My speeches at Larken Rose's 'Approaching Humanity' event

Paul, thank you so much for joining today.

Today I wanted to talk about the recent event that I attended and was fortunate enough to speak at, Larken Rose's Approaching Humanity event, which was held on July 18th, 2026 in Sedona, Arizona.

This was a really, really interesting event.

It was an all day event and it was mostly a variety of speakers, including Larkin himself, his wife, Amanda, and many other great speakers.

And it also included music and various skits.

And the general theme of the event corresponded to the launch of Larkin's new book called Unbound, with the main chapters of the book corresponding to major sections of the event itself.

Generally, each speaker had about a eight or nine or ten minute segment, and then we moved on to another speaker.

So things were kept lively and interesting and connected.

The variety of speakers were all over the spectrum, which is good because it kept the audience very interested.

And they covered topics like police abuse, consent-based communities, philosophy, anarchism from a Christian point of view, anarchism from an atheist point of view.

And all of these altogether are related to the various themes and topics of Larkin's book and the event itself.

I was fortunate enough to have an opportunity to speak three times, so I basically gave three speeches, each around the eight or nine minute time frame.

I thought it might be fun if I showed you my three speeches and also gave some commentary on each of the speeches, what I was trying to accomplish and how they connected to each other.

Now, one thing I do want to mention that the title of Larkin's book was Unbound, and this is a term that Larkin basically used throughout the event and of course, throughout his own book.

in which he's basically talking about the human mind emerging out of the belief in political authority over the course of these many decades and many centuries, and in particular, the unbinding of the human mind in the present time we live, where we are actually seeing this starting to gain traction and even accelerate.

The unbound mind is a mind that is essentially becoming free of the belief in political authority.

And as you probably know, if you're aware of Larken Rose, this ties very tightly with his other major work, The Most Dangerous Superstition.

And this particular book that he wrote is basically the same theme, the same concepts, except it's presented in a less philosophical, a less rationalistic format, and really instead tries to connect directly with the sensibilities of common people, the average person.

So I think it's a different take and probably a necessary take on the same topic.

And so for that reason, I and some of the other speakers tried to employ the use of the term unbound when we were referring to a person's ability or the people's ability to work their way out of the belief in political authority.

Once again, I had three speeches during the events.

My particular topics were, one, isolation, in this case, mental isolation, number two, eroding propaganda, and number three, human nature and emergence.

If you're familiar with my work, you'll know that all of these topics tie in with my general work on the psychology of the belief in political authority, but they also connected directly with the themes of this particular event.

So what I'll do today is play each speech fully, and then I'll add some comments.

So let's take a look at speech number one on isolation.

Paul, thank you so much for joining today.

Today I wanted to talk about the recent event that I attended and was fortunate enough to speak at, Larken Rose's Approaching Humanity event, which was held on July 18th, 2026 in Sedona, Arizona.

This was a really, really interesting event.

It was an all day event and it was mostly a variety of speakers, including Larkin himself, his wife, Amanda, and many other great speakers.

And it also included music and various skits.

And the general theme of the event corresponded to the launch of Larkin's new book called Unbound, with the main chapters of the book corresponding to major sections of the event itself.

Generally, each speaker had about a eight or nine or ten minute segment, and then we moved on to another speaker.

So things were kept lively and interesting and connected.

The variety of speakers were all over the spectrum, which is good because it kept the audience very interested.

And they covered topics like police abuse, consent-based communities, philosophy, anarchism from a Christian point of view, anarchism from an atheist point of view.

And all of these altogether are related to the various themes and topics of Larkin's book and the event itself.

I was fortunate enough to have an opportunity to speak three times, so I basically gave three speeches, each around the eight or nine minute time frame.

I thought it might be fun if I showed you my three speeches and also gave some commentary on each of the speeches, what I was trying to accomplish and how they connected to each other.

Now, one thing I do want to mention that the title of Larkin's book was Unbound, and this is a term that Larkin basically used throughout the event and of course, throughout his own book.

in which he's basically talking about the human mind emerging out of the belief in political authority over the course of these many decades and many centuries, and in particular, the unbinding of the human mind in the present time we live, where we are actually seeing this starting to gain traction and even accelerate.

The unbound mind is a mind that is essentially becoming free of the belief in political authority.

And as you probably know, if you're aware of Larken Rose, this ties very tightly with his other major work, The Most Dangerous Superstition.

And this particular book that he wrote is basically the same theme, the same concepts, except it's presented in a less philosophical, a less rationalistic format, and really instead tries to connect directly with the sensibilities of common people, the average person.

So I think it's a different take and probably a necessary take on the same topic.

And so for that reason, I and some of the other speakers tried to employ the use of the term unbound when we were referring to a person's ability or the people's ability to work their way out of the belief in political authority.

Once again, I had three speeches during the events.

My particular topics were, one, isolation, in this case, mental isolation, number two, eroding propaganda, and number three, human nature and emergence.

If you're familiar with my work, you'll know that all of these topics tie in with my general work on the psychology of the belief in political authority, but they also connected directly with the themes of this particular event.

So what I'll do today is play each speech fully, and then I'll add some comments.

So let's take a look at speech number one on isolation.