Civilization #31: The Oceanic Currents of History

To better understand human history, what's happening in the world today, and to be able to predict the future, we must build on what we've learned. If you have been following current events, there are now three major conflicts in the world.

The Three Major Conflicts Shaping Our World

The first and most devastating is the war in the Ukraine, where Russia and Ukraine have been in conflict for about three years now. A lot of people have died. There's controversy over the exact number, but it's possible that over a million soldiers have died in this war so far. Even though President Donald Trump of the United States has shown signs that he wants to end the war, we don't really know when it will end. This war in Ukraine is still happening, and it's affecting everything and everyone. It brings a lot of instability and uncertainty to the world, it's driving up prices, and it's making things inconvenient. When you fly to the United States, you'll discover that it takes longer because you can't fly through Russia; you have to fly around it.

The second conflict, which is not as deadly but will probably prove to be even more dangerous, is the war in the Middle East. As you know, for the past couple of years, Israel has been in conflict with basically most of its neighbors. It's launched an expedition into the Gaza Strip against Hamas for what Hamas did on October 7th. It's launched a war against Lebanon and is involved in Syria. The signs tell us that this conflict will spread. Trump has come in and promised a resolution, but there are historical, structural forces that make this conflict possibly the beginning of World War III.

The great fear right now is that Israel attacks Iran and drives the United States into a war with Iran. This would mark the beginning of World War III and could possibly lead to the end of the world as we know it. If the United States attacks Iran, both Russia and China must intervene in some capacity. Iran is the lynchpin of the global economy for two reasons. First, there's a lot of oil in Iran and the Middle East, and China, South Korea, and Japan get most of their oil from there. If the oil supply is cut off, the Chinese, South Korean, and Japanese economies—basically all of East Asia—face economic collapse and catastrophe.

Second, if you look at a map, Iran is really the center of the world, meaning most of the world's trade goes through that area, especially through something called the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran has the capacity to cut off all trade in the Strait of Hormuz, and that would be a catastrophe for the global economy. If that were to happen, the Western powers would need to get involved to free up the strait, and then Russia, India, China—who knows? A lot of people would have to get involved to protect their economic interests. There are these geopolitical factors, but there are also religious factors that are driving the conflict in the Middle East.

The third and final conflict is basically the United States against the world. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991, we have been living in a unipolar moment, meaning there's only one hegemon, one superpower. As such, the United States has been able to dictate policy, especially economic policy, around the world. The United States controls all trade; we have to use the US dollar to trade. The United States also uses its military to protect shipping lanes, a system called the Pax Americana, or the American peace. This has brought tremendous prosperity to the world. China would not have grown as fast as it did without the Pax Americana; it is American warships that allow Chinese ships to sail safely to deliver goods around the world.

But this unipolar moment has also created a lot of conflict. The main conflict is that the United States can invade any country for no reason. In 2003, it invaded Iraq for no reason. It destroyed Libya for no reason. It almost destroyed Syria for no reason. The number of countries the United States has gone and destroyed is staggering. That's why Russia under Putin, because it felt bullied and disrespected, is now in conflict with the United States. Strangely enough, this has caused the United States to go into conflict with the rest of the world. As you may know, the United States right now under Trump has declared or is about to launch trade wars against a lot of countries: Canada, Mexico, and quite possibly, very quickly, the European Union. The United States is already at economic war with Russia and China.

If you know enough history and study the historical structural forces that drive global conflict, then you'll understand what's going on and be able to predict what will happen.

Two Traditional Models of Historical Analysis

How can we understand the movement of history? Why do people do what they do? Why do nations go to war? Why do nations have peace? I'm looking at grand history, at the large structural movement of history. In the past, there have been two main models for understanding historical development.

1. The Cycle

The first is the idea of a cycle or a circle. This makes sense because it mirrors what we experience in life. We are born, but then we die, and then other people are born, and then they die. It's a cycle. You look at the seasons: there's winter, which gives rise to spring, then summer, then fall, then winter again. For most of human history, people have understood the movement of the world as a cycle.

This is certainly true in Chinese history. Dynasties rise because they have the Mandate of Heaven. Heaven favors them, and they do justice when they first arise. But over time, for a variety of reasons—because of corruption, because there's a bad emperor—they lose the Mandate of Heaven, which allows a rebellion, which then creates a new dynasty. Chinese history is almost a continuous cycle of dynastic rise and decline.

In the Western context, there's also a cycle. There are many different cycles, but let me explain one we've noticed in the Greek and Roman world. The cycle is this: there are three major factions in a society:

• The people, whose strength comes from their numbers, their mass.
• The nobility, a minority of people who have authority. They are respected because they know more and are better at war than ordinary people.
• The king or a great person, who has the army.

These three factions are always in conflict, and what happens is a changing alliance where two of the three get together to beat one, forcing a new alliance. You first have an aristocracy, where the nobility is in charge and everyone has to do what they command. But over time, this aristocracy becomes corrupt by exploiting the people through debt. The nobles own the land, and you have to work it for a share. But sometimes the weather is bad, so you can't pay the rent, and they give you a loan. Over time, this loan becomes a debt, and at a certain point, you can't pay it off. You become a slave, and your children become slaves as well.

This creates a lot of conflict. How is this resolved? One of the nobility wants to be king and sees an opportunity. He tells the people, "If you make me king, I will clear your debts." This creates a monarchy. The first king is usually a good king because he had to work hard to obtain his position, and people love him for clearing their debts (this is what we call a Jubilee). But the problem is the king has a son who's not so good, and then that son has a son who's awful. So, the nobility and the people get angry, rebel, and create a democracy.

But then, in the democracy, the best speakers or the wealthiest people control the votes. They get together and create an aristocracy. You see how the cycle works? It goes on and on. These three factions are always in conflict, and the way they form alliances creates a certain form of government.

You can see this cycle happening today in the United States as well. Who is Trump? Trump is a king. What is Trump saying? He is saying to the people, "The elite are corrupt, the elite are stealing from you, the elite are lying to you. Vote for me, and I will destroy the elite and give you more economic opportunities." Trump is not going to be president for four years; his ambition is to be king. We see this cycle throughout human history.

2. The Line

We also have another model of historical development, which is a line: the idea of progress towards truth. The idea of the line is that human society does not go on in a useless cycle; it is moving towards a truth, a good end.

This idea has been around for a very long time. In the Bible, when King David first sponsored it, the Bible was a line where Yahweh, the God, was looking for a friend he could trust to rule his kingdom of heaven. He first tried Adam and Eve, and they disobeyed him. Then he tried Noah, then Abraham, then Moses, and then he found his true friend, who is David. The truth is David in the Hebrew Bible.

Then you have the Romans. Virgil wrote something called the Aeneid, and in it, Troy was destroyed so that Rome could be founded. When Rome was founded, it would have to fight a series of wars that would eventually lead to the rise of Augustus Caesar. This would create the Pax Romana, and this is the end of history. This is where all movement ends because once you achieve the Pax Romana, there will be no more war. Obviously, this is not true, but back then, they thought it was.

If you know a little bit about current history, you'll know about a man named Francis Fukuyama, who works for the American government. He wrote an essay called "The End of History?" arguing that when the Soviet Union fell, it showed the end of history. Before, history was a battle of ideas: communism versus capitalism. With the fall of the Soviet Union, we now know that Western liberal consumer democracy is the best system in the world. We no longer have to argue about this. Everyone should try to be a liberal consumer democracy, including China. If everyone became one, there would be no more war. We wouldn't want to fight because we're too busy spending money, and the best way to make money is through trade, not war. We now also know this is not true.

The main proponents of the line theory of history are actually Christians. They believe that Jesus marks a turning point in history, a progress towards truth. What is truth? The second coming of Jesus, which will mark the end of the world. When Jesus returns, he will usher in a millennium—a thousand years of peace—when he will be king, and we will all have to obey him.

This idea is what is driving a lot of the conflict in the Middle East, believe it or not. There are millions of Christians, called Christian Zionists, who want war in the Middle East because if there's war and the world is about to end, Jesus has to return from heaven to save us.

You think this is silly, you think this is crazy, but I'm telling you right now, this idea, which millions of people around the world believe in, is one of the main causes of the war in the Middle East. Crazy ideas make crazy events. There are people who literally believe that we can save the world by ending it. It's only the threat of nuclear holocaust, the threat of the end of Israel, that will force Jesus to return, issuing the second coming.

A Variation: Hegel's Dialectic

There are variations to these two basic models. For example, Friedrich Hegel has this idea called the dialectic. A dialectic just means a conflict or a conversation. He believes that history is driven by ideas that are in conflict with each other. Wherever there's an idea, for example, capitalism, a new idea will arise to challenge it—we'll call it communism. Then, these two ideas will merge, drawing on the best parts of each other, and we can call this socialism. It's a line, but it's almost like this: there's an idea, something comes in conflict, and this leads to a new idea, which then leads to a new idea. He still believes that we are progressing towards the truth through this conflict. The idea of the dialectic will lead to, of course, Marxism. Marx is drawing a lot on Hegel and another philosopher named Immanuel Kant for his theory of communism.

These are the two main models of historical development: the cycle or the line. You either believe that things move in continuous motion or that they're moving towards an end.

A New Model: The Oceanic Curve of History

These two models don't really work. History as an academic discipline is just not very good. You look at the world today—the Trump presidency, the conflict in Ukraine, the Middle East conflict—and you would expect historians to come out and say, "Oh, this has happened before, and we can predict what will happen." But they're not doing that. They're not very good at predicting things. History is notorious for not being able to tell us much about the future. They say it's because we look at the past. For me, this is frustrating. If history is any good, if it's accurate, then it should help us predict the future or at least better understand the present.

Truth does two things: first, it explains why this happened. Why did World War II start? The answer we have today is something like, "Hitler was a bad guy; he was evil." That doesn't explain much. Second, if it's truthful, it predicts. History doesn't do that.

I want to fix this problem by introducing a new model of history, which is a lot more complicated but more useful at explaining why things happen and helping us predict what will happen. This model is what I call the oceanic curve of history. Imagine the world as a huge ocean. Within each ocean, there's an ecosystem with currents, and these currents come into conflict with each other, which leads to a new development. Think about hurricanes. The thing that's really important about this model is there's no moral judgment in it. In the line model, the end is good and where we're at now is bad. But moral judgment—saying this is good, this is bad—is not helpful. It doesn't really tell us anything. I'm much more interested in explaining why this happened, how this happened, and where this is going.

Culture as the Meta-Reality

To understand this theory, you need to see that the world is divided into cultural ecosystems. Culture is the meta-reality. A meta-reality is the understanding of the world from which all other understandings derive. Culture is the most important part of who you are—much more important than your gender, race, ethnicity, or economic demographic.

To understand this, I will do a thought experiment. Let's take a random guy from China 2,000 years ago. We take him off the streets and put him into China today. In 2,000 years, China has changed a lot. We now have the internet, computers, cell phones, skyscrapers, cars, and roads. How long would it take for him to adapt to the new China? I would say at most five to ten years. Because even though on the surface China has changed a lot, deep down, China's culture has stayed consistent for the past 3,000 to 4,000 years. He would understand how to make friends. If he were to get a job, he would understand how to associate with his boss and colleagues. If he were to get married, he would know how to raise his children to have them succeed in China. It would take him time to learn how to use a cell phone, a computer, and drive a car, but he could do so.

Now, let's do another experiment. Let's take a random guy from China today and put him in Germany today. I will argue that he will never, ever be able to adapt to the culture. He may get a job as a pizza delivery man, but he will never make friends who are German. He won't find a German wife. Whatever job he does, he won't know how to succeed. He won't know what to say to his boss or how to associate with him. This is a guy who knows the internet, how to drive a car, and can speak English, but because of the culture, he's always a stranger.

This thought experiment shows you the persistence of culture. It's the most important part of who you are. It drives everything else: how you see the world and how you interact with others. What matters is culture and nothing else.

The world can be divided into cultural ecosystems because of history, geography, and demographics. Europe is a cultural ecosystem. Someone from Germany can go to Italy and still feel at home. They don't speak the same language, and the geography is different, but they share the same cultural orientation and values. The Middle East is another cultural ecosystem. Then you have the steppes—this ocean of grassland that extends from Hungary to Mongolia. And you have China, India, and so on. These different cultural ecosystems are determined by their geography, history, and demographics. Culture is a response to these factors.

The Pattern of Empire and Collapse

Within each ecosystem, they're always interacting with each other. When they change, they change their interaction with each other.

Why do empires fall? Why do they climb? Why do they fail? How was it possible for the Roman Empire to collapse? How were the Greeks able to defeat the Persian Empire? How were the Mongols able to conquer the Chinese Empire? When an empire is conquered, the pattern is the same. There's a consistent pattern.

What happens is this: there's usually an empire, let's just say Rome. As it expands, it encounters the Borderlands—places that are the intersections of empires. Mongolia is the borderland of the Chinese Empire. Arabia is the borderland of the Byzantine and Sassanian Persian Empires. The Borderlands and the empire become, at first, symbiotic. They depend on and work with each other in three ways:

1. Trade: They trade with each other.
2. Military Cooperation: The empire often needs mercenaries, and people who live in the Borderlands make very good soldiers because they live in a time of war and chaos with no central authority.
3. Raiding: Some people in the Borderlands will raid and pillage the outskirts of the empire for resources.

The pattern is this: the Borderlands first start off as isolated regions of the world—Arabia, the steppes, the Germanic North (what we call Scandinavia today). As the empire expands, it starts to interact with these isolated ecosystems. When they interact, these Borderlands become energized. It's like the empire is adding fuel to the Borderlands by giving them more wealth, knowledge, and access to information.

Over time, because of this new energy, the Borderlands become much more populated, wealthy, and knowledgeable. This creates internal conflicts within the Borderlands, and the only way for them to resolve this conflict is to expand. In the process of expansion, they will conquer the empire. That's the pattern.

The Borderlands are first these isolated regions that no one knows much about. When the empire expands, it energizes them, making them more wealthy, populated, and militarily sophisticated. This creates internal conflicts, forcing them to expand. During this expansion, they come in conflict with the empire and, now and then, will conquer it and become the new empire. This is how the Mongolians conquered China. This is how the Manchus conquered China. Before the Mongolians and Manchus conquered China, there was trade, and the Chinese Empire was using them as mercenaries. There was also a lot of small-scale conflict.

Why Empires Are Destined to Collapse

How is it possible for the Borderlands, which are only a fraction of the wealth, population, and resources of the empire, to conquer it? The important lesson is that empires are destined to collapse. Empires must collapse.

There are three boundary conditions of all societies. Eventually, all societies must collapse for three reasons.

1. Financialization

When a society first starts, it's important for people to contribute to its growth. I can do that by starting a farm; when I build a farm, I make goods and create wealth for society. You can also do that by building a factory. But over time, you eventually realize that it's more profitable to lend money than to build things. It's much more profitable and easier to be a capitalist than to be an entrepreneur.

The French economist Thomas Piketty wrote a book called Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and he makes the argument that inequality in society happens because of the nature of capital. Money seeks to grow for the sake of growing, and the best way for capital to grow is by consolidating and charging rents. For example, there are five restaurants in Beijing competing against each other. They lower prices and try to make better food. But eventually, they figure out, "Hey, we're five restaurants, we can just get together and negotiate a cartel, a deal where we all charge high prices." Then they make more money. That's something we call rent-seeking behavior. The idea of rent-seeking is to create a monopoly, which forces people to buy at whatever prices you charge. That's the ultimate goal of business.

Over time, because capital consolidates, it's much more profitable to engage in capitalism than in entrepreneurship. You're better off investing in the stock market than getting a job. Piketty shows that the return on financial capitalism is 5% a year on average. If you put $100 in the stock market, you make $5. But the return on the real economy is only 2%. If you start a factory, hire people, or start a restaurant—which contributes real growth to the economy—you only make 2%.

That's why if you go to America, you'll find that young people your age are not working. They're investing in Bitcoin, playing the real estate market, investing in stocks. You make more money doing that than by doing real work and creating a company. In other words, your society isn't producing any value, and as a result, your economy can't move on. When you're in this situation, what are you forced to do? Historically, what have societies done to get out of this situation of financialization?

They make war. War destroys things. When you destroy things, you are forced to rebuild them. That's why we have war: it's a game reset. It allows a society to rebuild itself. Over time, the economy matures to a point where everyone becomes a renter or a landlord, trying to charge people to use their land. They don't want to work. At that point, you have no choice but to start a war to reset your society, or your society will continue to decline.

2. Rat Utopia

The second boundary condition is the idea of Rat Utopia. This is an experiment that's been done many times. The idea is this: what happens to rats in a perfect world? Normally, rats have an extremely ritualized society. For example, to mate, male rats go on top of a mound where all the female rats can see them, and they start to dance. This attracts the attention of a female. The male rat starts to chase the female, who runs back into her burrow and hides. The male has to stand outside and wait for her to come out. When she comes out, she will start running again, and he will chase her. They do this multiple times until eventually, the female rat lets him catch her, and they will have sex and have children. It's a very heavily ritualized society, no different from human society.

Experimenters asked themselves what would happen if we made a perfect world where no one had to fight for food. Every day, food would come down from the heavens, and all the rats could do whatever they want. They would have complete freedom. This is what we call Rat Utopia.

It turned out that all of society collapsed. It was a complete disaster. The male rats started to rape female rats. There was no more playing around, no more ritual; it was all just rape and murder. It was a complete breakdown of society. Why did this happen?

One thing you need to understand about rats and humans is we all like status. We humans are all standing in line to go onto a mountaintop. On the mountaintop, everyone respects you, you make a lot of money, and you feel good about yourself. This line takes a long time, but eventually, you will get to the mountaintop. The way this game works is people on the mountaintop have to fall off and die for other people to climb up.

But what happens when the people on the mountaintop don't die? You're just stuck in line. When you're stuck in line for hours, you get angry and frustrated. So you hit someone behind you, and that person gets angry and hits you back. Eventually, everyone in the line is fighting each other. The people on the mountaintop are enjoying the view; they have status, and they're never going to fall off.

This is our society today. The people in power in China, in the United States, around the world, have been there for a long, long time, and they're not dying. So what are young people doing? Tang ping, or "lying flat." Quiet quitting. You don't see any opportunities. What you want is not money; what you want is status, and that requires you to achieve a certain level in society. But those positions are being occupied by people who refuse to die. As a result, society collapses. Young people refuse to work, refuse to get married and have children, so your society dies.

3. Elite Overproduction

The third boundary condition is the idea of Elite Overproduction. It's the same as Rat Utopia, but Rat Utopia is a conflict between the haves and have-nots. Elite overproduction is a conflict among the haves, the very wealthy. Even though there's a limited number of status positions, too many elite people are being produced.

It's not only that the children of poor people are being screwed over; it's that the children of the elite are being screwed over. This creates conflict because the poor can't do anything—they can just fight each other in line. But the elite can do something. They can go to war against each other. They can start killing each other. This creates civil war. In fact, if you were to look at America today, you could say there's a civil war going on between two different factions of the elite. This is what drives a lot of history. Revolutions happen not because the poor are trying to overthrow the rich, but because the lower nobility is fighting for opportunities against the upper nobility.

Applying the Conditions to Empire

Now let's apply these three boundary conditions and ask ourselves why empires collapse. The first reason is that most people in the empire don't want to live there; they're just stuck. Why? Because they are in debt and are landless. Throughout most of human history, empires that have persisted for the longest have this huge problem where the majority of the population suffers from too much debt and landlessness, with no opportunities.

Then, the elite starts fighting amongst themselves. There's corruption because the elite are struggling to engage in rent-seeking behavior among themselves. They're trying to steal more and more. So there's civil conflict and corruption. It's only a matter of time before the empire collapses.

During this time, what does the empire do? It's really strange, but they import people from the Borderlands to try to resolve their civil conflicts. You can't trust the army anymore because the army is made up of people who have too much debt and are landless. So what do you do? You hire foreign mercenaries. That's what China did in its history. You can't trust your own army, so you hire foreign mercenaries. Eventually, you replace your army with foreign mercenaries, and then the foreign mercenaries take over your empire. That's what happened in Rome. That's what happened throughout human history.

Why the Borderlands Conquer the Empire

Why is it that the Borderlands are able to conquer the empire? The argument is cultural. We have this prejudice or misunderstanding about civilization. Civilization is about cities, writing, technology, and wealth. If you look at it that way, you don't really understand why these Borderlands—the Mongolians, the Manchus, the Vikings, the Arabians, the Greeks—are able to conquer these empires.

A better way of looking at it is culture. In the Borderlands, a certain culture develops because it's a borderland. It's a culture that focuses on freedom, egalitarianism, and self-reliance. This is true throughout the Borderlands. If we were to go back to Mongolia during the time of Genghis Khan, or to the European north at the time of the Vikings, these are cultures that emphasize these values. As such, these were amazing warriors.

Let's look at the Vikings. The Vikings didn't know how to read or write. They didn't have any mathematics or cities. But from age two or three, their kids were learning how to swim, row boats, cook, hunt, fight, and ride horses. What are civilized kids doing? They're learning how to do test questions. In a war, who's going to win? Obviously, the Vikings.

The Unstoppable Hurricanes of History

This is the idea of the oceanic currents. You have these isolated areas that are ecosystems among themselves. As the empire expands—just think of it as an imperial current—it energizes these areas. These areas actually have much more energetic potential than the empire, which is dying. This energy forces so much change in the Borderlands that they now become like a hurricane and have to ride through history. Sometimes they're defeated, but sometimes, like the Greeks, the Vikings, the Mongolians, and the Arabians, they win. And when they win, they create a lot of destruction.

These are currents, natural forces that are unstoppable. Once they start, you cannot stop them. This war in Ukraine is a hurricane that will engulf all of Europe. This war in the Middle East is a hurricane that will engulf the entire world. Once this starts, you can't have a conference and decide to end it. These things cannot end until they reach their natural course. The hurricane stops when it runs out of energy. The hurricane does not negotiate with you and say, "Oh, well, you make a very good case for why I shouldn't destroy you, so I'll just stop." Hurricanes don't do that. These are natural forces.

This connects to current events and should allow us to predict them. And spoiler alert: things will not end well. We are looking at the complete destruction of the world we live in today. Nothing will be the same because these are oceanic currents. They destroy everything in their path. Once you unleash them, they must destroy. It's only a question of how much.

What Starts These Hurricanes?

If you look at an ocean, you will discover that these currents are happening all the time. There's no start; they're always in motion. Once you start an empire, you're already starting to unleash a hurricane in the Borderlands. Once the hurricane matures in the Borderlands, it will overwhelm an empire, which will then start to energize a new borderland. The answer is there will always be hurricanes. They are always forming; you just have to figure out where they're forming to predict where they're coming from.

Obviously, the two big hurricanes right now are what's happening in Ukraine and what's happening in Israel and the Middle East. But other hurricanes are coming. For example, there will eventually be a conflict in East Asia. A lot of people are saying the conflict will be between China and the United States. I do not think that's the case. I think it will involve Japan and South Korea. It will not be over the Taiwan Strait; it will involve South Korea and Japan.

Another conflict is what's happening in America. America is itself a hurricane. Eventually, America will have to fight a civil war. When you go to America, you will see how divided the country is. People are already predicting a civil war; it's only a question of when. I think things will speed up in 2028. The election in 2028 will be heavily contested, and there's a very good chance Trump will run again.

But the big, scary hurricane is Iran. Eventually, the United States and Iran will come into conflict with each other, and this will drag in the entire world.

How Do the Hurricanes End?

What is driving the hurricane is the internal conflicts within the Borderlands. There are just too many people and not enough status positions, so they go on and conquer their own territory.

Look at the Vikings. They were in northern Europe—Denmark, Norway, Sweden—and for most of human history, we had no idea they were there. They kept to themselves but still traded with the world. Then they started to come out of nowhere. They went over to colonize Greenland and Iceland, and they also went to North America, becoming the first Europeans to reach it. One strategy they had was to expand, explore, and colonize.

But you also had a group of Vikings, the Northmen, who went to attack France. They were such a huge problem that the French decided to give them their own land, called Normandy—the land of the North people.

Then they went over to Ukraine, along the river, because they were trading with the Islamic empire. They founded colonies or new settlements. This was a peaceful process because they were trying to establish trading posts, and this became the basis of Russia. The people were called the Rus', and that's where Russia comes from.

Normandy is interesting because they eventually went off to conquer a new country in 1066: England.

The hurricane stops when the people just run out of energy because they've reached a point where they can't go on. The hurricane is created because they have wealth and power but not enough status positions, so they have to expand to fill them. This is what drives empire-building. It's not because you lack resources; it's because you have too many people who want status, and you can't leave them in your society because then they will overthrow you. So you send them somewhere else.