Aleks Svetski | The Wake Up Podcast Ep. 59 What is “The Meta” The Meta Series Pt. 1 with Meta Trav
Link to the YouTube (the timestamps are based on this): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tElGRLJML0k
I. Introduction [4:47]
II. The Meta [47:53]
a. The Eden Meta
b. The Crisis Meta
c. The Erectus and Sapien Meta
III. Jesus, the human meta par excellence [1:27:16]
INTRODUCTION:
Aleks Svetski [4:47]: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Episode 59 of The Wake Up Podcast. We’re doing something new! We’re going to do a series of podcasts. This series is going to be called The Meta Series and I’ve got Trav a.k.a. ParabolicTrav a.k.a. Meta Trav joining me on this to go through what he’s actually started putting together. And he’s one of the few people — and I said this to him when we spoke about organizing this in the first place — one of the few people online that I can just see a small snippet of the stuff he writes and I’m like, Fuck, this guy gets it! So I’ve been looking forward to doing this series for a while, man. Thank you for joining.
Meta Trav: Yeah, good to see you brother.
Aleks Svetski: Absolutely. So look, before we get into any of the meta stuff or the meat of the discussion, I just want to look at an origin story of yours and how you came to the place that you are now, the stuff that you’re doing and the writing that you’re doing around the concept of meta, personal life inspirations, etc., along the way. I’m really curious around that stuff.
Meta Trav [6:02]: Okay so it probably starts when I was a stock broker back in the day. And around that time, when I first became one, I was really unhealthy. And then I figured out how to be really healthy, and it was actually from a blog post. And a lot of guys who follow Austrian economics will remember someone named Karen DeCoster — she was always on lewrockwell.com. And she did a post once about this guy named Mark Sisson and The Primal Blueprint. The paleo diet and evolutionary biology — that stuff was really taking off years ago and he was one of the first out of the gate along with Robb Wolf, the CrossFit guy. And Karen wrote this article about evolutionary biology and diet. And that got me into Mark Sisson and that got me into The Primal Blueprint. So I was this overweight, stressed out stock broker, and I read that and an immediate light bulb went off. And I implemented all of this stuff — I read Mark’s book and it just completely transformed my life. But it got me thinking: so I remember walking around the office and all the other brokers are extraordinarily stressed out, overweight, you know? I just had that vibe about them that something was very off. And I was like tanned all the time, I was just like vibrant, and I felt really out of place! And so at the time I decided: I don’t really want to do this job. And if you know — in the back — the dynamics of how being a stock broker is in modern money management? It’s a bit of a joke. It’s a bit of a grift. Getting people into mutual funds or whatever — I think it’s a scam. You could just buy the base ETFs and outperform almost any stock broker. If you buy QQQ you outperform everybody! So there was all this pressure to perform and all this stuff — I just thought it was really out of whack. Now I understand it is all very fiat. So at the time, I had an instinct that I don’t want to do this with my life! I much prefer this thing I found. Because at that time, I had also been changing the lives of people around me with this knowledge.
Aleks Svetski: And how old were you then? This was roughly like what, 10 years ago?
Meta Trav [8:32]: That was 2008, around the crash of the stock market. But I didn’t decide to leave till I believe 2011–2013, if I recall. But I decided to leave to start a health practice, because I thought I had figured out something of intense value, if that makes sense. Really impacting people’s lives! Because you don’t really feel like that — you’re trying to keep up with the market and all these games going on. And that relates to the Austrian stuff I had learned too about: a proper economy provides value with the services and products. I wanted to be a part of that! I ended up starting a health studio — and this is like the current version of it behind me — and so I started my own studio. And no one was really doing those at the time, these like micro-gyms that you see now everywhere — CrossFit was just beginning and stuff like that. So I had an amazing experience where I was able to give people this ancestral health, this evolutionary biology-based diet. And people would have like — I would call them almost miracle transformations. You’d see people on every kind of drug you can imagine — diabetes, markers for heart disease, everything — completely transformed, right back to the way they were designed. So it was really incredible seeing that. And I thought, Well I’m really on the right track here! And that went on for a while and I did that for years. But it got me thinking, and it was around this time that Mark Sisson was trying to come out with another book and it was something akin to primal lifestyle. Because when you realize that you’re adapted for a certain type of diet, you start thinking, Well what else am I adapted for? Because I knew I wasn’t adapted for the cortisol-induced environment of being a stock broker, but it didn’t have a structure that was easy to follow like diet, if that makes sense. [With] a diet you can implement a framework, but with your life — how do you wrap your head around what you’re not adapted for? It’s a much bigger question! And Mark came out with a book and I was really excited for it and I’m like, Oh we’re going to delve into the next stage of this. And it was a real let down, that book. I was like, Ah, it doesn’t feel like he’s touching on much of anything in the way that I was thinking about it. So it went on for years like that where, in terms of the ancestral health, it was limited to: nutrition, lifestyle, sunlight, a lack of stress. That was about as far as it was taken. And then it was actually around the time that Jordan Peterson was coming out with his stuff, if you recall. And he started to touch on things about the Bible, which up until that point I was a pretty staunch atheist. And he came up with his Biblical lecture series and I just had a whole slew of epiphanies that even now would be hard to package for you and explain to you. But it was something akin to: I had the epiphany — and that’s what I’ve been exploring with this meta stuff — that religion has been exploring the problem of what we’re adapted for! Or in the way that they term it: what pleases God. They’ve been focused on that for thousands of years! And they were primarily focused on like, What are you emotionally adapted for? What is the nature of envy? What is the nature of anger? And if you think about it, those are no different than like the malexpression of diabetes. Envy’s like the malexpression of diabetes — but it’s an emotion! So I started to really delve into that, and Jordan Peterson started me on that. And then I went forward and it was an interesting part in my life because — I’ve mentioned this on a Twitter thread before, but — I had a drinking problem back then, which intuitively you know that that’s an adaptation problem. There’s something out of whack! Why do you feel compelled to do this? And so I was watching Jordan’s stuff, and it was very interesting: at the same time, my wife was taking our daughter to forest school — this type of school that they have around here, just outdoors. And there was this friend that she met that was going to this local church, so they invited us. So I was watching Jordan Peterson, I was drinking a lot, I was kind of in this weird place in my life. I’m eating ancestrally but the rest feels completely out of whack! A lot of people face that. And so I went to church for the first time since I was a kid and they were studying the Book of Revelation, which has ridiculous passages that make no sense. So this pastor up there starts going through it and I’m like, Oh, here we go again! Just this nonsense! This doesn’t make any sense! And they’re gonna spin it a certain way where it makes sense. So this pastor started to go through it and he started off by saying like, This was a blue-collar town. And this blue-collar town had these types of workers. And they were worshiping these idols. And then this woman was creating a sexual cult. It was all this weird stuff. And all this background, like what I’d been used to in other fields of study to be explained — he was doing it that way. And suddenly this passage that literally made no sense started to become this brilliant amalgamation of what was going on at the time, that was extremely pertinent to what’s going on now! And I just remember being in awe of how complex what I was going through was. So that got me really interested! I’m like, Here is a mountain of knowledge that I have not been connected to in my life. And the bigger thing about Jordan’s work is that I realized that there was a tradition that I’d come from — like, my grandpa was named John. I had friends named Matthew. I have a brother-in-law named David. These are all Biblical names. So much of my life was Christian and I had no idea because I was disconnected from it. And then once I started to learn this I was like, Wow I’m actually at the tail end of a 2,000-year tradition — you know, right at the end — and I have zero respect for it! I think it’s useless! When [in fact] it’s been the predominant way that people have been approaching life for 2,000 years. So I felt this immediate reconnection to culture, if that makes sense. A reconnection to my ancestry, where I’m from — it was really a powerful revelation that I had. But anyways, I introduced myself to that pastor at the time because I thought, I need to get to know this guy. Because if I end up going to other churches where they don’t make sense again I’m gonna forget about this pretty quick. And we became really good friends because he’s the same age as me — he’s in his late 30’s — so he was a really young pastor, very charismatic, very smart. I was really interested in getting to know him. He invited me to a Bible study, and then that is where I would say all my knowledge of evolutionary biology, psychology, Austrian economics — I found, as I was going through the Bible, I was able to apply it all in ways I couldn’t imagine before. So much of the world and history was starting to make sense. And that question I had at the start like, What does an adapted lifestyle look like? was starting to become clear to me. And that’s now what I’ve called The Meta, and we’ll get into why I call it that. But I’ll just finish that: I ended up stopping drinking — everything got better in my life as I started to connect to this ancient way of figuring out what we’re adapted for.
Aleks Svetski: Yeah so a big question — which I don’t believe any of us will ever have the answer to this — is the difference between nature and nurture, and what impact each has on a person’s character, on their on their constitution, on their principles, and all this sort of stuff. And where I’m leading to with this question is: that initial book that you mentioned that you read while you were a stock broker, Why do you think it was you who read that book? Why you? Why that book? Because there was another what, 20, 30, 40 stock brokers in that office with you — they didn’t, but you did! Do you think there were some ingredients there along the way? That there were some seeds planted, maybe from a nurture capacity? Or do you think that was part of your nature? Can you draw that back in terms of your behavior from when you’re young?
Meta Trav [18:17]: That’s a great question! And I can answer that now in a pretty specific way: when I look at myself now, and how I was back then, I always had a bit more of a capacity for logic. That’s why I gravitated towards Austrian economics. Prior to that and prior to being a stock broker, when I was young, 9/11 hit and I started to do online debating, arguing every single topic known to man including religion. But at that time those were really superficial arguments like, Oh, God’s omniscient, omnipresent, and you just make little logical arguments to [debate this] — not useful at all! Never really getting into what they discuss. But I remember as I would debate, I was very different than other people, that I was always debating with myself. I never really cared about the rhetoric nature [of it] and the winning of the debate — I cared about: Did I have what I would consider the distilled logic?
Aleks Svetski: You mean some sort of consistency, right?
Meta Trav [19:16]: Right. And even if I felt like I had won an argument based on tactics, I would govern my own self-doubt: Well I didn’t have the logic right and know that and I could feel that. I did that for 10 years. When I first started debating after 9/11 I’m like, Oh they need to be nuked! Those bastards over there! And then a few months in I’m like, Holy shit, what a mess did we create over there? And the history of how the CIA was involved and all this stuff — these guys were just kicking my ass from the start! But as I continued to go through — and you learn all the logical fallacies and you keep debating, you keep debating — I found that I couldn’t name most of the logical fallacies now but I have an intuition for them: when a person says an argument I have an intuition that it isn’t correct. That’s fallacious! I can’t explicitly remember what the exact logical fallacy is, but it’s such an intuition now it’s like an instinct when I speak to people. And that’s what led me to Austrian economics! We debated economics like mad and you’ll be talking about Keynesian stuff and all this ridiculous stuff and it would never sit right with me. Eventually I went to school for finance and they would teach and I’m like, This doesn’t make any sense! And then I remember someone in the debate forums percolated a bit of Austrian theory and I was like — bang! — that’s the logic! And I just zeroed in on it. Now, no one in my family has ever read any of those books. No one I know has ever read those books. I came to it by my own nature and being raised by the Internet, if that makes sense. Just being exposed to the fire hose of knowledge. And if you have a logical mind, you eventually land on these logic-based sciences — these a priori sciences. And then you see that: that’s the only appropriate way to start building your worldview, because the rest is all subjective.
Aleks Svetski: Do you think it’s got something also to do with an inability — I don’t know, because me and my girl were at a gym last week and it was the second or third gym that I’ve been kicked out of in this city because I refuse to wear a mask. And the thing is: here where we are at the moment in Colombia — they don’t really care, so if you just wear the mask under your chin, it’s fine. It’s not as bad as wearing a mask while you’re training because that’s just incredibly fucking stupid, but wearing it under your chin — it’s just a blatant fucking lie! The guy came up to me and was like, Look just wear it under [your chin], and I’m like, But why? Do you not see that we’re fucking lying about this? So I wrote this whole message to him in Google Translate. I’ll actually read it out to you — I think you’ll laugh at this shit! But I just have this inability to bullshit: I can’t sit there and live a lie. So this is what I translated for the guy — I said: I understand you’re doing your job, but being human is more important. I’m not a sheep. I’m not a dog. I don’t believe in the lies from the government. If you want to support a lie and live like a slave, that’s up to you. I’m sure you’re a nice person, but supporting a lie makes your behavior evil. I will not support a lie. The question I ask you is: Do you support the people and the truth, or the government and its lies? So I was trying to use some reverse psychology on the fucker, and he had nothing to say! He’s like, No no I’m for the people, and all this shit. I said: If the gym tells you to put on a mask or jump off the fucking bridge, are you gonna do it? No, but they’re not gonna do that. I said, Why are they not gonna do that? Well, because that’s stupid! I said, Well, you just agreed with me that wearing a mask over your fucking face is stupid. He said, Yeah, but just put it underneath! I said, But isn’t that just as stupid? He’s like, Yeah, but it doesn’t matter — that’s the rules!
Meta Trav [23:32]: I can just imagine you arguing over Google Translate!
Aleks Svetski: Bro, it was ridiculous. And then they banned me from coming back in. But anyway, the problem I’ve got there is it’s — I don’t know. Someone who spoke to me really deeply in this capacity was Ayn Rand: you read it in her books. And her position, particularly on compromise — she’s got this whole essay on the word compromise where she says, The real genesis of the word compromise is to actually fracture or break something. In engineering, when you say something is compromised, it means: it is fucking broken! You don’t use it! When you think about it: we’ve been taught to compromise. We’ve been taught to settle for a lie — and for me that just fucking grinds me the wrong way. Logic is one thing, but I know a lot of people who have the capacity for logic — even people who fucking work for me in my company who are extremely logical, [with] capacity for logic — but they’re out there fucking jabbing themselves one, two, three, four fucking times, they’re willing to wear a mask just to comply because, I don’t want to ruffle any feathers, or whatever the case is. So, it is a logical inconsistency, but I feel like it’s got something to do with either: one’s capacity to conform to a lie, or one’s capacity to not be able to lie. And I wonder if there’s something there? And I wonder if you can relate to that?
Meta Trav [25:16]: I definitely can. And I think from some of the work I’ve been doing I can provide some insight: what you’re describing in those people where, let’s say, they abdicate to culture — they have a very difficult time going against culture. To a degree, people are adapted for that! So we like to think that we’re adapted for logic — well, it’s one adaptation. It’s particularly useful in markets. Or in the case of men: with the burden of performance. If you have to create something and build something, trade with people, build alliances — you need logic. Lack of emotion. But from 50,000 BC on to about 20,000 BC it was known as, roughly, the Upper Paleolithic — or what I call the Eden Meta. We can get into this — I don’t want to get too complicated right away. You would imagine that your life would be just a ritualistic rhythm of culture and moving with the seasons and migrating with the herds. You wouldn’t be thinking outside the box. You wouldn’t even be having big conflicts over masks or whatever — none of that stuff existed! The certainty would have been so high in your day-to-day that the great adaptation you would have is to be guided by culture as an instinct. And if you were outside of culture, you would likely feel this great anxiety. So whenever you’re talking to a person like that, it’s just: that instinct is very strong in them. And then if you go further — and you know this stuff and we’ll have to get the backstory on it, but — as tournament males start to arise because of technology, that’s when you start to need logic as your primary guiding approach to decision-making in your life, because you have the burden of performance, you’re largely in chaos the whole time, you can’t look towards culture to take care of you or tell you what to do. So just the way that evolution works is: we have these twin instincts that are traveling through time, and then when you hit the modern world you have some people that have that massive, communal, abdicate-to-culture instinct — that’s what they’re adapted for. Then you have guys like us: we probably come from a different lineage where it’s far more focused on logic, performing, building things. And I think that largely parallels the problem of the communist and the capitalist instinct that’s been going on. What if it’s not that it just arises randomly in the 19th-20th century? What if it’s related to our fundamental adaptations? And the way that we approach problems? And the way that we approach life? Because you see it! You see those people who: they get all of their guidance from culture! The government says something? Oh I’m eating that way now. Oh I’m taking that drug. Here’s this experimental vaccine, completely unproven — like, you gave the example: Wouldn’t it be stupid to jump off a bridge? Yeah but if they convinced you it was good for you, they would! So as soon as culture just — once there’s a unified amount of people that are making a claim, a mountain of lemmings just jump on it. And I truly believe that they’re adapted for that — that is their primary way. Now that works well when there’s a good culture: they’re the servants of a good culture. But when that’s broken — particularly in a fiat culture — you can go all the way back to 1913 to when this started, and then the authoritative part of culture starts becoming warped. Then they become the pawns of those guys. And they become our enemy.
Aleks Svetski: Recently I’ve been on this whole tirade where I’ve said things like, Klaus Schwab’s not the enemy — your neighbor wearing three or four masks is the actual enemy! Shit like that. And I’ve been grappling with this notion of like: Are these people almost like a different species? And maybe it’s not to that extent — maybe they’re not a different species, but in your framing: maybe they’re a different instinct and a different adaptation of human? So coming back to the nature/nurture thing is like: How much of that do you think is nature? And how much of that do you think is nurture? Do you have any idea? Do you have no idea? What’s your thoughts there?
Meta Trav [30:07]: Well, I used to put a lot of stock in nurture, but I don’t so much anymore. I think as time goes on, it’s a lot of people’s nature — that’s what we see play out on the global scale, on the individual scale, within neighborhoods: it’s a lot of nature. What’s really going on here is a lot of fear: take away everything people have learned in their life, scare them enough about what’s going on, and they will toe the line in a very unified way. So I think it’s a lot of nature that determines this. Nature is that guiding thing now. When people are born, some have a different propensity for anger. Some people have a different propensity for guilt. Psychopaths, for instance, don’t feel any guilt! So you have this variance within people, and that’s all we’re really talking about: one is adapted for abdicating authority to culture, one is more adapted for an individualistic, logic-based — it’s just a slight difference of instincts. And those, largely — regardless of the nurture — are a very very strong force that, over a long enough time, tend to dictate.
Aleks Svetski: Interesting, In about a week or two I’m gonna release the episode that I did — have you heard of a lady called Nozomi Hayase?
Meta Trav: No, I haven’t.
Aleks Svetski: She’s on Twitter — she’s a Bitcoiner, and comes from a school of what’s called liberation psychology, which basically is like the corollary: liberation psychology and traditional psychology is like Austrian economics and traditional economics. It stands on its own and it’s a humanist psychology which places the individual at the center and believes in the idea of free will as opposed to the rat-in-a-box fucking —
Meta Trav: In a maze! Deterministic.
Aleks Svetski: Exactly. [As opposed to] the non-humanist side of psychology which assumes that we’re all deterministic, nurtured entities, that — with enough jabs — will function in a certain way. Modern psychology by and large does away with the notion of nature — it believes entirely in nurture! So anyway, she brought up something really interesting: it’s a study by a guy — and I don’t remember his name but it’s going to be discussed in the podcast — he studied psychopaths for 30 years and has actually come to the conclusion that they are biologically a different species than people who have the capacity for empathy. And he’s done all sorts of tests: improving it through brain scans, what lights up in the brain, all sorts of things. And one of the outcomes of the study is this idea that “normal” people or people with the capacity for empathy who try and train psychopaths on empathy actually do themselves a disservice because they prove to the psychopath that, Here’s my weak point! Here, come and stab me right through the armor here! And it was really interesting just hearing [that] because I’ve never thought about different human beings as different species, but there seems to be something in that direction. And then obviously the series that I wrote recently — The Remnant, The Masses, and The Parasites — I’ve really tried to look at them. But I looked at them more archetypically — not at a biological, DNA-level. I just said: archetypically, you have the 20% of people who make the difference and the 80% are the lemmings. And then what I realized after the first article was: You know what? There is a subset of humanity which we can call parasites. I said, They’re either failed remnants — so the failed people who tried to produce — or they’re the envious, jealous member of the masses who sees the productive person. And the whole role of the parasite in this game is to create mechanisms for extracting value from a system, and the best way to extract value from a system is to weaponize the lemmings against the productive people, because you’ve got numbers on your side. But anyway, it’s obviously beyond the scope of this conversation and beyond the scope, probably, of what any of us will ever really discover, but it’s just interesting to think about why you and I can — as you said — within a few sentences, straightaway latch on to something that makes a lot of sense. And it’s not only logically consistent, but it’s actually a representation of something that’s true! And I think that’s the sort of thing that rings to us, versus these people who will do things completely in the face of evidence and truth or whatever, and they’ll continue living a lie and not have any ramifications.
Meta Trav [35:49]: A whole bunch of thoughts on that: When you describe alternate species, the way I think about it is that: throughout history, those variations in people — guilt, excessive envy, some people are super-possessive, some aren’t, some are highly logical — a bunch of those variations group here and a bunch group [over there]. That would be what I think — not necessarily different species — but: people that have variations that are adapted for different historical roles. Because like I said, the lemmings, they serve well in a good culture. And I want to back up because you were bringing up this nurture: Where I get my thoughts on nature come from a book called The Nurture Assumption, if you’ve ever read it. Have you ever heard of that book?
Aleks Svetski: Not yet, no.
Meta Trav [36:52]: It’s fantastic! It’s a must-read. And the simple conclusion from that book is that: the primary determinant of how your kid’s going to turn out [when you raise them] is a combination of just nature and not nurture. Most people think nurture is a parent putting a lot of effort into their kids and trying to teach them, how to engineer each part of their behavior — the really helicopter-style parenting: I’m going to teach you how to be generous! I’m going to teach you how to share! All this stuff — now, that is largely a delusion. They don’t turn out that way! It’s a delusion that you can actually do that to a child. The true drivers are: nature — so they’re genetic, and their genetic propensities. And the only nurture comes from their peer group! So they will mimic and adopt the behaviors of their peer group. So if their peer group is generous and sharing, they will be too. If their peer group eats a certain way, they’ll eat that way too. What their parents really do is largely inconsequential: we don’t have that ability to engineer our kids like that! So what that says to me is that: the thing that designs kids, at least, is the combination of nature, and essentially what you can think of as culture. So: what determines what culture is? Because it’s like a nurturing force — it has values and stuff. What really determines that? And I think that goes back to Austrian economics — that the culture is always downstream from the money. And when our money turns us into a high time preference culture, it becomes warped and gnarled. When we’re low time preference, it’s focused way in the future, it’s highly orderly. Because we’ve had many of these cycles throughout history, and I’m not just talking like the Roman collapse: the whole Jewish tradition of jubilee, for instance. Marx’s crazy cycles of debt expansion and debt forgiveness! So I think one of the big variabilities that we have, from a nature standpoint, is: we have different time preferences. Some people are genetically higher time preference. Some people are genetically lower time preference. So when the culture warps the money and the culture starts promoting high time preference, all the lemmings come out of the woodwork and they support everything! And then when it goes low time preference and the money gets better, that’s when you get the super-productive and the highly orderly. So the best way to think about nurture is: your genetics and culture, and then culture is largely downstream from money. The simplest resolution — that’s the way I look at it, at least.
Aleks Svetski: Yeah the time preference piece is really important. Obviously Saifedean, in our circles, really popularized that term, but the more reading — whether it’s ethics or morality or economics or all of that sort of stuff — I do, the more I find that this common thread of time preference is so fucking important!
Meta Trav [40:41]: I read about this African tribe once — this is to emphasize the genetic, adapted nature of all this stuff — and they didn’t have an adapted ability to predict the future, or even perceive the future. They were very present-based. And they couldn’t perceive what things would look like down the road — not very well at all — and it was something about the British army at the time: [the tribe] would steal things, because they can’t perceive the consequences of that into the future. And then they’d get put into prisons — and they’d commit suicide! Their incarceration was only for two weeks, and they couldn’t perceive that it would only be two weeks — they thought it’d be forever. So it goes to show: even our capacity to predict out into the future — it’s genetic! It’s an adapted ability. So I’m sure there’s degrees in that in all people, and it’s the tyranny of what we’re going through right now.
Aleks Svetski: Indeed. Okay, so I want to wrap this part up before we go into The Meta. So: stock broker, moved into the health and wellness space — the paleo movement and the ancestral eating was a big driver for that — and then you found principles similar to that in economics, in Christianity, etc., and that has taken you on this journey. So for me, some of the biggest inspirations along the way were people, movies, and books. And in particular, I think you and I were probably lucky having been born when we were born, because between 1995–2005 you had — I think — the peak era for film. To this day, Braveheart is still my favorite film. I think that film alone helped carve a big part of my character, at least in the nurture department of my character. But are there any shining examples? Other than what you’ve already mentioned around the paleo book and Jordan Peterson’s work, that also helped plant some seeds for your thinking today?
Meta Trav: Well the first non-fiction books I ever read were by Ayn Rand. The Virtue of Selfishness — I think I read that at like 14-years old.
Aleks Svetski: You totally had the seeds!
Meta Trav [43:20]: Objectivism was the first thing I learned, and it just made so much sense. And her book on collectivism, too. So that was the first non-fiction books I read. That’s pretty big in how that all ties into what I was explaining. In terms of fiction though yeah, like you — Braveheart, anything about liberty, the battle for liberty. But it’s funny you bring up like the 90’s. I was just thinking of Dances with Wolves — I think that was in the 90’s, with the epic score that goes with it.
Aleks Svetski: Yeah! There’s none of that shit anymore, man! There was The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise, was incredible as well. The Patriot. Gladiator, of course. And that shit’s all gone, man! it’s all fucking cheap shit now.
Meta Trav [44:16]: It was almost like the 80’s was ridiculous masculinity, and then the 90’s was refined masculinity. And the music was always done to an orchestra score.
Aleks Svetski: Hans Zimmer and all those guys. And there’s none of that shit now.
Meta Trav: It’s gone! There’s nothing like that at all.
Aleks Svetski: Fuck! My, how we’ve deteriorated! There was a guy today who was trying to counter Brandon Quittem, who wrote a really really good piece for Bitcoin Times Edition #4. And it was this idea of Bitcoin miners being a pioneer species, so going to places that are desolate and barren and unable to capture or harness or utilize energy, and planting themselves — they’re seeds — and then being the genesis from which an economy can build around it: so you get industry, then you get everything else. So it’s this idea of Bitcoin mining as a pioneer species — fucking mind-blowing! One of the points in there is this idea of: the more energy we can harness and use, the better the lifestyle gets. And there’s the graph of GDP and energy usage which is up and to the right, even though GDP is a fucking scam of a measure — and then this lemming comes on and he quotes like, Oh the last 20 years — if you look closely, energy in these high-GDP countries has actually been going down. And my response was: Yeah, and so has every fucking useful metric for life! Socially, we’ve become more deranged in the last 20 years. Politically — hell, everything has fucking gone backwards! The last 20 years have been a regression you fucking moron, so you just actually proved the damn point! And this is probably one area where I definitely disagree with the Matt Ridleys [author of The Rational Optimist] — and Jordan Peterson got caught up in this shit — is this idea that we’re living in the best time in history. We’re actually not! The Matrix nailed it: the peak of humanity at this point was the year 2000. That was the peak. Everything after the year 2000 got fucked.
Meta Trav: Compared to what we could be? Other than technological capability, we’re miles behind.
Aleks Svetski: Correct! Totally. Thank you! We just have this technological cushion that makes us feel like things are better we can fucking talk to each other, but in reality everything’s fucked up! Socially and economically and politically and fucking health and all those things have gone down — it’s just: technology is the one shining thing that’s gone up.
Meta Trav [47:07]: Yeah we’re just living on accumulated capital. We’re just consuming all our traditions. Everything’s eroding!
THE META
Aleks Svetski: It reminds me of that medieval painting of the father eating the son — it’s the leviathan painting, I think? So anyway, let’s get into Meta. We’ve got some background here: let’s talk about The Meta. So first of all, can you tell us what it is? And what the hell it means?
Meta Trav [47:53]: Okay — make it simple, eh? It’s very multifaceted: it takes a while to explain fully, but I’ll go into the genesis of how the idea came along. It’s two parts: so when I was doing ancestral health, you start realizing what good feedback looks like. You’re like, Holy shit! — I didn’t know my body was capable of this! I didn’t know I could feel this way! So not only are you using the correct logical framework to approach the problem, but the feedback is incredible! It was actually a revelation for me, because if you’re just going through your life and you’re following culture and you’re just taking ideas [at face value] blah blah blah, the feedback is never very good! You never feel powerfully in control. And I felt that way after taking on ancestral health. Around the same time, I was trying to figure out markets. I was reading a book by George Soros — his autobiography. And he was a student of Karl Popper, one of the famous philosophers of science. He came up with falsifiability. But he had this amazing quote! He said: The market is the greatest laboratory because it gives instant feedback to your ideas. So in the case of investing, you’re profitable, you’re unprofitable. [Soros] has this story where one of his traders — because he had a team of traders with his Quantum Fund — and one of these traders came to him with a large 20-page report on why euro bonds were going to fall. And Soros just took the report and he said, Okay I want you to do the exact opposite of what you think, and tell me how easy it is to make money! And that really got me into the scientific nature of what works — or the primacy of feedback. Because the only reason that the ancestral stuff mattered is because of what worked. So it was the union between those things: looking at the a priori nature of things is really really helpful, but you also need to be a slave to feedback! The a posteriori: the observable success of the laboratory. So I was reading those two books and that was the original idea — Austrian economics is an a priori science. But everything relating to human life and your experience is all about what works. So fast forward: the next epiphany I had — because this stuff percolated over years — was playing video games. Years ago I was playing League of Legends. And in video games, when you’re playing them, the top play style — they call it the meta. It’s like, Oh you need to play the meta characters right now! You need to play the meta teamwork strategies! They’ll say: This is the meta right now and you need to play it. Otherwise, you have a mathematically less chance of a higher win rate. They’ll announce that when they’re playing the competitive stream stuff. They’ll be like, Oh they’re playing the meta right now, or whatever. But you can see the meta! For instance with League of Legends, you can go to a website called champion.gg and you can see: With this current patch, here is the current win rate percentage. Well ancestral health is definitely the meta: eating that way is definitely the human meta. But guys in bros science also have the meta, because they’re just pure feedback! They really don’t care about high-brow theories. They’re like: What fucking works? How do I get jacked? They’re pure feedback-focused! You could take 100 of the fittest guys on the planet and you’ll have a great idea: if you did a meta-analysis of all their feedback methods, you’d have the meta of those 100, and it would be very very powerful. So that’s how the idea started where I was just like, So what’s the human meta? Well that’s not an easy problem to answer! From what I had done in ancestral health, I knew that what would indicate what could potentially be the meta was: evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology. When you seem to satisfy that perfectly, the lab experiment produces the highest feedback. So then comes religion. Religion is like bro science! It’s like: This is the best way for your tribe to arrange itself for maximum peace and harmony. Here’s the Ten Commandments — Oh, well why do they work? I don’t know! God said so! They don’t have a hypothesis that informs the feedback — they just look at the feedback! I’m assuming a non-supernatural explanation of why the Ten Commandments exist. Jordon Peterson did a great piece on it! He said: Moses was tasked with arbitrating thousands of disputes between this wandering messy tribe, he would have started to see the commonalities between all of their problems percolate up like a bottom-up method where he’d be able to abstract out, Oh here’s the problem: You’re all coveting what each other has! Oh here’s the problem: You’re all lusting after wives! You’re committing adultery! He’d find those — and then the story goes: he goes on the mountain and he gets back with the Ten Commandments. But you could look at it like it’s a very logical feedback-driven process where he determined those Ten Commandments. When I was an atheist, I never paid attention. But when you look at them, they’re like, Oh this is tribal reunification theory — this is how you make a tribe work! And everything today is the same problem: everyone’s coveting each other’s stuff, everyone’s got lusting problems, everyone’s got anger issues. So when I looked at religion, I was like, Okay so here’s the bro science of that time that has mastered the feedback that works! The Old Testament has in Leviticus the best hygiene methods that work. They have the best kosher or food preparation methods that work. Cleanliness methods that work. And then behavioral methods — it’s just a book of bro science! That’s the best way to think about it. People wouldn’t call it science. I missed a book I read: it was called The Paleo Manifesto, by John Durant. He really explored this: he said the Old Testament is the first book of science. So this was a paleo thinker, and his second chapter was called Moses the Microbiologist, and it went through all the hygiene and everything they do to prevent the spread of pathogens and stuff like that. And you can only conclude that that’s a book of rudimentary science, and that’s why the Jews were always so antifragile throughout history whenever there’s plagues — they’re surviving because they’re super clean. The God of Abraham is like the clean God — he’s the hygienic God. And that’s in the book! So, knowing that: it was about marrying it all. So I thought to myself, Okay looking at Biblical bro science truths, do they also match up with — or can they be informed by — evolutionary truths? And that’s where you see the exact same thing! So what the meta is, is what is working, but it’s also the a priori nature of why it’s working. And I feel like we’re smart enough now to explain why a lot of the stuff worked in the Bible — Jordan Peterson being a pioneer of that. So, when I lay out my metas — if you go back to the League of Legends thing — every time a new meta occurs, it’s because a new patch occurs. And they change all the dynamics of the characters and the gameplay styles. And then in that patch era, a new meta emerges. But when you look throughout history, we’ve gone through distinct changes in the environment that we’ve evolved in. You can think of that like a patch. And so what we did was we invented a technology, we completely warped our environment, and now we’re here steeping or revolving in this new patch, and a new meta arises. So the combination of all that stuff is the meta — it’s not just bro science. It’s also trying to be informed from an a priori standpoint, from the nature of it.
a. The Eden Meta
So the first one I ever wrote was the Eden Meta, which really describes the Upper Paleolithic period. That is from 50,000 BC to — it goes up to 12,000 BC normally, but I stop at 20,000 BC for my Eden Meta. And it’s my view that: what they’re talking about in Genesis — of this place of perfect balance with God — is that period of time in history when we were maximum lords of the Earth. The top apex predator. We had an abundance of food. We had extraordinarily entrenched cultures where life was extremely certain day-to-day. The extent of our possessions wasn’t much. We had group hunting. We had communal sense of possession. We all thought we should share in what the tribe brings — everyone contributes. So the Eden Meta is where some of our very strong social adaptations come. And the best way to describe the type of individualism that would have existed in that time is called prosociality, which means it’s an other-focused way of acting. If you could go back to those times, the sense of self isn’t egotistical and possessive like it is now — it would have been very thoughtful to everyone around you. To the point where — in case of men — there’s this picture I really love of these these guys spearing a bear, and when I look at it, I always think: They probably would have been willing to die for each other! It would have been that level of — I don’t want to call it selfless, because action is always selfish, but — they didn’t have what it would be around death where it’s like a real tragedy because we’re so possessive and egotistical that when we die it’s all this lost potential, the way that we look at these things now. They wouldn’t have looked at it like that then! It would have probably been an honor to die for your friends and serve your friends and serve your culture and just glorify it all and then raise your kids into all the predetermined roles that exist. It would be this very very certain — and of course you’d have specific tribes that face some crazy hardship or something like that, but largely it would have been a very different reality to what we have now. And the big thing was that: they have this group hunting, this communal sense of possession, not a lot of possessions — very very little. So that’s a meta! That patch — that was the meta that emerged! That was the behavioral style that humans had. So that’s the first part of it.
b. The Crisis Meta
The second one we enter is when we kill all the megafauna because our technology gets too good — we enter this period of crisis. So this is a different method! This is like, Oh what are humans like when they’ve completely run out of food? Well it turns out they have these crazy guys called shamans that try to compel forth the animals and try to be blessed by the animal Gods and there’s cave paintings to try to compel forth something to make the hunts more successful. Oh, but then the hunts aren’t successful — let’s blame the shaman! Then the shaman invents [the blame] that: You in your sins and in your way of acting was the problem! Oh it was us? Oh I feel guilty! Well what can we do? What can we do to please God? Well let’s sacrifice our kids! Let’s do human sacrifice! All this weird stuff starts coming during those times, and that continues into the Neolithic. It’s like: Why do we have a history of human sacrifice? That is freaking bizarre! But it’s because our environment got warped so much — [it was] a new patch for humans that they had to deal with. And the meta of that time was that we had to give up extreme value — our most valued possessions — to get the blessings of God. And you look in the Bible and they have a patch upgrade — Abraham faces the same problem: God asks him to sacrifice his son. And he’s about to do it! He’s about to give up the thing of most value in his life and God says, You don’t have to do that anymore — I just wanted to test that you would. And then human sacrifice — at least in the Jewish tradition — ends when that goes forward. So the Bible fixed the meta. I call that the Crisis Meta from 20,000 BC to 12,000 BC. And then we enter the Neolithic, which a lot of people that study nutrition understand. But it wasn’t just that bread entered our diet and dairy and things like that, but completely different ways of living! We started to live now in villages where it’s based on farming, it’s a lot more war, we’ve domesticated the horse — and this is where I talk about how the tournament males started to arise. The best story I’ve found to explain that is of Native Indian culture, which — when we colonized the New World — they weren’t technically Neolithic: they would have been Mesolithic, but we gave them some technology. The Spanish gave them horses and stuff, so they’re a weird hybrid. And you can see this strange phenomenon: they go from a society that’s on foot all the time with dogs, and they can’t even kill a lot of the remaining megafauna like buffalo — they’re eating dogs a lot. And then suddenly they get the horse and then they become just masters of hunting! And this quote I have from Wrath of Gnon — he did the excerpt from it — and it said: Up until that point, everything was based on communal ownership because everything was communal hunting. Suddenly it comes along — with the domestication of the horse — the complete prowess of the individual to mark his own kill. And because of that, some men are better at it than others — some survive better than others. And the ones that are better at it, they get to have as many wives as they want. So polygamy starts to enter the meta at that point. So we go from largely a monogamous [culture] — what I call the pair-bonding style — then as soon as we can individually hunt, individual skills start to be elevated, whether it’s in farming or agriculture. Because we’ve entered such a world of chaos because we killed all the megafauna, we now have certain men that are better than others — way better! And then because they’re so good, womens hypergamy picks them because they want to survive. I posted this article describing life at 8,000 BC, and they say that: for every 1 man, they would have 24 wives that would reproduce. So that’s like massive harems. I’m just trying to imagine what these villages would be like — these farming villages — and there’s a couple guys like that with 24 wives [each]. And the birth rates are roughly 50/50 for men and women: that means 23 other guys didn’t reproduce because they didn’t have the skill, they didn’t have the ability. So this starts warping our evolutionary trajectory — where that tournament male is the only one reproducing — and the women that are reproducing with him are the ones who are more hypergamous, that they’re willing to do that. I’m sure there were lots of women who died who weren’t able to do that, and tons of men who weren’t able to keep up with the other men. So then that meta starts changing us again. That is when sexual selection really starts to alter our evolution — and that’s a big thing! Jordan Peterson really got me onto that about: evolution is not just what everyone knows is natural selection, that what is not capable just ends up dying, or not fit for the environment — when sexual selection enters, it’s females’ selectiveness that starts picking the qualities of that will go on in the future. And if you think about it: that’s a conscious force. That’s not just the unconscious nature of evolution dictating things anymore — there’s now a conscious force. And my view is — during the Neolithic — that tournament males were largely reproducing, and the others were dying. And — we talked about those variations earlier — it starts changing our variation towards that, and we switch from being largely a pair-bonding species to a tournament/pair-bonding species. And I’ve probably got to get into what a tournament species is. There’s one last piece to that: after the Neolithic and the Jewish tradition and the Old Testament is working behind the scenes, fixing a lot — because we’re all dislocated now, there’s kings and these tournament males with their harems and it’s this world that’s dominant — then the Jews start through synagogues and they start building an antifragile tribal reunification software, if you think about the Bible in that way. It’s software and it’s tribal reunification and it’s these people of Israel that are constantly messing up, but they keep surviving all these empires! And then eventually it culminates in Jesus, who perfects the tribal reunification with the creation of the modern church — the body of Christ. That’s where we start getting back to that Eden Meta — we start going back through [the metas] — because Jesus essentially teaches how to be like that old tribe 50,000 years ago that loves its neighbor, would die for its friend, that’s so self-giving. It’s because we are adapted that way [by nature], but our history was really going off course with good technological change — the horse and the bow, etc.
Aleks Svetski: So when you were mentioning the meta early on in this discussion, one thing I thought of was: I was an avid reader of all of Bruce Lee’s stuff when I was younger. I loved his philosophy, and I loved his general take on the idea of Taoism — which, the word I think in some sense means meta, because the best translation he had for it at the time was The Way. And The Way is not just What or How but it’s Why as well, which is effectively, roughly speaking, what we’re talking about here. So yeah: Eden, Crisis, Neolithic, Jesus, and then prior to Eden I remember you mentioned something like Sapien and Erectus. Do you want to just cover those really quickly before we dig into a couple of these?
c. The Erectus and Sapien Meta
Meta Trav [1:09:11]: The big thing there is that language wasn’t invented yet or discovered — that comes in around 70,000 BC — and then culture really picks up around 50,000 BC. Prior to that — Erectus and Sapien — they’re just this communal, hunting tribe. Very basic social tribe dynamics: their grunts and hand signals to communicate. And just a very specific type of diet. So what you can take from that period isn’t as interesting as what you can take when culture and technology starts to be developed — once that starts getting in. So our trajectory up until 50,000 years ago is a lot more linear. It’s very consistent. It’s very natural selection-based. And then it starts getting into the Eden Meta, the Crisis Meta, and keeps going, and we just start entering chaos — different patches, different metas — and it’s all building, it’s warping our genetics, sending us in a million different ways.
Aleks Svetski: So the argument there is that: you’ve got technological evolution in the front, cultural in the middle, and biological in the end. And the cultural is trying to bridge the gap between the technology moving — and outpacing — our biological evolution.
Meta Trav [1:10:38]: Yeah, you’ve got it! So culture gets good enough where we get smart enough — because when you’re communicating with language, you can communicate more advanced inventions — you can communicate how to discover this stuff or share it with other people, other tribes. There’s just a lot more dialogue happening. And so then the technology changes things, and then female sexual selection picks those new men who are better at it, which then alters culture, which then alters future technology, which then alters sexual selection — it just keeps running like that! And then it’s very slowly dragging along biology with it, because a lot of people are dying who aren’t cut out for this new world.
Aleks Svetski: Okay. So at the risk of going into too much detail — because I want to do an entire episode on the tournament male — but can we give a basic overview of what that is and how that plays into this technological, cultural, and biological evolution?
Meta Trav: So, two types of species of mammals: tournament species and pair-bonding species. Humans are traditionally thought as a pair-bonding species.
Aleks Svetski: And pair-bonding meaning?
Meta Trav [1:12:12]: Okay, so there’s these actual specific qualifiers: because we’re roughly the same size and we’re less aggressive, we don’t have claws or things like that, and we have much larger need for parental investment, that means that women will select a man based on his long-term ability to commit. So then there’s other species where the difference between men and women is dramatic — one of them being elephant seals, or lions. And they often have aggression and they have claws and they actually fight a lot — they’re constantly in male competition. And then how the female reproductive strategy works there is they wait for whoever wins and then they have babies with them. But that species also usually has not a lot of parental investment required from the male. So the women just say, Thank you very much! I got your genes, and I’m out of here! So the tournament reproductive strategy would be strictly trying to get genes — you want the best genes, the winning genes — and then the pair-bonding is: you’re trying to find the genes that will stay with you the longest for the maturity of the kids. Now, because human babies are so utterly fragile — they have big heads and they don’t come with a lot of pre-built firmware — like, a horse when it’s born can walk shortly thereafter. It takes forever for a human baby to do that! So we need a ton of parental investment, and that’s why throughout most of history we’re largely a pair-bonding species. But then we invent technologies which are — it’s almost like giving man claws, giving them tough hides — and they can be aggressive with each other now and they can compete with each other! That Indian on horseback — well he can get all the food. So it creates tournament qualities in us, and then the women now pick that man for reproduction. And that’s why you see polygamy arise — because you don’t see that in history. It just starts arising. And they don’t have a lot of parental investment in the kids. The king or whatever — he’s got his harem and they all have babies and he’s just not there and they’re all raised by the women. So a human — because of what we’ve been through and those metas that I described — we are a hybrid tournament male, hybrid pair-bonder. So we have instincts for both — that’s what I’m getting at! In particular men, and in particular women: some women are more hypergamous than others, know how to pick the tournament male. And if you don’t pick the tournament male in crisis times, you die. That’s how important this is! And if you don’t — as a man — use your tournament instincts now, you die: you take stupid vaccines you shouldn’t, or you trust things you shouldn’t, and you’re [jumping] off the bridge because you’re a lemming.
Aleks Svetski: So can you define the word hypergamy for people who are new to that term?
Meta Trav [1:15:26]: Typically it’s just: what is the instinctual reproductive strategy of a woman. Some rope it up that it can be — like, Rollo [Tomassi] has a really good way of saying it. He says: Hypergamy is is the instinctual desire for alpha seed and beta need. Alpha seed being a tournament male seed — they’re superior, they’re the winners, they’re smarter, they’re able to compete better, they’re able to protect better. And then beta need is that guy who will stick around for a long period of time. You might not like him too much — he’s not the alpha — but he’ll provide for you for a long period of time. So hypergamy is — in Rollo’s example: when a woman’s in her 20’s, she wants alpha seed. As she starts hitting something in her 30’s, she hits what’s called the epiphany stage and then she starts — because tournament males can be assholes! Tournaments can impregnate you and fuck off! You’ve seen those guys! You’ve met them! So they look at their past in their 20’s and go: I really screwed up! I let my instincts run wild! I pursued this guy who was a terrible person. Of course, there are good tournament males and bad tournament males — we’ll get into that later. So then they get into their 30’s and they hit the epiphany stage and then they start thinking: Well I’ve screwed up — I have a kid and the father isn’t in the picture — I need to be taken care of and I’m starting to lose my looks. I can’t compete with 20-year old women anymore. So the epiphany stage starts changing their hypergamy to pair-bonder, or beta, or someone who’s just going to commit and be there for a long period of time. But the challenges is they’re never necessarily happy like they were with the real desire and attraction to a tournament male — this is more like a settling phase. So that’s how modern human hypergamy works, but ancestrally — if you were in the Neolithic — it would be a do or die scenario: if you don’t pick the tournament male, you’re dead. So women who are highly hypergamous found that guy really desirable, to where he kept you around and he desired you back — they’re the ones who reproduced! So that’s why we have that instinct strong in us. That’s why guys are very confused by that phenomenon, when they see a guy they think is an asshole get the woman [where you think]: That guy’s not gonna stick around! That guy doesn’t care about you! Because they don’t understand that this instinct is there in women and it’s ancient.
Aleks Svetski: It’s almost reptilian.
Meta Trav [1:18:07]: And in its purest form it’s psychopathic! The tournament male — if you look at elephant seals, for instance, they have nothing to do with parenting. If you met a modern guy who impregnated a bunch of women and had nothing to do with parenting and just screwed off to a beach somewhere, you’d think that guy was the biggest piece of shit alive! That is the most raw, instinctual form of a tournament male. It’s rare to see but you see them. You see psychopaths. But everyone’s on a spectrum: this [end] would be tournament male, this [end] would be pair-bonder, and most people are [here or there], and some guys that are really successful — patriarchs, people who build really strong families, that don’t buy into all this stuff, who would remove themselves from culture and build their own private reality — they’re always tournament males, because they need some of those instincts [to achieve that]. And I call anyone on that side a tournament male! If you’re playing [anywhere] on that side, right of center.
Aleks Svetski: I like what you said there about: [the tournament male] has the capacity to remove themselves from culture and build their own bubble.
Meta Trav [1:19:33]: See, that is actually a very hard thing to do if you think about what we’re evolved for! We’re evolved for following and advocating for the culture and tribes! To be able to do that is a very unique instinct.
Aleks Svetski: And it’s a very risky thing to do as well because traditionally there’s strength in numbers, etc., particularly in a world of limited technological capacity and a high degree of scarcity in terms of resources and food and everything like that. Two things: have you ever looked at spiral dynamics as a model of understanding?
Meta Trav: I have heard this before! I looked into it a bit but [not enough].
Aleks Svetski: I just think in a way it fits really nicely, particularly the evolution from a communal type of meta into the tournament male type of meta. So, in spiral dynamics you have the layers of individual and collective consciousness in human society or in the world. They’re each given colors — so level one, the base level is beige and it’s pure instinct, pure survival, egocentric, me me me, and the archetypical manifestation of that in humans is babies or a really really old person that’s about to die — one of those two! And then we evolve into what’s called the purple zone, and the purple is tribal, communal, we’re all in this together, and it’s marked by things like: we saw some lightning strike and then it started raining after somebody dropped a rock, which means if we drop a rock maybe the lightning will strike again and it’ll rain! It’s the bro science stage of existence and it’s all completely communal. It probably fits a little bit into the Eden piece and is with us through Crisis. But then what happens is that the next evolution, the next consciousness level of the spiral is the Power God level, so it’s red. And that’s where the individual rises above and uses force or power or some sort of coercion to lead and to rise above the group. And this is where you get the Genghis Khan’s of the world.
Meta Trav: Tournament males! Yeah it’s exactly that, because you would not see that in the Eden Meta. You don’t even see it in Native Indian culture.
Aleks Svetski: Really?
Meta Trav [1:22:38]: You don’t see it until the very end when they’re at war with the American government! The idea that there would be a leader of a tribe — I’m specifically thinking about the Oglala Sioux Indians and the signing ceremony that they were doing. It was one of those first treaties that was all bullshit and they asked them: Would your leader come sign and they all laughed! They were like, What man has the right to rule or to speak for us all? Something like that — they had a really good line! It made me realize that they had no concept of that, because the technology isn’t there yet for rulers — it’s all communal still. There’s still individuality — they really cared about how they dressed and stuff — but the idea that one would speak for them all was just insane to them. It was so different than what I thought! And then it’s not until they get into war — when the Sioux were battling the US government and then Red Cloud arises and then Crazy Horse arrives — because it’s an intense need, and then the tournament instincts that are there, the best start leading! But they do it in a very prosocial way: they don’t oppress their people. So even back then in that meta it wouldn’t have occurred where it would require technology and that change [requires] tournament males.
Aleks Svetski: I’m thinking through the mapping: so after the red layer, the fourth is blue. And blue is: order, structure, process, and it is basically the
consciousness. We could call it a meta, but it’s where religion evolves.
Meta Trav [1:24:34]: Yeah I call it the integrated tournament male. Tournament males are instinct-driven: instinct to not invest in kids, instinct to compete with other men to be dominant — that’s an instinctual tournament male. [But] when they submit to religion or submit to God, they become an integrated tournament male: their actions are imbued with what’s pleasing to God. And that’s when we get our history! That’s when we get our exciting, beautiful things like chivalry! It’s like an integrated tournament male history.
Aleks Svetski: That actually reminds me of a quote by Viktor Frankl which is: You have liberty on one side or freedom on one side, and then you have the counterbalance for that of responsibility. And for me, I was thinking of a word that combines freedom and responsibility and it’s actually independence, which I think is the highest incarnation of freedom. I could be free to just fucking live on the street if I want, but I’m not independent — I’m dependent on the whims of the environment. But like to be truly free in the purest sense or in the highest sense, you want to be responsible and free and to do the blend of both, is the integrated tournament male or the independent human.
Meta Trav [1:25:55]: Or in the term that we all understand now is: a sovereign male. Because almost all Bitcoin maximalists are tournament males! It’s a graded [thing]. Very moral, very into sovereignty.
Aleks Svetski: Or at least on the path to that.
Meta Trav: Totally.
Aleks Svetski: So there’s another four layers after blue: you’ve got orange. Orange is the entrepreneurial rule-breaker. I’ve transcended the dogma of the structure and realized that there’s more out there. Entrepreneurs and the scientific revolution, etc., emerges from that. And then you get green over the top of that, and green is this idea of the pendulum swings back to more communal — the holistic view and process of the world. And then you move into transcending the first six base layers into what’s called yellow, and yellow is the integrated human, which is that the individual who’s able to move up and down that entire stack and use the energy of each one, as and when needed! Me and Michael Krieger did a really good podcast and a discussion on this.
III. Jesus, the human meta par excellence
Meta Trav [1:27:16]: Well that finishes my thought on meta! So it’s like: well what’s the human meta? It is all of those things, and you have to know when the right instincts apply for the right things! So the playstyle of the meta today is that you have to be aware of all of that: there’s a time to be Jesus, there’s a time to be a tournament male, there’s a time to be communal, there’s a time to be praying to the shamans. And it’s all built in you!
Aleks Svetski: Context matters!
Meta Trav [1:27:46]: That’s right — and that’s when you become integrated. And think of a woman — if you think of what the opposite would be: a form of healthy hypergamy? They need to understand their instincts. They need to know when to apply it. They need to know that maybe dating that rock star at 22 is not gonna work out well. They need to integrate their instincts properly. And yeah, it’s exactly that! It’s about being able to travel along those, where context matters. And I’ll give a good example: I think the true master of all this is Jesus. I went from someone thinking Jesus was a swear word all the time.
Aleks Svetski: I was the same, man! I laugh, because I did the same thing from the age of 18 to my late 20’s — I was the same!
Meta Trav [1:28:31]: Yeah. [From that], to understanding entirely why they named time after him: the year of our Lord. Because he teaches so many — what you could almost think of as paradoxical — teachings, but it’s for the different metas! It’s hard to give it in a quick thing, but he gives so many ways to deal with different stuff to, one, temper your instincts sometimes, to, one, embrace them. And it’s some of the most powerful stuff I’ve ever read! That’s why my meta stuff ends there [because] you can go further: you can talk about industrial man, etc. — but it stops at Jesus because he literally fixes it all! Because he’s a tournament male in terms of like, No one can tell him what to do, and in terms of frame — that’s the other concept — his frame is unstoppable. He can’t be defeated, he totally imposes his will wherever he goes. So on one hand he’s almost like a warrior, and the other hand he’s like a complete lovey commie and just, Love your neighbor! So he’s this really weird hybrid. But when you understand his stuff and you go through it, you find the answers. Like when I was saying right at the start, that book Mark Sisson wrote about what would be the [optimal] lifestyle? I really feel that when you deeply understand what Jesus talked about, you get like 90% of it! You get a full suite of ideas on how to fix your emotional imbalances from envy, lust, greed — the seven deadly sins — it all comes from Jesus. You get tools on game theory on how to deal with differential power structures. So when you’re dealing with the Roman Empire, when you’re dealing with the Pharisees, he gives you [instructions on] how to do game theory so you keep your dignity intact and you can actually not always be losing all the time. So he’s giving game theory, he’s giving psychology — it’s really powerful stuff! And when you throw it all together it’s like a complete picture. And then you throw the whole ancestral story behind it — all the metas — and it just sort of fulfills it all with him. Which seems bizarre to me, starting years ago [with] pure evolutionary biology and now seeing that Jesus is like the paleo emotion theorist! Like, Sisson was a paleo nutritionist or biologist, and Jesus is a paleo emotion theorist.
Aleks Svetski: So there’s three or four cultures that come into mind and I’d like to hear your thoughts on how they play into the meta, and whether they’re variations of the Jesus meta. So it’s (1) the Japanese and the samurai warrior class and the bushido. For me, having done a bit of study in that area, I find that culture extraordinarily fucking interesting. Particularly the samurai culture and the principles around honor and war and spirituality, etc. And then there’s (2) the Chinese — not the Confucian path, which is really the centrally managed, top-down collectivist viewpoint which is basically what ended up winning in China, unfortunately — but the Taoist thought. We mentioned earlier the Tao, the Way, and when I look at that, it’s very aligned with Christian thought. It’s very aligned with with natural order. It’s very meta, to say the least. And then the third one is (3) the Stoics and the ancients. So the philosophers, the Aristotle of the world, the Roman Stoics, and all that — so just that region. You could probably also throw the Indians in there as well.
Meta Trav [1:33:09]: When I read the Native Indian creation stories and their religion — it sounds a lot like Christianity to me!
Aleks Svetski: So what’s your thoughts [on these]? How do they play into this model of going from Eden, Crisis, Neolithic, and Jesus? Would you lump them into the same thing as Jesus? Are they flavors of that same sort? Maybe an emergence of collective consciousness? Because they all emerge around the same time, give or take 500 or 1,000 years?
Meta Trav [1:33:44]: Well they only would have persisted because they had good feedback. They worked! They led to some form of order. And if they had successful feedback, that means they were very likely tapping into the a priori nature of it. The Christians call that the Logos. The Logos or the Meta — it’s the same word it’s the same design. They have to be tapping into design for it to be successful — you just can’t get fit if you’re not tapping into the design. You won’t get the feedback right. It just won’t work! So any of those things that have persisted and have huge cultural significance always are the Meta — they always are the Logos. They’re always tapping into it, whether it’s Buddhism, whether it’s bushido, or whether it’s the Stoics. Now, I’m one of those guys that I haven’t gone down that path that much — I haven’t gone down the Japanese philosophy that much. The Stoics a little bit, but I immediately turned away when it was all about having no emotions. I think there’s real power in emotions! So I just haven’t gone far in those areas. So about the only insight I can provide is that they have to be Meta — almost always! When you approach it with a Meta mind you’ll be able to extract out — there’s always fluff included in these things. There’s lots of fluff in the Bible — there’s lots of stuff that needs to be burned off, and you’ll always find the Logos sitting there. That’s been my experience, at least. So I’d have to go through that, but I’m certain it’s there. Jordan Peterson calls this the golden thread: this is the golden thread or the Logos or what I call the Meta. So if you can extract it, then how to live to its fullest.
Aleks Svetski: I like that analogy of the golden thread, because for me, when I went off the rails and became a full-blown fucking atheist and all this sort of stuff when I was young, I went in and thought I found things that were divergent to Christianity. I was like, Look at this fucking Eastern philosophy and all of this! I went down the Alan Watts path and all this sort of stuff. And I thought I found something different. But then as I got older and I dug into Christianity once more, I was like, Holy fuck! They’re actually the same thing, just slightly different languages and slight variations and nuance in explaining basically the same thing. And that’s why I think the golden thread is a very useful way to think about this.
Meta Trav [1:36:57]: And if I’m right — the major thing I’m trying to say is that: our evolutionary history is the best way to see what the golden thread is. The Bible just attributes it in a broad sense to: Well, this pleases God. And our modern understanding of evolution and the Paleolithic, etc., it provides us finally [with] what the template is. It’s like: This is why you have these instincts. This is why you feel this way. It’s not particularly more useful, because religious people — they’re fine just doing the bro science! I’ll just do what works! They don’t need to know! But I think this is where the big power is, for me: I can’t just attribute things to the supernatural.
Aleks Svetski: Yes!
Meta Trav [1:37:52]: I can’t have that level of conviction where I’d be able to follow the bro science or the feedback that works really well, just by attributing it to something supernatural — I need something that’s a lot more firm. Because I’ve unfortunately — or fortunately, depends on how you look at it — I’ve been too steeped in the a priori nature of Austrian economics and other things to where, if it isn’t to that level, I have a hard time really being convicted. So by putting it together this way, it makes it perfect! The level of conviction I had when I first did a paleo diet? I have [that] for all of this now!
Aleks Svetski: Yeah it’s like an integrated symphony. Funny that you mentioned the supernatural thing, because literally my next question is like: Where do you stand on the supernatural element? Because me and Jimmy Song did a good 2–3 hour episode on this and it was called Bitcoin Preachers and then I followed it up with Bitcoin Atheists with Knut [Svanholm] and with Ben Sessions. And basically I played devil’s advocate: I played the atheist with with Jimmy Song and Jordan Bush, and I played the Christian with Knut and Ben. It was an interesting set of discussions! And where me and Jimmy got to was: Jimmy was like, Yep, you’re a Christian! But minus the belief in the supernatural. And I was like, Yeah that’s an interesting way to describe my principles and where I sit. Does that align with you? Or where do you place yourself?
Meta Trav [1:39:41]: Ooh, that’s a big one! So when Jesus did his ministry, he called people that followed him the followers of The Way, just like Taoism. He called what he was doing The Way. So I consider myself a very diligent follower of the Way. I really think about what he taught often — it’s so so powerful. Some people are just like, Oh I love Jesus! And they can’t even explain why. My interest in Jesus is entirely from his teachings, and his teachings are mind-blowing when you really get into them! And the problem that people approach with Jesus is that they never get the Jewish context behind what he’s talking about. I’ve been with them before where they just read a passage and they’re like, Well how did that make you feel? I’m like, It doesn’t work that way! You have to go into the typology where it’s the actual reference — because everything he talks about is in the Old Testament, almost always. For instance: I did a newsletter on turning the other cheek. A lot of people just say, Oh so if someone hits you, you just let him hit you again — it’s like a form of love. And that’s not what he means at all! What he means is — it’s very complicated, but — if you were a master and you were to hit your slave on the cheek, you would do it with a backhand. And if you were a Jew you wouldn’t hit him with any other hand because you can’t use your left hand for unclean tasks like backhanding a servant. So if he backhands you — and this is like a sign of disrespect or whatever — you turn to him the other cheek. Now this presents a problem because if he backhands you again he’ll hit your face. And he actually says the cheeks! He says, If they hit you on the right cheek — which would be a backhand — turn to him the other cheek, as Jesus says. And so if he was to backhand you again, your face would be where his hand hits, and there was Jewish law against hitting your slave in the face. So it’s hamstrung you there. So all that’s open is the other cheek with a fist, if you gave him a right-fisted blow, but then there was laws against hitting your slave with a fist. So by turning the other cheek, you frustrate their ability to take your dignity again! So when people talk about Jesus turning the other cheek and they’re sitting there getting beat on like a doormat, like a whipping boy or something — Jesus literally is teaching defiance! He’s teaching — when there’s a power differential with a master and they’re taking your dignity — this is how you at least maintain it or get it back, or at least frustrate them from continuing. So that’s a completely different message than what you normally read on Jesus! And all of this stuff is like that when you go through it! There’s this low resolution, pop culture explanation of what he’s talking about, and then you get into the deep Jewish context and you’re like, Holy shit! That is something entirely different!
Aleks Svetski: That reminds me of Jordan Peterson redefining meek for me. People think meek means the downtrodden or useless or the sheeple, but the original incarnation of the words was something along the lines of: Those who have swords and know how to use them but choose to keep them sheathed. And for me that was one of those mind-blowing moments.
Meta Trav [1:43:41]: And what is the great thing that Christianity did in history? It integrated the tournament male! It got him to put his sword in his sheath and focus on things like earning a return on his property. That’s one of the big things he would talk about in the Parable of the Talents: actually going out and earning a return. The foundation of capitalism is also found in Jesus’ teachings. So yeah it’s really all there. So that one — because that’s what Jesus says — The meek shall inherit the Earth: he’s responsible for the integration of the tournament male! Because up until that point, the great hero of Judaism was David, who was a classic tournament male — cheated on his wife, killed his best friend, stole his wife, had kids. That’s a classic tournament male! But he also had pair-bonding, loving instincts too about his people, so he was hailed as a hero — and then here comes Jesus and he’s like, The meek shall inherit the Earth. It’s incredible stuff when you start really dissecting it.
Aleks Svetski: So you mentioned your readings of the teachings of Jesus — so you mentioned the Old Testament. I also had a discussion with my girlfriend around separating Christianity from religion and from indoctrination and dogma, which to me I see three layers: I see Christianity the philosophy, then you have religion, which is an interpretation of the philosophy, and that can come in many flavors and that’s fine, but then you have the deranged third layer which is the institutionalization of the religion, of the philosophy. And there’s a big difference! And I think most people, when they have a problem with Christianity or any other religion, it’s the problem with the third. But they throw the baby out with the bathwater — the philosophy itself is extraordinarily powerful! But even the religious text or the flavor on the philosophy can get distorted in some senses. So for you, what’s your best way of getting to the source of some of these things?
Meta Trav [1:46:11]: Well I think Jesus came and ended religion. The big theme is he was up against the Roman Empire. One of the other groups he was up against was our emotional selves — the battle within. But he was also up against the Pharisees. And there’s this phenomenon that happens: so, religious teachings explain what sin is, and sin is a very rational concept. But there’s always the natural cost of sin when you do it: when you drink or you murder or you lust and then your whole family breaks up or you covet your friend’s stuff and something happens. When you engage in those sins, there’s always the wages of the sin itself. Just like if you eat seed oils, there’s the wages of that — and you can consider that a sin. But then religion always comes along and adds a second layer of sin payment! There’s the payment of the wages itself — that something gets out of whack in your life and you get some really bad feedback — but then religion always adds on: But you also owe payment to God to get cleansed of it! That’s where all the abuse happens! And that’s what Jesus comes to end. So I’ll just give a quick example of that because I know we’re running out of time: For the Jews at the time there was sin and there were a million different sins that percolated over time as the Old Testament went on, so they feel like they’re living in sin all the time. But to be cleansed of sin you had to go give offerings at the temple or get cleansed by something called living water at the temple — this was around the time of Jesus — and that would always cost you money! It’s just like the Catholics did — it’s like, Oh you need to confess your sins and be absolved of your sins and your soul will leave purgatory. What’s the saying? Once the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs. So there’s always this payment to God. You’ve had the wages of sin and it’s cost, but now you owe this second cleansing piece. And if you don’t do it, you’re going to have no blessings in the future. Well that’s the religious human piece turning it into a racket. So Jesus comes and says, I’m living water you don’t need to pay to have yourself cleansed — I am the lamb that gets slaughtered. I am the sacrificial lamb. You no longer have to pay the payment to God for your sins anymore. But it always says, But go and sin no more, so the sins of the action itself remain — there’s always the wages of those — but you don’t owe a payment anymore. The racket’s over! So when Jesus came and did that — I mean, it’s so distinct when you read his stuff — he ended the payment racket of sin. That’s what the Pharisees were built on at his time. The what the modern [system is] in a lot of ways, but it’s not as strong as it was in medieval times or things like that. But that’s always the racket, and I think Jesus just utterly destroyed that. So in the absence of that — what is there? There’s a personal relationship with the teacher! That’s the way I see it. And that’s, to me, the only true way to do it. Not everyone’s going to do that because that’s — and he always says: Very few will get this!
Aleks Svetski: Few understand this. Is there an answer here for your position on the supernatural element of Christianity itself?
Meta Trav [1:50:09]: Yeah so I don’t believe in any of the supernatural elements. Because Jesus is so logically clean — his logic stuff is just so perfect — I feel like the human religious element added all these other pieces to his teaching. I can’t escape that. That, to me, is the Occam’s razor: so much of what he says is just too pure! It’s too perfect! It’s too clean! And all this stuff gets added. So anything after his crucifixion, I largely ignore. This is probably very controversial! But I don’t even really recognize what Paul says. He’s responsible for a lot of the New Testament I don’t find his stuff related — when you read Jesus and you read Paul, you’re like [ehhh]. The same connection isn’t there. And then of course with Old Testament stuff there’s giants and all sorts of supernatural things. You really think that we started from a little garden with a snake in the tree? That is by definition of fable. There’s people that believe it’s literal and they’re really antagonistic if you don’t. But if that is a fable — if that’s a metaphor — how much else is a metaphor? So, my interest is the golden thread, the Logos, the Meta — that’s always what I’m seeking. And then I find great joy in connecting what Jesus is doing to those periods I talked about — the previous metas — and he’s perfect! All his stuff recreates all of them. There’s a certain thing that I have when something fits so perfectly: I accept it — you’re probably that way too — I’m like, Ah that fits too good! I don’t need any more data!
Aleks Svetski: Yeah that stems from the propensity to appreciate a priori truth. It’s 2 + 2! It’s perfect! I don’t need you to prove that fucking 2 + 2 = 4 motherfucker, it just does!
Meta Trav [1:52:32]: And that’s the way I look at it. If I can simplify what the meta is to me: when the a priori and the a posteriori — from the former, from its nature, from the latter, from its empirical observation. When they line up perfectly — when you have a perfect explanation for why this is perfect and it’s great feedback and the a priori is perfect? That’s all I’m after. That’s the path.
Aleks Svetski: That’s it. That’s beautifully said.
Meta Trav: I need the a priori there because of my Austrian background. I just struggle. It can’t just be bro science — it needs to be the whole picture.
Aleks Svetski: That’s really well put. It honestly does remind me: right at the end of the podcast with Jimmy and Jim — the preachers podcast — Jimmy tried to prove a point around like, Look there has to be a supernatural explanation for some of this stuff because if you look at some of the teachings in the Bible — and he mentioned one and he said, This one proves that it’s not just about doing things logically because this has no logic. And I looked at it and I was like, Well no, not exactly! It was something to do with eating in a house and thanking someone or whatever and it seemed rude on the surface. It was funny because Jimmy specifically pointed that one out as: Where’s the lesson in this? And I was like, Well I can see a perfect lesson in that! I pointed it out and he goes: You should be a pastor because I had not heard that one before! He’s like, That’s really good! I’m gonna go and ponder that for a while!
Meta Trav [1:54:31]: I’ll tell you something: because if we think the same way — we have the same logical instinct — I found when I started going through passages, I had way cleaner conclusions than other people. When I started bringing in all the Jewish stuff — there was such a joy I had going through it because I felt like maybe I had an instinct for the Logos a bit better? I don’t know. Maybe that’s arrogant. But it just leap off the page! Because when you really start studying Jesus, you’re like, Holy shit, this guy is logical! This guy is like pristine logic! Logic that actually makes your mind bend.
Aleks Svetski: 4-D logic, yeah.
Meta Trav: There’s a couple of parables where you’re just like, What did he just say? And I can see why this stuff has been around for 2,000 years. But he’s so logical and that goes against what people think is the nature of Jesus. So when a very very logical person reads it, you can’t help but find it an exciting process. Fortunately I’ve been able to go through with this pastor friend of mine who’s just really crisp on all the back end, all the Jewish stuff, all the traditions and the laws. So you’re reading something and you’re like, What the heck does this mean? You get a nice explanation, you look it up a bit more, you really get a picture for what’s being talked about and then you can apply your logic to it at that point.
Aleks Svetski: Okay so to actually finish an earlier thread: so when I said, Where do you get your teachings from Jesus? You mentioned the Old Testament is far more congruent with Jesus’ stuff and then with the New Testament, not so much. So if someone wants to do this themselves and review and study — for example: where can they validate some of the Jewish principles at the time to understand things like the word meek, etc.?
Meta Trav [1:56:35]: Well I don’t know about that because that’s something Jordan said. I assume it’s correct because he’s not a lazy person! But the very best on some of the most poorly understood things that Jesus said that leads Christians astray — that’s turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, give the cloak off your back — is some writings by a guy named Walter Wink. And he wrote Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way and he goes into all the very complex Jewish law behind stuff, and then in the case of the extra mile he goes behind the Roman laws that applied to soldiers. They weren’t allowed to make you walk one mile — if you went the extra mile they’d get the equivalent of court martialed! So you’d punish them! So Walter Wink covers it beautifully, but he covers — the key message of Jesus’s ministry was dignity and always protecting your dignity, which Christians suffer at, at times, especially when they follow that doormat philosophy. So Walter Wink’s stuff is awesome. Now beyond that I’ve had the luxury of having a pastor be able to take me through the Bible, so I don’t have any specific books. I do like Red Pill Gospel actually by Forrest Maready, I don’t know if you’ve heard of that one?
Aleks Svetski: Why do I know his name? Is he the author of the smallpox thing?
Meta Trav: Polio! The Moth in the Iron Lung. He’s amazing and I always see the logic with him — I judge people now on what I think their natural Logos is. Whenever I see someone — like, you have it — whenever I see someone where I’m like, That guy’s got the Logos! I tend to find all their stuff correct, whenever I dig into it. So his book Red Pill Gospel — this gets controversial — like, I don’t like to alienate Christians because I feel like what they have is beautiful. I don’t want to screw them up whatsoever on their on their faith — it’s not the point — this is just my own personal journey. But I found Red Pill Gospel pretty cool.
Aleks Svetski: Okay. I want to throw one book in the works. We’re going to wrap this one up in a minute anyway and then I definitely want to do an episode on hypergamy, tournament male, frame, dignity — I think that sort of grouping is incredibly important, and then we can dig into some of these other metas. But there is one book — so speaking of Logos and this and this golden thread — there’s one book that changed my entire perspective on the nature and notion of property and territory, which is called The Territorial Imperative by a guy called Robert Ardrey. And he’s an anthropologist of the kind that just doesn’t exist in the fucking world anymore. These days anthropologists like that fucking retard Yuval Harari are walking around claiming that they know something because they wrote a book.
Meta Trav: Yeah and they’re woke.
Aleks Svetski: Exactly, this dude is definitely not woke, and he’s got some sections in there around his territorial theory around why the Jews survived for so long and why they keep surviving. He makes a very compelling case — and it inspired me to start like an essay which I’ll have to finish at some stage called, Private Property as a Biological Imperative for Human Beings — and he talks about: the first natural biological imperative for just about almost every species other than in insects, more for mammalian species, is the territorial imperative and not the sexual imperative. So sexual selection comes after territorial selection. It’s a really strong case and it uses all sorts of examples anthropologically-speaking, from animals to monkeys to birds, all the way through to humans. And I can’t do it justice in five minutes but basically it sets the stage for understanding how nature has — almost in the DNA of all species that seem to find symbiosis and a dynamic equilibrium with their environment — they have the capacity to innately sense territory, And it manifests in different ways. And he looks at examples of how perfectly healthy and strong males of particular species — depending on the patch of land that they hold — will either attract a female or not attract, but the female will go to the one who has the prime real estate or the prime property or the prime territory, not the prime genetics. And usually the one who has the prime territory is the one who has the prime genetics anyway, so they overlapped each other. And what’s interesting is that there’s all sorts of evidence around the home ground or your home territory: you can be a weaker specimen and if the attacker is from outside your territory and comes in, you generally beat him because you’re on home ground.
Meta Trav: It’s like it has psychological power.
Aleks Svetski: It has psychological power, it has biological power, it’s got all sorts of stuff, even down to how birds in a particular zone, they’ll fly in and they’ll go to take another bird’s property or they’ll prey on them or whatever, but one bird will fuck up five competitors because it’s his home base. And if that one bird was past a particular point outside of their innate biological territory, that bird would just get fucked up by one of them! So there’s all these sorts of interesting things. There was another example of the US military trying to relocate a bunch of endangered birds down at the cape of Argentina or Chile, and no matter what they did — they took the motherfuckers on boats and all this sort of stuff and they planted them all around the world — and they all flew back to the same spot, irrespective! Every single one of them had this innate biological — almost like a homing sense. And they didn’t see how they got there, [dealt with the] winds and all this sort of stuff, so it’s a really interesting thing. And for me, having read that book and then having thought about and having come from a background in Bitcoin, I was like, Holy fuck! The light bulbs just started like going off for me and I was like, Holy shit! Maybe we have a territorial imperative! And I link it to this sense or the idea of taking someone’s stuff or stealing — it feels incongruent. Even as a fucking child, before you’re taught what is wrong or right — you take something from someone else — it just doesn’t feel right! The kids beat each other up over it. So there’s there’s a thread there which I think you more than most people would really really appreciate, so I’d really recommend digging into that, because I think it’ll weave into this Meta thing — it’ll add some color to the elements.
Meta Trav: Yeah. I know it will, because I don’t know if you read my thread recently on property — and Bitcoin has taught me that I only care about the instinct of possession now when I think of property and the capacity to defend it. This studio of mine was shut down for 3 months in the lockdown — I apparently don’t have property rights! I thought I did. It’s because I don’t possess it when you really get down to it. I’m really interested in seeing property not through the property rights banner anymore — I’m really about seeing property through the psychological possession, the perspective. Which I think completely relates to what you’re talking about. Because that instinct itself is probably an integrated version of the territorial instinct, but in things. It’s not so much in an area of land — it probably still is, isn’t it? But yeah there’s so much there. And the cool thing about Bitcoin is that it’s a possession technology: your psychological possession over it cannot be impeded by anyone else, and that’s why it has property rights. It doesn’t rely on a government to larp that you have property rights — you can fundamentally possess it! There’s been nothing like that in history.
Aleks Svetski: Absolutely. All right let’s wrap this up I think we basically went through everything. We went through the timelines and periods, we went through hypergamy, tournament males, we went through the idea of patches. I think next time we’ll speak a little bit to maladapted emotions and stuff like that. I really like the idea of emotions and then the light side and the dark side of each emotion right. And that’s probably a Jungian thing — he popularized this idea of light and dark versions of everything. And that feeds really into the spiral dynamics that I was talking about before: when me and Michael Krieger were talking about it, he was framing the different layers in like, Red is bad and blue is bad, and I was like, No no no — red has an energy which is extraordinarily good. If we’re in a burning fucking house, you don’t go into green mode like, Oh kumbaya we’re all in this together — No! You go into fucking red, you kick the door down, you tell everybody to get the fuck out before they all burn down. So each each layer of consciousness or each meta of consciousness comes with its own light and dark manifestations. All right I guess to finish this up: where can people find you? And where should they find more about the work you’ve done on meta?
Meta Trav: You can go to my Twitter account it’s @travsteward. That’s where I’m posting it all. You can see my pinned post there — it’s all my meta megathreads. I’m always pumping out new ones. So that’s the best place to reach me.
Aleks Svetski: Okay. And then your old school account I think you still use it: @parabolictrav, right?
Meta Trav: Yeah, not so much anymore! I much prefer this way of using Twitter. I get sick of talking about Bitcoin. It’s gotta rope into the whole picture. And we could probably explore it one day, but the meta nature of Bitcoin is really interesting.
Aleks Svetski: That’s probably where once we get to whatever episode near the end, we tie it all together with Bitcoin. Because the reason I did this fucking podcast and called it Wake Up was: I wanted to look at — now now I’m going to use your terminology — I wanted to look at the metas across multiple dimensions in the world. Because, for me, Bitcoin touches all of these fucking things, but it’s interesting insofar as it does touch all of these things! Bitcoin in isolation is fucking digital gold — who gives a shit! Oh Bitcoin is a fucking asset? Okay good on you bro — fucking, you’ve found something else to gamble with. It’s totally not interesting! This is why I find this stuff interesting — it’s the never-ending rabbit hole.
Meta Trav: I know. I find it amazing that there’s so many things that Jesus said that, if you replace what he’s saying with Bitcoin, they make perfect sense. It’s just really bizarre! Michael Saylor’s done it a few times and people are like You’re a heretic! It’s blasphemy! Well there’s a reason! Because it taps into the Logos. It taps into the meta.
Aleks Svetski: It’s the golden thread — it works. All right man, well thank you so much.
Meta Trav: No problem. It’s been a real pleasure.
