By Predictive History in The story of CIVILIZATION — 27 Mar 2025

Civilization #42: The Protestant Reformation and the Birth of Capitalism

We are doing the Protestant Reformation. I'll explain to you how it gave birth to capitalism. It's going to be hard conceptually because we're going to take concepts we learned before and combine them to help explain the world we live in today. If there's anything I'm saying that's unclear or confusing or debatable, please interrupt me. I want to make sure that you can follow the logic clearly.

First of all, what I will do is explain the three major differences between the Protestant religion and the Catholic religion. Let's look at Catholic first. In many ways, the Protestant religion is a response to the problems created by the Catholic religion.

Catholicism and Protestantism

There are three main characteristics about the Catholic religion. The first is the idea of orthodoxy, or dogma. There's a set of beliefs in the Catholic religion that you must memorize. You're not allowed to question it. You're not allowed to interpret it. You must memorize it.

What maintains the orthodoxy is the idea of hierarchy. Only priests and the ordained, those sanctioned by the Catholic Church, have access to the Bible. Only they can interpret the Bible properly. They are favored by God. The pope is God's official representative on Earth. That's the idea of hierarchy.

The last concept is the idea of justification by works. The idea here is, if you want to be saved, you have to engage in the proper rituals. You have to do what the Church tells you. Your actions matter more than your beliefs.

Now, as we discussed in previous classes, these three main concepts that underpin the Catholic Church, they will create problems. Justification by works, it creates a problem of hypocrisy. The idea here is it'd be nice if you believed in God. It'd be nice if you believed in what you were doing, but you don't have to. As long as you do what you're told, you can still go to heaven. It creates the idea of hypocrisy. Obviously, there are a lot of people who are opposed to this.

Hierarchy creates a problem of corruption. There's no real mechanism to prevent the priests from abusing their powers. As we discussed last week, the priests do engage in a lot of corruption and abuses.

The problem of orthodoxy is it creates disconnection. The idea here is that ever since the dawn of human history, we humans are fundamentally religious. Our first and foremost need is to connect with God, to be with God, to work with God, and to access God. Because of these three problems, disconnection, corruption, hypocrisy, there's always been dissent, there's always been rebellion against the Catholic Church in Europe. Remember last week we discussed the Cathars, the Waldensians. This has been an ongoing issue in the Catholic Church.

The Protestant religion was developed in response to these problems. Let's look at the three major responses of the Protestant religion. The first response to orthodoxy is direct access. You don't need the priest to tell you what the Bible means. You can just read it by yourself. In fact, God wills that you talk to him directly by reading the Bible.

If that is the case, then the Church must be fundamentally egalitarian. Because if everyone can access God, then everyone is equal in the eyes of God.

But the fundamental demand now is justification by faith. You have to truly believe in God. You must develop your life around this faith in God.

On one hand, the Protestant religion is solving a lot of problems created by the Church. But on the other hand, it's also creating a lot of problems as well. Let's go over some of the major problems. If it's justification by faith, it creates a problem of anxiety. Why? Because how do you know you truly believe in God? How do you really know you have faith? You have to constantly prove to yourself that you truly believe in God through actions, through works. You have to raise doubt in your mind. This makes you anxious. That's one huge problem created by the Protestant religion.

The second big problem is a problem of diversity. If everyone is equal, then everyone can start his or her own religion. What we will see during the Protestant Reformation is an explosion of different religions with all different sets of beliefs. There's only one Catholic Church, but there are tens of thousands of Protestant denominations.

Then with direct access, you are forced to have literacy. You are forced to educate yourself. This is a good thing. But it's also a problem because if you're poor, you may not have access to education. This is a problem for a lot of people. That's why, in the beginning of the development of Protestantism, most of the adherents to this new religion were actually the aspirational middle class. The people of some means, the people who want to aspire to more wealth. This is the basic rundown of the differences between the Protestant religion and the Catholic religion.

The Holy Trinity and Anxiety

Now I'm going to go deeper, explain the problems that this new religion creates in the minds of the faithful. The problem within the Christian religion, as we discussed in previous classes, is the idea of the Holy Trinity. The Holy Trinity. The idea of the Holy Trinity is that Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit, these are different forces that are independent of each other, but they are equal to each other, and they're part of the same thing.

For the human mind, the way that our human minds are designed, it is impossible for us to understand this concept of the Holy Trinity. It's like saying that this pen, it is here and not here. Your mind has to believe that this thing is here and not here. Your mind can't do that. Your mind has to believe in one thing, and it cannot believe in contradictions. But this is inherently a contradiction. The only way that our mind can process this is by believing that this is a symbol. The only way that we can understand the Holy Trinity is to believe that it is both nothing and everything. That's what a symbol is. A symbol is nothing that represents everything, depending on how you perceive it.

The problem with this is that it creates the problem of anxiety. Anxiety. Why does it create anxiety? Because again, our fundamental need is to connect with God. The concept of the Holy Trinity means that we can never truly connect with God. It is a symbol. It is an abstraction removed from us. We can never be intimate with God. It's either away from us or through us, but we can never touch it. We can never feel it. This creates anxiety.

Before, this was not a problem because the Church stood between you, the believer, and the Holy Trinity. All you had to do was believe in the Church, and you were fine. But then, what happens if you get rid of the Church? Now you have to try to grasp what the Holy Trinity is. Again, remember, one of the main ideas of the Christian religion is that you must struggle with your faith. You must recognize and fully realize your faith in God. Otherwise, you'll be condemned to hell. But as we have already discussed, this Holy Trinity is impossible to understand. This creates anxiety.

Now, the thing about anxiety is it creates the problem of OCD, obsessive-compulsive behavior. Because anxiety comes about because of confusion. What you want to do is remove this anxiety by ordering your physical world. People with obsessive-compulsive behavior, what do they do? They like to clean houses. They like to buy things. They like to lose weight. They're trying to order—the word we use is rationalize. They're trying to rationalize the world around them in order to reduce anxiety. Have you studied obsessive-compulsive behavior? OCD. It's caused by anxiety, and this anxiety forces you to try to rationalize the world.

Double Predestination

Now, there's also a third problem in the Protestant religion. It's the idea of double predestination. This is a big concept, but it's very easy to understand. If you remove the Church because the Church is too corrupt, the problem arises, how do you know if you're going to heaven or not? Who's going to decide?

A theologian by the name of John Calvin, he proposed the idea of double predestination. The idea here is this. God at the beginning of time has already decided. This decision is final. You cannot persuade him that he is wrong because he is perfect, eternal, and immutable. Only a few, the elect, will be saved. Only these people will be allowed to go to heaven. Everyone else will be condemned to hell.

Who are the elect? The elect are those who truly believe that they have been saved. Only those who truly believe in God's mercy and God's grace will be saved. If you think about it, this creates even more anxiety. Because how do you know if you're one of the saved? You have to work hard now to solve this problem.

Let's summarize. Because of the Protestant religion, you have three new problems created. The first is the individual believer cannot understand the Holy Trinity, but they must. That's what the religion demands. That's the first problem. Second problem is the anxiety causes OCD, which makes them want to rationalize the world. It makes them want to order the world according to their faith. That's the second issue. The third issue is that you have double predestination, which says that if you do not truly believe in God, if you do not actually figure out the grace of God, then you'll be condemned to eternal damnation. These are the three major problems created by the Protestant religion.

Over time, and this is a process that will take decades, centuries, they figure out a solution. They figure out a solution. The solution is this. The solution is money. Money. The solution is money. That's how you resolve these three paradoxes or three contradictions, three anxieties.

What Money Does

First of all, let me explain what money is. Money. In the world, we are all different. We have different perspectives. Each individual is unique. Each individual is different. Each individual sees the world differently. This creates confusion. This creates problems.

I might ask you why you're in school. You might say, "I'm here to learn mathematics." I might ask someone else, "I want to go to America for college." Another person might be, "I want to learn." Each person is different. But what happens is this. If I introduce the concept of money, what it does is it standardizes, systematizes, clarifies, and simplifies everyone's understanding into one concept, into a coherent whole.

Let me use an experiment to show you why this is true. Some experimenters, they gave everyone a wine test. They put three different bottles of wine in front of each person, asked each person to taste the wine, and then asked each person which wine is the best. Most people could not tell the difference. These were different bottles of wine, but they didn't know which one was better. Then what the experimenters did was they put price tags on each bottle of wine. $10, $20, $50. Then when the experimenters did this, everyone knew, "Of course, the $50 bottle of wine is better."

That's what money does. Money allows us to simplify the world in order to understand it. All our beliefs, all our values, all our judgment now are placed into this one symbol, money. But then what happens is we then take this money, and we reshape the world according to money. Now I ask you, why are you going to school? Everyone's like, "To make money in the future." Everyone agrees on this. That's what money is. Money is a system to standardize everyone's thought. Then once the standardization happens, it reshapes reality into a rational order.

Now that we understand what money is, we can now explain how money reduces the paradoxes. Money is a way for people to rationalize the world. You're anxious? What do you do to reduce this anxiety? Make money. Make more money. Don't stop until you make the most money.
Then money is a way to resolve the God issue. Because money is also a symbol. What you can do mentally is conflate God with money. Money is God. God is money. That makes sense to people.
Now, because you've conflated God with money, you can now solve the predestination problem, which is, "How do I know I have faith in God?" Because I have a lot of money. Because I spent my entire life accumulating money. How do I know I'm going to heaven? Because I'm rich. My wealth shows that I have true faith in God. If I have true faith in God, then I must be one of those predestined by God to be the elect. Therefore, I have nothing to worry about.

Accumulation and Capitalism

Because of this, the beauty of this system is this. It creates a concept of capitalism. Never before in human history have people believed that this is a good thing, that you should go accumulate money for the sake of accumulating money. Before it was always about accumulating money in order to increase your social status.

Wealthy people would always spend their money holding community feasts. On giving money to the poor. On helping the community. Remember Julius Caesar, when he died, he was the wealthiest man in the world, but he gave a third of his money to the poor people of Rome. He gave a third of his money to building parks for Rome. The final third went to his adopted heir, Octavian.

But now, what's important is that you try to accumulate as much money as possible. Don't waste it. Because if you waste it, it's corruption. It shows you lack the faith in God. That's why we have capitalism. Because of the anxiety created by the Protestant Reformation. Again, this is a process that will take centuries. It doesn't happen right away. But it's a process that takes centuries, and it's a process that will define the world we live in today.

Even though today most people are actually not Protestant, most people do not believe in double predestination, most people don't really understand the Holy Trinity, most people don't want to rationalize the world, we have absorbed this mentality. We believe that we should accumulate money for the sake of accumulating money. That's why we worship people like Jack Ma, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos. Even though, if you think about it, they've just accumulated a symbol. Money is actually nothing. But we worship them because we believe that money is reality itself. That's what capitalism is. Capitalism is a belief that money is reality in itself.

I know conceptually this is hard, and this is a lot. Now what I will do is explain historical context, explain the evidence for this argument. But first I want to make sure that this argument is clear to you. This is a thesis. This is an explanation as to why we have capitalism today.

The Historical Context of the Reformation

Now what I'm going to do is explain the historical context as well as provide the evidence. The Protestant Reformation is a process that took place from 1517. 1517 is when the theologian Martin Luther published his 95 Theses. The theses are a direct criticism of the Catholic Church, the corruption of the Catholic Church. It ends really in the year 1648. This is after decades of violent warfare between the Protestants and the Catholics. At this point, Europe is completely exhausted. They just finished fighting something called the Thirty Years' War, which is, before World War I, the deadliest war in European history. It kills at most about 8 million people. All of Europe is completely devastated. In certain parts of Germany, which is where the war was fought, they lost about half of the population.

This war ended in something called the Treaty of Westphalia, the Peace of Westphalia, which guarantees religious freedom to everyone in Europe. This ends the Protestant Reformation.

Martin Luther and the 95 Theses

Again, historians date the beginning of the Protestant Reformation to Martin Luther. Last week we discussed the Crusades, and we discussed how there were many thinkers, theologians who opposed the Catholic Church. People like John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, and they were eventually condemned as heretics, and their rebellion was stamped out by the Catholic Church. But Martin Luther, he's fortunate in that he has powerful political patrons. The various princes of the Holy Roman Empire want more autonomy from the Catholic Church, and Martin Luther gives them a proper pretext in order to financially divorce themselves from the Catholic Church.

As I discussed, what he's most famous for is something called the 95 Theses, which is a direct criticism of the corruption of the Catholic Church. At this time, the Catholic Church wanted to build St. Peter's Basilica, a church in the Vatican. They wanted this to be a gorgeous building. To finance the building of this church, the Catholic Church sold something called indulgences. Indulgences are basically tickets or special letters that will reduce the punishment of your relatives in purgatory. It's basically to reduce the number of sins you committed. It's basically like bribing God to reduce your penalty. This was a very popular thing. It allowed the pope to build St. Peter's Basilica, which is one of the most beautiful buildings in the world today. But as you can imagine, if you are a true Christian, you are insulted. You're offended. You're angered by the idea of this corruption.

The 95 Theses are 95 sentences in which Martin Luther lays out his case against indulgences, and as such, against the authority of the Church and the pope. This is the argument he makes. Let's look at some sentences. The 36th sentence is:

Every truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without letters of pardon.

What he's saying here is the idea of salvation by faith. You don't have to spend this money. You don't have to do what the Church tells you. If you are a true Christian, if you truly believe in God, God will forgive you. You have direct access to God. He's denying the authority of the pope, which makes him a heretic. He also says:

Christians are to be taught that the Pope in granting pardons needs and therefore desires their devout prayer for him more than the money they bring.

This is an insult to the pope. He's saying the person that most offends God in this world is the pope. Because the pope is insulting God by telling the world that God can be bribed by money. Let's pray for the pope. Because clearly the pope has offended God. He also says:

Why does not the Pope, whose wealth is today greater than the richest of the richest, build just this one church of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?

He's saying the pope is the richest man in Europe. Why doesn't the pope spend this money and build the church himself?

Why is he exploiting the poor when he is the richest man in the world? As you can imagine, the Church is furious with him. They deem him a heretic, and they want to burn him at the stake. But again, he's protected by powerful political patrons, and they fight a war over this issue, and it ends with something called the Peace of Augsburg, which divides the Holy Roman Empire, Germany, into Lutheran areas where they are free to believe in Lutheranism and Catholic areas where they still adhere to the pope. This is the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli

Martin Luther starts this doctrinal debate, and John Calvin also contributes to it by introducing the idea of double predestination. Martin Luther, he wants to reform the Church. Then he eventually realizes that he needs to build another church. But John Calvin, with his idea of double predestination, he's trying to deny the authority of the Church. He's telling people that because God has already decided who will go to heaven at the beginning of time, then the Church is lying to you. The Church is fooling you, deluding you.

He's a Frenchman. He went to the Sorbonne, the University of Paris. As you can imagine, he's deemed a heretic, and he flees to a place called Geneva in Switzerland. Switzerland is one of the birthplaces of the Protestant Reformation. The reason why is there are a lot of independent towns in Switzerland. As I mentioned, the first believers in the Protestant religion are actually townspeople. That's the aspirational middle class. They want to connect with God, and they want a religion that encourages them to achieve more in life. That's what the Protestant religion is about.

There's also another famous theologian that's really not discussed today, but he's considered one of the three major founders of Protestantism. His name is Ulrich Zwingli, and he's based in Zurich. He's probably the most extreme of the three.

The Peasants' War and the Act of Supremacy

The Protestant Reformation, it opens a can of worms. It opens a Pandora's box. Because before, the ultimate authority was the pope, who represented God. But now you're free to believe whatever you want.

There are lots of peasants who rebelled against the nobility because they thought that feudalism was evil in the eyes of God. This is a proto-communist movement. These are people who wanted total equality and democracy and freedom in the world because they believe that is the will of God.

They rebel against the feudal lords and kill them. Then the entire aristocracy unite because they see these peasants as a threat. Now, there are lots of these peasants. We estimate maybe about 300,000 joining this rebellion. But they are not educated. They are not organized. They have no weapons. They have no centralized authority. Therefore, they're all massacred by the aristocratic armies.

This is the Peasants' War. This is important because eventually we'll discuss communism, and communism will be developed in response to the Peasants' War. This is the deadliest massacre of peasants before the French Revolution.
1534 is the Act of Supremacy. That is when the king of England, Henry VIII, declares his independence from the pope. But because there's such a strong Catholic contingent in England, Henry VIII maintains Catholic practices. But rather than have the pope be at the head of the Church, he himself is now head of the Church. It's called the Church of England now. The religion is called Anglican, the Anglican religion. The Anglican religion.

The Diversity of Protestantism

The thing that we should observe about the Protestant Reformation is that, first of all, it's extremely diverse. There are lots of different denominations.

The Lutherans are those who believe in Martin Luther.
The Calvinists are those who believe in double predestination.
The Anglicans are English who still follow Catholic rituals, but rather than follow the pope, they follow the king of England.
The Hussites are those who adhere to Jan Hus in Bohemia.
The Unitarians are interesting. Unitarians are those who deny the divinity of Jesus. They deny the Holy Trinity. God is God, and Jesus is just the Messiah. He's just a prophet of God. They affirm the moral teachings of Jesus, but they deny his divinity.
You also have the Anabaptists. The Anabaptists are interesting as well, because they believe that to truly believe in God, you must choose to do so. Therefore, you must not baptize infants. Because when you do so, you force children to believe in God, even though they themselves lack the capacity, lack the reason to believe in God. Only adults can join the faith, and they must do so voluntarily.

As you can see, there's tremendous divergence, there's tremendous diversity within the Protestant faith. It still continues today. Every day you have new denominations opening up because people are interpreting the Bible differently.

Another thing that you will notice is that most Protestants are actually located in northern Europe. The countries of England, Germany, the Nordic countries, Switzerland, they will go Protestant. In the south, France, Spain, Italy, they will remain Catholic. The only exception is this, the south of France. The south of France. The south of France will turn Protestant.

It's interesting for us, because if you look at a map, the Protestant French are heavily centered in the south of France. If you remember from last week, that's where the Cathars are also located. Some historians believe that Protestantism and Catharism, they sort of mingle together. They combine and become conflated together. Other historians believe that it's because culturally the south of France, because it's surrounded by mountains, it's always been culturally independent of the rest of France. They speak a local language called Provençal, which is different from French.

These Protestants in France, they're mainly in the middle class. They're extremely well educated. They become very prosperous, and they join with the nobility. As such, the king of France, and France is right now the most powerful country in Europe, the king of France sees them as a threat. What he'll do is he'll kill some of the nobles, which launches the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572. That's a day when tens of thousands of French Protestants called Huguenots were killed.

This was a process by which these Huguenots, extremely well educated, extremely hardworking, extremely wealthy, they will move to Protestant countries like England and the Netherlands and Germany, and they will help these countries jump-start the Industrial Revolution. They will bring their expertise, and they will help these countries jump-start the Industrial Revolution. This is a tremendous loss for France, tremendous gain for the other Protestant nations.

The Thirty Years' War

Eventually, Europe is divided into two major factions, the Catholic faction and the Protestant faction. These two factions will eventually engage in something called the Thirty Years' War, between the Habsburgs, the Holy Roman Empire, which is supported by the pope, versus basically the independent states of Germany. This is a war that will last exactly 30 years. Again, it will kill at most 8 million people. It's the deadliest war in European history up until World War I.

What's interesting about this war is that France, which is Catholic, chooses to join the Protestants in this war because they see the Holy Roman Empire as an imperial threat. They're afraid that if they allow the Habsburgs to take over Germany, then eventually they will start to swallow up France. It's a religious war, but it was also a geopolitical and imperial war. Again, this war ends with the Treaty of Westphalia, which guarantees religious freedom in Europe. The religious wars will end, and the Protestant religion will now be free to develop independently. This is called the Peace of Westphalia.

Roman and Viking Culture

Now let's summarize, and let's discuss the evidence for my argument that the Protestant Reformation gave birth to capitalism. These are the three major differences between the Catholic religion and the Protestant religion. The question then is, why is it that the north will become mainly Protestant and the south of Europe will stay mainly Catholic?

One thing that we discussed in this class is the persistence of culture. Again, no one knows why this is the case. You'll hear different arguments. It could have been weather. It could have been personality. It could have been a lot of different factors. But one possibility I want to present to you today is the cultural factor, which is that the south of France and the north of France are culturally different.

Let's look at the south of Europe. The southern European countries of Spain, France, and Italy were heavily influenced by Roman culture. That's where the Roman Empire was based. The Roman Empire eventually became an imperial bureaucracy. There are three core values to the Romans.

Liberty. Now, liberty is really important. It means obedience to the law. Because only by obeying the law can people be free to do what they want.
Secondly is the idea of res publica. Res publica means public virtue. To serve the public good, which basically means obeying what the Senate tells you to do. Obeying authority.
The last is the idea of piety, which is to respect the customs and history and traditions of Rome.

These are the three major values of the Romans. We can believe that they became embedded in the south of Europe.

Now, let's look at Viking culture. When I say Vikings, I don't really mean Vikings per se. What I really mean are those proto-Indo-Europeans that never really assimilated into Roman culture. What are their values?

They believe in courage.
They believe in loyalty.
They believe in resourcefulness.

We discussed this when we discussed the Vikings. Now, what we're going to do is this. We're going to map Catholic belief with Romans, and we're going to map Viking belief with the Protestants and see what happens.

The Catholics, they believe in orthodoxy. The Romans also believe in orthodoxy. They call it liberty. Obedience to laws. Don't question laws, just obey them. Catholics believe in hierarchy. Romans believe in hierarchy as well. They believe in obeying the Senate. The Senate is the ultimate authority. Catholics believe in justification by works. The Romans believe in piety, respecting tradition. You don't have to believe in these traditions, but you must respect them. This is pretty close. I mean, it's not perfect. But this suggests that Roman culture had a tremendous influence on the development of the Catholic Church.

Now, let's look at the Protestants. They believed in direct access to God through the Bible. The Vikings believed in courage. What is courage? Courage is self-exploration. To go out in the unknown and figure out things for yourself. That's what the Bible is. That's what faith is. To read the Bible by yourself and to interpret the Bible in your own way. You have to do so using emotional and spiritual courage.

Egalitarianism. The Vikings had a concept of loyalty. Loyalty is basically the idea of mutual love. I'm loyal to you, and you're loyal back to me because we love each other. The last concept is justification by faith, an individual struggle to come to terms with what God means to you individually. The Vikings believed in resourcefulness, which is also the idea of individual struggle. You can figure it out by yourself if you work hard enough. If you will yourself, if you have the courage to do so.

Again, I leave this as a possibility. Don't treat this as a historical fact. I just suggest this as a way to think about why the Protestants became Protestants, the Catholics became Catholics. A lot of it has to do with the cultural residue from the past. This is just a thought experiment.

Three Inventions

Let's now talk about why it is that the Protestant Reformation won out. Again, they were up against the Holy Roman Empire. They were up against the Catholic Church. There were more people in Catholic Europe. Catholic Europe was wealthier and stronger, but they still won. The reason why they won is due to the invention of three things.

The first thing is the printing press, which allowed for mass literacy and education. Now everyone could read the Bible. Before, you couldn't do so. You couldn't afford a Bible. But now everyone can read the Bible. Not only that, but everyone can now become self-educated. You can read all the classics by yourself. The Protestant religion compelled you to be literate and to be educated. As such, the Protestants as a whole were more well educated than the Catholics. That's the first reason, the printing press.
Second reason is the musket. This is really important. Before, the main weapon, the ultimate weapon, was a knight. The armored knight. The armored knight was a professional soldier. That's why the knights were the nobility, because they had to spend all their time training for war, going to war, fighting wars. It's very expensive to be a knight. But now, eventually, you have the gun, the musket. It takes about 60 days for anyone to learn how to use the musket. The thing with the musket that's really important is it's able to pierce the armor of the knight, which makes the knight useless in war now. It's the musket that is important. In other words, anyone who has courage and devotion, mainly meaning the Protestants, they're able to fight a war. The musket will be vital. It will be crucial for both the American Revolution and the French Revolution. We'll discuss the musket when we get to the American Revolution and the French Revolution.
The last thing is that you have banknotes. Before, people used gold or coins that were minted with gold in order to trade goods. Now you can use banknotes, which is just money. You can now monetize your hard work and frugality. You can now channel your hard work and frugality into banknotes. What's really important now is there's only a finite amount of gold and coins. But there's an infinite source of banknotes. You can work infinitely hard.

What this means is before the Protestant Reformation, it's really hard to get people to work hard. Because let's just say that you are an employer, and you want to be, "I'm going to pay people more." When you pay people more, they actually work less, because they can't spend that money. They're like, "If I have to work eight hours a day to make $100, but now I just work two hours a day to make $100, I'll just work two hours." They actually work less. In this system, slavery makes sense, because the way to get people to work hard is to force them into eternal debt, which is what slavery is.

But in this new Protestant system, then slavery is an evil, because you're denying people the capacity to be with God. You are with God if you work hard. But if you're a slave, how do you measure the hard work? You're not able to work hard. That's why after the Protestant Reformation, one of the main things that they did was eventually outlaw slavery.

There are lots of good things about the Protestant Reformation. You have the Industrial Revolution. You have the end of slavery. You have the rise of capitalism. You have the rise of the middle class. You have lots of really good things. But there's also no denying that there are some bad effects as well.

This is a printing press invented by Gutenberg. This is what a printing press looks like. You have the musket. Before, people had bows. The bows were used by trained archers, and they weren't that powerful. But now with the musket, you're able to pierce knight armor, because there's more energy, 3,100 joules within the bullet. Then you have banknotes as well. Banknotes really are the abstraction of wealth, which means that in theory now, you could have infinite wealth. Why are we so wealthy today? Because we abstracted wealth. Before, wealth was limited because gold was limited. But now with banknotes, with money, in theory, wealth can be infinite.

This is John Wesley, who is the founder of the Methodist Church. He summarizes the idea of Protestantism really well.

We ought not to prevent people from being diligent and frugal. We must exhort all Christians to gain all they can and to save all they can. That is, in effect, to grow rich.

Protestants believe that it is God's calling, it is your mission to get rich, and that's how you know that you're favored by God. The way to get rich is by working hard and not spending any money.

Three Sociologists

What I'm going to do now is present the evidence for my argument that the Protestant religion gave birth to capitalism. To do so, I'm going to refer to three major thinkers. Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, and Georg Simmel. They're all sociologists. They're considered the three major founders of the social sciences. They're all contemporaries. They were all writing about the year 1900.

Why this is important is the year 1900 is really when the Protestant religion is most triumphant. This is when capitalism is most dominant. Even though most people are not Protestants, the Protestant work ethic, the belief system has conquered the world. Germany, Britain, United States are the three most powerful countries in the world at this time. They're the three largest empires, and they're all Protestant nations. As such, they can impose Protestant beliefs on everyone else.

In the year 1900, it's also before World War I. At this time, everyone thinks that this is the greatest thing in the world. Protestantism, Industrial Revolution, capitalism are all divinely sent by God to bless humanity. What Max Weber, Georg Simmel, and Émile Durkheim are trying to do is figure out what's really going on, and to see if there are any consequences to this system. What they will show us is, in fact, there are a lot of problems in the system.

Max Weber

Let's first look at Max Weber, who in 1904 to 1905 wrote something called The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. He's trying to explain why it is that Protestants are a lot wealthier than Catholics in general. This is what he has to say.

So far as predestination was not reinterpreted, toned down, or fundamentally abandoned.

Remember double predestination. The belief that God has already selected those who are going to heaven, and you must prove to yourself that you're one of them.

Two principal mutually connected types of pastoral advice appear.

There are two consequences to the idea of predestination.

On the one hand, it is held to be an absolute duty to consider oneself chosen,

No one is going to heaven. The odds are you're not going to heaven, but you must believe you're going to heaven. Otherwise, you lack faith in God. Otherwise, you don't truly believe in God, and therefore you'll be truly damned, condemned by God.

And to combat all doubts as temptations of the devil, since lack of self-confidence is the result of insufficient faith, hence of imperfect grace.

To prove that God is perfect, to prove that God loves you, you must truly believe that you are chosen by God. If you doubt yourself, then you'll be condemned to hell. Then you become a servant of the devil.

The exhortation of the apostle to make fast one's own call is here interpreted as a duty to attain certainty of one's own election and sanctification in the daily struggle of life.

You need to prove that you are one of the elect by focusing on this world. Focus your energies on conquering this world.

On the other hand, in order to attain that self-confidence, intense worldly activity is recommended as the most suitable means. It and it alone disperses religious doubt and gives the certainty of grace.

You have anxiety? How do you deal with anxiety? Work. Work. Work. OCD, obsessive-compulsive behavior. What kind of work do you do? Make money. Because the money is proof of God's grace.

This worldly Protestant asceticism

Asceticism just means you're actually not spending any money. Not only are you compelled to make a lot of money, but you're also compelled not to spend any of it. Not to enjoy it, because that leads to corruption. That leads to decadence.

Acted powerfully against the spontaneous enjoyment of possessions, it restricted consumption, especially of luxuries.

No one's spending any of this money. Where's this money going? It's going to the bank. Who's using this money in the bank? The government is. What are they doing? They're using it to fight wars. That's how England, the Netherlands became empires. They had access to all this surplus wealth that Protestants weren't spending.

On the other hand, it had a psychological effect of freeing the acquisition of goods from the inhibitions of traditionalist ethics.

The idea here is this. Before, if you're wealthy, you're expected by everyone around you to support the community, usually by organizing feasts on religious festivals. You were expected to share your wealth. If you had too much money, it showed that you were against the community. It showed that you were selfish. But now people believe that if you're wealthy, it means God favors you. The more wealth you have, the more people respect you. It's a complete inverse from the historical case. Historically, we believed that those who have too much money are evil. Now we believe that those who have too much money are inherently good. It's completely reversed.

It broke the bonds of the impulse of acquisition in that it not only legalized it, but looked upon it as directly willed by God.

Before, it's embarrassing to have too much money. Now it is prestigious to have too much money.

The campaign against the temptations of the flesh and the dependence on external things was not a struggle against the rational acquisition, but against the rational use of wealth.

What's evil is not to make a lot of money. What's evil is to use that money to enjoy yourself.

The Iron Cage

Now he discusses the problems with this ideology.

The Puritan wanted to work in a calling;

The Puritans want to be close to God.

We are forced to do so.

We're not Puritans. Most of the world are not Puritans. We are stuck. We are in prison in their world. They create this world, and we're stuck in it.

For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life,

The idea was in the Catholic Church, if you wanted to be an ascetic, if you wanted to deny the world, you went into a monastery. The Puritans made the entire world into a monastery.

and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order.

He's talking about capitalism. Capitalism was created by the Puritans in order to rationalize the world.

This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production, which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition with irresistible force.

They create this system, which is industrial production. This industrial production has made us all into slaves. The soul of this industrial production system is capitalism, wealth for the sake of wealth. There's no denying this system. You can never free yourself from this system. You're stuck inside of the system. But not only that, this entire industrial production has permeated into all aspects of life. It's permeated into the family. It's permeated into the school. Why do you have grades? Why do we have tests? Because of this industrial economy. Grades, tests are another form of money.

Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burned.

What he's saying here is that this system will keep on going until we destroy the planet, and we run out of resources. Because that's what capitalism is. It's the exploitation of the environment.

In Baxter's view, the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the saint like a light cloak which can be thrown aside at any moment.

The idea of capitalism is, "Listen, external wealth, wealth is just a measure of your faith in God. That's what's important. What's important is your faith."

But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage.

Money was supposed to be a tool. Money was supposed to be a mechanism for us to connect with God. But now money, capitalism, industrial production has become our prison. There's no denying it. No one can now escape this.

Predictions

Now he makes predictions.

No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas.

What we're saying is this. As capitalism conquers more and more territory, as it becomes more embedded into everyday life, there will be a nostalgia for the Catholic Church. There may arise new prophets who will rebel against capitalism, just like Martin Luther rebelled against the Catholic religion. These new ideas will happen. They're called fascism and communism. Capitalism will give rise to the Nazis as well as the communists, the Bolsheviks. This is the future. He's making a prophecy.

But if these things don't happen, then what will happen is this.

Mechanized petrification embellished with a sort of compulsive self-importance.

We believe today that we have achieved divinity. We've achieved heaven on Earth. Capitalism is the greatest good. But if you think about it, our civilization has become a zombie civilization. It is without soul. It is without spirituality. It is without heart. It's all machine. It's all money. It's all obsession. Nothing else. That's what he's saying here.

For of the last stage of this cultural development, it might well be truly said: Specialists without spirit.

We have scientists who lack purpose. They have no sense of divinity. They have no sense of mission. They're just doing technical work. Scientists who just do technical work.

Sensualists without heart. This nullity imagines that it has achieved a level of civilization never before achieved.

That's what he's saying. He's saying our civilization, it is a zombie civilization. It is nothing. It is nihilistic. But we believe this is perfection. If you think about it, he's describing perfectly the world we live in today. It's perfect. He wrote this in about 1900. He predicted this would happen, and then he's right. We live in a zombie civilization.

Georg Simmel

This is Georg Simmel, who is a friend of Max Weber's. They're contemporaries. They're colleagues. They're friends. He's trying to explain where money comes from. I explained previously money now has become a substitute for the idea of God. It's become reality itself. How and why is that? Here he explains it.

The projection of mere relations into particular objects is one of the great accomplishments of the mind.

We're able to take an idea and transpose this idea onto a thing. We're able to take the idea of God and turn it into money. We can do that, and that's a great thing.

When the mind is embodied in objects, these become a vehicle for the mind endowed with a livelier and more comprehensive activity.

When we do this, we turn God into money. We're able to understand reality much better.

The ability to construct such symbolic objects attains its greatest triumph in money.

Money becomes a placeholder for everything.

For money represents pure interaction in its purest form.

How do we know if we're working hard? How do we know if we are succeeding? How do we know if we have friends? Through money. Through capital accumulation.

It makes comprehensible the most abstract concept. It is an individual thing whose essential significance is to reach beyond individualities.

It centralizes everything. Everyone agrees on money.

Thus, money is the adequate expression of the relationship of man to the world which can only be grasped in single and concrete instances. Yet can only really be conceived when the singular becomes the embodiment of the living mental process which interweaves all singularities and in this fashion creates reality.

At the beginning of class I talked about money. How money takes all our different perspectives and converges them into one thing. Then it redesigns reality through this lens. That's what he's saying here.

Émile Durkheim

The last person I want to talk about is Émile Durkheim. He's a French sociologist, and his most famous book is called On Suicide. He's trying to discuss why it is that Protestants are much more likely to kill themselves than Catholics. His answer is it's because Protestants believe you have to struggle individually with faith, whereas Catholics don't believe that. Catholics believe that you just follow community rituals, and you're good. Protestants feel that they are alone and abandoned in this world, and that they must struggle out of this darkness. That leads to tremendous energy. But it also leads sometimes to self-defeat. It leads to hopelessness, and that's why they kill themselves. That's what he's saying.

I want to read this. This is really important. He's talking about the fact that Protestants transfer this anxiety into the accumulation of wealth. They're anxious about what God is. They're anxious whether or not God loves them, and they focus on the accumulation of wealth. This is a problem because:

Overexcited ambitions always exceed the results that they achieve, whatever these may be, because they have not been aware that they should not go any further.

Let's just say that you want to lose weight. Your obsession is to lose weight. It's possible that you may die in the process because you don't know how much weight you should lose. You don't know what the proper equilibrium is. You just want to lose as much weight as possible. That's the problem with accumulating money. You try to get more and more money to prove your worth to God, but you can't stop. You don't know when to stop.

Consequently, nothing satisfies them, and all this agitation perpetually sustains itself without reaching any form of satiety.

You cannot stop. You look at Jack Ma, the richest man in China at some point. He has all this money, $50 billion. What is he doing with it? Nothing. All he wants to do is make more and more money. Why? Because only the acquisition of money brings him happiness. Nothing else does. It's a disease.

Above all, as this race towards an unattainable goal can give no satisfaction, but the race itself, if that can be called satisfaction, should anything chance to get in its way, then one is left empty-handed.

You're so focused on the obtaining of wealth that if you lose this process, you stop this process, you will feel devoid of everything. You could have $50 billion in the bank, but you drop out of this race, you stop the accumulation of money, you will fall into anxiety and depression.

Now, it so happens that at this time, the struggle becomes more violent and more painful, both because it is less regulated and because competition is fiercer.

He's talking about capitalism. Because it's all about the accumulation of wealth, and the accumulation of wealth can only bring about more anxiety and more stress. It's bringing down all social bonds. It's bringing down all traditional morality. It's bringing down all customs and norms.

All classes are caught up in it because there's no longer any established classification.

If you're rich, if you're poor, you're stuck in the system. No matter how rich you are, you're still playing this game. You can never escape it.

So, the effort is all the greater at the moment when it becomes more unproductive. How can the will to live not be weakened in these conditions?

I know this is hard, and I know what I'm saying is going to be depressing. But what Max Weber is saying is we live in a zombie civilization. That's what he's saying. What Émile Durkheim is saying is that this civilization is on a path to suicide. It's on a path to self-destruction. Because there's no purpose in this civilization. We exist for the sake of accumulating nothing of value. Eventually, we'll just recognize this, and we'll opt to die. Our civilization is on a path to suicide. You know what? They're right. They're prophets.

Think about this. Never before in human history have we been as wealthy, with technological progress, with the internet, more connected. We can fly all around the world. You can go to the United States and study and then come back and work. You have more opportunities than ever before. But again, think about this. Never before in human history have there been more depression and anxiety, more suicides, more feeling of disconnection.

A Thought Experiment

Think about this. Let's do a thought experiment. Let's just say that I have anxiety, and the way that I deal with this anxiety is I collect newspapers. Every day I'm out collecting newspapers. I fill this room with newspapers, and then I go next door and fill it with newspapers. Everyone would say that I am hoarding. The word is hoarding, and it is a disease. It's a disease. We all know it's a disease. If I were to go talk to a psychologist, he would say I have a disease. I need to take some anxiety medication. I need to relax, go on vacation, whatever.

But let's just say this. Let's say I have anxiety, and all I want to do is make money. I make a million dollars. I don't spend it. I put it in the bank, and I go make two million dollars. Then I go make three million dollars, and I'm not spending it. It's all in the bank. How is that different from hoarding? How is that different from me collecting newspapers and just putting it in the house? It's not. There's no difference. But everyone would think I'm a great person. I am a good person because I'm working hard, and I'm saving money.

It's a contradiction in our society. It's a contradiction that exists because our civilization is incapable of recognizing that we are a zombie civilization that is on the path to civilizational suicide.

This was depressing, but I feel as though we needed to discuss this. Again, the same ideas that we learned previously, we're combining them, and we are going to use these ideas to understand the future development.

Questions and Answers

Suicide and Sin

"I have several questions. The first one is the Protestants are more likely to commit suicide."

"Yep."

"I believe that it's believed in Christianity that suicide is a sin."

You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. In the Catholic religion, suicide is the worst sin that you can commit. In the Protestant religion, there are also mechanisms against suicide. But let's go back to the theory. The theory is double predestination. God has already decided who will be burned in hell and who will go to heaven. Only a minority can go to heaven. There's nothing you can do to change this.

If you follow the logic, you commit suicide, you're doing God's will because you commit suicide because you don't believe in God, or you don't have enough faith in God, which means that you were condemned anyway. Suicide, it's not a sin, it's a sign of weakness.

But also what's important for us to remember is that suicide is also a feeling of disconnection. It's a belief that no one cares if you die or not. No one supports you in your life, and therefore you're better off dead. If you die, you're not actually impacting the community. That's Émile Durkheim's argument. You're always going to have people kill themselves in all religions. You can't really stop that. But Protestants are more likely to kill themselves because Protestantism is a much more individualistic religion than Catholicism.

Diagnosis and Possible Solutions

"You mentioned three philosophers, I believe."

These three are not philosophers. These are sociologists. They're social scientists. They're Max Weber, who is considered the founder of sociology, Georg Simmel, and Émile Durkheim. These are the three major sociologists that really created modern social sciences.

"They all notice a lot of problems, but do they have any idea, like providing potential solutions?"

That's a great question. These are social scientists. The thing about social scientists is they feel their responsibility is to diagnose problems. Once they diagnose problems, then it's up to us to figure out the solution. Let's figure out what they're saying.

Weber is saying that this anxiety, which leads to capitalism, will ultimately lead to civilizational decline. That's his main argument. Again, he's not writing at the beginning of Protestantism, where Protestantism was a persecuted religion, and where it really gave hope to a lot of people, and it really empowered them to transform their lives. He's really talking about late Protestantism, when it's really conquered the world, and he's seeing a lot of issues.

He's looking at the anxiety which causes capitalism, which causes civilization to decline. He says there has to be a response. There are going to be three possible responses.

The first possible response is nothingness. In which case, guess what? We become a zombie society. A zombie society just means that we just go on day to day doing whatever, but we don't know why. We don't really care. We have no soul. We have no spirit. We have no energy. That's what a zombie society is. That's what he's afraid of.
But it's also possible that there is a reaction which will lead to the return of the Catholic Church, which was basically a theocracy. That's the second possibility.
Then another possibility is that of new prophets, or people who are trying to channel this discontent with capitalism in order to form new movements in the way that Martin Luther and John Calvin did. In the 20th century, there were two major responses to the problem of capitalism. The first, of course, is called communism. The second is called fascism, with the Nazis.

The 20th century was really about defeating these two critics of capitalism. That's what the 20th century really was about. You first had World War II, which defeated Nazism, and then you have the Cold War, which defeated communism. This is out. Right now, our two paths ahead of us are either a zombie society or a return to a theocracy.

If I'm a betting man, what our future looks like, I think it is most likely the world becomes a theocracy. There are theocracies that exist today. For example, let's look at North Korea. North Korea is a theocracy where people are not allowed to think for themselves. People must do what they're told. It's all a very heavily ritualized society which worships the divinity of the supreme leader.

We may hate this society. We may be disgusted by this society, but guess what? This is really important. People in North Korea, even though they're poorer, even though they have less freedom, they are on average happier and more fulfilled and more energetic than most societies. You can compare North Korea with South Korea. In South Korea, no one's having kids. That's a sign of complete hopelessness in the society. North Korea, they're having a lot of kids. That's a sort of faith in their society.

That's what Max Weber is predicting. He's predicting these three possible paths. We tried the new prophet path. It didn't work. We don't want to become a zombie society. The only path ahead of us is to become a theocracy. A return to the tyranny of the Catholic Church. But the tyranny gives us meaning, purpose, and spirituality, a connection with God that we are lacking in this society.

But let's just say, for the sake of argument, "I like my individual freedom. I don't want to go to a theocracy where everyone's a slave. What can we do about this?"

One issue that Max Weber doesn't really address because he doesn't recognize the problem is all these problems we're talking about are a problem of mass society. When you have mass society, your options are much more limited. When you have mass society, you need to feed millions and millions of people. You need to organize them. You need to give them something to do. Therefore, your political flexibility doesn't really exist.

In other words, thinking ahead, there are two solutions. Either you become a theocracy, or you figure out the problem of mass society. I'm sorry to say this, but if most people in the world died, then we would have more freedom in this world. But if we choose to continue the system where we have 8 billion people struggling on this Earth, then you're stuck with moving towards a theocracy. That's what Max Weber is saying. He's basically giving us a prophecy about our future.

Disconnection, Anxiety, and Capitalism

Having said that, let's look at Durkheim. What's he saying? He's saying this. This is really important. It's a hard argument, but this is what he's saying. Why do you have suicide? Suicide is the result of disconnection. If we do not think we are valuable in the world, if we think that we are alone in this world, we don't want to be part of this world. We kill ourselves. It's a very simple idea. But then the question then is, why is there disconnection? Because of anxiety. It's a belief that if I don't work hard, God will not favor me. Why is anxiety important? Because it leads to capitalism.

In other words, these four concepts are interconnected. Disconnection leads to suicide. We have disconnection because of anxiety. But anxiety is what feeds capitalism. If people weren't anxious, they wouldn't go out and work so hard to make money. They'd be like, "I'm pretty happy making my $10 a day and sitting at home and eating noodles because I don't care." Your society would collapse. Capitalism would collapse.

Capitalism creates suicide. That's why we have the highest suicide rate in entire human history. More anxiety, more depression, more suicide, more unhappiness, more loneliness than ever before in human history. You can't say capitalism is the issue, but if you work out the logic, capitalism is the issue. That's why today in the United States and elsewhere in the world, they're talking about a return to a theocracy. Because the direct response to capitalism is a theocracy.

Let us all obey the Church, and we're good. Now, women will have to stay at home and give birth to kids. Also, if you're homosexual, we're going to have to kill you. But that's the price we're going to pay. It's a terrible world that we're going to. But what Durkheim is saying is if we continue on the path of capitalism, people are going to choose the path of theocracy. Theocracy is almost a natural outcome of capitalism because of the problem of disconnection.

But are you going to be able to defeat capitalism ever? The answer is no. We tried in the 20th century. It led to the death of tens of millions of people. Good luck trying to defeat capitalism. You can't do it. It can't be done. It's too powerful.