422: Human Forever with James Poulos
Transcript — TFTC
Article: https://www.tftc.io/422-human-forever-with-james-poulos
Transcript page: https://www.tftc.io/422-human-forever-with-james-poulos-transcript
Published: 2026-08-05
Machine transcription, lightly cleaned; may contain errors.
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[0:04] Marty Bent: What's up, freaks? It's your boy Marty Bent here to introduce this rip of TFTC. Sat down with James Pullows to talk about his book Human Forever and the spiritual battle we're involved in right now. Are we going towards a transhumanist future or is the human spirit going to wake up and recognize that we need to get closer to our humanity? Spicy rip, but a good one nonetheless. Got to read the top 4 shoutouts from Rip421. Rejecting the Great Reset with Michael Rechtenwald. @LoneStar, 50,000 sats. Sniffing the blood in the water. Lone Star is a shark, it seems. Maybe he's just a fish. Noster Report. Noster Report.

[5:31] James Poulos: You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free. Let me talk about a Fed just gone nuts. All, all the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven.

[5:42] Marty Bent: I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.

[5:52] James Poulos: I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.

[5:55] Marty Bent: If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.

[5:57] James Poulos: Probably should be. Probably should be.

[5:58] Marty Bent: James Polos, how you doing?

[6:03] James Poulos: Hey Marty, how are you?

[6:04] Marty Bent: Doing well. I was saying right before we hit record, you've been, uh, highly requested by a lot of the individuals who listen to this podcast over the, over the last few months. I think, um, the signal you're putting out there, particularly with your book Human Forever, And the commentary you have on the state of humanity, particularly here in America as we're transitioning into this digital age, is a breath of fresh air during very confusing times.

[6:34] James Poulos: Well, they are confusing in some ways, intentionally so. And the most important thing is not to get confused. So I'll do my best to keep that up.

[6:47] Marty Bent: No, I appreciate it. We lost you there for a second, but just jumping into it, I mean, from your perspective, where do we stand? What I'm seeing, this is a Bitcoin focus. We focus on Bitcoin as a topic because I think it's an imperative as we move into the digital age. We can either get a completely dystopian CBDC slave coin world, or we can get freedom money. Bitcoin monasteries, as you like to call them, uh, in the future. And then on top of that, we have AI blowing up and really pushing us towards a somewhat transhumanist future. And then we obviously have this oligarchic, kleptocratic political apparatus above us that's really trying to control the narrative and censor people from talking about very important topics.

[7:38] James Poulos: Well, yeah, that's right. The subtitle of the book is The Digital Politics of Spiritual War. When it came out, at first there was a little bit of head scratching, and now there's just sort of like sad nodding. It is a spiritual war. Slave coin is about right for the CBDCs. And a slave to what? Not just the regime, whatever that turns out to be, although it's obviously very hungry for the entire planet to planetize control and a servile relationship with that form of control. But it's a slave to the world. It's a slave to the machinery of the world, to the logic of the world.

[12:25] Marty Bent: Agreed. And I think to help contextualize this conversation, I mean, you believe that we're losing our humanity, getting closer to this Borg life. I guess to start, like, how would you define humanity? What makes a human a human? What connections to other individuals, to the, to the Earth, to the world, to nature makes us human? And why is that something to cherish and to fight for?

[12:51] James Poulos: Sure. Well, um, you know, even, even before the question of, of should we cherish it, is, uh, is it, is it our, is it our lot in life to be human, right? Are we not in a certain profound way stuck being human, warts and all? And do we not have some kind of duty to accept that? And if we deny that, are we not lying to ourselves with a very old and very evil lie which only ends in tears? You can go all the way back to Genesis. And what is, you know, what is that first lie? Oh, you know, you'll, you'll be as gods.

[16:41] Marty Bent: Yeah.

[16:43] James Poulos: You see just worship of knowledge, worship of idols, of abstract ideas, worship of just about everything with the exception of God, and a stubborn, bitter refusal to hear even just the words of Jesus Christ. I mean, you know, the meme, men will literally blankety-blank rather than go to church. That list is growing very long, and it is kind of funny, but it's also just like terribly sad. If the men find themselves unable to do this and the women find themselves unable to do this, I think it was even Amy Coney Barrett during her confirmation hearings where she said that she tells her children that anything girls can— anything boys can do, girls can do better.

[20:33] Marty Bent: Yeah, I completely agree. It's weird sitting here today because technology, right? The internet, the digital age, our supercomputers, our ability to have this conversation across the country, right now, it does have extreme value in terms of like connection and stuff like that, but it's a double-edged sword where it brings a lot of pain and suffering and disassociation from other individuals on the planet. So it's, it's trying to figure out how to temper that power with the temperance, the low time preference that you just described, uh, and like how much—

[21:13] James Poulos: Yeah.

[21:13] Marty Bent: of this is being driven by the fact that this technology, particularly the internet and the digital age, was introduced to us and we've never experienced chemically as humans the pace of change that we have in the last 30 to 50 years.

[21:26] James Poulos: Yeah, it's difficult and there's a lot of pressure to not wait around and hope that in the course of your everyday life you encounter people in meatspace who get it and with whom you can work fruitfully and right away. The way that our regime has operated, its mode of rule has been one that has broken up the kinds of face-to-face negotiations that are necessary for a large commercial republic to function. That is the United States of America.

[22:09] Marty Bent: Yes.

[22:11] James Poulos: We're a nation not really like other nations. We're a republic, not really like any of the small republics of yore. It's just straight out of the Federalists. These guys were aware of what was going on when they were laying down the founding. But you can't have a large commercial republic in a world where, oh, sure, you have some speech. It might not really be free speech. And if you say things that the regime thinks are blasphemous, then there's kind of really no Theoretical limit to how much you can be punished, but you really have no free association. Sorry. How America is supposed to function under those conditions?

[28:46] Marty Bent: And it's— so is this the time of peak hubris? You're saying all this, I can't stop thinking about that dude from Braintree who was talking— is the big story this week, him and his blood boy. Then Yuval Harari, who will say openly men are becoming gods and we're going towards this reality where we're gonna reach the singularity combined with machines and become gods of our own world. Like, what would you say to the Yuval Hararis of the world and try to shake them to recognize their own hubris and why that is not possible or something to strive for?

[29:25] James Poulos: Um, you know, what kind of gods, right? False gods? evil gods. You can definitely augment human capabilities in ways that make you feel like you are no longer human. But I mean, you know, I always just sort of flash on Britney Spears, like, no longer a girl, not yet a woman, right? Like, no longer human, not yet a god. You don't want to be there, bro. Like, you might think that that's like a cool place to hang out, but like— You know, vampires, I mean, these are very old myths and they speak deeply to the yearning to, you know, people don't really want to be God.

[34:22] Marty Bent: Yeah, it is very creepy. The pictures of the Braintree guy going around this week, it's like, whoa, you, you sort of look like a cyborg. You might be a robot. And I guess that's like, again, going back to we most definitely do have to fight this battle in the digital world. 'Cause if everybody goes into their monastery and goes off-grid, the people who think that we can become gods are gonna continue unperturbed doing what they're doing, getting more people into the Borg. So in terms of what we can do, whether it be Bitcoin or something else in the digital world realm to protect our humanity beyond Bitcoin, what else do you, do you think we should be doing?

[35:08] James Poulos: Yeah, well, I, you know, just, we, we need compute. I mean, Bitcoin's great, but if no one has any GPUs, you're sort of like a little bit stuck. So, uh, you know, fundamental digital technologies. We, we, you look at the First Amendment, you look at the Second Amendment, you got freedom of association, uh, in the First, and you've got, uh, you got a right to keep and bear arms in the Second. Uh, right there, one and two, implicit in those things You get these— I mean, every, every technology now is dual-use technology. Oh, scary, you might use these as weapons. Guess what? They've been used on us as weapons for now a couple generations.

[38:38] Marty Bent: Yeah. And so do you have hope that we can change the tide here?

[38:44] James Poulos: Yes. I mean, it's not really a choice. You do not get to choose whether or not to have hope. You must have it. And I think the more that you accept the duty of spiritual discipline, the more that you pray, the more that you get out of your sort of ego enclosure that it's so tempting to disappear into, And the more that you encounter in real life people who get it and are— not just get it, but also as part of getting it, understand that, you know, sin is inescapable, and every day we must start again, and we are beginners at every moment. That humility, if you manage to do that, I think that you will see hope.

[39:44] Marty Bent: Yeah.

[39:45] James Poulos: Um, manifest, um, in your heart, uh, but also in your life around you. Um, hope is like any of these other sort of spiritual muscles. Like, you have to, you have to exercise them. You have to work them in order for them to work. Uh, you gotta water the plant in order for it to bear fruit. Um, and if the plant is good and the plant is strong, then you water it and it'll bear good fruit. At the same time, you know, like, let's not have any illusions about this. The parable of the wheat and the tares, of the wheat and the weeds, is that, you know, no matter how much good wheat there is to harvest, it's going to be intermixed with the bad stuff, with the weeds.

[40:57] Marty Bent: Yeah. Do you think there's a quote-unquote awakening going on right now. It seems like there's a lot of backlash. We have a few boycotts going on in the country, whether it be Bud Light, Target, Miller Lite even. And obviously the presidential election here in the United States is beginning to pick up, and you have a bunch of new candidates beginning to put their flags in the ground, say, hey, here's my— here's the stance I'm willing to make, which seems to be vehemently against the incumbent status quo uniparty for some of the candidates that exist? Do you think people are beginning to wake up? There's that silent majority that has had that uneasy feeling that things have gone a bit awry and they're beginning to act out against that.

[41:50] James Poulos: I do think so. The evidence is there. It's late. It needs to be much stronger. It needs to be much better coordinated. You're right about the candidates. I know RFK has sort of come out with a pretty muscular pro-Bitcoin, anti-CBDC posture. I think that you will see that among Republicans, including candidates going forward, at least some of them. I think people are waking up. I think the generational dynamics here are difficult. Boomers, God love them, it's— they've been through a lot already and they really don't want it to be true what's happening. They just don't want to have to stare that monster in the face and accept what time it is.

[47:48] Marty Bent: Yeah, it's still worth it. You mentioned courage there. You think there's enough courage out there?

[47:53] James Poulos: Not right now. Is there ever? Is there ever enough courage? You know, it's like the things are really only clear to us Um, when it's too late, you know? What is repentance? What is forgiveness? How do these things work spiritually? Uh, you have that moment where you're like, wow, like, I am a monster. Like, I blew it, and I can't fix it. I can't compensate for it. I can't propitiate the, the false god of justice, you know? Like, the jury awarded me $600 million. And it's like, that's not— it doesn't change it. That moment of humiliation where you accept the profundity of your powerlessness and your errancy, that is when— that is the moment that occasions repentance, the turning away, the metanoia, the changing of heart.

[50:29] Marty Bent: Yeah. No, building on that, it is encouraging. I mean, within Bitcoin, you see this subculture of people really pushing for strong, big families, get married early, have a good life. And then you see that in Gen Z too, in some subsets. Of that generation as well. It seems like there's these people longing for a return, if you will, to traditional family values, because that's truly— as somebody with 2 sons, that's really what brings the most joy and the most fulfillment and most happiness in my life, is being able to see them like, wow, that was low time preference. I created that. And molding or helping to mold, um, these 2 humans.

[51:36] James Poulos: Well, it's later than you think, but it's never too late. That's how I like to sum it up. And young guys, young guys, you know, if you're a teenager right now, you are aware that there are 2 choices. You got 2 doors. And door number one is the monster squad. You know, you can be as obese and have as many colors of hair and Wear as many, like, weird sort of, like, uh, sexual prostheses as you want, um, but your, your soul belongs to the board. Um, or door number 2 is, um, is this the straight and narrow way, um, is, uh, is, is, uh, is the way of the body of Christ.

[52:57] Marty Bent: Yeah.

[52:58] James Poulos: almost, uh, which is, you know, which is, uh, will we continue to try to expel Christ from our life? Uh, it's such a, such a humble, um, simple teaching, a very exoteric teaching. You don't need to be a PhD or a blue check or an elite or an expert or anything in order to hear and understand that message, that gospel, that teaching. Um, and despite this fact, or perhaps because of it, uh, it scares people. They do not want to even see about it. Um, and I think that's, you know, that's another reason why, uh, sometimes you really do have to like Punch yourself in the face for so long that you just, you just kind of can't anymore.

[54:28] Marty Bent: Yeah. Did you have to hit yourself in the face a bunch of times before coming to this realization?

[54:34] James Poulos: Well, I mean, who hasn't? It's part of life. Obviously, you don't want that for your kids. And if you can raise your children well in that sense, you've done a very blessed thing. But living in this world is not easy. And seeing yourself as God sees you is something that many people are not really raised to do or to understand.

[55:09] Marty Bent: Yeah.

[55:10] James Poulos: And some who are— it can be difficult to raise a child right in that way on your own, certainly, especially in a country like the United States of America where, let's face it, you know, this is a cult factory. This is a place where, you know, you can roll into town with the craziest of heresies and get yourself a following pretty fast.

[55:36] Marty Bent: Yeah.

[55:38] James Poulos: you just look at sort of like what the norm is in Silicon Valley. And one of the, one of the filtering mechanisms for, for investment is, you know, well, is the guy like a pretty good cult leader? And if the answer is yes, then it's like, all right, like, I'll make a bet on this guy. Let's see what he can do, you know, uh, in, in sort of the same way that like the intelligence community has operated for a long time, right? You sort of like stir some people up, you dose some people on LSD without them knowing, You just kind of like poke the swarm a little bit and see what happens, see who bubbles up.

[56:53] Marty Bent: Yeah, yeah, it's very discombobulating, right? Because you mentioned you brought in like the intelligence apparatus, the Borg, as you define it, it's like very hard to focus attention on one part of the Borg. Like, you sort of don't know where you're getting attacked from. That's very discombobulating for a lot of people. It's hard to focus, like, all right, here's what I should do to combat this. It's widespread.

[57:26] James Poulos: Yeah, it's decentered in its own way. You know, I like to joke that these things are the real 5 I's. They're like innumerable, invisible, instantaneously interoperable information entities. 5 I's. Until recently, it was only angels and demons that could do that, and we envy them. You know, we are envy factories. We see these things, or not see them, but experience them, and we go like, why can't I be like that? You know, they don't seem to experience awkwardness. They don't seem to experience despair. They're not like trapped in a body that they didn't choose. And they can go where they want and do what they want and carry, you know, there's sort of like a—

[58:18] Marty Bent: Yeah.

[58:19] James Poulos: Uh, uh, the Girardians out there can talk about sort of mimetic rivalry and stuff. Um, but yeah, this, this envy, this, this, uh, longing to have that kind of angelic state of being. Um, it's very tempting, uh, if you, you know, if you weren't sort of spiritually raised, uh, to understand, um, that actually, you know, being human is better than being an angel, uh, that, you know, that Satan is jealous of human beings, um, that we have a special and privileged and unique relationship with God. Uh, I think it's in 2 Corinthians where, where Paul is like, do you not understand that we will be like judges of angels and so forth?

[59:49] Marty Bent: Yeah. Yeah, I like being human. That's been like the weird thing the last few years as the transhumanist singularity crew has been beating the drum like this is inevitability. Like, I like being human. I like— obviously like the digital world too, and the internet has provided a lot of value to me. Social media as well. It's probably also corrupted my mind a bit, but again, going back to try to balance and temper that power with some humility. Um, it's been a— that's why I'm happy we're having this conversation, because I've been trying to view both sides of the argument. Like, it's like, oh, this is pretty cool stuff we can do with all this technology, but it is also very corrosive, if not wield it in the correct way or fashion.

[1:00:38] James Poulos: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's really remarkable, you know, you get so many of these guys who, whether on the, the tech side or the woke side or, you know, or, or both and, um, people who are, are just like, we suck, we suck, we suck, and they don't spend any time on like, do I suck, you know, like Maybe before just focusing all my energy on what's wrong with us humans, what if you began with like, well, what's wrong with me personally? Where am I falling down? What's my laundry list of failures? And people are very reluctant to do that. There's a couple of reasons for that. Some people are obsessed with justice, like, well, no, if you only focus on yourself, then there's going to be injustice.

[1:01:29] Marty Bent: Right.

[1:01:30] James Poulos: We know that if there's injustice anywhere, there's injustice everywhere, sort of one of the great diabolical lies of our time. Some people are obsessed or are worshipful toward money. Well, if everyone just focuses on themselves first and looks inward first and assesses their spiritual condition first before they start banging on humanity, well, then that's going to slow down the wheels of commerce. That's going to It's going to lower the amount of frenzied transactions in the marketplace. That's not very good. Standards of living will go down. It's like, how would you measure the standard of living right now today? Oh, well, GDP and numbers and charts and whatever.

[1:02:50] Marty Bent: Right.

[1:02:50] James Poulos: Who have I failed to meet my obligations toward? Where have I shirked my responsibilities? Where have I sort of judged others before I judging myself? That doesn't mean that you know you guys just stand there like a mute when you see diabolical systematic assault on our humanity. That's not what what judge yourself and not others means. But if you are not beginning in your own heart, then how do you? How do you expect to have any integrity or authority when you start looking outward, especially when you dare to judge the whole human race? Please.

[1:03:24] Marty Bent: Yeah. Yeah. You got to— and it's funny. I came to Bitcoin from an Austrian economics perspective, big fan of Thomas Sowell. And that's one of the tenets of human action is individual human action collectively. drive society forward. Um, it's weird that we've gotten to this point in time where people want to allocate blame for their strife externally. Um, it's the government, it's the lack of government intervention, it's that rich guy over there. So no, I want you to look inward and think about this and what you could be doing better.

[1:04:04] James Poulos: Courage. You know, where does the word courage come from? It comes from the, the French word for heart. It's It's hard. Courage is hard. There's always kind of like a running debate over what the worst or most fundamental sin is. Usually pride gets the dubious distinction. But, you know, there's, I think, a closer relationship than people sometimes think between pride and sloth, sort of indolence, like prideful refusal to exercise your own will. will, uh, to exercise any discipline over your will, to humble your will. It's needed. You have to like get up. You can't— you cannot, uh, just lay back and wait for God or for anything else to just like wait on you, to serve you like you're some sort of, you know, like spoiled princess.

[1:07:06] Marty Bent: Yeah, the technology makes it easy to be slothful.

[1:07:12] James Poulos: Oh yeah, oh yeah. You're not slothful. You're doing all kinds of things in the, in the In the invisible world, you know, I liked hundreds of tweets today. I had like tons of conversations, super productive. You know, I'm changing the discourse. I'm, you know, I'm, I'm getting micropayments. I'm, uh, I'm doing fan service, uh, so many things, um, all while you're just kind of, you know, you may as well be a head in a jar. You may as well be sort of like Baron Harkonnen, like sitting in this like pink vat of like Nutrient sludge or whatever. Job of the hot, you know, choose your sort of sci-fi sort of blob blob person.

[1:11:00] Marty Bent: Yeah.

[1:11:02] James Poulos: Am I using it to try to find shortcuts and substitutes for spiritual goods, for my duties, for my responsibilities to those I claim to love? And if the answer is yes, it doesn't matter if you are just looking at your phone like an hour a day or 10 hours a day or 5 minutes a day. If that spiritual illness is present, it's just going to flow into and through your relationship with tech just as much as it does, uh, and, and clearly has for so many people, uh, in their relationship with television, with the radio, uh, with books, um, with magazines, uh, and on and on.

[1:11:44] Marty Bent: Yeah, powerful things to think about. Look inward, freaks. Do a little— I want to say self-calculation, but a little Accounting. Take stock. Yeah, yeah, take stock. James, thank you. It's been a fascinating conversation. It's one, again, thinking about like both sides of the world we live in right now. It does feel like we're at this inflection point where we do need to take back some ground from the transhumanists who want us to live in this Borg. and really get back to our humanity, which again, despite every economic indicator and wealth indicator that the, uh, the powers that be feed us, I agree. I do think there is a mass desperation, a mass sort of disillusionment out there in the world. We do need to get back to our humanity, get more closer with our humanity.

[1:12:48] James Poulos: Amen, brother.

[1:12:51] Marty Bent: All right, where can we find the book?

[1:12:54] James Poulos: The book, Human Forever, it's on canonic.xyz. Canonic, where you too, now that they are, they are, they're in beta now, so that means that you too can upload your publication to Canonic and have it published on-chain and put it up for sale in Bitcoin. We've got I think at this point, 3 flavors, BTC, BCH, and BSV. So you can, you know, pick your poison there. And, and that's where you can find it, Canonical, canonical.xyz. The book is Human Forever: The Digital Politics of Spiritual War.

[1:13:32] Marty Bent: Well, go check it out, freaks. James, thank you for your time today. It's a fascinating conversation. God bless.