Questioning Societal Norms in Our Troubled Times … And a New Way Forward

In this public talk, I welcome us all to go deeper. To think critically, to self-observe, to discuss solutions for a new way forward as a community, and to build the skills we need to live in harmony with Earth and the life we share on this home. Together we question the unquestioned societal norms of consumer convenience, ownership, the monetary system, our current political situation, and sustainability. I bring together patterns I’ve seen from 14 years of striving to live radically outside the system. Knowing the truth behind our actions, we discuss how we can meet our basic needs, while not stripping away the rights of Earth and our fellow humans.
Prepare to think and be inspired to be the change you wish to see in the world.

Filmed April 30th, 2025, in Ojai, California, at the Sane Living Center on Day 94 of the Non-Ownership Experiment. Part of my 14 city Community Speaking Tour from San Diego to the Bay Area.

Gratitude to:
Carol at the Sane Living Center for creating spaces for free community gatherings,

Peter Deneen for organizing the event and helping me connect with the local community,

Zoya and Matai for filming the talk and creating this video.

Transcript: The following is a transcription of Questioning Societal Norms in Our Troubled Times … And a New Way Forward, part of Robin’s talks series during his Experiment in Non-Ownership.

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Introduction by Pete Deneen

My name is Pete Deneen, and it’s my pleasure and honor to be able to introduce tonight to you guys my dear friend Robin Greenfield. Robin walked to Ojai and to my house from Canada earlier this year. It was unexpected. I was not on his route; in fact, Ojai was not on his route. But we had an extraordinarily dry start to this year, a historically dry start, and so, the Santa Ana wind season overlapped and went into December and into January. And we know what the result of that was, with the fires in Los Angeles. And so, because of that, Robin was waylaid and detoured into Ojai, where, by way of the network of friends, we were introduced to each other. And our friendship has blossomed since then, and I’ve, I’ve had the pleasure of hosting him up here a few times now. Thank you so much for coming back to Ojai again.

Preparing for the Experiment

Well, I’m grateful to be here with all of you. Right now, I’m in this practice of the experiment of non-ownership, so that’s what we’re going to be diving into tonight. In July of 2024, I set out on a walk, as Peter mentioned, from Canada to Los Angeles. And for me, this was a practice of deepening into a place of integrity and focusing on living in a, in a state of truth. And that was … so tonight, I’m going to particularly share about the experiment of non-ownership, but I’m going to share a little bit about my, my journey and my philosophy that brought me to the place of desiring to simply live in a way that doesn’t destroy the very Earth that we live upon. How many of you think that is important? Yeah. So, I’m, I’m glad to be here. I’m glad to be here with all of you.

So, how this, how this current experiment of non-ownership started: as I shared, in July of last year, I left from Canada to walk to Los Angeles. And in doing so, I simplified my life down to everything that I owned fitting onto my back, in a backpack. And then, shortly after that, I ended up getting a, a little stroller walking cart, and then everything fit onto there. And the idea was to get into the present moment, to slow down, and to simplify my life. And for some of you who have followed me, you might wonder, wait, I thought you already lived a really slow and simple life. But over the years, I had found myself somewhat caught back into the rat race — a nonprofit — and this was a deep practice in, and getting into, the present moment.

So, as I walked, I was preparing myself for arriving in Los Angeles for this current experiment. And when I got to Los Angeles, I knew what I was going to do was give away every single physical possession that I owned and my money and have this radical experiment in non-ownership. But to do that, I had a lot of work to do to prepare myself. So, with each step that I took on the Pacific Coast Highway, I was letting go of more of the past, and I was walking into the present moment. And in order to prepare myself for what most people, for what many people, would be a nightmare — to have nothing and to have no money — I was doing a lot of inner work. And the other aspect is, we live in a time where we can maybe not own many physical possessions, but because of our relationship with the digital realm, we could still have endless quantities of things. We might not have any photo books, but we could have 30 to 40 to 50,000, photos on our computer, for example.

So, to prepare myself for Los Angeles, I set out to, well, one of the practices was to share everything inside of myself that I had been guarding or hiding over the years. Anything that was a secret, anything that I was embarrassed of. So, I did a, a nine-part video series online, where I shared every single thing that I had, that I was considering – to sort of be owning — things inside my head that others didn’t have access to. So, that’s what I did before arriving in Los Angeles. And then, I committed to four years of telling only the truth, and not telling a lie — even when the park rangers asked me if I was sleeping in Griffith Park.

Giving Away Everything

So, When I arrived in L.A., I gave away everything that I owned, down to the clothes on my back, down to my computer. And I sat naked in Griffith Park for about five or ten minutes. It was a cold day on January 26th, and a friend named Andrew covered me up in a blanket. So, that was the first item that I borrowed. So, the idea was to own nothing for this period of time. But it wasn’t that I wasn’t able to use things. The few things that I needed, I borrowed from other people. And during that time, I tended to have about maybe 10 or so items. The experiment continues. Now, I’m on tour throughout California, and this is everything that I have. Oh, I now have a wonderful little — Peter, did you say this is butterfly sage? Hummingbird sage? But I don’t own this plant. It will return to the earth.

Borrowed Items

So right now, I have about 10 borrowed items, and it’s a book —the Nonviolent Communication book— which I also took from Peter’s bookshelf last time I was here. A pencil, two hats, a blanket, and then the clothes on my back, plus a notebook. And so some people would ask … well, one other note,  I had been doing a lot of work prior to this. So, I had already gotten rid of my car, and, keys, or a house, and a cell phone, years prior. And as far as money goes, I had already gotten rid of my bank account and investments. And anything like a mutual fund or IRA, or even a PayPal or a Venmo or anything like that. So, when I say, for the last three-and-a-half months, I’ve been existing without owning any physical possessions, I mean zero physical possessions, just these few items that I’ve been borrowing. I also, two-and-a-half years ago, got rid of my last form of identification, which was my driver’s license. And then I had … I got rid of my birth certificate, passport, or social security card, and driver’s license. So, I had shed those things from my life as well.

My Personal Exploration and Practices

So, there’s, there’s two parts to this. Some people would be asking, of course, why would you do something like this? And, to some, it might come across as potentially ridiculous or just overly radical. And so my life is designed to create critical thought. There’s two main aspects to this deep experiment that I’m doing. First, it is my own personal exploration of the world that we live in. It’s my own practice of entering into some of the unexplored realms that we have in a very consumer-driven society. So, it’s an opportunity to grow and to explore and to just be myself to the deepest level. The secondary aspect is, my life is my message. It’s a form of activism, that’s a form of, to some degree, you could say, a public stunt that’s designed to create critical thought, that’s designed to create self-observation in our own minds, that’s designed to create conversation as a community around a new way forward, and designed to get us to think about and act upon the, the belief system that we have. So, by building new skills for a new way forward.

So, before I get into the depth of, well, what I really want to share tonight — which is critical thought on a lot of the ways that we’re living today — I want to share a little bit about the why, the personal why, the, the reason that I am so deeply happy to own nothing and to have no money right now. And I am so thoroughly grateful to be here on a, on a just a personal level. So, right now, at the core of my desire, is the pursuit of living in a, in a state of integrity, and the pursuit of truth. And for anybody that’s been following me for some years, you may have noticed that, for a long time, I’ve existed on this sort of tightrope — or this balancing act — of taking things to a radical extreme, but also being accepted by society. My belief is that people are not going to receive the message and create change in their life if they don’t like the messenger. If they just think I’m an absolute nut, or that I’ve lost my mind, the odds of them taking in this belief system are, is highly unlikely. So, for a long time, I’ve been in this balancing act. But for this experiment, I basically am willing to risk losing it all, in the pursuit of just existing in the highest state of integrity I can, even if that means people just decide that I’ve completely lost my mind. Fortunately, I’m grateful that many of you are out there thinking, “All right, has this guy lost his mind?” And I’m guessing there’s at least a few people who are pretty sure that I have. But I’m grateful to all of you for seeing me as the full human being that I am, and for being here tonight to explore these realms with me.

So, another big aspect is dissolving the ego and humbling myself. So, as I’ve been in Griffith Park for those three months, the way that I’ve eaten is primarily from eating from the garbage. For years, I’ve raised awareness about food waste through dumpster diving. But this is just eating from the garbage — like half-eaten bagels and chunks of burrito. And, but sometimes, some really high-quality stuff. But being dependent on my sleeping spot, as to whether the park rangers are going to kick me out, saying to people, like, “Hey, can I borrow a pair of pants or a sleeping bag to keep myself warm?” All of this helps to just dissolve the elements of the ego that no longer serve, and to humble myself, which I believe is very important — to be of service. I think when we’re operating from a place of service, but it’s too deeply from a place of ego, we often end up doing more harm than actual good. So, I, I believe it’s an important thing for us to practice.

Another part is surrender, letting go of the attachments. I, as all of us have attachments to things being a certain way, and I’m exploring the idea of just living and just being, and not having an attachment to outcome, and just opening up to, if I’m existing in a, in a state of integrity, well, maybe that’s what will be created around me. And not being attached to, to, a specific outcome. It’s also a practice of being in the deep present moment. As I’ve been in Griffith Park, just sleeping under the open sky, and on the ground, and having no computer or, or phone, and no money to buy what I would want, it’s resulted in me just being in the present moment. And I think being in the present moment is one of the most powerful things we can do in the face of this consumer-driven society. Fred Rogers has been an inspiration of mine over the last few years. He taught me — Mr. Rogers — he taught me that one of the most powerful gifts that we have is just to be present with whoever we’re with. I truly believe that. So, by shedding so much and just by existing, I’ve been able to practice a lot of the things that are harder to practice when life is so busy.

It’s also a practice of interconnectedness. So, today, we live in a societal structure that creates this independence, where we all have our very independent lives, living largely separate from things. And I really like the idea of interconnectedness. And by idea, I mean a universal truth — that everything is connected. I was recently reading a little bit of John Muir, and he mentioned how he was in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and anything that he looked at, he would see, was hitched to the entire universe. And I truly believe that everything is interconnected. And so, by being in the present moment, and by just being with it all, that it’s a practice of the … the interconnectedness. And then, along with that, is interdependence. I really actually believe that the only way we can survive is if we take care of one another. And that all cultures that have ever existed, that were in harmony, were cultures that practiced interdependence — that saw that we’re not separate from one another. And so, one way for me to practice that is to say, “I need you.” I need you in order to be clothed, in order to have a warm place to sleep at night, in order to have food. By doing that, that dissolves the illusion of independence — that’s been built into me over the, the few decades that I’ve been alive — and helps others, too.

In fact, one of the people who lent me his clothes for a week-and-a-half started to see himself in me. And it was beautiful to hear him say that he started to dissolve the illusion of separateness — even between us. So, that was a beautiful moment. Another practice is simple living. Mahatma Gandhi is one of my biggest influences, and one of the things that he would say was, “Live simply so that others may simply live,” which is something that we’re going to dive into a little bit tonight. But for me, simple living is at the core of our true solutions. I don’t believe that advanced technology is what’s going to save us. I believe that if we’re ever going to reconnect with the earth, that it’s important to do that through basic, simple living. And, along with that is another practice, which is finding wholeness and completeness within. As long as I believe that I am not whole and complete, as long as I believe that I need this product or I need this service — whether it’s Old Spice deodorant or this particular brand of clothes or gadget — as long as I am seeking that from outside of myself, I will always be vulnerable to these destructive systems. As all of us, as humanity. And so, this is a practice of just simply finding deep wholeness and completeness within.

And then, the last one that I want to share is, it’s a practice of living in service. So, at the core of, well, I would say, at the, my objective is that, eventually, for every ounce of my being, to be in service. In service to the Earth, and service to the plants and animals, and service to our fellow humanity. And all of these practices help to get to that direction. And, like I said, I grew up in the dominator society. I didn’t grow up living in service. This doesn’t come naturally. I need to actually practice these things in order to become them. And then, the last thing that I want to share along those lines is, the practice of universal love. As I was sitting in Griffith Park, I would just spend time looking at the little gophers that were digging in the, in the grass, or looking into the eyes of the coyotes or the deer, and just loving everything. I, I want to exist in a way where I love everything. And again, to some people, that sounds radical. To others, they’re like, “That’s exactly how I feel, too.” But I want to exist in a way where I have a deep love for everything. And all of this — this not owning anything — is just a deep practice and embracing these skills and working on these skills.

Transformation Journey

So, although, over the last three months, in Griffith Park, as well as the walk from Canada to down here, I’ve gone a lot deeper, this goes back for me about 15 years. In 2011, I was living a fairly typical US American lifestyle. I was focused on material possessions and financial wealth. When I was 25, I had a goal of being a millionaire by the time I turned 30, and every Sunday, I would spend sometimes up to two hours shining my car. I loved the shiny rims and the, the dashboard being nice and clean. And so I was living that life for quite some time.

Oh, thank you, my friend. And, can you tell I was in need of some water? I thought, just maybe, I was actually suffering, to be completely honest, because I don’t have a, a drinking vessel right now, and there were only disposables back there. So, I was like, “Dang, I guess I got to go without water for the next hour-and-a-half.” Thank you, my friend.

So what happened that resulted in me not living that lifestyle is I started to watch a lot of documentaries and read some books. And I realized that the way that I was living was causing such destruction to the Earth, that my life was an embodiment of exploitation, and oppression, of inequity, and injustice, and of destruction of life upon Earth. The food I was eating, the car I was driving, the gas I was pumping into the car, the stuff I was buying, the trash I was creating, the money I was spending, my investments, my money in the bank — all parts of systems of destruction that I didn’t want to be supporting. But the thing is, I just didn’t know. But now, I knew. And so, about 14 years ago, I set out to try to just live in harmony with the Earth, to break free. And what I found though, was that I was wrapped up into a web of consumerism — that all the ways that I was living were these strands of consumerism and destruction — and I was deeply, deeply wrapped up in this.

So, what I did is, one step at a time, I cut each of those little strands. And then, as I did that, I replaced them with a new way of being, a more harmonious way of being. Because these documentaries I was watching and these books that I was reading weren’t just telling me the problems — they were also telling me solutions for a new way forward. So, that’s what I’ve been doing for the last 14 years: embracing a new way, a new way forward, living my life as my message. But also, taking it to an extreme level that’s designed to shake things up, you could say.

The Social Experiment Intentions

So, this experiment of non-ownership, as well as the dozen or maybe a couple dozen experiments that I’ve embarked on over the last 10 years, are designed to do four main things. First, to create critical thought. Is anybody thinking right now? I, I see, I see, I see a little bit of it out there. So, to get the wheels turning. To create critical thought. The second part, along those lines, is self-observation. So, what I’m doing is, observing my own mind. I’m observing my own actions. And, in doing so, I intend to be the stimulus for others to as well. You’ll notice tonight, I’m not going to say anything about good or bad, or right or wrong, or you should do this, or you shouldn’t do that. I’m just observing my own mind and my actions, and I’m inviting others to do the same — to, to question at the deepest level of our own minds. The other aspect of that is to create critical community conversation — to have conversations around a new way forward. And then, with that, to also build the skills that we need for a new way forward. We will — it’s important to think. It’s important to talk. But we also need action. And that action requires skill sets. Skill sets for a new way forward. So, towards the end of the evening, I’m going to share a few dozen solutions, skills that we can bring into ourselves for a new way forward.

Mindfulness Exercise — No Judgments

So I am going to dive into some things that definitely could stimulate a little bit of anxiety or overwhelm. And, so, what I want to do before that is, I want to go into our minds for a little bit, and enter into a state of just relaxing ourselves a little bit. So, I invite you, if you’d like, there’s no rules in this room whatsoever on my part. But I invite you to close your eyes and just go into a little bit of the present moment.

And so, we’re not going to work any magic here. But we are just going to notice if we’re holding any tension. We can just release it a little bit. If we feel it in our shoulders, we can release our shoulders a little bit. If we’re feeling it in our jaws or our eyes, we can release that a little bit.

And, so, in what we’re about to explore, I would like to invite you to come to this from a place of knowing that there is no good or bad. There is no right or wrong. I’m not sharing a place from a place of ‘have to’ or ‘should,’ not even duty or obligation. There is no, there is nothing inherently wrong with owning things, and having possessions. And, there is nothing inherently wrong with having money, and money being a part of our lives, to meet our basic needs. So, I invite you to release any judgments that you have of yourself, anyone else in this room, and of me, too, and know that there is no judgment here, unless it is coming from within your own mind. And we can release that now.

Although there is no right or wrong, or good or bad, or have to or should, there is a lot more behind our basic daily actions than we see. And that’s what we’re going to explore. So, before doing that, let’s just take three deep breaths together. And I invite you, if you want to, let it out, orally, audibly. I welcome you to.
All right, welcome to being here now. Does anybody feel a little bit more here now after that? Nice. I certainly do. I certainly feel a little bit more connected.

Truth Behind Consumer Convenience

So, the first little tidbit I want to talk about is consumer convenience. So, consumer convenience is something that’s so deeply ingrained into our lives that we often don’t even really notice anymore. Thank you for being here, friends. Thank you.

“Sorry, we have to leave.”

So, all of us have probably, almost all of us, have heard of the concept, or the theory, that energy is not created nor destroyed. And, there’s the same amount of energy today as there was billions of years ago on Earth. What I’ve come to see, with 13, 14 years of analyzing through thinking, but also through practice, our consumer convenience is that that universal law exists as well, when it comes to convenience and burden. When I look at any consumer convenience, what I see is that the burden is actually placed elsewhere. Somebody is paying the price. Some being is paying the price. Some place is paying the price. A really deep educational experience on the externalized costs of consumerism, or capitalism, whatever we would like to call it, is The Story of Stuff. That was one of the early wake-up calls to just seeing the truth behind our daily actions. So again, I’m glad that we’re in this place, that we’re not talking about right or wrong, or good or bad. But what we are talking about is that probably everybody in this room desires to live in more harmony with the Earth, and to live in a more equitable and just way. And if that’s the case, then exploring the truth behind our consumerism is a very important part of that. For those of us who are seeking, living integral lives, and non-delusionalism, or truth, you could say — another area that we tend to go when we learn this, when we learn –I mean, it can be quite painful to learn how much destruction there is behind just our daily actions: our food, our energy, our waste, our water, our transportation, our money, etc. One of the things that we like to do is attach ourselves to labels, whether it’s vegan, or whether it’s, “I only eat organic,” or whatever it may be. I don’t remember most of the labels anymore; those are the only two that come to mind for me in the moment. And so, what I’ve started to see, labels as I really step outside and observe them, is that they are false safe zones. We live in an interconnected world. Ecosystems have no labels. Everything is interconnected. It is only a human thing to do, to create labels that are designed to compartmentalize ourselves and escape the depths of the interconnectedness of our lives. So, I welcome you, when you’re finding yourself diving into a label, and maybe potentially latching on to that a little bit, to ask: Is this at the depth of it what I’m seeking? Or is there some element of this being a, a false safe zone?

So, in this country, what we call the United States — many of us call the United States — we have five percent of the world’s population, but we consume twenty-five percent of the world’s resources. So, that, by definition, is extreme. When people call me extreme, I say, “Of course, because if I wasn’t, it would mean that I’m living in that delusional state that, that’s normal.” So, you’ve probably heard some, some quotes like, “The last thing I want to be is sane in a sick society.” I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t see us as a sick society. I see us all as human beings that are existing in these incredibly complex times that we live in. But to call our lives normal is, well, I think ultimately, a delusion.

So, one of the statistics that I recently read, that has become a very poignant one in my mind, was reading Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken. And, so, the amount of resources that our ancestors would consume in 100,000 years, we now consume in one year on this Earth. So, we live in a very extreme time. And, so, that’s a big invitation: to see that normalcy is just a construct. What normalcy is, it’s seeing the same thing day after day after day, week after week after week, year after year after year, after year. There’s a lot of things that all of us in this room feel are normal now, that in 2016, we never could have construed as normal. It’s just seeing the same thing and being immersed in the same thing. And, so, the only reason someone — I actually just did a podcast yesterday, and the host said to me, um, “Are you interested in taking the middle path?” And I said, “Yeah. If you compare me to the global norm, I am in the middle path. If you compare me to the billions of humans that have existed over thousands of years, I am the middle path. The only reason that I’m extreme is I’m a product of an extreme society.”

Consumer Convenience = Happiness?

So, all of this consumer convenience, and all of this, is supposed to make us happier, make us healthier. We’re supposed to have, like, the most meaning and purpose that any society has ever had. And I will never say that. When I look out into the world, I see nothing but depression, and anxiety, and loneliness. Looking out right now, I see a lot of connection, and a lot of meaning, and purpose, and a lot of happiness. However, when we look at our society as a whole, there’s a lot of people that I respect greatly, who say we are the most unfulfilled, unhappiest, and unhealthiest society that has ever existed in the human experience. And we’ve seen that in reality. This doesn’t bring us the deep level of happiness. And so, what we’re going to talk about a little bit at the end of the night, is ways that we can bring that happiness back into our lives.

Separation: Our Greatest Threat

As I’ve explored this, this time that we live in, what I’ve started to, what I’ve started to see, is that when you look at any environmental issue, or you look at any social issue — which we now realize, and many people have realized, are totally interconnected — there is no such thing as an environmental or a social issue. Human beings are a part of this Earth, and we are animals interconnected to all the ecosystems. So, to say any issue, any of the great problems we live in, what I see is that, at the core of them, is the belief that we’re separate. When we exploit the Earth, when we exploit other people, when we exploit the plants and animals, it’s that we believe that we are separate — that there’s a disconnection between us and who we’re relating to, or what we’re relating to.

So, my basic belief is that it’s, that at the core, separation is at the, the root of all the injustices, the exploitation, the oppression, the destruction that is going on. One of the deep examples of our time is that one percent of the world’s population owns fifty percent of the world’s wealth. That can only happen in a society that is separate from one another — that believes that we are separate from the Earth. So, right now, in this experiment of non-ownership, there are two main forms of separation that I’m exploring.

Ownership: The Delusion

The first is ownership, of course. And so, what I’d like to take a moment to explore is that ownership is not as concrete as we have been sold to believe that it is. That, actually, ownership is simply a construct. It is simply a concept.

So, one way that I like to illuminate that, is that when one person sells land to another person, and again, I’m not saying that there’s anything inherently wrong with owning land. I know many of us do. But we’re just exploring, at a little bit of a deeper level. So, when one person sells land to another person, how it generally works is, there’s a contract, there’s, like, a title or a deed, that person signs it over to that other person, and now, they own it. But we could ask a few questions. Did the land sign the contract? Does the land agree that it’s now owned? What about the plants and animals that live on that land? Did they sign the contract? I’m pretty sure the squirrels are still coming and going, and so are the hummingbirds. And, what about the people that potentially lived on that land for thousands of years? Did they agree that that land is now owned? Or, even the people that currently live on that land? When we decide to take public domain for an interstate or a new theater, a new sporting arena, do they agree to that ownership? And, so, we start to look a little deeper, and we see, okay, ownership is a concept. It is a construct.

A few more ways to illuminate that, is that when we own land, we pay taxes. When we don’t pay those taxes, who owns that land? After a couple of years, not us anymore — the bank, or the government. So, how concrete is ownership? Or, in 2008, 2009, when about, I think, about a million people lost their homes in a short period of time, from the housing market crash, a lot of people realized, wow, ownership is not so solid after all. I thought I owned this place, and now it’s gone. So, there’s many cultures around the world that don’t practice ownership like we do here in the United States. There’s actually many cultures that have existed, that didn’t even, or don’t even, have a word for ownership. Ownership is very much considered concrete in this society. But the reality is that it’s just a concept. This concept has allowed us to do some pretty destructive things.

So, when people from Europe moved over to what we now call the United States, many people call Turtle Island, there was a coming over here with this idea that we could own the land. And some people would say, the settlers, or the colonizers, whatever you want to say, came over. And then, because of the idea that we could own the land, there was a genocide of millions of people, and a dismantling of hundreds of cultures, of people that have lived here before, because there was a belief that we could own the land. At the same time, there was a concept that we could own people. About seven million people, I’ve learned, were stolen away from Africa in that time, because people believed in a concept of slavery. The word “slave” is to dehumanize a person — to say that you can own someone. But it’s a human being who has been enslaved, not a slave. So, this concept of ownership has allowed us to do some pretty disconnected things, with our fellow humanity, and with the Earth.

Now, some people say, “Well, that’s something of the past. Slavery is the past. Genocide of indigenous people is the past.” But when you look, you realize that this is baked into our Constitution. And it is baked into hundreds, or thousands, of laws that exist today. And, that these concepts have deeply infiltrated our, our way of being, in a way that is often destructive to, to life as we know it.

Money: The Illusion

So, the other aspect that I want to talk about, is money, for a moment. There’s a lot of people that I’ve listened to, that I deeply respect, that say that money only exists if enough human beings believe that it does. So, at times, it was shells. At times, it was salt. At times, it’s been gold or silver. I will say, at times, it’s been paper, because it’s hardly even paper anymore, right now. It’s mostly digits on screens: trillions of dollars coming in and out of existence, in and out of existence, from moment to moment. So, when it comes to the stock market, when billions of dollars that supposedly existed today, don’t exist tomorrow — how real is money? When the Federal Reserve can print billions of dollars overnight, at their desire — like, how real is it? And, when deflation comes, or inflation comes, and, one, at one moment, a dollar is worth a dollar, and then, at the next moment, it’s worth what? A fraction of that? Or a fraction more? Some people say that money makes the world go around. Well, I haven’t had any for the last four months, and I’m pretty sure the world has continued to go around. I’m pretty sure that the world went around before money ever existed, and I am pretty sure that the world will continue to go around, even after this current monetary system dissolves — which most likely it will.

Now, some people hear this, and they say, “Well, this is all fine and good, Robin, to be questioning our entire societal structures, the very basic structure of ownership and money. But we’ve got some really important things right now. We have the potential dismantling of our democracy. We have, you could say, fascism, or dictatorship.”

Our Political Situation in 2025

Some people would say, right now, we need to be focusing, not on that. We need to focus on the current human rights that are being taken away. Or on the current environmental crisis. Or on this current genocide. And I have a lot of space in my heart for that. Because that’s what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about a different way forward. We’re talking about justice, and equity, and harmony. But some people would say, “It’s irresponsible to even be going to this depth, and not putting our time into only this political situation as it is.” And what I would like to share is that our current political situation is interconnected to our last hundreds of years as a country. It’s not just this current moment. And that it’s very important to zoom out and look at the bigger picture. Often, what a dominator political structure wants is, it wants us to be spread thin. To be drained. To be going from one injustice to the next, day after day after day. And not be able to focus on truly moving forward as humanity. So, there’s a couple of things that I would like to mention in that regard. Right now, as I shared, some of us are very concerned about losing our democracy. But, it’s important to know that we actually already don’t have a democracy. So, a democracy has a very simple definition. A vote is a vote, is a vote, is a vote. Every vote is equal. But, in this country, corporations have much more votes than individuals. When Citizens United was created, and corporations are now considered people, and they can spend billions of dollars to buy our politicians, and change our laws — by definition, we no longer have a democracy. We have something kind of like a democracy, but the closer you look, you realize that we barely even have that.

Couple other notes on that. So, we have a system where more human beings are imprisoned in this nation than any other nation on Earth. And that’s not a Republican or a Democrat thing. That is very much whoever is in charge of this country — whether it’s the Democrats or the Republicans. In fact, the Clinton administration was one of the main administrations in creating the three strikes policy, where people are put behind bars for decades or life, for breaking laws that were unjust in the first place. That were actually designed to often put specific demographics of people in jail that they don’t want to have in power. So, in this country, two million Black men are behind bars. A really powerful book to, to read if you want to learn more about this, is The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. And she actually shares that seven million Black men and boys are either in prison or under a form of government surveillance. And so, this is not a democracy. This is a way of actually taking away basic human rights. And, again, this is whether we have Democrats or Republicans in charge. A really important thing to know is that when people are imprisoned, often they lose their right to vote for their entire life. So, this is a very strategic way of taking away the ability to have a true democracy.

The other really interesting thing about our democracy is that we are the most effective democracy — or most effective country — in the entire world, at overthrowing democratically elected governments. The CIA itself has admitted, or disclosed, that we have overthrown at least five democratically elected governments. And the reason that we do that is because we want their oil, or we want some form of their resources. A government, a politician, a president, is elected democratically, to serve the people. And then, the United States, whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican in charge, goes in, overthrows that. So that we continue to get the resources that we want to exploit from those places. So it is, I think, deeply important for us to remember, to be just looking at the bigger picture. And, one of my encouragements would be, it’s not about not being informed. I think it’s very important to be informed. But, so many of us today live in a time, live in a way, where we feel such a strong need to be informed, that we spread ourselves so thin, learning about every single thing that’s happening every single day, from the current administration. And then we’re less able to be truly of service to our community. So, I would encourage you to ask the question: “What’s the right balance for me to know?” And, “What level is maybe just actually playing into their hands? Of spreading myself too thin, and being less effective as a change maker within my own community?” It’s something, something to think about.

Breathing Exercise

Let’s take a few deep breaths together. I invite us to, to close our eyes again. We’re going to move into a little bit tense of an area. We can relax a little bit. So, I invite you to close your eyes again. Notice where you have tension. Let it out. Hey, maybe think about the person next to you, and think about how much you love them. How grateful you are for something. What are you grateful for right now? And let’s take three deep breaths and then come back to it.

Amazing, what coming back to our breath can do. Thich Nhat Hanh is one of my greatest teachers, and he talks about that all the time — that we always have our breath to come back to.

Sustainability or Destruction?

So, three more little concepts that I’d like to talk about before moving into the solutions. And the first is, the first is the delusion of sustainability. So, I’ve dedicated my life to living in sustainability, but I’ve also dedicated my life to not living in the delusion of sustainability. So, there’s two ways that I’d like to illuminate that.

Okay, imagine you have a friend that comes over for breakfast every single day, and they come over, they eat breakfast, and then, on the way out, they punch you five times. And every day you’re like, “Man, I really wish they’d stop punching me.” And so eventually you talk to them enough, and they make some changes, and they say, “You’re right. I’m just going to punch you four times a day.” Well, that’s basically what driving electric cars is, unfortunately. I know this can be painful because I’m sure many of us have electric cars. And again, I’m not saying it’s a matter of right or wrong or good or bad, but a more accurate way of saying it — rather than sustainable — would be to say less environmentally destructive. When satellite imagery of our world shows lithium-ion mines large enough that we can see them from outer space, that’s not sustainable. A lot of the most polluted places on Earth exist because of our need for lithium-ion and other precious metals and other metals in order to create this technology, including electric cars and solar panels. So, yes, they are a form of part of the solution in breaking free from fossil fuels, but if we are talking about true sustainability and truth, it’s just an important thing to keep in mind. Also, when it comes to buying organic food — say USDA organic — there’s a whole spectrum of what that can be. You can have local regenerative organic, or you can have big-box store organic. The truth behind it is far from what we would ever want to believe. I’ll be the first to say that I still buy kombucha at Whole Foods sometimes, and I really enjoy it, but it’s not sustainable. Any of these things that we’re buying at stores like Whole Foods are putting the money into the wealthiest people on Earth. One of the wealthiest people on Earth owns Whole Foods and profits from that. So it’s just another thing worth looking at. It’s not about saying whether it’s good or bad or right or wrong, but it’s about changing our language around it to maybe call it more of what it really is.

Earth Code

So, the other thing that I would like to talk about is the concept of Earth Code. How many of you have heard of Earth Code before? Peter? Okay, in the back. So, I’m grateful to be here sharing these concepts that are, that are new. This was a new concept to me just some years ago. So, we have a lot of laws in this country — I don’t know how many, probably hundreds of thousands of them. And what is the purpose of laws? Would anyone like to share? What’s the general purpose of laws?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: “To control everybody?”

Okay, yes, that’s the behind-the-scenes aspect. What’s the supposed purpose of our laws?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: “To make us safe, to protect us. Right?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: “Justice, to bring justice.”

Yes, that’s another element of what laws are, at least supposedly for. When we actually analyze a lot of our laws, what we see is they bring justice to a certain group of people, often at the expense of a much larger group of people. And so, what I have started to follow is Earth Code. Earth Code doesn’t say that I’m against, or anybody who practices Earth Code is not saying that we’re against any government code, any federal law, state law, or city law. But what Earth Code says is that anytime a law does not truly protect the people, and the truth is that law actually is full of injustice and inequity and destruction of the Earth, then we’re going to follow a different code. And that is a code of critical thought. Unlike, you know, most of these structured codes that are sort of blanket statements laid across entire biomes, regions, and diverse cultures of people, Earth Code looks at every scenario with a critical mind and a critical eye and says, how do I exist in a way that observes basic human rights? That observes the basic rights of the plants and animals, the fungi, and the bacteria, and observes the basic rights of Earth. So, for example, the Anishinaabe people have created the Rights of Manoomin, which is the wild rice — that’s the land where I grew up; in Bolivia. Yes, Bolivia. They’ve created the Rights of Mother Earth, which are actually a part of their Constitution. These, we actually see Earth Code being built into some constitutional level, but also very grassroots level. So again, it’s not against the idea of laws. It’s for creating laws that follow a more universal, natural law that truly serves the people. So, if that resonates with you, I highly encourage you to learn more about the concept of living in Earth Code. Civil disobedience, to me, is very aligned with that — the unwillingness to obey any unjust law, and instead obey a just law of the Earth and our fellow humans, and the plants and animals.

Privilege: Exploration of

The last concept I want to share before moving into solutions is talking a little bit about privilege. So, in the world out there, or on social media, when I acknowledge my privilege, there’s a lot of pushbacks. There’s a lot of people that say, “Oh, yes, virtue signaling,” or, “Oh, political correctness.” And to be honest, I completely get it. Because what you could potentially call the liberal-left movement has a very long, large strategy of saying, “We’re right, you’re wrong. We’re good, you’re bad.” And it does create a fair bit of disconnection and separation and defensiveness. But there’s also a lot of … I think it triggers for a lot of people things inside of themselves. So, when I talk about privilege, for me, this is about the practice of non-delusionalism. This is the practice of truth and integrity — to not acknowledge the place that I am in society because of the privileges that I have would just simply be delusional. It would be simply avoiding basic truths. So, what I mean by privilege, when I talk about it, is that the life that I — and, actually, I want to share one other aspect — is that when I was first told to acknowledge my privilege, or sometimes it was a gentle encouragement, and sometimes it was more of a demand from people on social media, I was pretty resistant to it. And the reason why is because I grew up poor. My mom made about $18,000 a year to support four kids. We were on welfare and food stamps and such. And Jewish in a Catholic Christian-dominated city and society. Didn’t have a dad, and we were outsiders. But I’ll take that back. I had a dad. He just wasn’t really around very much. And so, we were very much outsiders. And so, when people started to say that I was privileged, I thought, you don’t know me if you think I’m privileged. You don’t know where I came from. Then I realized, in my mid-20s, oh, when I compare myself to the global norm, or to the big picture of humanity, within what we call the United States, I actually have almost every privilege that exists. So, during this experiment of non-ownership, sleeping in Griffith Park as a white man, I am the safest demographic of people that could possibly embark on this experiment. If I was a woman, to be sleeping outside at night without protection, it’s a very different story. As a white man, versus a Black man, if the police officer comes, there’s definitely a good chance that I could be in a different situation, where I would actually have to be concerned for my life. I don’t have to be concerned for my life, if the police come. Just, at the very least, at the very most, like, just some of my basic comfort. But not my entire life. As I was sleeping outside, I slept in a very comfortable, quiet spot i Griffith Park, and I realized a lot of the people who are experiencing homelessness, they have challenges with physical ability, of being able to walk four miles round trip. And so, they often end up sleeping in places that are much less comfortable, that don’t help with their mental state, and their health, and happiness. So, my physical ability — I could share so many different privileges. But I think it’s a really important thing to speak about. And especially in this room, in this group. We all have different levels of privileges. But, I would say all of us in this room are in the … no matter what lack of privilege we have, we’re in the top few percentages of the most privileged people in the entire world. And if we don’t understand that, and we go into services to be of community, it’s very common that we end up doing more harm than good in the communities that we try to serve. So, that’s why I acknowledge it. And that’s why I believe that it’s so deeply important.

Getting What We Really Want

So, we’re going to move on to talking about some solutions here, which I’m very excited about. I’ll share solutions for about five minutes or seven minutes, and then open it up to questions. So, as we’re moving into solutions, a lot of people, when they think of living this different life, they think of, like, suffering. They think about, like, giving up, creating an emptiness inside of them, like a hole inside of them. They’re concerned about their own happiness or their health. And so, my strategy is not about giving up on our very basic pursuit for a meaningful and purposeful life. What it is, is just saying, “I’m no longer willing to achieve these basic human needs of health, and happiness, and meaning, and purpose, etc., if it means someone else is suffering on my behalf.” But, the really good news is that there are so many ways of breaking free from those systems of destruction that still meet our basic human needs, where we’re not giving up, but we’re actually finding more meaning and purpose. So, what I’ve come to see being with people for the last 15 years of exploring this, it comes back to often the basic … we all share the same basic human needs. It’s as my belief system, which is not one that I’ve created myself, that’s largely come through the practice of Nonviolent Communication. I consider this book my Bible. I’m not selling it. I don’t need to. It’s already sold five million copies. So, they don’t need any help. But it’s been so transformative, and this is a language of tuning into why we do what we do, is a desire to meet our basic human needs. So, what I’ve come to is, I see that, for most of us, it’s a need to be seen, and a need to be heard. It’s a need for belonging. It’s a need for community. It’s a need for meaning and purpose. It’s a need for health and happiness. It’s a need for basic safety and stability, and, and structure in our lives. And I would say, to really matter, at the core of most of our being, is these core, core, basic human needs. And so, these solutions don’t take away any of that. Instead, they help us to accomplish that, to an even deeper level.

Solutions: A Primer

And so, with these solutions, I also want to share that you can take them to the depth that you would like, from the simplest level of change in your life, to the most radical transformation of your life. You get to decide what level you want to take them to. And also, some people think that top-down is the way to go. Other people believe that bottom-up is the way to go. My belief is it’s both. We need top-down, and we need bottom-up. But my belief is that we’ll never have top-down if we don’t also have bottom-up. The comfortable class of this society, the people in charge, are never going to change if the bottom, the people, don’t demand it — which reminds me, one other note that I would like to share on, on privilege, actually, that I think is very poignant for our time, is that some people say, “Well, the only reason that you can do what you do is because of your privilege.” And I actually believe that erases the truth of so many people that have existed. The only reason we have any rights, basic human rights as humanity, and the only reason that we still have a functioning Earth, is because people with much less privilege have stood up, have been … had the skills, the knowledge, the courage, the willpower, to get out of their comfort, to even risk their life, to build the civil resistance movement, to create resistance to these systems, and to actually move us forward in another way. So, I think it’s very important to acknowledge our privilege, but to not say that you can only do things because of privilege. Because, the most powerful people I’ve ever seen on this Earth are people with much less privilege, who create the real change.

Solutions: A Way Forward

So, as far as communities, or as solutions, my number one is community. I believe that all true solutions lie in community. So, there’s many levels of community. If you’re interested in deeply exploring living in community, you can explore intentional communities. There’s a website, ic.org, which is the Foundation for Intentional Communities. There’s also the Global Ecovillage Network. And these are two places you can really deeply explore living in intentional community. In Los Angeles, there’s the Los Angeles Ecovillage, which is one of the largest intentional communities in Southern California. But we don’t need to go as far as living in intentional community to practice living in community. Every single day, we are here in community tonight. So, take down phone numbers or email addresses, however you communicate, or even just addresses, and just show up at each other’s houses. Embrace more community in your daily practices.

One way to do that is by downsizing your life and owning less. The reason why is that if you have every single thing you need inside of your house, you have a lot less reason to go out there and actually be with people. So, for example, one of the items — I’m not going to get — once I start to own things again, is a fingernail clipper. At the very least, I will have to go out and talk to somebody every week or so, to clip my nails. But the same goes for having a lawnmower or an electric drill, or maybe a food processor, or a food dehydrator. The more that we share these resources, the more that we build community into our daily practices. So, sharing — I don’t remember who I was talking with last time — oh, it was Matai –about creating a tool library here in Ojai. A tool library is a, a beautiful way of sharing. Of course, we have book libraries, but there can be libraries of things. All the things we can share through this library system. We can — I mentioned downsizing, having less, simplifying. But we can also downsize our money. We can look at all the ways that we’re spending our money, and we can say, “Does this bring deep value into our lives? Or is this actually taking away value from our lives?” “Is this actually resulting in me having to work more of a job that I’d rather not be working? Or even having a job that I’d rather not have?” And maybe there’s all sorts of ways that we’re spending money that we don’t need to spend anymore. And we can simplify, and we can downsize. One of the most radical human beings that I’ve learned from, his name is Mark Boyle. And he’s written a book called The Moneyless Manifesto, and that is a detailed guide on how to live without money — everything that you would need to know. And, there’s another guy who lived without money named Daniel Suelo. And there’s a book The Man Who Lived Without Money I think is the name of that book. So, those are some areas to deeply explore.

Another thing we can do is we can break free from cars. Not necessarily not having a car, but walking more, biking more, using public transportation more. Being just more connected with people. When we’re in cars, there’s this concept of … what do you call yourself when you’re driving? Driver. Okay, and what are the people called that are not driving, who are on the outside of the car? Pedestrians. Yeah. But we’re all human beings. When we’re in the car, there’s, it, it, it makes this like separation, and this disconnection. The less we’re in the car, it really changes things. One of the main benefits for me of getting rid of my car is that I spent a lot less time kind of calling people names, let’s say. Also, when you no longer have a car, you no longer have a trunk. When you no longer have a trunk, you have less ability to buy more stuff at Walmart. That was a big realization for me in 2012.

Another thing we can do is embrace reducing our waste. We’ve probably all heard of the concept of zero waste. Very few of us, of us, are ever going to get to zero waste. Even when that’s been the core of my desire, I’ve never created zero waste. But we can reduce our waste. A simple way to do that is to look inside of our garbage cans and see, “Oh, okay, what do we make? What do we got here? How can I do that differently?” So, just questioning everything in our garbage can and our recycling bin. Unfortunately, most recycling is basically a sham. But, so, we can recycle our garbage, and we can look and say, “How can we do this in a way that doesn’t create this?” And whether it’s paper towels, we can use reusable washcloths. If it’s disposable coffee cups, we can have our own reusable cup. If there’s a lot of food packaging, we can start to go to the local food co-op or farmers’ market and get more of our food in bulk and unpackaged. One of the big ways of reducing our waste, or going zero waste, is composting. So, the least radical composting is food scraps, and leaves, and branches from our yard. But we can compost everything that can return to the earth. That includes our hair, fingernails, and, that can even include our own poop. How many people here compost their own poop? Nice. We got a few people. Thank you for being you. Can I come over and use your toilet later? So, composting our own poop is one of the most radical acts that we can take, because the reality of our, our septic — or, not our septic, our sewage systems — is that they are nowhere near as sanitary as we would believe. I was in Sebastian, Florida, and I picked up the local paper. And on the front of it, it said, I think it was, “Four million gallons of raw sewage spilled into the river.” And I was like, “Whoa, that’s a lot.” And then, under it, it said, “Third largest spill in four years.” And, that was the moment I realized that that’s the norm. Not the exception. In our, in our system. So, for anyone out there who doesn’t think you’ve pooped in the ocean, probably, we have. The systems are not quite what we would hope them to be. And so, one of the radical acts that we can do, is compost our own poop. And, the reason I love that so much is because it’s a solution that could be implemented by billions of people tomorrow. That would build incredible soil fertility, all while reducing our waste substantially. It doesn’t take any advanced technology, and it’s incredibly safe. If you’d like to learn about it, you can read The Humanure Handbook, which is written by Joseph Jenkins, and his nickname is ‘The Duke of Duty’ or ‘The Pope of Poop.’ Very radical human being. He likes to swear a lot, so sometimes I feel a little uncomfortable, but very kindred spirit.

Another thing we can do is embrace not using chemicals. Chemicals that pollute the earth and our own bodies. A simple way of looking at that is: is this killing life? And, many of the items that we put on our bodies, that have petroleum byproducts and chemicals, are actually destroying the billions of species — well, hundreds of species, but billions of bacteria and yeast — that we are interconnected with. So, we can just use basic natural products or resources on our bodies. But, also in our cleaning products. Anything that we have at home here in Southern California, we have the company Dr. Bronner’s, which is one of the largest natural soap companies in the country and the world. And, in my opinion, one of the most radical corporations in this country and the world. And, that’s a very simple way that doesn’t require doing anything radical, except just buying a different soap at the store. That makes an incredible difference in our relationship. So, we can grow more of our own food. We can forage for food. I have a, a database — findaforager.com — that you can go to, to find foragers in your area, and learn how to forage. To learn these basic skills. From, we can source our food locally. We don’t have to grow and forage our own food. We can support local farmers and local growers, and really seek out regenerative agriculture practices. We can simply love our water. Just having a deep love of our water. Many of the Indigenous cultures say, “Water is life.” And if we really, truly believe that water is life, we treat it in a different way. We can deepen our connection with the Earth. We don’t have to go into deep nature to deeply connect with the Earth. We can simply listen to the birds. We can hug the trees. We can breathe the air. We can speak to the plants. And we can see that the sky is here with us, at every single moment. And the earth is below us, whether we’re in Los Angeles, Ojai, or in the deepest national parks in this country. We can spend more time in nature — less inside, more outside. We can break free from societal norms. That’s one of the things that holds us back the most. Is the concern of what will people think about us? I like to look at life through the lens of: Is this beneficial to the Earth? Is it beneficial to my community? And is it beneficial to myself? Rather than, “What will people think?” We can practice gratitude. I listened to a lot of Ram Dass on my walk down here. I listened to about 40 hours of Ram Dass, and that was one of his teachings — just to be grateful. When we’re grateful, we have so much more. Just by tapping into a different state of mind. We can be in the present moment. I mentioned Thich Nhat Hanh, I mentioned Fred Rogers — Mr. Rogers — those are two of the people that have taught me, that, that the most … how powerful being in the present moment is. We can live in service. I have really good news: when we are living in service, we will always have meaning and purpose. There will always be somebody who needs our help. There will always be an ecosystem that is in need of our help. There will always be plants and animals that are asking for our service. So, we can always find health and happiness and meaning and purpose through living in service. We can practice Compassionate Communication, like I mentioned. There are classes. You can take classes. You can learn from people in person, or you can find free resources online, or the book — I mean, you could borrow this book when I’m done with it from Peter. However, you want to do it. We can get off our devices. Just spend less time on our devices. One way of doing that is to shut off our phones and computers about an hour before bed, and then not turn them back on until a half hour after waking up. That makes a meaningful difference in lowering stress and anxiety inside ourselves. We can take Sundays off. Turn the devices off for Sundays. Or, even go back to the 1990s, and go on family vacations, where we’re off for an entire week. We can practice wealth redistribution. So, if we have funds that we maybe don’t really need, and there are other people, or other projects, or activists, or nonprofits that could really use that, we can send that money their way. We can support them. We can distribute those funds. One activist that really resonates with me — if you want to dive into that — is Vandana Shiva. She educates on the reality behind globalization and the centralization of money and the one percent. So, it’s a simple thing: just distributing our funds in ways that help create the world we want to live in.

Along with that, we can divest. Taking our money out of destructive investments. In 2012, I took my money out of my IRA and my life insurance, because I realized I was invested in fossil fuels and cigarettes. You can reinvest in portfolios and funds that are more invested in green energy and such. Or, you can take an even more radical step, and say, if we don’t have fresh air, and we don’t have clean water, we have no future. There are people suffering right now, who are equally as important as us. And we can invest in the present moment. Strategically, by putting those resources into the present, we can also invest in our future. Land redistribution — there’s a website, landback.org, if you want to explore redistributing land to Indigenous people in this country. Leah Penniman created the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust, which is a land trust designed to redistribute land to people of color. Specifically, I would say, to Black communities. To put the land back into the hands of people who have traditionally been caretakers of this land. We can practice voluntary simplicity. Mahatma Gandhi, one of the things he shared, was, “Live simply, so that others may simply live.” You probably have reconnected to how deeply poignant that is today, as we talked about our consumer convenience. How radical today it is to just simply live simply. One radical way of doing that is to commit to never paying federal taxes. You can do that by committing to earn less than the federal poverty level. That’s one of my lifetime vows. You can learn about this through … this largely started during the Vietnam War era, through the war tax resistance movement. But it’s simple: our taxes are paying for the military-industrial complex, the police brutality, bailing out the big banks, the prison system, corruption in industry. All of that is being paid for by our taxes. So, we can stop doing that, and put our money instead into the communities. What I do is, I’ve made a lifetime commitment to donate one hundred percent of my media income from TV shows, books, etc., directly to nonprofits that are truly serving the people. So, I’m not against taxes, but I want my taxes to actually serve the people and serve the planet.

We can educate ourselves. If we don’t know about the solutions, we can’t practice them. And if we don’t know about the reality behind our lives, it’s hard to break free from it. Some resources I recommend: on my website, I have a list of books, films, and people I’ve deeply resonated with. If you’ve resonated with what I’ve been sharing tonight, it’s at robingreenfield.org/books, or /films, or /people.

Then, the last two: we can find wholeness and completeness within. As I shared earlier, if we are whole and complete, most of the rest can just fall away. The solutions come to us when we’re whole. And much of what we think we need, we no longer need. We can dedicate much of ourselves to the life that we want to be living. And, then, a very important one to me — learning from people who have lived in harmony with this land for thousands of years. Not perfectly, of course; no culture has lived in perfect harmony. But, certainly in much more harmony than we are today. Learning from Indigenous people, I think, is one of the most … one of the most impactful, and also one of the most grounded ways we can reconnect with the land, with the people, and with the plants and animals. If you haven’t already, read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. That’s a very life-changing book. She also came out with a new book, The Serviceberry. Has anybody read The Serviceberry yet? A few of us. It’s a short read, only about an hour-and-a-half, two hours, and I cried for, like, three-quarters of it. It was so deeply meaningful. The Haudenosaunee have The Thanksgiving Address. It’s only about a 10-minute read. And, this book … if we lived just by this book, if our environmental movement, and our social justice movement, was led by this book … wow, would we be effective. That’s The Thanksgiving Address: words before all else. Greetings to the natural world. That’s by the Haudenosaunee. And, then, Lyla June Johnston — she’s here in California — she has a recent dissertation. Her PhD was on Indigenous food ways. And, that’s a very powerful read. And, also, her TED talk on Indigenous food ways is very powerful as well. Those are just a few of the many people to learn from.

Closing Remarks

Again, it’s not about giving up. It’s about finding the deeply meaningful place within ourselves. My encouragement is to start where you are. You can only be you. You can only be in the time you live in. You can only be here, right now. So, start there. And my encouragement is: don’t start with what you’re feeling most daunted by, or most overwhelmed by. Start with what you’re excited for. Maybe you’re excited to grow some food, or to forage, or to reduce your waste, or to start a community initiative, like a tool library here in Ojai. Or, maybe it’s to spend more time at the library, or reading to children, or just being more deeply connected with the Earth. Whatever it is you’re feeling excited about, my encouragement is to start there. And then, one step at a time, break free from the systems that no longer serve, and recreate the systems that serve the life that you truly want to live.

Questions and Answers

I am very grateful to now say that that is the end of me. Of course, it is not the actual end of me talking, because now I’d like to open it up to questions. Before doing that, I just want to share, if any of you are desiring to leave right now, I will certainly not take that to heart. Any time you desire to go out into the world and do what you’re wanting to do, I welcome you to. But I’ll sit here and maybe do about 20 minutes of questions. That talk was longer than I was planning, but maybe about 15 or 20 minutes of questions. Does that sound good? For those of us here?

Question: Do you have a cell phone?

Do I have a cell phone? I got rid of my cell phone in 2014 — so, a little over 10 years ago. And, what I do have, what I have had, is a computer. And through that, I just use email. And then, I also use something called Google Voice, so I can make and receive calls, and do texts through that, but only on WiFi. So, I’m disconnected from the internet for … well over half of my life, I would say. Because if there’s not WiFi, I’m not on it. And I’m very intentional about having a, a balance there. And, then, currently, I don’t have a computer. So, during this experiment of non-ownership, I took nine weeks off of being online. I was fully offline for nine weeks. Now I’m back online. And, what I simply do — it’s so funny — so many people are, like, “Well, if you don’t have a device, how can you be in touch?” And I’m, like, “Well, because there’s, like, five billion devices on this Earth, and I can just use one of those in the moments that I need one.” Just as we can share books, we can also share computers. The library has computers that I can go use. So, right now, that’s what I’m doing. This experiment of non-ownership is a … is a short … it has an end date. And that is potentially at the end of this speaking tour, which ends in Sebastopol. I’d also like to mention, from here, I’ll be in Ventura tomorrow, Santa Barbara, on the 4th, San Luis Obispo, on the 8th, Santa Cruz on the 10th, San Francisco on the 14th, Oakland on the 16th, and Sebastopol on the 18th. So, if you have friends around Los Angeles that you’d like to have hear this message, you can share that with them. And that’s on my website, robingreenfield.org/tour.

Question: “So, you have an income with your media business?”

Okay. So, as far as my income, I’m grateful to talk about that. So, what I have committed to is, not to make money off of my message. The reason why is because if I am making money off of my message, then it’s … it’s hard to … I’ve just seen from leaders around the world, it becomes very challenging to separate those two things. And, not to produce videos, because you’re actually needing money. I have been very intentional about keeping those things very separate. So, the little bit of money that I make, I earn through either public speaking, or by teaching donation-based schools — usually foraging schools. But, ninety-nine percent of all talks I ever give, there’s no money. Like tonight was free. Because that’s not the point. Money is not the point of this. It’s about sharing information. So, I’ve committed to earning less than the federal poverty threshold for life, which is about $15,000 for an individual. When I made that commitment, about 10 years ago, it was $11,000. And, that’s … I’ve earned less than $10,000 since, I think, 2015. But I do flow money, and what I mean by that is, I’m not against the usage of money. And I am trying to create an equitable distribution of money. I do run a nonprofit, but mostly I help distribute money to other nonprofits. And, sometimes that includes my nonprofit as well, which is called Regeneration, Equity and Justice, that I started in 2020. Does that answer the question?

“You haven’t really opted out — you’ve gotten rid of a lot of stuff. But you’ve hung on to the main trap of society, which is the media — that is, the device, or access to someone else’s device. I mean, that’s all about these traps.”

Yes, so I still exist in some of the traps, for sure. I have not ascended. I am not a fully enlightened being. However, I have dissolved an incredible amount of it from my life. And I’ve dissolved an incredible amount of the destruction and the exploitation in which I was wrapped into. Here’s the situation I’m in: I could opt out completely, and, in many ways, that would be the absolute happiest day of my entire life, to be completely honest. Right now, I want to be alone in the woods. I am very happy to be here with all of you as well. This brings me great joy. But I’m tired. And I would like to be alone in the woods very, very much. And, thankfully, I will be alone in the woods for a couple days starting tomorrow. It’s in Sisar Canyon. That’s all I’m going to say. Don’t come find me. But, so, here’s the balance I live with: my objective is to be of service. And, to be of service, I have the balance of how much do I remain in society. If I remove myself completely, I will not be nearly as effective as a servant. If I check out of the internet completely, if I remove myself fully from the monetary system, I will not be nearly as effective. As a servant. What this means is, every day, I am walking a line of ego. Because, for example, I don’t like to talk about this, but I have a million followers on Facebook, a half million followers on YouTube, I have “blue” check marks, I have a Wikipedia page. All of this is incredible ego boosting stuff, right? I might not have a million dollars in my bank account, but you can see a million followers, and a verified “blue” check mark. I don’t… I have this, in part, because I started from an ego-based place, because that’s the society I grew up in. So, my job is to navigate that line of dissolving the ego, holding on to whatever parts of the ego actually are of service, and dissolving every part that no longer is. And, it’s a very challenging thing to do. I don’t have the right or wrong — I don’t have the exact answers. But what I can say is that I’m very … for me personally, what I can say is, that when I started this twelve years ago, I was probably operating from a place of, like, seventy percent ego. And now, I don’t know where it’s at, but it’s definitely substantially lower than that, on most days. I’m not thinking, “How do I benefit from this?” It’s, “How do I use the skills, the resources, the time, and the energy I have, to exist in the difficult, difficult times we live in?” Hey, if I lived in the time of the Buddha, I wouldn’t have social media, and any of that stuff. But I live in a time where this is powerful stuff. And my job is to navigate that, to the best of my abilities.

So, over here. Hi. Thank you for being here.

“I have two quick questions. One is, have you had a medical emergency since going on this adventure? Yeah. And, if not, what would your plan be? I mean, obviously, you live in the present as much as possible. But I, I would imagine a lot of people are wondering that.”

Yeah. So, have I had a medical emergency since I started this different way of life? And, if I do have one, what is my plan? So, this is an area where I’ve explored deeply our healthcare system, or, as some people call it, our sick care system. If you really explore our system, you see that it’s not designed to keep us healthy. It’s designed to deal with us once we have a problem. So, what I practice is preventative healthcare. Some statistics say that seventy-five percent of all visits to the hospital or to the doctors are prevented by the food we eat, whether we move our bodies, and then, our mind. And, so, the vast majority of it is preventable. So, that’s first and foremost. My job is to prevent destroying myself in the first place, and having to go to the hospital. I actually believe that when we have insurance, we are more reckless with what is insured. When we have our car insured, there’s no doubt we are much more, like, “Okay,” with it being wrecked. And I believe we do the exact same thing to our bodies. And when we see that our hospitals have McDonald’s in them, we really see there’s a problem at the foundation of our healthcare system. So, I have chosen to opt out of this very substantially. I write about this in depth on my website. And I have a 45-minute video entitled “On Health Insurance, Age, and Death.” And I recently did an hour-long video exploring death in general. So, I have not had a major health issue since I began this lifestyle, about 13 or so years. Well, in 2016, I almost lost a toe. And I went to the hospital, and they sewed it back on for me. That was at the very beginning of this stage. Now, if my toe was hanging three-quarters off, there’s a good chance I would not go get it sewn back on, and I would practice … humans taking care of toes outside of that. And the reason I know some about that is, there’s a book called Dono Doctor; Where There Is No Doctor, for a long time. When we lost a finger or a toe, we took care of it. We knew how. So, this is my life. Some people look at my life, and they see it as all philosophical, or they see, like, me being dependent on others. But my most valuable resource is skills. So, for example, a really important thing to know, is that if we lose our finger, if our finger gets cut off, it is impossible to bleed out through the loss of a finger or a toe. Very important to know, in that scenario. You don’t have nearly as much urgency as you would think, when you know that you won’t bleed out through that. So, a couple other notes on that. I’m not against going to the doctor. I just only will if it’s actually needed. And, then, the other note is, my relationship with death. Of course, we live in a society, just like we have a different … different relationship with money and ownership, we also have a different relationship with death than many societies around the world. I’m simply of the belief that death isn’t bad. Partly, that’s because I don’t believe in heaven and hell. I don’t think that, depending on the way that I live, I’m going to burn in hell for eternity. So, when I die, I die. I’ve accepted that. I don’t know what’s in the future, and I don’t know what’s in the past. But I don’t think that I’m going to burn in hell, or anything in that realm. So, I’m very open to death. More so than the average person. Now, some people look at me, and they say, “Well, sure, you’re 38 years old. You’re healthy. You’re young. You’re delusional, basically. And only time will tell.” The reason I don’t think I’m delusional in this regard is because I believe that, actually, I’m just choosing to not exist within the constructs in which I was born into. And that I believe in what many people around the world believe, and have believed, for a very long time. So, I accept my death much more so. And, because of that, I’m not going to take part in anything like chemotherapy or radiation, if I was to get cancer, for example. When I was 25, I got a vasectomy. And I’m 38 years old now. That was a decision at that age to not have children. I have not, for a moment, said to myself, “Boy, was that a mistake.” So, I’m interested to see what happens in my elder years, how this plays out in the long run. And, it is very much an experiment. And time will tell whether it turns out I was a young, delusional hypocrite, or I knew what I was talking about. So, I welcome you all to follow along, for the years ahead and see.

Question: “I would imagine that being in Ojai, a lot of us have adopted the label as activist, or hippie, or something along those lines of being intentional. And, one of the things that I’ve found really curious is how few people support credit unions. And, that there is no credit union in Ojai. And I was there. So, I’m really curious if that’s something that you write about on your website, you speak about?”

Yes. So, the concept — so, the idea of, instead of putting our money into the big banks, there is an alternative. And that is supporting local credit unions. Many of the local credit unions truly support the community. There’s teachers’ credit unions, for example. When I lived in San Diego, I took my money out of Chase Bank, and I put it into Mission Federal Credit Union. And I do write in depth about removing money from the banks, and putting it into credit unions. That’s at robingreenfield.org/creditunion. So, it’s certainly something I’m an advocate for. It’s not something I talk about as much, since I just don’t have money in any accounts anymore. So, it’s a little less relevant in my day-to-day practice. But it’s certainly one of the things we can do, to make sure our money is not invested in destructive infrastructure projects, and is actually supporting the community. Thanks for bringing that up.

Question: “So, I don’t know if I can structure this question very well, but I just came to myself. So, for example, Jeff Bezos, Amazon … the wealthy, or one of the most wealthy men in the world … his ex-wife, right? They divorced. I believe she had a lot of money. But she decided to give this money to a lot of, uh, nonprofit organizations. So, I guess my question is: people can right that delusional path, but when they awaken, maybe they can do a lot of good, too, right? Yeah. I don’t know if it’s a question, or it’s a statement, or your thought.”

Well, thanks for bringing that up. I mean, my, my basic belief is that, no matter where we are, or who we are today, we can … we can change our lives, to be existing in a different way. It doesn’t matter what we’ve done, or where we are. We can choose. We can choose how we’re going to use our resources. We can choose how we’re going to take our actions. We can choose how we’re going to communicate with others. And, we can choose to take responsibility for our lives, and live in a way that’s in, in much more harmony. So, I don’t look at the billionaires of the world with much in the realm of disdain. Because I, I see all of them as the same, as the same as me, trying to meet the basic desire … to belong, to be accepted. They might be more out of balance, with their way of doing it. But, they, I do believe, are … are looking for those … those very basic things as well. So, we’ll do two more questions, although I’d love to do way more. I’m just seeing that it’s … it’s 7:50 right now. So, here in the back.

“I have a very simple question. But, are you happy?”

Am I happy? So, the answer is yes, I am happy. And I’m also many other emotions at the same time. So, you see me smiling. It’s not a false smile. I only smile when it’s genuinely inside of myself. Which is a large portion of every single day. I experience a lot of joy, and a lot of happiness in this lifestyle. A lot of connectedness, and a lot of peace — inner peace. And, at the same time, I experience sadness. I experience disappointment, and disheartenment. I experience overwhelm. I feel pain inside. Sometimes I even feel a little bit depressed. I feel anxious. Or many of these, many of these feelings. And sometimes I feel deeply, deeply happy, at the same time, as I feel, a … I feel pain deep in my heart, at the same time. And, I’ve come to appreciate all of these feelings of … of pain, and sadness, and to embrace them for what they are. And that also helps to turn them into a lighter … a lighter feeling. When I get depressed, it’s usually only for minutes, or potentially hours. And, I also … some of the teachers that I learned from — the Buddha is one. Or Thich Nhat Hanh. Or Ram Dass. They teach us to just observe our emotions, and sometimes they say, just say, “Let’s see how long it lasts,” or to say, “Here is depression. I am not depressed. Depression is inside of me,” to not attach so much to it. But yes, as far as happiness goes, I am experiencing a deep level of … of inner happiness, and inner peace, and almost every day. Probably every day. And those other feelings as well, on days, as well. So, thanks for asking that.

Question: So, thank you for coming. I appreciate your message a lot. I’m curious: in light of how you covered a lot of topics, and you did acknowledge in the beginning of our conditioning around radical individualism. But I’m curious of … in many of your solutions, and many of your comments, I find you’re having a narrative that often is focusing on us as individuals, and almost as consumer choices. And I’m curious of why you choose, you’ve thought about this so much, why you choose to frame so much of the discussion in those terms, versus exploring the rich opportunities and histories … for example, there are groups that are anti-capitalist, you have organizations that are anti-racist, you did mention co-housing, but it seems like I’m left with, it being, like, I feel so many of these oppressive forces have been put upon me. I didn’t choose them. And I feel a lot of anger and resistance against that. But yet, I don’t want to be sitting with that myself. I actually want to join with others in doing it. And I feel that, in this context, it … I still feel like it’s sitting with me. Like, I, I need to choose this or choose that, versus finding a collective way to make systemic change, versus a focus on personal change.”

Yeah. So, the question … yeah, a little bit about, like, that, the way that I’m speaking is against individualism, but yet, in some ways, I very much embody individualism with my way of being, and also with some of my solutions and recommendations for a different way forward. I would say there’s a couple elements to that. And then, there was also the mention that some of what I’m recommending is almost based on consumerism. I would say, first of all, I still am a product of individualism. It’s an area in which I’m still breaking free. I didn’t really come to community being at the core of solutions until the last handful of years. Whereas, in my earlier days, I really did see self-sufficiency and sustainability … that’s where I really was focused in the earlier days. And it’s only more recently that community has become more deeply at the core.

At the same time, my entire life is built deeply into community. As much as sometimes it may not appear that way in every … I, I don’t live in one specific community. But every day, almost every single thing that I do is an interconnected relationship with community. And I think maybe this talk that I gave tonight doesn’t necessarily equitably share the resource, the community-based resources. But, on my website, I think you’ll see there’s hundreds of community-organized activism and community resources that I plug people into, and that I recommend people [look] into. And then, also tonight, some of the … I mentioned a lot of people, more so than I mentioned organizations. However, every single one of those people … what I’m also really connected to is their organizations and what their organizations do for the world. So, yeah, I think it’s an area where I still have growth to make. And, I think it’s also potentially partly just in the way that I’ve shared tonight. And then, also, it, it really is this — I truly believe that, although it is these dominator systems that have been put upon us, I truly believe that the only thing that we can really control is ourselves. And that we’re never going to be able to have healthy communities if we don’t have healthy minds. And so, every single person here has the ability to take responsibility for their own actions, and to be honest, I think, is one of the areas in which we’re lacking the most in society. So, my answer is, it’s a combination of two things. It is … it’s not being dependent upon anybody else to create the, the, the world that we want to live in. But, also, embracing community at the same time. And, a lot of people don’t have a lot of community around them. And so, I like to give solutions where they can start, no matter what. So, yeah. I’ll be interested to see how that question changes, or how that answer changes in the years ahead. As I am more and more involved in community. So, did that give some insight into the question?

“Yeah. Thank you.”

So, it’s 7:55 right now. I think it’s time to call it. Although I would love to answer more questions, I will spend time here, and spend a little bit more time together. Also, one of the most important aspects of preventative health care, is, 12 hugs a day keeps the doctor away. So, I love to share hugs. And I encourage you to share hugs with each other tonight as well. And, last thing: I’m giving a talk in Santa Barbara on the 4th. And I do not have a way out of Ojai. So, if anybody’s looking for some one-on-one time, send me an email at info@robingreenfield.org. I’ll just potentially give you a ride to the train. If anybody wants to put me on the train, or if anybody wants to go up to Ventura on the afternoon of the 4th, you could also talk to me tonight. So, Santa Barbara, May 4th, in the morning, in the afternoon, after I get out of being alone in the cabin. Yeah, late morning, early afternoon. I can … I can drive if you want to drive. Thanks for sharing. So, yes, on that, hugs and goodbye to the people on the internet. Oh, we’re all human beings, doing the best that we can do, in these difficult times we live in.