 So I want to talk a little bit about what drives history and why almost everybody I think gets it ultimately wrong or most people get it wrong, at least most commentators get it wrong when you read about it. You know, the germs, guns, whatever kind of books and other books of that genre. And I'm reading right now, the end of the world is just beginning, the beginning, and of course, Harari has his version. And you read them and first of all, the fascinating books, Guns, Gems and Steel, fascinating books, really interesting. I mean, I love history and they have these amazing stories and amazing theories and a lot of the theories, there's a lot of truth to them and the stuff comes together. And you just learn a lot by reading these kind of books, you learn a lot about the concretes that are going on in the world and have happened in the world and it enriches, it enriches one's knowledge. And this came to mind because I'm reading the end of the world is just the beginning. And granted, I've only read the first few chapters that deal primarily with the past. And let me first say before I criticize the book, you know, my criticism of the approach and my criticism of the book, let me first say that I'm really enjoying the book and I really like it, it's wrong in some fundamental sense and we'll get to that. But it's fascinating, it's really, really interesting and a lot of what he says is true. And a lot of what he says is right and a lot of what he says I hadn't thought of and it's new to me and that's exciting and that's fun when you read a book like that. And it's big in scope, it covers so much. It covers so much of human history and what he's doing in this book is he's setting it up for an analysis of the future, a predictive model, which is great because in 10 years we'll be able to tell him you were right or you were wrong, although he might be right for the wrong reasons, that's also possible. But and I agree with, to a large extent, with his predictions, at least I think I do, and I agree with much of his analysis and the thing that I find most interesting is, and I give him a lot of credit for this, he is absolutely right on how great the world is and has been since World War II and in many respects since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. He gets that and he gets it in a way that most people don't get. He gets it in a way that the left doesn't get, the left has no clue about, the left is completely clueless about and he gets it in a way that because they're so anti-capitalist, anti-markets and don't have any kind of conception of the state of the world, how poor people were, how horrible life was and what the Industrial Revolution actually achieved and did. But he also gets it better than the right, particularly the right, the kind of conservative right because he says, as of 2019, now he believes 2019 is the peak, life is amazing and to a large extent it attributes why our material life is so good and has been so good over the last, since World War II at least, he attributed it to free trade, he attributed it to globalization. So he is one of the few writers today that I see who are all in on globalization, all in not that he thinks it's gonna survive, he thinks it's gonna collapse completely and gonna go away and gonna drive the world economy into a real rut. But he believes it's a good thing. He believes it's a source of much of our prosperity, much of our success, much of our wealth and quality of life and standard of living, ours and the rest of the world. So he's a huge proponent of globalization and I give him a huge amount of credit for that because it's not easy to be pro-globalization right now, globalization as he explains in the book is found upon, is viewed negatively by almost everybody and left and right. And so good for him, he gets it, he gets it and that is real power. So if you look at now for my more critical part, again, I'm enjoying the book, he reads the book, he's quite a character, he's got a great reading voice, he fills it with emotion. So I actually recommend it, the end of the world is just the beginning, is actually quite enjoyable and interesting, you'll learn something, you'll get a different perspective you'll get for most historians or for me, for that matter. And you will, yeah, and I think his predictions for the future are interesting and quite possibly true, scary, very scary, although if you're in America, less scary, but potentially true. So what is the issue? And this is the issue that you see in Diamond's book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, you see it in Harari, you see it in others. And that is that almost all books that try to come up with a large-scale history of the world, story of the world, ignore the one thing that I think ultimately shapes the world. The one thing that in the long run, in a sense, is the determining factor. And that is ideas. For Peter-Zion, the world is shaped by geography and demographics and everything else just happens. He, at least in this book, he doesn't really explain it, it just happens, Industrial Revolution just happens. It's an outcome of a sequence of events that just roll together because of location and because of sudden actions that happened before and it's kind of this causal sequence of events, but there's no individuals in the sequence, there's no ideas in the sequence, there's no culture in the sequence, there's no philosophy in the sequence, there's no political theory in the sequence. There's just things happen and look, they happen, I can explain what they happen through geography and through demographics. And when I read this, yeah, geography matters. And yes, demographics matter, but both are clearly dwarfed, in my view, by the role of ideas, by the role of ideas. So it's fascinating to read somebody who expounds, who's really smart, knows a lot and expounds on history, knows a lot of history, is clearly pro-success, pro-prosperity and yet doesn't see how ideas shaped us all. And of course, ideas are not in a vacuum, ideas are concretely shaped partially by the people who embrace them, partially by the accidents of geography and the accidents of population that partially determine, I don't know, why Aristotle is not picked up, but Plato is, why Aristotle is lost to the West and then we discovered why, is it an accident? For example, Peter Zion talks a lot about Portugal and Spain and the importance and why they are the ones who first go out exploring and why they are the first in the West to kind of go out there and establish navies and it's partial, it's because they live in this peninsula, so they only have to protect one border, things like that, right? And I'm thinking, no, I mean, that's all true, it's true. They have a coast of the Atlantic, they have a coast on the Mediterranean, they're surrounded by water, they also have only one border to protect, all of that is true and all of that probably played their role. But what's also true and maybe much more fundamental is that the Iberian Peninsula is where the works of the Greeks were preserved by the Muslims. It's where in the 14th, 15th, 16th centuries, the best libraries in the world existed. It was where Aristotle's works survived. It was where great Arab and Jewish philosophers lived and it was this fertile soil in which philosophy, primarily Aristotelian philosophy, it was there in the soil, in the libraries. So that when the Christians conquered the peninsula, to their credit, which is very rare for Christians to get credit for me, to their credit, they didn't burn the libraries, they studied them, they took a lot of the books, copied them and sent them to Rome where Thomas Aquinas read them, so that's even the 14th century. So this period of the 14th and 15th century, which are the period where Iberian Peninsula establishes itself, actually Aquinas was 13th centuries, that right, right? A periods in which the Christians are just coming in, they're discovering these libraries, they're discovering these ideas, they're discovering this thought and it is what makes that culture, the dynamic, exciting culture that it becomes and it is what makes them curious about the world and it is what makes it possible for them to sail across the oceans. Now, if those libraries had been in Tbilisi in Georgia, yeah, the world, the history of the world would be very different. The fact that the Arabs went in that direction, established the libraries to the west, established them on a peninsula with a coast of the Atlantic which was easily defensible, all of that it probably is good, all of that probably made it possible. Who knows how history evolves, if they'd gone east then the libraries had gone east. The libraries had bagged that by the way which were even better than the libraries in Cordoba and the great cities of southern Spain, the libraries had bagged that even better but they were all burnt. Where were they all burnt? Before the Mongols even got there, they were burnt and then the Mongols came and basically flattened all the bagged that to where there was left, whatever was left was gone. So the western civilization was reborn in a sense in the Iberian Peninsula and in Italy where these works were read by Aquinas and then influenced the church and would spread through the Italian Peninsula and where focus on this worldliness, happiness in this world and worldly interests was introduced by Aristotle, Aquinas, both to tell you thinking into pre-Renaissance Italy. So really it's those are the places, Italy, Spain and Portugal where you get these ideas. See but that, you have to think, you have to see the world of ideas and this is where, and I don't know what Peter Sihan's views of free will and individual agency are. My guess is he's probably got pretty good views but certainly how are we who's a determinist and who doesn't believe in free will, who views us very much as a mechanistic beings and many of the other writers on history who kind of don't view free will as that as existing or important or determining of the future. They ignore this and again when I recommended The Cave in the Light, this is why I love that book because that is a book that delves into not so much history but the wall of ideas in history through a particular path and a particular lens played over as Aristotle into great book but conventional writers on history don't, many of them don't do that and it's something to be wary of because it's very seductive to hear their stories and to buy into their stories as the cause of factors in history. Guns, germs, and steel is a great example, well-written, interesting, fascinating sequences. They all make sense, kind of, but as Lenny Peacup illustrates in the ominous parallels and in a magnificent talk he gave at Fort Hope Forum years and years ago called The Wall of Philosophy and Psychology in History. Sorry, The Wall of Philosophy and Psychology in History. What shapes history in the end is ideas. When Peter Zion talks about the decline in population, in the demographic decline, the shrinkage of the size of families, the fact that we're having fewer and fewer kids, all of that is true and he can show you mathematically and he can show you from all these countries in the world how it's happening and the speed of which it's happening and so on and you could argue, well, it's just, you get rich and you have fewer kids and you have a lot fewer kids and you have less than replacement and some of that is absolutely true. Wealth matters a huge amount to demographics, to the number of kids we have, but is that the only factor? Does culture make a difference? Does people optimism or pessimism about the future make a difference? If you change the culture, will you change people behavior vis-a-vis children? Well, we know that's true because even wealthy religious people have kids, lots of kids, so religion seems to matter, ideas seem to matter. Israel is a good example, I haven't seen Peter talk about Israel as an example, a county example of the demographics because Israel is a country that I remember not that long ago, a few years ago, really, really, really being worried about the demographics and a lot of people around and because Jewish demographics were collapsing and Arab demographics were holding up in terms of them having a lot of children and then suddenly over just the last few years that shifted and Jewish demographics, Jews are having more kids and Arabs are having a lot less kids, not Arab having a lot less kids is foreseeable because as they get wealthy and westernized, particularly Arabs in Israel and among the Palestinians, they have less kids, which is exactly the pattern. Peter documents and there is consistent with everything we see around the world but the idea that secular Jews are having more kids is strange. It doesn't make any sense. It goes against what you'd expect. Israel's become richer, more successful. It's also become more optimistic. It's also become more energized. It's also become more positive about the future, more confident in its own future. Does that have anything to do with it? I mean, I think so. So culture matters, freedom matters. One of the interesting things is again, Peter talks about the rise of America and its advantages, the natural resources both on the Atlantic and the Pacific coast and a desert in its south, a difficult border in its north but a friendly neighbor in the north, all of that. And everything he says about America is absolutely true. But America would have evolved completely differently and had a completely different destiny, completely different future if America had had a different political system. And maybe political systems somewhat have something to do with declining birth rates, particularly in places like Russia and China. Russia by the way is one of the fastest shrinking populations. All those Putin fans are gonna have to live with a Russia that is weaker and weaker and weaker as we move into the future for all kinds of reasons, among others, population. And a brain drain, 500,000 people leaving since the war began. And the smartest, the best people leaving. So you can't ignore ideas, political ideas but more importantly, political ideas ultimately are determined by what? They're ultimately determined by metaphysical and epistemological ideas, moral ideas, philosophical ideas. You cannot ignore philosophy. Now it would be fascinating to take what Peter knows Peter Zein knows about geography and demographics and integrate it with a philosophical, cultural, ideological perspective. That would be amazing. And that would be, I think that would be the right approach, the primacy of ideas within the context of geography and demographics. Within the context of germs and guns and other stuff going on. Something wrong with the audio. Francis says, describe America's successful geography and demographics as a bit silly. It is, but it isn't. I mean, America, it was unique. It was unique in that it was a brand new land. It was unique in that it had this ability to expand westward. It was unique in that, that expansion westward also happened to include some of the most fertile land in all of human history. It is unique in the sense that it's the only country other than Canada and Mexico. I mean, it has both a Atlantic presence and a Pacific presence. I mean, there's a lot of things unique about America that positions it phenomenally worth to be successful, but of course, none of that would have happened. If the audio is weird, it's because of the internet uplink. So there's nothing I can do from here. It's hopefully we'll get better as the internet strengthens. Audio is back, even so. But imagine an America that doesn't have any independence. Imagine America that remains a British colony for another 50 years, maybe 100 years. Does it develop as one country? Does the, what do you call it, the Louisiana protests ever happen? Does America go to water Mexico? There is no America. Is there a war with Mexico to take over the southwest? Is California part of America? Are there five different countries? Are there 10? Are there 20? A reflection of Europe is much of America taken over by Mexico? Is Texas an independent state country? Who knows? Without a set of ideas that shape the union, that shape what Americans want to do with America. Is America, does America have the geography that is so beneficial? Does it have the demographics that is so helpful? Do millions and millions of people emigrate to America if it's an authoritarian dictatorship? Probably not. They emigrate because of the freedom. So the demographics, the huge growth in the American population, and the move west is driven by the fact that America is free. The Industrial Revolution and Britain becoming this amazing bastion of trade Yes, something to do with the fact that it's an island. Yes, something to do with the fact that it sent boats out and traveled around the world and they discovered they could outsource and the trade was a good thing. But there are lots of islands. And the Industrial Revolution happens in England, not because of that primarily, but because something in Britain makes possible the existence of a John Locke and an Isaac Newton, something in England makes it possible for people to start businesses and to profit from them and the attitude changes and the culture changes because of these thinkers and ideas. You cannot take the British and Scottish enlightenment out of England and pretend that everything is the same. It just isn't. These are actually the determining factors. And here again, I encourage you to read the ominous parallels by Leonard Peacock where he shows step by step by step in a fascinating, interesting, beautifully written way the way ideas shape culture, the way ideas shape politics, the way ideas shape ultimately even technological advance. The enlightenment follows the Renaissance which then in the Industrial Revolution follows the enlightenment and that sequence is a sequence of ideas. The manifest in action and reality. And America is a product of the enlightenment. If the Americans had rebelled 100 years earlier, everything would be different. If the Americans would have rebelled 100 years later, everything would be different. Americans rebelled at the exact right time from an ideological, political, philosophical perspective because it was the era where the ideas of liberty, the ideas of freedom, the ideas of rights were at their pinnacle. Pinnacle is not exactly the right word. They were most spread, most around. So when you look at the future, demographics are important. As Peter Zayn says, and we agree on China. But it's funny, he never mentions with regard to China the fact that authoritarian regimes like China don't produce technological advancements, authoritarian regimes like China don't create wealth. For him it's more China's in decline because of demographics. And they are. They're a shrinking population. And it's very difficult for China to generate the kind of economic growth with a shrinking population and much, much more importantly with authoritarian government, authoritarian government. So if you combine our knowledge, our knowledge of political, of philosophical ideas, of political ideas, the politics of liberty versus the politics of oppression, but more importantly, if you combine them with, as Lenin Pekov shows, the wall of epistemology and how epistemology is so crucial to developing a proper moral ideas that are crucial to developing the right political ideas, and understanding of the geopolitics and of resources as Peter does and demographics and geography and all that. Yes, that is an incredibly powerful tool in predicting the future. And I'm gonna say, I think that if you add the demographics, Peter Zayn claims, and I haven't run the math, I guess I believe him, I'm not sure I believe him, maybe he claims China's population is gonna half in the next couple of decades, I think. China is gonna go down to 600 million people. If that is true, that is truly unbelievable, but not only that, the population is gonna age, they're gonna be, have fewer and fewer and fewer productive people in their productive prime, which is true. But if it's that fast, then China's finished. China's finished. If you add to that the fact that innovation is something young people do, working hard is something young people do, entrepreneurship, starting businesses, in other words, wealth creation. If you add to that the authoritarian nature of China and the bad economic policies they're putting together and the ideology of China, which is metaphysically and epistemologically very mystical, the fact that China doesn't have a role model to look at, i.e. no United States that is free, capitalist and prospering, then I agree with Peter completely, China is in deep trouble and I also think that if China is in deep trouble, to a large extent, we need to really think about the extent to which we are, because trade is win-win. We benefit from trade for China. And if we're also going to shut down trade with China, we're in deep trouble. So I like integrating the ideas. For example, I'll give you an example. I was thinking about this. One of the examples that he doesn't really deal with because he looks at a number of children in terms of demographics. But one of the things he doesn't deal with, which I will deal with on a separate show more thoroughly, is the issue of immigration. So for example, the United States is on the verge of having negative population growth. But the United States can solve the problem in a way that I'm not sure China can, although China might do this, we'll see. And that is through immigration. For example, if I was running China right now, I would open Chinese borders. Maybe not on the Western or Muslims, but certainly in the South, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Cambodians, those are relatively, I think, young populations. Let them come. And if you start seeing a shrinkage in Chinese population, I mean, you will, it's not an if, it's happening, then what you would get is people coming in to come and work in China so that the China doesn't collapse completely. So one way in which you can replenish your demographics is by importing people. Yeah, I wonder if human says North Korea. There's a good idea. What about opening up your border to North Korea and telling the North Koreans, hey, come to China. We'll give you jobs. You know, we'll arrange for you to get jobs. I mean, imagine how wonderful that would be. Both it would be good for China and it'd be amazing for the North Koreans. And of course, people want to go where there are jobs. They also want to go where there's freedom. So some people wouldn't want to go to China. Some people would be hesitant to go to China. But it's one way South Korea and Japan can solve their demographic problem. I mean, Japan is collapsing demographically. I think South Korea is collapsing even faster. Well, again, open up your borders. Maybe some Chinese would like to leave China, certainly Hong Kong. What about the United States? If we're really demographically going to start shrinking, well, we can solve that through immigration. Open up the borders. Bring people in. And you solve the particular problem that Peter is worried about. Now, the problem doesn't go away because the countries from which they're leaving are going to be in trouble. But that's reality. But again, this is determined by ideas. There's a reason why people want to leave Central America and want to come to America. One is free and one is not. The reason why people want to leave Africa and go to Europe, one is free and one is not. One is rich and one is not. But Europe, again, faces horrific demographics which immigration could solve. And here, by the way, again, one of the great benefits of the United Kingdom, one of the great benefits of England, Britain, is that in spite of the fact of being on an island, in spite of the fact that demographically, again, it's a rich island, some people having fewer and fewer kids so there's shrinking population, what keeps England going, what keeps the UK going is immigration. In spite of Brexit to the Brit's credit, immigration has not declined. What's happened is something they did not expect and that is that the ethnic background of the immigrants has shifted so before Brexit, almost all the immigrants to the UK in the years before Brexit were Eastern European or many of them were Eastern European. Not all, many of them. Post-Brexit Eastern European immigration has collapsed but you get increased immigration from India to Pakistan and they are getting quite a bit of immigrants to the Arab world. But this is revitalizing the UK and you might say, yeah, but they're bringing in their third world culture. Well, look at the Conservative government. You guys should list, get a list of the people in the Conservative government. Now, the woman at the top is a, you know, white woman, Liz Truss. But almost everybody else in the cabinet is brown, black in terms of skin color, female, if it's male, the brown, and these are really good people. I mentioned Kemi Badanak who was raised in Nigeria. Born in the UK to Nigerian parents, went back to Nigeria, raised in Nigeria and then came back to UK and then went to high school, I think, in the UK. And today is a prominent politician. But look how many Conservatives, and again, the Conservatives in the UK are much better than the Conservatives in the US, primarily because they're secular. So demographics are non-destiny. Policy driven by philosophy is destiny. And unfortunately, we have brought in philosophy driving today and therefore brought in policy. So destiny is consistent with the demographics. We're going to hell. But it's not primarily going to be because of demographics. It's primarily going to be because of the statism and the fascism and the nationalism and the weight and left-wing statism that is the consequence of the mysticism of subjectivism and ultimately the moral altruism that is driving this culture and that is driving the political agenda of the culture. So in this case, the outcome is consistent but the causal factors are different and this is why I can be more hopeful than Peter can. Because if it's demographics and geography, then it's demographics and geography and it is what it is and it will be what it will be and there's nothing we can do about it. But if it's ideas, if it's philosophy, then we can change our destiny. If it's ideas, if it's philosophy, then we can have an impact. We can, for example, advocate for immigration, which would solve at least locally the problem. We can advocate for, for example, freedom which will increase immigration and increase the productivity and increase the optimism and the efficaciousness of the people around. And I believe that as they become more efficacious, if they're more optimistic, as they're more positive, as they're freer, they will have more kids. We can convince people to think, to use reason, to live, to live the best life that they can live. Again, I think the more people are convinced of that, the more people embrace life, life with the capital L, the more they embrace living, taking their life seriously and the more they're convinced, the more they're certain that their mind is efficacious and they can achieve happiness and they can live a good life, the more optimistic they become, the more productive they become, the more they will demand freedom, the more I think they will even have kids. So if you don't take ideas seriously, then you get caught up in determinism, even if you yourself are not a determinist, even if you believe people have free will, historical determinism captures all. Oh wow, Jacob Rees-Mogg, another real kind of ancient Brit, that's quite a name, Jacob Rees-Mogg, is head of the energy department. Now Jacob Rees-Mogg, last I know of him, was a real free marketer. He was one of the best conservative members vis-a-vis free markets. So look, there's hope for the UK. Now I was hopeful when Johnson was elected and was gravely disappointed, but this looks like an interesting cabinet. So let's give Liz Truss a, let's give it a benefit of the doubt. Let's hope that this is a government that'll live up to the better members within it and actually do something, do something to move the UK towards more freedom. I mean, Jacob Rees-Mogg is better on climate change, is better on liberating the energy sector. He's quite good. So you've got a number of good people now in the UK government. All right, let's see, where were we? Yeah, I was wrapping up. So you become a determinist even when you don't are not a determinist individual. You become a cultural, historical determinist because what can change? Ideas can change. Ideas can change. And if ideas change, then culture changes. And if culture changes, then the future changes. Then the path is not set. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Brook show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to www.uranbrookshow.com. I go to Patreon, subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course, subscribe. 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