Can you imagine four American kids lost in the jungle for months? They wouldn’t make it through a night: "My iPad battery died. Lame. And how can we eat? There are zero Whopper trees! Oh great, now I'm down to my last Ritalin. This is BORING. What’s th– [Eaten by jaguar.]" 👩‍👦🐆

So this survival story seems incredible: ”Indigenous knowledge, bravery, vigilance: how young siblings survived in Colombia’s perilous jungle.” How’d these kids make it over 40 days in the wild? Ancestral knowledge.

Thirteen-year-old Lesly Mukutuy was able to identify edible fruits, find suitable water and avoid dangerous plants and animals thanks in part to knowledge handed down to her by [her grandmother].

And speaking of plant power, the kids were discovered by a jungle native who had taken ayahuasca that day.

“They were found by an Indigenous guardian who took yagé and with the support of the army’s technology,” said Luis Acosta, coordinator of the Guardia Indígena. “Those who take yagé see far beyond what we see. He becomes a doctor, a panther, a tiger a puma. He sees beyond because it’s a holistic medicine. He had the capacity to look.”

Forget actress/waitress/model, this is the multi-hyphenate job title I wanna see: doctor/panther/tiger/puma.

(ICYMI: I’ve written about my ayahuasca experiences here and here and here and here and discuss it in my Misguided Meditation show too.)

Raw power

Actually, doctor/panther/tiger/puma reminds me of the one “body work” session I did, which was with Rudá Iandê, a shaman from the Brazilian jungle. His approach is, well, it’s tough to put into words. This is from his site (yes, shamans have websites now):

Each step is one part of the adventure. I breathe and connect to the mystery. My heart pumps blood and pulses with the earth. I hear the laughter of thunder. I dance my pains. In each tree, I feel time growing. I celebrate my achievements. I love, because this is what nourishes me. I overcome challenges and feel stronger. And I am always where I have wanted to be: in the center of my being.

We human beings can choose. This is our privilege and responsibility. This is our challenge. We are responsible for our own existence.

Years ago, he came to NYC and a friend told me he was incredible and, y’know, I’m all for thunder laughs and pain dancing so I signed up for a session not even knowing what I was getting into.

Upon arrival, he talked to me for five minutes, then I did breath of fire for a while, then he started doing a sorta deep tissue massage (like, really getting in there), and then I started laughing hysterically for five minutes, and then I started bawling for ten minutes, was flooded with images of my dead mother, and then my calves and forearms starting seizing up in violent cramps so painful I told him I didn’t think I could continue. He said to me, in broken English: “I can stop if you need. But this is your raw power rising up inside you. I encourage you to let it rise up.”

He used the magic words for me: raw power. Immediately I heard the Stooges song and envisioned Iggy Pop climbing through a crowd, barking like a dog, smearing peanut butter all over himself, and bleeding in every sense of the word.

I couldn’t let down Iggy. So I endured the seizing muscles and seized the day. The pain subsided and within a few minutes our session was done. I was flabbergasted. I went into the reception area and sat there for 45 minutes before I could even handle city streets. When I left, I was incredibly sore yet felt lighter than ever before.

Later, it occurred to me how silly it must seem to this jungle shaman that here in the west we think your priest, therapist, and masseuse should be different people. What a mad delineation. Our culture so strongly desires to segregate the mind, body, and soul from each other that we wind up dooming ourselves to lives of disconnection. We try so hard to separate the drums, guitars, and vocals into isolated tracks that we forget to listen to the song.

Sea gypsies vs. the tsunami

Years ago, 60 Minutes ran this story about the Moken: Sea Gypsies Saw Signs In The Waves. Among the least touched peoples by modern civilization, the Moken have lived for centuries on islands off the coast of Thailand and Burma. Anthropologist Jacques Ivanoff describes their lifestyle this way: "You are outside of everywhere. You are nowhere, in fact."

They survived the massive tsunami in 2004 that killed huge swaths of Asia because they knew the sea better than any marine biologist. While “more advanced” folks gathered at the shore and gaped at the ocean (“why is it receding like that?”), the Moken were fleeing towards higher ground. They understood what was happening because of a legend passed down for generations about the Laboon, the "wave that eats people."

Knowledge of the laboon, or “seventh wave”, had been passed down for thousands of years through generations of Moken living intimately with the ocean. The Moken – “people immersed in water” – learn to swim before they can walk…They had heard stories of laboon around the fire; when it comes, they had been told, go to the mountains or head to deep water. For the animist Moken, laboon was sent by ancestor spirits to clear out the world’s evils. It would devour everything in its path before all was reborn.

By the way, animals also knew something was up before the waves hit: Elephants stampeded toward higher ground, dolphins headed to deeper water, and cicadas suddenly went silent.

Why did others who lived near the sea not realize what was happening? A Moken man says, “They were not looking at anything. They saw nothing, they looked at nothing. They don't know how to look."

Remember that line about the ayahuasca guy who found those kids in the jungle: “He had the capacity to look.”

Technology does so many great things for us, yet we rarely factor in what we’re losing along the way and how much it’s murdering our capacity to look. Flooded with images, we see nothing.

We’re also losing our ability to truly hear. We all know about peripheral vision, but we rarely consider peripheral sounds. I’m a New Yorker so I’m walking constantly – and I can always tell when I’m behind someone wearing Airpods. Lost in a podcast or T Swift bop, they never clock when someone is behind them or wanting to pass. They’re never bored, but they’re also fractionally less present. And those fractions eventually add up in a compounding loss-of-interest way.

Context clues evaporate when we constantly cocoon ourselves in screens and sounds. We know every inch of our internal bubbles, yet slowly become oblivious to our surroundings.

And now we’re going to add goggles to the mix!? Good luck with those passthrough views. Actually, I get it now. The killer feature of Apple Vision Pro: It will be a great way, in the future, to shows kids what the sky looks like when it’s not clouded by wildfire. (FYI the air was so crazy in NYC last week that someone made a “Tatooine” reference and I had to be like, “Please don’t make me learn about Star Wars right now. This week’s been tough enough already.”)

Take that

“You’re a luddite. Stop it with all the tech kvetching.” Look, I’m a slave to tech too – and I totally get how much it’s improved our lives. I just wish we were better at acknowledging the tradeoffs we’re making and how all these gadgets that make things better also make us worse. Otherwise, it’s impossible to make mindful choices about incorporating technology into our lives. That means we remain stuck in the splash zone of an infinite scroll slot machine “move fast and break things” attack mode that’s great for capitalism but a horrorshow for our brains.

Another thing to note about the Moken is all the words that don’t exist in their language. For one thing, they have no word for “when,” which means they don't know how old they are. They don’t have a word for “mine” either. Also, there’s no “want” or “take.” Ivanoff says, “Take [“want”] out of your language and you see how often you use it. 'I want this, I want that.'“

Turns out the Moken want little. Unlike us, they don’t desire to accumulate material objects. Baggage sucks for nomadic people because it ties them down. Possessions may represent wealth to us, but they’re cement shoes to sea folk.

Just think how much we’d worry if we didn’t have all our stuff. Don’t the Moken ever worry like that? Nah. Turns out “worry” is another word that doesn't exist in their language.

Quickies

🎯 The nice thing about seeing a giant fish tank in a movie is that you know someone’s about to get shot.

🎯 Pickle ball is crypto for sports.

🎯 The Bitcoin logo looks like it was designed by a 12-year-old using Microsoft Paint.

🎯 Online dating is like going swimming in a public pool: Most people there are gross and lord only knows what diseases you'll contract, but hey, you gotta beat the heat somehow.

🎯 A great thing about ladies: If they can't get laid, they don't go out and shoot a bunch of men. They just get a cat.

🎯 White people are always saying crazy stuff, like "as the crow flies."

🎯 "First, let us acknowledge our transcestors."
-Straight guy at a liberal arts college trying to fit in during Pride month

🎯 We were drowning in boredom and solved that, but now the solution is drowning us in anxiety.

🎯 Sometimes I think a title is "too on the nose" and then I remember the success of "American Psycho."

🎯 The fun thing about people who pronounce it IN-surance is how they are almost always OUT-surance.

🎯 The problem is we keep trying to get the computers to act like humans when we should be trying to get them to act like plants. Perhaps the computers will get so intelligent they’ll realize the wise play is to ignore humans and emulate living things that don’t destroy their environment instead.

🎯 Everyone be nice to Canada. We’re gonna have to all live there once the climageddon goes down.

🎯 Memory: One time i was about to take a shower and then i looked at my hair and was like "nah it's too good" and didn't shower.

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🗣 Tell a friend (or post online) about the Rubesletter. It helps!

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FYI the Rubesletter recently received some kind words from two wise Jasons I admire so I’m just gonna drop ‘em here:

“I do not need another newsletter in my life but I have trouble not opening and reading yours to the end. Smart, unpredictable, intellectually intrepid. Bravo.”
-Jason Zinoman, NY Times comedy critic, on Instagram

“Here’s a great piece on paying it backward. From music to sports to movies, Matt shares some great examples of younger, ‘hotter’ talents shining a light on someone they’d long respected to help elevate them in the public consciousness.”
-Jason Fried, Founder, 37signals, in his newsletter

Comedy

😈 I post clips of my standup at Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Some recent clips:

😈 Virginia: I’m headlining 6/23 in Manasas (tickets) and 6/24 in Lorton (tickets).

😈 Read my other newsletter “Funny How: Letters to a Young Comedian.”

😈 Listen to my podcast! Deep dives on tech/culture/comedy and more: Kind of a lot with Matt Ruby. Coming up this week: I dive into the whole “separating the art from the artist” conundrum.

5-Spotted

🗯 Michelle Matland explains how a costume designer helps actors find their way toward their characters.

When we did “Julie & Julia,’’ Meryl Streep was playing this amazing 6-foot woman, a historic icon. When Meryl showed up for the fitting, Ann put her in seven-inch heels and immediately her posture changed. Her chin and shoulders shifted. She became Julia. In “Midnight Cowboy,’’ Ann took the heels off Dustin Hoffman’s shoes so he’d have that walk.

🗯 The high-return activity of raising others’ aspirations, according to Tyler Cowen.

At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind.  It costs you relatively little to do this, but the benefit to them, and to the broader world, may be enormous. This is in fact one of the most valuable things you can do with your time and with your life.

🗯 Trash talk hall of fame moment from Draymond Green (on the court) to Paul Pierce (on the bench).

Chasing that farewell tour, they don’t love you like that. You can’t get no farewell tour. They don’t love you like that … You thought you was Kobe.

🗯 Here’s an intriguing AI use case from Daniel Shankin’s newsletter: bedtime stories generated by Chat GPT.

To be honest, the most interesting thing I'm reading these days are bedtime stories generated by Chat GPT. I don't know if you know this, but pretty much all children's stories that feature classic superheroes are incredibly violent. I don't want to read incredibly violent super hero stories, and I'm only so good at making them up on the fly. You know 'who' is really good at making them up? Our future robot overlords. You can just type in:

Please write a story about Iron Man, the Hulk, and Doctor Octopus that is nonviolent and appropriate for a four year old. The story should include some basic, easy to understand facts about science and physics.

What comes out isn't high art, but it satisfies its audience.

I think we found our tagline for AI creations: “Low art, but it can satisfy children.”

🗯 Naval: “We evolved for scarcity, but live in abundance.”

There's a constant struggle to say no, when your genes always want to say yes. Yes to sugar. Yes to staying in this relationship. Yes to alcohol. Yes to drugs. Yes, yes, yes. Our bodies don't know how to say no. 

Thanks for saying YES TO THE RUBESLETTER. Your body needed it.

-Matt

P.S. Reminder: I’ve got two full specials you can watch free on YouTube: