This is a transcript excerpt from the YouTube podcast "Freedom Is Not FREE | Wellness Force #Podcast" (hosts: Josh Trent, guest: Greg Anderson). The speakers argue that freedom is costly and currently under threat via government restrictions and peer enforcement during the COVID-19 era. They describe a culture of fear where citizens police one another (grocery-store arrows, mask confrontations), note that people who neglect physical/emotional health tend to be more triggered, and criticize prominent wellness influencers for remaining silent out of fear of losing revenue or followers. The conversation includes calls for personal accountability, business reopening/pushing back, and moral courage (with analogies to Nuremberg and the frog-in-a-pot).
Chapters
Freedom is not free. Like our freedom is essentially paid for by the blood from my grandfather who was in World War II as a brigadier general, by the blood of so many men and women who have spilled it in the name of freedom. And Greg, I know that all these wars weren't purely for freedom. I know that a lot of these wars that we were involved in were probably for oil and gas and money and control. But look, the human spirit, like we are born with freedom, babies are free. Like my son coming your family.
Yeah.
There's nothing that somebody could tell you about limiting their freedom that you would ever believe because they came into this world completely free. It's the unlearning, as my buddy Cal from the Unlearned podcast talks about, we're all unlearning the shackles and the anti freedom beliefs that we ourselves unknowingly have been projecting out by the way we live. How. How are the way we're living as a society right now exactly. How is the way we're living as a society really enabling the anti freedom energy that we're experiencing?
I think the biggest problem that we're having when it comes to like a societal wide problem is the fact that the government is moving to restrict all of these freedoms. Just like you said. Right. We're unlearning these. But the most bizarre thing that we've seen is they're doing it in a way where citizens are doing it and enforcing it amongst each other. And so they've created this state of fear that's so great that if you don't fall in line with it, other people are coming after you, other people are going to confront you, other people are going to report you and be. And like I have and I hate that it hasn't happened to me yet. And maybe it's just because of my cauliflower years, but the truth is almost all of my friends are being confronted on a regular basis.
Confronted how? What do you mean?
Like for example, one of my jiu jitsu students, 16 year old kid. Right. So I shouldn't say kid. He's in that transition from a kid to a man.
He's ready for initiation.
Yes.
Yeah.
So in the grocery stores in Seattle, they have one way arrows down the aisles. I don't know if that's a thing in. Okay, so he's walking down not. Not on one of the aisles, on the ends of them. Right. He gets to the soup aisle and he walks 10ft the wrong way and grabs a can of soup 40ft at the other end of the aisle, he said to this morbidly obese man who was probably 45 years old, started screaming at him, hey, you're walking the wrong way. What are you doing? Don't you see the arrows on the ground? And it's like, listen, since the beginning of time, some morbidly obese guy has. He does not have the ability to be violent and confrontational with a 16 year old kid that's training and fighting every single night. Like, it's not how this world works. But we've arrived at a place where the world is so backwards that now the incapable get to dictate what the capable do. And I'm sorry if that sounds. Yeah, exactly. I'm sorry if that sounds like harsh or insensitive, but we've arrived at a place where the people that have put the least amount of effort into taking care of their mind, body and spirit are now getting to dictate what we who put the most. I mean, I wish I could be £400. I wish I could eat pizza every night. But unfortunately, I hold myself to a standard. I'm disciplined, I train daily, I try and put good nutrients into my body. So the people that have actually taken the steps to be capable human beings are now being berated by the people that have neglected themselves. And it's just bizarre that we've arrived here and it just continues. I mean, the Krispy Kreme thing, it's. It almost makes me feel like I'm living in a bad comedy. Like, hey, if you get a vaccine, you can eat donuts every day for a year. Even though the number one comorbidity is obesity. What are we talking about here? You know, and so I just see people being confronted all the time. My best friend, I've had him on my podcast, he is a physician, he worked in New York during the height of the pandemic. He had 200 COVID patients. And every evening he, he would go for a run around Manhattan and he didn't have a mask on. And people are just going, and the dude's in a mask 18 hours a day, literally trying to save people's lives. Then you have people screaming at him. And it's just. I mean, it is what it is, but it's not. I have to look at the overall picture and the trajectory of our country over the last year. The path that we are on is not sustainable, period. Yeah, it is not sustainable. So at some point, yeah, something has to give.
God, there's so much I want. I mean, we could do a whole Podcast on the two minutes you just spoke about. But, but really like what the core of what you're hitting on that really what I loved that you expressed was the people who are less capable and who are the ones who have not been investing in their health and their emotional health, their mental health, their. They are the ones that are the most triggered, the most anxious. And we know from all the guests we've had on the show that center around emotional intelligence and how to be really emotionally resilient and strong. Whenever there is a trigger, there is an exploration point for self discovery. So think about that. Anything in my life, Greg, that triggers me, that makes me super angry, that makes me project on other people, it's cause for me to look within. And I think at the beginning of this whole thing, and, and I'm curious how you feel about this. In the beginning of this whole thing, I felt so much anger and frustration at my fellow men and women who were literally just like silent. I mean, what really triggered me the most is I'm in the health and wellness space, as are you. You know, we're in the health and wellness and I guess you could say development, personal development world. And there were so many people with millions of followers who could have affected radical change just by speaking up a little bit. And they were fucking silent. And it triggered me so much. I wrote so many of my who are podcasters and influencers specifically, I was like, you have an obligation and a responsibility to speak the truth. Yet they wouldn't. And you know what their traditional response was, Greg? Most of them said, if I do that, I'm going to lose revenue, I'm going to lose followers, I'm going to lose traction in my business. And my response was, so the fuck what? So what the fuck what? Because what are we standing for if we're standing for nothing? How do you feel about this?
Well, it goes back to what I sang about when I was a young soldier, accepting that my beliefs may end in my demise, right? And that's my physical demise, like my physical body. But it's the same thing you could apply to that. Like my beliefs may end in my. In a decrease in revenue. It may end in a bunch of people unfollowing me. Because all these people that are out virtue signaling are going to see someone that's like speaking the truth and they're going to attack them because that's what happens on social media. But guess what? You get to go home with your head held high, knowing that you're on the side of right and I'm telling you right now, this is my Nostradamus moment, right? When all this is said and done, the people that stood on the side of right, they're going to be able to hold their heads high and there's going to be a lot of people out there that are ashamed of themselves. I mean, the Nuremberg trials, like, hey, I'm just, just following orders. It's not a viable response that we're seeing. And I know making the connection to Nazi Germany people think is like, kind of obscure, right?
No, it's not.
It all starts. I mean, it's the frog in the pot analogy. You know what I'm saying?
That's right.
And the heat is being turned up. And if you think that it's not, I don't think you're being honest with yourself. Your eyes aren't open. The heat's being turned up. And do we stand up and do we push back once the water's boiling? Like, it's going to be too late. That's why I think it's important and it's imperative that people start having these conversations, opening their businesses, pushing back and doing the things that we're talking about right now. And then also personal accountability. Take care of yourself, take care of your family.
Yeah.
Start changing your habits. All these things are important. And the thing is, is like everybody, our society through again, going back to what I was saying, just good times have created us. Is this put us in this constant state of weakness to where we know what the solution is to beat Covid. You know, I joke, I tell people at my gym, if you can do one dead hang, pull up, your body's too strong to die of COVID Now, some doctor will probably say, oh, that's inaccurate, you're lying. But by and large, sure, you don't have to have elite level fitness to beat this thing. You just have to have a body that functions well and that is running on good nutrients. Why aren't we talking about that? Why isn't that in the mainstream media?
