To watch or listen to the interview, visit the podcast and vlog page, HERE.
Transcript from the October, 2023 interview below, slightly edited for readability.
00:00:00,000 --> Melanie Rubin
Today, my guest is Derrick Broze.
Welcome, Derrick. So glad you're with us and thank you for taking the time. I know how busy you are.
00:00:35,000 -->
Derrick Broze
Yeah, thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.
00:00:38,000 -->
MR
Great to see you.
Derrick Broze is a professional freelance investigative journalist and he's an author, musician, speaker, and activist. Quite a remarkable person.
I met Derrick the first time at the third Greater Reset Conference in January of 2021 in Morelia, Mexico, which Derrick and John Bush were collaborating on producing.
We're going to be talking more about those conferences in a bit.
Then I had the pleasure of participating in what I believe was your first online investigative journalism class. Is that correct?
00:01:13,000 -->
DB
Yes. In the fall of 2022.
00:01:16,000 -->
MR
So, Derrick's website is https://TheConsciousResistance.com and let's spell it out for those folks who may be listening to this as a podcast.
Do you want to go ahead and spell that out for us, Derrick, just so I make sure I got it right?
00:01:30,000 -->
DB
Sure. Yes, that's the T-H-E. And this is important, conscious, not conscientious or conscious. I've noticed sometimes people spell that differently. So, the conscious, C-O-N-S-C-I-O-U-S resistance, resistance, R-E-S-I-S-T-A-N-C-E.com. TheConsciousResistance.com is my main website.
00:01:55,000 -->
MR
Great. Thank you. That's so important because there's so much great information there.
I pulled a tagline, it's longer than a tagline, but I'm going to share it from your website, which I thought was very concise and astute, and gives an idea of what you do.
And it says, “Consciously resisting is to engage in self-reflection and pursue knowledge of the self. Without knowing our own doubts, fears, hopes, dreams, insecurities, and strengths, we cannot truly know what freedom means to us as an individual. To become conscious and aware of one's actions is one of the most important steps towards claiming your own freedom.”
So that was like a radical statement for me. People don't usually, when they start talking about resistance, they don't in the same sentence usually start talking about self-reflection and pursuing knowledge of the self.
We'd love to hear just a little bit of an introduction from you of what that means, like your overarching philosophy of conscious resistance.
00:03:02,000 -->
DB
Yes, thank you. I appreciate that. And thank you for sharing that description there.
I like to tell people that when I first started to, wake up is the term we usually use.
When I first started to question the world around me, as an adult, legitimately question the things that I'd been taught by parents, teachers, society, etc. It was about 2009, 2010. And for me, that experience was coming after going to prison at a young age of 20 years old.
I got addicted to drugs after dealing with depression, dealing with some trauma in my young life.
All these kinds of experiences, once I got through prison and had the time to basically sit, I chose to use my time in prison being stuck there.
I started meditating, I started praying, I started doing a lot of journaling and self-reflection and trying to understand, why was I using all these different drugs or what was I trying to avoid?
What was I trying to get away from? What was I trying to heal from?
And so, I was already on that journey while I was in prison. When I got out and it was all said and done, it was October 2008.
I was now out back in Houston, Texas. I was a felon, but I was happy to be free.
I was just free and no more paperwork and jumping through hoops and all kinds of stuff like that.
It was just like the nightmare was finally over.
And I grew a lot in that time period and most of it I would say was due to being in solitude and that was either in prison being forced to be alone and using that time to the best ability I could to do that healing or choosing to get into meditation and prayer and spend time alone in reflection once I got out.
And I was just emerging into the world with this excitement and this thirst for knowledge and really feeling like I wanted to help the world. I wanted to learn more about it.
And then again, with that kind of understanding or that realization that maybe I wasn't taught everything, everything I was taught probably wasn't correct, wasn't even accurate and started to question just my fundamental beliefs.
So, it was the combination of those two things, going to prison, having this deep bottom where I needed to start questioning my whole life, and then through that starting the healing process.
And then after that, getting out and then getting into activism, having this thirst for justice, and wanting to help the world in terms of exposing corruption as I was learning.
And for the first couple years I had these two different lives where I went to the Houston Zen Center because I was very much into Zen Buddhism at the time and I was going to - I was organizing meditations, just all kinds of things like that - drum circles, that whole kind of spiritual conscious aspect of my life.
And then I had this other part of my life which was protests, rallies, marches; activism of various sorts.
And for the first couple years it seemed like the two different groups would never meet and I just had this dual life because when I would talk to my spiritually conscious friends and I'd say “Hey you guys, want to go to the protest the rally or the march for this and that?” And sometimes in the spiritual community, in my experience, it's a lot of put your fingers in your ears, put your head in the sand — like no bad vibes, don't talk about the bad things or you are going to manifest it.
So, it was not a very welcoming attitude towards that side of my life. And in the same vein, I would go to my activist friends, political-oriented friends, and maybe invite them to a meditation or something in that area and there was just a lot of disinterest. A lot of the activists I knew at that time were atheists.
Nothing wrong with that per se, but that was just where they're coming from…very logical, rational kind of people. And so, yes, for the first couple years there was just this separation.
And then in 2013, I had a, I don't know, another shift if you will in the summer of 2013. I was just up watching videos all night and this phrase “the conscious resistance” was kind of whispering in my ear.
And that's when I realized that I couldn't keep these
things separate anymore; that for me, this was the same thing, the struggle that I was going through to understand my healing journey and to heal my trauma and to heal intergenerational trauma in my family. That was the other side of the struggle I was having in the physical realm of learning about all the corruption in government and learning about conspiracies and all this kind of stuff. I realized this is the same thing. I cannot separate these anymore and that was the year that I launched the conscious resistance website and eventually the book series and everything.
So, sorry to give a long-winded answer, but that kind of embodies what it means for me, and I try to, through my books and talks but also through my journalism, not just come at journalism purely through the strictly objective, obviously reporting facts and sticking to the truth, but also, my spirituality, my lens as a human being is going to impact and affect the way I cover things and so I don't shy away from that. I make that a part of it.
00:08:01,000 -->
MR
Yes, I think that's why I've been drawn to your work so much because it is an unusual combination. I lived in an ashram for 13 years. The spiritual aspect of things is important to me. And I've been an activist for a long time. So, finding a model for how those things come together is really beautiful and I think it's so necessary right now. Some people say we are in a spiritual war, and I happen to agree with that.
I was also really drawn to your motto on your website which is “leading by example and helping others in their pursuit of freedom.” You're definitely leading by example, and I look forward to getting into that a little bit more in this interview.
00:08:44,000 -->
DB
So, can I just say something about that idea?
MR
Yes!
00:08:48,000 -->
DB
I would say that even that phrase is my restating of the principles and the attitude of the bodhisattva.
There’s probably an old video on my website. I don't even know if it's still up there because it probably was deleted by YouTube.
But it was a video I did years ago called Bodhisattva Activism. It talked about that idea of somebody who maybe puts off or delays their own enlightenment for the desire of helping other people. That’s very much how I approach my activism and journalism as well or just that kind of mindset of how can I find things that matter: information, solutions, whether it's health, spiritual, just knowledge, and use that for myself but also share it with other people and take you along in the journey. If I can inspire the people along the way then that's definitely the goal.
But it really does come from those principles.
MR
Absolutely. Yes.
And it seems like when one thinks about why we were put here that maybe we were put here to implement some degree of spiritual awareness into the work that needs to be done in the world.
So, seeing models of that I think is important for people, not just what you choose to do with your life, or how you're personally stepping out of the technocratic state, and that model is huge, but also how you do that with kindness and grace and compassion.
I love that. It's great.
You've also been the founder of the Freedom Cell Network and the Greater Reset Conferences which happen once a year and the next one's happening in January.
I'm hoping we can touch on that as well. But I'd like to dive right in about your book, How to Opt Out of the Technocratic State, which provides some history about how society got into the mess that it's in now and how our thinking and actions need to change in order for us to have a better life and a better world.
So, bottom line, what inspired you to write this book?
00:11:03,000 -->
DB
First off, thank you for giving me a chance to talk about the book. I do think it's an important work and I'm glad to see that more people have resonated with it.
I started writing it in 2019. I think I got the idea first in 2018.
A lot of my journalism over the years has focused on digital technology, digital rights, tools like facial recognition, license plate readers, drones, you name it.
It's been something that I've kept up with both on a local level in Houston, but also more broadly just across the world, trying to keep up with this growth of the surveillance state.
And it wasn't until 2019, though, that I started to get the history of technocracy and that movement and put that piece of the puzzle in there.
And I see it not just as disparate pieces of the surveillance state. It’s true. There's facial recognition, there’s cell phone wiretapping.
There are all kinds of ways that we're under surveillance. And that was something I was very aware of, but I hadn't quite understood that there's actually a philosophy behind the use of these technologies.
And even more so, in 2019, as I was writing the book, I mean, I was seeing warnings from attorneys saying that the United States should put a moratorium on facial recognition technology.
They were warning back in 2017, 2018, 2019 that AI was moving pretty rapidly and that maybe there should be some kind of regulation.
And you know, my personal political beliefs, I really don't look to government regulation as the answer in a lot of areas, but I do think we're dealing with a particular situation here that is unprecedented.
And so, I took those warnings seriously. And as I was writing this book, it was one part a warning to the future of saying, “Hey, guys, this is what we're facing right now. This is what's already happening in China. This is what's already happening in India. This is what's already happening in parts of the world that have fully embraced this mindset and this technology, everything, this internet of things that we're moving into now with 5G smart cities.”
A lot of these things that more and more people are familiar with. In 2019, when I was writing, there were fewer people paying attention to these items.
So I wanted to write a book that would give people that history, a little bit of awareness of where we're at, as you said, as well as where we've come from, and the philosophy of technocracy behind it, because I think it's the backbone of a lot of what we're seeing.
But most importantly, besides being a kind of wake up call, also being a call to action and trying to provide solutions based on my own experience. As well, to give information about people I've met and spoken with through the Freedom Cell Network and people around the world who are trying to build new systems in terms of new technology or new ways to grow our food or new ways to exchange, you know, monetary value, things like this.
So, the book is that, you know, it's a warning to anybody who's paying attention, hopefully, because I originally published early 2020, we just recently published the second edition this past year.
And just in that short time of three years, the world has rapidly changed. And some of the things I was writing about in the first edition have come to pass, much more quickly than I imagined.
And so, I released this new edition with more information because I felt like, not only did I want to comment on, “Hey, here's what happened since the book came out.”
But more importantly, to say, “Here's what we learned.” Here's what I was seeing in Mexico when we were helping bring people down from other countries, so that they could get to Mexico to avoid shots and quarantines and things like that. Right. Here's what people were showing me they were doing in their local communities to make sure they had access to good food and clean water and things like that during lockdowns.
Just trying to crowdsource all that information that I gathered from people as I traveled in Mexico, traveled across the United States during the middle of lockdowns, and also my own thoughts and ideas.
00:15:12,000 -->
MR
Yes, it's an interesting blend in the book because it's got case studies of various things. It's got history, philosophy, if you will.
And then it's also got in certain parts, checklists of things people can do to get out of the technocratic state.
As you know, I've been wrestling this document to the ground, this “Checklist and blueprint for exiting the matrix and creating parallel society.”
There's a lot of overlap in the thinking for that. I realized as I was preparing for this interview that I need to do a side by side comparison and see what I missed in the checklist from what's in your book.
00:15:56,000 -->
DB
I'm excited for yours as well. I think we need as many of these kinds of guides as different people create. I also think the approach you're taking is probably going to be more valuable, maybe, for some people than the way I approached it. Like you said, I do have some check lists and some to do items, but it's not always the way my brain operates.
So, I tried to make it as hands-on as possible, but I think yours is going to be even more so because I have found that some people literally are looking for a line-by-line item of do this, then this, then this, then this.
And so, the more tools available - my book as well as what you're working on, I think is just going to be great for people who are thinking in these areas.
00:16:39,000 -->
MR
Well, thank you. I look forward to continuing to evolve these tools and hear about other similar efforts people are doing. As you said, I think it's going to take a big village to get us out of the current situation.
So, does the concept of parallel society match what you think we could collectively create if we opt out of the technocratic state? What would be the result of opting out of the technocratic state and what would we call it?
00:17:09,000 -->
DB
Hmm. Yeah, so those are great questions. I mean in in the book, and in my vision, I imagine that we're opting out of systems that we see as amoral or antithetical to liberty, to privacy, to bodily autonomy, to a lot of the principles that I think people hold dear to their hearts. We are opting out of those systems which do not align with our values and then trying to create and/or collaborate with others to create and to build alternatives. Because obviously again, this is not a single person or one group. We’re starting to see how these labels that have divided us in the past are becoming more and more useless and we need to just collaborate where we can. The idea being that we're creating new systems that would align with our values and would respect our principles and bodily autonomy, privacy, liberty, etc., the things we care about.
So, I do think that the goal at least for me is to create - I don't want to say necessarily a parallel world because obviously we're existing here in the same physical space. But perhaps the idea of Samuel Konkin who is the founder of agorism, which is where a lot of my work is inspired from. He envisioned that we would create these pockets of agora, or what I think are the freedom cells, with hubs of people around the world who are starting to trade together, starting to buy land together, starting to, you know, live outside of these mainstream systems. They are finding ways to avoid things like CBDCs and all that kind of stuff. With those pockets of people that are now happening all around the world, we're kind of the seeds to whatever the next stage is going to be for this next parallel system or alternative system. The way I like to explain it to people is that, ideally, the new young ones that are going to be born into this world that are not even here yet—that they might have the opportunity to come into a world where you have two paths. One path is smart cities and track and trace society, facial recognition, and all these things that we see ahead of us and maybe you don’t get to drive and maybe there's no more personal individual property ownership and some of these things we've heard from the World Economic Forum. And then there's another path of people building communities of all types and growing their own food, and trading amongst each other, and freedom of religion and freedom of speech and all the things that we've believed our world was about. You know, that's kind of the way I see it and of course, it's much simpler to say, you know, one path or the other, obviously there's grays within there, right. But the idea being that people have a choice. We see the plans of folks who are working on, as I briefly touch on in my book Agenda 2030 and the Great Reset, with ideas such as the Great Reset which we hadn’t even heard about when I wrote the first edition. This another reason why we wanted to update the book. If we see the visions of what they have, for example, the phrase “You will own nothing and be happy.” is a part of that. If we choose not to act personally, I believe on a spiritual level that we are failing our ancestors who worked so hard to get us to this point, no matter what skin color or background you come from, as well as those who are coming after us. I believe they are 100% depending on us to step up to the plate and get organized to protect freedom and liberty and save this very young idea that humanity is just barely hanging on to at this point in our history. I feel like it's that crucial that this idea could disappear as quickly as it came into our awareness. Obviously liberty has been with humanity for a long time in our consciousness, but in terms of it actually being recognized in a lived experience, it's still not there. We haven't gone far enough. And already it could potentially slip away from our hands if we allow these people to have their way. So, I think it's important for us to recognize that and I don't see much hope in trying to take back the system by electing a new president or prime minister or violently overthrowing the government or something like that. I think the best strategy is again, like we said earlier, to lead by example. So, rather than me trying to say “Let me force you to want freedom the way I want, or just put our people in power and we'll know what's better for everybody,” we just say “Let's just build the world that we want that actually does reflect our values and principles and whoever wants to come along with us, let's co create together.” And of course, our goal is to inspire more people and bring more of our families and friends along with us. But humans learn by what they see. So, it’s better if we lead by example, and we go build these communities, whether that's in Mexico, United States or wherever people feel free to do so and have the ability to do so. I think that will be part of helping more people exit these systems as the systems, the mainstream systems inevitably get more tyrannical, less free, as inflation increases. And this is what Samuel Konkin predicted: as the state gets more and more aggressive, people will naturally have a reaction to look for alternatives.
But if there's no alternative, well, they'll just kind of accept it and suffer, until things get pretty bad. But if we, the people who can see what's coming, choose to build these parallel systems and alternative networks of trade and food and everything we can think of, then we might provide some path for those who are coming after us.
00:22:28,000 -->
MR
Yes, I personally feel that it's all about the kids, the ones that are here and the ones that are coming. So that's, what I'm dedicated to. I mean, it'd be nice to enjoy my stay here on planet Earth this time around. But my work is definitely dedicated to the little ones and the not so little ones that are already here. So, well before we leave the topic of your book, how can people get your book?
00:22:59,000 -->
DB
Yes, so the book is available to download for free on my website and you can purchase it all the usual places. I encourage anybody to purchase it anywhere else but Amazon. On my website, theconsciousresistance.com/ howto, there's a landing page, and that'll link you to the couple of places you can purchase the second edition in English. You can also purchase the second edition in Spanish. And there's an audio book available there for free as well, and it just recently got translated to German, we haven't released that one yet.
And it's in the process of being translated to Japanese right now. So, I’m excited about that. But yes, that's the main place: theconsciousresistance.com/howto.
00:23:41,000 -->
MR
Great, and I'll put that link also on the video so people can read it as well as hear it. So, let's talk a bit about the freedom cell network you've mentioned: that was something that you and John Bush created.
And can you give us a bit of a description about what that is, and how people can find out more about it?
00:24:02,000 -->
DB
Absolutely. So, the freedom cell network is an idea. It's a movement, I guess you could say of people around the world, who are focused on what we just finished talking about—building parallel systems, and are in the process of doing that.
Obviously, it's much easier said than done okay. Let's build new systems—systems that are parallel to the current ones. Okay, where do we start? Well, we're going to need a lot of people. Well, not all of us are blessed to live in areas where we have family and friends and networks, even whether you live in a small city or a big city, a lot of people feel very alone. They don't know anybody, they're not plugged into any activist groups or maybe through their church or whatever other organizations they're a part of.
They might not really know anybody. And part of the freedom cell network is trying to solve that problem. And so, we have our website freedomcells.org, that's freedom (as it sounds) and then cells CELLS.org like the cells in your body.
I like to explain to people that each group, each cell or hub or hive or circle, the name is largely irrelevant. It's the idea behind it, but each group is and each cell in your body is individual. It's powerful, it's unique on its own, but it's also part of the larger collective which is you.
And that's kind of how the freedom cell network is. We encourage people to create local hub circles, hive cells in their area that come together and focus on a goal setting; so getting together and saying “Hey what are the interests we have here?”
Well, we're worried about inflation, we're worried about having access to clean food. Let's sit around and brainstorm and discuss what steps can we take to build some group security in terms of food. Maybe we start one by one. We take some grocery trips together, we start buying food together in case of an emergency or just whatever steps are necessary to start moving towards the goals that you're setting for yourself in terms of six months to a year and beyond.
And so, the idea being that we're creating these groups everywhere people are, and that they want to focus on this. You encourage people to create freedom cells. I've been promoting it since 2016.
And thanks to Covid and Bill Gates, they are our best friends in terms of recruitment. We saw massive growth from January 2020 when we had about 2000 people on the website, and probably 10,000 people broadly paying attention through Telegram and email and stuff.
But after Covid, and the Great Reset announcement, there's now 40,000 plus people on the site, tens of thousands more using Telegram and other apps to organize their freedom cells or their freedom groups inspired by what we're doing.
And, many more people doing it, who don't put it on the internet. They're just out there in their communities, organizing and getting things done.
But the idea is again to build this local decentralized network of people focused on solutions. So you know the groups in Houston are going to be different from the groups in Denver. And the groups from Denver are going to be different from those in Germany and Australia. And it really has grown to that point. You know, there are 20 plus freedom cells around Mexico for example. We know that there are active groups in Australia, parts of the UK and parts of the US obviously are very active, as well as Canada, and it's become a worldwide movement. The website itself is available in Spanish, German, Dutch — all of that translated by people within the network who just volunteer their time to do so.
And so when people go to the website, they can search, they can create a free profile and say this is what I'm interested in, these are the skills I have, these are the goals I'm interested in, and they can put their location on our map. We don't want your home address, but put an approximate location of the area you're in. And that adds you to the map, and you can search our member maps and our cell maps and say “Show me everyone within 10 miles or 50 miles,” or “Show me all the groups that have been formed within 10 miles.” Then you can go through there and look at the list to see what their description’s about, and see if they're meeting. You can look at people's profiles and see “All these people within 10 miles of me, they sound like they're interested in homeschooling as well.” Then you can message them. Or see, “Oh look, they have a meetup. I'm going to go to that next meetup.”
The website and the Telegram groups, they're really just filters to the real action of the freedom cell network which is in-person.
There's the website, but the website's not the network. The network is the people in the real world, doing things, hosting meetings, getting organized, growing food.
And again, we've had so many success stories during Covid. Whenever I traveled around the US during the activation tour, I heard from people who said when they were locked down and they didn't have anybody in their community, they used the website to find like-minded people. For one, to just not feel alone and they started gathering when they weren't supposed to. Some people started homeschooling their kids together because they realized they had that in common. Other people started community gardens, started growing food, so they didn't have to go to the grocery stores and deal with masks and all that stuff.
And some people even bought land together, so people have taken the idea and the concept of organizing in a decentralized way on a local level. And as I discussed in my book, setting goals, and you know just kind of just knocking those down as a group, building that group security, so we're not all dependent on Derrick or Melanie to get things done. Instead, we have this group knowledge and power diffused among our numbers. And these, I think are the agoras or the seeds that Konkin was predicting. I think that we're at that point now, where it's happening; where people are looking for ways out of the system.
Right now some of them are just nice social clubs and groups. But I do think as this evolves, and as food gets more involved, food production and more community gardens and urban farms, that we're going to get to a point where the freedom cell network and the maps on our website can be used to trade goods and resources amongst each other in these parallel networks that we're trying to build. So yeah, if anybody's looking for community freedomcells.org is one place to try to find it.
00:29:55,000 -->
MR
That's great, thank you and I'm a case study actually, because a friend of mine knew about you before Covid and was following your work. At a point when Covid happened, we were talking and he said “Well, you need to check out Derrick Broze’s work and the freedom cell network.” And then it turned out that a freedom cell started in my city.
And I got connected through those people, but mainly got connected to the Greater Reset and to you and to John through the Freedom Cell Network that my friend knew about. So, through word of mouth and things spreading just organically, and that led myself and my partner to, as you know, the Exit and Build Land conference that John and Rebecca Bush have done. And then, we're connecting with communities through that, and it looks like we're moving to one of the communities that we connected to through that process.
DB
So, that's amazing.
MR
I’m kind of like the poster child for how the Freedom Cell Network has helped my life. So, thank you so much.
DB
You're very welcome. That's so great and that’s why we, I mean that's why I, do interviews promoting this. And I'll just mention one other thing about the Freedom Cell Network.
If someone does go check the maps and doesn’t find anybody there, and you don't have the sort of response that Melanie just described, I encourage you to start a freedom cell in your area. Because I guarantee you there are other people checking it and saying the same thing, “Nobody's in my area. Oh well.” And then they leave. But we want to encourage you to plant that flag in your community, even if you don't know what it's going to be yet. Just start the whatever-your-town's-name-is freedom cell. Or whatever you want to call it doesn't matter.
Create it on the website. If you use other apps like Telegram or Session or Signal maybe create a group there too, and you can link to them there and just wait. I guarantee you people will come behind you and they will reach out to you and before you know it, you will start to make some connections. So just be patient with it.
We've had sometimes where people have literally been posting on our website and organizing locally for years before the right combination of other motivated people came along. And they really started to do some awesome things. But she was patiently plugging away for years, organizing small meetings, and just didn't give up. So, yes, if you join and there's nobody there yet, go ahead and start the group. We nominate you and see where that goes.
00:32:18,000 -->
MR
Yes, and you never know what the untapped need is. In a in a related story, I got connected to a whole other group of people through an organization that was started by Christopher Hassell, which was called Santa Fe unMasked. It spawned a group in Albuquerque that my friend Karen Larré started called Albuquerque unMasked. Christopher had asked me to start one in Albuquerque and I knew I didn't have the bandwidth for it – I was moving around too much. So Karen's group now over 800 people who have found sanity and information and networks like the Freedom Cell Network and all sorts of resources through that group. Who would have known there was such an untapped need in this area for information which overlaps the freedom cell information.
They're not identical for sure—different bodies of information, but they definitely overlap. You never know what you're going to find, and who is going to find you, when you start something.
And Karen's done great service for our local community as you and John have done for the world. I really appreciate the leadership. So, let's jump in for a few minutes to what the Greater Reset conference is and especially since the next one is coming right up.
So, what is it? Why did you start it? What should people know about it?
00:33:40,000 -->
DB
Sure, so the Greater Reset is an initiative of the Freedom Cell Network. We've mentioned John Bush, who is a friend of mine based here in Texas as well. He's a couple hours away in Austin.
And John and I were talking in the summer of 2020. So obviously Covid lockdown start in the spring. By June 2020, the World Economic Forum put out a video and made an announcement of something they're calling the Great Reset.
And that I think literally sent shock waves through the freedom and health freedom truth communities. People who were just terrified of what was about to happen, knowing “Oh my God vaccinations are coming soon, and lockdowns are happening,” and all the insanity we witnessed.
And for us it felt like the fear was palpable. Like we were looking in the different chat groups and then Telegram and social media and there was just so much fear even from our particular kind of subset of the community where we always try to stay very solutions focused.
And it just felt like we needed to do something. We can't just watch this plan unfold that they're doing. And as we typically try to typically do, we think, “How can we counter them?” How can we offer an alternative to what they're doing, right? It's not like “Let's go storm the Davos meeting and take down Schwab.”
Let's just give people something else to watch. Let's just give something better for our community to pay attention to. I've noticed, especially in my role as a journalist, that you have to keep one eye on them because sometimes there's relevant stuff. But then you also want to tell people to ignore them, let's do our own thing. And I noticed that often when there are World Economic Forum meetings, people will just obsess over it for a week. There are all these clips of “Here’s what Klaus Schwab said and this and that.” Again, there's a place for that. But what if we just tune them out and talk about what we're going to do for five days from our bottom-up community grassroots perspective? That was the original idea. We knew that the World Economic Forum was planning to meet January 2021 and announce the full unveiling of their Great Reset plan. And so, we said “Look let's host an event.” And it was actually two events because John was in Texas, and I was down in Mexico.
And the first four events we've had simultaneously broadcasted from two different countries so two locations at once. One in Mexico, one in Texas and then streamed online for free to people all around the world. And the first one we did in Zihuatanejo, Mexico and John was in the Austin area.
And in the middle of the lockdowns and everything we had 100 people show up at to both places and that was kind of just like wow! That's cool. People actually showed up and more importantly, people who were locked down tuned in from all around the world. We had I think 100,000 people throughout the first week of the first greater reset. And we had so many powerful speakers from Charles Eisenstein and Foster Gamble and Rosa Koire, which was actually her last speech before she passed away shortly after that. This is all available for free on the greater reset Odyssey channel that you can find on TheGreaterReset.org. And, we know we tapped into something special, because the event went great. It was a great success and people responded very authentically to it, so we knew we wanted to continue doing that. And so, we've done four events now.
We've now gotten the rhythm of doing it every January. We don't necessarily aim to do it on the exact same days, but around the same time as the Davos conference.
This January 2024 we're doing one single event in Morelia, Mexico. So, John and his wife and some of the crew are going to be coming down to Mexico and we'll have all the in-person speakers in Mexico.
We'll have a few virtual speakers, but this year it's 98% in person, which is really great. We made some exceptions for the great James Corbett and Catherine Austin Fitts. They can't come in person, but they're going to do some virtual presentations.
But everybody else will be in person, including yourself, which I'm really excited about, to have you on there. It’s five days. Mental, physical, spiritual health, permaculture and food independence, building parallel networks, taking back our tech - getting off big tech, and community-building. Building free and conscious communities.
And that's everything from organizing tips and tools, to homesteading advice, and we're still announcing the speakers. We've just started to announce them on the website and through our social media and I will mention the tickets are going to go on sale. The early bird price of just 150 US dollars starting on November 11th. So, if you go to TheGreaterReset.org and just sign up for email list, you'll get all the details you need. We hope that you can come down and if not, again, it's streamed for free online. Post a watch party with your your freedom group in your area. I mean I think it's really a good time to bring people together because there's not a single talk on our bill that is going to be focused on the problems. It is all solutions-focused and we do that on purpose because we all know the problems by now, hopefully and are ready to do something about it. So, you could choose the day that works best for your community. Maybe you know permaculture and food independence is most relevant to your community. So you guys get together and pick a venue and invite the friends and family, promote it in your neighborhood and listen to the presentations and have discussions and see how they apply to your community, what steps you can take. You know our hope is that we gather again in a couple months we hear from everybody who was here last year and they have stories to tell about how their lives have changed and how they've been moving forward in these goals. That's the cool thing is we actually are hearing that in real time, that the Freedom Cell Network and the Greater Reset are giving people the motivation and the inspiration they need to take those steps to make big changes. That's just an amazing feeling that I'm blessed to be a part of.
00:39:26,000 -->
MR
Yes, it's very inspiring. I will testify to that. And it's not just about the information that you receive, you have an amazing opportunity to network with like-minded people from all over the place. Those people are very inspiring and it fosters the building of relationships and breaking you outside your bubble of what you think is possible. Because there are people doing incredible things, just really smart, savvy, wonderful people doing amazing things actually all over the world. You and John have curated these presentations and these relationships. So you know I personally went to the first one in Morelia two years ago and I loved being in Morelia. So, take the opportunity and go. It's a lovely city; very fun to visit. And then last year I went in Austin and that was also a great opportunity and you guys have done the tech masterfully. I'm sure it's going to be an order of magnitude better even this time.
DB
I'm excited to welcome you back and have you as a speaker. I will second and third anybody who's thinking about it to come because it's a life-changing experience. I know for us to be involved in the organization, but when we get to step back and just see all that magic happening, not only on stage, and the great presenters as you said, that knowledge-sharing. But the community around it is really what's so special to us and particularly just the decentralized nature of workshops and things that we have. And for this to be our fifth event and we're doing one event this time. It's going to not only reduce any potential tech headaches that might come with streaming across two countries, but we're expecting the best one yet in terms of attendance and the presentations and speakers and just community overall. So I really would invite everybody to come out if you can make it down to Mexico. You'll have a great time and meet - I think this year we counted 350 plus people from 15 countries, so we're all gathered in Mexico, and we had 20 countries tuned in through the live stream.
00:41:43,000 -->
MR
Yes, that's great and it's such a reasonable offering too. I mean the fact that you make this available for free to people online. It kind of blew my socks right off and really showed me how much you and John are dedicated to change. And the fact that the early bird price is only $150, I mean that's like crazy for a five-day event. So thank you and it's a lot of fun. There are a lot of fun events including music and dancing.
I had a really good time at both events. So, let's just restate what the website is for the greater reset. Is it TheGreaterReset.org?
00:42:23,000 -->
DB
Yep. TheGreaterReset.org is the website. You’ll see the email list is right there. So, just sign up for the email list. We are now kind of at the point where we're working on it daily. So, you'll be getting weekly updates on our speakers. You can see the speakers we've announced so far on the website and there's a blog there where we're posting all the relevant details as we get them.
00:42:42,000 -->
MR
Awesome, thank you. I know we're kind of getting on in time, but I wanted to jump into one more topic if you don't mind before we wrap. Do you have the time Derrick for another five minutes?
DB
Sure.
MR
Okay, great.
This really goes back full circle to the beginning of this discussion where I said that your focus on self-reflection and personal growth and spiritual growth as a foundation for creating change in the world is really striking to me. You started at the beginning of this interview by talking about your experience as a youth. You've shared freely about drug use and prison time when you were younger and that you changed your life dramatically after that. Some of that was based on the on the reflection that you had while you were in prison and the spiritual growth that you had. So, most people have some degree of trauma in their past and many people struggle with addiction. I've heard this planet be called a trauma planet.
To what extent do you think your beliefs as a young person about life, people, and yourself contributed to those earlier struggles and to what extent did trauma contribute to forming those beliefs?
00:44:04,000 -->
DB
Wow, that's a great question. I would say trauma 100% influenced my various beliefs that I held as a youth —even things that I didn't necessarily consciously think out like, “Oh, I feel this way about this thing.” But as you know, especially when I got locked up and of course with hindsight, I could see “Oh yeah, I was dealing with this thing, and I was acting this way.” Then I could very clearly see how my, for one thing, my inability to trust people when I was younger or to suspect that every person was going to do me harm was directly learned from my father coming in and out of my life at a young age and writing letters from prison promising to be there. You know, I remember getting these letters at five, six, seven years old, crying every time. And then he'd get out and we might see him once or twice and then one day my mom would come home and tell us “Well, he's back in jail again.” Having those cycles to the point until my mom was just like “Alright, I'm not telling you guys anymore.” You know, she just kind of got sick of being in that role. But I definitely could see as I got older how those experiences kind of ingrained a mistrust of pretty much everybody and just an assumption that people lie, people say whatever they want. Things like that that then started to become some of my own worst behaviors, especially when I was using drugs. And so yes, definitely I was able to see these things with the benefit of the gift of solitude and silence which is what I chose to do with most of my prison stay. I could really start to peel back those layers and see like “Wow, I've been feeling this way because.” It was at a point where I wrote him while I was in prison because he got out the week I went in. I felt so stupid about that. I've been angry at him my whole life. I remember clearly thinking, “I'm repeating the family tradition if I continue this because my family on both sides has a history of drug and alcohol abuse and prison going back a couple generations.” So I felt really bad about that but I wrote him and I told him as I was starting to heal how I felt about it. I didn't get the answer I was hoping for and the healing would come later. But it was the beginning of me starting to really untangle all that mess and take some personal responsibility too. Because in the beginning I was untangling it and it was like “Oh, it's his fault. That's why I'm this way.” And then, of course, it was realizing like, “Okay well, that may be true to some extent. I felt or was hurt this way because of actions he took, but I have to take responsibility for who I am, what I'm doing now.” But yes, definitely the trauma played a role in it and internalizing various lessons that then impacted me growing up.
00:47:01,000 -->
MR
Yes, so, I worked in the trauma field for a little over a decade. We all experience some kind of trauma at some point. In my view, it does form our beliefs. The tricky thing is that, as Einstein said, “You can't fix a problem with the same consciousness that created it.” It’s an inside job; we have to change our own consciousness in order to be able to see the possibility of a new life for ourselves, for other people, and for the world. So that goes with addressing our trauma and looking at what our beliefs are about ourselves, other people, and about the world. It's amazing you did so much of that on your own. What role do you think that changing our beliefs, or looking at our beliefs has in being able to create happy personal lives and as a collective, to create a happy parallel society or parallel networks or whatever we're calling that? What would you like to see everybody doing in terms of looking at their beliefs or examining them?
DB
Sure.
MR
It’s kind of a big question I know.
DB
No, I mean I think you kind of touched on it there, just examining our underlying beliefs and being willing to question ourselves. I write about this in the Conscious Resistance Trilogy that I—the solitude for me was such a huge gift. It was while I was in prison. Then after I got out, I went on a bike tour and spent months on the road by myself. And in those experiences, I learned so much about myself. One was voluntary, one was not voluntary. But both times it was that solitude and just making time to be with ourselves for a little bit, which is very difficult in our fast-paced world or at least it can be, if we allow ourselves to be swept up in it.
So, I mean even if it's just spending 5, 10 minutes alone at night or journaling throughout the day or at the end of the day or making that regular time to just tune into yourself. I think that can go a long way. As simple and trite as that sounds, if each of us did spend more time on ourselves then I do think it would help the planet. I did a video a decade ago called, For the Good of Everyone, Focus on Yourself. And you know, that's part of it right? Not to the degree of being incapable of having empathy and compassion for other people.
But yes, we do need to take care of home base. We do need to take care of our health and work on our healing and in that process we help each other, and being able to be there with each other, for each other too. Because I have realized more and more as I've gotten older, we never know what other people are dealing with—what other people are going through in their day-to-day struggles and how close they are to the edge.
You know, and it doesn't cost us anything to try to be supportive and listen to somebody despite all the differences we may have. I know there's a large swath of the population that might not agree with the things that we're talking about today or the desires we have. But ultimately, at the end-of-the-day, I believe we're working for them as well. And if we truly hope to embody that that we need to recognize that not everybody is going to be on the same page, but that doesn't mean we can't still treat them like human beings deserving of respect.
MR
Absolutely. Yes. And a tool that I've used portions of is your holistic self-assessment. Why don't you say a word about where that is and how people can use it?
00:50:51,000 -->
DB
Sure. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yes, the holistic self-assessment is also on TheConsciousResistance.com, under the books tab. I believe we have that available to download for free. You can purchase it of course, as a short little handbook. It's definitely meant to be more like a guidebook/ something you can write in and jot your thoughts down. I developed it based on these experiences I'm talking about in prison, trying to work through different parts of myself and different exercises that either I picked up from other places or just came to me naturally and I made my own. It's something to get started with. I’ve tried to make it as concise and simple as possible and as least fluffy as possible if that makes sense and just kind of whittle down the best pieces of the information that I think is necessary to get the concepts across. But also I wanted it to be useful in helping people essentially just get to know themselves better and get more in line with the values and principles and goals they have.
00:51:54,000 -->
MR
Great, thank you and I know we've taken a lot of your time. I want to direct people back to your book, How to Opt Out of the Technocratic State. Again, coming back full circle to the beginning. Derrick talks quite a bit in the book about how he personally has opted out of the technocratic state - financially, in terms of privacy, information security, and censorship, in working towards creating an intentional community, and in terms of transportation and a variety of other ways that he has chosen. It hasn’t been easy to opt out of the technocratic state.
So that's inspiring. It's a great case study example, and I think it would be best if you check it out and read it in his own words. And then Derrick, I want to throw it back to you for a wrap up, anything else you'd like to share or bring to conclusion with the items we've talked about in this interview?
00:52:52,000 -->
DB
Well thank you so much for wanting to talk to me and share with you, your growing audience, and I’m excited to see where you take your work and just to be a part of your journey as well. It really does mean a lot. And I don't know if we've already mentioned it, but I think for me what's very cool about this is to have somebody I get to collaborate with through the journalism course, and now see you take on your own path here. There have been a couple of people who took that course who are now doing really exciting things that I'm happy to share more with and just see where it goes. Because we need more people asking questions, promoting truth and looking for solutions. So, thank you for being a part of that.
00:53:32,000 -->
MR
You are welcome and thank you for offering the course. It was really great. And if anybody has an opportunity to take Derrick's course, I felt like I was quite fortunate that we were the first audience, maybe the guinea pig audience, and you did a great job. It was wonderful material, and I learned a lot.
00:53:50,000 -->
DB
Thank you.
00:53:52,000 -->
MR
So, thanks so much Derrick. I know I'll be seeing you again soon, if not, before then in January and we'll be in touch.
00:54:01,000 -->
DB
Thank you so much. See you in Mexico.
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