Thursday, April 8th 2010

Interviews:  Joe Rogan

Slaughtering Sacred Cows With Joe Rogan

By Johnny Firecloud

Joe Rogan is a rare breed of human. The stand-up comic, MMA enthusiast and former host of Fear Factor is an intelligent, well-spoken analyst of the sociological tides, a rare cerebral comic who can jump from a ringside UFC announcer’s seat to the stage, where he strips “conventional wisdom” to the bone and leaves audiences contemplating existentialism while laughing their asses off.

Rogan’s fuel is the social taboo, the ugly underbelly of distraction and complacency that allows proud idiots like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck to significantly impact our societal direction. There aren’t many comics out there confidently kicking wisdom that’s in league with Malcolm Gladwell & Sam Harris one minute, and defending the comic craft the next by putting Carlos Mencia in his place as a joke-stealing hack.

His new comedy album is called Talking Monkeys In Space, a CD/DVD release in which Rogan voraciously dissects religious dogma, brings well-researched and hilarious musings on everything from human evolution to psychedelics and brings a no-bullshit flavor brand that takes no prisoners and forces viewers to examine our own sacred cows, simply by outlining how indefensibly stupid most of them are.

We caught up with Joe earlier this week to discuss the Catholic Church, drugs, conspiracy theories and the cheerleading of proud ignorance in America, among other hot-button issues. This is not your typical product-hawking Q&A session. In fact, this is the more controversial half of an incendiary conversation that lasted over an hour – read part one here.

Antiquiet: How close you do you think we are to realizing Terrence McKenna’s Ultimate Novelty concept, the one catalyst that irreversibly changes everything about our civilization? I’d been considering the 2012 doomsday concept as that focal point, but really it seems as if the internet has become that thing, or a precursor to it. A perfect example of its impact is the widespread awareness of all that’s happening in the Catholic Church. The internet could be the pebble pushed over the mountaintop for the downfall of religion as we know it..

Joe Rogan: Yeah, but look what’s happening. Nothing. It’s still gonna be there. These fucking zombies, man… There’s a really intelligent dude on my message board who I’ve been going back and forth with. And he was raised Catholic. For one reason or another he’s not willing to admit that Catholicism is a cult, and I’m like ‘dude, they’re all cults.’ And he argued that the people do question the leadership, and they’re very upset at these priests that are fucking these kids, and so on. And I’m like ‘Really? Well how come we’re not killing them? ‘Cause that’s what you really should be doing.’

You fuck my kid, I’m gonna cut your head off. And that’s how it should be. It should be real simple. When you’ve got a cult of kid fuckers, and people are taking them seriously, that’s one of the craziest aspects of this life – that the Catholic religion has any pull whatsoever in a civilized community with the internet, with the culture and all the access to information that we have, fuckin’ wireless internet on your goddamn cellphone. And yet this cult of kid fuckers still gets meetings with world leaders. Our tax dollars pay to fly these fucking pedophiles all over the world. When the pope visits, we pay for that shit.

Antiquiet: He also has diplomatic immunity, so he’s legally untouchable.

Joe Rogan: And we have to pay to protect him! It’s fuckin nuts. And that guy has been guilty of shielding pedophiles. Personally guilty. It’s fuckin’ incredible.

Antiquiet: I just don’t see how this can just go away and quiet down. They’re digging themselves even deeper now, comparing their “struggle” to Jewish persecution and so on.

Joe Rogan: (laughs) Right. Comparing their struggle to the holocaust. Can you imagine? How crazy is that? We’re talking about fucking genocide! They’re comparing people criticizing kid fucking to genocide. I mean… wow. That’s how crazy it is. That’s how entitled they feel. I grew up Catholic. I went to Catholic school for first grade, and dude it was horrifying. It was just the most brutal, joyless, negative, constantly fear-mongering… everything about it was horrifying. Evil fucking cunts. All of ‘em. Every single one of ‘em, man. The whole thing is a mess.

People say ‘Oh, the Catholic religion does all these great things, all these charitable things…’ No. Human beings do charitable things. It has nothing to do with this nonsense cult. Just because someone’s done something good with some of the money that’s been extorted from some of these poor fucks that wanna believe there’s an invisible man in the clouds watching everything you do…

Antiquiet: Where do you stand on the existence of God?

Joe Rogan: I’m not anti-God. I’m not opposed to the notion that there’s some sort of a deity, or that instead of a deity being one thing… We always envision God as this individual with his finger on all the buttons. It’s probably way more complicated than that. It’s probably that everything is God. It’s probable that there’s a divine order and system to the entire universe, to the entire dimension that we live in, and that it all moves in this very particular order, and it moves towards goodness. Positive energy is reinforced by more positive energy. Positive actions are rewarded with more positive things. That karma and all that stuff is real, and that’s what God really is. God really is love and energy that is possible. That’s why you’re supposed to fight against shit like Catholicism. This isn’t anti-God. If anything is anti-God, it’s the Catholic church.

Antiquiet:: Speaking of a controversial issue you can relate to, marijuana legalization is on the ballot in California this November. What are your thoughts?

Joe Rogan: Well the idea that it’s 2010 and this is still a subject of debate is one of the most ridiculous things about our culture. I mean, it’s not killing anybody, and it’s beneficial. It’s not just beneficial physically, it helps people with glaucoma, it helps people going through chemotherapy, it helps with people’s appetites, helps people sleep, insomnia, ADD, there’s so many things it helps with. But the most important thing is that there’s no drawbacks! There’s no reason to keep it illegal. Everybody keeps wailing about the children, the children, but check it: You’ve got two groups of kids. One group of kids is on crystal meth and cigarettes and alcohol, and another group of kids are on pot. Which direction do you want to go in? I’m going with the pot kids. They’re giggling, and they’re probably not going to get anything done, but Jesus fucking Christ there’s worse things in the world. And this whole notion of ‘getting something done’ is pretty ridiculous in the first place. At the end of the day you don’t really get anything done. You live, you die, and the world moves on. It all just keeps moving.

Antiquiet: It’s amazing that it’s such a hot-button issue after all this time. I’ve been a smoker for 16 years, and never once has it made me black out, forget who I was, throw up, get violent or crash my car. I’ve never fucked someone by accident or gotten a DUI. As a substitute for alcohol, it’s served me well.

Joe Rogan: That’s why you’re so interesting to talk to. There’s something about marijuana that changes the way people view the world. It opens up new areas of perception and makes you reevaluate your model of the world, and that’s one of the reasons why it’s illegal. The social consequences of people questioning everything about the government and everything about our culture are huge. It makes you a terrible sheep. It makes it much more difficult to swallow bullshit. You ever watch a really bad movie when you’re high? You see how bad the acting is and you’re like oh my God. It’s just one of the best bullshit detectors in the world. If you’re not sure how you feel about someone or something or whether someone’s full of shit, talk to them when you’re stoned. Suddenly all their bullshit just becomes so glaringly obvious. It’s really an amazing plant. It’s one of the most beneficial plants for human beings that’s ever been discovered! It’s incredible that it’s illegal. It’s fucking incredible!

Antiquiet: If you show any enthusiasm about it, you’re automatically in the Cheech & Chong group. You’re not taken seriously.

Joe Rogan: People harp on it all the time, they’ll say I exaggerate it or ask ‘Why are you focusing all the time so much on weed?’ I’m like, do you not understand how important it is? It’s really important for the attitude of our culture. It’s a gigantic catalyst for thinking, it really is. And yeah, it can be something that makes people lazy. It can be something that people fixate on and it winds up sabotaging their lives. Well guess what? Anything can be! Masturbation can be. All these personal choice issues.

What we’re missing in this life is a balance. I think that’s what we’re missing in our culture. If you were writing a story about a culture in its last days… take Rome, the stories of people throwing up to gorge themselves even more, the vomitoriums, the sex with little boys, it’s just the most sinful, disgusting and gluttonous indulgence. The worst aspects of human behavior. And all that is is symptomatic of a complete imbalance.

I think that’s where we are now. We’ve been turned into infants by our own culture. It’s supported all this ‘rah rah rah USA’ bullshit, but look at this fucking hero of the right, Sarah Palin. John McCain… this dude’s been around forever. He was locked in a fucking cage in Vietnam. He’s been around. But what is he, 70 fucking years old? He’s an old ass dude who’s seen a lot of things. Meanwhile, he’s giving this bullshit speech yesterday after she introduces him, saying ‘I have a feeling that Sarah Palin’s gong to be around for a long, long time.’ And everybody cheers.

If that’s not fucking terrifying, than what is? Is that cocksucker gonna live forever? Talk about someone not getting the big picture. Do you not understand what’s happening here? That’s not good, the fact that she’s going to be around for a long time. Someone who doesn’t even read? Someone who can’t tell you a book or name a magazine or newspaper she reads on a regular basis? When that’s good, when that’s the forefront of american culture and political thinking? That’s terrifying.

Antiquiet: That anti-intellectualism ties in with that. It points directly to a proud lack of curiosity, and frankly the thinly veiled racism brewing within the Tea Party, within the hardcore Christian conservative right. It’s spreading, and it’s not getting better.

Joe Rogan: There’s definitely an anger towards Obama that I’ve never seen directed towards a white president before. And the crazy shit is that nobody has any idea what they’re angry about. Their arguments don’t stand up to the thinnest questioning. Jeanine Garofalo said something about how all tea-baggers are racist, and I don’t think it helps to give a big blanket statement like that. But I do think that there’s something about this movement that’s not normal. The anger they have is not coming from an honest place. There’s something that they’re mad at, and it’s not just what he’s doing.

When they rise up and they’re putting signs up saying ‘We want government honesty!’ and all that shit, they don’t even know what the fuck they’re talking about. They’re so mad at something, and I think racism has something to do with it. I think that is at the heart of a lot of it for these people. I don’t know, man, it’s a scary time. It’s a scary time of change.

Antiquiet: It is, and religion’s playing a greater role than ever in our lifetimes, in the pounding of the drum.

Joe Rogan: As it should be, right? I mean, if you want to get retards on your side, the best thing you can do is pander to their retarded shit. There’s nothing more retarded than an invisible man that lives in the sky, and Jewish zombies, you know? All this chaos is crazy. 2010 and we’re basing our lives on ancient shit written by people who thought the world was flat, the sun was 17 miles away and you could beat your women, it was OK to own slaves, and so on.

Antiquiet: And that’s on our money.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, it is, along with all sorts of masonic symbols. Like, what is this, man? What the fuck is this?

Antiquiet: Right. We could get into the illuminati and all that, but things just seem to be spiraling out of control on a much bigger level.

Joe Rogan: I think there’s certainly a bunch of people conspiring to make a bunch of money, and to do it amorally and against the will of the people that are supposedly voting. But I don’t think there’s one gigantic group controlling it all. There’s no way they could organize that. It’s not possible.

Antiquiet: All the same, it’s no accident that every war since World War II has been fought in a third-world country.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. Conspiracies are absolutely real. And that’s a tragedy in our culture, the term ‘conspiracy theory’ has been allowed to taint legitimate ideas and legitimate subjects for debate. sensible people don’t want to be lumped in with that. all you have to do is label something a conspiracy theory and logical, normal people will back up and back off without examining the plausibility of the debate.

If you pay attention to history, conspiracies are very, very real. Not just nutty ones, unprovable ones, but real ones like Enron. Like Operation Northwoods, a plan drafted and signed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962 and vetoed by Kennedy. They were going to attack American civilians and blame it on Cuba, to start a war with Cuba.

Antiquiet: They were going to blow up a jetliner and bomb soldiers, right?

Joe Rogan: They had a plan to attack Guantanamo Bay. They were going to lob mortars at US fucking soldiers, and they were prepared to take on US casualties. They were prepared to fucking kill Americans so that we could get excited about killing Cubans.

Antiquiet: It all sounds very familiar these days…

Joe Rogan: It does sound very familiar. And that’s why when people are so quick to dismiss claims that 9/11 was an inside job and so on… Yeah, it does sound kinda nutty, especially with the more wild concepts, but you’ve gotta realize that the government has been involved in disimformation and spreading lies along with the real information forever. They’ve been doing it forever! The way they manage the news. The way they manage information being distributed to people.

How about Operation Midnight Climax? That’s a real conspiracy where the CIA was responsible for distributing LSD to unknowing people. And the way they did it was by operating brothels in New York and in San Francisco. And they’d dose up these guys who came in to get laid. They did it because they couldn’t get volunteers that were willing to sit through their LSD experiments anymore.

Antiquiet: Holy shit.

Joe Rogan: Man, they dosed an entire town in France! It just came out recently that this is true. A bunch of people died and went fucking crazy. This shit happens, man.

Antiquiet: The culture climate would definitely change if we took equal attention that we give Tiger Woods and Jesse James and directed it to what the hell we’re doing when the leader of Afghanistan is threatening to join the fucking Taliban, the same day we’re admitting to shooting these Afghani women and digging the bullets out of their bodies to hide the evidence. Then there’s the Wikileaks video. Yet as it stands, all I’m seeing on TV is that Kim Kardashian might be fucking some new guy, and some spotlight whore with 8 kids is dancing badly with other celebrities.

Joe Rogan: For sure we’re sheltered by the news. It’s very selectively distributed to people. And I just read that this morning, too. It’s pretty incredible. What’s also pretty incredible is that the brother of the president of Afghanistan has actually been on the CIA payroll for years. And, he’s a known poppy dealer. He’s neck deep in the heroin business. Also there’s the fact that a plane that had been to Guantanamo Bay on several occasions crashed in Mexico with four tons of cocaine in it a little over a year ago. Nobody talks about that. Reuters was the only fuckin’ news source that covered it. It wasn’t on CNN, it wasn’t on Fox News, it wasn’t anywhere! And that’s a fucking gigantic story, when the CIA’s been accused of selling cocaine and drugs in this country for decades. Forever. And everyone’s like ‘no, that’s ridiculous. That’s conspiracy nonsense.’ But here’s fucking evidence. Here’s a plane that had been to Guantanamo Bay, a fuckin’ CIA torture plane, filled with four tons of cocaine. And it crashes, and nobody ever talks about it. That’s a gigantic story, man.

Antiquiet: I don’t think the American public can really grasp that information and process it, when for so long the most important thing to the collective is who’s going to win American Idol.

Joe Rogan: Or fuckin’ Tiger Woods, right. You would almost think that the whole thing was orchestrated, like the aliens are gonna come piling out of Kim Kardashian’s ass at a certain point when they realize we’ve bought the whole thing hook, line and sinker. The more information we have access to, instead of enlightening us it’s illuminating the chaos. It’s making things much crazier.

Antiquiet: Doesn’t leave much hope for a happy existence.

Joe Rogan: The hope is to find a group of people you enjoy spending time with, surround yourself with people that you love, and affect them. That’s the microcosm, your friends and your circle. Be positive, surround yourself with positivity and understand that we’re all in this together. This is a gigantic super organism. That’s what the human race is – we’re not just a group of individuals working together. No, you are me and I am you. That’s why we can’t be apart. That’s why the world thing they can do in prison is to put you in solitary confinement. You’d think that in prison, the last thing you’d want to do is be around a bunch of scumbags and murderers. But that’s literally the worst thing they can do to you, is to separate you from those people. Because you’ll get sad, you’ll go crazy. We literally need to be connected with human beings or we will lose our fucking minds. That’s a physiological thing. You need to be around other people or you will go crazy.

Antiquiet: A kid gets inspired by your approach and wants to start changing his life for the better. What advice would you give him?

Joe Rogan: Number one, you’ve got to manage your biology. And when I say manage your biology you have to manage both your body and your environment your body moves to. It’s going to sound like real simple shit, but clean up your life. If you have any addictions, get rid of ‘em. Take care of your health. Start eating healthy food. Start taking vitamins. Start exercising. If you don’t like exercising, go on walks. Do yoga. Do something to manage your body so that your body is giving you an even view of the world. Cause for many people, just the act of moving through life is painful because their bodies are out of shape, because they’re unhealthy. That forces them to react to life in an unbalanced way. It’s very difficult once you’re in a bad place to bring yourself to a healthy place. Much more easy to start from a healthy place, be raised by healthy people and find yourself in that environment as an adult.

You’re not going to be able to see the world clearly, you’re not going to be able to see your own shortcomings clearly if you’re just constantly dealing with unnecessary bullshit. So take care of your biology, take care of your health and be honest. Be honest about everything, be honest about yourself, your wants, your needs and desires. Don’t silence that voice inside. You want that voice to be as clear as possible.

That’s one of the most beautiful things about the isolation tank. I’m constantly pushing this on people – for people reading this that haven’t heard about it, it’s this tank that’s filled with water and 800 pounds of salt in it, so it’s buoyant. And what you do is lie in this water that’s heated to the temperature of your skin, and basically what happens when you’re in it is that you have no sensory input. You’re lying in the water, floating completely weightlessly, and once you close the lid it’s totally dark, you don’t hear anything or see anything. There’s literally no sensory input whatsoever. And in the absence of sensory input you literally find yourself in a place that’s not available anywhere else in the world. And when you do that, you really hear the voice completely crystal clear. And you get to see your life almost untethered from your body. It’s your mind without any physical input whatsoever. It literally is your inner guiding voice with complete clarity. And it’s a very important environment for people to understand what they truly want, what’s bothering them, weighing on them and so on. It helps to guide you in the direction you should be going.

Antiquiet: Where can people try it?

Joe Rogan: The best place to try it out is in Venice, at a place called Float Lab. That’s the guy that did my tank. Tell him I sent you. If you go to floatlab.com, he makes custom tanks and you can learn more about it. He’s really a great guy. An eccentric guy, but he’s really great and he makes the best tanks. And he’s also working on some new crazy stuff to deliver video information while you’re inside the tank, because he thinks that in the absence of any sensory input you can learn far quicker than outside of that. He’s working on all kinds of stuff like that with UCLA and some other schools.

There’s also a place in burbank called Soothing Solutions. If there’s anybody reading this who’s interested in looking into it, if you just google “where to float,” there’s a website that has places all across the world where you can go and try this out and learn more about it. I can’t recommend it enough.

Antiquiet: How often do you go in?

Joe Rogan: All the time. All the time. It really depends on how my schedule is and how much time I’m going to have to really sit down and think about it. Because it’s not like something you do and then you get out of and you’re done, like ‘oh, I did two hours, I’m good.’ No. When you get out there’s all this thinking that has to be done, this evaluating.

Antiquiet: Sounds very much like a mushroom trip.

Joe Rogan: it’s very much like that. And it’s natural. If there was a pill that could put you in the same place that the isolation tank puts you in, for sure it would be illegal. No doubt about it.

Find more on Joe Rogan at JoeRogan.net, learn more about Joe’s isolation tank here, and don’t forget to pick up a copy of Talking Monkeys In Space.