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Good evening. Good morning. Meeting you wherever you're at, whatever time you're listening, wherever you're listening from.
This is I Will Not Lose Podcast with your host, Tony Ortiz.
Big shout out to our Spotify listeners. I Will Not Lose live on all streaming platforms as of the time you're listening to this.
So shout out if you're listening on YouTube and watching in.
Shout out if you're listening in on Audible, Diebel, whatever, wherever you get your podcasts.
Apple Podcasts, not here to judge. Just here to win. All right, so a lot unfolded this week.
We're going to figure out what can we learn from the massive failure that everybody's talking about.
And I really wanted to theme this podcast about being impeccable with your words.
uh shout out to Don Miguel Ruiz author of the four agreements and the first and most
important agreement is always be impeccable with your word so this is something we need to be
reminded of especially in 2022 where everything's shifty with censorship and how low the barrier is
to being able to broadcast and put your voice out to the world, know how powerful your words are.
So first off, I just want to introduce myself. I'm your host, Tony Ortiz. I wanted to give a
big shout out to everyone who listened in last week, everyone who showed their support in the
comments for this venture. If you've checked out last week's episode, we had Gil Thompson on
His album, Writing to Heal, at the time of recording this, is out, available on all streaming platforms.
So quick plug for him.
Want to check it out.
And a big shout out to his wife, Tanya.
She had given me some critical feedback on the I Will Not Lose Episode Zero.
I had my smoke alarm beeping.
So thank you for everyone who listened through that annoying beep.
Did try to make an attempt to edit it out.
And after a couple hours, I said, you know what?
It's about learning from successes.
It's about learning from failures.
So let's just move forward.
So thank you for listening.
If I lost you, sorry.
Hopefully, you'll come back a little bit later.
But I can't apologize for the past.
We're here to move forward.
So being impeccable with your words.
Earlier this week, or last week at the time of recording this,
kanye west went on the drink champs podcast and some are saying sink his career um in the past
week he has lost endorsements for some anti-semitic comments some things about george floyd and the
death being fentanyl related and uh i believe his quote was they hit him with fentanyl if you look
the guy's knee wasn't even on his neck like that. So this was a man not being impeccable with his
words. And what does that mean? And why is it dangerous? What can we learn from this? You know,
not here to bash Kanye, call him crazy, anything. You know, this is a discussion about what can we
take away from this? Why is it so dangerous? Because people don't know. So try to put yourself
from the perspective of somebody else. Try to have empathy and understand why. So in Don Miguel
Ruiz's The Four Agreements, the most important agreement, be impeccable with your words. I'm
going to read here. The first and most important of the four agreements is be impeccable with your
word. The word is your power of creation, and that power can be used in more than one direction.
One direction is impeccability, where the word creates a beautiful story, your personal heaven on earth.
The other direction is misuse of the word, where the word destroys everything around you and creates your personal hell.
So, I did have somebody ask me when they said, you know, Kanye's crazy.
He's crazy for saying that, but I don't get what's the big deal.
Why is it so dangerous?
um shout out to lex friedman yesterday kanye was on lex friedman's podcast a lot of podcasts a lot
of people are staying away from kanye with a 10-foot pole um but i think a discussion needs
to be had uh to to counter it and just see what we can learn from it on lex challenged kanye and
he says you know we we want an apology when you say jewish media or that jews are controlling the
black voice of artists, you have to understand that there's people with hate in their heart
driven towards Jewish people. So saying something like this, I know it sounds crazy, but this is the
sort of stuff that leads to something like a Holocaust. And there were people in 1930 in
Germany saying there could never be a Holocaust. This is just saying, you know, oh, well, it's true.
You know, there's all these counter arguments, but you have to agree that somebody hearing this, there are crazy people out there. There's somebody, especially in an economic time when somebody is trying to say, where's all my money going? Why is food leaving my table? And you're trying to point not individuals.
I think where the mistake was is Kanye is entitled to have his own experience, and I can share from my experience.
I can share my outlook on this, but his experience was created by individuals.
And when you create hate and you generalize to an entire group of people, that's very dangerous, and people take that in terrible ways.
We've seen it happen with many examples, which we can get into in a bit.
But on Lex Friedman's podcast, Kanye had made some other things about comments about history, namely that history is subjective and that we need to forget about it.
We need to move forward.
This is very, very dangerous category, very dangerous territory.
When you go and you say something like, we need to forget about history, something that happened less than a century ago, that's still recent history. There's still people affected. There's still people's grandchildren affected by things that happened. And it's the sort of opening up to saying, well, this blame is on this entire group of people.
Now, not sure where you're from or where you're listening from. Chances are you don't have a huge
population of Jewish people in your community. Certain communities you grew up in, you don't
know that Jew is a minority because it's very highly populated. So it may not be common knowledge
to you that holocaust is taught in schools the atrocities are taught they're not to be forgotten
the reason why we teach history is so that we don't repeat the mistakes so when you have a lot
of things happening like an economic depression like people with highly influential people
spinning anti-semitic rhetoric it just creates a recipe for disaster and you can you have to
understand how that can make people upset, make people scared, make people terrified. I mean,
there's just, there's so many words. Words have such a power that you can stir up thoughts of
slavery, you can stir up thoughts of genocide, you can stir up all sorts of things from history.
And it doesn't mean that, you know, God forbid, you get enough people thinking a certain way,
and bad things happen. So I get it. Ye cannot articulate very well. There's a lot of thoughts
that he has. And like they'll say, a broken clock is right twice a day. Listen, he has a hard time
saying what he's trying to say. And I don't think he understands because he's especially doubling
down on media and going to say, you know, it's fine. I can go on without. So he says they're
going to blame it on him being manic or it not being on medicine. And he's right. We've seen this
before. We've seen this when he's made his comments about George Bush. We've seen it when
he's made his comments about Beyonce and Taylor Swift's music video. I mean, we always say, well,
it's an outburst and Kanye must be off his medicine. So as a representative of being an
advocate for mental health, you have to understand why this is dangerous to, I don't know how to say
it. It's not that, you know, you don't want Kanye West as your representation for mental health,
especially not black men, mental health or mental health for black men. It's just,
it paints a bad picture. You know, I really don't like the word crazy. I don't like that
it's thrown out so loosely. But when you have somebody as influential as Kanye West saying
something like, you know, I've been off medicine for two years and they're going to say this is
the reason for the behavior. Sure, you're not helping the cause. When you have Kanye West going
on Joe Rogan's podcast and Joe Rogan saying, you know, shout out to Joe Rogan. He had said something
and this is his opinion, this is his experience. He says, why would you medicate, Kanye? Why would
you hide that sort of creativity? It seems like it would hold you back. Hang on one second. I have
to plug my laptop in or we're going to lose this. All right. And we're back. So we were talking
about being impeccable with words, why it's dangerous, why somebody like influential as
Kanye West being a representative, whether he chooses to be or not for mental health,
these are all dangerous things and somebody that influential should have the responsibility to
know that his words it's almost like when I think it was 60 minutes I forget the interview that
Lil Wayne was on and they had asked him what does he think about Black Lives Matter
and he was like yeah you know my life matters and it's like wait Wayne you don't know what's
going on outside at all, do you? Imagine being a celebrity in a world where your viewpoint,
your world is so small because you're not exposed to what's going on in the everyday lives of
everybody. So not that I give Wayne a pass, but I can completely empathize why he may have no idea
people are rioting in the streets and that this whole thing is going on. So there's probably a
level that kanye maybe had i don't know i think the man's smart i think he knows what he's doing
he's following a playbook um it's not the first time we've seen him say things that are outlandish
and he's following a playbook of say donald trump or people will be perceived so um when you go and
you have on the whole point of creating a picture of what the enemy looks like. I remember when you
have something like 9-11, and you painted a picture, and people took that picture of what
terrorists look like, and you better believe there was discrimination of anybody who had a beard,
Arab descent, a lot of friends shout out. They know what I'm talking about. Now, that hate,
that pain comes from somewhere. It's rooted in somewhere. And rather than have a vague idea of
saying, we want to fight this ideology, you paint a picture and you say, people that look like this
are taking food out of your place. People that look like this want to enslave you again, want
to hold you back, want to oppress you. And you start to generalize and it starts to create
hate. This is what words can do. This is why you have to carry impeccability with them.
Now, you may not, I don't know, I'm not a billionaire. I can't imagine what that world
is like, not even in my wildest dreams. But I can tell you that you have to make adjustments
in your life. I know I have to make adjustments in my life being a black man. You have to make
adjustments in your life being a white woman. You have to make adjustments in your life
being Jewish. I can empathize, although I don't understand everything that can be triggered. I
don't understand what it can do, just the way somebody may say, well, I don't understand how
you can get so triggered by the N-word. It's like so much hate, so much blood, so much history,
and that word embodies all of it. But hey, not everybody can understand. So hopefully we can
take this and explain to people who may not understand why it's so dangerous. See, a lot of
people look up to Kanye West. A lot of people don't even know him from music. He's influential
in fashion. He's influential in a lot of different things. Just for the sheer bank account, being the
richest in so many categories, forget about the music. People are going to look up to that and
hang on to the things that he says. So he may not have to make the same sort of adjustments that
you'd have to make but it's uncomfortable knowing that things are just different for you than they
may be for somebody else and stirring up the the black lives matter the george floyd uh saying
things you know that that symbol meant so much to so many people and i remember clearly this was
around 2016, you had such a, you had fear on both sides. You had the idea that, you know,
any black man could be dangerous, can be scared. You had the idea that any cop is armed, can be
scary. And now you have two people in a situation, say a pullover, where they're terrified and you
can't even have a conversation. And it wasn't the same. You know, I've been pulled over plenty of
times in my life. It wasn't the same as when everything was high with tensions in 2016.
So while you have to separate the organization of Black Lives Matter from what the words mean,
and we get so hung up. So when Kanye wears a shirt that says White Lives Matter,
it's polarizing because it's like, okay, well, we know this is to be political. We know this
is to be decisive we know this is to separate people but for you to say oh well i disagree
with that term white lives don't matter it's like it's just it's so confusing so kanye knows what
he's doing he's pulling some stuff up it's just objectively wrong on so many levels um but hey
deeper conversation is if he's off medicine and if he's crazy, if he's bipolar, does this make
it an excuse? And this is where it gets scary for the mental health portion of this. You have
the misconception that taking medicine stifles your creativity. And this is interesting. I want
to take some time on this. So a lot of people have at least experienced some sort of seasonal
depression. So they can empathize a little bit with what depression feels like. People have been
sad. People haven't felt manic. And the opposite of depression, the mania, the high
grandeur, thoughts, the happiness, you know, you usually take medicine when you have a headache
and you want to cure a pain. So you have a symptom, you take the medicine, it cures that
symptom. When the hat, when the symptom is happiness and perceived creativity and unbelievable
energy, that's when it gets really tricky to say, well, you know, why would you take medicine? Why
would you stifle that? I can tell you from my personal experience, being bipolar as well as
Kanye West, I have been on medicine for two, maybe three years now. My creativity is off the chains.
I'm creating every day, multiple hours a day at a high level, still sleeping. And it's been that
way for at least a good year. So I don't believe the fact that you're kind of stuck. And I think
that it takes a lot. Don't get me wrong. It's a huge struggle to find the right medicine. And if
Kanye hasn't put that work in, I can't speak for his experience. I don't know. I don't know. I know
medicine can be terrible. You can take something and completely feel not like yourself, feel worse.
So I have no qualms with anybody who doesn't want to go through that battle and find out what their perfect recipe is. But does that make it an excuse? Does that excuse the behavior?
year. I'm stuck on this. I tend to believe no. I tend to take accountability for my actions. I tend
to take a look at something I did and especially say, well, you know, how could I have prevented
myself from being in that state? You know, not always something you can control. I get it. And
I may not have the same. It sucks to say I have the same symptoms or I have the same thing as
Kanye West because now it's all different and the brain is extremely complex. So this is not
prescriptive. Again, this is my experience. This is what I've known and what I've kind of gotten
to experience and just how it affects my life. So maybe if somebody can't understand why the
words are dangerous and why it's scary to do things, look, it changes the way that people
have to adjust their lives because the way that they're judged or perceived. And when you have
two people that are scared, that gets extremely dangerous. You know, if you almost just want to
say, officer, look, I'm scared. I want to go home to my family tonight. You want to go home to your
family tonight. I'm keeping both my hands on the wheel. I'm asking you before I reach even for my
wallet. I'm telling you where everything is. I'm letting you lead with the flashlight. Yeah,
it doesn't have to be that high of an intense situation. Look at me, I'm getting anxious just
thinking about it. That shouldn't be the way that it is for routine things like, sir, your
headlight is out. But you have, I think it came up in the podcast. I have it here in my notes,
temptation towards imitation. So at least what that means to me is you have a lot of people
that want to be like you. You have a lot of people that want what Kanye West has, whether it be the
model ex-wife, whether it be the billion dollars, whether it be the musical perceived genius,
whatever. I don't want to take any accomplishments away, but we're seeing the
unwinding. This is not jumping on an award show after drinking some Hennessy and stuff.
You know, I empathize. The man's lost his mother. The man's lost his family. He's pushing some things. He's, at least from what it seems, not taking care of his mental health. We've seen this spiral since he's lost his mother. And it's like, wow, you know.
Um, so I think what I can do with my platform, with my words is to educate on one, why it's
so dangerous, one, why our words, why our words are so powerful and why we need to use
them in the best manner and just how to eliminate any sort of hate, you know, um, and that goes
for Kanye's hate towards what his experience is, people's hate towards police, people's
hates towards whether it be immigration.
You know, people have a lot of hate in their heart for a lot of different things.
So this is not meant to be prescriptive, saying that you should or shouldn't take medicine.
This is me sharing a bit of my story so I can just get it off my chest.
you know, I didn't get into creating a platform and having a voice in order to bad mouth or in
order to say. So I thought this was the perfect opportunity to say, you know, my kids listen to
this and I have the conversation with them. You have to understand these things happen. You have
to understand people are shaped, even having the conversation of, look, our grandparents,
their grandparents our parents may not have the greatest perspective they were shaped by their
world you get into their great great grandparents and the further you go back the goal is for us to
move forward but we can't forget history and say let's just move forward we'd be bound to repeat
the same mistakes uh things happen in cycles and you can see wow these are happening just like it
used to happen then. So what can we learn from that? How can we steer? How can we avoid those
mistakes? So a lot to digest. This has been I Will Not Lose. Hopefully you learned something
from the massive failure that happened over this past week. Thanks for listening.