Beyond the Vapor with Robert Stark
Robert Stark interviews Ross Calvin about his American Colossus Project
This is The Stark Truth, hosted by Robert Stark, brought to you by StarkTruthRadio.com. Robert Stark is an American journalist and political commentator. You can listen to his podcasts at www.starktruthradio.com. [Music] Robert Stark here. I am joined here with Ross Calvin and we're going to be discussing his proposal for a Prometheus statue with Jason Residor Johnny on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco. Ross, it's great speaking with you. Thanks, Robert. Thanks for having me. It's very nice to talk to you. I'm sorry to say I might issue one correction already. Dr. George Johnny hasn't been able to be a part of the project here for a few months, lamentably. He's not on any longer yet a few things to attend to personally. Incidentally, just as we get started here, he's a very brilliant man, as I think most people know. Yet, he's also not really a real estate developer, and there's a sense in which this is sort of a real estate development, just a big one. And so there were some ways in which it wasn't quite the best fit, actually, either. Nonetheless, I respect him a great deal and it's been somewhat of a shame that's developed the way that it has. However, things are progressing a foot, and I'd love to share more about it. Before we get to discuss the project, do you want to give a brief introduction to yourself about yourself? Yeah. Well, I grew up in New Mexico in the Southwest, and I've been a finance guy most of my life. I ran an investment fund, an Austrian economics focused strategies, global macro and frontier markets and volatility for about 10 years. And then three and a half years ago, just under, I transitioned to being a Bitcoin miner. So we've had some operations in different parts of the world going on these now, three years, two and a half years. And I developed a blockchain platform for oil and gas right in the middle of that fund strategy, which was anchored around Bitcoin and it was the best performing pool of assets in the strategy. And so, you know, as it got to be quite a stressful, you know, 10 years will take a toll. So it got to be somewhat stressful and I took the best ideas and the best sort of distillation of our practice and folded that into the mining company that I run. And yeah, so anyway, I mean, you know, there's a very nice tie in between the mythos of Prometheus and sound money. Yeah, no, and it's that, you know, if you imagine that, and this is what I was hoping to share with you this evening, that if you imagine that the Prometheus figure is represent sort of the basic and most profound agency of man, then you come to understand that, you know, his forward looking attributes, that's what Prometheus means, obviously, can't really be facilitated in a modern economy without sound money. You know, basically it changes our time preference such that we can focus on things that are further out in the future as opposed to being reactive. And so, anyway, there's a very nice economic sort of fundamentals tie in between the sound money as a lot of Bitcoin and the Promethean mythos. So the project is called American Colossus, and it's to build a Prometheus statue on Alcatraz. Was this initially your idea, or Jason, George, on his idea? Do you want to kind of give an introduction to how you thought up with this and the significance of Prometheus sort of how he ties in with America's spirit of innovation and of Technae? Yeah. Well, it was mine. I actually floated it. It sort of circulated it about right before the election, the Biden Trump election. And it sort of the first time it occurred to me actually, or at least building a statue on on Alcatraz occurred to me when I was five or six years old, we were sailing and well, no, it must have been when I was about 10. Anyway, sailing past Alcatraz in the bay. And I looked at it and I saw, well, what a crazy thing to have this kind of bummed out, kind of insignificant thing on this island. And it's a perfect place for a symbol of triumph and beauty and nobility and freedom and the power of technology to liberate humankind. And so I think even all the way back then, and I was visiting, I think in 2018, some friends and we had this very beautiful night across the bay in Alameda and we were coming back in the sunset and the light was hitting it just right and decided that this was going to be something that we'd have to accomplish in our generation. So, however, my first inclination was, frankly, a bit kitschy admit, which was the Statue of Liberty, which rhymed with the one in New York City would be would be would be very appropriate. But I discovered Jason's work. Gosh, maybe around that time. I can't remember quite when it was. The funny thing about it was that he used to appear on a show that was run out of sort of a house that was really close to where I grew up in Albuquerque. And it was this new thinking allowed. Yeah. Yeah, so Jeffrey Mishlove back like I forget when it was maybe it was like 2017. Well, yeah. Yeah, so you you you probably know that there's this sort of strange subculture in the Southwest sort of broadly speaking like kind of like. I was also I was in Sedona over the 4th of July weekend. Yeah, exactly. So it's it's. I was I saw a bookstore in Sedona that had like a lot of interesting books and like mysticism like that really fit in with the kinds of. I think like Jason's books would be perfect there but they did have them but like it really fits in perfectly with like the kind of stuff to talk about and thinking about. Yeah, no, and it was it was a sort of a normal thing you know growing up in that part of the country and and yeah strangely abnormal most of the rest of the world I guess and so I mean strange to me. But but it was on PBS and I never watched anything else and so you know he appeared on there and I just kind of just kind of started tuning in a little bit. Anyway, and I found it very moving because his ability to reach back into the deep animals of you know religious history and synthesize quite you know archaic and kind of arcane things for daily at modern relevance was very powerful. And the reason it resonated with me was really that you know in this in this fun strategy and in my world as an entrepreneur, you know, we we kind of have this familiarity or friendliness to promethean style sort of disposition anyway. And it was, it seemed very natural and it was wonderful to hear this sort of codified that people had codified this way of being and thinking so very long ago and that's not something that we get to learn very much about in school we have to really seek it out independently and so you know Dr. Johnny was among many other things wonderful about that and so it was as as this that there was a sense in which you know I, you know I'm a big fan of Howard Rourke who's the Iran hero and there's a sense in which this sort of totem always was the most resonant with me and so I wonder after thinking about what really belongs on that island and what really resonates most meaningfully and most necessarily with this moment in time is moment in the West. And this moment in San Francisco and this moment in our country, the you know the Prometheus is a let's say no a no brainer. This would also be sort of a usher in a renaissance or a new rebirth of a new civilization. I mean, I mean that might be kind of grandiose one can hope but there there is one certain thing that we, we suffer from these days I think which is this just wave after wave of pessimism. It's actually completely out of keeping with the reality of our nature. I think it's unique. I think it's sad but I think the pessimism today is. I mean there obviously be major problems in American history but I think the pessimism must be pretty unique to today. I think so I think it's just saturating everything you know I mean that to my to my eye, you know and I lived in China for a couple years and I saw the lamentable wages of what was done in the 60s and 70s and sort of darkly in the minds of and the culture in a way that I don't I don't think was ever true about Chinese culture before today. And you can see the same sort of subversive, subversive agenda at work on our culture also. I think that pessimism is part of it I think it's it's actually much more easily disseminated today than it ever was before. And it's also let's say we have a unique situation I think in that you know the West has always been so extremely tolerant really. And we have welcomed so many different kinds of people that this can be used against us in a way that I don't think many cultures before have had that had that particular kind of vulnerability. And you know when we're looking where we're on the brink of an age, which is actually completely unimaginable. And those of us in the in the Bitcoin world and, you know, who spent time on artificial intelligence. It's the labor market and the capital markets are about to be reengineered. And this is going to come along with the reengineering of the energy systems around the world. And then we have the capacity to develop rapid biotechnology and nuclear is opening up once more. And then, you know, rocketry and space travel is becoming something popularly discussed I mean the yesterday, I think it was just yesterday the first private spacewalk. So there is this enormous reason for optimism, and there's this enormous reason to cherish the spirit of Prometheus as it moves through Western history. And, and yet it's being denigrated. And so, you know, I think the reason to have something monumental and large right in the middle of this beautiful harbor is to is for all of us to look at it and not be able to mistake. And also precisely we're supposed to be doing here. And also what precisely the American covenant really is. So, you know, I'd like to talk about about how the Prometheus figure really is the fundamental archetypal figure of the Western of America. And I think it's, we can go down the rabbit hole as much as you like but just just for starters, you know, we have this covenant in our country, which is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And we know we have a statute of of of liberty there and liberty meaning menu mission and, and, and the triumph of, of, you know, ending the slave trade and ending slavery in the West. And that life is sacred. But the pursuit of happiness has always been a little bit less, less well understood. And I think that that's actually really the point that there's a sense in which Prometheus is really the pursuit. Most of the Statue of Liberty represents liberty and Prometheus would be, would sort of honor the pursuit of happiness as well. Exactly. I think that's, that's, that's a way that the American palette might experience it. And there's a, there's some wonderful things about it that make it actually very common to us, even though it's this ancient myth that, that we don't get a lot of exposure to. And that is to say that, you know, there's, there's this basket of things that we call freedom, the liberating power of technology, the pursuit of things which are meaningful and beautiful and sacred, the elevation of the ideal in our lives. The, the ennobling of ourselves and our communities through works of perseverance and exhausting ourselves into an art or into a company or into a technology. I think these things are broadly speaking called freedom. And it's a, it's a sort of another, it's an, it's an older Germanic term. And it's, so I think the founders were actually drawing on this, this term freedom as being different from the Roman sense of manumission, freedom from being owned by the state. And so there's a deeper and more powerful, I'd say the pursuit of happiness is the most powerful of the three. Because when you're pursuing freedom, when you're pursuing the ideal, when you're pursuing the most noble work you can conceive of, you're willing to undergo any kind of ordeal to do it. And this is what partly part of what the Promethean mythos teaches us about Prometheus fashioning man, and depriving Zeus of a race of slaves because he put agency and technology and the creative will and the kind of Nietzsche incense into man. And, and, and, and deprived of Zeus of a race of slaves. And so he was tortured, he had to go through this ordeal of, you know, being, being chained to the rock and, and having the, the liver. Packed out by the eagle, which of course, you know, it's Zeus, by the way, Zeus was always his son of totem is the eagle because he's like a sky God. And so the, you know, the Eurasians see these eagles that are pretty fearsome things and, and they're soaring up there in the sky, they sort of represent Zeus. And they also represent the state, by the way, they represent fatalism and they represent the state, and that man is man's agency is in, in, in combat with those forces by nature. And it's kind of a, it's kind of a primordial law. And so, so the pursuit of happiness is the kind of, as far as I'm concerned sort of almost plain spoken political correct way, politically correct way of saying freedom in, you know, 1770s colonial America. And so, I think that this is what they meant all along. And it, you know, it kind of grew, I think pursuit of happiness kind of grew as the United States expanded into into the continent. To come to mean another, another term which is called manifest destiny. So symbolic, because the Pacific Ocean was the end of manifest destiny. Yes, indeed. And that's, that's really a point of poetic beauty, actually, for our country. And that, I mean, I don't, I don't know that that actually, I mean, you know, manifest destiny was also used as a kind of political slogan for for taking over the Philippines, but, and that sort of thing. That actually really coming to the end of the continent and pushing to the fullest extent of why we can, where we can maneuver to that San Francisco was always that beacon. So San Francisco has always been kind of the manifest destiny city. So it couldn't be really more, more appropriate. Yeah, it's a bookend to the Statue of Liberty, an oracle to the American people, an icon to a future renaissance. But so basically, like with the Statue of Liberty, how it complements that is the proposal, it would actually be even larger than the Statue of Liberty, you're much larger. Yeah, I think, you know, that the proposal is that it's 350 feet and the hill that the highest hill point on the island is about 65 feet up off a sea level already. So it, it potentially can tower and be extremely powerful. There's something of a poetic, I'm sorry, a sculpture proportionality that is at work, however, to, and anybody who's been to New York Harbor can see the extremely elegant proportions of the Statue of Liberty. It's actually really quite small, but the amphitheater of the harbor and the buildings around create, create a sort of a specific size that you need for something like that. Not only that, but the pedestal on the Statue of Liberty is about half its height. So it's actually quite small and yet sort of in like a, like a beautiful spindle is right there in the middle of everything. San Francisco Bay is a little different. It's, it's larger, and it's also more geologically powerful. It's less sedated, you know, I mean, the Hudson is a, this kind of a slow meandering thing, and it's, I guess, is pretty straight, but it's, it's, it has the feeling of being slow. Whereas the, the tides and the mountainsides and the fog and the sort of rapidly changing climate of San Francisco has this kind of tumult about it. And also it being larger requires a larger statue. So, you know, it sits about, it sits about a mile and a half off of the shore. Now the Statue of Liberty is about that distance away from Battery Park. This is a similar distance. However, the city of San Francisco, the downtown area is obviously set back a little ways and there's this sort of quite tower area, which is shorter buildings and so on. And so it's, there's a little bit of a, it calls for something that requires your attention a little more. And then, of course, the size of the Golden Gate is also a big factor. And actually be, would it be taller than the Golden Gate Bridge? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, the Golden Gate is about 230 meters. It's about 650 feet. So it's the statue would be about half as high. The goal is to have the, the statue with its eye level look over the plane of the Golden Gate. So, you know, then this, by the way, is pending engineering. We don't think it's going to be, that'll be actually too controversial, structurally speaking, but, but there's always room for, for revisiting that. And so I think that, you know, there's another inside note too, which is that, you know, go big or go home. I think that the, the thing that what really is required is maybe a slightly smaller height would still work within the framing of the, of the bay itself. But this is a monumental, this is a monumental thing, and it belongs to all of us. And it needs to, it needs to usher in, as you've said a couple of times, a kind of rebirth of thinking about the size of things that the American people should be undertaking. The scope and the magnitude and, and the mass, the weight and the importance of those things. And by the way, maybe the most deeply that the ideals represented by Prometheus are loud and undignable and un-ignorable. So the statue of the monument needs to represent all of those things. I think with San Francisco, the significance of that is important because it is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and probably the most beautiful city in America, but there is like a lot with the natural beauty and the architectural beauty as well. And a Prometheus quality to some of the landmarks, but there is so much negativity about it. I think it is kind of like polarized in the culture wars, where people who are more conservative associate with the left and there's a lot of the negative news about the decay and the homeless crisis, and a lot of negativity in the media about San Francisco. So it's also a revitalization and Renaissance, specifically, I think San Francisco is important, but it's a Renaissance for California too. No question. And that's, that's something that's very dear to my heart and of the rest of us. And there's a sense for starters that if San Francisco doesn't work, then America itself doesn't work. Because San Francisco has always been the sphere point of experimentation and pioneering of all kinds. And so to see it, so beleaguered by this kind of inebriation of both ideological integration, I think, and of course the narcotics really has the potential to put the lie on our entire American experience. And if we can't get it right, then we can't go anywhere else and get it right. And so, and there's, you know, a very profound part of the Prometheus mythos, which is that as he's, as what, and this is not just this particular part but there's, but this is the most iconic that as Prometheus is is chained there to the mountainside, being tortured for giving man technology and fire agency for, you know, a thousand years. He is, he's devoured and then he regrows he regenerates. Speaking to the inexhaustible creativity and fundamental regenerative power of man. And so, there's something, and you know, that regenerative power and my, and my estimation follows a kind of innate capacity for man to idealize and to follow beauty even through the darkest situations. And so, and this, by the way, this is the thing that gives us composure to forge ahead and to triumph the way that our species has. And so, our goal is to make this, this symbol, a symbol of idealization of how this fundamentally regenerative power of man can always rise and populate the popular consciousness. And that it in this is a kind of a, a therapy term and I don't really mean it but there's a sense in which ideals give us an ability let's say a hope but an ability to live for a future that is more positive, more abundant, more optimistic. And, you know, the San Francisco has basically been the front line of the narcotics war against the United States. It's something that, you know, for starters, people in the Orient want us dollars so they just want to, you know, harvest as many us dollars from our country as they can and drugs are a great way to do that. But also, they want to weaken our social bond and they want to destroy our morale. And so they know that using this weapon, right, especially in the heart of this, this profoundly powerful city is, you know, could could damage our could damage our culture very much. So there's a sense that this monument is a rebuffing of that effort to dismantle our ways. And that we are also humane and that we care about our fellow Americans and we want regeneration and zeal and optimism and beauty to live and thrive within. And the symbolism between Prometheus and what the prison symbolizes that contrast is important, but would the statue be built on top or next to the prison, or would the prison be demolished completely. And do you, what would you say to people who say that the prison has any like historic preservation value. No, I, I argue that it does not have any historical preservation value. I know that I know that some folks feel that way. But look, the prison for starters. Well, to answer your first question. That it would be demolished, and that it's, it's bones, you know, the rubble the stone work can be reused in the new building in the in the platform and, and the museum which will sit at the base around the base of the island. The, the, the penitentiary, you know, it gets like 2 million visitors a year. There's a lot of people that go in there. But I contend and having been there and I think lots of people will have the same experience that there's not very much that's particularly moving or culturally enriching about it. And that it actually, it kind of resonates like sort of a sideshow, you know, like, if you are watching a football game and then the commercials come on, you have to watch the commercials also. And so if you travel to San Francisco as a tourist, you might go to Alcatraz also. But it's, it's, it doesn't, I don't think have a great deal of cultural significance. And in contrast, I think it represents a prison of failed ideologies and the prison of what happens to the soul and the mind. And when it's when it's trapped by narcotics. So, no, the, you know, it was only operational for about 30 years. They only built it because they thought it could, it would be, you know, sort of away from the city. And they didn't quite have the same zeal for, I think, city beautification as we should have today. So, and, you know, it also, I don't know what your audience thinks, but I think that it looks a bit like, you know, a Romanian Soviet style prison camp. And, you know, it's the kind of, it's like a new deal project, it was sort of of that era. But it. I think like architecturally, you had like Art Deco in the, during the boom of the 20s, that was more grandiose. And then the, I think I don't know if you would call it like streamlined modern, but Art Deco was followed by more like utilitarian architectural aesthetic. Certainly, I mean, yeah, that, that was a product I think of, of Vaimar, you know, the Vaimar architectural sort of disinheriting of, of, you know, cultural, cultural, cultural tradition that happened in Germany made its way architecturally around the world really, really quickly. So, I think that certainly happened and, and, but the, the prison itself, you know, they had some noteworthy prisoners. I think it's more of a, more of a macabre kind of curiosity than it really is anything meaningful to anybody. Just opposed to, you know, this, this monument. And a museum of breakthrough technology and, and pioneering and entrepreneurship to surround the bottom of the island will be, I think, an order of magnitude, if not more, more resonance and powerful and meaningful to all tourists, all comers. And to the United States. And I think also incidentally, lead it to be a much more powerful commercial success as well. Can you some background on the design? Would you have interest in different aesthetics ranging from Art Deco to neoclassical, and would you put the design up to a vote or do you think it's more aristocratic to have the artist decide on the design? Yeah, I think that's a nice one. Are you the artist behind it? No, no, I'm not. And I think that's important. And, and, you know, I would ask your audience if anyone knows who the designer of the Statue of Liberty was. Most people don't know. And that's, that's one. I know. So like, I know he was French, but I can't name his name off the top of my head. Yeah, I mean, he, he, he in the true spirit of a sculptor. He was French, but he didn't want his name associated with it because he thought it would take away from the magnitude and the power of the of the art. And I think he's right. He was right that. So, so as far as I'm concerned, no, I mean, I have, I have, you know, lots of ways that I want it to be, but I'm not going to impose those on the process. Is it more neoclassical or Art Deco? Yeah, it's actually, that's, that's sort of an unknown. My, my inclinations are that it's somewhere in between that has motifs of both, because I think that actually both of those speak to the sort of progressive will that Americans have kind of uniquely with our roots in a neoclassical heritage, but also a sort of futuristic dynamo of Art Deco that it speaks to another's Promethean artifact that we can talk about maybe in a minute, but called Archayo Futurism, which is not actually as well defined as, as one might want. And we're in the driver's seat to help crystallize what that means. But now Archayo Futurism is sort of, it's sort of like the future we should have had like an optimistic, like taking the best from the past, but not being too reactionary about or being stuck in the past, but using boring for the past to create a more optimistic or exciting vision for the future. Yeah, I mean, I think, the way that I think about Archayo Futurism is that it, and I'm not, I'm actually not a scholar about this or anything but it, but the way I feel. There's a book by Guillaume Faye called Archayo Futurism, but I haven't, I haven't, to be honest, I haven't actually read it. Right, well, and I think that there's a sort of American spin on it too, that the things that are archaic, I think he refers to mostly are that they are, you know, more of a aristocratic structuring of the social order. In my view, the archaic actually is more resonant with what I described earlier about the pursuit of happiness, being this primordial instinct around which the mankind is formed. And it's, it says ancient and as kind of pre verbal as it can be, and, and almost to the point where when we sense it in ourselves, it feels very old. Or originality, it's the instinct for newness for uncovering the truth behind even, even Golden Gate Bridge, you could say is like Archayo Futurist, or, or the, what's it called, Palace of Fine Arts, Coit Tower, like a lot of San Francisco landmarks, already sort of have that, even the Transamerica pyramid. So, yeah, that's true, there's that aspect of futurism and Coit Tower has, has kind of an art deco motif obviously and, and I'm not convinced that the Palace of Fine Arts does actually because of, because it was, you know, it was built with the World's Fair quite a bit earlier. But then, then putting them all together, you're right, there's a bit of a, there's a bit of a thread there. You know what this, this instinct for futurism of course is, is what the San Francisco Bay embodies so among all the places of the world right so So our sculptor, his name is Fenda Villiers and he's a wonderful philosopher of sculpture, and also a totally beautiful artist. And we've asked him to create something that is forward moving and uplifting and vital and resonant with both neoclassical forms and also art deco motifs and modernistic motifs. And I think that he, he will do an absolutely wonderful job and, you know, it will be somewhat of a different form. It will, it will be more movement than most people I think are used to seeing in these large statues across the world, which to my eye I'll look, well, many of them look like, sort of like potatoes, you know, they're like sitting there still and without a lot of justiculation. And unfortunately, some of the larger statues around the world, which do attempt some dynamic motion, end up looking out in my estimation a bit oversaturated with it and a little bit too perfectly I think some sometimes they look a bit like on the cartoon side. But in any event, because of the sort of layering of these different motifs and a lack of concise precise definition that could make it quite kitschy, the, these, one will see the sort of elemental forms and the suggestion of these, each one of these motifs in a way that I think is going to end up being extremely elegant. It may sound unpractical or grandiose, but the plan basically, it's hedging that if Trump wins, it's to appeal to Trump as the president has authority over national parks. Yeah, you know, President Biden just I think it was maybe three or four months ago, but put about 120,000 acres just outside of Los Angeles, that was a national forest into a national monument so that it, you know, it couldn't be used for development. The Grand Canyon was created in this way. The Statue of Liberty was also created in this way as national monuments, Alcatraz is the national park. And so it's, it's federal lands. Biden can be fashioned into a national monument under the Antiquities Act by the president. Now my view is that, you know, President Trump, in, in the middle of 2020 when all the statues were coming down. He signed up an executive order to create a national sculpture memorial garden. And that was one of the first things that Biden rescinded when he got the office. So it's natural to presume that these symbols of heroism and nobility and optimism might not be so, so friendly to, you know, a Harris administration. Would you continue pursuing the project if Kamala Harris is elected or is this totally handshake from victory. No, no, no, no, of course we will. It may, it may be that she wouldn't approve it, though. So, if that's the case, then we can wait until the next administration. Because the location is so, so utterly important. And the monument itself is so utterly important to our national spirit that it's, it, you know, look, the Statue of Liberty took 20 years, 30 years. I don't think it took quite 30 years. But, you know, they conceived of it and started working on it in 1882, I think. And then, and then it wasn't installed until 1907 I believe so anyway it was quite a long time. But something of this nature could very well take a long time as well and that's all right. There's no reason not to keep going. There's, it's, it's, I think kind of obvious though that after President Trump already made his executive order, and you know, he's, he's a real estate guy and so he kind of understands the importance of monuments like this already. And then one other thing that the symbol of regeneration which it, which it, which the statue, you know, emblemizes is, is actually not just very sort of poetically resonant with the Statue of Liberty in New York, but it's also resonant with Trump Tower. Yeah, Trump Tower is very retro futuristic, especially like the 80s variation of that. Yeah, that's true. And, you know, people might remember, although it's, it's been a while that New York City in the 70s and early 80s was pretty rough. And then Giuliani came in famously kind of turned things around, and Donald Trump was a big part of that a building buildings and developing his properties in, you know, where he could get, I think good deals around town. And I think Trump Tower was one of those. So there's a sense in which there's this kind of regeneration thing going on between Trump Tower and the, and the, and the Alcatraz monument. The Prometheus monument. So, it, it, it makes sense that he would also say something about wanting to build more like neo classical architecture for public works projects. That's right. Yeah. You know, I want to touch on the neo classicism a little bit, but, but certainly for government buildings, there was a can't remember for some executive order or a commission, or both. But that was yet another thing that was rescinded by by Biden when he came in is building all new public buildings in a neoclassical style. There is a sense, however, in my opinion that neo classicism represents a kind of traditionalism that has not been as successful as we want it to be. So, like you take Washington, I think the problem that have of Washington, you see it's almost like it's not, it could have been more grandiose and a rich, an arcade futurist direction. But it almost like it almost could be a bit too much, a bit too much like low key where it feels a bit too much like a cemetery. Yeah, it's true. It's, it's, they're, they're well, neo classicism has, I think, as essential to its design, stillness and the staidness of institutions, the quiet, the quietude of these things. And Prometheus is obviously not that at all Prometheus is the opposite he's forward moving up lifting and vital. He's dynamic. He, you know, he also symbolizes bucking the regime. And so, there's a sense in which a purely neoclassical statue for this, for this monument would not fit would not work. And that's okay because that doesn't represent all that there is to America. Right. I mean, even, even to be honest, the Statue of Liberty has this kind of clever aspect to it, which is that you don't really know if it's a man or a woman. There's a sense in which there's this like dynamic churning underneath that that Liberty represents that isn't the kind of, or that that you that you experience when you see this tattoo that that that is that Liberty doesn't actually represent the institutionalism either. And so, I think that, you know, for people who are patriotic and who love neoclassical architecture, there will be plenty to love about this monument. However, it's just not the entire story of us. And so we have to endeavor to make it a story about the optimistic and beautiful future as well. Do you think this is important symbolically you touched on this, but countering sort of this iconoclasm of tearing down statues. And what happened in 2020, and if you tear something down from the past, you have an obligation to create something better, but that obviously didn't happen. It's about right. It's a counterbalance to like that spirit of like destruction. Yeah, I think there's just peer to deconstructionism involved in those tear downs. And, you know, that was the thing that, you know, really stark, stoked, stoked my higher. You know, and why, why 2020 for me was the sort of one of the times that one would endeavor to launch something something like this. And, and, you know, I, like I mentioned earlier, I spent a lot of time studying China immersed in Chinese history. And one of the things that they did in China in the 60s was they would tear it, they tore down the four olds. And the old aspects of religion and culture and family and institutions around China, which were the things that gave a kind of coherence to Chinese life. The sort of Maoist thing about tearing down statues and which by the way also happened in the Bolshevik Revolution, tearing down churches and so on, that this is understood to be a way of subverting the courage of people. And so, it certainly is our monument is certainly a, a, let's say, a fist in the face of that, of that attitude. You know, and the wonderful thing about being out there on the island like this is that if you want to tear it down, you're going to have to go swim with the sharks. But artists have a greater role in the economy. And does you think the arts complements technological innovation or tech part is going to take me. Gosh no, not anymore. They absolutely should. I mean the entirety of the spirit of the Renaissance, which I think was a beautiful Promethean, a Promethean event in Western history, which by the way, I consider the American Revolution to be the apex of the Renaissance. But the, the Renaissance was this outgrowth of the unification, the idea that there was a unity between arty and beauty, art and beauty making, and technology, and the study of nature. And, you know, the study of sort of God's laws in a new fresh and naturalistic way, as opposed to a state and someone who fatalistic totalitarian way, like the, like the church had to sort of run it up until then. And, no, I don't think we have this at all. I, I'm hoping that down deep in the, in the hearts of people who see this monument, that they will, something will stir them in a way to bring forward a kind of naturalistic sense of beauty, even if they're engineers, right, even if they're very technical people. And that multidisciplinary approach to life is actually the way that we should be, that surely should be the, so the governing aspect of our. Yeah, because ideally they should complement each other, but like one complaint is that about like Silicon Valley is that a lot of the people in tech are pushing out the creative types, which is kind of, there's a lot of different angles to that, but it's kind of sad because ideally, technological innovation and cultural, or aesthetic innovation should complement each other. Yeah, I think that's really true. Well, you know, the more, the more sound money is needed in that equation. The more large technology companies become sort of dependent on the, excuse me, fiat sort of system, and the more they become kind of monolithic. And so there's, there's a movement, which is, you know, big tech versus little tech. And, you know, little tech is the creative destruction oriented and dynamic upstart kind of part of the part of the economy there. And then there are the large technology giants, which are, you know, incredibly powerful and sort of state oriented now. And maybe not nearly as creative. I mean, you know, for example, Peter Teal, I remember. And I think it was a, a castigated Google for owning huge amounts of treasury bonds because they couldn't think of what else to do with it. So, you know, there's certainly plenty of that going on. And, and I think that, this multidisciplinary way of thinking about the world has, has, and its roots, a kind of. It's, it's as though your own individuation and your own self sovereignty are kind of the, the, the driving force. And of course Prometheus is a. He's the titan of, of those forces of those, of those spirits. And of self sovereignty and self-individuation and a greater sense of what Nietzsche called down going, you know, exhausting yourself into your art so that you can bring forward something more powerful in you and more ideal and, you know, more productive and, and transformative in your work. So one hopes that this monument will spur that spirit and people who come to see it and will remind them that that is their destiny, because I don't think anything could really be more profound and more profound effect on our, our culture and our civic life. So yeah, like with this Silicon Valley, it has, it has like this history of the spirit of innovation, but there's also a more negative side of Silicon Valley, where it's becoming more like a state bureaucracy. And the whole thing about repression, a free speech, and what Silicon Valley should ideally be in what it is now. And you also have a proposal for a C said off the coast of SF as a rule for kind of a new Silicon Valley. Yeah, yeah, it's true. I actually think that there's a, there's a, you know, one could say that the first technology and the most profound technology of man is speech, not fire but speech. I don't know which one came first but, you know, speech allows you to differentiate yourself and to organize with great numbers of people and, you know, satisfy the wants it in like an economic sense of a larger and larger array of different types of people. And that's part of what has made man so economically powerful and triumphant, you know, taking resources from the other beasts and metabolizing like, you know, like the Highlander, you know, where they can be only one where, you know, mankind has been more powerful in doing this than any of the other species because of speech. And, you know, at least half of our brain is dedicated to social interactions. So, the idea that we would censor speech right from the heart of where free speech technology should emanate is sacrilegious, to say the least. And so I think that, that, you know, Prometheus stands against this in every way. And it should be a reminder to all of those who drive their, you know, portions up the, up the highway one to their fancy houses and San Rafael. That's a warning. And do you want to comment on the cease dead proposal. Well, I don't know very much about it. I know some of the people. So this isn't your proposal. This is someone else's. No, we don't have a cease dead proposal. No, but, but there once was, there were, there were, I think, several, but there once was one, I think, with C studying Institute, which was to set up an oil Derek across, I think maybe offshore international waters. Yeah. And, and have that be a place with its own laws and a way to experiment with your, with its own policies and governance system. And then there was another that goes to have people work on, or live on cruise ships, and then disembark to come in and work in Silicon Valley during the day, and go back at night so as not to flout the, the, just not to go afoul of the immigration laws but still be able to work in Silicon Valley. But that I think was maybe 10 years ago, both of them were longer than 10 years ago. No, but the one thing that I think is important to sort of along those lines to, to talk about is the museum that is in a way aiming to be a kind of temple to the Promethean spirit that it encircles the island at the foot of the monument. Because the story that people gain awareness of when they visit this museum, which will be about, you know, rocketry and agriculture and biotechnology and sound money and you name it. It will showcase in a way that isn't really done anywhere else, to my knowledge, the unbelievable amount of difficulty that inventors and pioneers have gone through in history, the kind of endurance and perseverance, and clearness of vision, clarity of vision, that they've, they've needed to, to triumph to make their vision into reality so that we can have the benefits, you know, remaining, right, and that we can sort of grow at a compounding rate, because of their ingeniousness and initiative and industriousness. So, the, the, around the base of the island. There, you know, it's, it's all, it's quite high, actually, it's, it comes off of the water about 20 feet, and it presents this very beautiful opportunity to both look back onto the city and look out into the, look out into the ocean to the Golden Gate. And also, sort of become immersed in the mythos of Prometheus as it has been alive through our culture. And I think that most people, a won't know very much about the Prometheus story when the monument is first built. I mean, that's a part of our job is to make sure that we raise the public awareness about it. But still, there won't be, there won't be people. So when they visit the island, they'll be able to see in a very visceral way with historical examples that are our ancestors, who created wonderful things that we all maybe even take for granted, but which were, you know, leaps forward in human well-being. And so, there is this sense that we are being subverted and ground down all the time. And yet, there's this indefatigable, permanent kind of optimistic will that has always been at work. And so, reminding people of that spirit, I think, is an equally profound part of the monument, because reconnecting with the pursuit of happiness with individualization and self sovereignty. And this call to be industrious. This will give permission and confidence in a way that's interactive and augmented reality and so on. And, you know, as you might imagine, if you can envision looking across the bay at the monument and seeing something distracting on the on the on the base of the island. Our endeavor is to actually conceal it such that it's actually going to be parts of it, at least, will be quite hard to see, and yet still let in light and still let in the sort of the optimism from the sun that comes down. And then, of course, also showing vignettes. So we'll be made of metal so the sun hitting it while the dramatic impact. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there'll be this native native native native plants covering parts of it. And then, you know, as you can imagine, there's a sort of strategic way of letting light in where you can create a huge amount of space internally. And yet, keep it from being too distracting and too visible to to observers on the on the shore. So there's going to be, I think, an extremely elegant balance between those two things as well. And it's going to kind of rhyme with the dynamism of the of the statue. And we have an amazing architect to design that for us as well who's done some projects around the world, quite well known some projects around the world that that already have these elements to them so we're extremely lucky in this regard. Yeah, it sounds very exciting. And if you want to, is there anything else you'd like to add about the project that we didn't touch upon? And do you want to plug the website or anything else? Sure. Yeah. Thanks. With the project. Yeah, you bet. Well, please come to see American Colossus.org. And there's a sub stack American Colossus.substack.com. And we're going to be releasing some live media here in the next six weeks or so, which we'll start giving, giving people a sort of a sense for the mythos, the story of Prometheus and how it interweaves with the story of us as Americans. And what it means philosophically and artistically. And we're very excited to have begun a film project, which will be a docu series that will trace the making of the monument. And then also in the same fashion, we've in parts of the mythology and parts of history, of course, also contemporary events and so on. So that'll be, that'll be out in starting 90 days or so from now. Middle December. And just urge everybody to stay tuned and please come check us out and send us a message if you'd like to be involved. Uh, Ross Calvin, great show. Thank you so much for being on. Great, Robert. I really appreciate it. Nice to talk to you. Thank you for tuning in. You can follow Robert Stark on his sub stack at robertstark.substack or on his website at starttruthradio.com. See you next time. [Music]