Sunday Service: Are You Counter Culture?

From Romans 12, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is His good, pleasing and perfect will. What does that mean? How does it apply to your life if it even does. That’s what we’ll explore today. Welcome to our Sunday service. When you were a kid, your mom ever asked you or say to you pointedly, if everybody else jumped off a bridge, would you do it too? Sometimes I would say, of course not other times, I’d say probably just depending on what kind of mood I was in and whether I wanted to rattle mom’s cage or not. But it’s great question, and one that I bet that you’ve been asked at some point in your life, and they’re asking you really, are you just going to follow the crowd, do what everybody else is doing? Are you going to do your own thing? So I’m curious about what your experience was like as a young person, and then what it’s like today. Maybe you were major non conformist, maybe you were part of the counterculture as a young person, or maybe the opposite. Maybe you were a perfect little boy or girl, and you did everything exactly the right way, and now as a grown up, you’re thumbing your nose at popular culture, at convention. You are doing your own thing, cutting your own path, making your own way. What do you think? Is there a direct relation between the way you were then and the way you are now? Maybe you have been the same the entire time. Maybe you’ve always been interested or disinterested in what anybody else thinks of you. I don’t know. I do know that popular culture certainly changes, and I know that you and I change. Individuals change anytime a new popular culture comes up. Think about just the different trends in clothing and and in music and art and politics and all of it, everything that goes into culture. It’s always, always changing. Sometimes it comes all the way back around. Sometimes it doesn’t. But as a new form of pop culture comes in, counter culture also springs up in direct response to that which makes sense, Yin Yang. It is the dichotomy of human beings. It’s night and day and all of these things. It’s quiet and loud. It’s a little bit country. I’m a little bit rock and roll. It’s all of it. So look back the different counter culture movements in the United States, you had the beat generation in the 40s and 50s, with Jack Kerouac, and they were rejecting materialism and exploring Eastern religion and certainly non conformity. The hippies came around in the 60s with Woodstock and the Summer of Love. It was peace and love and harmony and the Beatles and Hendricks and the music was amazing. There’s no doubt about that. The 1970s ushered in punk rock in the United States and the UK, with the Sex Pistols, The Clash and the Ramones rocking out. It was anti establishment. It was rebellion against early rage, Against The Machine kind of stuff. They were big into DIY, do it yourself. Civil Rights Movement in the 50s and 60s, with MLK, Malcolm X and Rosa Parks, obviously challenging racial segregation and demanding equal rights for everyone, particularly African Americans, the feminist movement in the 60s through the 80s and going on today, for goodness sakes, all over the world, with Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, to name a few, advocating for women’s rights, LGBTQ and all the other acronyms or numbers or symbols that go Along with that these days, from the 60s till today, fighting for the rights and acceptance of everyone. So appreciate that. And then the 90s ushered in the anti globalization movement. You had big events like the Seattle WTO protests and the whole movement was all about looking looking at the negative aspects of globalization and exploitation of developing countries. So a lot going on, and the environmental movement also sprung up around that time. And it carries on today. And within all these big counter cultures, there are. Is going to be subcultures as well, which and a subculture is not in direct response to popular culture. It’s just, these are ideas. These are things that spring up. Hip Hop culture started in the 70s, and it’s still alive and very vibrant today. It started in the Bronx. You have goth, started it in the 70s, and is still going on today. Punk is still going on today. Skate culture, skateboarding culture start in the 70s, and it’s still obviously around today. So there’s certainly a lot. Grunge started in the late 80s and went into the 90s with Nirvana and Pearl Jam. I don’t know that there’s a lot of grudge going on grunge rather going on today. But I’m probably wrong, because I’m wrong about a lot of stuff straight edge subculture. I just was reading this morning that there’s a lot of Gen Zs that don’t drink alcohol at all. And while the straight edge subculture started in the 80s, think it’s probably your fight you’re finding and seeing a lot more popularity of that today, which is happening so but there’s emos, there’s bikers, there’s all kinds of different kinds of subcultures that are out there, and certainly many more that I did not name. But I wanted to circle back to when we were kids. What were you into? What kind of teenager were you? Were you a goth kid, an emo? Were you a jock? Were you a theater kid, a math geek, a Slack or a stoner? Maybe you were big into art. I don’t know what kind of kid were you? Maybe you were all of those things. Maybe you went along, go along, get along, to Rage Against the Machine. Did you march to the beat of your own drum? Do you have a chip on your shoulder? Did you have a chip on your shoulder? Kind of irritated, angsty, or are you just kind of happy to be there? These are all possible. And then the question is interesting that during your teenage years, which are so formative, even before, how much of that have you carried into your adult life? It’s always interesting as like we’ve been talking about the cultures change. Subcultures pop up. You move in and out of these. We are dynamic beings. We are very dynamic. We are not static. I am not static. I am dynamic. There are certainly people out there. Today’s term is non playable characters, which is a great term. And the idea there is that, if you’re familiar with video games, there are characters in a video game that just do one function. Maybe it’s there’s a shop keeper, and the shopkeeper, when you go in the door, they show up and they ask you what you need, and then they go away. So you’re not really interacting necessarily with that shopkeeper. It just does the same thing. It’s you can expect, or know what you can expect from them. And there’s certainly a lot of people that will go through life in that very static phase, or they just tow the company line completely. They’re completely emo through and through. As a 12 year old and now as a 55 year old, I would respect that, and this isn’t good or bad. I prefer dynamism to being static. I very much prefer that. I like to think that I am constantly evolving. I’m constantly moving forward. I am constantly trying to become the best possible version of me, and recognizing that the things that I like are going to change and and evolve as well. And all of it’s great. So I prefer that, and I imagine that you prefer that too. You’re paying attention and listening to the stuff that I’m thinking about and talking about, then you’re probably on board with that. So it’s interesting for me. I was 13 years old when Nirvana’s Never mind came out. I was 14 when the chronic came out. So from a musical standpoint, I think I was pretty fortunate to be born when I was and like you, I was a lot of things as I am today. I’ve always considered myself to be a multifaceted person with varied interests, and I’m disinterested in being categorized.

I was a jock, I was a theater kid, I was into Student Government, I was into grunge. I what all of these things I was interested. Interested in all of them. I found all of it to be great and awesome, and it was engaging to me. And I never, I never felt the pull to be a part of just one of the communities that’s just me. So around that same time, I was introduced to throw in Emerson like it was my seventh grade year that we read Walden and civil disobedience and Emerson’s ideas about self reliance have had an absolute last impact on me, as well as so many people throws ideas, all of it. I mean, they’re such inspirational people, but the whole idea is that you’re supposed to live authentically and deliberately and be close to nature. It’s moral conscious, it’s it’s integrity, and I think that understanding and appreciating that human beings are inherently good, but also trusting in yourself and your inner voice inside of you, maybe that’s the biggest thing right there, being true to yourself, following your instincts, even though they might tell you to be going upstream or to get out of the stream altogether, to leave the game that you’re playing, and to go and do whatever it is that you are being called to do. So all that makes sense to me, grab the hold of it. And who knows if I had been born 10 years before that, 10 years after it, I have to imagine that things be a lot different. That’s a whole interesting thing too, isn’t it. What do you think? How much different would your life be if you were born 10 years earlier, 10 years later? Here we are as grownups. Which brings me to really what I wanted to talk about this year. What does popular culture look like right now? What is popular right now? Oh my gosh, social media. So great. So popular influencer culture? Wow. What a time to be alive. Everybody’s glued to their screens. Identity Politics, it’s been big for a couple years. That’s great, right? Voting based on your immutable characteristics. I’m a white guy, so I’m supposed to vote for a white guy, or I’m a woman, so I’m supposed to vote for a woman, or on this I’m supposed to do that? Well, don’t tell me what to do. Do not tell me what to do. How’s how’s that sound? You’re going to lump me into this group because of something I have no control over that’s offensive to me. It’s also preposterous. So that’s that’s going on. What about this whole quiet quitting and just being so apathetic about the work that we’re doing, checking out participation trophies and equity? Oh, buddy, that’s not going to have negative ramifications in the future, body positivity, I should be grateful and love my body no matter what it looks like, even if I’m morbidly obese, that’s good too. That’s also not going to have any negative consequences long term, no way it’s all going to be just fine. Mental illness where that’s not a, I don’t know. Maybe that is a, maybe that is a popular cultural thing. That’s a whole nother conversation, I think. But certainly I think the groupthink, cancel culture, deep platforming and globalism. Think that these are all parts of what is going on in today’s world. And if I know one thing, it’s that I am not interested in groupthink. I’m not interested in, uh, in just because somebody tells me to do something, I’m going to do that. In fact, probably going to do the opposite. That’s at least going to be my impulse. So if these are the mainstream pop culture or just mainstream culture, what’s what’s counterculture today? And I think that that one of the things is being conservative is a counterculture thing. It’s fascinating now that you’re seeing a lot of young people who are identifying publicly as conservative and to publicly identify as conservative these days. Who has not popular in the mainstream or on social media, is it? And it’s so funny that you’re seeing language like this person comes out as conservative. Conservative. So it’s been so maligned for so long being conservative. So it’s a counterculture thing. If body positivity is pop culture, well, then being physically healthy and strong is counterculture these days, working out, being strong, being ripped. Counter Culture, weird, hard work and full engagement, checking out the apathy. If quiet, quitting is culture, then counter cultures, powerful engagement, working your butt off. Participant, participation, trophies and equity are pop culture, are mainstream? Well, then winning and merit our counterculture today, if identity politics and groupthink are culture, popular culture mainstream, well then individualism is counterculture, and independent thinking is counterculture. If globalism is popular culture, well then bottom up, family, community, neighborhoods, that’s counterculture, and all those things, for the most part, are me. So I’m punk rock baby, I’m rock and roll, I’m all these things. That is my take on counter culture today. I think it’s just, it’s an interesting thing to pay attention to, and to look around and say, Man, I remember back when I was a kid in the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, the 2000s I was a goth kid. I was Emo, I was punk rock, I was a theater kid, I was a jock, I was this and that. And you look around what’s going on today, and just over the past however many years that you’ve been observing human beings and existence, it’s fascinating to see things change. But like we started, started talking about the verse from Romans, just because society is telling you to do something, and just because all your friends are jumping off that bridge doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for you to do. Listen to your heart. Listen to yourself. Think about what’s good in the eyes of God, and do those things. Do those things as always. Do your part by doing your best. Do.

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.