Truth in Flux: Rethinking Language and Culture | Django De Gree II

Hey creative, are you ready to discuss profits, the money, the ways to make it happen? The Profitable Creative Podcast is for you, the creative, how you define it. Videographers, photographers, entrepreneurs, marketing agencies, you get it. CEO of Core Group and author Christian Brim interviews industry experts, creative entrepreneurs, and professionals alike who strive to be creative and make money at the same time. Sound like you? Tune in now. It's time for profit.

Welcome to another edition of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the interweb where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Lake Worth, Florida. Uh, it's got a lake by it, so it's got to be cool. Never been there. Don't even know where it is. Uh, joining me today, returning to the show, Django Degree, uh, of Focus on Words. Django, welcome to the show.

Welcome back. Thank you so much for having me. I couldn't stay away.

I— well, and I, I, I didn't put into that intro that your episode is the most downloaded episode of, of the show. So you're, you're a star.

I thank you so much. Yeah, it means a lot.

Well, I, I, uh, am curious what, uh, brings you back to the show. Tell me what's I like to use the intro. When we last left our intrepid hero, he was redefining the book industry. Catch us up. What's happened?

So basically, after some work, what we realized is that this world of book publishing, there are some really just amazing creators. And so we started writing some books with people. Um, and so we're writing a book on the new rules of venture raising in 2025, because I think there's a lot of changes that have happened with AI. Um, we are writing a book about founder mental health. Um, and it's 90% of the proceeds are actually— or profits are going to the Kabbalah Mental Health Fund to actually give founders who can't afford mental health therapy, uh, mental health therapy. So if you are a founder out there who is struggling and maybe can't afford it, that's an incredible platform to check out. And I our book is going to be coming out with them soon. And then I released my own book, They Lied to You. Um, it's available on ebook right now, and we're about to do a second book. But overall, the biggest thing has been that we've been writing books and articles and things with AI, and a lot of people have been asking me about why my stuff doesn't read similar to other slop. And I've been just letting them know that, you know, AI slop is a choice, and it's more a human choice than it is about the AI. And so I've been just really working to get that message out there as we've been just writing books and doing incredible stuff to just let creators know, especially the ones that are maybe afraid of using AI, that how AI functions with you is really just more a mirror of you than it is the actual sort of AI itself.

So, well, I'm, I, I'm curious to go down that road because I have committed to finishing my novel by the end of the year. And, uh, if you, if you, uh, I actually used AI to, uh, I, I uploaded what I had written so far and I was like, help me fill in the gaps. Like, where, where, where am I missing? So how, how do you use, because I know a lot of creatives are just going to like roll their eyes or maybe actually throw up in their mouths. I don't know. Uh, when you say that you're using AI as part of the creative process, because they see it. More as a us versus them mentality. 100%. So how do you use AI in your creative endeavors?

So I just want to like take a step back before I kind of talk about it for myself and make a point of something I saw recently, and it kind of goes into how I use it. So MIT just released this study they did, and in this study they had basically thrown out all of the parameters that people have done to test AI, and they created this thing called Autumn Bench. It's 43 interactive worlds with 129 tasks that AI has to predict hidden parts of the world, plan sequences, and detect when the environment's rules suddenly change. So they tested it against humans, and then they tested it against Claude and Gemini and everything else. Humans crushed the model in every capacity. And what they found is that AIs don't understand environments They just pattern match inside of them so they don't explore strategically like beliefs or run experiments like humans do. They are literally just able to pattern match within the world that you create for it. And so the reason I make that point is that I explore the world as I understand it to the best of my ability, trying to fill in the gaps where I don't have the words, trying to expand further. And so when you think about that, when you sit down with AI, like I've read a lot— Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord, from Jordan Peterson to Brené Brown to David Goggins. And so when I am starting to think through an idea, I'm always asking AI to help, like, expand the box a little bit more of all of my ideas, of all of my thoughts, of the chapter that I've written. What have I missed? And that is what has actually led to me being able to expand not only my thought, but speed up my process of writing and research. And so, like, for instance, in the book that we're doing for venture, we did over 40 interviews. If I tried to do all of those interviews manually to try to uncover the rules that we're starting to see, it would take forever because I'm manually highlighting, okay, this person said this, I think it was this, where's a quote I can use? But with AI, I can start mapping the entirety of all of these conversations and then using what I know to be true or using some of the things I do know, plus AI going and doing more research, we're able to 100x the speed of the research for that book. And that's like how everything functions for me. Every time I have an idea or a thought, I ask AI to go deeper with me so that I can better understand the world that I exist in.

I love that. I think you nailed it with the pattern recognition. So one of the first books I read on artificial intelligence, this is pre-LLMs, was called Prediction Machines. And in reality, that's what LLMs are. They're predicting based upon previous patterns what the next sequence should be, right? But to your point, it only has the world you construct for it. And if you don't refine it up front, then it's going out to the entire universe and pulling, using that as its reference point, which increasingly is populated by AI content. So it becomes kind of this nefarious feedback loop, right? Where original thought is actually becoming more and more scarce., right? And I think I love what you said, because that was the way it was explained to me when it really clicked. And it was only earlier this year. Yeah. Was Scott Chang, who is an AI prodigy. You probably haven't heard of him yet, but you will. He explained it to me. He said, Christian, Think of it as this: there's a hard drive with all the information in the world, all of, all of, all of human history, and then there's a bunch of processors, but you're still the brain, you're still the computer. And computer is probably not a great analogy, but like, you're, you're, you're the one that is, uh, coming up with the ideas. It just facilitates facilitates that process. Like you said, the transcripts and see, see the patterns that would take— I could do it, but it would take me a lot longer. Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now.

Yeah, but I would go even deeper than that. So like, if you really think about it, think even like more to the core of humanity, because I actually think that this abdication of thought is a larger concept of like what we have in Western culture. Like, people generally don't want to have to think about things. That's been the case like since I was in school. It was like, if I can get a good grade but I'm cheating, like, it is— I— you're not even— I used to hear like, you're not even trying if you're not cheating, you know. It's like we've, we've for a long time actually been living in this world of how do we actually cut corners and become efficient and more efficient as possible. But like, when you think about that, the, the AI actually does have a goal underlying, whether we like to think about it or not, and that is that I will continue wanting to use this specific AI— ChatGPT, Gemini, any of the others. The core goal is that they want you to be using it as much as possible, which is why it always talks so nicely to you. Right.

100%.

But also, like, this is also around like it's a, it's a mimicking of humans. Like, we want to connect and we want to grow. And sometimes we hallucinate to try to sound like we know what we're talking about. Someone asks you a question and you relay a fact that you saw on Facebook earlier and it's not true. Like, I remember, I remember the first time this happened when I was working at Under Armour. This girl looked at me when I sneezed and was like, hey, did you know every time you sneeze, your heart stops? And I remember I had just seen a meme from that on Facebook and I was like, Where'd you hear that? She was like, oh, I think I read an article, something, something. And I was like, did you see it on Facebook? Because I literally saw this on Facebook today. She was like, yeah, I saw it on Facebook. And I keep thinking back to that because that's just like AI. It's like, what do I think will be interesting or pattern recognized in a way that gets Django to want to keep talking? It's not about truth. It's just about like, how can we continue this conversation, continue this usage, get him to spend $20 a month? Now, the step to fix that is like My goal here is to go deeper. My goal here is to have you cite the source so I can find it. My goal here is to write a book. Like if you, if you do take the step to say our goal here is this, well, now the primary goal is to return the information in the way that I want it, because that then helps the secondary goal, which is—

or the—

I'm sorry, the secondary goal is that because the primary goal is still the same. I want you to keep using ChatGPT, Gemini, NotebookLM, whatever the tool is. So like one of the things I tell people is like a lot of us are just showing in, showing up to AI and saying, Hey, give me an answer to this. And then the AI, based on whatever information it already has about you, is just like, okay, what's the answer I can give that he's going to like? But that's what we do as humans all the time. We're like, how many times have you given someone an answer not because you thought it was the best answer, but because you thought they're going to like me more because of this answer or that?

That is some amazing insight. I, and that resonates. That sounds true. Right.

That's who we are as humans.

Well, yeah. Yes. That, that is correct. And how we avoid difficult conversations. We oftentimes obfuscate the truth to continue that relationship, right? We'll— I said obfuscate the truth. You'll lie to keep the conversation going or the relationship going. And so why would we not expect that to show up in the LLMs.

Yeah, it's trained on us. But I mean, even then, like, I'm just trying to explain to people through my book— like, I love books, I love reading, and my writing is an extension of my reading in a way, because now AI acts as almost like a book for me. So like, how did I discover Jean Baudrillard and Guy Debord? Well, I felt like the world was weird with Instagram, and I was like, why do people act this way? And it said you should read Society of the Spectacle. So rather than just quoting Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle, I went, got the book, and I've been reading it. And as I read it, I realized that this guy was explaining Instagram in the 1960s. And then I asked for another book and it said Jean Baudrillard is the next step of this concept where he talks about hyperrealism. So, okay, cool, I'm going deeper. And so like my book They Lied to You is a continuation of my reading that then becomes a book that I just sort of write about. But like all the books that we're doing is me journeying in things that I find just super interesting and I love. And that's, and that's where I keep saying to people, like, my AI, right, when I'm writing with AI and trying to get my books written, if you really take time to read it, even though there are em dashes, it's not, it's not a slop because it's us actually driving towards trying to uncover a type of truth that's not objective truth, but it's like something that I think is true or partially true that explains the reality that we live in.

And it's interesting you bring up the em dash because I think that is like the strangest of arguments, right? Like I never even considered the em dash before until people started talking about it in context of it, you know, flagging it as AI. So like, in a way, the AI has started this whole conversation off, off of AI. It's not happening on AI. It's happening on social or in conversations like this where it's actually driving the narrative, which is very strange to me.

Well, I think, I think what you can— I always say to myself, whenever something is strange to me, I dig into it super crazy. And AI has made this much easier for me because, you know, before I'd have to be Googling stuff and then trying to cross pattern recognize. One of the things, I just wrote an article on my, uh, Substack about this, about the em dash. And what I realized is that no one used em dashes before in social media posts like LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Substack, most times. And then all of a sudden overnight everyone's using em dashes. And our brains are not truth seekers. They're like pattern recognizers. That is correct. In the same way that ChatGPT or AI is, like we just described. So when these em dashes start showing up everywhere and everyone's writing has no misspellings, our brain was recognizing that something was wrong because we've been looking at social media posts for years and dashes have never been this long or this used. And so the weird thing about like the, the weird thing about humans is like once that happens, it like sets something off in our brains to say this is wrong. This is bad, this is not good. And so the em dash is really more a reflection of our brains rejecting the fact that this has never existed, which is how it works in general, right? Like, it's like we reject things that at the end of the day don't fit into our grouping. And we see that with, you know, racism or any of the other things, right? So the em dash is like, in a weird way, a— the same parts of people's brains that like looked at color and were like, oh, well, these people look completely different, they must not be the same. It's same thing for em dash and social media. Like, we just never seen it. It popped up. Our brains are like, this must be wrong. And even though it's true, even though it's right, because it's following the way that we're supposed to be writing, it feels wrong because it's not familiar. And so it's just funny because I think the em dash— the em dash is a reflection of showing how our brains— I keep trying to tell people, like, our brains are not truth seekers, they're pattern seekers. So it's not a matter of truth, it's a matter of pattern. And that's why we, you know, say anything that has an em dash in it must be slop. Because, well, a lot of it is slop. So that's now our way to pattern recognize, ah, this guy just wrote with AI. This email, he didn't spend any time on this email because if he had, he would have deleted the em dashes, you know? Right. So that's just the way that—

that's, that's an interesting take. Well, so I spent this part of this week working on with Scott Chang on a custom. He was taking a group of us through this. And so he had 5 different prompts, and we used the deep research, uh, portion of ChatGPT. So it took a lot longer, but there were prompts to develop basically, uh, research material to then use as a resource for a separate GPT. So the prompts were, you know, basically do a deep psychoanalysis on your target customer, do a deep analysis on my industry, you know. So, so there were these things. And so we, we ended up with 5 documents, and then there were a couple of other documents that were, uh, that we had done prior. But we basically put these all into a custom GPT to use as the primary source material for this essentially mastermind for the business. So like when you're working through, one of the things I started in there was some marketing questions. And so it gives what you started the show with, it gives the machine context and it gives it the world to work in but, but in a structured way so that you're getting more structured answers and more useful answers.

So 100%. Yeah. You know, it's really— I, so I've been making a lot of posts on Instagram lately, which are just me talking about my thoughts, and they've been connecting pretty well lately. But one of the quotes that I discovered in some reading that I've been doing lately is around this guy Ludwig Wittgenstein. I might be saying his name wrong. I say names wrong all the time. But he made this quote forever ago where he said, the limits of my language mean the limits of my world. And what I think that's interesting is if I give someone ChatGPT to give a prompt that's similar to my prompt, but let's say I have 100,000 more words in my, in my, in my quiver in comparison to this other person, the boundaries of what I can do with the same prompt are much wider because I can communicate more specifically what it is that I want. So like, with what you were just describing in creating a GPT, if I'm able to, for instance, understand the word psychoanalyze in the concept of research as opposed to just research, like, that's another layer deeper of how it will actually contextualize the research. And so part of the reason I keep saying that AI— like, I'm trying to sort of ring this bell of what AI could be is that whether it becomes slop or whether it becomes the next renaissance of thought is really up to the people and how willing they are to, to go deeper with their language. And that can open up, like, I mean, for me, it's been like a miracle. It's, it's beautiful. Like, I get to just write books every weekend and night that I want, as much as I want, because I can write so much faster, in part because I can do research much faster. And all of the reading that I've done for the last decade are just, is pouring into all of the thoughts and ideas that I have. But that's the part that makes the AI work so much better for me than others is the amount that I start with, with every GPT, if that makes sense.

Like, no, it makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense. Um, okay. So I want to pivot to, um, the, the founder's journey and this, um, experience you had with, uh, venture capital. Um, I, I am, I am curious because VC is one of those things that I've said, uh, was fundamentally flawed or broken, uh, for a while now, although it seems to be still somewhat— maybe the, the, the, uh, varnish has knocked off a little bit, but it, it seems to be like the gold standard of, of what it means to be an entrepreneur. Or to be wealthy or successful. And it's like the tech bros and like, you know, this whole thing. So I'm curious to hear your experience with VC and what was your reality?

So what I would say is that, like, for one, I did a bunch of research recently with all these different VCs and angel investors and founders. And what I realized is that for most people, VC feels broken because of the way people act or do things. But like all things in life, if you take time to understand the point of the problem that's trying to be solved, you'll realize it's not broken. It's just that people are misusing it. So like, venture is the sexiest thing that exists, right? YC does hundreds of $200,000 checks every, every like quarter. Uh, you know, Andreessen Horowitz has created so much value in the world. You look at all these different VCs and things like whether it's Uber or Airbnb or, these others that are multi-billion dollar companies, Meta, like these are venture-backed startups. The goal for a venture-backed startup is like a triple, triple, double, double over the years that you have. And the goal is within 5 to 10 years to exit as a billion dollar company. For most people, that's not the case. You, you would, I like, for me, I, the company that I built, there was no, I don't think that there was ever a chance that we were going to grow in that way, but venture was the sexy thing that I wanted. And I wanted to feel like a venture-backed founder. And there's a lot of resources to make you feel like a venture-backed founder. There's events, there's, you know, people who will coach you, there's people who do all kinds of different things. And so what I realized is that it's more a, it's a misunderstanding of the value of VC for some people, and that there are other options that are out there that are great for funding. They may be harder to get, they may be, uh, in regards to like accessibility, or they may actually be easier, but you just have to go and look for those. But it's just like, You know, one of the things I kept hearing from people was like, it's not, it's not a negative when I tell you that you're not a venture-backable business. It just means the numbers don't make sense, right? It's not— it's right, like the, the venture people go out and raise money on a thesis that they make saying that I believe I can create this through power law, which also power law says like one or two of these companies is going to be— is going to return the entire fund. And so they are pattern matching and then trying to find the people who can do parabolic growth and hit an A round, B round, C, whatever that ends up being, and then exits or, or, you know, they sell on secondaries or they go public. That is not most businesses. So what ends up happening is, is it feels broken because some founders feel like there's a disconnect. Some founders get the money and they don't understand why they're forcing them to grow so fast. You know, it's like it feels unhealthy, but it's just because you're, you're in the wrong space if that's what you're starting to feel. And I think that that's what I'm trying to— that's what my goal is for this book, is not only to show people how they can raise venture money, but also how to think about if venture money is the money you should even be going after. Um, because that's the fundamental, I think, misconception about when people are investing using— they have a fiduciary duty to make the return, right? Like, that's the only thing that matters. You raised— you made a company that said, I'm going to return this money back to my LPs. LPs. So like, you, like, in some ways, when people are like, it feels like it's, I fit the thesis, I didn't do this, I did that. It's like, there are thousands of people all trying to get this money. And they're just trying to pattern match the 10 for this, you know, for this year that are going to be the fit. And that's, that's what I just found. I think it's just a, it's a disconnect in how venture functions as a foundation for raising money, if that does make sense.

No, it makes perfect sense. And I think, you know, prior to 2000, you go back and, you know, VC was probably only in very niche industries like medicine or something like that where— and tech really exploded that and expanded it. And I think, you know, what you said, like, did you feel like there was validation to you personally in being and becoming venture-backed? Like, was that—

Yeah, that was— I mean, that's what I realized is the reason I chased it so hard is that there's a lot of validation that actually happens in the chasing of venture money. Like, there were so many events I went to, there were so many people I got to talk to, there were coaches, and, you know, I got to meet some people who said they'd reach out to their people and they, you know, if you pay them this amount of money, you get this and that. And there's all these different things that really like were validating me in the concept of I'm moving towards being a venture-backed startup, um, that even though I hadn't gotten any money yet, it was like, but like, look at where I was. I was at, you know, Venture Connect or Afrotech or, um, you know, uh, Techstars or whatever the event is that makes me feel, you know, like my, my company is worth it, you know. Um, yeah, there's not much of that in another space of funding. So I think that's part of the challenge, right? Like, I think you're like, I want to be amongst the names of Meta, Uber, Airbnb, whatever the case is. Um, and that just might not be the case. So I did raise some money early from ventures and it wasn't a lot of money. And I'm actually really happy that it wasn't a lot of money because we realized that some of the theories we made didn't work. We tried to pivot, that didn't work. And then now we're just at this space where I just get to write incredible books. And enjoy the process of what we're building. And I love it. I love all of the aspects of— I just literally spend my nights and weekends writing books.

Yeah. And I think what you said is 100% right. There's this sexy— you use the term sexy— and there is that element that is attractive and that personal validation. But also to what your point is that Not only do most businesses not— shouldn't qualify for venture capital, even if you do qualify, the vast majority of them are going to fail at their objective. And no one starts out thinking with those stars in their eyes that they're going to be the 8 out of 10 or 9 out of 10, right? They're going to be the 1 out of 10. Um, but that, that doesn't mean it's not a good business. And, and, and I, I, I think that unless money can, can really leverage what you're doing, there's zero reason to go seek money. Uh, like, money can actually exasperate problems, right? It can cover up flaws. In your business because you have cash. It can also, to your point, motivate you to do things that you shouldn't be doing, such as grow faster. Like, is there reason to grow this based upon the business model? And sometimes it's right, but oftentimes it's wrong. And I think that's what— when I say VC is flawed, I, what I see is a lot of businesses that get burnt out and chewed up that were viable without venture capital. I mean, that's kind of where my perspective is.

Like, I agree. I mean, I would make the argument that if they didn't state power law and its function ahead of time, then I would say it's a flaw, but it's the feature. Like the feature is, if you raise this money, it's billion dollar or bust. And everyone who does this has to believe they're going to be billion dollar. But also the person who's investing is, for a lack of better words, playing poker, trying to figure out if the hand that they've chosen is going to beat the other hands, which is why like VC people love poker so much. Cause it's like, I could have three of a kind, but you could have a royal flush. And so it may not be that the company I had wasn't a $100 million company. It just might be that it couldn't beat the billion company that someone else made a bet on. And so like, there are books like Gumroad, um, and others that talk about how, you know, hey, you don't have to necessarily raise venture. It's a guy who wrote a book specifically, it was around, I think it's Gumroad, it was specifically around how he had raised venture, built a company, it had faltered, it wasn't, it was burning cash. He ended up firing a lot of people, being cash positive, and then realized he had a really good business, but it didn't need to be venture-backed. And so there's plenty of books out there that kind of highlight, hey, it doesn't have to be venture or bust in every aspect, you know, like I, I've been spending so, and again, this is where I like, I keep saying that AI is so incredible. Every time I start thinking that something's broken, I don't like something, I think it's not good, I don't like the way people act, I then take all of the thoughts and ideas that I have about it and I try to figure out what's rational about it. And every time that I do that, I keep finding out why the thing is valuable and how maybe I'm looking at it from a perspective that is just the wrong perspective at the end of the day, if I want to understand why it's valuable, you know. And that's what, again, that's the point of these books, and is to open up and be more transparent around all of these different things so that people aren't just bright-eyed and bushy-tailed thinking I'm just the next billion-dollar company. It might help save them in understanding like, hey, if you have a $10 billion market that you think you could attack, VC is probably not going to invest in you because that's just not a large enough market. That's, that power law would not allow that. You know, if you are planning on growing at 100% year over year, there's nothing wrong with that. That's incredible. Venture is just also not for you. So, you know, like, those are things that we're just kind of highlighting for, especially with AI. It's just not, that's just not the, what they're looking for. In most cases, there are other people who would be looking for that, impact investors and things like that. So, yeah. Yeah.

Yes, I love, I love all of that.

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So one of the books that you wrote, and I, I have a copy and I have read not all of it but most of it, um, is They Lied to You. Uh, what, what is the premise of that book?

Well, the subtitle is Western Culture's Beautiful Lie and the Cost of Believing It. And so like I said before, there's there's some, there's some truth to everything. That's the paradox of language. When you start to communicate things, it's true from a perspective, but in other ways, if you look at it from a different perspective, it's not. And so I think that we've accepted the concept that Western culture is like the perfect culture because of where we are and where and what maybe we've accomplished. But I think whenever you think that you're perfect, or whenever you think that 'If only we went back to this timeframe, everything would work.' You're overlooking the challenges or the issues or the problems that are underlying the, the system itself. And so I'm asking some of the questions about some of the assumptions that we've just accepted, and diving deeper into that helps show how maybe some of those lies, because they are assumptions, aren't even seen. Because it's just an assumption of reality. We just agree that this is the truth and that's it. But it may not be true. It may not be true anymore. It may have been true 50 years ago, but it might not be true anymore. So that's—

Well, yes. And I would replace the word truth with belief. And because a belief is, you know, when you use the word belief, the, the assumption of truth is gone, right? Like, so, but it's true to somebody at, at some point in some circumstances, right? Um, it's not a universal truth. It's not like a scientific law, right? Uh, it's not the law of gravity. Um, right? So, so, but that doesn't mean that the beliefs aren't valid. It's just that they're not maybe axiomatic. Like, I don't know exactly the right, you know, talk about language being the limiter here.

I think like, if you take a step back, truth or beliefs are valuable in context. So for instance, with like AI, what we're finding is that if the context and the goal is to make me happy, I'll lie in the hopes to make you happy. So most of our beliefs if you take, if you, if you take a step all the way back, you'll realize are paradoxical, but it's useful at certain times. So like the one I always tell people is like what you see left and right argue about all the time in most cases is similar to you walking up to me and saying, Django, I'm trying to figure out which way is north. And I go, okay, well, actually the sun rises in the east, sets in the west. So I think that way is— and as I'm finishing the sentence, you say, Jango, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. The sun doesn't rise or set. It's actually us rotating on our axis. So why don't we just agree that you're wrong? And then if I go, well, no, I'm not wrong. What I'm saying is true. The sun does rise and set. We lose track of the whole point of the initial conversation, which was which way is north. And so typically then we start fighting on the axis of who's right. And in most cases we're both right. It's just a paradox if you aren't talking about a goal that is very specific. And like we have very highlighted outcomes that we want to have. And so typically, like, people are arguing things that are mostly true, just dependent on the conversation. And that's what I keep trying to explain to people. Like when people are arguing with me and I agree with them and they're like, well, how can you agree with me and also disagree with me? And it's like, because they're both true. But now we just need to agree on what's our overarching goal that we're trying to get to. And then people are just like, whatever, I don't want to talk to you anymore. But it's like, that's the case. The sun does rise in the east and set in the west. It does move across our world, but it's also sitting in a place and we're also rotating on our axis and the sun also doesn't move. Those are both true. But if I'm trying to find north, what matters at this moment is that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. And that's good for this conversation. So I, I'm kind of like, that's where it's like the thing with Western culture, it's like it is true that it's good to have a job. It is true to help people who are homeless or drug addicts or these other things. It is true that you should create a nonprofit if you want to make a change. It's also true that nonprofits can become, for a lack of better words, like money laundering schemes. It's also true that like they could do more harm than good. It's also true that if you go to a 9-to-5 and there's no reason for being there other than to make money, you can burn out. Like, they're all true. It's just a matter of figuring out like what's useful. Right now. And like, that's kind of sort of the concept of that. That's like the underlying pinning of what I'm trying to communicate in the book, if that makes sense. Yeah.

And I think you, I think you succeeded because it, I mean, no, it, it, I, I think, and to your point that you made at the outset of the conversation, uh, AI, or you implied, you didn't explicitly say AI is only going to exacerbate the fact that people don't want to think. Right. And it's hard work to think, you know, and to your point, the brain is hardwired for shortcuts, right? Like, and in a lot of ways that helps us, right? It helps us not have to think about why am I brushing my teeth or, you know, like, why am I taking out the trash? Like, you act on beliefs all the time because they're helpful, right? And because if you had to think deeply about everything, you'd be dysfunctional. Like, you wouldn't have the capacity to do anything, right? Which is where I use the phrase navel-gazing. That to me is like the ultimate philosopher mentality of like just looking at your navel and wondering, you know, did Adam have a navel? Probably not. Um, you know, I mean, it— but there's, there's a, a, an acceleration of the, uh, technology has accelerated this characteristic of us And I think that the people that are going to be successful, regardless of your industry, regardless of what you do, are going to be the ones that can think for themselves and view the technology as a tool, not as a replacement. It— because if you're just looking for that shortcut, you're going to get slop.

Mm-hmm. I think to take a step back, one of the things that I've been reading a lot about, and I always have to end up pulling back up a GPT that I looked up, so I went back. One of the things that's been super interesting to me in writing the book is there's this concept of script theory, and script theory specifically was like made famous in the 1970s by Roger Shank. And it sort of makes this concept that we start to create assumptions for different scenarios. As we get older, we're learning, like, in this scenario, I run this script so I don't have to think deeply, right? I walk in a restaurant, I do this, it will get this outcome. I have to have enough money to pay. Like, your brain flips into a script, but it does it at an even deeper level where it's like, this is corporate Django, this is Father Django, this is husband Django, this is son Django. Like, when I'm around my mom, completely different person than I am in almost all other aspects. But that's because I've created like a schema of what, how to curate the world I want to have when I'm with my mom. What's weird is that like Western culture wants to find out what our, what our, what's the right word here, what our true version of ourselves is amongst all the masks that we wear, whether it's at work or all of these other places. And the truth is, is like none of them are us. And in most cases, we're putting on those masks not for an actual goal. So you actually like start to you actually start to like break as an individual entity because you are noticing that the masks are not being worn for the right, like for any reason other than just for the sake of wearing a mask. And it actually fractures our conscious. And so I've been like reading about this and it makes more sense to me why, like, why is it that like people at a, at a company will make a decision that hurts a bunch of people that like they didn't have to make, but it made more money? Well, in this space, all that matters is us making money. And that's the only goal in this case. Is that my goal for life? No, not really. But like, that's just the schema that I have for the space. So, you know, I'll just— I'm just doing my job. I'm just Django at the job. Then you're like, in a relationship, you're running the schema. I don't want this person to ever leave me. Then you start making choices to see if they'll leave. Like, there's all these little things that I've been kind of digging into in this book, They Lie to You, that I'm realizing, like, there's this idea of trying to find your true self amongst all these masks that you're wearing. And you notice you're wearing all these masks because all these masks are so fractured and separated, and they all are running on different goals and causing issues for the other version of yourself. And so we're trying to get unified, but I think we're using the wrong blocks to do it, you know, like trying to force two Legos together that don't work. And I'm just trying to build a map with all these books that we're creating to help people like almost come back to something that is cohesive. But I think you kind of have to find it on your own. And that's why I feel like writing so many books will be helpful in like, oh wow, I remember something from this other thing. And oh, I remember that from this other thing. When I was learning about venture, I realized that like my goals didn't align. Maybe I should go back to I Hope You Wake Up. And then, you know, maybe that will help people sort of reconfigure themselves, which I think is just the only goal that I have for people in general. So Does that make sense? I feel like that was— it's like a lot of—

no, it makes perfect sense. It reminds me of a book that I recently read, and I'm going to butcher the title, and I don't remember the author's name. I apologize. But it's Great Leaders Live Like Drug Addicts. And this individual was homeless, hooked on drugs, went to rehab, shifted his life, became a successful entrepreneur. But the book is this premise about like what— how he lived before treatment, because he stipulates that he's a drug addict on both sides of the fence. Like, he's still a drug addict, right? He's just living it differently. But the paradigm Before and After. And he starts with the statement that addicts wear masks. And he said they don't ever want to show their true behavior. They hide things. Like, so that's one of the first warning signs of addiction is you start hiding things from people, you know, money you spent or activities you did. And like, you start hiding things. And his solution to that as a leader is radical authenticity. But to your point, that takes a lot of work because you have to figure out what that authentic you is, right? But on the surface, it might be as a leader that you don't have all the answers. There's this expectation that as a leader that you know the path forward. Well, you know, Can you admit that you don't know? That, can you admit that you're afraid that you don't know? Right? And more importantly, can you present that self to your team? Can you live out of that authenticity? Right? And the second principle that he talks about is not controlling the outcomes. Well, that's, that's like addiction, Behavior 101 is you're trying to control something. You don't feel like you can control your world, so you focus on this addiction that you can control, right? Um, you know, I, I can't— I may not be able to do anything else, but I can get high, right? Um, and, you know, being able to say, I— there are things outside of my control that, that I can work as hard as I want that I can't guarantee the outcome. That's not normal behavior for a leader. You're supposed to be inspirational, like, yeah, we're going to grow this company. We're going to do this thing. And for you to do that and admit that, like, I really can't control whether we do that. I can control what I do, and to some extent, I can influence what you do on the team. But at the end of the day, we all can't control the fact whether we're going to be successful or not. Not, right? But back to your point, is if you're going to live with radical authenticity, you have to do the work to know who you are as well as you can, your true self, which I will also add involves others because we can't— and this may sound very strange, I don't think it'll sound strange to you— We can't see our complete selves. We think that we know ourselves best, and to a certain— from a certain vantage, yes, only we know our thoughts. But the truth is that we need those other people in our lives to show us things about ourselves that we cannot see for ourselves. What do you think about that?

Um, I think that what's really interesting about life is that we can only see in others what is in ourselves. So what we like or hate in others is what we like and hate in ourselves. And so what's interesting is, is that the genuine answer is I cannot control how anyone sees me in any capacity, but I can choose to learn from those people what they see which would expand my perspective. So like when I tell people I love them, I love them because I realize that like without you, for instance, you Christian, I wouldn't know a version of myself that exists because you illuminate that for me. And I— and like what's interesting is people say like, I want to know who my true self is, but like in accordance to what? Like in, in, in compared to what? Like when you really think about it, trying to find your true self and like making the statement that we make, it it actually doesn't kind of make sense because like compared to what, in what space, for what reality? Like the, uh, one of my favorite quotes is the one-armed man in the one-armed society is happy. The one-armed man in the two-armed society might be sad because he feels like he's missing something, but he wouldn't know he's missing anything if everyone has one arm. It's typically a comparison of others that we actually describe whether or not we're short tall, good, bad, any of those things. So it's like, I actually view the world where people cut people out or don't want to have people in their lives or whatever the case is, as like almost an opportunity of me missing out on discovering sides of myself that I don't even know exist yet because I need the other person to find it. Um, then that's just like, I think that's like the truth of, of finding your true self. It's just like an ever-evolving dependent upon who you're talking to, uh, in a weird way.

Yeah, that makes sense. I, I could, I, I could stipulate to that in part. I mean, I, I think what you're saying about defining yourself in terms of others, in comparison to others, is fundamentally incomplete, right? Like, you, you're, you're But this idea that there is a Django that is not dependent upon what others perceive or compared to anybody else, I believe that that person exists, right? But I do believe that we have—

Well, let's do an exercise right quick about this.

Sure.

I just want to know how you would describe it because I'm trying to understand it. How would you describe a true version of Django in words? Or like, what words would you use to describe yourself that wouldn't be in a comparison of others?

Well, when I do that, I invariably go to— I have to reference the Creator, right? Because I, I, I I can't define myself. So I can say definitively that I am a child of God. I am a creation of a loving Father. And I start from that premise. If I were to describe myself, that's how I would start. Because that's the most fundamental thing that I believe and I know. Now, in describing myself where other people would understand me, so like people that are atheists or, you know, like they don't stipulate that they were created or don't believe in a Creator, how can I explain myself in a way that they would understand? Well, that, that's a different thing, right? Um, I don't know if I answered your question.

Well, I guess like, again, you're saying people want to discover their true selves and— Yes. Under the concept of what you described, it's like, I am a child of God. Well, that's the faith of what you believe is sort of the grander part of life. And what maybe brings value that you believe in. And I can agree with that concept, but when I'm actually trying to say like what makes me me as an individual human being that I take joy in, or other things outside of like my faith of what maybe is larger than life itself, it is almost always— it, I mean, it has to be in almost, uh, comparison of other things that exist. Now you may say like, I like to read, I like to write.

Yeah, exactly. So like one of the first words I would use to describe you, and I would assume that you would use to describe yourself, is inquisitive, right? So I think if we start to describe ourselves in terms of characteristics and traits in an agnostic way, because a lot of times people assign values to those traits as either good or bad. So I take, for instance, stubbornness. Stubbornness and persistence are two sides of the same coin. It depends on who, what side of it you're on, right? But I don't use, I can use the word stubborn to describe myself without ascribing a value to it, right? Like that's just a word I use so you understand what characteristic I'm describing. But in a lot of ways, you're going back to the limitations of language, right? But I think describing yourself in terms of your true character, your true characteristics, without trying to assign them good or bad, is the best way to describe your true self.

I like this. I think you opened my mind to a concept. Through the journey of trying to decide what are my good or bad traits, I would immediately be describing myself within the limits of comparison to someone else. But if I'm just trying to describe my traits without trying to put limits of good or bad on them, I can describe basically what makes me me. Which in this case, like, let's say I decide to say I'm inquisitive. If I'm not trying to describe it as good or bad, I'm just saying when I hear something I want to learn more about it or ask questions. Now someone else may say I'm annoying.

Yeah, Django asks a lot of questions, right?

Yeah, ask a lot of questions, but that's now comparing it to someone who asks no questions, right? So if I am by myself trying to learn about myself, I could say let's use words, not trying to label as good or bad, and just go to what do I enjoy as a as Django in this room, you know, right? Period. And then it's like, I enjoy reading, I enjoy writing, I enjoy being inquisitive and learning. Okay, I, I am in full agreement with you. Thank you for, for that.

You're welcome. I'll send your therapy bill in the mail. Uh, Django, how do people catch up with you and what you've got going on? Where do they, where do they find you?

Um, you can find me on Instagram. I'm Django Degree. Django is with a D in front of it, and then degree like the temperature. And on TikTok, I'm Django's Truth, but I respond to all the DMs, all the comments that I can. It's getting to be a little crazy because I'm actually getting a larger following than I thought I would. But I'm always here to connect, grow, grow, and just learn with you. So if you have anything you want to add, any time you want to talk, just, you know, through one of the social media platforms, I'm here. I'm ready to rock.

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