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Here in the United States we have 5 % in the world's population but we consume 25 % in the world's resources.
That by definition is extreme.
The world can't handle the way that we exist. The reason that I am so extreme is that I am a product of an extreme society.
Robin Greenfield, he is minimalism in extremis personified.
This sort of thorough -esque character for the digital age who's questioning the mores of modernity pushing the outer boundaries of essentialism and non -ownership through what is sort of this evolving and very public form of performance art awakening in which he continues to shed himself of modern artifice and the creature comforts of convenience in order to experience what he would describe as a deeper connection with himself, with others, with life and the planet.
My belief is that a quality existence takes a substantial amount of time.
For me that could mean growing my own food, foraging, harvesting rainwater, really putting deep practice into my relationships.
Everything that brings the deepest value into my life takes real time.
Robin is a guy who's gone a year without showering, another year without buying any food, consuming only what he could grow or forage.
He's dumpster dived and done stints in New York City and Los Angeles, where he consumed like an average citizen with his only rule being that he would literally wear on his body all the trash is consumption produced.
But none of this compares to Robin's latest adventure.
After pushing a cart at his last 44 possessions down the Pacific coast, Robin recently completed this walk in Los Angeles where he relinquished every last item he owned.
No ID, no bank account, no phone, no laptop.
he even stripped himself of every single item of clothing to take up residence in Griffith Park.
Why would anybody do this?
What is he trying to experience and what is he trying to communicate to all of us?
If I was just to summarize my life in one way, that could be it, live simply so that others may simply live.
Brother Robin. Hey, so nice to finally meet you.
Thank you, I've been looking forward to this for a very long time, you've been on a hell of a journey, there's tons to unpack.
Yes, and I do not know what we're gonna talk about, I'm interested to see what Rich Roal is gonna ask me.
Well, the first thing I want to say is in kind of reflecting upon your life and these choices that you've made.
There are a lot of parallels I think between your journey and that of many ultra endurance athletes that I know who kind of create their own bespoke, audacious challenges that are designed, of course, to push themselves, but also to provoke interest, like wider interest in the mainstream around, often around an idea that they're trying to advocate.
And like them, you're somebody who creates challenges for yourself.
There may be a little bit less athletic perhaps, but no less daunting, more daunting, I would say, a more existential, more thorough -esque in certain respects, these extreme experiments that show us what's possible and what being human is really about.
I like the sounds of that.
You like that? Is that a fair assessment?
I mean, how do you think about these, quote unquote endurance challenges of your own design?
I completely agree.
They are much less challenging physically than endurance athletes.
but they do require a lot of the same mental capacity and skillset that you would need in order to, you know, run ultra marathons or things like that.
And in the past, when I first started as a adventurer, I was more geared towards that.
And then I would say over the years became much more a explorer of my mind than the physical realm.
But that's the evolution, right?
Yeah. Transcending kind of one challenge and what is the next rung on the ladder towards my kind of transformation and this trend, it's really a transcendental journey, I think that you're on.
Yeah. How do you describe who you are and what you do to people that you meet who aren't familiar with you?
So that is the hardest. I'm able to answer almost all questions, but that's one of the ones that I always have the hardest time putting into a concise response because I do, I am in a realm of exploring a lot of different areas.
But to put it simply, my objective is to try to exist on this earth in a way that doesn't destroy this only home that we have and actually contributes to the regeneration of this world and the reconnection of our humanity and of having deeply meaningful relationships with the plants and animals that we share this home with.
And so it's a really, really simple concept to simply exist in a way that doesn't destroy the earth that we have, that doesn't contribute to such inequity and injustice and exploitation and extraction and at the very least to live neutrally to do no unnecessary harm, but at the very best to have a life be a truly positive contribution and to ascend delusionalism, not be doing good here, but the truth is behind the scenes in order to do good here, we're actually taking part in exploitation and destruction here.
And so to look at the full picture of our existence and in the complex times that we live in, dissect them to a level that very few people want to because it's very uncomfortable to realize the truth behind our lives and then live that to the deepest levels that I can and then do that as a public experiment so that others can be on this journey with me and then explore their own minds and their own relationships.
Yeah, it's not exactly an elevator pitch. No, it's a mouthful.
Yes. Yes, I don't know how you distill that down into anything more concise than what you just shared.
I would like to get my life down to a singular mission.
That's been something I've been wanting to do for a long time, just to have a lot of, just an utter singular mission.
And a lot of the people that have inspired me, a lot of my influences, they have that.
They have sort of a singular mission.
Except that really, when you actually read their full biographies, and you actually look at the complexity of their lives, there is no singular mission because we're talking, these are people that are trying to make meaningful contributions in society and our lives are complex. So yeah, I am working on, at the heart of my existence is simplicity.
Like that's from the core beginning.
It's living simplicity, living simply.
Gandhi is one of my biggest inspirations.
And he says, live simply so that others may simply live.
if I was to trial to boil my life down into one singular mission, it would just be whatever Gandhi's quotes are.
Those are the ones where I'm like, that's what I'd like to do if I just boiled it down to one simple mission, live simply so that others can simply live.
But isn't that like one spoke on the wheel of a himself, like living simply is an aspect of doing no harm, right?
There's a broader kind of sensibility here that's rooted in strains of philosophical thought and various spiritual traditions as well.
Like, is there one overarching philosophy that you draw upon or kind of tradition that is most influential in how you think about these things and make decisions and pursue your actions and advocacy?
Yeah, the answer to that is a very simple and clear no. I do not draw from any one particular area.
I get my inspiration from a wide range of human beings that are just out there doing their things, shining their light.
And I actually from the beginning was very intentional about not gravitating towards any one particular, thought pattern or practice because I wanted to formulate my own mind.
And it's so easy to gravitate into one label or one religion or one whatever, and then not really form your own opinion.
And so who would have been my early heroes, like you mentioned Thoreau, for example, I was very intentional to not read any Thoreau for a long time.
And then to be honest, the first couple of times I read it I didn't understand it because of his writing from 100 years ago.
I just don't always get it.
But so yeah, I look at what I'm trying to, the philosophy that I'm practicing and working towards, a lot of it is pretty universal in the sense that the sky is above us, the earth is below us, that we are here on this planet with the plants and animals, that us as a humanity, we are actually global neighbors and brothers and sisters, we're actually far more connected than we are separate when you look at all of this.
So I really try to follow the absolute basics of what you could kind of consider universal truths.
Of course, when you dissect anything, we don't know what truth is, but in the construct in which we live, universal truths, and when you look at these universal truths, of course, you see they exist in so many areas.
And I would say some Buddhist teachings definitely in the last years have become, well, right now, one of the very few things I have with me is a song book by Thich Nhat Hanh.
And, you know, I look through here and I think, yeah, this is very, very much in alignment with my basic beliefs.
Yeah. There's sort of a deconstruction here because obviously we're all a product of our influences and experiences, and they tend to, you know, kind of drive what we think and how we act.
But for you to say like, I don't want to be unduly influenced by all of that and want to kind of explore like my mind from a sort of first principles perspective you know is to say is a vote, you know against separation and a vote for oneness.
Like if you're saying like connection is what it's all about and there is no separation and it's all one to then say, well, you know, my thoughts and my actions are in alignment with this tradition is to then create, you know, guardrails that separate more than they unite.
And then the key is that, of course, we have traditions and philosophies that at their core believe that we're all connected and do not buy into the polarization and the separation.
And so teachers, for example, like Thich Nhat Hanh that I learned from, he is a Buddhist monk, but he doesn't have a religion.
You know, a lot of Buddhism, as you know, is not a religion.
It's just a very basic way of approaching the world.
And so any of the philosophies that I gravitate towards are the ones that say, this is a way, not the way, and that it's not dogmatic and labeled.
So, you know, a lot of indigenous wisdom or a lot of indigenous creation stories or philosophies, I also gravitate towards because like right now, well, one of the few books that I had this year while I still own some things is the Thanksgiving address by the Haudenosaunee.
And it just gives thanks to 17 key elements of life.
You know, people, the creator of Earth, Earth, Mother Earth, plants, animals, birds, trees, et cetera.
And it doesn't say anything about anything being bad or good, right or wrong.
It just says we're thankful for our presence and for all of the interconnectedness of life.
And so I certainly gravitate towards certain practices.
is however being in the time that we live in, in the 2000s and growing up in this country, what we call the United States of America, the reality is I grew up in a very fragmented society.
I had no traditions.
I had no lineage that I was connected to.
I was a part of a society that taught me radical individualism rather than community.
Taught me that I was separate from everything not connected to.
And so that's a huge part of the journey is breaking free from that, that you could call it radical individualism and coming into these concepts such as oneness that you mentioned that some people hear that and they're just like, you know, woo, woo.
But I truly believe that we can work on our minds and work in our relationships in a way where we actually do enter into a state of oneness or a relative state of oneness.
And I'm excited to see what we talk about today maybe because that's kind of one of my big focuses right now.
Yeah, I wanna get into your origin story and kind of what made you who you are today.
But for people that are watching or listening who aren't familiar, like maybe this would be a good moment to just kind of talk about what you just did and what you're now doing to kind of anchor this.
Sure. So basically you just walked the Pacific coast, 1600 miles, which culminated in you being in the Los Angeles area, where you have now, basically set up residence in Griffith Park and given away like every, not that you really owned anything, but like whatever you did own, you have now liberated yourself from.
And not that this is a Buddhist practice per se, but you are living in this state of independence, dependence and interdependence where you have no money, you have no bank account, you have no belongings, and you are kind of subsisting on the generosity of others in alignment with kind of the tunes of nature at the moment, is that it?
Well, but I - Did I capture that?
Can you just follow up?
Whenever anybody asks what I'm doing, can I just refer them to you?
Yeah, so, and this is just kind of the latest in many chapters of many adventures that you've gone on that we'll talk about, but this is kind of where you're at right now.
So what was the decision to embark upon this trek?
What was that trek all about?
What were you trying to do and accomplish and experience?
And why are you doing what you're doing right now?
Sure, sure, sure, sure.
Okay, I'll try to wrap that up into a few minutes or so.
We have all day. All right, so as far as where we're at right now, so I have for at least eight years wanted to become the human who owns nothing.
to literally have not a single possession to my name.
And I mean absolutely nothing.
That's been a long -term aspiration, which I'm sure a lot of people would have a hard time wrapping their head around, because that's the last thing in the world they want, because their needs for safety, stability, security, belonging, acknowledgement, all of those things, they would see them being crumbled, just crushed in being able to get there.
For me, I saw this concept of owning absolutely nothing as a form of ultimate liberation and as an opportunity for me to practice so deeply what it is that I want from my life.
And so I had actually always thought that I would do that.
Recently, I gave up on that.
I thought it wasn't gonna happen.
We might come back to.
But 13 months ago, I was actually sitting in Vipassana, which is a practice meditation.
I'm sure you know about Vipassana, right?
So I was sitting, it was day six And it just sprang to me.
I'm gonna walk from Canada to Los Angeles or Canada to Mexico.
I wasn't exactly sure where and that I had just rapped, you know, although I've been living simply for a long time, in some ways, I had re -entered The Rat Race with running a nonprofit, bringing in resources to manage a team and be able to share fruit trees and seeds with people.
I just found that I was actually back in The Rat Race, Even though it was for a different cause, it wasn't for self -enrichment.
It was for community enrichment.
Here I was struggling with just living the life of integrity because of all of the chores and bills that existed within the realm of the nonprofit.
And so I was sitting in Vipassana and it just days, it was day six and it just came to me.
Like, I'm gonna go for a walk.
I'm gonna finally go for a long walk.
I've wanted to go for a long walk for a very long time.
And so I knew I was gonna be on the West coast. So that's where the Pacific coast highway came from.
And then what I decided is I was gonna simplify my life down to everything that I owned.
Being able to carry with me on this walk.
The walk was the vessel that would allow me to simplify my life.
Because if I couldn't carry it I couldn't own it.
So it was a very simple vessel that forced me to resimplify like I had been before.
And then the objective was that as I walked from Canada to Los Angeles, I would have an opportunity to shed the past and walk into the future.
I gave myself a very practical, literal vessel in order to do a lot of this figurative work.
And so, I decided that that was the way in which I would get into the present moment.
I would slow down and simplify.
Walking does that, there's no way around it.
You have to get more slowed down, you only can go three miles an hour.
and I made the commitment that by the time I arrived in Los Angeles, I would have finished everything on my plate or canceled it.
So for the last year, it's just been canceled, canceled, delete, delete, delete, just trying to get my life into a place where I can actually embrace the present moment rather than being overwhelmed and overcommitted.
So I gave myself, it was the six months or so.
And I also made the commitment that by the time I arrived in Los Angeles, I would have emptied my mind of all secrets of anything I was guarding or hiding, and that I would arrive in LA with a completely open mind, with complete transparency, and have literally not a single secret.
And so I did that on the walk, and then that all prepared me for arriving in LA one week ago, eight days ago, and then being able to give away everything I own, sitting naked in Griffith Park for a little while, I was just a palm front covering my front and all of that was needed because I wasn't ready for that.
The whole last 14 year journey helped me to be ready for that.
I never could have done that.
But this walk helped a lot with just the day -to -day, slow movement, shedding, releasing, and then arriving, and being there.
And so that's where I am now.
I now have not a single possession to my name.
I don't own anything.
And so of course some people are gonna say, well what about the clothes that you're wearing?
So shall I tell you the six items that I?
So currently I have six items, all of which I'm borrowing.
The top and bottom that I'm wearing are from a guy named Ant who came out to the gathering.
The blanket that I have is from a guy named Andrew who bent me this blanket.
I have a sleeping bag which is tucked up in the hills in Griffith Park, not too far from the Greek theater.
And that was from a guy named Keith, who lent it to me.
This hat is from a guy named Greens, who lent this to me about three days ago.
And then yesterday, so I had five items that I was borrowing.
And then yesterday I was at Tikhnot Han Sangha, community at Compassion at Heart.
And I took this little book of songs, songs for connection with the Earth.
So now I have six items that I'm borrowing And I'm eight days in, and I'm no shoes, no socks, no water bottle, and of course no computer.
I had gotten rid of that.
And so I'm just practicing.
Really my whole journey has been a practice of simple living.
And this is the deepest that I've gone in simple living.
It's pretty D but it's also the culmination of many stages.
Like it's not an overnight thing, like every kind of challenge that you've signed yourself up for is a progression, of stripping yourself down more and more and more and more.
And like this is kind of like the end point of that like after you've given it all up.
So it wasn't like an overnight thing.
This is something you've been pursuing for many years.
And yet, I would imagine that final destination where you're sitting naked with a leaf.
Like, what is this really happening?
And you have like a rule around borrowing also, right?
Like borrowing means that you've set a deadline on how long you're going to kind of, you know, enjoy this thing that's been shared with you and you give it back.
You have 10 days. So you have two more days where you get to wear this and then you're going to be naked again unless aunt comes back with something else or whoever.
Yeah, I will be naked again tomorrow night in Griffith Park.
And that's tricky cause the rangers are now, they know I'm there and they're watching me.
So I was going to ask like, Like, how's it going with like, you know, there's sort of regulatory bodies and, you know, the police and all these people that are probably not smiling too kindly on your experiment.
Well, this has been a beautiful experiment as far as me getting into practice.
One of my big practices, compassionate communication or nonviolent communication.
And I love to get to interact with the law force because that's one of the most challenging times to practice compassionate communication.
But, you know, as some people may have figured out by now, I don't know, but they might not have thought about this.
If I own nothing, that means I have no form of identification and - You don't have a driver's license.
You don't have anything, right?
2016, I got rid of my driver's license and my birth certificate gone, like actual gone.
And then in 2022 - It doesn't exist in the cloud somewhere.
Oh, so I have a social security number.
That still exists, but there's no card. There's no physical ID that exists.
So I'm still in the system.
I can't remove myself from it, and I don't know if I even necessarily would, but there's still work to do.
And then in 2022, I actually lost my passport.
And that was like, all right.
Okay, this could be the moment where I get rid of my ID.
So then the last ID I had was my birth certificate.
I got back to Asheville, North Carolina, where I was living at the time, and I composted it.
So at that point I had no ID and it's been two and a half years and there's no copies out there.
I still, yes, I'm in the system, but I have no form of ID.
And that was the step that allowed me to get here today because that was my biggest holdout.
Cause once you have no ID, I did quite a bit of research. It's very hard to get a form of ID when you have no ID and no copy.
And so the reason that I brought that up is now when I interact with law enforcement, which has happened now three times since the walk began.
When a police officer comes to you and you say, I have no form of ID.
The most likely scenario is they're gonna be concerned, like either you're hiding from the law, you're trying to not be known who you are.
And so this is just another one of the elements of the experiment of being a human in the truest sense, having shed even the structure, the concept of needing an ID and being able to say, well, why do I need an ID?
I'm a human being, just look here I am.
And so the last thing I'll say on that, as far as answering the question fully is now that I'm in Griffith Park and I'm existing there with nothing, I am technically sleeping there illegally, I'm not allowed to be there and everything's been flowing, the Rangers have been around a little bit, but yesterday was the beginning of the Rangers showing me that they know that I'm there and that they don't want me there.
Yeah, there's also a high alert because of the fires, and suspicion around arson.
And so kind of malingerers in parks like that are not gonna be received with immediate kindness.
Yes. It's very understandable.
And of course I'm not, I don't have, I don't own a lighter or matches.
I'm not cooking in the park like you see what I own.
I have nothing for doing that.
So I'm there in a way that I have full confidence is not doing any harm.
And actually since I've been there I've cleaned up over a thousand pieces of garbage.
So that's one of my services to the community is that as long as I'm there, this place is gonna be more enjoyable and it's gonna be cleaner for people.
However, I totally acknowledge that, it's a public space and there's no, I don't wanna be existing in a way that takes away from anybody else's connection to this public space, takes away from the community.
And at the same time, I am testing this concept of Earth code, which is to say that for me, as long as the way that I'm living is in alignment with the Earth and does no harm to humanity and to the plants and animals, then that's what I'm gonna follow before I follow any government code.
And that's a difficult place to navigate.
And I've had a lot of people who, of all the projects that I've done, if you would call this a project, I've received the most judgment and anger And it also does play a role that I arrived in Los Angeles at a very, very unique time.
And coming into it, you know, when this happened, it was like, do I still go?
It was definitely a very difficult decision as to how to navigate this.
I would think that leap to like let go of your passport or any identification at all.
Like that's, I hadn't even thought about that.
Like that's heavy, I find myself like trying okay, what would I do in your shoes if I'm inhabiting your kind of like ethos?
And I find myself like making bargains or playing games like, well, I am this activist and I have a message and you're a public persona, you've done three TED talks, like you're all over the media, you've had all kinds of articles written about what you're doing and that's part of your mission, like getting this word out and sharing your story with other people and hopefully inspiring them to go on their own journey of reframing their relationship with the planet and others and the plant and animal kingdoms, et cetera.
And an aspect of that would be the ability to travel to foreign lands to carry that message, right?
Like I could justify like, well I should hold on to my passport because this is integral to like my mission.
And so to say, no, I'm even going to let go of that.
Like that's how hardcore you are.
I mean, you make the minimalist sound like absolute genius.
You know. Yes. It is, extreme is a word that's often used to describe me and I am extreme.
There's no question about that whatsoever.
Now, a little bit of a preface to that is that here in the United States, we have 5 % in the world's population but we consume 25 % of the world's resources.
That by definition is extreme.
The world can't handle the way that we exist. And so the reason that I am so extreme is that I am a product of an extreme society.
And to do anything other than go to the extreme would not allow me to even simply exist in a harmonious way.
I have to go to this extreme just to even try to get to a place of a truly harmonious way of being.
And then also my objective is to simply exist in a way that results in the questioning of the status quo and the societal norms that are unquestioned and even believed to be unquestionable.
Like the concept of ownership, which is at the heart of what I'm focused on right now, there's cultures that don't even have a word for ownership.
There's not even a concept of owning, But in our, I don't even know if I would call it a culture, we're so fragmented, but in our society, it's like unquestionable, ownership.
We can own the land, we can own the possessions, we can own the money, you know, a lot of people accept that we can even own people.
And so to go to this level of non ownership, it is extreme, but it is only extreme because I would say we've become so disconnected and I'm so enthralled by testing the levels of society that are very challenging to test. And I'm doing it because I love it.
I wanna be doing it.
Yeah, I mean, you're poking the bear.
It's sort of like you're taking a stab at what we consider inalienable truths.
Everything in life is about perspective, right?
And it's so true. And then when you talk about normalcy, like things that we don't question and we just accept as fact, there are plenty out there that we just sort of blindly kind of assume and use as a basis upon which to build the foundation of our lives.
And ownership is certainly one of those, like what is ownership?
Like we assume it's a real thing.
It's not a real thing.
It's not real, it is a story.
It is a social construct, a social contract, right?
That we simply do not challenge, but it doesn't actually exist and for you to kind of challenge that is deeply confronting and is going to inevitably put you on like a crash course, you know, crash collision course with like authority and like all kinds of institutional structures, right?
And that's what you're signing up for.
So, should, you know, the law enforcement in Griffith Park decide that you need to be, you know, locked up for a night or two?
Like, you, I'm sure you're aware that that may well be your near future, right?
You're okay with that like, in the same way that like Gandhi is like, you know, okay, just, you know, nonviolent communication, but also nonviolence in general, like acceptance.
And for you, as this, as this activist, it's all part of the story that you're telling.
I actually, so I've never been to jail, even though there's plenty of people who would rather me not be able to share my message because it stands against a lot of what corporations would like and what our government would like.
I have been pretty effective at poking the bear with a smile on my face, where they haven't, there's a lot of people online.
And then they just think you're insane.
There's a lot of people who think I've got mad.
So I've done it. But then you're like, look, I did Ted Talks.
That helps. I mean, you have a gaggle of people around you, right?
Who are kind of running interference for you.
Like these, these sort of acolytes and the people that are following you that are kind of showing up in Griffith Park, like ants and the like.
Yeah, I mean, none of them are there enough to if the Rangers come that they're gonna be able to do anything, if the Rangers come that's, and they wanna take me away, they can, they will.
I don't have anybody supporting me in that regard really.
And one of the reasons why is because, well I just wanna first acknowledge one thing.
The activism that I'm doing is in a very, it's in a realm where I've been very safe up to this point and I've certainly taken a lot of risks.
There's no question about that and I've certainly given up a lot of comforts.
But the reality is I live a very comfortable life, even with the fact that I own nothing and have no money.
And there's certain areas in which I'm, I think right now is an area of civil disobedience.
There's a good chance I will be in jail in the years ahead because I'm just so deeply wanting to test the things that are likely to bring me there.
And I have to say that if I was to spend some time I'm in jail right now.
I mean, it's absolutely perfect.
For all your needs are met.
Yeah, do practice non -ownership.
I'll have a bed, I'll have food.
We'll be able to practice just simple existence.
So I will deeply embrace those days as part of the practice.
And who knows, yeah, maybe we can look back at this conversation and be like, yep, that's when he started to go to jail after that.
But we'll see, there could be years before that.
I'm not sure exactly how things will go.
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No computer, you haven't had a cell phone for a very long time.
Almost 10 years now.
10 years. But, you know, you have a digital online presence.
So I assume there's somebody kind of around you who's capturing these moments that you're sharing on Instagram and on YouTube and the like, when you were on your walk you had your laptops out, right?
Yup, so I've been so, I wouldn't go as far as to use the word addicted to the digital devices and the internet, but they have certainly, I've just had a really unhealthy balance for a lot of my life.
Those devices, they're designed for that.
Social media is designed to tap into your mind in a way that gets you off balance and you spend as many minutes as possible.
And I have been suffering a substantial amount in my life as far as the amount of time I've spent looking at screens.
It would be so embarrassing if I had a ticker over my head that said the number of hours I've spent looking at screens.
It's in the thousands and thousands of hours.
And so part of this practice has been an opportunity to break free from that.
I have no computer.
I have no device. I can't reach anybody unless they come to the park and that sometimes that's things that I've scheduled or people arriving.
Right now, what my team is, is there's two people that are supporting things here in Los Angeles.
One, her name is Melissa.
She's been following me for some years.
And then the other one, his name is Daniel.
And he just responded to a posting on Craigslist. Daniel's doing video, Melissa's on her computer helping to schedule the events in Griffith park, and media, like me being here, she helped with that.
And how that works is, obviously I have no money, but there's a supporter, his name's David, and he wants to help me spread my message.
So he said that he could pay those people directly.
And so in that way, money is fully decentralized from my life, but I'm still able to use it as a tool in order to help me spread my message.
And that's what my whole life is.
I mean, I don't have particular rules, there's nothing black and white.
I have to figure out how do I do all of this in a way where I right now can break free from the crutch of the computer and the damage it does to my mind, but still use it.
And part of it was, one of my aspirations right now is can I...
Eventually I'm gonna log off for the rest of my life.
It's just a matter of when.
Maybe in the next couple of years, maybe longer.
And the objective is, can I exist as a human in the present moment that doesn't own a device and doesn't touch a device yet reach more people than ever before from this place of integrity.
And I believe it's possible.
I believe that it would be very hard, but I think I can do it.
And that's the this experiment, this three month experiment of non ownership is the beginning of testing those waters.
And well, here we are.
This is the biggest podcast I've ever done, let's see what happens.
There's always another level, right?
Like on, you know, from one perspective, like you still own an Instagram account.
You own a YouTube channel.
You know, like, I don't know if those are, I mean, that's a broader definition of ownership, but in the digital realm, you know, there is a tether, right?
I'm glad you brought that up.
And what is that tether doing to you?
Because at the highest level, Well, you're on this path to attempt to transcend your ego.
And these things, you know, are allure on the ego, right, especially as a public person, how many people watch my video?
Like, you know, how many people watch my Ted, there is an ego component to that, that is like inescapable as part of the human condition, right?
And can you be an effective advocate and example an activist without that, right?
and then you're really in the hands of others in this interdependent way, reliant upon them to carry this message on your behalf without that intermediary kind of like pseudo ownership of digital spaces.
Yes, I'm really glad that you brought that up and that's one of the reasons I was most excited to have this conversation with you is because we have a long enough period of time to be able to dive into some of these realms that in short form content, And you just can't do, you just can't dive into all of this.
All of this is a gray area, you know?
And I want people to know that.
I don't have a right or wrong or a good or bad, I'm just trying to navigate to be the most effectively of service to use my resources, to use my skills, to minimize my hypocrisy, but acknowledge my hypocrisy is where they exist. And certainly, so I said, I don't own anything, But my social media channels are a form of ownership.
Now they're a form because actually the reality is I don't own them, the social media platforms own them and they can take them away from me at any second or decide they don't want me there at any second, but it is still an attachment, a form of ownership.
My website, the domains, that's another form of ownership.
Now I work with the nonprofit.
The nonprofit owns them.
So again, technically I don't own it, but it's an attachment.
I'm certainly the one directing it.
It's certainly a form of ownership.
And I'm able to direct some funds.
I don't own the funds, but I have that ability to direct things and move it around.
So ownership, of course, as we discussed, it's a concept.
And so there is no like, what is it?
What isn't it? The whole purpose is to discuss what it is.
As far as the ego aspect, you hit the nail on the head there is that, I shed the attachment to money largely.
When I was 25, I set the goal of being a millionaire by the time I was 30.
I said that now I literally own $0, not a penny, but I have a Facebook page with a million followers that says right there, one million for everybody to see with the blue check mark.
And today in this society, that's in some senses more valuable.
And if you're looking for a way to pump up your ego, That's almost more meaningful than being a millionaire today.
And so the last journey, the last decade has been a very difficult journey in ascending the ego, molding the ego.
And when I first got started, I was, I would say, I don't like to make labels.
So I'm just not going to actually.
But what I would say is, I was heavily ego driven and that the only reason I've gotten to where I'm today, or a big part of the reason I've gotten to where I am today is because of how big my ego was and still is to motivate me.
That's the reason I did 80 hour weeks on the computer because my ego is pumping me along.
And so, it's a big part of the journey.
It's less about the technicalities of what ownership is or isn't and much more about where you feel the tug of attachment, right?
Like what would it feel like for you to hit delete on your Facebook page or just remove yourself from, like that's like triggering, right?
Yeah, like, because you know, if you have that many followers that you're in a privileged position where you're probably not gonna starve.
Yes, absolutely not.
Cause there's so many people out there who wanna support you, right?
And all you would have to do is have somebody, you know, post on one of those channels, hey, this is where Robin is, he's a little hungry or he's cold, and like somebody's probably gonna show up, right?
So are you really in a place of surrender if you're still relying on that, right?
Like there's always another level.
There's so many more levels.
I'm not gonna say I'm at the beginning, but I'm still, there's a lot longer to go.
You're further along the way than probably at least anyone else in North America.
like a voluntarily, I would say.
There is a long history and tradition of this, there are Hindu and Buddhist monks who wander the earth and rely on the grace of strangers and this has been going on for a very long time, but what's different about what you're doing and the way you're doing it, is that you've draped it in this kind of welcoming kind of populist costume where you're sharing everything publicly on multiple channels in a very inviting way that makes people intrigued, interested, encouraged, inspired all these different emotions, which is cool because that's the groundswell of a movement.
And I know that's the motivation behind you, but the ambition piece I think is really interesting, like where does our ego serve us and where does it derail us?
Like your earlier challenges, you've ridden your bike across America three times.
you flew to Rio with no money and somehow made it to Columbia 7 ,000 miles away, there's a documentary about that.
You've been on all these stages.
You did this experiment in New York City and Los Angeles where you basically ate like a normal average American consumer and then wore all your trash in this giant costume.
Like these are, you know, audacious but ambitious projects and their impact can't be completely decoupled from the ambition that inspired them.
And perhaps there's a part of, you know, ego that's saying, look at me and look at these amazing things that I'm doing.
But that's what got you to that place.
And now you're in this, you know, this different chapter where you're trying to shed yourself of all of that.
But this is like the hero's journey, right?
like, this is the path of transcendence of constantly stripping away and getting at what is actually real and true.
Yeah, real and true.
And that's a very, of all the times to live in to be pursuing real and true, I do really believe that this is one of the most difficult times ever.
We live in a world that is just so based on fallacies and delusion, and where it requires so much more shedding in some senses than it ever did in the past. I'm really, I'm really glad that we're talking about this.
And I wanna share a little bit about my journey of letting go of some of the ego.
I first started to acknowledge my ego and probably around 2013, like I realized it, I started questioning it.
Fortunately, there's teachers out there who brought these concepts up and I, you know, I heard them and that was doing the work.
And, you know, some of the releasing that I've done.
This, just this last year, I deleted my Twitter account, which was my first letting go of one of those public platforms. It was verified, it was very useful tool.
And I was like, all right, it was the least important of the four.
So I deleted that. And the one that I first connected with you on many years ago.
And when I deleted Twitter, I deleted a lot of opportunity because there were people who followed me on there that didn't follow me anywhere else.
A lot of journalists follow me on Twitter and not elsewhere.
And a lot of journalists go to there first to see somebody.
And so it was certainly a challenging thing to do.
That was smooth. Like, I forgot that it even existed.
I deleted LinkedIn about four years ago.
That was a bit of a release for sure.
But the biggest one for me is I deleted my personal Facebook profile about one year ago.
And I cried multiple times over a period of three days.
Just when I did that, I had, originally I had 5 ,000 friends on there.
That's very ego based.
some years ago I got it down to like 800 where I actually knew every person that I was on there.
It was actually a person I wanted to have a connection with.
So imagine 800 people, many of them I didn't have their personal contact for.
It was, that was our only way we were connected.
And it was a lot of journalists over the years.
A lot of people I met from my world travels in Africa and you know, South America and Asia, like people I would never see again.
This was our only real way of connecting.
and I knew that when I deleted that, I was ending hundreds of relationships because most people need some level of convenience for their relationship to continue.
They're not gonna write me a letter.
And so when - There's nowhere to send it to.
There is nowhere to send a letter to right now, no. But so deleting my personal Facebook was a huge letting go and it's been tender, you know?
Like I said, I cried a few times.
With that I didn't expect that I didn't expect to cry when I let go of my personal Facebook profile, but I realized that I was letting go of a very big part of me.
I got that profile when I was 18 or 19 years old.
My entire adult life I've used that as a form of connection.
And that was a substantial step in that realm.
And then the last thing I'll add to this is that it was about maybe five years ago that one day I thought to myself, I realized, whoa, when I'm making decisions, I'm no longer asking how will this benefit me?
I'm actually only thinking about how this will benefit others.
Which meant two things.
Either I had deluded myself so well, and I was running Egomanias so well that I had put it in the background, or that I had actually ascended the ego enough to the point where I was no longer primarily acting based upon my own desires, and actually was interacting based on my desires for what I say, which is the earth, my community.
So that was a moment of realization.
And then it's hard to talk about this because a lot of people are going to be judgmental.
If you say, oh, my ego is reduced, they'll be like, oh, that means the ego is actually bigger.
But I can just tell you that, especially over the last one year of just as I've been shedding and letting go of so much. I can just tell you that most days, I never remember that anybody cares one bit about anything that I have to say that I have a profile with the blue check mark and that anybody would even, yeah.
Most days I forget that anybody even knows that I exist and so I can tell you that like the ego is dissolved a lot and my objective is not to dissolve the ego fully my objective is dissolve to dissolve all aspects of the ego that are only self -serving and to keep the aspects of the ego that help me to be of service and help me to accomplish this mission and when I look at some of the leaders that I've learned from you know like Mahatma Gandhi, he was majorly ego -driven at the start.
It took decades of dissolving his ego to the place where he had almost none.
Decades of work. And this practice right now of owning nothing, while walking down the highway from Canada to Los Angeles, pushing a baby stroller that I bought for $20 with all of my stuff on it with shoes that are falling apart, the number of people that assumed I was a tweaker or a bum or homeless, like all these judgements and labels.
And now owning absolutely nothing, this has been such an incredible opportunity to dissolve the ego because as I'm sitting here, I was telling Scott, I was like, man, more than ever in my entire life, I genuinely just feel like a bum.
And I'm like, more than ever, I'm like, wait, people actually want to hear what I have to say and people would actually want me in a room to share this message.
So I still have a lot of work to do with Ego, but I can just share deeply from what I'm feeling, what's bubbling inside of me and what my daily operation in heart and mind is, is that it has dissolved by over the last 14 years of practice.
It has dissolved to to maybe 20 % of what it was before.
Five years ago, I felt like maybe it was at 50 % and now it may be 20%.
And maybe it shoots back up later, possibly.
But at this point, I would say most days, I am not operating from a place of ego for the most part.
That's amazing. I would imagine for myself, trying to imagine myself in your shoes.
we're gonna get to your shoes in a second.
Shoes that are worn out.
I would vacillate between, you know, thinking I'm just an absolute bomb, like an unhoused bomb, you know, living off grace of strangers.
And, you know, just how lame that is, right?
And on the other hand, like, look at how badass I am, like, I'm doing this thing no one's ever done.
And like, you know, like I'm like, just so much more hardcore than everyone else.
Like, as a recovering alcoholic, like I'm able to kind of maintain those polarities at the same time, feeling like I'm better than everyone else and the worst piece of shit at the exact same time.
Maybe you can call me a recovering attention.
Both are indulgences of the ego.
You know, they're both very ego driven, just, you know, a different ends of that spectrum.
Yes. And I was going to say, you could maybe call me a recovering attention holic.
I've, you know, I've wanted attention for a long time.
and you're good at getting it.
And you come from this like marketing background and you know how to like gain attention.
And there's a dopamine hit with that that goes right into the ego.
Yes, dopamine hit. Now here's the element that I can just share.
And again, it's slightly vulnerable to share this because I know people were talking about ego.
This is a place where you get a lot of judgment.
But what I can tell you is I'm feeling no dopamine hits lately from the stuff.
And so one of the current practices that I have of taking three months of non -ownership and not being online is I'm not asking how many views I'm getting.
I don't know. And you're not scrolling.
No, I'm not - Reading comments.
Now, I did slip up once.
Yeah. I'm not reading comments.
I don't really know what's going on too much. I don't have the internet.
I'm not going to the library.
Besides this non -ownership, I'm actually taking three months of being off screens.
And so, I did slip up and one of my teammates, Daniel, he looked at one of the videos and he said something like, whoa.
And I was like, what?
And so he told me like, about one of the videos getting a lot of views.
And then I ended up having about a five to seven minute conversation about which videos are getting views or not and how many views we're getting.
And so I slipped up a little bit.
My intention was for the entire three months to have no idea whether anybody's paying attention or not.
But what I'll say is that I used to experience that dopamine hit and it's almost a form of manicness, I would say, like a mania that I used to experience where when I would have, sometimes multiple hundred media outlets would be doing a story over a period of a few days as they were syndicated out through things like AFP or these different media services.
And I would see, you know, overnight, you know, 10 ,000 people, 10 ,000 new followers.
I would experience this, it felt like a mania.
Like this strong. I would imagine people who experienced bipolar, like manic, this was the manic.
I never get the low, but I would get that manicness and it would almost be like this element of jitteriness a little bit and like a heart racing.
But to me when I say manic, I think that's exactly what that mania feels like.
And I just don't get that anymore.
I'm just not focused on that.
And why it's because of the practice.
So I have just, over the last few years, I've started to take a lot of silence.
I've done a lot of detoxes from social media, like week -long here, two weeks long there, month -long there, I think I've done a month, maybe not quite a month.
And all of these practices work.
And the last thing I'll add in this moment is that I have decided as of recently that my focus is going to be not on outcome.
We were talking about attachment.
My biggest attachment has been to outcome.
that outcome could be, how many more followers I gained this year, or how many people I reached, or did I get onto larger media outlets, or those would have been some of my main outcomes, or what quotes the media said, like what great things did they say that lift me up?
And I decided within the last year that I was no longer going to be attached to outcome.
I was just going to do the work.
And I have gotten to that place where that's what I'm doing.
And the reason that I can now tell people about how sometimes I poop my pants, you know, I've pooped my pants many a times in my adulthood.
We all probably have, most of us aren't going to say that.
And I can now say that because if everybody decides they don't like me, fine, I'm just going to focus on truth and integrity, not the outcome.
And there's, and one of the reasons I can do that is because I believe if I do that, I'll actually be the most productive I've ever been.
So I'm acknowledging that.
But the more that I just say, I'm not going to focus on outcome.
I'm going to focus on just living the message, the more all of that starts to fade and to fall away.
And every day presents its challenges around like, how do you align your actions with your integrity and kind of these vows that you've made about, about these principled ways of living your life.
Yeah. Unforeseen curve balls getting thrown in your direction.
Yes, every day is a challenge.
I have so many friends who are on the same path with me of living a life that's in alignment with the earth and focusing on equity and justice and compassion and love.
And it's so hard because the whole society is set up as soon as we get there to drag us back in, you know, just paying rent and having enough for food.
It's very hard in the society we live in.
It's very fragmented and it's designed to keep us from getting that place of true freedom and being truly of service.
And so the way I look at it is that this path goes against the grain of society.
Every single day is going against the grain of society.
Which means if you don't keep moving forward, you're going to go backwards in this society.
And within a short time, all of the gains can be unraveled.
And so it's a constant challenge.
However, that being said, my belief is that when you shed enough of it, the grain ceases to exist. It's still there but the grain is removed from the mind and you have created enough of a new flow of life that it's just no longer an issue.
Like that grain for the most part is just non -existent.
And I'm just able to flow in my existence now more than I was before.
And there's no, there's no sucking me back into it.
What is the biggest epiphany that you've had or maybe surprising discovery?
Like a discovery that you didn't predict.
To give an example of something that I come back to is that a quality existence takes time.
We live in a time where the belief is that the more convenience we have of will have a higher quality of existence.
The more that we can outsource everything, the higher quality of existence that we'll have. My belief is that a quality existence takes a substantial amount of time.
For that, for me, that could mean growing my own food, foraging, building my own items, making my own clothes, harvesting rainwater, really putting deep practice into my relationships.
everything that brings the deepest value into my life takes real time.
And it, you know, for a lot of people that would be an incredible revelation when we think that having everything we want delivered right to our doorstep is gonna create the quality existence.
I think that creates a hollowness inside of ourselves.
And that's what creates depression and anxiety.
And that actually taking a substantial amount of time and to meet our basic needs of food for water, for dealing with our own wastes.
That's what creates a truly quality existence.
It's a radical notion.
In this society. Yeah, it's radical.
I mean, first of all, this idea that while everybody's life is premised upon owning more, the idea of even pursuing what it might be like if your life was premised on not just owning less but owning nothing, confrontational confronting, and that all of the conveniences that we presume and assume are gonna make our lives better and easier are actually obstacles to the meaning and the purpose and the richness that we so deeply desire underneath all of it.
I think that's pretty clear.
I think millions of people can feel that inside of themselves that sure when all of this was sold to us, it sure seemed like it was gonna result in happiness.
And in certain ways, we have absolutely benefited.
There's no question about that.
Like I'm not a polarized black and white person.
I can see the incredible benefits of being able to share this message, right here, right now using this technology, for example.
But the reality, I think is very clear that once you have, Annie Leonard of the stories of stuff was one of my early inspirations, And she said something like, okay, you might need say seven t -shirts, but once you get that eight t -shirt, is it gonna bring real value to your life?
Once you move up to a hundred t -shirts, are you any happier?
The reality is that that fuller closet for most people today is resulting in a spiritual crisis, a lack of connection to anything deep and real.
And for me, that's the earth, that's our fellow humanity.
and that's the plants and animals that we share this home with.
And then when you go even further, it's the bacteria, the yeast that we share this with the fungus, just the air.
And the reason why that is is because the more we have everything we need in this consumer material realm, the less we have to tune in to the vibrancy of life, the things that have given us life are all on the side.
They cease to exist when we exist inside these homes where they're climate controlled.
We just have to push a button.
We have everything we need inside of it.
We have everything we want delivered to it.
We have endless content on the screens.
It sure seemed good, but I think that we are, I know millions and millions of people are seeing that actually it's not, because it's destroying our souls.
And those of us that realize that the only way we can have that convenience and comfort is on the expense, the burden to others.
That's the other, for me, big realization that I had dating back in the beginning of my journey is that I realized in this society, whenever there's a convenience, someone else is paying for it.
In order to have our comfort, others are paying for it whether it's the earth, whether it's other people or whether it's plants and animals.
And so just some simple examples of that.
when we have these clothes where we can just buy them for a pair of jeans for 50 bucks or a 100 bucks.
The reality is that there's people working in really poor conditions, most likely.
There might be child labor or slavery.
There might be, a lot of our clothes are actually made in prisons by people who are imprisoned.
When you actually look back at every single, almost every single one of our consumer goods and our material objects that come through convenience.
The only reason we can have that convenience is because of the burden we are placing on others.
And another way that I look at it is, you know, the concept that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, neither can be these conveniences, these consumer conveniences.
Every time there's a consumer convenience or comfort, it means someone else is paying for it.
And so when we realize that and we really tap into it, that's when we start to experience an existential crisis, a deep suffering because now we know that just for us to exist someone else's suffering and that we don't believe in existing in a way that's causing such destruction and exploitation, but everything we're doing, the food that we're eating, the car that we're driving, the gas we're pumping into the car, the stuff we're buying, the trash we're creating, the money we're spending, the credit card we're swiping, the investments that we have, the money in our bank account, it's all causing
destruction. And when we tap into that, that is deep suffering.
And so I think at a very, very deep, deep level, we're suffering because even if we don't know that yet, a lot of us can feel that we've tapped into that.
And so that's where Gandhi said live simply so that others can simply live.
He said that at a time before this form of exploitation, but that's what he was saying.
And that's why I would go, I would be able to say if I was just to summarize my life in one way that could be it, live simply so that others may simply live.
Because when we live simply to that level of embodiment it means we have removed ourselves from the hundreds or thousands of ways in which we are tied to the exploitation.
And as we remove each of those, as we replace it with a way in which we're actually connected to something.
Unless something is created in a truly regenerative way, it is by definition exploitive either of other humans, of natural resources, the planet of animals, whatever, right?
And that's the really good news.
And so this is so deeply disturbing because I think we're fundamentally compassionate and nobody wants to kind of create harm on purpose.
So we compartmentalize this, and we deny it and we push it down in order to live our lives.
But there is that like under current where we know that this is the case, but we can't quite confront it.
And the solution is too extreme.
Like to do what you're doing, to actually live in integrity is an impossibility.
to sign up for that is to sign up for a life of suffering and martyrdom and who wants to do that?
But what you're here to say is you're actually experiencing a richer life of deeper connection and happiness as a result of this radical act.
I don't, I suffer, all humans suffer.
My belief is that suffering is part of existence.
It just is, we all suffer.
There's no way around it.
There is no, in my belief, any sort of utopian existence for humanity.
There never has been, and there never will be most likely.
Suffering is a part of the human existence.
The question is, what do we suffer over?
Do we suffer over a $10 ,000 watch?
Or do we suffer over making sure that our neighbor has enough to eat?
Do we suffer over getting the raise?
Or do we suffer over becoming masters of our own mind?
Whatever we're doing, we're gonna be suffering.
And so I suffer, but the reality is that I'm sure that a lot of people can obviously see I'm experiencing quite a level of contentness and happiness in a moment when a lot of people would assume that I would be suffering greatly, owning absolutely nothing and sleeping outside, a lot of people would think that I would be suffering.
But the reality is that I'm suffering the least over the last eight days that I ever have in my adult life.
I'm experiencing right now, the highest level of contentedness that I ever have. of the most connection, the most oneness, the most dissolving of the concept of self, all of which is what I was hoping.
I thought owning nothing would do something and the fruits are being harvested in the sense that I'm experiencing the least anxiety that I ever have and the most just existence, just being here in the actual present moment.
But I wanna go back one bit and then there's one thing that I wanna say, just in case anybody possibly didn't get this.
Now, in order for us to have convenience or comfort does not inherently mean a burden is being placed on others.
It's only the systems in which we've created to create that convenience and comfort.
We can have convenient and comfortable lives that do not cause a burden.
And human beings have done that before.
And there's some human beings who still do that today and there will be more human beings who do that in the future.
We can have a lot of comfort.
I have so much comforts that are not causing destruction.
So a new way exists, other ways exists.
And there's thousands of ways to tap into an existence where we meet our basic needs for convenience and comfort.
And it's not at the expense of others.
And I just really want to say that.
So people know we can be comfortable without exploiting others.
There's so many ways in which we can do it.
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You mentioned that you made some of your clothes.
I wanna get back to your long walk.
We have these shoes in front of us right now, which you came in with.
These are like the handcrafted moccasins that you walk down the coast in.
I mean, it's, you know, watching these videos of you like walking in these things.
It's like unbelievable.
So explain to me like what these are and like how did you did this?
You could see the treads on the bottom then warn off.
I mean, this is like, how much of the walk was barefoot?
How much of it was in these shoes?
How did you come up with this?
Like, did you make these?
Half and half, yeah.
So I set out on the walk on July 28th, 2024.
Walk me through it holding one of them.
Great, actually this is my, I like this one more.
Yeah. You said you wash them, right?
They don't smell bad.
No, here you hold that one.
So... This one's fraying at the front here.
So I set out on the walk on July 28th, 2024.
So a little over six months ago, and I had designed these shoes back in December of 2023.
And when I designed these shoes, I was not going for a long walk.
These shoes were never designed to walk 1600 miles from Canada.
They were just to sort of putter around your garden and like hang out at home.
They were to keep me warm.
That's the, hence the wool.
I was staying in a cabin in northern Wisconsin with a wood stove, and I wanted to be able to walk outside and still be warm enough while it's below freezing.
And so that was the primary thing.
And they were in no way, shape or form to walk hundreds or thousands of miles.
They weren't that. When I decided to walk from Canada to Los Angeles, I certainly would have loved to have some different shoes.
These were the shoes that I had.
And I didn't have, I had a lot going on, I didn't prep, I didn't prep for the walk really at all.
I never walked even 15 miles a day prior.
Like I had done as little preparation as possible before talking about starting a walk.
What are the shoes?
So they are wool felted booties.
So they're like a wool bootie basically.
And someone who follows me online, I put the call out saying I was looking for some support with making some of my clothing items. I was switching to 100 % homemade natural fiber and naturally dyed clothing.
Clothing that was as closely connected to the earth as possible.
And I accomplished that before the walk.
And so she knitted the, or actually, I believe she crocheted or let's just say knitted.
I don't know, I think crocheted is what she did.
The... The upper. The booty, yeah, the upper.
And then she sent them to me.
It was made from a local wool.
And then now you might notice that these do not represent my actual foot size.
Yeah, those are like size 15 or something.
Yeah, they're huge on me.
I look like a clown.
And that one's closer to the right side.
They're different sizes.
Hold that up. Yeah, it's a little smaller.
Yeah, and so she had never made a pair of shoes before.
She wasn't an expert.
And then what I did is I felted them over a wood stove.
You do it in hot water.
And then I dyed it with black walnut, that's what the color of the wool is.
and that's black walnut from the tree in front of my mom's house.
I was staying up in Northern Wisconsin.
And then what I had to start with was just a very thin deer leather from a deer that was hunted in Wisconsin and it was tanned with bark.
So, it was a really very natural process.
When I started this walk with that, and so the leather was sewed on with deer sinew.
So it was a straight up, as close to the earth shoe as it gets, you know, it was walnuts, deer and sheep.
And that's it. And the stitching.
The stitching was deer sinew.
So that was basically the sinew comes off of the muscle of the deer.
Most people would waste it, but it's a very useful.
It's not a vegan shoe.
Very not a vegan shoe.
It's almost 100 % not, except the concept of doing no harm there was, you know, that's another realm, but it's a shoe that does a lot less harm than a lot of shoes that are industrial, whether they're vegan or not.
So in some senses the concept of veganism of doing minimal harm actually is embraced in this.
Yeah, you need a more expansive kind of view of that, like the toxins and the runoff from the factories that poison the waterways and you know, all these things that occur with the manufacturing of synthetic consumer goods.
Yes, that's where as you probably see, I don't really get into labels because it's hard to really see the truth when we're in labels.
But, so when I started this, I made it, I was actually hoping to walk the whole journey barefoot, that was my aspiration, 1600 miles barefoot, and I made it the first day, three miles.
I just did a little soft start.
The next day I made it like seven miles barefoot, both days, And then the next day I think I made it about 15 miles barefoot.
So I did the first about 30 miles barefoot.
I was in Bellingham.
So about, yeah, 30 miles from the, from the border in Canada, where I started at the Peace Arch National Monument.
And that's when I put the shoes on, I realized I could not do it barefoot with the weight on my legs and my feet from the backpack.
And so within 10 miles, the soles had worn out on the bottom of these, the thin leather.
And so the first couple days I ended up finding some secondhand industrial leather and gluing it on with super glue that I got at a hardware store.
And I already had really crumbled in my attempt to do it with the level that I was trying of fully connected to earth stuff.
I was using superglue and a factory farmed leather, although it was scraps, but still.
And so ultimately to wrap that up, what I found is I needed to use a much thicker leather.
I was hoping to get buffalo leather.
That's some of the thickest that was from regenerative agriculture but never was able to get it.
So what I ended up using was mostly scraps of industrial leather.
And so it wasn't the level of materials connected to the earth or that I knew the true source behind them as I hoped.
and I ended up doing 1 ,000 miles on these shoes and I did 600 miles barefoot and I was in pain for a good amount of the trip I would imagine.
Did you get blisters in these things or no?
Well, the good news is that I never experienced a single blister, no injuries whatsoever.
And I realized that blisters come from of course a rubbing.
And these didn't have any rubbing, so no blisters and then also no calluses either.
I haven't like researched this, but you have souls and you have calluses.
Those are not inherently the same thing.
I think a lot of people see them as synonymous where you build up your calluses in order to have tough feet.
Maybe you know this, maybe you have some insight on this but what I've come to see is that calluses develop in a place where you have a consistent, constant rubbing.
Souls are not built by rubbing.
And so you don't have those calluses on say the bottom it's usually on edges where you have a constant rubbing.
And so I don't have any callus whatsoever from 1600 miles of barefoot and walking, I just have thick soles.
Do you wanna - Yeah let me see.
So they're a little - There's dirty, there's - There's dirty mugs up there.
Yeah look at that. But no, it's yeah, like the sole, you develop a toughness in your soul or a thickness but the callus is that like really rigid, you know, kind of feels like more dried up part of skin where the rubbing is and it is usually like, yeah on an edge.
And my take is that calluses are dead skin souls are alive.
What do you think about that?
I don't know. I'm not qualified to answer that.
Cause you can just like Probably right.
Chop of the. You can get a razor blade and you kind of slice them off.
So that's my thought.
So now the issue that I did have, you might be able to still see, there's, does it look kind of like a little bit of a half moon right there?
Like a ridge. So what happened was you think, you would think that walking barefoot, you build up your souls, but on concrete for hundreds of miles, I would see my soles - They wear it down.
Wearing away. Yeah, you're wearing the skin off.
Because of course, like, look what's happening to this.
Yeah. So, that's happening to the feet as well.
So, the bottom of your feet are getting raw.
So they would get really raw right on these edges to the point where it was painful.
And so, what I had to do is sort of, I would get to that point where they never bled, but you could see the pinkness and I would have to then put on the shoes.
But then, the more I wore the shoes, the more I had to resol them because these soles wear out.
And I put new soles, the inner sole, I put about eight new ones of those in, maybe.
The outer sole, I only replaced twice.
But it was like, okay, either I wear out my sole or I wear out this sole.
And doing this journey barefoot and with these shoes was a lot of work.
You're talking about not convenient, these are the least convenient shoes that I know of in existence.
It's not like a high recommend.
I do not recommend it.
This is what you did.
The idea, the ambition behind it super glue aside is that everything that you are wearing is biodegradable and as it wears out along the run, you could discard it and it would go back to the earth, like in there's no issue with that.
That was a really sweet experience for me that every time a soul ran out, I could just bury it in the soil.
I would find some deep leaves the deep leaves or some loamy soil, and I would just bury those souls, and that was a beautiful experience for me to think like most people doing the PCT or the AT, when they're done with their shoes, they gotta go in the dumpster.
When I was done with those souls, I could bury them right there along the road or right along the trail, and that's got a very practical sense, I'm literally not putting stuff into the landfill.
But what I've experienced of wearing, it's different now, now that I'm doing this experiment of non -ownership, here I am in these, you know, industrial clothes up during the year.
Right, you're wearing like sweatpants that look like they came from, you know, raw stress for less or something.
Totally, but that's an actual, like I don't make many sacrifices, that's the actual sacrifice of this is going back to that.
But the thing that I wanna share on that is that, wow, every time that I was able to bury the souls and return them to the earth, the connection that I felt with the earth in that moment, knowing that I was creating soil rather than filling up the landfill and that the way that I had designed my life was one that was actually, here I was taking part in the end of cycle, you have this concept of cradle to cradle.
It's not like these souls are not cradle to cradle because I got these from an industrial source, but it was closer to at the very end and I was seeing that these are returning to the earth, and I would love to share another little insight on that if you're open to hearing it.
So one of my aspirations is to spend long periods of time away from human beings, any human interaction.
And the walk did not accomplish to that.
I was on the Pacific Coast Highway.
There was very few moments of not seeing people for very long, but two days before this walk began, I came out of the Olympic National Park and I had just spent one week there, seven nights there, fully alone.
I found a little lake on the map and there was no trail in or no trail out.
It was by one of the hot springs.
I can't think of the name of the hot springs up there in Olympic National Park, but I found this little lake on the map and I had to climb a thousand feet up and a thousand feet down to get there in these shoes and I spent a week there.
As soon as I got there, I knew there was no human beings coming down there.
Like it took real work to get up and down.
And I spent a week just sitting by that lake, just being, I had six and a half pounds of wild rice, less than a pound of dried venison, a small amount of dried maitake mushrooms and sea salt Oh, actually a friend at harvest does not.
So all my food came from the earth and then I was eating the berries and the greens and also a few fish there as well.
So in that way I was really a part of the earth.
What was going in and out of me was the earth.
But the part that was kind of astounding for me was now a hundred percent of my clothes were natural fibers.
So I was sitting next to the lake working on the soles of my shoes or sewing patches onto my clothes and every piece that came off my clothes I could simply return it to the earth just as a bird would lose a feather or a deer would lose its hair.
I could return any of this earth and it could become a part of the bird's nest and not feel any guilt over that whatsoever.
And that these, every single element that I shed was actually returning to the earth.
And wow, that was astounding as to the dissolving of separateness that existed, where after about five days, I started, actually it was less than five days, it was more about three, that I actually started to feel that I belonged there, that I was another animal.
I was a human animal.
And I can say that I would not have felt that if I was in synthetic clothes, the natural fibers with the natural dye, that ability to actually watch myself shedding and returning to the earth was definitely a profound moment of reconnection.
And this I say very lightly, I've only said this to a few people, but I'm gonna share this because I'm practicing just full transparency and truth, but it's a very tender thing to say.
But I almost felt like I was becoming indigenous to that land.
I'm not indigenous.
I'm a white person that has roots from, you know, some colonizers and settlers, I'm very much not indigenous, but with hours a day of just harvesting berries hand to mouth and just existing in the most other simple way, what I mean by that is that I felt so deeply that I actually belonged there that I was actually a part of the land that I was not separate.
And I felt, I just imagined myself And just like, it was almost like a bit of an out of bodiness of just imagining myself there in this, in this existence.
And it was such a beautiful feeling.
And actually one of my big inspirations, Robin Wall Kimmerer who wrote Braiding Sweetgrass, she's Potawatomi.
And she says we can all become indigenous to the land no matter our, no matter if we're direct descendants of colonizers and settlers, we can all become indigenous in this to a land.
And I really felt that, and a big part of that was the clothes that I was wearing and the ability for them to simply shed and to simply assimilate with the environment.
And so what do you make of that?
Like you mentioned that it was a profound experience of oneness.
Like what is the thing that you want to share that was so moving about that, you know, for the people that are listening.
So better understand why it was profound for you.
So the first, the reason why I'm timid to say it is because, as a white man, I would never want to say something that would negate the experience that people who are indigenous and still exist today have with the land and the level of, you know, how the colonizer, the genocide that has happened that has taken away their ability to have that deep connection with the land.
And so, as a white man to say, to even just acknowledge that and say that I felt that element of indigenous with the land.
It's a very difficult thing to say.
There's a good chance some people will hear that and feel triggered.
Chafed at that. Yeah.
But I truly believe that all human beings, If we're ever going to turn things around, we need to deepen our connection to the point where we feel at home on this earth, which is that is another way of saying being indigenous to the land.
That we actually feel at home here, that we belong here, that we're part of this place, that we're not separate.
That the deer are our relatives, that the birds are our relatives.
That when we're there, we're not saying my job is to leave no trace.
No, my job is to exist as part of this, and that includes eating the berries.
And that includes that may include trampling some plants because if we are never trampling any plants, it means we're sitting in our air conditioned homes and the plants are being decimated behind closed doors.
So for me, I guess as far as the messages is that I really do think that dissolving the illusion of separateness and feeling that connectedness, if we don't do that, I don't believe that we'll ever have a shot at having a sustainable future at true regeneration.
At the heart of it is we need to reconnect to a couple of key things.
One, the earth, two, our fellow humanity, three, the plants and animals we share this earth with, and four, ourselves.
And we need to feel at home and a part of all of that, not separate from that.
And last little note on that, is that's at the heart of indigenous teachings.
Like when I read indigenous teachings, that's what it's all about, that we're a part of it all and we give gratitude for it all and we see our interconnectedness with it all.
And it's definitely what I wanna tap into and it's definitely what I'm tapping into some in Griffith Park right now, it's not the deep wilderness, but having nothing means I spend a lot more time looking up at the sky and listening to the birds, being with the deer and the coyotes.
And yeah, so just more of that.
And when we're doing that, it means we're not consuming as we're just viewing.
And the occasional brush with law enforcement.
Yes, the more that you fully embrace this the more likely you may have a few of those.
How did you become this person?
I imagine people might be thinking like you must have grown up in a commune with a cult leader and the like, but this is not your backstory at all?
Yes. No, I grew up really, really, really wanting to be normal.
That's what I wanted more than anything.
And now part of the reason why there's a few key pillars here.
So my mom and dad, now they are hippies actually.
And now if you ask them, I don't know if either of them would call themselves hippies.
But my mom was a Hare Krsna, still today we call herself a Hare Krsna, although there's no other Hare Krsna as in Ashland, Wisconsin, population 8 ,260 in Northern Wisconsin.
That's about 80 % Catholic or Christian.
So she doesn't wear the Hare Krsna clothes, but she is an Eastern spiritually minded type of person.
I grew up, you know, I remember the World Wildlife Federation, WWF Panda Bear like stickers on my notebook, my mom contributed to them.
And she loved the Earth, we would go to Earth Day, she conserved water and electricity.
My dad actually would spend a lot of his time talking about his inventions of water purifying devices and pedal powered cars and alternative energy, and he never did any of those.
He never actually invented those, but that's a lot of what he considered himself to be, an inventor of renewable energy devices and water purification devices, et cetera.
My dad took me out.
So my mom and dad were never together.
They had two kids, me and my brother Levi, and we're like 15 months apart.
And my dad and mom were probably not together for more than two years, maybe?
They were never married.
So my last name is Greenfield from my mom.
So, okay, I feel like that's a bit of a sidetrack, but it is connected in that there were two elements.
One, I had a deep connection to the earth.
Both of my parents loved the earth.
Both of my parents believed in not harming others.
And my dad was vegetarian for like 20 years.
And my mom, actually I grew up semi -vegetarian.
We ate chicken and fish, but not red meat.
So there was a lot of that.
We ate a lot of tofu as well.
And so there was a lot of elements of that.
And at the same time, my mom was hiding who she was is because we lived in this sort of dominator society.
We were Jews as well.
There was only three Jewish families in the town and it was almost all Catholic or Christian.
So I had no dad around really.
I was Jewish in a Christian society.
We were poor. My mom made about 15 to $18 ,000 a year working as an aide, a school aide on the playground originally for four kids.
There were four kids from three dads.
So my brother Joe is four years older.
He was actually born in Oakland.
My mom and dad met in Eugene, Oregon, add all these things together.
And what I wanted was just to be normal.
I didn't want any of that.
I went over to my friend's house.
My best friend's dad was an anesthesiologist. My other best friend's dad was a lawyer.
Another friend's dad was a doctor.
Another was a real estate agent.
I happened to have some of the wealthiest friends in town because of some of the after -school programs that I got into.
And so I would go over to their house and their cereal was stored in plastic Tupperware containers.
And at my house, it was in glass jars.
So I saw glass jars as poor and plastic containers as wealthy.
And so basically I got super drawn into the consumer world.
I wanted a nice house and a fancy car and a nuclear family.
I just wanted to be normal.
I wanted to be loved, to belong, to be acknowledged.
And so that was, my upbringing was a juxtaposition of those two things, a great love for the earth and all the plants or more animals, I wasn't connected to the plants then, but I loved frogs and turtles and fishing.
And also wanting to have, wanting to fit in, wanting to belong and I saw belonging and fitting in as material wealth and financial wealth.
That's where, so that was where from a young age I started to pursue the path of materialism.
You were a Boy Scout, you got your Eagle Scout certification.
So you're self -sustaining in that regard. You're already wired to be able to survive in the wild on some level, right?
But you go to college and you have your kinda, So you kind of, you know, typical college experience, you know, you're, drinking beer out of beer bongs and you know, doing what college kids do.
And you set this goal that you want to be a millionaire by 30, you create a marketing agency.
Like, you're kind of like doing the normal thing, right?
So where's the pattern interrupt?
Like, you talk about having this moment of awakening but I don't know exactly what that was.
Yeah, so, yeah, I went to university for biology and aquatic science, but really I was there for binge drinking and sex. Like that's really what I was doing with my time because binge drinking was the norm and having sex was your way of showing that you were worth something.
Like as a man, the way that I knew best to prove my self worth was to have sex with many women and to have sex with women that are considered beautiful.
That was my way of not just belonging, but being extra belonging, like being loved.
And that came through media, through the mainstream media, the magazines and songs that I was listening to.
And so, I was pursuing this objective of both being normal, but being better than normal.
fitting into normalcy, but being really, really good at it, like being a millionaire, not just having money but being a millionaire.
So after university, after about a year, I actually ended up moving out to San Diego, California when I was about 25 years old.
And I had been in sales and I ended up after about six months starting a marketing company and we sold advertising, and I had the goal of being a millionaire by the time I was 30 and life was going very well.
I rented a three -bedroom apartment three blocks from the beach in Ocean Beach. I was making solid money.
I within a couple of years had 20 independent contractors at the peak of the company that were selling ads, and I was bringing in over six figures at least the last year before I stopped doing that.
So I was on path to be a millionaire, I was having romantic relationships, I had many friendships, I would have made my childhood self very proud with what I was doing.
People back in my hometown, my small hometown would definitely be looking up to me as a living in Southern California and being financially successful in all these other ways.
And I was happy and I was healthy.
I was still traveling the world, and so everything was basically going according to plan.
And then something happened, and I realized that I wanted to slash almost felt like had to radically transform my life.
And a lot of people would think that I must have had some sort of major shake up like a near death experience or an experience of death in the family or yeah, just some sort of big shakeup but I didn't have anything like that.
All that happened was I started to watch documentaries and I started to read books and I just simply learned that I was living a great hypocrisy that almost everything that I was doing was causing incredible destruction and injustice and that my life was built into such inequity.
What I looked at it was as I was rabbled into this web of consumerism via thousands of strands.
And I was just here in this absolute web of destruction.
But I didn't wanna be, it's like you said earlier, nobody wants that actually, but now I knew.
Just by watching, you know, short films like the story of stuff or documentaries like Food, Inc.
like reading Michael Pollan, many, many, many different people out there who were just sharing the basic truths behind our reality.
I just learned that my entire life was not what I thought it was, that most of what I was doing was because corporations had very large advertising budgets, and because societal norms were very powerful.
It's not because it's what I was wanting to be doing or so much consciously choosing to do, I was just being a product of my surroundings.
You know, for example, I was wearing Old Spice deodorant.
Why? Because they had really solid commercials and they convinced me that in order to be a contributing member of society, I needed their deodorant.
And so I decided that I wasn't gonna buy into the delusion.
I wasn't gonna buy into the lies, the corruption, and that I was gonna shed all of that.
And so it was multi -pronged.
It was truth that I was pursuing.
It was ascending delusion, which are basically the two ends of the same coin.
It was, yeah, ascending corruption and destruction.
So it was sustainability.
It was human equity and equality, not wanting to be a part of the great wealth gap.
So it was all of it.
It was human. It was earth.
It was animal, it was plant.
it was, it was a desire for sustainability at that time.
I didn't know the word regeneration.
I don't think that was really a, so much of a popular word at that time, but regeneration, sustainability, equity, and truth.
And so it was just, that was what it was.
It was just, I decided very quickly that I was going to radically transform my life to be living by that rather than by consumerism, of materialism, financial wealth at the expense and the burden of others.
If I went through that bibliography though of books, documentaries, et cetera, that you were consuming that gave you this moment of awakening or this period of awakening or unfoldment, I'm sure there's a lot of people in the world who have read those books and watched those documentaries.
And perhaps in the wake of that, live their lives a little bit more mindfully than they would otherwise.
What is it about you in particular that led you to have a much more radical reaction?
Is it the way you were wired?
Is it the way you were brought up?
Is there something inside of you that's different, that has catalyzed such an extreme kind of response to what you learned and discovered?
And I think it's not like the next day you moved to Griffith Park and gave up everything.
Like this has happened in stages.
Yeah it began with these bicycle adventures, portions of which you were without money and like drinking out of fire hydrants and a lot of dumpster diving.
And then like doing the whole dumpster diving thing.
I think you got into like something like 2000 dumpsters and as a way of showing like, 50 % of our food is waste and while, however many millions of people are living in food poverty, All of these things have a message behind them.
You can call them stunts or experiences or adventures.
But they're all kind of very consciously crafted to feed a certain type of message, but each one is just a little bit more extreme than the one that preceded it.
That has kind of led you to this place.
Yeah. That's a, that's, you could just leave that as a mystery.
I don't know, I don't know.
Cause the reality is, is that I don't even know if we have free will.
I don't know if what we're living is reality or delusion.
I don't know if potentially everything is predestined.
I don't know any of this.
So it's a little hard for me to say, but if we operate within the confines that we, here we are human beings living in this reality.
I don't know why you know, because I have so many friends that learn the exact same things as me and they don't take it as far or even nearly as far.
And I think I could say a few things.
One is that I've been wired, I've been on the extreme since a young age.
I've always been exploring like when I was in about maybe fifth grade, me and my friend Hans biked 30 miles to the next town.
And when we got there, we were like, well, what do we do now?
Like we had to call our moms collect to get picked up.
We couldn't bike back.
And then when I was 16, I hopped on a bus from my small town to Florida, 48 hours on Greyhound, you know, going a far way away at a pretty young age.
So I've always been pushing the limits, you know, just to give another example of like the extreme things I would do and the level I was willing to go to.
You know, there was a, in home economics class, there was a chunk of a sponge at the bottom of the drain and I ate it.
You know, someone gave me $5 and I ate it.
I've always been just testing the extreme, doing really out there things.
From fifth grade, I was an entertainer.
I was the class clown in my high school, that's what I was nominated.
So there's always been a desire to test the limits.
There's always been a desire to go outside of societal norms. There's always been this ability to put myself out there.
So that all helps compared to someone who's timid and struggling to put themselves out there, I always have. The other part is that of course, ego.
I had that large ego, which allowed me to enter into this realm because it was partly ego driven.
So that I would say played a role.
And then I do think at the heart of me is this pursuit of justice and of truth that has been there from, also from a very young age.
And I'm not sure where that came from.
So these are I would say part of the ingredients that has allowed me to be able to do this with relative ease, like sure a lot of this has been hard, but the reality is that the same time it's not been that hard. Like a lot of it has been joyful and flowing.
So those would be some thoughts as to what makes it possible.
I've always been a fairly driven and out of the box person and also critical thinking plays a big role.
I've always been a critical thinker.
What are your siblings and your high school buddies, your college buddies think about what you're doing right now?
So, it goes across the realm of opinions.
A lot of my former friends, I would still consider them friends, but we haven't talked in 10 years and, or longer.
And there's certainly, there's certainly a lot of people who have written me off as just crazy, you know, I just don't fit into their pattern.
Even if they see the success that I've had, they're like, you know, it's just so far outside of their realm of, and so far outside of what they want to be reality.
So there's no doubt that there's people that are, you know, friends from my earlier life that just think that this is all ridiculous.
But there are, I would say more so people that are inspired and that have played a role and that enjoy being around me.
Because when they are around me, they're learning, they're growing, they're exploring, they're deepening.
But I will also say, I've done a pretty solid job of compartmentalizing my life in the sense that I don't bring this into anywhere that doesn't really want it.
So family and friends, I don't ask them to do things really, I don't judge them from what they're doing or not.
Because that just resulted in a lot of struggle and undesirable experiences when I was in my beginning stages.
And so, you know, my two best friends, Paul and Dane, You know, we just have kind of a fairly normal time together, camping and although Dane, you know, he got in, he ended up doing a lot of dumpster diving with me and moved in this direction some as well.
But so the, and the last thing I'll say like, you know, I have a lot of support from my family, but as an example, my brother Joe, he doesn't get it.
He thinks I should be making money.
I should be capitalizing on this position I have to make money to like, give to my mom for example, and me going to Griffith Park and owning nothing, like this is another level where he's just like, right dude, this is not.
I mean, there is an argument that comes to mind, which is because you have this large platform, you are in a position where you could capitalize on on it financially and use that, you know, like funnel that money into your nonprofit and leverage it for the betterment of the planet that is consistent with that's integrous with your message, right?
So, that's probably one of the most common things people say is that I have this platform and I could monetize it, and then by monetizing it, I could do more good with it.
And actually my biggest struggle is that I don't have the funds to accomplish a lot of what I'd like to.
Over the last years it's been my limiting factors actually been funds.
but I truly believe that the most valuable thing that I have is my integrity.
And when I am operating in the monetary world, I am not able to live out my integrity to the highest degree and so I actually chip away at the most valuable, meaningful thing that I have. So that's my objective right now is to really play into that.
Like that's shedding as much shedding anything that doesn't build my integrity.
And that means most attachments to the monetary system for now.
And we'll see, like right now it is a bit of a surrender game in that I might render myself a little less effective as I'm moving away from that.
Or maybe just being a human being of a deep level of integrity, people will resonate.
They'll see that. And it will result in me being more impactful than I ever could have been had I decided to monetize.
It's a counterintuitive perspective shift. Like the idea of doing that in the traditional way versus like the real power is in your allegiance to your integrity.
And that's like a nuclear power plant that attracts opportunities and things that you might not imagine, but it's all sourced from that.
And so that is the thing you have to protect above everything else.
Yeah, that's what I feel.
And my hopes is that I play my cards, right?
And that I use my life to the best of ability.
I definitely ask myself questions like, am I, you know, is this the right move?
Am I on the right path?
And I have doubts about it and I don't always know.
to be honest, the last few years, I feel like I've been the least effective that I've ever been, as I was running the non -profit and trying to bring in funds to be able to plant more fruit trees and provide more gardens to people.
I actually became the least effective that I ever had been, and I think the reason why is because I wasn't, I was being spread thin and I wasn't able to be living my message.
And I think that's my best gift is just to live my message to the utmost degree.
And that includes living in a deep form of integrity.
And so that's what I'm going to do.
I'm fully set on that and we'll see what ends up happening as far as whether my dreams of being a very impactful and meaningful contributor to society happen.
or I just dissolve into, everything becomes more technological and I continue to not embrace it and everything becomes, yeah, more, where if you take part of it, it's harder to live in integrity.
We'll see what happens.
It's possible that I just render myself obsolete in this lifetime, or it's possible that I hold strong and that I continue to be able to be a pillar in this journey that so many of us are on, that's the reason I can keep doing this.
There's literally millions and millions of people have the same desires for the world.
And so only time will tell whether I play my cards right to be as effective as I'd like to be in creating change.
Well, part of that integrity is decoupling from your attachment to those outcomes though, right?
Yeah, as I was saying and that I could totally hear that, and so I'm never going to have no attachment because that would mean that I gained full enlightenment.
I'm never gonna gain full enlightenment.
But it's just a balance, it's the right level.
And also you can have grand aspirations without having attachments to them, I believe.
And the reason I believe that is if you look at people like the Dalai Lama, for example.
I truly believe that he's in the flow state of utilizing his life to be most highly effective of service while still having deep aspirations of using his place on earth.
And so I see leaders out there who do that where it's obvious they have aspirations but they do detach from the attachment to outcome.
And I think that year after year after year of practicing that you can enter into the flow state where the attachment disappears but the drive remains.
And that's not something I can say from experience or even having talked to someone who said that before.
But I can say that through the observation of, most of my leaders are in their 70s, 80s or past. So you can see their life trajectory and you can see how they changed throughout.
And that's the pattern that I see is that it is possible to dissolve the attachment while still being driven for the core values that I'm talking about of equity, of justice, of harmony.
You can be totally, utterly dedicated and use every moment for that without it being a form of attachment, cravings, or aversion, however, that requires incredible practice and dedication.
Part of your practice of ensuring that your actions are in alignment with those values is this formal practice of setting vows and then renewing them or revising them like in four -year intervals.
How did that start and what are your current vows?
Sure. Well, as far as how it started was I looked at our leadership and I saw what characteristics so much of our leadership is lacking that our society really needs.
And I saw how you corrupt a leader.
And my objective is to be a leader, you know.
I want to be a leader for society, not a leader that has power over, but a leader that has power with.
Now in an ideal world, maybe there would not be need, there wouldn't be leadership.
Everything would be decentralized, realized, but under our societal structures, leadership plays a role and I think we can have benefit from leadership.
So my objective is to be a leader that is more or less uncorruptible and the vows play a role in that.
So they are simply set as a way to protect myself from the things that would steer me off track.
So the original vows were to earn less than the federal poverty threshold.
That's a lifetime vow.
When I made that vow, it was $11 ,000 per year.
Now the federal poverty threshold is $15 ,000 a year.
So earning less than that per year.
Keeping my net worth at that level or lower, keeping my material possessions at that level or lower.
Along with that means not paying federal income taxes for life.
Why? Because, you know, some statistics say that about 50 % of our federal income taxes go to war in the military industrial complex. But when you add in police brutality, the prison industrial complex, you add in bailing out the big banks, you add in big pharma, big ag, fossil fuels.
So I've made a lifetime commitment to not putting my funds into that, not paying federal taxes.
Another vow is to financial transparency.
So you get to decide, you get to know where my money comes from.
Every bit of where my money comes from is documented on my website, that's a lifetime commitment so you can see, you can see where I'm potentially being influenced by.
Another one of my early vows was to making every flight that I take public.
So, I can't go off to places, without people knowing where I'm going.
And that, I think, if all of our leaders did that, wow.
And transparency, if all of our leaders and corporations were financially transparent, a lot of our issues would just, they'd be gone.
So those have been my vows since 2015, and then my new vows, as of this year.
Two years ago, I started to practice non -sexuality.
So I just decided I was gonna take a one year break from sex and romance.
And that one year turned into two years.
And then as of this year, I added that to my vows, another four years of non -sexuality.
And one of the reasons for that is one of the easiest ways to corrupt a man is sex. You want sex, you'll do things that are not and your integrity to have that sex. And you got a vasectomy at 25.
Yes. So, yeah, this runs deep.
Yeah, I decided. I mean, you've had girlfriends.
Yes. Over the years.
Well, up until two years ago, I was a very sex -driven person.
I was very much chipping away at my integrity sometimes.
Like I remember one time a woman asking me, a handful of years ago, are you having sex with me because you want to have sex with me or because you want to be having sex And the answer was I wanted to be having sex with someone.
And that was very painful that I was not living in integrity that that relationship was not integral in that scenario.
And part of the cathartic aspect of your walk was purging you of these dissonances and kind of coming clean, doing like a personal and moral inventory of yourself to kind of disclose your secrets so that you could emerge clean into Griffith Park.
And part of that was this video that you did on, that was basically a sexual inventory, right?
Like I was sort of, you know, kind of open disclosure of, you know, your patterns and your behaviors as a way of like, you know, basically not letting, you know, your past, whatever haunts you in your past continue to haunt you by like disclosing it and being transparent about it.
Yeah, that was the most, and that's one of the more painful things that I've done.
And it was a challenging thing to do because there's other human beings involved, but it's my past and I want to heal.
That's a big part of the truth and transparency, it's about healing.
And for me, I have minor trauma, but definitely pain and mourning over my sexual past. Why?
Because I was born in a society that did not teach me how to respect women really?
Like I was learning from movies, from shows, I was watching movies like American Pie during my teenage years.
And we didn't even know the work.
I asked some of my closest friends, we never even heard the word consensuality when we were in college.
Now I'm not blaming anyone but the context is that I didn't know how to navigate sexual relationships at a young age in a way that we're fully consensual and respectful.
And I feel mourning and I feel pain over that.
And I wanna be a part of the healing process.
And I feel like being fully transparent and open and discussing the nuances rather than blaming or putting self guilt or shame upon myself, of acknowledging what my past has been, the context of my past and discussing that.
And one of the reasons that I think that is valuable is because I think millions of young men and boys experienced just what I did.
But today if you discuss that in public, you risk being canceled.
And that was definitely an opportunity for me to say that truth and transparency is more important and if people decide that they'd rather, that I'm no longer here and that you're gonna cancel me that that's okay because truth and transparency is much more important.
It's a very tender and very vulnerable thing to talk about, especially on a platform like this, that's so large.
And because it's also a topic that I could, that video was an hour and a half where I talked about that.
But I'm glad to be able to talk about it a little bit because at the heart of all of this is healing.
We'll never be connected with one another if we don't heal inside of ourselves.
And so a big part of this whole practice has been healing, becoming whole and complete.
And so the last vow is I vowed to four years of 100 % truth, 20 % transparency, telling only the truth and not telling a lie.
And so I got to the place where I don't have anything I'm guarding or hiding anymore.
I released it all. And I've committed to four years of that.
And it's a really relevant time for that.
When you look at our presidential situation, imagine if the president only told the truth and didn't tell a lie.
and practiced full transparency that would dissolve so much of the issues of our time.
And so a big part of my vows and the reason that I renew them in alignment with the presidential cycle every four years is that I'm actually saying, here's what our leaders could be doing with taking, they don't have to take vows, but just embodying these practices and showing a person who's a public persona or has a platform, taking these vows, a big part about it, a big part of it is that I want to influence leaders to also go to that depth.
What has this experience taught you about happiness?
I would say that it's very clear and this sounds cliche, but more material possessions and more money does not have a direct correlation with happiness as much as people would often think otherwise.
I think happiness comes from connection.
Connection with all the things that I've been mentioning earlier.
I think happiness comes from a purity inside of us.
I think happiness comes from accepting ourselves just the way we are.
Mr. Rogers, Fred Rogers is one of my inspirations as of the last couple of years.
And one of the things that he said the most is I like you just the way you are.
And I believe that liking ourselves, just the way that we are, that's how we get happiness.
That's how we ascend the materialism and the need for large quantities of money.
as soon as we just love ourselves, as soon as we just like ourselves, that's when wholeness and completeness comes.
And when we're whole and complete, we're no longer comparing, we're no longer blaming, judging, it's no longer based on the right and wrong and the good and bad and the shoulds.
It then comes down to this more of this just inner state of peace.
And I would say happiness and peace are rather synonymous in my mind.
I would also say integrity and happiness are rather synonymous in my mind.
I highly doubt there is a person out there who is fully embodying integrity that is not also substantially happier than the average person out there.
So I think happiness comes through deep practices, many deep practices, not just one, and that happiness is something that we will get, that we will have, that we will experience only if we put in the work.
Now, of course we'll get little happiness here and there without putting in the work, just buying a new pair of shoes can give you happiness for a little while, but true happiness comes from a whole lot of work, a lot of practice, both mental and physical and in our relationship with the world around us.
That's super interesting, this idea of integrity being synonymous with happiness.
What is integrity? It's being integrous with your values, right?
Your behaviors match your values.
They are in integrity.
But I can't help but think that for the most part we are captured by the trappings and the incentives of modernity.
Like we're on the hedonic treadmill.
We're doing what is in front of us to do.
We're trying to meet our responsibilities And we're playing a game that we didn't sign up for, but lack the ability to actually see at a 10 ,000 foot view and feel powerless to escape because everyone we know is participating in this.
And as much as we can lift inspiration from your example and the extremities to which you will go to kind of advocate for a different way of living, It also feels beyond arms reach, right?
Like, wow, that's really cool.
Okay, now back to my job, like, so what is it?
I guess this is a good way to kind of like, you know, kind of come to a closing with this, like what is it that you want people to learn or glean from what you're doing that they can translate into their lives?
Whether that's just a perspective on their life or through real specific kind of behavior changes that would allow them to connect with more meaning and purpose and vitality and understand their values, because I think we're living so disconnected, not just from the planet and where all our products come from, but disconnected from ourselves such that ideas like meaning and purpose and what are our values and what would my vows even look like if I were to sit down and write them out?
Like, we don't necessarily all have immediate answers to those questions.
Those are the result of a deep inner journey and exploration that you've been on.
So, how would you kind of articulate what it is that you want people to hear and see and take and feel from this profound experience that you're having?
Yeah, more and more I've also realized is that even in answering that question about happiness just now, I felt almost a little bit uneasy because I've realized my job is not to provide answers.
My job is to stimulate thought.
My job is to stimulate critical thought and to help people to ask questions more than it is to provide answers.
So what I would like for people is to ask some basic questions.
is the way that I'll say it from first person, is the way that I'm living in alignment with my values?
Is the way that I'm living the way that I really want to be living?
And if the answer is yes, great, but if the answer is no, then it's, then it's what can I do to bring my life into alignment?
What can I do to make sure that my actions are in alignment with my beliefs?
And if that's where you are, then we get to explore solutions.
We get to explore the other ways that are possible.
And that's different for everyone.
It's especially different when you look at, we have hundreds of diverse cultures around the world, and within each culture there's different scenarios, and you're gonna have different ways of learning to align and learning to connect.
So that's the number one thing.
It's just asking ourselves, taking the time in the society that many of us are so busy and so spread thin that we don't even take the time to ask, are we living the lives that we want?
Now, the area that I have expertise to be able to contribute towards is that if your answer is that you want to be living in a way that is more in harmony with all life less destructive to all life, then that's where I have, you know, now 14 years of dedication to learning that and introducing people to other ways of doing that.
So, you know, my website is just an absolute plethora of resources of how to enter into these realms. And the first resource that I would share is I documented the first hundred changes that I made to transform my life.
And that's just at RobinGreenfield .org slash 100.
And that's like, you can just go over there and you can say, you know what?
I'm really excited to start growing my own food.
Or I'm really excited to start reducing the amount of waste and using reusable items. Or I'm really excited to demonetize my life and learn how to meet my needs through community rather than through money.
or I'm really excited to create an environmental activism campaign or start a nonprofit.
My website, what my job is to do is to do this extreme stuff, but not to leave people hanging.
The idea is not that anybody has to do what I do.
If anybody's saying right now, like, well, I can't do what he's doing, so that's that, you know, next podcast, that's probably a protection mechanism.
because a self protection protection mechanism of not having to do anything.
The reality is at the heart of all of this is that there's thousands of things that we can do to align our actions with our values.
And so my recommendation would be, figure it out what your most passionate and excited about when it comes to transforming your life.
And then make goals to make a few of those positive changes.
When I decided to transform my life, I made a objective making one positive change per week for two years, because that's 100 positive changes.
So imagine if you woke up tomorrow and you're doing a hundred things differently.
You might not even recognize yourself.
You might have a crisis.
But by making one positive change at a time, you can create the new you if that's what you're seeking.
And so just as far as some simple things that we can do that can make a big difference in our lives.
Growing some of our own food, learning to forage and harvest our own food from the land, looking into our trash cans and seeing all the ways that we're creating trash and then finding alternatives, reusable alternatives, learning to fix some of our own items rather than buying new ones.
Learning just that we don't need nearly as many things as we do.
So downsizing and simplifying, getting rid of all the extraneous stuff that's actually taking away value from your life and shedding it so that you can bring more value into your life, using your body as a means of transportation, walking, running, biking, skateboarding, whatever it may be, moving your body via human power, driving the car less, composting, turning your food scraps and your plants from the yard into soil and experiencing that life, volunteering more in the community, getting rid of more bills, all the bills that you're like, actually I don't need this bill and shedding that.
And then if you have access to a lot of resources, distributing those equitably, looking at what you're putting on your body, if you're putting lots of toxic things, toxic chemicals on your body, finding natural alternatives, your food eating more whole foods, eating a lot more, you know, vibrant fruits and vegetables that are grown locally.
The list goes on and on, but these are some of my top ways in which they're accessible, there are things we can do, and it creates a feedback cycle.
We start with what we're most excited about and what empowers us and we build one step at a time.
And I look at it like a foundation, you're building the brick of a foundation of a more whatever you wanna call it, sustainable, equitable, more connected life, and each of these bricks that you build helps you to add another brick and then eventually maybe you can start to do things you never imagined before.
Your website really is a treasure trove, like there's a ton of resources there, it's pretty cool, like plenty for people to read and experience and lots of videos, like everything you wanna know about your world is pretty much on that site.
Yeah. How long are you gonna be in Griffith Park?
I'll be there until April 20th.
Assuming they let you, April 20th.
I'll still be there, I might not be sleeping there but I'll still be hosting all of my gatherings in the green space, just north of the Greek theater.
I'll be gone in two days from now, from till March 16th, doing five weeks of Vipassana which is something that we didn't dive into.
but five weeks of silent meditation, as well as doing part of it as service.
And then I'll be back March 16th, until April 20th.
And then most likely, I'm gonna do a little California tour from San Diego up to San Francisco, continuing owning nothing, continuing the experiment of non -ownership and doing a little tour of maybe a couple dozen cities or something like that.
And how long do you anticipate this non -ownership experimental to go?
Like is this, have you committed to something, do you have a sense of how long you're going to do it, or are you taking it one day at a time?
I've committed to three months, so till April 20th.
And that is owning nothing.
Now there's a possibility, like for example, a notebook.
It's like I'd like to write a pen I can borrow.
If I'm writing on a piece of paper, I feel like that paper kind of becomes mine.
It's possible that I end up owning some little things within this three months, but three months of non -ownership.
And then after that, I'm not sure yet.
What I know for sure is that I'm not gonna end up owning a whole bunch of stuff right off the bat.
When I start to own things again, I'm gonna accumulate just the things that help me to meet my basic needs and help me to also be more effective in my work.
I love the idea, part of me, contemplates the idea of making this my life, my life that for the rest of my life I exist by owning nothing, it forces me to be in the public service.
I have to be here in the public because you can't own nothing and live without people, it requires people.
And so part of me very much is drawn to the idea of this is me that for my entire life if I practice non -ownership and I exist in society in this way.
It's also possible that I come in and out of ownership and maybe I do a couple of years of it.
But this is the beginning, this is a three month experiment and the idea is that it's putting me down the path and then I'll see where exactly the path goes.
Right, I mean, you can't write another book unless you have a computer or a notebook or something to write on, but perhaps we could broaden the definition of borrowing for a period of time or what that means?
Like there's a creep, like once you kind of crack that open and say, okay, I'm like open to a little bit of a shift here, then it's like, you have to be very intentional and wary of like what comes your way and the rationale, like the stories that you'll make up to justify like owning something that perhaps is in defiance of that integrity.
That will become like the challenge, right?
Well, it's all about just calling it what it is.
If I'm not gonna be in non ownership, I'm not.
And if I am, I am, and if anybody really gets to know me, that's what they'll see.
I don't try to fit things into a narrative that aren't what they are, because that wouldn't be integrity.
So that's why I've moved away from labels.
And instead, and that's why I rarely ever make short videos because this stuff is complex and that's my job is to exist within the complexity.
On that note, I can write a book without ownership because I could simply speak the words and someone else could dictate them.
Now you're going old school like, you know, like serious throwback style to the great teachers dictating their wisdom them and knowledge to others, to let others transcribe.
Yes. And there's plenty of people that would do that.
I have the book that I recently wrote was volunteer edited.
So someone spent a lot of time editing that as a volunteer.
And then also I could do it at the library.
The library is a wonderful public service.
And I could volunteer at the library for my contribution.
And I could write the whole book at the library.
And then, you know, as far as my writing of books goes, I have, you know, this book, I've entered into a practice where this book is available as an experiment in the gift economy.
And I don't own this book.
Yeah, you don't own it.
It's compostable. It's, you know, it's any money that's made in the exchange of this book doesn't go to you.
because when the bullet goes to your foundation.
Actually, so it does go to the foundation but then that is all directed to black and indigenous led non -profits that are working on food sovereignty.
So it comes through us and then as directed.
If we make, if we bring in enough, you know, if right now we've only managed to donate $1 ,500 to other places.
It's a big experiment in the gift economy And the level I've gone with non ownership with that is that it is licensed under a Creative Commons universal license, which means anybody could reprint that and sell it.
I have zero rights.
There's no copyright on this.
Yeah, I've never seen anyone go to that length where it's like, have at it.
You want to like copy this and sell it?
Go for it. You're spreading my message, I'm not attached, all I'm attached to is sharing the message, not to the ownership of the message.
so if somebody decided they want to do that, fine.
But also, yeah, nobody's doing that.
I haven't seen anyone else do that.
It's wild. Well, I appreciate not only kind of what you're doing, but how you're doing it, the way you show up in the world, the hopefulness and the optimism and the enthusiasm with which you broach topics that are typically associated with doom and gloom and martyrdom and all the things that we've talked about today.
You're very much about what you're for without a lot of energy around what you're against. And I think that creates like a welcome mat for people to kind of come to your page or your website or your books, your videos and kind of engage you from a place of curiosity rather than having to kind of confront their own biases or their defense mechanisms, around ideas that are difficult because they're asking us to really confront the reality of how we live.
And we're not all super enthusiastic about doing that.
Yes. And my biggest, my mother biggest practice right now is compassionate communication or nonviolent communication, which is created by Marshall Rosenberg.
And it's a way of learning to, yeah, not judge, not shame, not guilt, not right or wrong, instead just seeing people for the full human beings they are.
It's a practice of empathy.
And so it's a language of needs and feelings.
So what I do at all times now is whatever someone does, I always think to myself, what are the needs that they're trying to meet and what are they feeling?
And that's what I do for myself as well.
What am I feeling and what am I needing?
And so this dissolves judgements and it dissolves this concepts of shame and such. and so that's probably what I over the last few years have spent more time on than just about anything is rewriting my language to the practice of compassionate communication.
And that's definitely what I want people to get when they're with me.
I want people when they're with me to feel empowered and inspired to be able to question themselves deeper than they've ever questioned themselves before, but from a place of excitement and joy, not from a place of self -hatred or self -loathing or anything like that to see that we are all complex, intricate beings.
We live in a very difficult time.
The fact that any person, the fact that any human being out there is dedicating any of themselves to a positive contribution in the world, that is something to celebrate in the times that we live in.
So I celebrate every human being who is here, listening to this, who hasn't turned away and is taking any opportunity they can to self observe, to self reflect and to try to use their life as a way to contribute to society in a positive manner.
So lots of celebration of life and lots of gratitude.
That's the other big tool is gratitude.
Well, I celebrate you.
I appreciate how you show up in the world, the message that you're carrying.
It's deeply inspirational, the level of commitment and the integrity with which you're a steward of this message.
And it was really cool to talk to you, man.
I'd love to talk to you more like I only scratched the surface on the number of topics that I think we could explore.
So consider this volume one and not going conversation.
This is a dream come true to be here with you getting to share with so many people.
I've wanted to do this for 10 years.
And so it's a really beautiful hour to be here.
When was the last time you got a shower?
It's been about nine days and I.
There's a shower in the bathroom.
You're welcome to take a shower.
We're going to load you up with snacks.
So you gave the unharged, did I smell?
No, not at all. I didn't smell anything.
Oh, wait, just gotta show one last thing.
The toothbrush, this is how I - If you're listening, you just pulled like a literal twig get out of this pocket with like leaves on it and he's putting it in his mouth right now.
It's a California Bay tree.
It's antimicrobial, it is powerful, and I would love if you would wanna try it.
It grows around and then also my dental floss is pine needles and it is, look, look guys.
That one was too dry but it goes right through.
All right, I think that's our signal to like end it for today.
RobinGreenfield .org, I'll link up on your Instagram, whatever all this stuff, and pick up his books.
Good times, Dan. Thank you, brother.
Peace. Yeah, peace.
That's it for today.
Thank you for listening.
I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation.
To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at Rich Roll .com where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Boising Change and the Plant Power Away, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals .richroll .com.
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Portraits by Davey Greenberg.
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Peace. Plants. Namaste.
You
