Speaker 1: Catalysm in its purest sense is the human ability to
Speaker 1: trade things, to negotiate, to work with each other. And
Speaker 1: I think that's part of human survival. Actually, welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking
Speaker 1: our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is John Perkins, and author
Speaker 1: and activist whose ten books on global intrigue, shamanism, and
Speaker 1: transformation have been on the New York Times bestseller list
Speaker 1: for more than seventy weeks, sold over two million copies,
Speaker 1: and are published in at least thirty five languages. John
Speaker 1: was formerly a chief economist at a major consulting firm,
Speaker 1: advising the World Bank, United Nations, the US, and other governments.
Speaker 1: He is now the founder and board member of the
Speaker 1: Pacha Mama Alliance and Dream Change, nonprofit organizations that partner
Speaker 1: with indigenous people to protect the environments and that offer
Speaker 1: global programs to change the destructive ways of industrial societies.
Speaker 1: Hi John, Welcome to the show. Thanks Sarah. It's great
Speaker 1: to be with you. Happy to be here. We're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about your book, Touching the Jaguar, Transforming Fear into
Speaker 1: action to change your life and the world. But before
Speaker 1: we do that, we'll start, like we always do, with
Speaker 1: a parable. There's a grandfather who's talking to his grandson.
Speaker 1: He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always a battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and
Speaker 1: he thinks about it for a second. He looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather. He says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed, So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. I think it's a great, terrible eric.
Speaker 1: You know, I've got this cat looking over my shoulder here,
Speaker 1: and she would say, well, obviously, don't feed that hateful wolf,
Speaker 1: the angry one, the bad one, because it might come
Speaker 1: after me. And I think we can all look at
Speaker 1: the world that way. That it's absolutely true. And in
Speaker 1: my experience, my former life as an economic hit man,
Speaker 1: I was very aware that if you were in the
Speaker 1: process of promoting a world that looked like the world
Speaker 1: that I was promoting, if you fed that world, you'd
Speaker 1: get it. And what I was really promoting was what
Speaker 1: we call predatory capitalism, a form of capitalism that's extremely
Speaker 1: destructive and has caused climate change and so many of
Speaker 1: the problems we have today, what we call the death economy. If,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, we go out and we feed
Speaker 1: the good wolf, we feed the compassionate wolf, we get
Speaker 1: a world that's represented by what we could call a
Speaker 1: life economy and economic system that is itself regenerative. You know, Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: through most of my life, we've had a world situation
Speaker 1: where we keep feeding that bad wolf, if you want
Speaker 1: to call it the bad wolf. Where we keep feeding
Speaker 1: that wolf, that's all about there's never enough in the world.
Speaker 1: I'd get to take mine, and to get mine, I
Speaker 1: gotta hurt somebody else. It's not a win win, it's
Speaker 1: a win lose. And we look at that on individual levels,
Speaker 1: we look at that on corporate levels, we look at
Speaker 1: that on national levels. And this is a time when
Speaker 1: we need to turn that around. And I think the
Speaker 1: book Touching the Jaguar goes into how indigenous people have
Speaker 1: come up with these prophecies that tell us that we're
Speaker 1: at a time in history right now where we have
Speaker 1: the opportunity to turn that around, to feed the compassionate wolf,
Speaker 1: the good wolf, the wolf that's going to bring us
Speaker 1: about a world excellent. So I think let's start by
Speaker 1: taking apart some of what you just said there, and
Speaker 1: I think in order for us to understand your story,
Speaker 1: we've got to back up a while, like you said,
Speaker 1: and we've got to talk about your past, as you said,
Speaker 1: as an economic hit man. So let's first start there
Speaker 1: describe for listeners what that means to be an economic
Speaker 1: hit man, and then I think from there that can
Speaker 1: lead us into conversations about life and death, economies and
Speaker 1: indigenous people. Yeah, so, Eric know, my title was chief
Speaker 1: Economists that a major consulting from a company called Charles
Speaker 1: Team Maine in Boston. It was later sold and the
Speaker 1: name no longer exists. It was sold to Parsons. But
Speaker 1: I had a staff that arranged anywhere from thirty to
Speaker 1: fifty people at different times. And my job and my
Speaker 1: staff job was to identify countries that had resources our
Speaker 1: corporations want, like oil for example, or today more likely
Speaker 1: copper and other resources. And once we identify that country,
Speaker 1: we would arrange huge loans to that country. But it
Speaker 1: was with the understanding that those loans would be used
Speaker 1: to hire our corporations to build big infrastructure projects in
Speaker 1: the country. In fact, the money never actually went to
Speaker 1: the country and they had to sign off on the loan.
Speaker 1: They had to guarantee the loan through their resources as collateral.
Speaker 1: But the money came directly to our corporations, the Bechtel's,
Speaker 1: the Haliburton's, the Brown and Roots, the big engineering companies
Speaker 1: that the General electric and countries that provide the material
Speaker 1: and the machinery for power plants, hydroelectric plants, transmission lines,
Speaker 1: industrial parks, highways, ports, things like that, And for the
Speaker 1: most part, these things benefit a few wealthy families in
Speaker 1: those countries. First of all, they make huge profits for
Speaker 1: our corporations. They benefit a few wealthy families that own
Speaker 1: the industries and the commercial establishments, But most of the
Speaker 1: people in the country end up suffering because money is
Speaker 1: diverted from education, healthcare, and other social services to pay
Speaker 1: off the service on the debt. In the end, the
Speaker 1: country can't pay its principle on the debt, and so
Speaker 1: we go back, usually under the guise of the i
Speaker 1: m F International Monetary Fund, and say, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: we'll restructure the law for you, but you have to
Speaker 1: meet these conditionalities. In order for us to do that,
Speaker 1: you have to sell your resource, oil, whatever real treat
Speaker 1: to our corporations without environmental or social regulations. Privatize your
Speaker 1: public sector of businesses like your water and sewage systems,
Speaker 1: your utilities, maybe your schools and prisons, and sell them
Speaker 1: to our investors at cut rate prices, and let us
Speaker 1: build military basis on your soil and vote with us
Speaker 1: on the next United Nations vote. So, in that way,
Speaker 1: we really fed that bad wolf if you will, and
Speaker 1: that was my job. And you know, I don't want
Speaker 1: to keep talking too long here, but i'd say that,
Speaker 1: you know, when I get started in that business, I
Speaker 1: thought I was doing the right thing, because in business
Speaker 1: school still teach that if you want to help a
Speaker 1: poor country, you invest a lot of money in infrastructure.
Speaker 1: What we were doing, and statistically you can show them
Speaker 1: that the GDP that grows domestic product, that our measure
Speaker 1: of the economy grows, and it does, and so it
Speaker 1: looks like it's a good thing. But over time I
Speaker 1: began to realize that GDP was allowed to measure it
Speaker 1: measures the rich. It doesn't measure prosperity a country. It
Speaker 1: measures how well the rich people in the country are doing,
Speaker 1: not how well the average people in the country are doing.
Speaker 1: But it took a long time for me to realize
Speaker 1: that because the system is raped to show us that
Speaker 1: that's a metric that's important to use, gross domestic product,
Speaker 1: gross domestic product per capita, and they basically kind of
Speaker 1: meaningless statistics if you're trying to really see how our
Speaker 1: country is truly doing. It's so interesting as I read
Speaker 1: your work and I learned about it, I originally would
Speaker 1: have been like you were, and I would have thought, well,
Speaker 1: that sounds like a good project, that sounds like good work.
Speaker 1: It sounds like the I m F. That must be
Speaker 1: good investing in poor countries, and just fascinating to see
Speaker 1: the way the whole system is set up and who
Speaker 1: the ultimate benefactors are. Yeah, and here's an example, Eric,
Speaker 1: So the United States is representative in a way of
Speaker 1: many countries. The three individuals here in the United States
Speaker 1: that have as much wealth as half the population in
Speaker 1: the United States, if their income grew last year by
Speaker 1: ten pc and half the population of the United States
Speaker 1: lost three we still show a growth rate of around
Speaker 1: three and a half percent, an increase even though half
Speaker 1: the country's a lot worse off. That's g d P.
Speaker 1: That's what we measure. And that's true throughout the world
Speaker 1: where we have this tremendous imbalance between the halves and
Speaker 1: they have not. So there are really the extremely wealthy
Speaker 1: and the rest of US middle class. Are they have
Speaker 1: countries the US and other countries. Are they competing for
Speaker 1: these sorts of projects in less developed parts of the world.
Speaker 1: Is the US competing, say with China, for this type
Speaker 1: of project when we hear about them going into markets
Speaker 1: in Africa. Is that part of what we're wrestling over. Yes.
Speaker 1: I think the very sad aspect of this is that
Speaker 1: up until there were two superpowers, really there was a
Speaker 1: Soviet Union in the United States, and to a certain
Speaker 1: degree that maintained a balance. If I went into let's
Speaker 1: say Columbia or Ecuador, an African country, and tried to
Speaker 1: impose my will upon them, they could turn to the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union and use that as leverage. Even if they
Speaker 1: really wanted to take my deal, they could probably get
Speaker 1: a better deal from me. The Soviets are coming. If
Speaker 1: you don't, we'll take their thing. And I went back
Speaker 1: off a little bit in after daytime. But so the
Speaker 1: Union was no longer. We were the world's only superpower,
Speaker 1: and the United States had an opportunity at that time
Speaker 1: to really promote democracy and in a real pure form
Speaker 1: of capitalism, but we didn't do that. Instead, we promoted
Speaker 1: this that's what I call predatory capitalism, that favors monopolies,
Speaker 1: that is extremely exploitative, and we didn't make democracy look
Speaker 1: very good either. We supported a lot of dictators around
Speaker 1: the world, like in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, many other places.
Speaker 1: So there was a tremendous resentment growing and undercurrent, and
Speaker 1: countries didn't have options, so they played along with US.
Speaker 1: Countries that had resources that they wanted to develop. Poor
Speaker 1: countries that had copper or or oil or gold or whatever,
Speaker 1: but they didn't have the technologies to exploit them. So
Speaker 1: they needed to bring in our technologies and they needed
Speaker 1: our financing. We were the only options out there. Well,
Speaker 1: today China has come along. President She has made a
Speaker 1: big point that China will not try to interfere with
Speaker 1: countries politics or their foreign policies. So China, actually, I
Speaker 1: think has learned a lot from our mistakes, and I
Speaker 1: think China has the same goals that wants to exploit resources.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to paint China's the good guy here
Speaker 1: necessary at all, but I am saying that I think
Speaker 1: China has really learned from us. So we're finding, for example,
Speaker 1: in Latin America, that China's taking over, It's investing more
Speaker 1: in Latin America now than we are. Its trade is
Speaker 1: larger than the United States trade with many of the
Speaker 1: most significant, most powerful, economically powerful countries in Latin America. Today,
Speaker 1: we're finding the same thing as true in Africa. We
Speaker 1: made big mistakes. China's learned from those mistakes, and under
Speaker 1: the Trump administer ation, those mistakes escalated even more. We
Speaker 1: became more isolationist. Let's now transition to talking about what
Speaker 1: a death economy is and what a life economy is.
Speaker 1: A death economy is an economic system that's really based
Speaker 1: on one perception. So we can get into this later,
Speaker 1: but touching the Jagger was all about perception and realizing
Speaker 1: that how we perceived the world creates reality. And we
Speaker 1: have a perception that was growing for decades but really
Speaker 1: really took hold of ninety six when Milton Friedman won
Speaker 1: the Nobel Prize in Economics, and Freedman said many amazing things,
Speaker 1: but one of the most important things he said, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, was that the only responsibility is to
Speaker 1: maximize short term profits for a few investors, basically regardless
Speaker 1: of the social and environmental costs. And that's driven business
Speaker 1: ever since. And as I said, it was growing before them,
Speaker 1: but it really took off them. And you know, this
Speaker 1: idea of short term profit really gives corporate executives the
Speaker 1: right and in fact the mandate to do whatever it
Speaker 1: takes to maximize short term profits, including destroying the very
Speaker 1: resources upon which their companies depend in the long term.
Speaker 1: And so in doing that, they've created this death economy.
Speaker 1: And it's an economic system that's consuming itself into extinction.
Speaker 1: It's using up in the short term our long term potential.
Speaker 1: And it's also based to a large degree on war
Speaker 1: or the threat of war. Economy is very, very dependent
Speaker 1: on the war industry, and many economies are. But it's
Speaker 1: about consuming things to the point of absurdity, and it's
Speaker 1: really created a system that doesn't work. So many of
Speaker 1: today's crises, income inequality, that the climate change that we're experiencing,
Speaker 1: you can use the pandemic, species extinctions, the destruction of
Speaker 1: incredibly important resources. That's the death economy. And it's based
Speaker 1: on this one goal of maximizing short term profits, regardless
Speaker 1: of the social, environmental costs. And that's also what we
Speaker 1: call predatory capitalism, a view of capitalism where a few
Speaker 1: people can own almost everything. You know, oligarchy is basically
Speaker 1: or at least control large segments of the economy and
Speaker 1: have tremendous power over governments also through their wealth. And
Speaker 1: so a death economy you described its features. Is capitalism,
Speaker 1: by its nature a death economy. No, And I think
Speaker 1: that's a very important distinction because a lot of people say,
Speaker 1: you've got to end capitalism, and I understand what they mean.
Speaker 1: They mean we got to end predatory capitalism. The definition
Speaker 1: of capitalism is that it's a system whereby the means
Speaker 1: of production and commerce are our own by individuals, not
Speaker 1: by the government, and where you have competition thrives on competition. Well,
Speaker 1: we do have a system today where the means of
Speaker 1: production are not owned by the government, but that's been reversed.
Speaker 1: The people who own the means of production basically own
Speaker 1: the government. You know, we've seen in this last election
Speaker 1: how important money is and big money, huge amounts of money,
Speaker 1: crazy amounts of money, crazy amounts of money. And that's
Speaker 1: around the world. And even after the election is over,
Speaker 1: the amount of money that's spent on lobbyists, that spent
Speaker 1: on advertising, again it's spent on changing perceptions is huge.
Speaker 1: So even though the means of production are not owned
Speaker 1: by the government, they're owned by a few individuals. The
Speaker 1: important means of production other small you know, family ownership
Speaker 1: of small businesses. But if a big business comes along
Speaker 1: and wants to drive the small business out. They will.
Speaker 1: We know that. We've seen it happen over and over
Speaker 1: with some of the big box companies. But that's not capitalist.
Speaker 1: That's a form of capitalism. It's predatory capitalism. Small markets,
Speaker 1: the farmers market, you may have one in your town,
Speaker 1: A lot of people do. They're all over the developing world.
Speaker 1: Indigenous people have these small markets. That's capitalism. My grandson's
Speaker 1: lemonade stand is capitalism, and capitalism is based on the
Speaker 1: idea that they're going to have healthy competition and that
Speaker 1: you know, nobody's going to control markets. That's pure capitalism.
Speaker 1: We don't have that, and I think it's a very
Speaker 1: important distinction to make. So when people talk about getting
Speaker 1: rid of capitalism, I'm all totally in favor of getting
Speaker 1: rid of predatory capitalism. But I think the basics of
Speaker 1: capitalism are kind of even trade barter is a form
Speaker 1: of capitalism. So it's it seems to me that capitalism,
Speaker 1: and it's purest sense, and I don't want to people
Speaker 1: to be confused about this. Capitalism and it's purest sense
Speaker 1: is the human ability to trade things, to negotiate, to
Speaker 1: work with each other. And I think that's part of
Speaker 1: human survival, actually, right, And I don't want to turn
Speaker 1: this into a long economic discussion because that's not really
Speaker 1: what we do here. Listeners are probably like, where are
Speaker 1: we headed with this? And hang on, work, work, we're
Speaker 1: headed towards the territory you're used to. But I think
Speaker 1: these are important ideas. You say. It's something really important
Speaker 1: there in that in capitalism, the means of production is
Speaker 1: owned by individuals, not the government, right, And so much
Speaker 1: of what we see now is yes, that's true, but
Speaker 1: as you said, that, the people who own the means
Speaker 1: of production also now own the government. Thus we're not
Speaker 1: on a level playing field. It's not pure capitalism in
Speaker 1: the sense that it's a level playing field. The market
Speaker 1: is highly rigged at this point in favor of the
Speaker 1: people who have the money to lobby the government to
Speaker 1: act in the way that they would like to see
Speaker 1: things go. All right, So let's talk about your journey.
Speaker 1: So you're an economic hitman. You don't know that at
Speaker 1: the time. That's not the term you would use at
Speaker 1: the time. Uh, you're an economist. You think you're doing
Speaker 1: good in the world, and over time you slowly begin
Speaker 1: to realize oh, hang, on a second, maybe this work
Speaker 1: isn't really working out very well for the vast majority
Speaker 1: of people in those countries. So what happens next for you?
Speaker 1: Talk about sort of the journey from there to today.
Speaker 1: I know it's a long one, but maybe the next
Speaker 1: couple of steps for you. Yeah, So let me just
Speaker 1: step back a minute and say that one of the
Speaker 1: things that I had in my favor of trying to
Speaker 1: convince these leaders of countries to accept these huge loans
Speaker 1: that they knew would put their people deep into debt,
Speaker 1: was that they knew that if they took on these plans,
Speaker 1: they and their friends would make a lot of money
Speaker 1: because they own the industries they benefited from the infrastructure.
Speaker 1: But they also knew that behind me were people that
Speaker 1: we call the jackals, and these are usually CIA operatives
Speaker 1: or assets who will overthrow governments or assassinate leaders. And
Speaker 1: you know, the United States has admitted to a long
Speaker 1: history of this end day of Chile and urbans of watermelon,
Speaker 1: the moment of the congo and mossadeca Iran and ZM
Speaker 1: of Vietnam, and on and on. Two of my clients
Speaker 1: who were killed because they didn't accept these deals. The
Speaker 1: President of Ecuador and the head of State of Panama
Speaker 1: Hammi Rhodols and Omartari host So these people are there
Speaker 1: in the background now. When I decided to get out
Speaker 1: after ten years, I realized that what I was doing
Speaker 1: was not what I thought I was doing, and then
Speaker 1: I needed to get out of doing that. My conscience
Speaker 1: was bothering me. I didn't want to be in this
Speaker 1: any longer, and I actually wanted to expose the system
Speaker 1: from me because I knew about it. I couldn't do that,
Speaker 1: so I started to write a book about my experiences.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be an expose, so I contacted other
Speaker 1: people with my job, economic kiment type people and some
Speaker 1: of the jackals who I knew and uh. I immediately
Speaker 1: got anonymous phone calls, certainly my life and the life
Speaker 1: of my infant daughter. And at the same time I
Speaker 1: get invited out to dinner by the president of Stone
Speaker 1: and a Webster engineering company which had been a major
Speaker 1: competitor of my company. And he takes me to dinner
Speaker 1: and say, you know, you've got a great resume. Your
Speaker 1: chief economists of one of our competitors. We'd like to
Speaker 1: use your resume in our proposals. You won't have do
Speaker 1: any work for us. So I'll just let us use
Speaker 1: your resume in our proposals and I'm prepared, right, you
Speaker 1: would check tomorrow morning for five thousand dollars. Now, Eric,
Speaker 1: this was the late eighties. Half a minute dollars. There's
Speaker 1: nothing to sneeze at today, but back in those days
Speaker 1: it was a lot more. And then he said, I
Speaker 1: just don't write the book. We know you're working on.
Speaker 1: You can't write the book. So I was being hit
Speaker 1: the same way that I've been hitting other people. I'm
Speaker 1: getting threatened. My life's being threatened. My daughter's life is
Speaker 1: being threatened. And on the other hand, and being offered
Speaker 1: a bribe. It's illegal bribe. There's nothing illegal about paying
Speaker 1: a guy a retainer as a consultant, though that was
Speaker 1: a huge retainer, even by the standards of those dasts.
Speaker 1: So I'm being hit, and what would you do in
Speaker 1: that case? I took the jackals very seriously. I took
Speaker 1: the money. And what I will say in my own
Speaker 1: defense is that I didn't go out and buy mansions
Speaker 1: or fast cars or something. I put the money towards
Speaker 1: creating a new career. I wrote books about indigenous people.
Speaker 1: I went back to the Amazon, where I had been
Speaker 1: at Peace Corps volunteer year before I became an economic
Speaker 1: hit man. I went back to the Amazon and and
Speaker 1: I formed to nonprofit organizations dream Change and the pache
Speaker 1: Mam Alliance, when I'm a co founder of to help
Speaker 1: the Indigenous people and also to get the word out
Speaker 1: how we need to change the perception of what it
Speaker 1: means to be successful as businesses. And I wrote books
Speaker 1: on Indigenous people, which was fine with stone A Webster.
Speaker 1: They were happy with me writing those kind of books.
Speaker 1: And this went on for a long time. And then
Speaker 1: after nine eleven and I was in the Amazon on
Speaker 1: nine eleven with these Indigenous people. After I came home,
Speaker 1: I flew to ground zero and as I stood looking
Speaker 1: into that pit, I knew I had to come clean.
Speaker 1: I had to write the book. But this time I
Speaker 1: decided I wouldn't write an next boy day. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: contact anyone else that was the problem that world have
Speaker 1: gotten out. I would write it in secret. I'd write
Speaker 1: the whole book assumed that when I had it in
Speaker 1: the hands of a very good New York agent and
Speaker 1: publishers with them. Because my insurance policy, it's any self
Speaker 1: respecting Jacko would know that killing me would sell books.
Speaker 1: I become a martyr and people would want to buy
Speaker 1: the books, which was the opposite of what they wanted.
Speaker 1: So that started me on a whole new trajectory here,
Speaker 1: and I wrote the book that became Confessions of an
Speaker 1: Economic hip Man. And you know, it's sold a couple
Speaker 1: of million copies now and thirty seven languages, I think,
Speaker 1: and has become quite well known. Your work with indigenous
Speaker 1: people is a lot of what your most recent book,
Speaker 1: Touching the Jaguar is also about. And so I want
Speaker 1: to make sure we have time to get into some
Speaker 1: of that wisdom that you've gotten from the indigenous people.
Speaker 1: And also then I'd like to transition to some of
Speaker 1: what can we do normal people to participate in life economies.
Speaker 1: Like to start that discussion by asking, what is touching
Speaker 1: the Jaguar? Why is that the title of the book?
Speaker 1: What does that mean? You know? When I was a
Speaker 1: piece co of volunteer, I was out in the Amazon
Speaker 1: and I get very sick. I couldn't keep any food down.
Speaker 1: I was dying. I couldn't leave. It was in three
Speaker 1: days of incredibly difficult hiking through dense jungle, etcetera. To
Speaker 1: get to the nearest medical facility. A shaman in the
Speaker 1: Schwak cultures, an indigenous culture in the Amazon that I
Speaker 1: was working with hunters and gatherers, offered to heal me.
Speaker 1: And I had no idea what a shaman was. Graduated
Speaker 1: from business school, and it was very fierce. Look you
Speaker 1: get these tattoos, you know, like movies, right, I didn't.
Speaker 1: They had any choice. So that night I had this
Speaker 1: traumatic healing. It took me on the vision quest and
Speaker 1: I've got my eyes closed and he's chanting, and I
Speaker 1: see this a morphous form in front of me, and
Speaker 1: the shaman yells touched the jaguar. Well, it's nighttime, dark,
Speaker 1: the middle of the jungle. Out my eyes. I look
Speaker 1: all around, like, where's the jaguar, where's the jaguar? And
Speaker 1: he says, no, no, no, close your eyes and see
Speaker 1: the jaguar. So I did, and this a morphous form
Speaker 1: shape shifted into the face of a jaguar that said,
Speaker 1: and it sounded like my mother's voice, the food and
Speaker 1: drink will kill you. And I realized at that moment
Speaker 1: that you know, I'm eating some very strange foods in
Speaker 1: the jungles scrimming white grubs like that's the delicacy for
Speaker 1: these people. You know, it's actually high protein. And they
Speaker 1: don't drink water all the rivers because they know the
Speaker 1: rivers that got organic matter and dead animals in them.
Speaker 1: And so the women make a kind of beer called
Speaker 1: cheat it by chewing and spitting manioc root. It's spit beer,
Speaker 1: and then you can add water to it because it's
Speaker 1: alcoholic and it's you know, it's safe to drink. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm drinking a lot of this spit here because you've
Speaker 1: got to rehydrate, and there wasn't any paria. And so
Speaker 1: on this vision quest, I see that when I eat
Speaker 1: and drink these things, I hear a voice saying it'll
Speaker 1: kill you. At the same time, I saw how incredibly
Speaker 1: robust and healthy the char are. These are hundreds and gatherers,
Speaker 1: and men have legs that would make Olympic soccer stars jealous,
Speaker 1: you know um. And they live to be very old
Speaker 1: if they don't die in a hunting accident. And so
Speaker 1: in that night, that vision quest, I saw that it
Speaker 1: wasn't the food and drink killing me. It was my perception,
Speaker 1: my mindset. And after that the shaman told me that
Speaker 1: my payment to them would be to be as apprentice.
Speaker 1: One of the first things he taught me said, you know,
Speaker 1: when we say touching the jaguar, what we mean is
Speaker 1: you've got to face your fears. You've got to face
Speaker 1: the things that are holding you back, that are keeping
Speaker 1: you from being healthy or keeping you from doing what
Speaker 1: you want to do in the world. If you run
Speaker 1: from what's holding you back, in this case, this roy
Speaker 1: saying it will kill you. The jaguar will chase you.
Speaker 1: But if you go out and touch the jaguar, it
Speaker 1: gives you the energy and the know how to change
Speaker 1: your perception. And when you change your perception, you change
Speaker 1: your reality. Reality is molded by our perceptions. This is
Speaker 1: a shaman deep in the jungle saying this, And as
Speaker 1: it turns out, you know, I mean, that's the basis
Speaker 1: for modern psychotherapy, for advertising, for for marketing, for politics,
Speaker 1: quantum physics. You name it as human beings that perceptions
Speaker 1: control our reality. Yeah, you talk about this idea that
Speaker 1: human reality really is molded by our perceptions. And in
Speaker 1: order to change ourselves of the world, we've got to
Speaker 1: breakthrough barriers that hold us in old ways. Of thinking
Speaker 1: and acting. And the shaman, I think was his name,
Speaker 1: was how you process. The word he used was artum
Speaker 1: artum yes, yes, which in schwar it really means the
Speaker 1: power of nature, the power of life. It's the great
Speaker 1: strength that you get when you touch the jaguar, because
Speaker 1: the idea is in touching the jaguar, you are actually
Speaker 1: absorbing aguard's energy. Yeah, the jaguar. You're able to look
Speaker 1: at things with a new perception. So there's a reality
Speaker 1: spit beer and if my perception is it's killing me,
Speaker 1: it takes me to a perception where I'm getting sick.
Speaker 1: That same reality spit beer and screaming right grubs, and
Speaker 1: I realize, oh wow, this is local, organic food and
Speaker 1: it's actually very high in nutrition. It's making these people healthy. Therefore,
Speaker 1: to make me healthy, it takes me to a new reality,
Speaker 1: which is I am healthy. And if we look at
Speaker 1: today's world, the death economy is based on the perception
Speaker 1: of maximizing short term profits and short term materialistic consumption.
Speaker 1: If we change that perception and say, hey, the goal
Speaker 1: of business and the goal of individuals should be to
Speaker 1: maximize long term benefits for people in nature, for all
Speaker 1: of us, we move to a new reality, which is
Speaker 1: a life economy. That's a regenerative economy. That's an economy
Speaker 1: that pays people to clean up pollution and regeneral destroyed
Speaker 1: environments and recycle and create new technologies that don't ravage
Speaker 1: the earth. So it's all just about touching that jaguar.
Speaker 1: We're all afraid of change, but we know we got
Speaker 1: to change. We know this isn't working now, and the
Speaker 1: virus has really taught us this. We touch that jaguere,
Speaker 1: we can change our perception about what it means to
Speaker 1: be successful. It's not about just being successful in the
Speaker 1: short term, it's about the longer term. One of the
Speaker 1: things in the book that's really interesting is you work
Speaker 1: with these different cultures in the Amazon that traditionally our
Speaker 1: enemies of each other, but over time that starts to change.
Speaker 1: It's a great point, Eric, thank you. When I was
Speaker 1: first there in the late sixties early seventies, the Chua
Speaker 1: we're fighting the Achua and the Warranty and the Apoda
Speaker 1: and the Quetchua, and there were all these nations were
Speaker 1: fighting each other and and the reason was because they're
Speaker 1: hunters and gatherers and they need a territory and if
Speaker 1: somebody's encroaching upon their territory, they fight them. And these
Speaker 1: of small battles, usually not big wars, but sometimes we
Speaker 1: were fairly large but fighting each other. And then the
Speaker 1: oil companies came in. It was Texico in the late
Speaker 1: nineties sixties. Texico came into that area of the northern
Speaker 1: Amazon region of Ecuador and created have a huge amounts
Speaker 1: of pollution. They just lost a nine and a half
Speaker 1: billion to all the lawsuit of the Ecuadorians over this
Speaker 1: pollution that they caused. And so the indigenous people changed
Speaker 1: their processtion. They went on and they touched their jaguar.
Speaker 1: They would say that the jaguar was our neighbors are
Speaker 1: our enemy. That was the perception. They changed the perception, say, no,
Speaker 1: our neighbors are our brothers and sisters, and we've all
Speaker 1: got to come together to stop the real enemy, which
Speaker 1: is the oil companies. And so they did. They came
Speaker 1: together and they formed federations. They asked me to come in,
Speaker 1: and they asked the nonprofits to come in, and I
Speaker 1: mentioned pay for lawyers to do this in the courts
Speaker 1: as well as demonstrations and even sometimes attacking oil platforms,
Speaker 1: but they came together and then they had to touch
Speaker 1: another jaguar. They had to realize is that the real
Speaker 1: enemy was not the oil companies. It was the dream,
Speaker 1: as they put it, the perception of the world that
Speaker 1: needed oil us and the oil was being drilled because
Speaker 1: we have a perception of this. As they put it,
Speaker 1: you have a dream of large buildings and heavy industry
Speaker 1: and lots of cars, and now that dream is destroying
Speaker 1: the planet as we know it. And so they then
Speaker 1: reached out and touched that jaguar, said we get to
Speaker 1: go to people we most fear, and that was USO
Speaker 1: and again then work with us these nonprofits Pachamama Alliance
Speaker 1: Dream Change to change the dream of the modern world.
Speaker 1: And that's the goal of these nonprofits as we've got
Speaker 1: programs in something like ninety countries now that are trying
Speaker 1: to bring this message out that we've got to turn
Speaker 1: the death economy into a life economy. Essentially, that's it.
Speaker 1: So it was a great example of how these indigenous
Speaker 1: people kept realizing that they had to touch the jaguar
Speaker 1: and change their perception and when they did, it change
Speaker 1: their reality. So let's move into the question that a
Speaker 1: lot of people have when they hear something like the story,
Speaker 1: and so many of our listeners we think about economic destruction,
Speaker 1: climate destruction, all the issues. We go, Okay, I want
Speaker 1: to do something. Where do people start? What's the path
Speaker 1: that you recommend for for starting to change these death
Speaker 1: economies which were all a part of into more of
Speaker 1: a life economy. You know, there's an overall answer to that,
Speaker 1: and it's one that I think we all pretty much
Speaker 1: understand that we are to shop consciously, but I'd like
Speaker 1: to say that that's much bigger than that. It's not
Speaker 1: good enough just to shop consciously. You need to change perceptions.
Speaker 1: So if you decide not to buy Nike's shoes because
Speaker 1: they've got I'm just using as example, because they don't
Speaker 1: pay their workers in Indonesia or China fair wage, you
Speaker 1: need to let Nike know, And then you need to
Speaker 1: let all of your social networking people know and ask
Speaker 1: them to send a message to Nike saying, hey, I
Speaker 1: love your shoes, but I'm not going to buy it anymore.
Speaker 1: To you pay your workers in China or Indonesia fair wage.
Speaker 1: And if you find a company that you can buy
Speaker 1: better products from, let them know why you're buying from them,
Speaker 1: so to get that perception out there. You know, consumer
Speaker 1: movements can be so easy these days with social networking.
Speaker 1: You know, if we just keep letting our circles know
Speaker 1: and sending out messages and be nice. Nike, I love
Speaker 1: your product, but I'm not going to buy it anymore
Speaker 1: until you and get everybody you notice send that out
Speaker 1: and send and that has them to have everybody they
Speaker 1: know to send it out. And this has an impact.
Speaker 1: It has a huge impact because a lot of those
Speaker 1: executives in those companies, they want to do the right thing,
Speaker 1: but they've got to hear from their customers that customers
Speaker 1: have to push them to do that. But if we
Speaker 1: take this to another level, every one of us has
Speaker 1: a lot of power and we have a role to play.
Speaker 1: And I talked in the book about the daily practice
Speaker 1: or it could be once a week that takes less
Speaker 1: than ten minutes, that each one of us can do
Speaker 1: to to go into what what can I personally do?
Speaker 1: And it's based on five questions that the five questions
Speaker 1: that started are one, what do I most want to
Speaker 1: do with the rest of my life? I want to
Speaker 1: bring me my greatest satisfaction, my bliss, and I'll give
Speaker 1: a couple of examples. I would answer that question by saying,
Speaker 1: I want to write. I love to write, Eric, I
Speaker 1: love to write books. You know I've written. I've published
Speaker 1: ten books and written a few more that I ever
Speaker 1: dread to post. I love to write. And I have
Speaker 1: a friend who's a carpenter who would say I want
Speaker 1: to spend the rest of my life working with my
Speaker 1: hands in wood, kind of the opposite end of the writer.
Speaker 1: The second question is how do I do this in
Speaker 1: a way that helps other people? Can be one of
Speaker 1: the person or lots of other people. As a writer,
Speaker 1: I'd say, I'm going to write about transforming life economy
Speaker 1: into death economy, transforming fear into action to change your
Speaker 1: life in the world. That's what I want to do.
Speaker 1: I want to help people that way. My carpenter friend
Speaker 1: would say, I want to get people to build things
Speaker 1: using sustainable materials. And the third question then is what's
Speaker 1: holding me back? And as a writer, I might say, oh,
Speaker 1: I just don't have enough time. I know we need
Speaker 1: to write every day, but I don't have time. And
Speaker 1: the carpenter friend of mine might say, well, like people
Speaker 1: don't want to pay an additional price for sustainable materials.
Speaker 1: And so the fourth question then is when you touch
Speaker 1: that jaguar, how does it change your perception in your actions?
Speaker 1: And I would say, okay, so well I can I
Speaker 1: can get it about half an hour earlier every morning, right,
Speaker 1: or I can watch it how or less of television
Speaker 1: every night and write. And my carpenter friend would say,
Speaker 1: when I touched my jaguar, it says tell your clients
Speaker 1: that the added price is not a cost, it's an investment.
Speaker 1: They're investing in the future for themselves and their children
Speaker 1: in the world. And then the fifth question is what
Speaker 1: actions do we take? What does that drive me? And
Speaker 1: for a writer at you got a right, you know
Speaker 1: you got a right. And for the carpenter it's like, well,
Speaker 1: I gotta go out and build this cabinet using sustainable
Speaker 1: tears or this house, and I gotta tell them whoever
Speaker 1: you're building it for it, Look, you're investing in the
Speaker 1: future by doing this. And so five questions are what
Speaker 1: to bring me the most satisfaction? How do I help
Speaker 1: other people? And these are in the book incidentally, what's
Speaker 1: stopping me? What's the jaguar that's holding me back? What
Speaker 1: happens when I touch that jaguar, how does it change
Speaker 1: my perceptions? And what actions do I take? And I
Speaker 1: think those last three questions, what's the jaguar? How do
Speaker 1: I touch the jaguar? One of the actions I take?
Speaker 1: Those will change frequently, so as it right, Okay, I've
Speaker 1: set aside half an hour every morning and an hour
Speaker 1: every night. But now the next question is what are
Speaker 1: we going to write about? And then the question beyond that,
Speaker 1: what's the first sentence? But each time you do that,
Speaker 1: you reach a new level of higher conscienceness about yourself.
Speaker 1: You go deeper and deeper to your own satisfaction. So
Speaker 1: it's a process that's constantly evolving. And if we do
Speaker 1: it every day or even once a week, you know,
Speaker 1: you can get up in the morning for six or
Speaker 1: seven minutes just go into this little bit, may have
Speaker 1: it written down, and look at what you're gonna do
Speaker 1: during that day and commit to doing it. If we
Speaker 1: do that, we will get a better world for ourselves,
Speaker 1: else and for future generations. The way we spend our
Speaker 1: money is important, right. The companies that we give our
Speaker 1: money to matters. And then also not just voting with
Speaker 1: our dollar, but sharing why right, And how we live
Speaker 1: all of that. But it's not enough just to shop consciously,
Speaker 1: because you want to do that, but you also want
Speaker 1: to let the companies know. Speaking at a lot of
Speaker 1: international conferences, economic conferences, I was recently speaking at one
Speaker 1: in Russia about twelve thousand people, and this included a
Speaker 1: lot of CEOs from big American corporations as well as
Speaker 1: the presidents of countries. Putin was one of the other
Speaker 1: speakers there, etcetera. And you know, after I give my
Speaker 1: talk at the receptions that are always held in the
Speaker 1: evenings with some wine and cheese or cavier or whatever
Speaker 1: the Russians are serving that night, executives will come up
Speaker 1: to me and they'll say things like, you know, I
Speaker 1: really want to do the right thing. I've got grandchildren,
Speaker 1: I've get children and grandchildren. I want to make my
Speaker 1: company greener. But I know that if I lose half
Speaker 1: a percentage of market share or my stock price goes down,
Speaker 1: my major investors will fire me, and that replaced me
Speaker 1: as someone who only cares about stock prices or market share.
Speaker 1: So what I would ask of you is please spread
Speaker 1: the word out there to help people to send me
Speaker 1: lots of messages tweets. However, they want to send messages
Speaker 1: and get their networking circles to do this, and I
Speaker 1: want to hear things like, you know, we want to
Speaker 1: buy your product, but we won't until you do better.
Speaker 1: And if I get a hundred thousands of these messages,
Speaker 1: I can take them to our executive committee, to our
Speaker 1: major investors and tell them, Hey, these are our clients.
Speaker 1: We've got to listen to them. And so I think,
Speaker 1: you know, it's really important for people to understand the
Speaker 1: way this is moving. And before the pandemic, we were
Speaker 1: seeing some major changes in business, the Green New Deal,
Speaker 1: conscious capitalism, b corporations, benefit corporations. Back in August of
Speaker 1: two thousand, nineteen hundred and eighties, some odd executives of
Speaker 1: what's called the Business Roundtable, very very important executives and
Speaker 1: the biggest companies in the world came together and they
Speaker 1: basically say it, we can no longer just go for
Speaker 1: a short term stock crisis. They basically said, we've got
Speaker 1: to help create a life economy. And I think they
Speaker 1: meant it, but they have to be pushed. We, the consumers,
Speaker 1: the investors, the employees, all of us have to come
Speaker 1: together to push them. Yeah, yeah, And I think that's
Speaker 1: the jaguar that a lot of us faces. We feel
Speaker 1: like there's nothing we can do or that, you know,
Speaker 1: just being one person, we just fear that it won't matter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it does matter because we're not just one person.
Speaker 1: You know, we can we can organize, and that's always
Speaker 1: been powerful. I recall what Franklin Roosevelt at the end
Speaker 1: of World War Two. He was meeting with a bunch
Speaker 1: of labor leaders from the car industry, and at the
Speaker 1: end of the meeting he said to them, you know,
Speaker 1: I think you guys understand now that I'm on your side.
Speaker 1: I want to do what's the right thing for labor.
Speaker 1: But now you've got to go out there and get
Speaker 1: your rank and file to force me to do it,
Speaker 1: because that's the only way and get this through Congress
Speaker 1: is that I get your support. And I think that's
Speaker 1: that's so relevant today that a lot of corporate executives
Speaker 1: feel this way. You know, I also have to say
Speaker 1: that there are sociopathic corporate executives who don't give a dam,
Speaker 1: but they're not driven by profit. They're driven by success,
Speaker 1: which is based on a perception. And as long as
Speaker 1: our perception is short term profits are are success or
Speaker 1: drive success or what defines success. That's what will drive
Speaker 1: the sociopaths. But if we can turn that around and say, no,
Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna put on the cover of Fortune magazine,
Speaker 1: Time Magazine, and so on and so forth, the executives
Speaker 1: that are creating long term benefits for all of us
Speaker 1: that are really buying into this green new deal, the
Speaker 1: conscious capitalism benefit corporations, etcetera. And when we start honoring
Speaker 1: them and when business schools hold them out as the icons,
Speaker 1: then things turn around. And the only way that's going
Speaker 1: to happen is if you and I and all your
Speaker 1: listeners get involved in this and understand that we do
Speaker 1: have the power to turn this around. So you know,
Speaker 1: we've got two things to do. Want is to answer
Speaker 1: those five questions I mentioned and really push forward with
Speaker 1: with our individual agendas. And that may include this, or
Speaker 1: it may be additional to the idea that we also
Speaker 1: need to be conscious of how we shop and get
Speaker 1: organized with the people who were buying from, know why
Speaker 1: we're buying from them. Are the ones that we're not
Speaker 1: buying from. Know why we're not buying from them? This
Speaker 1: is very, very important there's something else you said in
Speaker 1: the book that I thought was interesting. You were saying
Speaker 1: that it's important to start telling a new story, which
Speaker 1: is to look for the good news that's happening, the
Speaker 1: good things that are happening, and to make sure those
Speaker 1: are getting shared and amplified. And you added to that
Speaker 1: something I thought was really interesting, because you said, even
Speaker 1: if we're tempted to see those things as greenwashing or
Speaker 1: token gestures, that it's still really important to share those
Speaker 1: stories and believe in them because they helped to change
Speaker 1: the overall narrative. Yeah, once people start to change that perception,
Speaker 1: even if it's for the wrong reasons, it has a
Speaker 1: mushrooming effect. And I think you're telling the book the
Speaker 1: story about a good friend of mine now who's a
Speaker 1: friend now, who, in order to make her neighbors think
Speaker 1: that she was an environmentalist, began to hang her clothes
Speaker 1: out to dry on a line outside her house rather
Speaker 1: than using the dryer. And she did it, you know,
Speaker 1: to please her neighbors. Basically you look like she's a
Speaker 1: good person. But she said that kind of started, and
Speaker 1: now she's devoted her life to developing programs that how
Speaker 1: people understand the importance of being environmentally sensitive. But it
Speaker 1: all started by hanging her clothes out for the wrong reasons.
Speaker 1: But perhaps you may think that Walmart is just greenwashing
Speaker 1: when they start having organic foods or doing various things
Speaker 1: like that, but it has a big impact ultimately once
Speaker 1: they said it may be done for that reason to
Speaker 1: begin with, but that has an impact, and so we
Speaker 1: should encourage companies to do that more and more. Yea,
Speaker 1: I love that idea of sort of looking for the
Speaker 1: good news that's out there, because we get very overwhelmed
Speaker 1: by how big the problem seems and how insurmountable. And
Speaker 1: I think that finding things that are changing helps us
Speaker 1: to fight off despair, because despair is no good. Despair
Speaker 1: causes us to give up right right. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think the coronavirus has been a major teacher because
Speaker 1: it's it's shown us that we can change and we
Speaker 1: may not like the changes that we have to make sometimes,
Speaker 1: but they can turn around and come to our advantage.
Speaker 1: So I know so many people who at the beginning
Speaker 1: were very upset by being more isolated and so on it,
Speaker 1: but in the process they figured out that, well, now
Speaker 1: that I'm spending less time going to the office and
Speaker 1: I'm doing it online instead. I can also have more
Speaker 1: time to read the books I wanted to read, or
Speaker 1: to maybe to write a book, or to learn to
Speaker 1: play the flute of the piano, or spend more time
Speaker 1: with my family. I don't have to spend all that
Speaker 1: time commuting. Uh. And that's just one example I think
Speaker 1: we've all learned. And I was supposed to do a
Speaker 1: big book tour all around the United States and to Europe,
Speaker 1: and I've done a lot of it virtually, and that's
Speaker 1: actually meant that we could have a lot more people
Speaker 1: because of what I'm doing. A book tour in a
Speaker 1: bookstore in Miami, Florida, for example, of which I've done
Speaker 1: in the past, and this did in the past people known,
Speaker 1: people came lived in the neighborhood. But this time I
Speaker 1: had people from Europe and Africa, people who have been
Speaker 1: to Miami and signed up on that they've been to
Speaker 1: that bookstore and signed their email list. So you know,
Speaker 1: we've we've found that there's some there's some opportunities that
Speaker 1: are created. So we've we've had to change, and we've
Speaker 1: seen that we can change, and we've also seen how
Speaker 1: change has impacted the world a lot less pollution. We
Speaker 1: can see those satellite images over China and other places
Speaker 1: how we've cut back, so we're learning. This has been
Speaker 1: a teaching experience for us. Yeah, it sure has well. John,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for taking the time to come
Speaker 1: on the show. It's been a real pleasure to talk
Speaker 1: with you. I really enjoyed the book, and I love
Speaker 1: the work that you're doing, and I'm happy that we
Speaker 1: got it's to do this. Thank you. Eric. I'm so
Speaker 1: happy too, and you're welcome, and I just want to
Speaker 1: say I deeply appreciate the work you're doing and your show,
Speaker 1: and thank God that you're doing it, and thank you
Speaker 1: for doing it. Keep it up. Thank you. If what
Speaker 1: you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making
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