Inside Heavens ATX: Building a 30-Acre Nature-First Resort Near Austin | Dan Mages

Dan Mages (00:00)
We’re building the largest 200,000-gallon beach entry resort pool with a 12-foot waterfall, and it’s coming off of a 13,000-pound capstone, and it’s absolutely stunning. And this is gonna be the biggest feature of our resort. It’s like the heart of our resort

is this pool, and we’re calling it Enlightenment. And it’s all natural, that’s—it’s filtered by plants, there’s no chlorine. And you’re gonna be able to stay in front of the waterfall.

Quentin Edmonds (02:00)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds. And when I say I love what I do, I love what I do. I love when I get a chance to connect with new people and see things through their lens. We all could literally be doing the same thing,

but we’re not going to do it the same because we’re different. We have different perspectives, different backgrounds, different experiences. But I absolutely love when we come from different experiences because we can see things through other people’s lenses if we allow ourselves to. And so I think today is gonna be very special. I’m excited about the man that I have here today. And one of the first things he said to me is about care and love for the land. And that, obviously—just that took my mind to a whole number of different spaces. And so he’s an artist, he is a co-founder of

The Heavens ATX. I’m gonna let him lay it out what he does, but I just wanna introduce you all to Mr. Dan Mages. Mr. Dan, how you doing today, sir?

Dan Mages (02:55)
Hey, thank you, Q, for that beautiful introduction. I’m really happy to be here and I’m looking forward to our conversation.

Quentin Edmonds (03:01)
Same

here, man. And so I’m delighted to have you here. I want to thank you for your time. I think time is our most precious commodity, right? And so I thank you that you was able to value us with your time. So Dan, I like to just really dive in. So I would love for you to tell the people what’s your major focus these days.

Dan, if you don’t mind, give us a little origin story, how you got into the space that you’re in. And then man, tell them where you are in the world. And so, Dan, sir, you have the floor, my friend.

Dan Mages (03:27)
Right on. Well, first and foremost, I am totally desiring to make this world a better place for everyone, and not just for humans, but for all of life: for the plants, for the animals, for the fungi, for the soil, for the birds, for the lizards, for the—for the microorganisms. I really want thriving in the cosmos, if you will. So,

I—I’m here really to just be a conduit to help people connect with themselves, with each other, and with nature, which is themselves. We are part of the same living system. And I think for me, I connected with a good—with a—with a… I just moved to Sierra Madre and I love it here. As you can see, there’s trees all around my cabin here.

Quentin Edmonds (04:10)
Show off, then. Don’t rub it in.

Dan Mages (04:12)
I know, and it does feel like that on some level, and I do feel a little like

everyone should have a living landscape and be living like this, and I feel very special and lucky. And I don’t think it’s anything in me that somehow—why am I here, not someone else? I think about these questions all of the time. But if you look at our history, we were always living in living landscapes. And so I really—I’m co-founder of The Heavens ATX. I’m building a beautiful resort because I want people to have incredible experiences with the land.

And so we’re working off of 30 acres in Bastrop, Texas. It’s in Cedar Creek, in the county of Bastrop. It’s about 20 minutes from Austin, Texas. And we’re building AirCrete domes—we’re the first in the nation. And each dome is handcrafted. It’s built with stained glass windows, reclaimed cedar. So we’re utilizing the landscape to create sanctuaries, as I would say. Almost cathedral-like, to where when you enter, you feel like there’s something

meaningful and significant that you’ve walked in the presence of, and what you’re walking in the presence of is nature. It’s biophilic, meaning there’s—it’s curves. Everything in nature is curved, there’s no straight edge.

Quentin Edmonds (05:18)
Come on, man.

Dan Mages (06:06)
That is something that we’re trying to create of. And we’re converting a 1990 ranch house into a farm-to-table restaurant where you can eat from the land. And so we’re not only growing food, but we’re serving

you the very food that’s grown on the land that you’re on. And this goes—this is an ancient way of existing and eating, right? You eat from the land that you’re actually on. And it’s something that we’ve lost in our culture, but that’s the healthiest way to eat. It’s literally eating the food that’s local, food that comes from the landscape that you’re existing within. And we’re happy to bring that to our guests at The Heavens,

so it really is heavenly in that way.

We’re building the largest 200,000-gallon beach entry resort pool with a 12-foot waterfall, and it’s coming off of a 13,000-pound capstone, and it’s absolutely stunning. And this is gonna be the feat—the biggest feature of our resort. It’s like the heart of our resort

is this pool, and we’re calling it Enlightenment. And it’s all natural, that’s—it’s filtered by plants, there’s no chlorine. And you’re gonna be able to stay in front of the waterfall.

So in the morning you walk out of your casita and there’s a waterfall, and there’s food grown from the land. And we have—the eggs in your breakfast came from the chickens on the land that are eating insects on the land.

And so this is something that we cannot wait to open. We’re almost completely done with this pool. It’s absolutely stunning. Austin—it’s from Austin limestone, and we have botanical gardens. We’re gonna be creating these experiences connecting humans to each other, to the land, and

to all of the living world. And I think the land here is not just like a—the background, it’s actually the experience, because we oftentimes forget that we don’t really know what a natural habitat looks like, because the habitats that we exist in are all paved over. There’s concrete, there’s buildings everywhere. But that’s not a natural—that’s a habitat that we built, like a zoo, if you will.

But if you go into a natural landscape—and then oftentimes we forget that the natural landscapes that we encounter are completely, radically changed from the way they existed prior to civilization, which is about twelve thousand years ago. And so there used to be something called old-growth forests.

Quentin Edmonds (08:28)
More—say that for me slower, if you don’t mind. Go for it, yeah.

Dan Mages (08:30)
Old-growth forest. We’re

talking about trees that are 500, 1,000, 2,000, thousands of years old. Where are the trees that are thousands of years old? And I just got back from Japan where I went on a four-day hike called the Kumano Kodo. It’s an ancient pilgrimage. There’s different sites where you honor ancestors. But I was looking around and I was noticing that the trees were all pretty thin.

And when I—when I did my research, I found out that these are saplings, you know. They’re maybe 30 years old, maybe 50 years at the oldest, but these are very young trees in the—in the life of a tree. Yeah. And so I’m wondering what happened to all the trees that were there for thousands and thousands of years. And literally ninety-eight to ninety-nine percent of all the trees on Japan have been harvested, as we would say, cut down, clear-cut, and multiple times. And so

I looked into that history and I realized, wow, we were on that hike for four days and we barely heard a bird. And so I was wondering like, where’s the living forest? But you can’t cut down a forest and plant some trees and expect a forest to regrow. It doesn’t work that way. Right. So I don’t think we fully come to appreciate the loss. And so I think once you realize the extent of what we’ve lost, it becomes all the more important

and all the more significant for us to protect living landscapes, just healthy ecosystems as much as they exist today. So this is what we’re trying to do with The Heavens to bring it back in, is to protect the landscape. We didn’t come in with clear-cutting the land and cutting down all the trees and building from the ground up, like literally killing everything to bring in other dead things to construct with, right? It’s like instead, we’re walking like a Native American would and asking,

“Can we have permission to build? And if so, where would we build and how should we build?” And so it’s a different approach. And this is something that we’re doing that’s unique and beautiful and truly honoring the land. Yeah, going back to the very beginning, I love the land because we are all interdependent on the land, because it’s a reciprocal relationship. We depend on the land for everything: our water,

our food. And the healthier the landscape, the healthier we are. Yeah, that healthy ecosystems create healthy humans.

Quentin Edmonds (10:43)
Yeah. Man, Dan, sir, man, I absolutely love this. I—what I love listening to you is the different way you are merging yourself in different cultures.

Dan Mages (10:53)
Yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (10:53)
And—and I love that because

there’s richness in every culture. You learn different things from each culture. And so I love the way, man, here you’re talking about four days here, and then traveling there. And so I absolutely love that, man. And so I’m gonna absolutely love asking you this question. I ask everyone that comes on: I make the statement that destiny has no wasted moments. Destiny has no wasted moments,

there are resources that we can pull from, we pull them from the failure, from the success, yeah. So, man, you’re well-traveled. I would love to know within your journey, this business journey, life journey, what have the moments taught you about yourself? Have they made you more humble? Have they made you more disciplined? What is the awareness that the moments have brought to Dan about Dan?

Dan Mages (11:36)
Incredibly so. There’s a couple things that come to mind. And one is when you—when you do deep travel, you realize no one’s better or worse than anyone else. No one’s better or worse. I’m not better than anyone, I’m not worse than anyone. I’m just another living being enjoying this existence as much as I can. And another part of that is I’ve realized that there’s a component that’s missing to most human life on earth, and that is play. Play is a part of what it means to be human.

And this is what the dolphins are doing when they’re jumping in the waves. We’re not the only animal that enjoys the play, right? And so play is so important and so significant. And what I’ve learned is indigenous humans, they didn’t even have really a word for work. The things that they had to do for work—go hunting, gathering—they did it in groups, yeah. And that’s fun. That’s literally what people do in Texas where we’re building our resort for fun on the weekends with their friends.

Quentin Edmonds (12:28)
Yeah.

Dan Mages (12:29)
Right.

And that’s the thing they had to do. And what they do—and basically anthropologists say they did that for maybe three to five hours a day. And so what’d they—

Quentin Edmonds (12:37)
Yeah.

Dan Mages (12:38)
do with the rest of their time? They’re out—they’re hanging out at the river, they’re hanging out at the fire, they’re singing, they’re dancing, they’re conversating, they’re having deep intimacy. And something that we touched on earlier was that the Penan, when they have communication with each other, they speak to each other

three inches from each other’s faces. They have deep connection with one another. And all of their existence… If you—I watch documentaries all the time about indigenous hunter-gatherers, that’s like one of my pastimes, because it shows us what a wild human looks like, the way we have been for hundreds of thousands of years. You’re getting a window into that. And it’s exciting and beautiful because we know what’s possible.

Quentin Edmonds (13:18)
Yeah.

Dan Mages (13:18)
You know, the—it’s that the—they’re so relaxed. They don’t have any cares in the world.

Quentin Edmonds (13:24)
Yeah.

Dan Mages (13:25)
In fact, they say they feel safe in the jungle. Yeah, everything they need is there, they know how to do everything. They know to listen for the birds, because if they know the birds are singing in a particular way over there, that means they shoot over there. Yeah, they’re tuned in, and they have relationships with the more-than-human world that I think have been largely lost. They—the Hadza

have—they call it the honeyguide bird. They whistle, a bird knows that whistle, comes to them, takes—leads them to where the bees are. Because they’re like—where the bird takes them, there, they light a fire, smoke out the bees, take some honey, eat it, because they love honey as we all do, and it’s so nutritious and so good. And then they leave some for the bird. They have this type of reciprocal relationship. And so

this is something that in our—at our resort at The Heavens, we have peacocks and we have snakes and we—and we—I want that. I want our guests to come and experience wild nature and to be able to enjoy it, because it’s so amazing. Yeah, we have a 360-degree glass communal sauna. So you’re gonna be able to be in the sauna right in front of the waterfall, get out of the sauna and go do a cold plunge. So you’re communing—you’re communing with each other,

yeah, it’s circular, so you’re looking at your—it’s a place to spend time with your friends. And also you can see—it’s glass, so you can see you’re in nature, you’re with your friends, and then you’re detoxing, and then you’re gonna go do a cold plunge afterwards. And these are the types of experiences that we want to create for our guests at The Heavens, yeah. But it’s really about nature connection, connecting to oneself, connecting to the more-than-human world.

Quentin Edmonds (15:01)
Man. So, and I feel comfortable talking this way with you because I know you have a religious background. So y’all—I know some of y’all following me. I’m not about to make this a religious show, but one thing, one story that I glean from the Bible that has helped me is how Genesis records the creation story.

Dan Mages (15:19)
Yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (15:19)
And so that story says—it talks about how God created one or two things each day. He created the world in six days, seventh day he rested. Now,

if the concept of God, most of us, all-powerful, he can do whatever he wants, so he could have just created everything he wants. But—

Dan Mages (15:34)
Yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (15:34)
for me, I think it’s important for me the way he did it in the story, how the story—

Dan Mages (15:39)
Yes.

Quentin Edmonds (15:40)
that he did a couple things one day, then he stopped,

Dan Mages (15:42)
Yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (15:43)
and then on the seventh day, he rested. I don’t think it was because he was tired, I believe it was because he was finished creating. So when you talk about that play, there has to be a sense.

Within the worlds that we are creating, whether it be home, business, there has to be a point where you stop. There has to be a point when you gotta stop creating, because if you don’t—and hopefully this is not a trigger warning for some people, but what makes cancer so deadly is because cancer never stops growing. It keeps growing, keeps metastasizing, keeps growing, and eventually it takes over the organs and the organs die. So eventually,

if you don’t stop, if you try to keep going, you are actually antithetical to what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to live, but if you don’t stop and take time to play or rest,

Dan Mages (16:32)
Right.

Quentin Edmonds (16:32)
there’s gonna come a point where you overdo it.

Dan Mages (16:35)
Right, yeah. You’re hitting—

Quentin Edmonds (16:36)
Play it.

Dan Mages (16:37)
You’re hitting on a very important point. And I also want to caution, because on some level I think a lot of people in the world would love to play more, would love to go to the festival, would love to be able to, but they are just trying their best to survive in a world that’s very difficult, where things used to be quite easy to live. But this goes—this is ancient, and even goes way back to your story, if I wanted to touch on it, which is

these myths that we have are derived from agricultural and civilizational societies. So agriculture didn’t begin until twelve thousand years ago, so prior to that, we were all hunter-gatherers, all of us. And so once agriculture began, agriculture is really hard and it takes a lot of work. And so the mythology of the—of the gods with—and within agriculture, then you start getting hierarchy, you start getting settlements because you’re in one plot of land, you get land ownership, you get the whole

series, the whole cascading series. And so the God represented there is really similar: He’s working in the way that an agriculturalist would, but the hunter-gatherers didn’t really work that way. They were—they were playing all day, every day, including what we call work. Including

Quentin Edmonds (17:41)
So right, exactly.

Dan Mages (17:43)
what we call work. But so yeah, so I really do want to say that I want all beings to get back to play.

Quentin Edmonds (17:49)
Yeah,

that’s—

Dan Mages (17:51)
There are ways to do that, and I think if we dream enough and think about our history enough, we’ll get back to it eventually. So I’m excited to participate in that and remind people that, yeah, play is so important, absolutely.

Quentin Edmonds (18:05)
Absolutely.

So man, so you—we here. So I—I’m just—I’m enjoying this conversation. And then I also want to be a good steward of people who come to watch, right? And so you are—you’re—you’re building, you’re building responsibly and holistically, I think I can add that word in there, too. Yeah. But you are building, you’re building domes. There is a business side to it, right? So I would love to know, maybe can you give some—maybe like one operational thing you’ve put into place

that’s—say the last two years that’s helped you be successful. I know you’re doing it in a right, responsible way, but give us some operational tips on how to build maybe in a responsible way.

Dan Mages (18:44)
Well, I think it goes back to what—where we started, which is respecting the land. And truly this is something that we don’t really have the equipment in our mind, because we see the land as like resources for us. We see it just to be—we can, “Hey, if we cut—if we cut down the tree, it’ll grow back. Everything just will eventually…”

And in deep history, that might very well be true. Like, forests can regrow in millions, thousand—hundreds of thousands of years. But I really do think that respecting the land is primary, number one. I do think that having deep empathy, not just for the land, but for everyone and everything, so that not treating people as like, “I’m gonna step on you to get something else,” like continuing the hierarchical structure in which we all live,

but bringing things back. And even as a professor in my classroom, I sit in the same chair as all my students, and I do that on purpose. And I don’t—I tell them, “Don’t call me professor,” because now I’m above you and all of a sudden I have all the answers, and you’re just a—a conduit for the information that I’m disposing upon you. But we’ve all read, we’ve all experienced. It goes back to the lessons I’ve learned around the world is like: Treat everyone as you want to be treated. This is—this is—and this extends beyond humans. And so I think

extending it beyond the human realm into the more-than-human world, because there’s living beings everywhere. And we don’t typically—I’m talking things as small as an ant and a fly and a spider. I think oftentimes we just step on them as instinct. Our moms did that, what—she yelled and screamed as soon as she saw it, squished it. And I think this is something that I try to teach my son. I’m like, “Let’s—if you don’t want it in this place, let’s capture it, let’s take it out and put it outside of the yard.”

It’s not here to hurt you, it’s not here to—it’s living its life the same way you are. And so I think really having that type of honor and appreciation for the more-than-human world will take us a long way.

Quentin Edmonds (20:29)
Yeah, love it, man. I’m gonna love asking you this, too, man. I want to hear—I ask everyone that comes on, I want to hear everybody’s unique perspective when it comes to relationship building. And so, most of the time I’m asking from a business standpoint, so I’ll propose it to you from business, but also just in general about building relationships. What’s your philosophy to build relationships? And what are some of the relationships that have helped you be successful, or

relationships who you’ve helped be successful? So just talk to me a little bit then about relationships.

Dan Mages (21:00)
I really think it comes down to authenticity—authenticity, like cutting the crap and getting down to the reality of the conversation that you and I are having now is the same conversation that I have everywhere I go, because this is who I am. You can’t stop me from talking about the health of the—of our ecosystem and our habitat, because I do care, yeah. And this caring comes from my mom. I’m not special in any sense. Like, my mom would—she would bring in homeless—

the people that were without homes into our home. So like, this thing was just like—it was just taught to me. It was—she showed me how to do this. And I had love from both parents, too, and so I think that’s something not everyone has. And so I think—I guess I have like an overflow of love from my mom and my dad, and ultimately that just goes to other humans. And so when it—when it—when it comes to relationships, I’m like,

some people—I would say a lot of people like me, some people don’t, but it—I am me. And I—and I—sometimes I’m a one-horse wonder, but at the end of the day, I’m really trying to make the world a better place for me and for you and for everyone. The people at the top, the people at the bottom, it’s not—to me, it’s not like a—it’s not an either/or, it’s an—it’s a both/and, like we all need to be living good lives. And I don’t think that the extreme hierarchy which exists on the planet is good for either side.

Quentin Edmonds (22:08)
Yeah, man.

Dan Mages (22:09)
You see what I’m saying? Yes, sir.

I don’t think the people at the top are really winning.

Quentin Edmonds (22:13)
Yeah.

Dan Mages (22:15)
Yeah. So I think if they come back into the tribe, they take down the gates, they take—they start flying the same planes that we are, they’re gonna actually enjoy it. Their smile’s gonna be bigger, their hearts are gonna be warmer, you see what I’m saying? So I think—I don’t think they quite understand what it really feels like to be a part of the people,

yeah, and all the other living animals. So now your connections aren’t just with other humans, but with the more-than-living world.

Quentin Edmonds (22:40)
Absolutely. So man, I feel safe sharing this with you, going down this vein, because so much we—so I’ll preface it this way: There’s a great book that I read called Switch On Your Brain from Dr. Caroline Leaf, and she talks about rewiring your brain. She talks about healthy talk that you have to say to yourself on a constant basis, because she says when you—when you are awake, you are training your brain on how you want it to think when you’re asleep,

because the brain never stops working. And so you—what you say when you’re awake, the things you consume, conversation that you have, is training your brain the way you want it to operate when in sleep, to think on positive things, right? And—

Dan Mages (23:21)
Yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (23:21)
so and so I preface it that way, because—

Dan Mages (23:23)
Okay.

Quentin Edmonds (23:24)
society has a way of training us, as well. Right?

Dan Mages (23:27)
Oh yeah, big time.

Quentin Edmonds (23:28)
And so I’m born in Baltimore, Maryland. If anything about Baltimore, tough place to live.

Dan Mages (23:32)
Oh yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (23:33)
So immediately when you came on to screen into my view, I’m looking at your presentation and I’m trained to be like, “Wait a minute, what is—like, this is—this is not my—this is not my normal energy.” That’s what my environment has taught me. And

Dan Mages (23:48)
Yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (23:49)
one of the first things you say is about care and love for the land. And so again, my environment would say, “What are we about to talk about?”

Because I have retrained my brain, because I have sat with enough people, I’ve—I’m a curious person by nature. Because I have made myself sit and understand some of the same thing you’re saying, that this is somebody I’m about to learn from, instantly that part of who I am started to kick in. And who would imagine just how deeply connected we are in passions and in missions? And so it’s amazing that somebody from Baltimore, me being who I am, but

obviously it’s deeply connected to what you’re doing, as well. And I just wanted to say that, because I want people to understand that you would be amazed how much you have in common with people around you who you dismiss,

Dan Mages (24:37)
Right.

Quentin Edmonds (24:37)
with things around you that you use, resources

Dan Mages (24:41)
Yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (24:42)
that you abuse. You would be deeply

amazed that if you took a step back and just started realizing just how connected you are to the people and things around you, would be amazed, like you said, how much joy and gratitude. Because talking to you, I have—there has been like electricity running through me the whole time we’ve been talking, because you are giving language to even some things I can’t say that I feel, and I know that I can’t give language because you are—you are giving the language to the things that I want to say, and I’m like, “Yes.” So I just wanted to say that, man,

for the viewers, because I appreciate what you’re saying, and I just wanted to add that to the conversation.

Dan Mages (25:20)
Yeah, I think

it’s tragic on some level that any of us really have to practice self-talk, because when you live in a—when you live in a healthy ecosystem with a healthy habitat, that means that you’re in a—our social—our natural social arrangement is in a tribe. And when you’re in a loving tribe,

you don’t need to do self-talk, man. People are talking you up all day, every day, you know what—so it’s like the message—the messaging, when the messaging is healthy, it’s like you just get to exist and relax. You don’t have to worry about having to talk to yourself. But we’re in such a toxic environment constantly in so many different ways. A lot of the—we have to shoulder that burden to try to pick ourselves up, but ultimately, if we can find that soul tribe, because we have been detribalized. But it was—

sometimes the best we can do, because it’s really hard to tribalize in our modern world, you find a soul tribe. You find people that are saying things that are good for you, healthy for you, and they’re people with your interests in mind, that they love you, they care about you, they want to see you thrive, they want to see you—if other people are thriving, that helps me through… It’s like there’s not an either/or thing here. All ships rise with the rising water, so I want it to be better for everyone and everything, because

what—that’s the—that’s the amazing thing about this place is we are all one. When you get down to the most—you keep on looking at the microscopic level, we’re energy flowing, and there isn’t a separation. It’s—we’re really one thing, and so helping the ecosystem is helping yourself, helping your neighbors is helping yourself, help—help—helping everyone is helping yourself. And it goes back to the land: Treat the land as yourself.

Quentin Edmonds (26:52)
Yes, it is, yep. Dan, I say—I say this countless of times on this podcast: I truly believe healing happens in community. That’s

Dan Mages (27:01)
Might—

Quentin Edmonds (27:02)
something again that I get from just reading like things I attract from the Bible, like healing happens in community, like you should be… I love how you talk about self-talk. So yeah, I’m gonna say again, not trying to make this religious, but this is—this is where the philosophy—I get it from, it’s James 5:16. It says,

“Confess your faults one to another so that you can be healed.” So basically what it’s saying is create a space where you can self-talk to each other and can—and talk about what you feel like is unfavorable. That way, you—when you talk about it, somebody can mirror back to you, and mirror back, I’m gonna say, like the truth of what it is. Like, no, so like Brené Brown says, “You—you’re not a failure, you just failed.” Like, we fail at the—

things, yeah. So right. And so when you talk about where you are, and the community, they wrap their arms around you and say, “No, you’re—you’re not a failure, you just failed. No, like, we are going to get past this. No, you’re just grieving, and grieving is a part of life. No, men can cry, that’s okay.” Like,

Dan Mages (28:05)
Of course.

Quentin Edmonds (28:06)
the community, as you said, and it is a tragedy, the self-talk, because the community—

we should be in our habitat, like you said, in our tribe. I think

Dan Mages (28:14)
Yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (28:15)
we are in a healthy tribe, healing happens from community. So—

Dan Mages (28:18)
Absolutely. Yeah, I am all about that. And the deeper we understand the reasons and the causes behind things, it just makes sense. People are lashing out and acting out, and they’re depressed and they’re anxious for good reason. Yeah, there’s nothing wrong—I always say there’s nothing wrong with the animal, look at the enclosure, right? Look at the enclosure. You can’t put a chimpanzee in a hotel room, feed him some Kibbles ‘n Bits, and expect him to thrive.

What—

Quentin Edmonds (28:45)
Snack bar and say, “Yeah, good,” yeah.

Dan Mages (28:47)
it’s like, where should the chimpanzee be? It should be in a really healthy habitat somewhere, and trust me, it’s gonna be acting the way that a chimpanzee acts in that environment. And so we are human beings, but this is not our natural habitat. And the closer that we can get to it, the healthier behaviors we’ll see, the more mentally strong we will be, the bigger—like, we’re not gonna be fighting over a few things on earth, that’s the thing. It’s—I’ve read Christopher Ryan, who I mentioned earlier, but he talks about the difference between chimpanzees and bonobos, and he says

they’re the same animal, but they were—they were essentially evolved in two different, completely different habitats. And so the chimpanzee is basically in a desert where you have to fight to survive, and so you look at their behaviors like, “God damn, the chimpanzees are brutal, they’re rough, they’re—they’re mean, they’ll kill you.” And then you look at the bonobos, it’s literally the same animal, but it was raised in a—in a dense forest and lush, and there’s lots of food,

and they are just hanging out, they’re very loving, they’re very social, they’re egalitarian, meaning there’s no hierarchy. And they—and they make love for everything, to—when they greet each other, when they get in fights, they make love to make up for the fight. They’re just very cordial and amiable and very kind. And it’s like, what’s the difference between—it’s the same animal in two totally different habitats. And so I look at us as,

we’re—we’re an ape, and we’re—we’re in a very competitive habitat. And so it doesn’t—it makes a lot of sense that we all have the struggles that we have, that we behave in the ways that we’re behaving. It’s like, I get it. Put—but you take the same humans, you put them in a completely different habitat, and all of a sudden they’re sharing, they’re social, they’re loving. It’s like you take any person, it’s like you put them in their family, and all of a sudden, like, why are you treating your family—what—like, our habitats shape us so deeply. And I think

it takes the judgment out of it. And that’s why I say no one’s better or worse than anyone else, yeah, because we could talk about the most notorious serial killers of all time, and you realize

Quentin Edmonds (30:33)
Right.

Dan Mages (30:33)
no, what—they were—they were abused in ways that are unspeakable. Albert Fish is one that I often think of, and his—he was raised in a Catholic orphanage and the—and the priests basically took him to the under—in the basement and they would—they would strip him naked and whip him, and they had him do that to other children,

other children doing that to him. And then he turns out to be one of the most notorious serial killers of all time. You think—what—like, these—so there’s like the—just a direct causation from like prior events. And everyone’s story is unique and different. So you can’t take that example and say, “Well, what—how this kid wasn’t whipped, he was also neglected emotionally. He also didn’t get the love from his dad and his mom.” There’s causation, and let me just say,

hypothetically, that they were just born that way, that’s not their fault, either. They didn’t choose that, you know what—so there should be a deep level of understanding and compassion that I think most of us are missing, and it’s really easy if you try to look at the underlying factors to things, yeah. So we really need a healthier habitat and better social arrangements, re-tribalize and rewild the landscapes.

Quentin Edmonds (31:31)
Man, you don’t know how much I appreciate you. Like, you are literally giving language to things I was trying to give language to, and I—I’ve been successful at giving some language to, but I think, like you said, everybody’s tribal, from—y’all bear with me—from, like he said, from the serial killer…

Dan Mages (31:48)
Yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (31:49)
Everybody’s tribal. And if they—people had a chance to be in a different habitat, man…

So well said, Dan. Listen, man, if someone wants to reach out to you, sir, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you?

Dan Mages (32:44)
Yeah, there’s a couple—there’s a couple of ways. One, I’ve just launched Tribal Truths, I’m calling it, on Substack, so they can look up Tribal Truths on Substack, and that would be connect with me personally. And with the vision that we have for The Heavens ATX and the domes and the pool, theheavensatx.com, there’s a website. We’re also on Instagram, @theheavensatx on Instagram, they could follow us there. But I think those ways would be sufficient to kind of

get a taste of what I’m doing and what—what we’re doing at The Heavens. So…

Quentin Edmonds (33:14)
Yeah. Man, I had no idea how, for me, how cathartic this conversation would be, but man, I appreciate you. It touches me to the real deep recesses of my soul on what I feel like I am—

I want to contribute to this world, what I want to contribute to the people around me. And so it was really good. This is a really good conversation for me. I want to reiterate, man, thank you for your time. I think time is our most precious commodity, so thank you for that. Thank you for your stories. I know we’ve been talking about trees and the earth, but I always say this every podcast: I think our authenticity, I think our integrity, I think our—the gift of our vulnerability are seeds for people.

And when we share our story, we’re dropping seeds, and we don’t know when the seed is going to take root, we don’t know when it’s going to grow.

But the fact is that we spread it, the seed, and at any given time, it can take root, it can grow. So I want to thank you for spreading some real seeds, man. And

Dan Mages (34:09)
Thank you.

Quentin Edmonds (34:10)
lastly, thank you for your mindset, Dan. Thank you for the way you think and bringing that mindset, that processing speed, that processing system that you have, the way you think, bringing that mindset to this platform. I really appreciate you coming on today, man.

Dan Mages (34:24)
It is a real honor and a pleasure. I’m so glad that we got to have this conversation, and I look forward to more in the future.

Quentin Edmonds (34:29)
Absolutely.

Well listen, y’all heard Dan. His information is in the show notes. Please get in contact with him—The Heavens ATX, Please get in contact with him, the information is there. Definitely make sure you are subscribed here, because I keep promising you—I keep promising you we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people, just like Mr. Dan. So sir, thank you again. And everyone else, listen, y’all have a fantastic day.