Civilization #26: Constantine's Monotheistic Revolution

Monotheism marks an intellectual revolution in human history, and it created the conditions for modernity—the lives we're living today. The first monotheistic religion is Christianity.

The Christian Tradition vs. The Historical Record

If you talk to Christians, they have a very easy and coherent explanation for why Christianity would come to dominate Europe. This is called the Christian tradition, which is to say we don't have much evidence that this is true, but this is what Christians believe and what they tell each other.

In the Christian tradition, Jesus came from Heaven to redeem humanity from our evil ways. He sacrificed himself, and after he sacrificed himself, he started a new beginning in human history. He was resurrected, and then he went before his Apostles and told them to spread the good news—the gospel—that he has come and he will return, and then he will bring Paradise with him.

There were 12 Apostles plus Paul, and they went all around the world to spread the good news. Paul became the Apostle to the Gentiles, which meant that he was trying to bring everyone into the new religion of Christianity. To show their authority and to show that they are actually the true apostles of Jesus, they are all martyred. Martyrdom meant that you knew they were telling the truth because they were persecuted. They went to India, they went to the Levant, they went everywhere to spread the good news. They interacted with or challenged the traditional religious authority—the pagans of that area—and so they were killed. They were stoned to death or they were executed.

After they died, their students would continue their legacy. These students would become head of the local church they set up, and they became known as the Bishops. Throughout all this time, they were being persecuted by the Romans and by the pagans, but because of their faith in God and because of the miracle that is God, they would eventually triumph. They would spread throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Egypt until they became a very dominant force.

Eventually, the Romans said, "If you can't beat them, join them." The first Roman Emperor to convert was Constantine. Constantine was the first Roman Emperor to become a Christian himself, and then a later Roman Emperor would make Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. This would create the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is called so because Catholic means "universal" or "the one and only." With the creation of the Catholic Church, you had a new idea called Orthodoxy, or "right thinking." One mission of the Catholic church was to combat heresy, or challenging Orthodoxy, to make sure that everyone stayed on the true path.

This is the official history told by the Catholic church and what Christians believe today. But historically, that's not what happened.

The Historical Reality of Early Christianity

Jesus, I argued, was a religious genius, and his idea would be what we call Gnosticism today. Unfortunately, he got unlucky and he ran into the Roman governor of Judea, called Pontius Pilate.

Pontius Pilate had a problem: he was trying to enforce the Imperial cult. The Imperial cult basically just means to think of the Emperor as God. Think of a cult of personality; his pictures and statues were everywhere, including on coins. The Jews hated that because for them, that went against their religion. The first commandment is "You should have no God before me, Yahweh. You shall not worship false gods." Pontius Pilate was having a very tough time dealing with the Jews. He threatened the Jews, and the Jews said, "Well, if you don't get rid of this religious cult, then you have to come kill all of us." Pontius Pilate had to back down. He lost face, and he killed Jesus—he crucified Jesus—as basically a middle finger to the Jewish people.

Because he did that, what he didn't expect is it would make Jesus into a national hero, a martyr. His followers became called the "Poor of Jerusalem." They established a church in Jerusalem and they were supported by the Jewish leaders. They were led by Jesus's brother, James the Just. These people will eventually become the Ebionites. This is important because the Ebionites will eventually spread to Arabia, where they will help develop a new religion called Islam. From the Ebionites, we will develop a new religion called Islam. The Poor got along very well with the Jewish people because they just saw themselves as a branch of Judaism, as following the law of Moses, but in a manner that conformed to how Jesus saw the world.

Then you had a man named Paul. Paul was a Roman citizen and he was part of the Roman elite. He had a problem: he was part of the Jewish diaspora, and because of the religious fanaticism in Jerusalem, that was creating conflict between the Romans and the Jewish diaspora. The Jews believed the Romans were evil and eventually a messiah will emerge from the ranks, from the house of David, who will lead them in the final victory against the Romans.

Paul saw Jesus as an opportunity to basically divorce the Jewish diaspora from the Messianic Jews. That's why he created Proto-Christianity. What he taught is that Jesus is the Messiah, but rather than a prophet of war, he's a prophet of peace. He basically offered an opportunity for members of the Jewish diaspora to assimilate themselves into Roman society. If you consider yourself a Jew, then you believe in the Messiah who will return and fight against the Romans. But if you believe that, then eventually the Romans might come and kill you. What Paul said is if you believe in Jesus, you can still be Jewish, because Jesus was Jewish and this is a Jewish religion, but you will be part of the Roman Empire now, rather than part of just this very parochial religion.

What's really important for us to understand is most people refused to follow Paul. Only a very small minority of people actually followed Paul. Most people who believed in Jesus were following the Ebionites. There were also other groups of people who believed in Jesus, for example, the Gnostics, which we discussed before. You also had these mystery cults. Mystery cults were the most popular form of religious worship, which meant they were just small groups of people who practiced the religion secretly. What made these mystery cults special was they focused on group religious devotion and worship, and they were trying to achieve a sense of oneness and unity. They were trying to be egalitarian and anti-hierarchical. What made them interesting was they used psychedelics a lot; they used drugs a lot in order to achieve a spiritual sense. A lot of them started to believe in Jesus because Jesus could be easily incorporated into a religion.

You have these different early Christian groups around, but what we know is that eventually Paul's group, which again is the smallest of these groups, would eventually triumph. The question then is why. Why is it that Paul's Church, which was the smallest of all these different denominations of early Christianity, would triumph in the end?

The Rise of Paul's Church

First of all, the dominant group was obviously James the Just and the Poor. Well, what happened was this: from 66 to 73 CE, the Romans fought a major war with the Jews. During this war, three things happened.

1. The temple was burned down. Remember, the temple is important because it is the site of religious worship for the Jewish people; it's the equivalent of Mecca today. When Jews in the diaspora prayed, they prayed in the direction of the temple. Now they have a problem because the temple has been burned down. So now you have to redefine what it means to be a Jewish person. As it happened, Paul had a new definition of what it meant to be a Jewish person: you believe in Jesus as Messiah rather than make sacrifices at the temple.
2. James and his group were wiped out. Not everyone was killed, but the majority of them were wiped out. Their denomination in Jerusalem was targeted and they were extinguished. This is important because the major authority figure at this time is James the Just. Because he's the brother of Jesus, if he's dead, there's no more authority. Therefore, Paul can claim, as he does, to be the real authority.
3. It scared the Jewish diaspora. It scared members of the Jewish diaspora, and a lot of them now saw Paul's Church as a very good alternative. They were afraid that the Romans might target the diaspora, and so to show their allegiance to the Romans, while still wanting to maintain their Jewish identity, a lot of them started to join Paul's church. Not a great deal, but an increasing number.

This would just start one of three major wars between the Romans and the Jews. There would be two more major wars, and in both wars, a lot of Jews would get killed, and a lot would get enslaved. This would drive more participation into Paul's Church. A lot of Jews were now joining Paul's church because of these wars. The church was seen as an escape mechanism for diaspora Jews from these wars.

The other thing about Paul's church and why it became dominant is it mirrored the social structure of the Roman Empire. The social structure of the Roman Empire is called the paterfamilias, and this is basically the idea of patriarchy. There's one man, the father, who is in charge of the entire household, and the household is basically a small empire unto itself. You have the immediate family—the sons, the children—you also have the freedmen, who are slaves freed to work in the household, and then you have the slaves. They were in charge of their own household, but they also had clients. This is the patron-client relationship. The goal of Roman society was to have as many clients as possible because this gave you social prestige, or what at that time was called dignitas. The more clients you had, the more people who obeyed you, the more dignitas you had.

Paul's church was a hierarchy as well, modeled on the paterfamilias. At the top was the bishop, and the bishop was in charge of something called dogma, which is how Jesus is to be understood. This is important because the problem with most early Christians is they were egalitarian, which meant that you could have your own interpretation of Jesus. But in this church, which is hierarchical, only the bishop or the person in charge had the right interpretation, and you had to follow his interpretation. This allowed the church to scale out into other churches.

Much more importantly, after you reached a certain size, it made sense for the church to participate in the patron-client relationship of the paterfamilias. This meant that they would now invite a local aristocrat to become the bishop. If that would happen, the local bishop would then convert his entire network and become Christian. The aristocrat would agree to do this because it allowed him to more quickly scale out and expand his patron-client network. The church became a mechanism for him to expand his social network and political power.

Eventually, Christianity would reach a point where it actually challenged the authority of the emperor himself. Remember, throughout history, the nobility was always in conflict with the king or the emperor. Now that the nobility was able to better organize because of the structure of the church, the emperor saw it as a problem. So there were some local persecutions—not global, not imperial persecutions—of Christians because of the power struggle.

But eventually, an emperor named Constantine emerged. He had fought a very bitter Civil War in order to reclaim the throne. As we know from our reading of history, great kings always want to introduce new religions to consolidate their authority. Think of King David introducing the new religion of Judaism, or Augustus introducing the Aeneid to the Roman people. Constantine wanted to introduce a new religion to unify the Empire and to consolidate his authority, and that became the Christian religion. That's why he converted to become Christian. He began to sponsor the beginning of something called the Catholic Church, and he was the first pope, or the head of the Catholic Church.

The Problem of Defining Jesus: The Council of Nicaea

Now that you have a Catholic Church, you have the idea of Orthodoxy. That's a problem because, remember, throughout this history, there are many divergent forms of Christianity. The Catholic Church began a process of eliminating all its competitors until it became the most dominant. But the problem with Orthodoxy is that a lot of Christian history is made up on the spot, and so there are a lot of contradictions.

One of the major problems in Christianity is the relationship between God and Jesus. Who is Jesus, really? This is a fundamental problem in Christianity. It was a fundamental problem back then, and it still remains a fundamental problem today. Throughout this time, there have been different solutions, different theories proposed to solve this problem. There's also something called the Holy Spirit, which we haven't really discussed. Think of the Holy Spirit as the expression of God on Earth. When God wants to do something on Earth—for example, he wants to move this table—he does it through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the expression of God on Earth; it's what we interact with. When we pray, we pray to the Holy Spirit rather than to God.

There have been major different theories proposed to explain the relationship between God, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus.

• Modalism: This is the idea that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are the same being, but they are in different modes. The metaphor is to think of water. If it's really cold, water becomes ice. If it's really hot, water becomes vapor. Water, ice, and vapor are the same being, but they're in different forms. That's the idea of modalism: Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit are the same thing, but they are expressed differently in different times. This is logical, but it creates a problem because if you actually read the Bible, you will see some passages where Jesus prays to God. That doesn't make any sense, because why would you pray to yourself? It's a theory, but it's not a great theory.
• Partialism: This is the idea that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are parts of a higher being. Think of the ocean. There's one ocean that covers the entire planet, but it has different parts: the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean. That's the idea here, where God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are just parts of a higher being. But then the question becomes, what is this higher being? Again, this makes sense, but it's not a great theory.
• Arianism: This was created by a religious teacher named Arius. His understanding was that if God created Jesus, then that means God came before Jesus, which means God has to be superior to Jesus. So God is a higher being than Jesus. Jesus is still great, but God is the superior being. Again, not great, but it makes sense.

There's this huge controversy as to the nature of God and the nature of Jesus. So what Constantine does is, in 325 CE, he orders all the Bishops of the Roman Empire to converge in a place called Nicaea: the Council of Nicaea. During this conference, they have to figure out what the nature of God is. These are all the bishops from the various churches, and the four major churches, of course, are Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. They're all there trying to figure out what the nature of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God are.

This is the solution, and this is a solution that even today no one can really figure out.

There are three beings: God, Holy Spirit, and Jesus. They are not the same thing. They're separate. They're not equal. These are three different entities, but they're all God.

This is called the Holy Trinity, and this is the major idea underlying Christianity today. God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are not the same thing, they're not equal, but they're all God. This is called the godhead.

The Birth of Monotheism

Let's try to figure out what's going on here. Why did they pick this theory?

First of all, what we need to understand is these first three theories—Modalism, Partialism, and Arianism—are really stories. They're stories of who God is. The godhead is an equation. What's the difference? In a story, you can personalize it. You can put yourself into the story and you can talk to God. Therefore, you can interpret the story the way you want to interpret it, and you can argue about the story with others. That's what stories do. But you can't do that in an equation. How do you put yourself into this equation? You don't belong anywhere. The system is closed off to you; you're excluded from it. You can't interact with the godhead. Therefore, you cannot argue here. There's no room for interpretation and argument. There's no room for debate. That's the first major advantage of the godhead. You cannot debate anything because there's nothing to debate. You either accept it or you don't accept it. There's nothing in between.

Second, before, we understood faith as something that you experience personally. You can talk to God, you can feel God. But with the godhead, it's something that you have to believe. You have to believe in miracles, which forces the idea of faith as blind obedience. Before the godhead, faith is something that you have to experience for yourself. Now, faith is just blind obedience. You have to accept this as it is. You have to memorize it. It's like mathematics. When you go to math class, you're not asked to figure out why the proofs work; you just have to memorize the proofs.

Third, the godhead is exclusionary. Exclusionary just means that you can't put any other theories in here. If you look at these three theories—Modalism, Partialism, and Arianism—you can actually put them together. They're not contradicting each other. They're not fighting against each other. They're different, but you can actually put them together. Whereas with this equation, it's exclusionary. You cannot put any other theories into it, and you cannot put this into any other theories.

If you put these three things together—something that you have to accept and cannot debate, something that forces your blind obedience, something that is exclusionary—it creates a new idea in human history called monotheism.

This is a new, radical idea in human history. Never before could we imagine something called monotheism. Before, there were some religions with one God, but this one God would also interact with other gods, or this one God would create new gods. But the idea of monotheism is there's only one God, and that's it. This is radical in human history.

The Consequences of Monotheism

If we memorize this formula—and you're forced to memorize this formula—your understanding of reality changes. There's only one way to understand reality that makes this true. The understanding is this: God is nothing and everything.

There's only one way that reality is structured that makes this statement true: God is Holy Spirit and Jesus, but God is not Holy Spirit and Jesus. The understanding of reality is God is nothing and everything, meaning God is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Meaning that God is all reality. What this tells us is this: symbols become reality. The symbols of reality, the representation of reality, become conflated into reality itself.

If we do that, this creates three new ideas that become the underlying basis of modernity:

• Capitalism
• Science
• The Nation-State

Before, we didn't have these three ideas. But now we do, because we have come to believe that symbols are reality. We have come to believe that God is nothing and everything.

Let's look at this. What is the underlying basis of capitalism? Money. Let's talk about money, because I think money is the best way to understand this idea that God is nothing and everything.

If you and I go back in time and we ask the people there, "What is the basis of wealth in your society?" they might say gold or silver. We ask, "Why is that the case? Why is gold and silver the basis of wealth in your society?" And they say, "Well, because gold is beautiful. You can make jewelry out of it. Also, it's very hard to get gold. You have to mine it, and it's very hard to mine it. And also, it's rare." So you're like, "Okay, that makes sense. Gold can be the basis of wealth."

Now, let's imagine some people from a thousand years ago transport to our time. They ask us the same questions: "What's the basis of wealth in your society?" And we say, "Money." And then they ask, "What is money?" And then we say, "Well, money is paper that the government prints." And then they're like, "Okay, but wait, wait, wait. That makes no sense, because the government can print as much money as it wants." We're like, "Yeah, that's right." They're like, "But how can you trust the government? How can you trust the government not to print like 20 trillion today? How can you trust them to behave?" We're like, "We don't know." And they're like, "Then why do you think money is valuable?"

Why do we think money is valuable? Because we believe money is God. Because money is nothing and everything. Because the symbols have become reality.

The question then is, why do we believe this? Why do we believe money is God? Why do we believe money is valuable? Because the power of monotheism is that it destroys other realities. It crowds out other realities.

The first characteristic of monotheism is that symbols become reality. The second is that it crowds out other realities. Before, in human history, we believed there were many realities. There was a spiritual reality, there were many spiritual realities, and in those realities, money didn't really matter. But now with monotheism, we've destroyed those other realities. Only the material reality exists.

But not only that, for monotheism to work, it has to expand until it becomes true. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, the third characteristic is aggressive expansionism. Not only will it expand, but it has to destroy those who criticize it. In society, you are not ever allowed to ask the question, "Wait, what if money has no value because the government can print as much money as it wants?" You are not allowed to ask this question. You're not allowed to think of this question. You're not allowed to imagine the possibility of this question.

That's what monotheism is. There are three main characteristics of monotheism that have enabled it to create the world that we live in today:

1. It destroyed the idea of symbols. Symbols are now reality. Money does not represent wealth; money is wealth.
2. It has destroyed all realities except for the material reality that we live in today. You are not allowed to think of spiritual realities. In school, we do not teach the idea of a spiritual reality, even though in our hearts we know it must exist.
3. It is defined by aggressive expansionism. It is always expanding because only by expanding can it be true. That's why the two major monotheistic religions of our time, Christianity and Islam, are so violent. They're the source of most major wars throughout human history.

We think capitalism, science, and the nation-state are all really good things. But why? Let's look at science. Science only concerns itself with the material reality. If you can't see it, it doesn't exist. But then this creates a problem, because science refuses to engage in hard questions. One question that I think is very interesting is, "What is thought? What is consciousness? How do we think?" The response of science to all these questions is, "Don't think about it. It's not a problem." And you're like, "Wait a minute. Consciousness is what makes us human. If we can't figure out what consciousness is, then we will never know what it means to be human." And science's response is that human beings are just the sum of biological parts. You are just your brain and your head and your eyes and your arms put together, because that's what we can measure. But the question of what consciousness is, how we imagine things, how we understand things—science doesn't know, and it refuses to engage in this problem.

Losing Touch with Reality: Symbols, Evil, and Sophistication

One thing that you're taught in school which is not true is that we're so much more sophisticated than ancient civilizations because ancient civilizations had these superstitious beliefs, like gods—like Apollo and Athena—and obviously they don't exist. So the fact that these ancient humans believed they exist demonstrates how stupid they are.

But here's the thing: if you go back to these societies and you were to analyze thoroughly how they understood Apollo and Athena and other gods, you would understand that they didn't actually believe these gods existed. They believed these gods were metaphors and symbols for forces in nature that could influence our lives. For example, take the idea of hatred and vengeance. Hatred and vengeance would become manifested in gods like Strife and Nemesis. The ancients believed this was a better way to understand the world. They understood that these forces were so powerful that we couldn't really control them. Therefore, we must be conscious of these forces and control them better ourselves.

Unfortunately, today we believe that because these gods don't exist—they're just symbols—then hatred and vengeance don't really exist either. They're just states of mind. They're just emotions, and you can just pretend they don't exist and then you're fine. The word we use for this is positive psychology. It's the dumbest idea in the world. It's the idea that if you think you're happy, then you're happy. Whereas the ancients thought that these were external forces and you have to work hard to tame them or to understand them. I think the ancients had a much more thorough and nuanced understanding of reality than we do.

Another idea that we don't have today is evil. The ancients struggled with the idea of evil. What is evil? Where does it come from? There was a very popular book at that time called The Book of Enoch. The Book of Enoch explains why there was a great flood. Remember, in the Bible, there's this flood that wipes out humanity, and only Noah survives. The Book of Enoch tells a story of why God had to destroy the world.

After God created the world, his angels, called the Watchers, saw humans and they thought that humans were stupid and evil, so they came down to better manage us. But then they started to lust after women, and they started to have children with these women. This created giants called the Nephilim. We humans just saw them as gods. Remember the Epic of Gilgamesh? Well, Gilgamesh was a Nephilim. We started to make sacrifices and pay tributes to these giants. But over time, these giants became more and more greedy, and so they started to devour us and fight amongst themselves. Now God up in heaven recognizes this problem, and so he creates a flood to destroy these Nephilim, these giants.

They're wiped out, but because they are born of angels, they are immortal. So they become these evil spirits that roam around the earth, and they try to create chaos. There's one great king called Solomon, King David's son, and he discovers these evil spirits and he captures them with a ring. But these evil spirits recognize that we as human beings are all flawed, so they tempt him with a beautiful woman. Solomon wants to have sex with her, but she says, "To have sex with me, you must worship my god." Solomon agrees, and he becomes controlled by these evil spirits.

After monotheism, after the Catholic Church, they banned The Book of Enoch. Obviously, if you're a powerful person, you don't want ordinary people thinking that you can be tempted by evil. If you're an evil spirit, you're going to go tempt powerful people, because it is the most advantageous to you, and the powerful people are the easiest people to tempt because they love power. So today, we're not allowed to ask the question about evil. Where does evil come from? Why are people evil? You're not allowed to think it.

Monotheism is crowding out different realities and possibilities from us. We live in a world that, even though we are much more wealthy and technologically advanced, we are much less sophisticated than in historical times.

Let me summarize the consequences of monotheism on our lives.

Throughout most of human history, we humans believed that gods are everywhere. Every day we're interacting with gods because we believe in spiritual realities. And again, gods are metaphors. Now, what do we believe? We believe that money is God. We structure our lives around the idea of money. Why do we come to school? To get good grades so that we can get into a university. Why? Because we need a job to make money. Why? Because buying things will make us happy. That's what everyone believes. God is money, money is God. The ultimate consequence of this for our lives is that life is alienating. Think about the number of depressed people in the world. Depression is a new idea; it didn't exist before. Think about the number of people who live depressing lives, who are unhappy, who are angry, who just hate themselves and their lives.

Throughout most of human history, we believed spiritual reality is real. There's a higher plane, there are higher dimensions, there are spirits who roam in these dimensions. When we die, we will enter these spiritual realms, and therefore we must prepare for entry into the spiritual realms by living spiritual lives on Earth. Now, today, we only believe that material reality is real. When we die, we're nothing. We came from nothing, we live our lives, then we die, we become nothing. That's pretty depressing. What this means for our society is that facts matter more than truth. In school, you learn facts, you don't learn truth. In science class, you're learning facts, you're not learning truth. There's a huge difference. Facts are things that happen in the world. Truth is how the world works. There's a difference. You don't learn how the world works in science class; you just learn things that happen in the world that happen to be true.

The last major consequence is this: pre-modern, we believed that slavery was the worst evil. If you believe in spiritual realities and you believe that when you die you will just ascend to the spiritual realm, then you want to live your best life on Earth. You don't want to be a slave. But now, what are you taught? You're taught that death is the worst evil. The worst thing that can happen to you is dying, because when you die, you become nothing. So what does this mean? It means we are all slaves. If you're afraid of dying, you can't live your best life. You're not going to take risks, you're not going to ask questions, you're not going to explore. We are all slaves, every one of us, because we are afraid to die.

Monotheism is what creates the world we live in today, and it explains why we live the lives we do today.

What's important for us to understand is this is not an instant change. This is something that will have to be fought over for about a thousand years, because monotheism—this godhead—is such a strange idea that people refuse to believe it. This was a minority religion at that time. But again, because this is a religion that must expand, it will eventually triumph and create the world we live in today, but only by killing millions and millions of people in these religious wars. From the day the Catholic Church was built, it was engaging in Crusades and inquisitions against people who refused to believe in this Orthodoxy.

Why are we less sophisticated than before?

We are less sophisticated than before because before, everyone was very intuitive and very imaginative, meaning that they could imagine themselves living in different realities at the same time. There's a physical reality that you experience, but then there's also this higher dimension, the spiritual reality that you could feel. For example, if I were to fight with you, I would experience that, but I could also see maybe this god behind me pulling my strings and the god behind you pulling your strings as well.

When you read The Iliad, there are all these other realities that exist on top of each other: the reality that we live, but also a higher reality where the gods negotiate amongst themselves. Again, this is a metaphor, a symbol for the structural forces that govern the universe. So when I mean sophisticated, I really mean much more intuitive and much more imaginative than we are today.

What made us lose the ability to imagine?

It's these three things, really: capitalism, science, and the nation-state. With capitalism, what it teaches us is that money is the only good, the highest good. So it crowds out other things, like love of each other or interconnectedness. If you are a mother who loves your child, guess what? It doesn't matter. But if you think about it, the most beautiful thing in the world is a mother loving her children. But because of capitalism, we're taught that doesn't exist because you cannot financially exploit it. You can't measure it.

Then you look at science. Science is the ultimate religion because everyone believes it has to be true; it's objective. But the idea of objectivity doesn't exist. This is something proven, something that elite scientists know, but which we don't really understand. Objectivity doesn't exist. In fact, what elite scientists now know—and this is a very strange idea—is the universe, reality, is a collective hallucination. The idea is that the universe is what we imagine it to be. It doesn't exist on its own. But we believe it exists on its own because of science. So when you go to science class, you think you're learning the truth, but you're actually learning a religion that hinders you from imagining other realities.

And of course, the nation-state. The nation-state now is like God. Who are you? You are a Chinese citizen. But before, we didn't think like that. We just saw ourselves as members of a community, and it could be a global community. You could have many identities. But now, if you're a Chinese citizen, you're not an American citizen, because you're in competition with each other. These are the three underlying ideas of the reality we live in today, and this wasn't true before.