Hello freak I'm getting<br>fascinated by the way your brain works<br>because for you it's important that the<br>person want to wear the suit and I have<br>a feeling that that's sort that's<br>symbolic of how you feel about life<br>itself. Like the person has to want to<br>be doing what they're doing. They have<br>to want to wear that suit. It has to be<br>an authentic gesture. Um did you ever<br>read a book called Extreme Ownership<br>written by a couple of Navy Seals? Uh<br>that's Joo Willink, right? No. No. Oh,<br>that's uh I think it is. Is it Is it<br>Jaco's book? Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah,<br>I've had Jaco on the show a bunch of<br>times. Important book. Well, I've had<br>him on once before. What am I talking<br>about? A bunch of times, right? I've had<br>him once, but it's an important book.<br>Yes. Right now, there's lots of books<br>that have picked up on this theme, but<br>they were very eloquent about it. If you<br>don't own something, you're not the<br>boss. You have to take full<br>responsibility for everything that you<br>do. Why be<br>subservient? You must be the master of<br>your own kingdom.<br>I feel you. Makes a lot of sense. You've<br>got to own. You can't just walk into<br>things with your eyes half open. You got<br>to walk into things with your eyes fully<br>open. You got to know what you're<br>getting into. You have to take<br>possession of your life. Is this a<br>thought process that you have to<br>constantly reaffirm or is this cemented<br>in your It's exactly that. It's exactly<br>that. You drift on this point, right?<br>And it is whatever form of meditation or<br>mantra that you decide to<br>espouse, there needs to be some period<br>in your day where you<br>remember that there's a world out there<br>trying to tell you who you are. And<br>there's a world in here that's trying to<br>tell you who you are. Now, where do you<br>want to put your ex? Because the world<br>outside is very noisy and very tempting<br>and it has all the razatas. It has all<br>the tinsel and all the<br>glitter. It's got all the<br>toys. But that's because you don't think<br>you're enough in the first<br>place. If you don't think you're enough<br>in the first place, the whole idea of<br>the world to sell you stuff is first of<br>all they have to make you feel bad about<br>yourself less than in some way. And I<br>don't resent this system by the way. It<br>is the system.<br>But what's the expression about? Don't<br>hate don't hate the player, hate the<br>game. Don't hate the game. Love the game<br>because you're in it, mate. So, own the<br>game, accept the rules, and move on into<br>the rules. So, the world will try and<br>tell you who you are, and you have to<br>tell yourself who you are. And there's<br>this ongoing battle, and somehow there<br>needs to be a reconciliation between the<br>two. But in the end, you've got to have<br>all the eggs in your basket. There's<br>also an ongoing internal battle, though,<br>isn't there? There's the you that you<br>want people to think you are, and<br>there's the you who you are, and trying<br>to figure out like, how do I how do I<br>figure out who I am? Like, am do do I<br>have a correct assumption of how other<br>people are perceiving me and how I<br>actually am objectively, or am I<br>bullshitting the world with this suit<br>and pocket square?<br>Yeah, I would say it's exactly the<br>scenario that we're talking about. There<br>there's essentially only two two worlds.<br>There's the inner world of energy and<br>there's the outer world of energy.<br>There's there's two identities. One's<br>real, one's false. The external world is<br>I'm asking you to tell me who I am.<br>That's what we're all playing at. And as<br>soon as you start to play that game, we<br>run into all sorts of trouble. Call it<br>the ego, call it whatever you want to<br>call it. But that's the dynamic that<br>we're in. And somehow we have to<br>give ourselves enough confidence to<br>reassure ourselves that we are enough.<br>However, I enter the game because I've<br>got to move on in the world. I got to<br>crack on in the world and I know there's<br>loads of temptations that can come along<br>the way. So, I will own the suit. I'm<br>going to wear the suit, but I'm going to<br>own the suit. Now, I don't mean by<br>paying for it. I mean by owning it. It's<br>now my suit. It's my idea to put on this<br>suit. I have to personalize it in some<br>way. I have to understand a narrative<br>that allows me to own that suit and<br>thereby I put on my suit of armor and I<br>come out into the world and guess what?<br>I'm in a good time because I'm owning<br>the suit. Now, this is a very rockolid<br>philosophy. Is this something you've<br>ever written down?<br>It's what the essence of narrative I'm a<br>storyteller. The essence of narrative is<br>only about this dynamic. There is<br>nothing else in a story other than this<br>dynamic.<br>So the struggle<br>between other people's perceptions and<br>your own wants and desires and who you<br>truly are, your your significant real<br>self. That's it. That's all there is.<br>You tell me a story that didn't that we<br>engaged in that's famous that's not<br>about this journey. I'll give you an<br>example. The prodigal<br>son parable Christian seems religious<br>doesn't really make much sense. Do you<br>know the story? Sure, but why don't you<br>lay it out? So, there's a father. He has<br>two sons, an older son and a younger<br>son. And he says to them, "Who wants to<br>spend their inheritance?" The younger<br>says says, "Me, dad. I'll go and spend<br>it." And the younger son takes all the<br>dough. And he runs off and sniffs coke<br>off strippers tits for a number of years<br>until he<br>realizes this is getting pretty boring<br>and I'm in a lot of trouble. He ends up<br>feeding throwing food to pigs. That's<br>his job. And he can't even eat the food<br>that he gives to the pigs. At which<br>point he says, "Dad, will you take me<br>back?" Dad then goes to They don't meet<br>this somehow happens. Not through<br>telephones. It just happens. At which<br>point dad goes to the fatty calf, says,<br>"Kill the fatty cal." Older son says,<br>"Hold on, dad. What's going on? I've<br>stayed with you since the beginning.<br>I've been loyal to you and I hear the<br>stories of my younger brother coming<br>back who's been sniffing coke off<br>stripper's tits for the last god knows<br>how many years and you're prepared to<br>kill the fatty calf. What's the SP, Dad?<br>I want to know the<br>story. He says, "You're all right, son.<br>Don't worry about that. You take a<br>little side step a little step to the<br>side. You'll always be with me. You're a<br>good boy." At which point he goes out to<br>meet the prodical son, the wasteful son.<br>the wasteful sun returns and he says you<br>were lost and now you're found. That's<br>the end of the<br>story. It's quite hard to make sense of<br>that in a literal sense. You go, "Oh,<br>dad was a bit unfair and you should have<br>been kind to the older son cuz he never<br>ran off and did<br>anything." But the essence of the story<br>is that you are the<br>father. You are enough.<br>Your older son is your intellect. He<br>says, "Oh, don't do this. Don't do<br>that." He's trying to reconcile, make<br>sense of a prosaic and material world.<br>The younger son being the<br>wild feral entity that he is, wants to<br>go out in the world and find out what<br>it's all<br>about. So, in his<br>recklessness and sense of adventure, he<br>finds that he can't escape<br>himself. So he has to return to himself<br>and at which point he has to accept who<br>he is which point the intellect is left<br>out of the equation pretty much as the<br>older brother because he can't<br>understand the significance of the<br>journey of the wasteful brother. In the<br>end you have to leave yourself to<br>understand the value of yourself. You<br>have to lose stuff before you realize<br>that all the stuff that you're losing is<br>ephemeral and transitory. It's not<br>yours. You're enough. You're always<br>enough. But you've got to somehow<br>prostitute yourself before you realize<br>your own value. That is the essence of<br>all stories. That's deep, guy. Richie,<br>is that something you you think about<br>all the time or is this I mean, is this<br>like a cemented philosophy? Let So King<br>Arthur, the story you just made, a man<br>is a king has a son. The son um the<br>father is runs into a bit of aggro. The<br>son jumps into uh a little uh boat, a<br>little skillet, and he's not skillet.<br>That's what you cook your chops on,<br>isn't it? Yeah. Um skiff. A little<br>skiff. The skiff takes off down the<br>river. He gets found by prostitutes.<br>He's brought up in a brothel. He<br>understands the ways of the street. He<br>becomes a king on the street. He works<br>his way out the different ladders. And<br>then he pulls a sword from a stone at a<br>certain point in his life, a certain<br>point of evolution. And then from there,<br>he goes on to be the king. There's a bit<br>of a tossle all along the way, lots of<br>wrestling matches. In the end, he fights<br>down his demons and he becomes the king.<br>So what's the significance of this<br>narrative? That every man in himself is<br>aristocratic. That he is his own king.<br>He takes a sour into the material world,<br>has to climb up all the different runs<br>on the ladder and ultimately has to<br>return to himself. The significance of<br>the extraction from the sword from the<br>stone is the stone is the material<br>world. The material world which seems<br>all solid because it controls you whilst<br>you're projecting your sense of identity<br>upon it. The extraction of the stone is<br>taking back your own authority, your<br>own divinity, your own authority, your<br>own identity, whatever it is that you<br>got to call it, your own power. You're<br>no longer looking for a sense of self<br>outside of yourself. And then you have<br>to face the demons that you've created<br>in your history by facing them and<br>fighting them and owning them. You put<br>them in the face of who you are. And<br>that's a wrestling match. You'd have to<br>take away all these crutches. And that's<br>all that we struggle from in life is<br>taking away our crutches. Oh, please<br>tell me who I am. Oh, please give me a<br>bit more money so other people think I'm<br>clever. Oh, and then I'll have a nice<br>car and people think I'm clever. You got<br>to take away all these crutches and<br>stand as the man that you are and you're<br>liberated from your whole thing. That is<br>the story of King Arthur. But it's not<br>just the story of King Arthur. It's the<br>story of all narrative. Do you think<br>that most people that are watching the<br>film are going to get that though?<br>They're just going to get an<br>entertaining story. They're just going<br>to see a bunch of cool stuff, some drama<br>play out. But this is fascinating that<br>you're operating so many levels<br>underneath it. Yeah, but I'm a<br>storyteller. It's my business. So, if<br>I'm in the business of story, I might as<br>well understand story. And do you need<br>to understand all that? I'm not sure if<br>you do. Depends where you are on the<br>ladder. So, you can just go along, have<br>a nice bit of entertainment. Good guy,<br>bad guy, everything's literal. There's<br>nothing wrong with literalism. It is<br>what it is. It's the game. You can glean<br>what you can glean when you're ready to<br>glean what you're ready to glean. Are<br>you a Joseph Campbell fan? I am a Joseph<br>Campbell fan. Yeah. Yeah. That I mean<br>that's a reoccurring theme in his work.<br>This the hero's journey. Yes. The hero's<br>journey. this underlying sort of<br>narrative that just really guides all<br>all stories and all ancient tales and<br>that there's something inherently human<br>about them, important about these<br>stories and they resonate with our our<br>wants and needs and goals and and even<br>also maybe the structure that we really<br>truly need in our own life.<br>Yeah. I mean, all the stories from<br>whatever period, I'm sympathetic to this<br>particular um to Joseph Campbell's<br>philosophy on this, but he's not the<br>only one. Right. Right. The weird thing<br>about religion is religion has done to<br>the spiritual significance of narrative<br>what the businessman did to the suit.<br>He's literalized it. He didn't realize<br>that putting on a suit is putting on a<br>suit of armor. is putting on something<br>that's rather<br>spectacular. You're just doing it for<br>convention. You're doing it for others.<br>You're not doing it for you. And in our<br>literal mind, we look at a narrative and<br>we see the narrative for what we believe<br>it to be, the exterior aspect of the<br>narrative. So, we completely we see the<br>world upside down. We don't we're not<br>actually interested in the essence of<br>the narrative because we're so busy<br>pandering after the approval of others.<br>So everything that we see, every<br>narrative that we listen to, every film<br>that you see, you're not really<br>interested in<br>its soul, you're interested in its body<br>because that's what we correspond to.<br>It's fascinating that you're comparing<br>it to suits because it resonates like<br>when you think of a guy showing up for<br>work or getting ready for work and he<br>doesn't want to go and he's putting on<br>this suit and it's just dredging through<br>it and putting it on and or you think<br>about a guy who's crisply tucking in his<br>collars and putting on his cuff links<br>and tightening up his tie and he feels<br>empowered by the whole process of it.<br>It's very it's very appealing. Like if<br>you see it in a film too, it's very<br>exciting. This is a man of purpose. They<br>did it in mean streets. I don't know if<br>you remember Harvey Keitel getting<br>dressed to go up on a Friday, getting<br>dressed to go out on a Friday night and<br>it affected a whole generation of people<br>about the way they dress cuz he owned<br>it. Yeah. Yeah. I never really thought<br>about that until this conversation. It's<br>not because I I just I don't really I<br>wear suits occasionally, like very very<br>occasionally. But you've been robbed.<br>I've been robbed. You've been robbed.<br>There are so many aspects of life. Food<br>for a long time got robbed from us and<br>we've slowly managed to claw that back.<br>It's true. Um, but clothes really,<br>you're a 45-year-old geyser and you're<br>still dressing like an 18-year-old.<br>What cuss is all that about? Well, some<br>people like to be comfortable though. I<br>get that, by the way. And they like that<br>look. Comfortable. Your suit's<br>comfortable. It's comfortable. Yeah. You<br>can get poured into this. Completely<br>deconstructed on the inside. Made by a<br>chap called Brunelloo. Knows what he's<br>doing. So, these are all handmade. Um,<br>it's It won't be handmade. Really?<br>Tailored? Uh, no. You I bought this off<br>the shelf and I had it Yeah. a couple of<br>things tweaked, but it's as comfortable<br>as a pair of pajamas. Really? Yeah. So,<br>again, you have to broker a deal. You<br>can't put on things that are<br>uncomfortable because guess what happens<br>in the morning? You're looking through<br>your suits, you go, "Oh, I like that<br>one, but I'm going to wear the<br>comfortable one." Ah, so they all have<br>to be comfortable. Well, otherwise,<br>you're not going to play the game, are<br>you?<br>[Applause]<br>[Music]<br>[Applause]<br>[Music]