be a part of. Okay, now that that's the case, now there's like actual pressure on me to discover my own potential", whereas before, maybe you ignore it because who gives a fuck? Now it's like, "What might I pursue? What might I become? What is my potential? What is my highest potential?"
I know this is all clichéd stuff, but they're real considerations, and I see them happening in people all over this conference and all the podcasts I do. It's real, and the same is true for me, like Bitcoin has awakened that thing in me that makes me asks those questions of like, "What do I want to become? Who's the person I want to be?" There's nothing more important than that, in my opinion.
Then it bleeds into careers and work activity and income and all that kind of stuff, but peace and joy and gratitude are the words that come to mind as a result of Bitcoin entering my life and consciousness in the world, because now I feel that a more peaceful, a more prosperous, a more free and more truthful world is possible, and that aligns with all the things, concepts, values, etc, that I've always been pursuing and curious about, but was bumping up against their relative deficiency in the world. Now they're bursting onto the scene, and all these other freaks are getting it too, and we get to share in that with people and contribute to it and learn about it and, most importantly, refine ourselves through it. So, I've never been happier in life, and it's beautiful.
Peter McCormack: Okay, salut! I'm with you; I've never been happier in life. Talk to me about psychedelics.
John Vallis: What do you want to know?
Peter McCormack: Well, you tell it.
Danny Knowles: About your mushroom experience?
Peter McCormack: Yeah. I lost my psychedelics virginity three weeks ago.
John Vallis: So? Go for it.
Peter McCormack: I mean, not too much to tell. A mutual friend you'll know offered us the chance to go up to his property in Texas and try mushrooms, and I was apprehensive because I have a bad history with drugs and I haven't done drugs in years. So, I was just mildly nervous about it, and yeah, I had a great time, it was amazing. It was really superficial, a lot of shapes and -- it wasn't what I expected.
I always thought you do psychedelics and you just see little green men and whatever, the clichéd thing. I didn't realise it's an experience you mostly do with your eyes closed. I would drift between just, like I'm closing my eyes now, shapes and colours and then going into these trance-like dreams where I wasn't seeing it but I knew what was happening, and then I would come out. And it was a very superficial experience. I tried to go in and be introspective, I tried to ask some big questions about parenting, relationships, relationship with my ex-wife; none of that happened.
John Vallis: No answers?
Peter McCormack: No answers, although I would say some of those relationships have improved since, but I didn't get any of that, but I got this hunger to go back and do it again.
John Vallis: Yeah, so this is something I've been interested in since 20 years old. At the time, it was just you get together with your guy friends and you go for a giggle fest, right? You all take a few grams and it's meant to be a big fun time, and I double-dosed myself accidentally. So, let's say we were doing a recreational dose of two grams, it ended up being four or five. It was a super-challenging time because, at a lower dose, things are swirly and it's fun and all that kind of stuff. At a higher dose, I think it brings you to a state of consciousness that's incredibly disruptive to your ego, your conception of yourself and all that that encompasses.
If you don't think there's anything other than that, first of all, but if you're not ready for that to be disrupted for a time, all the associations and aspects of your identity that allow you to move through the world confidently, "I'm Peter, this is what I believe, this is what I have. My preferences are…" all that stuff gets packaged up so that you can move through the world, the chaos of it, the threats of it and be basically okay.
What the psychedelic experience can do, and I say "can", because you can approach this differently, the punchline is a very high dose in silent darkness, either out in nature or inside, so five dried grams of psilocybin plus, in the right setting, silence, no shenanigans, anything like that; for a time, it delivers you to a perspective that is not tethered in the conception of yourself. It strips all that away. This is the idea of ego death; you no longer have a conception of yourself.
Then it begs the question, "Well, what the fuck is my awareness when it's not tethered to all these things that I think I am?" and you feel very naked, and a lot of people are not ready for that. It's a terrifying experience. So, when I was not ready for that and had this accidental dose, I was in a ball on the floor. I was actually outside by the shed. I'd left I'd my friend, I was like, "I've got to go outside", and I was there for 45 minutes; it was hell because I didn't know who I was. I didn't know what was going on. It thought I was going crazy.
Then I realised I had to stay with it. I had enough gumption, I guess, to be like, "No, don't be a pussy, stay", and I did that. Then it just clicked and it all went away and a feeling of, again, there's no language that can properly encompass this, it's an ineffable experience and it all sounds so cliché, but union with the ground of being, let's say. I think you can only have that experience if that union is not being disrupted by the different things that cause you to be a differentiated individual, differentiated idea of yourself. You can't experience that degree of unity if you have all these things that are separating you from that.
I realise this is all very weird language, but the punchline is that that experience caused me to pursue a greater understanding of all this stuff. So, I went on Amazon the next day, bought every single book they have on psychedelics. Six months later, I was down on the Amazon for three months living with a shaman doing ayahuasca on the regular, trying to figure all this stuff out.
Peter McCormack: What was that like?
John Vallis: I mean, the jungle sucks; it's so oppressive, just the heat and the bugs and all that kind of stuff. But again, curious person, I had to know like, "What is this? What's going on? It's not what I've been told. It's not just a recreational thing. It's not just, 'Drugs are bad; stay away from them'. It's something different. There's something of value here", and I wanted to know what that was. So, I was like, "Well, they've been doing it in the jungle for thousands of years and they take it seriously and I'm not going to put in jail if I do it there, so let's go figure it out".
It's hard to convey to you precisely what the benefit was, but broadly speaking, a broader perspective on who I am, what consciousness is, what reality is, and then of course, the question we've been dancing around this whole time is, "How then should I behave? Who should I strive to become?" That's the punchline of everything we do. And I find that those pursuits, done responsibly, are a phenomenal tool or a phenomenal help in that enterprise and that purpose. I can give you more details if you want.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I want it. Please do.
Danny Knowles: I want to know, in the jungle, why do they do it? What's their reasoning?
John Vallis: Well, so, the Amazon is a massive place, it's basically the size of continental US, and much of it is unexplored still, because it's such a thick environment. It's just thick jungle and river and mush everywhere. But the shamans in most places will say that they've been doing for thousands of years, and they've done it to access the "spirit realm". I know a lot of us would have an aversion to that characterisation, but let's just say another experience of awareness or consciousness.
Some tribes would do that because they felt there was a benefit to be gained by having someone that could access those realms and bring back different kinds of wisdom, whether it be personal wisdom for how the tribe should act or behave, and of course there was a hunting element of this, like divination sort of thing. I don't know much about that. I don't think these experiences allow you to predict the rain or where the animals are going to be or any of that kind of stuff, but when you're not so locked into your own individuated awareness, I think you're able to access greater pattern recognition because you're connected to more things, at least that's the sense.
So, when you're like that, can you observe the patterns of nature better? I definitely think you can, because you're not distracted by all the torrent of thoughts that you usually have, and all the different blockages that get in the way. If you really are more connected to all that is, well then I think you can derive greater insights from how all that is working. So, I think that's part of how, or why those practices emerge.
They still don't really know how because the combination of ayahuasca specifically, it's different for magic mushrooms and stuff like that, but ayahuasca specifically is two plants from the Amazon, and there are a shit-load of plants in the Amazon, so how did you figure out that you had to combine these two? It's not just like you pull one leaf off a tree and pull another one off and eat it, you have to get a ton of this stuff, like biomass, and boil it down in a giant caldron for a whole day. So, you might have ten gallons or more or water and you get a litre out of it, of this sludge; it's horrible, it's like drinking mud.
Peter McCormack: Do you have to drink the whole thing?
John Vallis: No, God no. You drink a shot of it.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
John Vallis: Then it delivers this experience. But the question remains, how did they figure that out? Trial and error I guess. I guess a lot of guys wound up dead in figuring that out, but it's remained for so many years because of the great value in it. If we look at the western world, broadly speaking, psychoactive practices generally have been instrumental to civilisation; that seems to the case. Now, it's not always psychoactive substances; rhythmic dancing, ordeal poisons, fasting, all of this kind of stuff has been used to perturb consciousness to varying degrees. Cultures, all throughout history, yoga's another one for example, have engaged in them for some reason.
I think, broadly speaking, we can say the reason is because there was a benefit to doing so. There's some sort of wisdom to be derived from shifting your perspective for a period of time, deriving wisdom or insight and then shifting it back afterwards, and then integrating that wisdom and insight into your life and into the culture. I think, if Bitcoin really is the base for a new culture, and I think it probably is, and maybe it doesn't happen for another 500 years, but I think that's the premise we all have to work with, I think we're going to see a resurgence of these practices, be they plant derived or otherwise, in forming the basis of that culture.
So, to answer your previous question, for me, I went in that direction because I didn't see a solution in the exterior culture world. Now I see the solution in the exterior, ie in Bitcoin, as well as the interior landscape that you're able to explore and refine through the responsible use of psychedelics. And a final capstone on that is, have you ever heard of Eleusis in Ancient Greece?
Peter McCormack: No.
John Vallis: So, this is a particularly notable one, but people like Plato and all the famous people form the classical Greek world attributed the height or the value or the advancement of their civilisation to these practices that took place at a town outside of Athens called Eleusis. The formal name for them is the Eleusinian Mysteries. it was a right that you experience once in your life if you were a notable person in the Ancient Greek world, and we don't know much about it.
It seems to be the case that it was fostering an experience of an altered state of consciousness. It seems like evidence is starting to show that it was a psychoactive substance of some kind; the punchline was that people would have this experience and then they would come away with it and saying, "That was most significant, consequential, valuable experience of my entire life", and it revivified the culture.
Then, in the modern day, because psychedelics were popular in the 1960s, burst on the scene, and then they were criminalised and pushed underground, and only in the last 20 years have places like NYU, Johns Hopkins, started to do the medical research on them. When you read the reports of the people that are involved in these studies, they too report that done in the right way, these experiences are among the most significant experiences of their life and stay with them for the rest of their life. Again, begs the question, why is that; what's going on there? That's what they're trying to discover.
I think the medical approach will only go so far because it's hard to write down on a notepad when you ask someone like, "Tell me about God", or, "Tell me about how you just unified with the ground of reality is". It's hard thing to write down and articulate. But I think, by virtue of the fact that more freedom is emerging through Bitcoin and people are more interested in their own development and refinement and, "Who should I be and should I value?" they're naturally going to go to these experiences because those experiences very much help determine the former.
I'm a bad example because I probably self-select and pay attention to more of this stuff, but it seems to me to be the case that a lot of bitcoiners are starting to become interested in this pursuit for that very reason. So, if we really are contributing to the emergence of a new culture, I think these methods of perturbing consciousness and accessing a different perspective for a period of time, are going to be fairly central to that.
Peter McCormack: Well, I mean even if you accept Bitcoin, you have to start to alter your thinking on a whole range of subjects.
John Vallis: Right, right.
Peter McCormack: Not everyone, but a lot of people have to reconfigure their life. You talked about fasting, for example; hodling is a form of fasting, if you think it through.
John Vallis: Yeah, it's a good one.
Peter McCormack: I've tried fasting; it's a struggle for me. I've always been a big guy; I like to eat. I like to wake up and have a coffee and a sandwich, or a bacon sandwich. Look, I am, but I've tried fasting; it's a real challenge. I've had periods when I've done okay, and you do gain that wisdom from that, but to me hodling is a form of fasting. It is a delayed gratification and with that comes wisdom.
John Vallis: Yeah, absolutely, and you bring up a good point. Everything alters your consciousness, even an idea. This is, I think, fairly central to the religious phenomenon as well. Like, why is it that a story about some guy in the past, real or fictional, why does it have such an impact on people? It's just an idea, but ideas are what operate the thing between your ears and dictate how you act. So, even something like an idea, like you can be certain of your financial security for 100 years into the future because you hold Bitcoin now. Now, "certain" is maybe the wrong word, but more confident than ever before.
Peter McCormack: More confident, yeah.
John Vallis: How much does that expand your conception of your own future and the future of your kids and the future of your grandkids? It's literally mind-expanding when a new idea enters your brain that expands the horizon of what the future could be for you. So, all of this stuff alters your consciousness. I guess what we're saying is how should we facilitate that process by intentionally altering our consciousness to gain more clarity about certain ideas that we want to continue to affect us, to continue to guide us in certain ways?
But it's a really interesting point that everything is consciousness-altering, from coffee to an idea to psychedelics. I mean, it's all just a soup of things going on up here that ultimately wind up in action, and everything affects it.
Peter McCormack: I'm following you here, because what I'm thinking is I think of, okay, my first Bitcoin tour of duty, did my first four years. If you survive a four-year period, even though I haven't really realised the gains from holding Bitcoin, there is that buffer that now exists. There's that financial buffer, and I know what that means for me and I know what that means for my kids, and it allows me to alter the decisions about what I'm going to do in life and what I want to do and the things I'm going to pursue.
If I do a second four years and there is a similar jump in net wealth, it allows me to widen the net of who I can bring into that kind of sphere. So, I have my kids, there's no way I'm teaching my kids, "Oh, yeah, you have to college and you have to get a job and you have to get a house". I used to, I used to say to them, "Your exams are important". Now, it's like, "Well, what do you want to pursue?" That's really, yeah…
John Vallis: You know, an obvious one that happens to a lot of bitcoiners is, when they feel that way -- how much of anxiety in life comes from job, career, money, all that kind of stuff? For most people, a lot.
Peter McCormack: A lot, especially when you can see it.
John Vallis: Yeah, absolutely. So, what's the impact on your mental clarity and how you determine what you want to do with your life if you can dial that down? You can say, "Oh, wow, I have a greater form of financial stability now, I'm not as anxious about the future. How does that change how I engage in the future? How does that change how I engage right now? How does that make available to me resources, mental and otherwise, that weren't available before because they were distracted by that?" I think it's significant.
Peter McCormack: So, if you go back to the start, we talked about failing institutions, crumbling centralized institutions. Certainly, there's a stress test. As you said, maybe they've not completely failed yet. We talked a lot about religion, and not so much what religion itself but the values that exist within religion. Do you feel like this kind of runaway fiat system, which is starting to fray at the edges, more than fray at the edges, do you think some of that comes from a lack of values, a lack of ideology, a lack of things that people anchor to themselves, or what do you think it's causing it?
John Vallis: It's a great question. I think it's inevitably both, but I think our natural state is the former. You grow up in the world and you have your familial and your community and your nation conditioning, the cultural conditioning, and so that affects all that and it by no means delivers to you everything you need. That's why, as we've been discussing, the culture is useful for socialisation, for interacting, for coordinating, for getting what you want, for accessing value, but you can't become it. You have to remain an individual so that you can take from it what's valuable and what you need from it and what benefits you, and not be co-opted by it.
I think what fiat does, is it increases the propensity that you are susceptible to being co-opted by the culture, the institutions, the government apparatus, all that kind of stuff, because they are able to develop an unnatural size, an unnatural degree of influence by virtue of the fact that they're able to surreptitiously steal from you. So I definitely think it exacerbates it. And why is it that here, at the time when the system is ostensibly reaching its breaking point, we have this "fiat culture" all over the world where people are unhappy, behaviour is deplorable in many cases?
I think we could all be fairly critical of the start of the world and culture today, and speaking about psychedelics, a guy I used to listen to a lot, Terence McKenna, he's dead now but he was a phenomenal resource in that space, he used to say, "Culture is not your friend". I now understand what he meant because it co-opts your will and you're directed by it rather than being directed by yourself, but I actually disagree. I think that culture can be a tremendous asset; that's why it exists, that's why we don't all live in the forest by ourselves, because there's so much to be gained by cooperating with one another.
But we have to make sure that the culture that gets established can't be corrupted itself. If it becomes corrupt, we become corrupted. But if we can establish it on a basis or a foundation of incorruptible truth, a money like Bitcoin, a sound money like Bitcoin, then I think there are no guarantees, but there's a much better probability that it will be less susceptible to corruption, and that means we will be less drawn in by that corruption, we'll be less co-opted by it.
Peter McCormack: Well, this is one of the areas I struggle with because the system itself, Bitcoin, it's truth essentially can't be corrupted.
John Vallis: Probabilistically.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. I can make an argument for, "Oh, well, in this scenario, this group of people..", but let's just say, generally speaking, it can't be corrupted, therefore we have truth and honesty with money and we don't have money misinformation. But that's the protocol of the system itself.
Individuals can still be corrupted, and that's why I've never been entirely in the "Bitcoin fixes everything" camp because humans are fallible, humans can be greedy, humans can be violent, humans have egos. So, I wonder in this new world where we have this much more advanced acceptance and use of Bitcoin, how does that still reshape us? Does this just shift the power dynamics?
John Vallis: I think we're finding out right now. I agree, of course. There's no silver bullet. We're weird monkeys, and we're always going to be imperfect, but that's the whole point. That gives us the opportunity to strive for being better, always. It's not like we're reaching in and be like, "All right, well, let's pack it in because we've pretty much done it". We will always be able to strive to be better, and that's a good thing; I'm grateful for that. But yeah, there are no silver bullets, and Bitcoin is not a perfect solution.
Simple example, if you were homeless and I said, "Hey, here's $100, go punch that guy in the face", you might do it because you fucking need to eat, right? If I said, "Hey, Pete", as you are today, "go punch Danny in the face. I'll give you $100 for it," you'd be like, "Fuck you!"
Peter McCormack: I don't know, man, try me!
John Vallis: Well, the point is, when you're put in a state of relative deprivation, you're more susceptible to being corrupted because of your needs, because of your wants, because of all that kind of stuff. But if you're in a lesser state of deprivation, and that can be a financial deprivation, spiritual, psychological, all that kind of stuff, if you're healthier more broadly speaking, I think you're less susceptible, there's a smaller probability of being corrupted, and that's all we can ask for.
Then, what I think is happening right now, you say, "Well, how's it going to fix it?" look around. Beefsteak last night, conference today, all of these people are being upgraded, if I can use that term, by this thing. They're all shitty monkeys like the rest of us, but they seem to be ascending to a higher version of their potential as a result of this thing. And I think the whole world may not be like hardcore Bitcoin maxis because, when this is just global money, there'll be a less tribal cultural aspect to it perhaps, but the fundamental values that are inherent in the system will continue to bubble up through the culture.
I think what's going to happen is, whoever you are critical of, maybe if you're walking around South Beach and you see some people, and you go, "Yeah, yeah, that's kind of…" wherever in the world you find people, you're critical of how they behave. That's by virtue largely of the culture. Sure, they're responsible for making their decisions, but there are so many different signals and conditioning that's being imposed on people that dictates their behaviour.
A simple one that I use often, and it's probably overly simplified, but if you and I grew up in the Amazon, in that village that I stayed at, rather than where we grew up, we'd be speaking differently, we'd have different preferences, we'd probably dress differently, all that kind of stuff. So, we very much are a product of our culture. That's why it's so important that the culture is predicated on values that we mutually agree are good.
When we buy Bitcoin, when we hold Bitcoin, we're saying that value's inherent in Bitcoin, truth, sovereignty, incorruptibility, etc, unity through the network; we're saying we agree with those values. We think those values are good, and as a result we're giving ourselves to them, our financial capacity in this case, to them. I think the more people do that, the more individuals will experience benefit and the more the culture will be predicated on those very principles or values, and I think that would be an improvement from what we have today.
Peter McCormack: I don't disagree, but I do also think, like when you said a moment ago, if I was hungry, I was homeless and you offered me $100 to punch somebody in the face, maybe I'd do it. I think the point you're really making is that when people are desperate, are hungry, they may steal, whatever, to protect themselves.
John Vallis: You can be more easily influenced by someone providing the things that you think you're deprived of.
Peter McCormack: Sorry, but where I was going with this is what I'm saying is, one the great things that I think about society and culture, and certainly western liberal democracies, is the fact that we've done a lot to protect people in vulnerable situations, whether that's economic situations, but also with regards to civil rights and such. One of things I worry about is the loss of that, in the pursuit of absolute freedom, that we lose some of these things that have I think been for the betterment of society and culture.
John Vallis: How do you think that would happen?
Peter McCormack: Well, I talk to some people who talk about they hate collectivism, they hate taxation and redistribution, whereas I look at it differently and I think a good society and culture is one that does protect the weakest within it. I think government is very bad at taxation and redistribution, but I think they still do a good job in places like the UK, and the US to a certain extent, with protecting the weakest in society, and I worry about the loss of that.
John Vallis: Yeah, this is a large discussion, but I think generally speaking, where I fall on it is don't violate property and do whatever the fuck you want. If you want to live in a society where you contribute 30% of your income so that there's a bigger safety net, more power to you, but we live in a world today where that's not really a choice for most people. I hope in the future it will be. I also think it's really hard for us to change one variable of society today without changing all the other variables.
Peter McCormack: Agree.
John Vallis: So, it's very difficult to look at things in isolation. Like, for example, I think, in a Bitcoin‑denominated world and a hyperbitcoinised world, I think far fewer people will fall through the cracks, so there'll be far less need for a safety net; but I also think the safety net will be provided on a familial, on a local, and a community level more effectively than someone on high in Washington DC trying to improve the life of someone on the street in San Francisco.
I think there's a lot wrapped up in that. How do family values change? How does the approach to the nuclear family change? How much more access to prosperity and wealth is available when it's not being stolen, when the productivity gains of new technology and innovation is not being siphoned away by the money printer? All these things go into it, but we could debate that, and who the fuck knows how it's going to play out, but the premise is don't violate property and allow people to make their own choices.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and any form of collectivism requires violation of property.
John Vallis: Not necessarily, because you could opt into it.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I just think it's difficult in an opt-in system to collectively protect the weakest in society.
John Vallis: Yeah, you may be right, but I think it will be resolved more emergently than we can currently see. I think part of the issue with the state generally and all the different things it presumes to have the authority to do, is that it causes us to abdicate our responsibility for many of those roles. So, in this case, a very simple example is, if you think you're already giving away 50% of your income in taxes, how motivated or even how capable are you to help the person in your very neighbourhood, in the cul-de-sac or the street that you live on, to go above and beyond and help that person? For most people, probably not, because in the back of their mind they're saying, "Well, safety nets are there, I pay my taxes, It's not my problem". But what if none of that happened?
So, (1) nobody was stealing from you and you had more wealth, and (2) you weren't given a free pass of abdicating that responsibility, because you knew if you didn't do something, nobody else would. Now I know this is idealistic and all that jazz, but my impression of seeing bitcoiners operate -- you're a great example of this, because when I shared that story about the guy in the town that I'm living in right now, he got fucked over by a scammer, you sent me a bunch of money to make him whole. Why did you do that? It wasn't the state doing that; you decided that you wanted to help that person because we have a relationship and all the rest of it.
My point is that, when you have a greater capacity to help and you feel a greater responsibility to help, I think you help more. I think that's the culture that we're going into, and I think bitcoiners are an early representation of that.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I don't disagree, but at the same time I can't pin my hopes on hoping people have the same values that I have and you have, because I'm not sure if that's realistic.
John Vallis: I mean, there are no guarantees, right?
Peter McCormack: No.
John Vallis: That's part of rolling the dice of reality. We take risk in every action that we take, and this is why it's so important to tether them to values, because if they're not tethered to the values that you deem most valuable or worthwhile or meaningful, by what means do you establish a compass in your life to determine action? So, I agree with you. It's hard to see all the dots that connect to this future that I've been articulating, but I think that's why we have to defer to call them axioms, values, premises, and I think one of them is, "Don't steal from me. Don't violate my physical autonomy or my property".
Throughout history, there have been laws written to say, "Okay, I won't violate your property, but I have more power than you so I'm going to violate your property if I need to by coercion, threat or actual force and violence". Bitcoin allows us to establish a property relation to the most concentrated form of our wealth, which is money, that's nigh inviolable. As you were saying before, you can be coerced, I can put a gun to your head, but you need my participation to get my Bitcoin if it's custodied properly. So, that changes the game and that instantiates that property right, the premise of, "Don't violate my property", more so than it's ever been represented or available to people before.
I think that's going to have pretty profound political and other effects as we've been discussing, because a law is only as good as the people who decide to uphold it. Unfortunately, in the world we're living in today, we're figuring out that laws can be changed or circumvented pretty damn quickly if you're tagged as the bad guy, and you may not be. You said something on Twitter that you didn't think was all that bad but somebody did and they censored you. You contributed to a cause in Canada recently that you didn't think was so bad, but somebody else did and they cut off your bank account.
So, laws are great and I think we should continue to refine them and we should ground them into the things that we think are most important. But, if we have an opportunity to make them more permanent or firm, if we have an ability to make them more inviolable, we should take it; I think that's what Bitcoin is doing. And when our property can't be violated, what happens? I think we get a lot more voluntary exchange, and you can then choose, like "I want to support these causes; I want to be a part of this city".
It's so early. I think we're at the precipice of really next level civilisational change, and it's probably going to be messy a little bit in the transitionary period, but on the other side of this or as we move forward, I think more good is coming than bad, and that's something to be hopeful for.
Peter McCormack: I think that's a great place to finish it, John. Thank you, man. Listen, this isn't at all what I thought we would talk about. It's quite a profound interview; left me with a lot of things that I want to go and think about, so I really appreciate you, man, and I'm glad we did this because it's been a long time coming. As you know, I love your work. Please tell people where to follow your fantastic podcast.
John Vallis: Well first, man, I appreciate all these discussions, and it's been a long time coming, and it's great to be on this with you and meet the team. I know you get a lot of flak, or have done in the past, and as we've been discussing, I think you talk to people and you have this out. Even if we disagree on stuff, I think if I can show you what I'm oriented by and if I can make a case for the things that I believe in and you can do the same, then maybe we can wind up better off after it.
Peter McCormack: Thank you.
John Vallis: So, it's been fun to have this discussion. If people want to follow me, they can look up Bitcoin Rapid Fire. I'm also hosting the Closing the Loop podcast for Seetee, and available on Twitter everywhere, that kind of stuff.
Peter McCormack: All right, man. Well, listen, good to see you. We've both got a long day tomorrow.
John Vallis: It's going to be fun, man. I'm super pumped.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
John Vallis: I can't wait.
Peter McCormack: Let's go and enjoy it.
John Vallis: We go get to celebrate with our people.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, man. Nice to meet your dad and yeah, peace out, man.
John Vallis: Awesome. Thanks, bud.
