 If you ask me what causes war, I would say it's a negation of reason in favor of some mysticism, mystical cause, and it's the negation of the individual in favor of some collective. Call that collective whatever you want, but in a favor of something else, something, what do they say? Greater than you. Anytime somebody tells you, you should go sacrifice yourself for a cause greater than yourself, run for the hills. They don't care about you. They care about that cause greater than you. You're just sacrificial fodder, and that cause greater than you is almost always, again, the state, the tribe, the collective of one form or another. So I believe those are the two causes of war. Lack of respect for individualism, i.e. collectivism, lack of respect for reason i.e. mysticism. And I'd add one more because I know many of you are big, economics is very important to you, and economic principles are very important to you. What is war? What is trade? Let's do the positive first. What's trade? What's the relationship between two traders? I gain, you lose, right? Mutual benefits. Yeah, mutual benefit. Trade is win-win. Trade is a win-win relationship. And this is maybe the fundamental principle in economics, that when we trade, at least the intention is for both of us to gain. Sometimes we make mistakes and we end up losing. But hopefully, for smart, most of our trades are win-win relationships. What is war? I mean Europe, right? What is war? Is it win-win? Is it win-lose? It's lose-lose. It's lose-lose big time. You could argue the weapons industry is the only winner in a war. And even there, we can discuss what winning means in that context. But clearly, for almost everybody, war is lose-lose. Now sometimes you still have to go to war, maybe to defend yourself. But generally, you're going to lose something. You're going to lose a lot. Maybe you gain more by preserving your liberty or everything, but materially, it's a massive loss. And again, just look at these Ukrainian cities. Look at the number of lives lost. We'll do questions at the end, if you don't mind. Just remember what you wanted to ask. I promise I'll answer. Massive destruction throughout. And the only reason there's not massive destruction right now in Russia is because the Russians have nukes and nobody wants to attack Russia proper. But the destruction is total. And think about, there's probably in excess of 200,000 young men who have died on just the Russian side. Probably over 100, not died, died and injured, right? But injured so that they can't fight anymore. Serious injuries. 200,000. And that doesn't include the Ukrainians where it's over 100,000 on their side, probably. We don't have accurate numbers. But by the time this conflict is over, I wouldn't be surprised if a million young men are either maimed or dead because of this. That's lose-lose. And no matter what benefits you might gain, that's lose-lose. And it takes a certain mentality and attitude towards economics that is oriented towards zero-sum thinking that gets you in to lose-lose transactions. Because if you're engaged in life to win and really understand that in order to win, how do we, how do you win in the game of life? You win in the game of life, among other things, by creating as many win-win relationships as you can, materially and spiritually. You become a billionaire by creating millions, hundreds of millions of win-win relationships with your customers. You become just somebody who has friends and enjoys social life by creating win-win relationships with people. And people engaged in that kind of activity motivated by that kind. They're not interested in war, they're interested in creating more win-win relationships. They don't want to lose-lose. Lose-lose is like horrible. But think about the Russian economy. I mean the economy of Russia is based on not quite a zero-sum view of the world but close to zero-sum view of the world. The Russian economy is not an economy that thrives on entrepreneurship and innovation and small business and business creation. Under Putin in particular, the Russian economy is being oriented towards one thing and really one thing only. What is that? Natural resources of one kind or another, primarily oil and gas. Everything else is being suppressed, everything else is being rejected, even though Russia has great engineers and great software people and that hasn't been what you think of when you think of Russia's quiet economy. The entire state has oriented that economy towards oil, gas, and certain minerals, maybe agriculture, but it's all about taking stuff out of the ground and shipping it somewhere else. Which is not zero-sum, we know it's not zero-sum, but it's as close to you get to zero-sum thinking. There's no reason Russia had to have this kind of economy. The reason is the state decided on it and one has to think about what is it about Putin that oriented him towards just wanting stuff out of the ground. Lack of respect for the human mind, lack of respect of entrepreneurs, maybe he didn't want too many independent thinkers, independent doers, independent wealthy people. All the billionaires in Russia are who? His buddies. We call them oligarchs but at the end of the day it's just another name for Putin's buddies. And he can control them. Yeah, he's not going to control a bunch of Elon Musk's. So the easiest thing is to create an economy we don't get Elon Musk's. And where there is an Elon Musk they leave because you don't want them. You want a bunch of oligarchs who'll do what you tell them to do, who understand at the end of the day who holds the power in that circumstance. So in my view you know war comes about when we have zero-sum thinking, when we have a collectivistic mindset and we reject reason as our tool of knowing the world. And I think that's what happened at the end of the 19th century, early 20th century as philosophers constantly chipped away at the idea of reason as efficacious as reason is valuable. You know Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche. Reason doesn't matter. Reason is not efficacious. Reason doesn't teach us about the world out there. We create reality in our minds. All the variations of secularized mysticism which is what I consider it. I mean what is Marx if not a secularized mystical philosophy? You replace God with the Palletarian and it's just all the same. You as an individual don't matter. You have to sacrifice to not God you have to sacrifice to the Palletarian. But you don't matter. Your mind doesn't matter. How do we discover truth? Well you have to be born a Palletarian to know the truth. Our bourgeoisie can't discover truth because there is no universal standard of reason. And if ever there was a philosophy there was zero-sum, Marxism is zero-sum. So with the rise of Marxism, with the rise of other zero-sum anti-reason anti-individualism ideas in Europe it's not surprise we got a World War I. A World War I in the name of what? Nobody really knows what the war was fought for but it was basically a war of collectives fighting each other for power with the idea that power is to be gained not through win-win relationship but through control, through war, through controlling other people. And World War II again mystical ideologies associated with race instead of class but the same thing the individual doesn't matter reason doesn't matter how do we know what the truth is well you have to be an Aryan to know what the truth is us Jews don't know the truth we can't we're just different type of human beings inferior there's no difference it's just different way to categorize people but it's always about categorizing people and and your genes are what determine who and what you are but it's about the individual doesn't matter the collective matters reason doesn't matter revelation matters and it's a zero-sum mentality I need more land Hitler told that we need more land Hitler told the Germans not more trade not more entrepreneurs not more innovation we need more land we need more oil we need more gas we need more natural resources it's all the same thing it's all the same mentality and we got a World War II as a consequence and for 80 years to some extent that mentality is being held back partially by the fact that the Soviet Union clearly was a failure and partially by the fact that fascism clearly was a failure and Europe at least was not going back to religion so there was this void a void that was filled mainly by people living their lives based on their own reason caring about themselves i.e. individualists and because I think of economists understanding of win-win relationship the establishment of win-win relationships on a global scale I mean I think the European Union is a massive achievement in the sense of it's a regional intent free trade money capital goods that's fantastic and that's a recognition of non-zero-sum nature of the world and you saw that you know all over all over the west trade opened up everywhere globally there's a recognition of the value of the individual you can go to any village anywhere in the world pretty much not everywhere but most places in the world and you ask the audience whose life your life who does it belong to and I have a feeling that two three hundred years ago most people would say the church the king the state nobody says that today there's an implicit sense of individualism maybe it doesn't manifest itself politically as we would like there's a lot of work to do there but in there's a real implicit sense of individualism there's an implicit sense of my mind is capable i'm not looking for the philosopher king there's a real implicit notion of that these ideas are true but it's implicit and for a long time you can survive on these implicit ideas our philosophers the people who teach here at the university and teach at universities in the united states and all over the world don't believe in any of that they don't believe the individual matters they don't believe in human reason and they have a really hard time with win-win relationships as with regard to trade almost all of them are statists when it comes to economics so we have this populist that's kind of with us on the ideas that lead to peace an intellectual class that has no clue that is exactly opposed to it and the result is yes we have peace but it's weak we are weak as countries we don't know what we stand for we don't know what identity is we don't know what the west is we talk about the west and civilization but we have no clue what it is we let it be challenged from the left and from the right and from the middle and we have no way to defend it one of the great challenges of liberalism today is to defend it it's being attacked from every direction because our intellectuals are not liberals not in the sense that we mean liberal and i think Putin is a manifestation of those dark forces those ancient dark forces that lead us to war and he could be an ominous sign of what is to come thank you for listening or watching the iran book 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 your own book show dot com slash support by going to patreon subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those 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 press that little bell button right down there on youtube so that you get an announcement when we go live and for you those of you who already subscribers and those of you who already supporters of the show thank you i very much appreciate it