Predictive History

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Predictive History

Secret History #3: Death by Gerontocracy

We have previously discussed the decline of Western society and civilization and the theories behind why it's happening. Today, we will look at the reality on the ground—the actual trends and current examples of this decline. The Spark: Immigration and Civil Conflict Let me start with this

Secret History #2: How Societies Collapse

The concept of monotheism, the idea of one true God, marked an intellectual revolution in human history. From it, we developed three new ideas: money, the individual, and the nation-state. While these ideas have always existed, monotheism made them the dominant paradigms. Together, they gave us modernity and created

Secret History #1: How Power Works

I first want to talk about Immanuel Kant. We will be discussing him a lot because he is the greatest philosopher in Western history. He taught us how the world works, and this is what he told us: we can never know objective reality. There is an objective reality, what

Civilization #END: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

In July 1944, at the Bretton Woods Hotel in New Hampshire, 40 nations gathered to discuss what the post-war peace would look like. With the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany and Japan assured, the question became: how does the world build peace and prosperity after such a devastating war?

Civilization #59: The Man of Steel

I want to make the argument that Joseph Stalin is probably the greatest man who ever lived. There are three reasons for this. First, Joseph Stalin was a poor high school dropout from Georgia, which is on the fringes of the Russian Empire, and he led an extreme, fringe, and

Civilization #58: Birth of the Nation-State

The nation-state is composed of two words: nation and state. The state is easy to understand; it is the supreme executive authority sovereign to a territory. The nation is a new idea—the idea of a people with a shared identity, whether it's a language, a culture,

Civilization #57: How Modernism Ruined Everything

To understand Sigmund Freud, we must first place him in the context of the Western religious, intellectual, and literary tradition. In the beginning, the main religion for humans during the Ice Age was animism. The idea of animism is that we humans are no different from every other living, conscious

Civilization #56: What Marx Got Wrong

Karl Marx is one of the most influential thinkers in human history. His contribution to intellectual thought cannot be overstated. To begin, let's conduct a thought experiment. Let's pretend there are two scenarios. In scenario one, you get into a really good college and decide to

Civilization #55: Kant, Hegel, and the Theory of Everything

My main argument is that Immanuel Kant takes the main thesis of Dante—that imagination is the animating force of the universe and love is the unifying force—and uses his epistemology to clarify, rationalize, and systemize it. Epistemology simply means the theory of knowledge: how do we know what

Civilization #54: The German Will to Power

We will now discuss Germany and conclude our examination of the four great civilizations fighting for global dominance. We previously covered Britain and America, and then Russia. Today, we focus on Germany. To recap, Russian civilization is very distinct from Anglo-American civilization, and German civilization is also distinct. We&

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