Professor Jiang: What I want to focus on tonight is the Iran war, of course: why it's happening, where it's going. The main argument I want to make today is the war in Iran is not a traditional war that you can analyze from a realist perspective. It's not about resources. It's not about power dynamics. It's fundamentally an eschatological war. That's the argument I will make to you today. But it's a very complex argument, and I'll go step by step.

I am working not from rigorous scholarship. I'm working from game theory. All the ideas that I'll explain to you tonight should be intuitive. If at any point you're like, “That doesn't make sense,” please raise your hand. Please interrupt.

The global economy and the US dollar

Professor Jiang: Let me first explain, in very simplistic terms, the nature of the global economy that we have today. There are two main pillars. There is the Middle East, the GCC, and then there is East Asia. How the current economy works is the GCC provides the world with cheap energy. This energy is sold primarily to East Asia, and East Asia, of course, is the manufacturing hub of the world. It takes the energy, turns it into manufactured goods, and then it moves over to the West, which consumes these manufactured goods. This, in very simplistic terms, is how the global economy is structured.

There is a particular quirk to this system, and it's all being undergirded by the US dollar as a global reserve currency. What happens is the GCC sells the energy in US dollars, and then US dollars are recycled back into the US economy. Same thing with East Asia, where East Asia will sell its manufactured goods in US dollars, and then it will recycle the US dollars back into the US economy.

The idea of the United States as a global reserve currency is unique in human history, and it has been a disaster for the United States as a nation-state. There are three reasons why.

The first reason why is that the United States loses all financial independence. The United States must guarantee the free flow of US dollars, and the United States has created a financial system in order to facilitate the free flow of capital around the world. This is not good for the United States because you lose financial independence.

The idea of this is the Eurodollar system. The idea of the Eurodollar system is all the US dollars stored outside the United States. Quite honestly, we have no idea how many US dollars are outside the United States. This dollar system actually makes no sense from a national perspective. You have absolutely no idea how many US dollars are in circulation. You have actually no control over how they are circulated. That's the first problem with this system.

The second problem with the system is financialization, which basically means that, in order for this system to work, this global economy to work, the United States has to become the financial center of the world and shift resource extraction and manufacturing to the other parts of the world. You hollow out your manufacturing sector. You no longer produce anything. You just speculate.

We understand the problem with the system. It leads to corruption. Corruption, of course, just means Washington, DC. Washington, DC is the most corrupt place on this planet. You get nothing done unless you're willing to bribe Congresspeople to do what you want. Corruption is a huge issue.

You have inequality, right? Think of New York City. I was in Santa Monica last week. It was the most ridiculous place in the world. It was just so silly. You have the Pacific Palisades, you have the $100 million mansions, you have Skid Row, where they're all on drugs. It's just ridiculous. Inequality, and, of course, you have debt.

It's almost like Americans exist in order to go into debt, in order to fuel the global economy. Again, this is terrible for American citizens.

The third thing is just Pax Americana. What I mean by that is this system is predicated on peace in order for people to trade with each other. People need free access, free, open maritime navigation for the system to work. The United States must guarantee this free maritime navigation, which means a bloated military budget. The United States must basically ensure the entire peace of the world, which causes tremendous military pressure on the United States.

If you think about it, this makes no sense because the United States doesn't actually need a military. I know this is hard for Americans to understand, but the United States doesn't need a military because there's no nation in the world that would actually dare to invade the United States. All that money that goes to the military could be instead spent on things like free college or free healthcare. But the United States, because it is forced to protect global trade and ensure free, open maritime navigation, needs this $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget.

This is the world as it is. As you can appreciate, this is not really sustainable. What we're seeing right now is the system breaking apart because of the Iran war.

Question: What are the benefits to the US system?

Professor Jiang: That's a great question. The main benefit is Wall Street is very happy with the system. You've got this financial hierarchy that benefits tremendously from the system, and that's why we still have the system.

Question: Why is there no way to calculate dollars outside the United States?

Questioner: I think you said there's no way to figure out how many dollars are outside of the US or in the Eurodollar system. Why is there no way to calculate that?

Professor Jiang: There's no way to calculate because of a variety of factors. The first is money is not printed. Money is just created off a computer screen, and banks actually have the capacity to create their own money. That's number one. Number two is there's a lot of counterfeit money in the system.

Question: Would other nations invade the United States without a military?

Questioner: You're saying that if the US did not have a military, even then other nations would not have dared to invade the US. Are you saying that because the US has a geographic advantage as a part of being in the Western Hemisphere?

Professor Jiang: Yeah. The United States is impossible to invade because it's protected by two oceans, the Pacific and the Atlantic. That's number one. Number two is there are a lot of guns in America. There's no military, but you come and invade America, guess what? You'll be fighting for every street corner. It's just a pain in the ass. Why would you do it?

Question: What are the symptoms of the breakdown?

Questioner: You say there's a breakdown, but I just want to know what the symptoms of the breakdown are. What are we seeing right now that shows that there's a breakdown going on?

Professor Jiang: I explained corruption, inequality, and debt. That's why the system is not sustainable.

Questioner: I just mean, how do we see that in front of us? What are the things that we see physically as those symptoms?

Professor Jiang: The clearest symptom of a breakdown is the 2008 Great Financial Crisis. That is when the United States government bailed out Wall Street but not homeowners. The idea behind this is the idea of regulatory capture, where the Wall Street financial elite are able to control the policy levers of Washington, DC.

From an economic policy perspective, you actually want to bail out the homeowners and not Wall Street, right? Because if you bailed out the homeowners, that allows for a more efficient economy. But because you bailed out Wall Street and not the homeowners, you create a K-shaped economy now. The K-shaped economy is basically the best indicator that the system is about to break down.

Question: Who benefits from military spending?

Questioner: If we don't need this big of a military, and we just said that we're going to be spending $1.5 trillion on our military, it's clearly corruption. Who is benefiting the most from this corruption?

Professor Jiang: The military-industrial complex.

Questioner: But who's specific?

Professor Jiang: Get on a train and go to Washington, DC, and go to the suburbs. In the suburbs, Fairfax County, Alexandria, they're all mansions. You go back 20 years, before the war on terror—the wealthiest place in America is actually called Loudoun County, Virginia. Twenty years ago, the per capita income of that place was $30,000. Today, it's $90,000. It tripled in 20 years' time. What happened? The war on terror. That's what happened. It is the military-industrial complex.

Question: Why has financialization led to inequality?

Questioner: Why has financialization led to inequality? I get it, but I'm unable to break down the—because white-collar jobs necessarily are a successor to financialization. You have people working in offices, doing IT jobs, tech jobs, sort of abstracted away from factory jobs, and those were supposed to create.

Professor Jiang: That's a really good question. Why would financialization lead necessarily to inequality? The reason why is that if you read Thomas Piketty, his book called Capital in the Twenty-First Century, he explains this very clearly. The idea is that, for capital to be lucrative, it consolidates.

What happens is that once capital consolidates, its returns are very, very high, much higher than if you actually engage in real work. For example, if you were to open a factory, you might have a 2% return a year. But with financialization, if you invest in the stock market, you get 5% a year. In this system, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

Question: Was America designed to be an ethnostate?

Questioner: In your model, the premise right now assumes that America was structured and designed to be an ethnostate. But in some of your previous lectures, you mentioned that the founding idea of America was that if you give citizens or people the ability to buy private property and do whatever they want, that is the incentive that the government would want to create.

By having open capital accounts, a strong banking system, technically we could just say everything you're saying are manifestations that would happen in every civilization throughout time. Inequality and all of these diseases, this warfare has been going on since before Homer. We just have a different paradigm of a different country that, in this current world, is not the ethnostate, but we have a hallucination that it is.

Professor Jiang: I'll explain this later on.

Question: How would the GCC withdrawing money have a profound effect?

Questioner: I was wondering, if the GCC pulls out the money from the stock market, it's going to be an economic or some issue. I don't know if that's what you said, but I looked it up, and the GCC only accounts for 1% to 2% of the US stock market. How would that have a profound effect?

Professor Jiang: When we say the GCC and East Asia are recycling the US dollars in the US economy, that doesn't necessarily mean the US stock market. It could also mean hedge funds. It could also mean real estate, right? Because the stock market is only a very small portion of the US economy. But I'll explain more as we go on.

The Iran war and the global economy

Professor Jiang: Now I want to explain the war in Iran and how it is spinning out of control. Originally, the war was between the United States and Iran. The United States strategy going into the war was very simple: decapitation, which means you knock out the leadership, and then everyone else, because they love democracy, they love freedom, they love human rights, they love OnlyFans, whatever, they rebel, and then you have a democracy. That was literally the plan going into the war.

Didn't work out. The Iranians are much, much more resilient. The Iranians have countermeasures against the strategy, including closing off the Strait of Hormuz. This is a huge problem because 20% of the world's oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, primarily going to East Asia. This creates a bottleneck in your entire global economy, right? This disrupts the model that I previously presented.

But not only that. As this war is progressing, the Houthis have been brought into the war. The Houthis are a huge problem because they control another strait called the Bab el-Mandeb, and it screws Saudi Arabia.

Hezbollah and Israel are at war. Then Iraq is also at war right now. As you know, recently there's been a Middle East military alliance signed by three countries: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan. This is Turkey right here, and this is Pakistan.

What I think is going to happen is Saudi Arabia sees the Houthis as an existential threat, and they will move against the Houthis. They're probably backed by Israel. Israel has military bases over here, so they've surrounded the Houthis.

The problem with this system is the Iranians have figured out that if you have four points of attack, including Hezbollah, which can attack the Suez Canal, the Houthis, which can block the Bab el-Mandeb—that strait—and then Hormuz, what you've done is you've choked off the entire Middle East.

The GCC is saying, “We'll just build pipelines.” That's okay, because if the drones can attack ships, they can probably attack pipelines as well. It's probably easier for them to attack pipelines because they're so huge, right? The GCC is simply screwed. But it also shows you that, because they're proposing to build pipelines, which cost billions of dollars and years to build, and they're not really a solution, it tells you that they don't really know what to do. They're really screwed in this.

What's important to also remember is that Russia, regardless of what happens, can always supply Iran from the Caspian Sea, and China, through its Belt and Road Initiative, can supply using railways. What's going to happen is that this war has to expand globally. You have this problem in the Middle East, and then it's going to link up with the war in Ukraine, and this will be a global situation. This is going to destroy the global economy.

The issue with this is, remember, these countries recycle US dollars back into the US economy, especially Japan, right? Remember, Japan has $1.1 trillion of US Treasuries. What Japan does for the global economy is provide liquidity. The idea is something called the Japanese yen carry trade. You guys may know what this is, but the idea is it's really the dumbest thing in the world, where the Japanese banks will lend money to Japanese corporations at a 0% interest rate. The idea is, when you do that, you are providing liquidity for the Japanese economy, right? Because deflation is a huge problem in Japan.

The Japanese corporations are like, “Well, we could do that, but there's a much simpler way to make money, which is we'll go buy US Treasuries at 5%. We're borrowing money at 0%. We are getting 5% by buying US Treasuries. We'll take that free 5%. Thank you very much.”

Because Japan does this, what it's really doing is providing liquidity for the world. The liquidity, by the way, is about $4 trillion.

The problem with this is Japan gets most of its oil and energy from the Middle East. The second thing is oil and energy investors are like, “Maybe I shouldn't put my money in Japanese yen,” right? Now the Japanese yen is sinking. What the United States is doing is, “We need to save the Japanese yen,” because if the Japanese yen sinks, then the Bank of Japan is going to recall all this liquidity from the world to save the Japanese yen. This will cause economic collapse in the United States.

Remember, 50% of US GDP growth is AI data centers, right? It's a bubble. You need this liquidity from the GCC, from China, from Japan. This war means that these countries will have to be much more nationalistic, and liquidity will dry up, which will eventually cause US collapse. There's just no way around this.

Given the situation, there is a solution to this. There's a way for the United States to win this war. All the United States has to do is two simple things. If it does these two simple things, this war in Iran will end right away, and the US economy will be saved.

The first thing the United States can do is give Iran $2 trillion. This would be a disaster for Iran. The historical example is, of course, something called the Plaza Accord. The Plaza Accord happened because Japan, at this point in history, the 1980s, was the dominant manufacturing power in the world, and the Japanese yen was very weak, which meant that the Japanese were absorbing liquidity from the world. This was causing huge problems for the US economy and for the global economy.

The Plaza Accord was an agreement between Japan and the G7 nations, Europe and the United States, that Japan would increase the value of its currency. This allowed Japan to buy property really cheaply overseas. Now you've reversed the situation. Before, you were absorbing liquidity, and now you are transferring liquidity to the world. This was terrible for Japan because it led to 30 years of deflation, stagflation, economic stagnancy, but it was great for the United States, right?

Why not just do this for Iran as well? Give Iran $2 trillion. It's US dollars, so they're eventually going to have to recycle it back into the United States economy, right? They'll buy resources to rebuild. United States companies will be allowed to go to Iran to rebuild infrastructure, to sell oil around the world. It's great for everyone, right? That's number one: $2 trillion.

But there's something else that has to happen, which is contain Israel. Israel is a huge problem in the Middle East because they're always going out starting wars, right? What you do is say to Israel, “We're going to embargo you. No more weapons for you guys, and we're going to sanction you.” If that would happen, peace would come to the Middle East, right? Just do these two simple things, we would all live peacefully ever after, and the global economy will be saved.

We know for a fact none of these things are going to happen. This is really strange. How do we get in a situation where the fate of 8 billion people on this planet is all being determined by this one little country of, what, 9 million people in the Middle East? The country is so small, you can't even find it on a map of the Middle East. This is the question we will examine tonight.

What is going on where the United States, the most powerful country in the world, is not able to protect its own national interests, and it's only advancing the interests of this, again, really small nation in a desert somewhere, right? We've already discussed the consequences for this war are just tremendous. It's the end of civilization, basically, but the United States is still allowing Israel to do whatever it wants.

The main argument I want to make to you today is this war makes no sense unless you look at it from an eschatological perspective. This war is meant to usher in the end times. This war is meant to bring in the Messiah if you're Jewish and to have Jesus return if you're Christian. That's the only explanation for what's going on. If you look at it from any other lens, it makes absolutely no sense.

Question: Why is Islam missing from the model?

Questioner: That model fails to acknowledge Islam. Iran is a big player. You're saying the return of Jesus, and then you're saying the end of time for the Jews, but then you have the Shia, Islamic, and you have the Sunnis. Why are they missing in the model?

Professor Jiang: You're right in that there are religious fanatics in Iran. Shia martyrdom is a very powerful force, but it is only a minority within Iran, right? If you go to Tehran, the capital, most people are secular. The intellectual class, the government bureaucrats, a lot of them are secular. It's the same thing in Israel, where you go to Israel, 40% of Israelis are actually secular.

What's really strange about the world we're living in is history is being determined by this very small minority in each of these different nations, whether it be Iran, Israel, or the United States.

Questioner: Just to respond to this, there's Twelver Shia Islam, right? That's the eschatological belief within those groups. Just watching your lectures, Iran's not the enemy in this war. It's the United States—to remove the United States from the Middle East, to establish Israel and the Greater Israel project and Pax Judaica as the hegemon in the Middle East.

Professor Jiang: Yeah. When I say the end times, I mean they have to fulfill a certain prophecy, and I'll explain what this prophecy is.

We've established how the global economy works. We've looked at how this war threatens to destroy the global economy and how this war is really being fought on behalf of Israel. Now what I'll try to do is explain how it is that we got to this unique moment in history. I'll explain to you the history and origin of capitalism.

The history and origin of capitalism

Professor Jiang: Capitalism is a historical accident. I know that most of you believe that capitalism is just the best way to run the world. But what I want to show you is that, in fact, it's a convergence of several historical accidents that has created the world that we live in today.

The first historical accident is Calvinism. In Calvinism, there's a very important idea called double predestination. In double predestination, the idea is, at the beginning of time, when God created the universe, he already decided the destiny of everyone. He already decided who is going to go to heaven and who will go to hell. Double meaning heaven and hell; predestination means it's already been decided.

Why we have double predestination was it was a rhetorical response to the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church was able to control people because the Catholic Church could determine whether or not you went to heaven or hell. That was the source of their power. Calvinism was trying to subvert the power by saying, “No, the church doesn't have this power. Only God has this power, and God has already decided.”

No matter what you do, no matter what the church says, your fate has already been decided. At this point in history, indulgences were a huge problem. Indulgences were just bribes to the church so that, if you're a bad rich person, you could basically get to heaven still.

What's really interesting is Calvinism creates a moral dilemma that didn't exist before, which is, how do you know if God has chosen you or not? Before, you would know because the church would tell you if you were selected or not. But now you have to believe if you're chosen or not. The way they remedied this is through the idea of wealth creation. Basically, if you're wealthy, it means God favors you. That makes sense, right?

But the other thing that's interesting is Calvinism demanded that you make wealth, but at the same time also not spend your wealth, because you have to prove you are a good person, right? You make a lot of wealth, but you can't even spend your wealth. This goes against human intuition because, historically, when we make a lot of money, the first thing we do is spend it on our friends and family, right? We take this wealth, and we transfer it into status for ourselves in a community. That's what intuitively we did in the past.

But now Calvinism breaks this cycle and says, “No, no, no. If you make a lot of money, you also have to save it,” which basically means you have to invest it. This is weird, but this basically creates capitalism. You can't spend your money. You can only save it.

Because of this concept, you now have a new entity in the world called the Dutch Republic. What the Dutch Republic would do is take people's savings and then start these enterprises around the world that led to a spice monopoly. At this time in history, spices are the most valuable thing in the world. The Dutch Republic, because of Calvinism, now becomes the wealthiest region in the world, and they create really the world's first idea of a middle class. This leads, of course, to something called the Dutch Renaissance.

The problem with this is the Dutch Republic used to be part of the Habsburg Empire, and now that they're so wealthy, they're constantly being invaded. You have all this money. You have to protect this money in order to get to heaven. That's your ticket to heaven. But how do you prevent the Catholics from coming and stealing your money?

This led to something called the Glorious Revolution: 1688, Glorious Revolution. This is the second historical accident. The Glorious Revolution is really a marriage of the dominant Protestant powers in Europe at this time, which are England and the Dutch Republic. With the Glorious Revolution, what happens is the Dutch Republic now transfers their gold, their wealth, to England. Why? Because England is an island protected by the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy is invincible, right? It's really the best place to store your money.

The Glorious Revolution then leads to the chartering of the Bank of England. This is the third historical accident: the Bank of England, 1694.

The Bank of England is unique in history because it's run by merchants, right? Historically, merchants would lend money to kings for their wars. The problem is the kings could die. They could lose the war. Or they could be like, “Screw you. I'm the king. I don't have to pay you back.” This was always a huge problem for these merchants.

The Bank of England solved this problem because they're lending money not to the king but to Parliament. Basically, the Bank of England—and, again, it's so weird if you think about it—is a private bank that is guaranteed by the people of England. Now you're lending money not to the king but to the English nation, which basically means that as long as there's one Englishman alive, that person has to pay you back.

It's a really weird system, but this creates our modern financial system. The Bank of England model, of course, will be copied with the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve system in the United States is modeled on the Bank of England system.

This system is great because what it allows is basically infinite financing. The example is the Napoleonic Wars, when England was trying to fight Napoleon for dominance in Europe, and England lost six times. It only won once, but England only needed to win once because it has infinite financing. No matter how badly Napoleon defeated them on the battlefield, England could just print money and say, “We'll bribe you Prussians or Russians to go fight another war.”

The Bank of England basically creates the British Empire. Then what happens, of course, is these ideas will then spread to the United States and create the American Empire.

Whiteboard: CapitalismCalvinism → double predestination.1688 Glorious Revolution.1694 Bank of England.

Wealth. Sin. Ego. Dutch Republic. Private. US.

These are all historical accidents. Calvinism was an accident. Glorious Revolution, Bank of England, United States: these are all historical accidents. But once you have these accidents in place, you now have to explain them. You have to create a philosophy or religion, a bureaucratic system, in order to manage these accidents. Now I'm going to explain to you how they did so.

Question: Why has money lending increased when religions discourage it?

Questioner: A lot of this looks like the act of money lending has been encouraged, eased up, or just increased over time. Why is that? Many religions discourage that, advise their followers not to engage in it.

Professor Jiang: Yeah, exactly. Most religions, I would say all religions, banish usury. Why? Because usury was the most destructive element in society. It basically caused all societies to collapse sooner or later. All religions ban usury.

Judaism is unique in that it only bans usury for the members of the religion. If you're Jewish, you can't lend money at interest to other Jewish people, but you can lend money at interest to Gentiles. But all the religions ban usury because it was such a socially volatile force, right?

Question: What makes each event an accident?

Questioner: Not that I disagree, but what makes each event an actual accident? The Calvinism one I understand a bit more, but the charter and such, accident?

Professor Jiang: When I mean accident, I mean they were not planned strategically. They were all responses to a specific problem that arose at that particular time. Does that make sense?

Questioner: Yes.

The philosophies of capitalism and Freemasonry

Professor Jiang: Now I'm going to explain to you the philosophies that developed because of these historical accidents. Now you have capitalism. Now you have to explain capitalism to the people. They had certain philosophers in place to develop a system in order to explain capitalism to the people and to justify it.

One contradiction that arose is democracy and private property. If you think about it, these two things are actually a structural contradiction. You guys live in the United States, think this is the most normal thing. In democracy, of course, you have private property. But actually, if you think about it logically, it doesn't make any sense because private property basically means an oligarchy, right? Democracy means rule by the people. The people choose: if they vote to say, “We want to redistribute wealth,” they should be allowed to do so because it's a democracy, right?

But the idea of private property is it is an inherent and inalienable right given to you by God. Therefore, you are not allowed to touch each other's private property. We have this system as a response to the Bank of England because the Bank of England is private property, but it's guaranteed by the people. How do you alleviate this contradiction? By saying to people, “We have a democracy. You choose to respect each other's private property.” Does it make sense? This is a contradiction, but this arose because of the inherent contradictory nature of the Bank of England.

Another contradiction that arose at this time is that reason and emotion were distinct. You guys don't appreciate this, but this is actually a revolution in human thought because, if you look at every other culture before this, reason came from emotion, right? The idea that you could think independently of your emotion was ridiculous to everyone. Go read the Greeks. Go read the Chinese. Every ancient civilization, the heart and the mind are aligned. In fact, in China, we say the heart is the mind. You think with your emotions, and, look, all the neuroscience tells us that is true. Our memories are essentially emotions, and our memories become the units for our thinking.

The question is, why did they come up with this silly idea that, again, is counterintuitive: the separation between reason and emotion? The answer is because of what reason means. Reason in this formulation actually means capital, and emotion means family, tradition, nation, community. Does that make sense?

In order for capital to win—it's transnational capital—there has to be a free movement of goods, people, and ideas. Whatever obstructs the free movement of capital is inherently bad, and they're labeled as emotions. Again, we think these things are just intuitive. But if you think about it logically, it makes no sense, and they came up with these formulations as a response to the distinct nature of capitalism at this time.

Question: Did seeing God as reason lead to this?

Questioner: You say that in the French Revolution they saw God as reason, and in Greek literature they see the gods as emotions.

Professor Jiang: Yes.

Questioner: They act in the world. Is that why, when they started to see God as reason, and then they conflated reason with capital, that's how we got to where we are?

Professor Jiang: That's a really good question. But let me explain the history. Let me finish this section, and then it'll become clear to you.

You have these ideas that are contradictions that must come in place in order to allow for transnational capital to dominate the world. The first is democracy and private property are not contradictions. They are intertwined together. They are one and the same. The second is that reason and emotion are separate, whereas before in human history we saw them as one and the same.

In order to promote the system of transnational capital, you need both a public layer as well as a secret layer. The public layer is just what we call philosophy. The three main philosophies that developed in order to justify the system are empiricism, skepticism, and utilitarianism: David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, John Locke. I won't go too much into it, but there's a secret layer to all this. The secret layer is Freemasonry.

Freemasonry is the religion of reason. If you read Freemason texts, whether it be Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma, or Manly P. Hall, they use a phrase over and over again. It's the idea of:

Holy empire of reason.

What is this? It's a holy empire of capital. Again, this is really important for us to appreciate. Reason in their eyes is capital.

This created a revolution in human cognition because, before, if I met someone, I might be like, “Where are you from?” That's the first question I would ask you. “What community are you part of?” Now I might be like, “How much money do you have?” You understand?

Again, this is the United States, so you think this is the most intuitive thing, to judge people by how much money they have. But historically we judged people by the community that they come from, the god that they worship, who their fathers are, who their parents are, right?

Whiteboard: Freemasonry → capital.

Reason = capital. Emotion.

Democracy. Private property.

Holy empire of reason.

This is the idea. Freemasonry was developed in order to better organize, structure, and manage capitalism secretly. Remember, the idea is democracy is just a facade created in order to fool people to agree to let bankers run the world. But you need a real management system, and this real management system is called Freemasonry.

Question: Were religious organizations against it?

Questioner: Were religious organizations against it, or were they part of it? Were the religious organizations, the Catholic Church, okay with this? Within or without?

Professor Jiang: That's a great question. Let's use game theory. The question is, you have this secret organization called the Freemasons, and they actually are transnational capital, and they want to conquer the world and spread capital everywhere. There must have been organizations against this system. Well, there were.

The problem is that this system is set up so that capitalism will always win out. If you align yourself with capitalism, then you win out. If you go against capitalism, you lose out, right? Think of history, where things like monarchy, organized religion, the Catholic Church, basically community, they're all being withered away, right?

You see all this massive migration to the United States and to Europe. You're like, “Who's doing this?” The answer is, it's capitalism, guys. Capitalism demands a free movement of people, goods, and ideas. If you try to stop them, then they see you as an enemy. But let me use game theory to explain what's going on.

Transnational capital is the most powerful force in the world. If you go against transnational capitalism, you will be destroyed. If you look at the movement of human history for the past 200 years, it's been the triumph of transnational capitalism.

The first example is the French Revolution. The Enlightenment is really the expression of capitalism, the political expression of capitalism, right? What does the Enlightenment call for? The Enlightenment calls for the free movement of ideas, people, and goods, right? The Enlightenment leads to what? The French Revolution.

Then what happens? You have the rise of communism. What's really interesting is, if you talk to these Freemasons, they think communism is the best thing in the world. Why? Because communism is a triumph of human reason above emotion, right? Communism demands that you put the public good, the reason, above family, community, emotion, love, nationalism. That's what communism is.

If you look at the past 200 years, 300 years, it's been the relentless march of human reason, of capital, but taking different guises, taking different forms, whether it be the French Revolution or communism or capitalism. Does that make sense?

Information, infiltration, and coordination

Professor Jiang: Let me explain what's been happening. I say Freemasonry is the organizing system behind capitalism. But what does that mean? Transnational capital means capital across different nation-states. When you do that, you have a problem. What they realize is, if you're able to solve three problems, you will triumph.

1. Information.
2. Infiltration.
3. Coordination.

The classic example is the Rothschilds. Their family was spread out in the different capitals of Europe, including Frankfurt, where they're from, but also Paris, London. One story that stood out is the 1815 Battle of Waterloo. The British and the Prussians fought Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, and, of course, Napoleon lost.

The Rothschilds had agents to monitor the battle. When the battle was declared, the agent got on a corvette, which is a fast ship, and sailed across the English Channel and told the information to Rothschild three days before the public knew. During these three days, there was a wild panic because, for some reason, we don't know who did it, but there were rumors going around that the British had lost the battle.

This is the idea of information, infiltration, and coordination. Information means, how do you access information quicker than other people? Infiltration is, how do you put agents into certain places that allow you to access sensitive information? Coordination is, how do you work across different nation-states in order to break the game in your favor? The best way to do this is through secret societies.

At this time in history, there are maybe three transnational forces in Europe. They are, of course, the Freemasons, they are the Jesuits, and they are the Jewish diaspora. Eventually, what they realize is, “You guys, we could just work together,” right? When you combine the Freemasons with the Jesuits and with the Jewish diaspora, you get an organization called the Illuminati.

The best way to understand this is, I'm not saying that they're planning this out. What they are doing is this: there are different organizations, and they all have a range of certain behavior. There are people within the Catholic Church who are pro-transnational capital, people who are against transnational capital.

What I'm saying is that secret societies are a convergence point of these different organizations, and because they're able to coordinate secretly together, they will always win out. Doesn't make sense.

I'm not saying that most people are part of a secret society. I'm saying if you choose to be part of a secret society, you will be at a greater advantage than if you are not. If you're just a government bureaucrat, you'll just be a government bureaucrat for the rest of your life. But if you're part of a secret society and you're a government bureaucrat, then your friends will help promote you in the bureaucracy. Then you'll be given investment opportunities. Then your children will be allowed to go to the most elite universities. It is to your advantage to join the secret society. Does that make sense, guys?

Question: Which organizations lost out?

Questioner: You named three of them, but what are the organizations or institutions that lost out? Who can trace their history to see it degraded as a result of this coordination?

Professor Jiang: That's a great question. One thing I disagree with people about is how these societies are continuous, right? What people say was, it started out with the Knights Templar, which was the original secret society, and then it evolved to become the Freemasons, and then they become the Rosicrucians. I don't believe this is what happened.

I believe that secret societies are just a natural byproduct of transnational capitalism because the way to win this game is by forming secret societies. But secret societies usually revolve around a charismatic figure. Maybe the charismatic figure will start a new organization called Skull and Bones, right? Because he's so successful, very successful people gravitate towards him. But eventually what happens is these people become very arrogant, their children become very arrogant, and the secret society gives way to other secret societies.

But what I think is true is the most powerful secret societies are eschatological. What I mean by that is, if you're a secret society and you're like, “We're here to make a lot of money and enjoy ourselves,” you won't do as well in the long term as, “We're here to serve God, and we're here to bring God to our world. We're here to usher in the end times.” There are certain reasons why.

The first reason why is, if it's eschatological, it's a script that you can play out over centuries. If it's not eschatological, then it usually revolves around a charismatic leader who, when he dies, the organization devolves. That's the first thing: it can span centuries because it's a script.

The second thing is that you can have more people participate in the movement, right? You can scale it out if it's eschatological. The third thing is people tend to be much more energetic when they think, “I'm going to bring about the end times. We are going to take the world to paradise,” right? This is a jihad.

Secret societies that are eschatological tend to do better than secret societies that are not eschatological. Specifically, secret societies that practice what's called the Kabbalah do the best. Now what I'm going to do is explain to you the Kabbalah.

If you know Freemasonry, if you read books like Morals and Dogma by Albert Pike, they're very open about the structure. What you'll recognize is Freemasonry tries to be the religion of reason. It tries to absorb all the best practices of every single religion out there and come up with the empire of reason. Maybe at the bottom levels you'll have Pythagoras, the Egyptians. But as you go up to the highest level, it's the Kabbalah.

Question: Why did the Freemasons put reason above emotion?

Questioner: Why did the Freemasons feel that reason was above emotion when they founded Freemasonry? What led them to the decision? Was it coordination? They felt they—reason as opposed to—

Professor Jiang: They didn't plan this out. Remember, all this is a response to a certain problem, right? You are trying to spread transnational capital around the world. How do you convince yourself and others that capitalism is good? What you do is you create a distinction between reason and emotion, where reason is capital, right? “Let's make things for money.” Emotion is prejudice, right? “No, I can't make money because my religion doesn't allow for it.”

That's what happened. It isn't like the Freemasons had an epiphany, which is, “Oh my God, reason and emotion are separate.” No, no, it was a response to a problem that they had. Does that make sense?

The Kabbalah and the end times

Professor Jiang: What was the Kabbalah? Again, I want to be concise. The Kabbalah is an understanding of how the universe works. Why are we here? Where are we going? Where did the universe come from? What the Kabbalah says is that God is the will to bestow. He's God, right? He's all generous, and he wants to share himself with others. The problem is there's no one to share it with. To know itself, to complete itself, God creates Adam Kadmon, the first man, the cosmic man, and Adam Kadmon becomes the will to receive.

But if you're the will to receive, you see things purely from an egotistical perspective, which means you don't really appreciate why God wants to give you anything. You reject God's gift. When you reject God's gift, the universe breaks. Now you have the separation between us and God. The purpose of the universe is to come to an enlightenment so that we're able to receive God's gift. This could mean spiritual alchemy. That is the Kabbalah at a very general level.

There are radical factions who read the Kabbalah, and they interpret it literally through the lens of the Bible. They take this idea that the entire purpose of humanity is to seek reunion with God, and they use the Bible as a script or as a plan. They interpret it literally, which means to say they want to seek reunion with God by acting out God's divine plan as told in the Bible.

What this divine plan basically means is the Jews must first return to Israel in order to fulfill the covenant between the Jews and God. Then the Jews must build the Third Temple as a resting place for God. This will initiate the war of Gog and Magog. When the Jews are most in need, then God will come and save them and save the world. Because reunion with God means opening your heart to God, and this means to repent.

Again, I'm talking in very general terms, but this is how they interpret their role literally. This is why we're seeing what's happening in the Middle East. Why are the Israelis committing genocide in Gaza like that? That's just insane. You don't have to do that, guys. But they're purposely doing it, and they're doing it in 4K. Why? Because they want the whole world to see this. They want to initiate the war of Gog and Magog, which will force the Israelis to come together. That's why antisemitism is growing in the world. The war of Gog and Magog will force the Jews to repent and turn to God, and then the world will end. Then they can build the Third Temple. This is why it's happening.

I want to explain why the Kabbalah is so powerful. It's so powerful because there's a sexual energy and desire that the Kabbalah unleashes, right? It's sexual, the idea of reunifying with God. We were part of God. We left God. Now we will become one with God again. It's a sexual union, and that excites people.

Whiteboard: Kabbalah. Bible.

Sexual energy + desire.

I hate to say this, but have you guys seen Pete Hegseth give press conferences? The guy's literally, when he's talking about the war, it's almost like he's having an orgy. He's having an orgasm. That tells you this guy's been reading the Kabbalah a lot.

I'm serious. These guys who are committing genocide, like Pete Hegseth, they literally see it in sexual terms. “We're so close to achieving the end times. We are so close to becoming one with God.” They're excited about it.

Question: Why would killing bring people close to God?

Questioner: I don't get it. I'm listening the whole time. I really don't get why people really believe that this is how you get close to God. Killing and killing and killing. That's so far from love.

Professor Jiang: That's a great question. From an intuitive perspective, it makes no sense because why can't you just open your heart and welcome God? The answer is it's too goddamn slow, man. You could do it, but can your neighbor do it? Can your neighbor's neighbor do it? Probably not. But for the Kabbalah to work out, everyone has to do it. How do you create the conditions so that everyone is forced to do it?

Questioner: My question is, as a kid, because I grew up in a very religious home, when I was being conditioned, I would always ask, “Why only one type would God choose as the chosen?” That makes no sense to me. It felt, even as a kid, and even now as an adult it feels like that's a false god. That's a false belief, because my intuition doesn't believe this. The whole world—

Professor Jiang: That's a great point. You can argue there are a lot of logical fallacies within Judaism, especially messianic Jews. You can say they're crazy. The problem is the world is not run by reason. The world is not run by who's right or who's wrong. The world is run by those who are willing to sacrifice themselves in order to achieve what they want. That's the issue. These people are crazy, but that's why they run the world, because they're willing to make sacrifices that no one else is willing to do.

The example I have is, you guys remember this Muslim who killed these two Christians outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC? Do you guys remember that incident? This was a married couple. They were Christians, and they were, I think, volunteering at the Israeli embassy. They caught a Muslim, and he was clearly drugged out.

I don't speculate too much, but there are people online who think that these two Christians purposely martyred themselves in order to advance the Zionist cause. Does that make sense?

Questioner: Yeah.

Professor Jiang: For them, death means nothing. “If I die in order to accelerate the coming of God, then it's worth it.”

Questioner: But it's not coming. That's the whole thing.

Professor Jiang: Again, it's not about who's right and who's wrong. It's about who's willing to work the hardest to achieve his or her ends. These people are the craziest, so they usually get what they want.

Think of the Israel lobby, which is basically just one issue, right? “If you go into Israel, we'll come after you. We'll spend $30 million.” Thomas Massie was this one lone voice in Congress. He was completely powerless. He was a pain in the ass. But honestly, who cares? They spent $30 million to get rid of this guy.

Then you have Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, right? $30 million spent by AIPAC against him, and then $60 million total against him. They're fanatical, right? You're like, “Is it really worth it?” You might have five people in Congress who are against Israel. Everyone else is for Israel. The math still is in your favor, right? They don't care. “No, if one person, we don't care who it is, that one person is against us, we'll go after that person and make sure he or she can never be in Washington.” It's fanatical.

Question: Was 9/11 a sacrifice?

Questioner: 9/11, it was a sacrifice?

Professor Jiang: Let me continue. Then 9/11 will make sense.

Question: Why doesn't China have corresponding organizations?

Questioner: Before we continue on this topic, how come China doesn't have corresponding organizations or societies, like capitalists, et cetera?

Professor Jiang: Because China has families. Families take the place of secret societies, right? China is not transnational. China works within its own borders, so you don't really need secret societies in order to win out.

Families in China win out over secret societies because families are much more close-knit than secret societies. But in the Western world, where the geography is much more spread out, where cultures are much more diverse, the secret societies will win out over families. Does that make sense?

Capital and the cycle of destruction

Professor Jiang: Let me finish my point. I'll do one more section. We have a question, which is, you've got these crazies in the secret societies that want to usher in the end times, but this is bad for transnational capital, right? What I want to show you now is actually, if you're transnational capital, you like these guys. We're seeing an alliance between transnational capital and messianic secret societies, and this is why we live in the world that we live in. Let me explain to you why, as a capitalist, I actually like these guys.

One thing to keep in mind is capital has no value in itself. Capital is a tool for me to extract your energy, your attention, your consciousness. Does that make sense?

If I'm a transnational capitalist, and America is so wealthy, rich, so filthy rich, right? I'm in New York City. Maybe the average family here—I'm saying hypothetically—each family has a million dollars. That means the kids don't have to work, right? But if the kids aren't working, then the system breaks down. I need to create a condition where people are forced to work.

Capitalism creates wealth, but it also must destroy wealth at the same time. It doesn't make sense, right? The best way to destroy wealth is through war and revolution. This is how capitalism will work. Again, I'm not saying this is a plan, but I'm saying this is the nature of capitalism to do this.

I'm the United States, and it's the wealthiest country in the world, and all the capital is here. But this has led to moral, social, and political decay, right? Too much debt, too much corruption, too much inequality. Now I can't invest in the United States because I can't get any returns, right? What do I invest in the United States? AI data centers? There's no return in that.

This war in the Middle East, which will usher in Pax Judaica, is the best investment opportunity for me right now, right? Imagine, maybe five, ten years down the road, the Middle East is destroyed. It's good for me because if you're destroyed, I can now rebuild.

Coming here, I took the New York subway, and I was like, “Wow. You guys have to take this every day, man. That's going to tell.” What do you do with the New York subway? Because it's going to cost you a fortune to renovate it, right? It'll take you forever to renovate it. Your only solution, if you're a capitalist, is to burn it down, right? Is that the cheapest way, the most effective way to renovate the New York subway? You just burn it down first, right? Otherwise, it's taking 50 years and billions of dollars, $200, in order to actually make it modern, right? It's just cheaper and faster. Just burn it down.

But if you want to burn down the New York subway, you probably have to burn down New York City as well, right? I'm telling you this is how these guys think. “How do I get the best return for my money?” The best return for my money is to invest in places after war, after destruction.

They move their capital to Israel, to Pax Judaica. A lot of this capital is also going to Argentina, Australia, Ukraine, the Mediterranean. Basically places that are virgin territory, right? It's all being anchored by Pax Judaica. Does that make sense?

When the money shifts away from the United States, you have economic collapse. Economic collapse leads to civil war. Now New York City is burned down. The New York subway is burned down, which means what? Which means now I can invest in a new subway system. Now, after maybe 10, 20 years, my capital can return to the United States.

Another way of saying this is the only way for capitalism to work is a constant cycle of destruction, revolution, and war. Without these things, capitalism cannot work. It doesn't make sense. You think, “These Kabbalists are crazy,” but these capitalists are kind of crazy too.

China, technology, and the Middle East

Question: Does China have similar secret societies?

Questioner: Does China have similar secret societies? What does it look like? I know we kind of talked about it, but—

Professor Jiang: There are secret societies in China. There are secret societies everywhere, and they're basically family-focused, right? It's usually one family, and it's usually a criminal organization, triads, and then they obtain power and they become legitimate.

The problem with the Chinese system is that it's not transnational. It's only within a certain ethnic network, so it's much more limited in scope. The other issue with the Chinese secret societies is they're not eschatological. They're political, but they're not eschatological.

Questioner: I heard, I may be wrong, but I heard that the secret societies, Freemasons, they have infiltrated into the top CPC officials, people, and have been since they came to China in 1848, the Opium War. It never stopped. That's what I heard. Whatever it is, they're now in China. Do you see that the Freemasons are as determined as before, in the 1950s, to scramble, strangle China, just like those people?

Professor Jiang: China, in many ways, has been colonized by secret societies, by transnational capital. The goal of transnational capital is to go to a place and extract as much energy as possible and transfer it into capital, and that's what's happened in China. I would make the argument that China has really hollowed out, right?

In the '80s and '90s, transnational capital went into China and built factories in order to extract the energy of its demographic. Afterwards—and I don't think people appreciate this—China could have only embarked on its infrastructure spending with the aid of transnational capital, right? Because you needed resources to build these highways and skyscrapers. Capital allowed China to buy these resources from Australia, from South America.

At that time, 2008, there's an agreement between the Bank for International Settlements and China to increase the value of the Chinese yuan, which allows China to buy up all these resources. This infrastructure spending has really hollowed out the Chinese economy because this infrastructure spending has led to corruption, inequality, and debt as well. China's basically done, and there's really no real growth potential for China. That's why transnational capital is shifting from the United States and China to the Middle East, right?

Again, if I'm a capitalist, I'm a trillionaire, I'm always looking for a place which will grow. I think the United States and China are in the same boat. They're both empires in decline.

Questioner: Do you see a similar repeat of what happened in the 1950s, when they tried to embargo China? China will just close up, and then—

Professor Jiang: I think what's going to happen is that China will be embargoed by its surrounding neighbors, and it will just remove itself from the global financial system, the global supply chain. It's going to turtle up. But when it does that, it's going to lead to structural contradictions. Why? Because people in the urban areas are used to a modern Western lifestyle.

If there's not enough food—I know this sounds silly, but if there's not enough food, the people in the urban areas, Beijing and Shanghai, want to maintain their current lifestyle. If there's not enough food, guess what's going to happen? There's going to be famine in the countryside. This is what happened during the Great Leap Forward as well. I'm not very optimistic about China.

Questioner: You're saying that there will be a kind of similar case?

Professor Jiang: I think so. Yes.

Question: What are the historical analogies for technology and the consolidation of power?

Questioner: What are the historical analogies of the current-day technology transitions and consolidation of power?

Professor Jiang: I see AI as a logical extension of this holy empire of reason, right? What you're trying to do is you're trying to allow for the rapid, almost seamless, frictionless movement of people, goods, and ideas. Freemasons appreciate that the main constraint on this is humans. Why? Because humans have emotions, right? Emotions are prejudices. They're biases, and they prevent the seamless movement of goods, people, and ideas. You have to break that. You have to transform people. They call it spiritual alchemy. AI is considered a tool in order to achieve this.

That's what AI is. AI is not just a surveillance tool. AI will help us, as humans, achieve full enlightenment, right? Imagine a microchip implanted in your head, Neuralink, right? That's always telling you the right thing to believe. If we're able to synchronize all of human consciousness, then that would lead to paradise, right? Because all biases, all prejudices, all negative emotions will be wiped out from the world.

That's what's happening. AI is not necessarily a revolution. AI is just the fulfillment of capital, right?

Question: What is the future of the Middle East?

Questioner: What is the future state of the Middle East in the short term following the conclusion of the Iran war? Is there any realistic chance that the existing global power structures will, or even can, be changed in meaningful ways?

Professor Jiang: First of all, this war in Iran will never end. It just can't end because the war in Iran is fundamentally a conflict between capital and religion. Israel represents capital, and Iran represents religion. This is a contradiction, and only one can win out over the other, but it's impossible for one to defeat the other. The idea of the United States sending in ground troops against Iran is going to lead to a quagmire that could go on for decades.

But if you're a capitalist, you don't really care, right? All you're looking to do is extract as much energy from people as possible, and war does that. War makes people anxious. It makes them work harder. The war in the Middle East is a perfect investment opportunity if you're a capitalist. Again, guys, I'm not saying this if you're a millionaire. You don't matter if you're a millionaire. I'm saying this if you're a trillionaire. If you're a trillionaire, then the war in the Middle East is a perfect investment opportunity.

The question is, is there an alternative to this? The alternative is the return to religious nationalism. Countries like Iran and Russia present a direct threat to capitalism. They call this Duginism, actually. Dugin basically says capitalism is the Antichrist system. It's the beast, and it negates all that is good in humans, and it includes family, community, emotions like love. This is really the great struggle that humanity will face over the next 50 years. This struggle is represented by the United States versus Russia.

Questioner: You just said Duginism, right? The idea of Russia operating as the katechon for preventing the Antichrist from occurring.

Professor Jiang: Yes.

Questioner: Do they represent one of the two figures in Gog and Magog, right? The idea of operating a massive war against this.

Professor Jiang: There are different eschatological systems. In the Russian Third Rome eschatology, Russia is a katechon, and it's meant to stop the Antichrist from conquering the world. The Antichrist, of course, is capitalism, right? But then you have the Christian Zionist eschatology, which perceives Russia and Persia as Gog and Magog. Does that make sense? These are different eschatologies.

Question: What does Peter Thiel mean by the Antichrist?

Questioner: Professor, can you speak a little bit more about the Antichrist that Peter Thiel is obsessed with and what his version of it is? What is he trying to tell us? What is he implying? He goes and meets Javier and gives him a lecture about—what is he trying to say?

Professor Jiang: I think Peter Thiel is carrying on the Freemason tradition. I don't know Peter Thiel. You should ask Kathy. But I think what Peter Thiel is doing is carrying on the Freemason tradition. For the Freemasons, the Antichrist is whatever force stops human reason from reaching its full potential. Does that make sense?

What the Freemasons believe is, if human reason is allowed to dominate, then human reason can achieve godhood. Our collective reason becomes God itself, as represented by AI. Whatever force stops the advent of reason, the advance of AI, is fundamentally against God and therefore the Antichrist. Does that make sense? That, I think, is the subtext of what he's saying.

Question: Will American universities in the GCC survive?

Professor Jiang: Nope.

The Iran and Ukraine wars and the AI bubble

Question: How will the Iran and Ukraine wars converge?

Questioner: How will the Iran and Ukraine wars converge? How will there be both an AI and private bubble crash and hyperinflation at the same time? That's a little different.

Professor Jiang: These wars have to converge because Russia is supplying Iran through the Caspian Sea, and Ukraine sees this as an opportunity to combine both fronts. Zelensky ordered a drone strike against an Iranian cargo ship transporting through the Caspian Sea. The idea is that if you provoke the Iranians, the Iranians will begin to attack Europe and Ukraine because a lot of drone factories are based in Europe.

I think this will just happen naturally because it's really hard to separate these fronts, and more actors will be brought in over time because the stakes are so high. What's the other section?

Questioner: How will there be both an AI private bubble crash and hyperinflation at the same time?

Professor Jiang: You have hyperinflation because the fiat currency, which is the US dollar, is moving slowly towards zero. That's a problem, and the AI private credit bubble will pop because liquidity has been removed from the US system, right? The GCC, Japan, are no longer able to invest in the United States because of their own problems, right?

Question: Who benefits from the AI bubble crashing?

Questioner: If the AI bubble crashes eventually, which it's going to, could that be wealth destruction? If the wealth is destroyed, the people have to work.

Professor Jiang: Yeah.

Questioner: Who's going to benefit, and whose wealth will be destroyed?

Professor Jiang: Look, all these bubbles are engineered. The fact that the media is telling you the bubble is going to burst basically is telling you there are some vested interests that want this bubble to burst. Who are these vested interests? I would assume the big AI companies, right?

Why would you, as Altman, want the bubble to burst? The answer is the government has to come bail you out now, right? You're too big to fail. The bubble bursts, OpenAI goes bankrupt. This is a disaster for the American economy. Therefore, Trump has no choice but to nationalize data centers, right?

Why would you want that? Because now you socialize the losses and privatize the gains, right? The data centers cost you a lot of money, and they're hard to implement because of community reaction. But if Trump and the United States government come in and nationalize these data centers, they are now military installations. Now you have eminent domain. Now the communities can't complain, right?

Data centers are the main cost of AI companies. You want the bubble to burst so that the federal government can come in and save your ass. Does that make sense?

Questioner: Yeah.

Question: What mechanism would cause the bubble to burst?

Questioner: You mentioned this in one of your lectures as well. The engineering of bubbles bursting, I think, implies a mechanism of control. In this instance, what would you say is the lever? Is that Sam Altman that can cause the bubble to burst?

Professor Jiang: That's a really good question because this AI bubble is distinct from other bubbles. You go back to the 2008 subprime crisis, there was a trigger mechanism, which was the home default, right? But with this AI bubble, it's circular financing. It's basically seven companies, and it's a circle jerk. They're all financing each other, and as long as they agree to not burst the bubble, the bubble won't burst.

What is the mechanism that will burst this bubble? The answer is they'll just make something up. They have all sorts of pretexts, but these seven will agree at some point to burst the bubble, and it will be collusion. They are actually already, if you just watch the news, so many news articles about “This bubble's going to burst. This bubble's going to burst,” right? They're already laying the groundwork. It's predictive programming. That's what it is.

Question: What do they gain by letting the bubble continue?

Questioner: My question is, what are they gaining by letting it continue to go on? I don't get why they're not just bursting it. You say that they have to time it right. What are they gaining by letting it continue on?

Professor Jiang: First of all, you just let it go on because it's the path of least resistance. That's number one. Number two is they can always control the time it collapses. When they time the collapse, what they can do then is short the market to maximize their gains.

People always pick the path of least resistance. If you don't have to pop the bubble, you don't want to pop the bubble. But if you're forced to pop the bubble, then you want to pop it in a way that maximizes your gains.

Wealth, family, imagination, and education

Question: How can people create an alternative, and what is real wealth?

Questioner: How can people in the West create an alternative to capitalism and modernity? If wealth isn't capital, what is real wealth?

Professor Jiang: First of all, real wealth is always your imagination, your attention. That's why these social media companies let you use their service for free. You think it's free, but it's not because you're paying attention to these things. They're capturing your attention, and that's what they want, right? They're absorbing your wealth, and that's why these companies are so valuable, because they're able to control your attention.

The alternative is for you to reclaim your attention. This can mean reading books, but it really means you focus more on human relations. You focus on being kind, open, and generous with the people around you, on getting to know your neighbors.

I was at the Pacific Palisades in LA. It was the most ridiculous, because they live in these $20 million to $200 million mansions, and they don't even know their neighbors. I was talking to my friend. He's like, “Oh yeah, Steven Spielberg lives down the street.” “Well, are you guys friends?” “No, I never met the guy.” They live three houses down. “I never met the guy. And Adam Sandler, yeah, he's my next-door neighbor. Never met the guy. Never seen the guy.” It's so weird.

Question: If the US and China are declining empires, who's rising?

Professor Jiang: I think Israel is rising. I think Japan is rising. I think Poland could be rising. I think North Korea is rising. Iran could be rising. Places that are outside the capital system will rise because they have untapped potential. Places that are over-capitalistic are just exhausted.

Question: How do JD Vance and Trump's positions fit together?

Questioner: What is your perspective on the apparent contradiction between JD Vance's isolationism and Trump's imperial ambitions? Do you see one faction of the Republican Party winning in the end?

Professor Jiang: I actually don't see it as a battle between JD Vance and Donald Trump. I see Donald Trump as trying to navigate opposing factions, right? That's why JD Vance is still around, because JD Vance works for Donald Trump, right? It was Donald Trump who picked JD Vance, and it's Donald Trump encouraging JD Vance to write a book and go on his book tour, right? JD Vance has been on a lot of podcasts.

Honestly, I think how politics works is, if JD Vance were really against Trump, there are lots of things Trump could have done. But I think Trump is the sort of person who tries to maintain as many options as possible, and JD Vance is maintaining an option for him.

Question: Where should people build a family and home?

Questioner: Guidance on where to build a family and home, given the stage of capitalism Western nations are at and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East?

Professor Jiang: I think that if you have a family, God will protect you anywhere. I think, rather than focus on “Where should my family be?” focus first of all on having a family. But also just focus on loving your children, and then God will take care of the rest.

Question: Where is the US–China relationship heading?

Questioner: Where do you think the US–China relationship is actually heading over the next 10 to 20 years? Is some form of long-term coexistence realistic?

Professor Jiang: I think China and the United States are not natural enemies. I think both the United States and China are interested in maintaining the current global order, especially China, because China is very export-oriented. China would like, as much as possible, to come to a détente with the United States.

The problem is the United States' internal politics make US foreign policy very erratic. But I think that President Xi Jinping's visit next month—he's coming here to the United States on September 24—will be a very good bellwether of where things will be headed. I think there'll be a compromise of some sort. I think that things will turn around for US–China relations.

Question: How will AI change our sense of purpose?

Questioner: As AI gets better at more of the things we consider human intellectual work, how do you think it will change our sense of purpose and what we value as a society?

Professor Jiang: I think AI is a dead end. I think there's a limit to AI, and the reason why is AI is completely dependent on the global supply chain, right? You'd be able to access rare earths, lithium, silver really cheaply from around the globe. But if these supply chains are breaking down, then it's very hard to take AI to the next level.

You ask yourself, in a time of global disruption, is AI really the best place to invest your money? I think that we've basically reached the peak of AI, and I'm not very optimistic about where AI will take us.

Question: What three changes would you make to high school education?

Questioner: If you could redesign high school education from scratch, what three changes would be best for preparing students for the next 20 years?

Professor Jiang: I would say the major problem with high school education is it's fundamentally about indoctrination, and it's trying to indoctrinate students in a very materialistic worldview. I think that if you really want students to be engaged, if you really want students to ask good questions, to really want to learn, you need to teach them the occult. You need to teach them things like the Kabbalah. You need to focus on the great books, Homer, Dante, and you need to make school relevant, right? School needs to be a place where students can learn about the world, as opposed to being separate from the world.

Question: How can we trust our imagination?

Questioner: You mentioned that we imagine reality. How can we determine that this imagination is sourced from God or Satan? In other words, how can we trust our imagination?

Professor Jiang: I think that the imagination can only come from the Monad. I think it's impossible to be imaginative in an evil way. Percy Shelley talks about this. Poetry: if you're a poet, you're not being imaginative, you're being divinely inspired, right? If it's a great piece of literature, if it's really beautiful, it comes from the Monad. It's an act of imagination.

You could also say Satan doesn't really exist. What is Satan? In my own conception of the universe, only the Monad exists. Evil is something that we conceptualize to explain the world we live in. But Dante would say the fundamental principle of the universe is free will. Real imagination comes from a place of love, so it's almost impossible to be imaginative for evil purposes.

Question: What is the role of an artist during this time?

Professor Jiang: The role of an artist is to be a prophet, right? The role of an artist is to reveal the universe, reveal the truth, and to give hope to people, to explain what's going on, but also to show new possibilities, to be a prophet. I think historically all artists were considered prophets of some sort.

Now they're just in Brooklyn and drinking $10 matchas.

Question: What positive things can you say about this present time?

Professor Jiang: I think this is a very positive time because what's happening in the world is forcing us to think deeply about who we are and what we want, right? That's why we're all here tonight. I think 10 years ago, my lectures, people were like, “This guy's insane, and let's just ignore him because he's saying bad things, and it's not comfortable listening to him,” right?

But now you're seeking answers. By seeking answers, by seeking the truth, you're actually activating the humanity in you. Your soul, the soul in you, the spark in you that was dormant for such a long time because things were so comfortable, is now begging for answers. I think this may lead to a spiritual awakening and an evolution of humanity. But this is something that is not obvious at some point because this is something that we have to seek together, and together we will build the solution.

Great books, Israel, and the occult

Question: What other great books can guide our imagination?

Questioner: You constantly return to Dante as the paradigmatic great-books author who redefined human experience and provided a way to view reality in a positive way. Are there any other great books, especially written following modernity? I'm thinking of Ulysses or In Search of Lost Time, or books even written now that you see as providing instruction manuals for our imagination to navigate the complexities of modern life.

Professor Jiang: That's a great question. I really like the Russian novelists, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. Anna Karenina, I think, is really the best novel ever written. Anna Karenina, and then Dostoyevsky is always wonderful: Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov.

But really, modern writers—I really like, what's his name? Who wrote Cathedral? Raymond Carver. Is that his name?

Questioner: Yeah.

Professor Jiang: I like Raymond Carver a lot. I think that his stories just force you to think very deeply, and they're very emotional. I would recommend Raymond Carver, Cathedral.

Question: Would Israel's changing demographics change the Pax Judaica argument?

Questioner: Your argument is that Israel is the next big world power, money's flowing to Israel, et cetera. You've already said that Israel has a high birth rate, three children per woman. But the demographic of Israel going forward, most births are towards the Hasidic Jews or the Palestinian Israelis, the Arab Israelis, right? That will lead to a very different Israel 50 years or 30 years from now. Does that not change your Pax Judaica argument, essentially?

Professor Jiang: The Israelis do not want Pax Judaica. The Israelis are fairly happy with the way things are as they are. Unfortunately, there are some messianic Jews, mainly Chabad-Lubavitch. I'm not sure if you guys know what it is, but they're trying to usher in the end times, and they're out of control.

What's been happening is there's an internal contradiction. It's being externalized, right? You guys may know a lot of Israelis are buying property in the Mediterranean, in Greece and Cyprus. They're moving to Argentina. The reason why is they don't like the messianic mess, right? Rather than fight them, which would lead to civil war, they're like, “Screw this. We'll just move elsewhere,” right? They're moving to Argentina, they're moving to the Mediterranean, they're moving to Australia, these places.

But what this means is, if these people are leaving, people from Tel Aviv are leaving, that means that Israel becomes even more messianic, right? The settlers have even more power. I see Israel transforming from a democracy to a theocracy in the next few years. I think this election in October will be very telling, and it'll be very interesting to see what happens. But the idea of Israel as a democracy can't last.

For Pax Judaica to take shape, what has to happen is you have to have a priest class, the theocracy, and you bring in millions of immigrants from India, and they become basically your slave class. That's what they want to create.

Questioner: Is that what transnational capital wants as well? They want an Israel with a priest class and a peasant class, I guess.

Professor Jiang: Yeah. Because that's how I make the most money, right? Libya is destroyed, Syria's destroyed, Iraq's destroyed. The GCC will be destroyed very, very quickly, right? Now I repopulate it with Indians because India, first of all, has a booming population of young people who are just going to revolt if you just let them stay in the country, right? You need to remove them and send them elsewhere.

Also, Hindutva is a growing ideology in India which calls for Indian Zionism. There's a lot of alignment between India and Israel. In fact, there's only four countries in the world where Israel has a net favorability rating. One of them actually is India. I think the others are Ghana and Nigeria.

Question: How was the Kabbalah co-opted by the West?

Questioner: I'm interested to learn more about how Kabbalah was co-opted by the West because, from my understanding, it was developed in Andalusia, Islamic Spain, and then spread out into Christian Europe. Now it's influencing the occult and secret societies. How did Kabbalah become part of Christian Zionism? What other occult strains do you think should be studied to both understand the world and as an alternative to create something new?

Professor Jiang: Kabbalah is interesting because what Kabbalah is doing really, if you think about it, is taking Egyptian Hermeticism and Gnosticism and applying it to the Bible. What makes the Kabbalah distinct from, say, Gnosticism and Hermeticism and Neoplatonism is that, for them, the mind of God is not really decipherable. You can't really understand the mind of God.

But for Kabbalists, they're like, “The Bible is the word of God, right? The Bible is comprised of the Hebrew alphabet. Then we can imagine that the Hebrew alphabet and numbers, numerology, are the fundamental tools that God uses to create the universe. If we are able to interpret the Hebrew alphabet and numerology in a certain way, then we're able to reconstruct the very fabric of the universe.”

That's what makes Kabbalah distinct from other things. You think about it, that's a really powerful way of understanding the universe because, if you can actually figure out numerology and the Hebrew alphabet, then you can actually predict the future. That's why the Kabbalah is so enticing for people. There are practitioners of Kabbalah who are able to predict the future.

You look at Chabad-Lubavitch. I'm not sure if you guys know about the history of Chabad-Lubavitch, but it was founded in modern-day Russia, and for most of its history was persecuted by first the Russian tsar and then the Soviets. It should have been extinct many, many decades ago. It's a very small movement, and now it's everywhere. It's in Ukraine. It's very close to Putin. It's very close to Trump. Javier Milei in Argentina, he's actually a Chabad-Lubavitch member.

From their perspective, it's a miracle. It's divine how they were able to survive such persecution and now grow and become so powerful. They believe they did so because of their understanding of the Kabbalah. But their understanding of the Kabbalah is also messianic, and they call for the end times. They're so energized. The history of Chabad-Lubavitch is so mesmerizing if you actually go deep into it.

I'll tell you one story. Have you guys ever asked yourself how Mark Zuckerberg became a billionaire? Because Facebook is not an original idea. There were lots of Facebook-like concepts around at the time. Why did Facebook come to dominate social media?

The answer is Mark Zuckerberg was able to take Harvard intellectual property, because Facebook is Harvard intellectual property, and he was able to ignore Harvard privacy rules, right? Facebook, you shouldn't be able to access that person's face and address and personal details, but they were able to do so. Where did Mark Zuckerberg get this power?

When Mark Zuckerberg was at Harvard, he was part of Harvard Chabad, which is the campus offshoot of Chabad-Lubavitch. He was a freshman when he joined Harvard Chabad. The two seniors who were part of Harvard Chabad at the time were Natalie Portman and Jared Kushner.

Questioner: You said Natalie Portman?

Professor Jiang: Natalie Portman, yeah. You didn't know that? Natalie Portman and Jared Kushner go way back.

The faculty advisor was Alan Dershowitz. The patron of Harvard Chabad was Larry Summers. You're like, “Wait a minute. What's going on here?”

Here's another really interesting story you can just Google. Mark Zuckerberg said that his parents had three daughters before they had him. They really, really wanted a son. What did they do? They went to ask for a blessing from Rebbe Schneerson, who was head of Chabad-Lubavitch. Rebbe Schneerson says:

Yes, I will bless you.

Then they had Mark Zuckerberg. You think, “That's a nice story,” but you read the Bible, it's not a nice story. It's actually a very messianic story because who in the Bible couldn't have children and then asked God for a blessing and then had a child? It was Abraham and Sarah, who had Isaac, right? Then Abraham sacrificed Isaac to God.

But it was also the prophet Samuel. Samuel's parents couldn't conceive, so they begged God and said:

Look, if you give us a child, we will make this child your servant.

Then they conceived and had Samuel, and then Samuel became the prophet who anointed King David. If you know the Bible, you know when Mark Zuckerberg tells his story, it's coded language. It means he's a servant of God.

If you look at what he's doing, creating the metaverse, why would you do that, right? There are a lot of really strange things about Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, and you can't explain it just using venture capital sense. For example, why does Mark Zuckerberg have complete control over the company? Why, as a venture capitalist, would you allow a 19-year-old, 20-year-old to have complete control over Facebook? You guys know this, right? He doesn't have majority equity, but he has majority control. He has certain shares that give him total control of Facebook. Why would you allow that to happen, right? There's a lot of strange things behind Facebook.

Why do I say this? Because in 2016, what happened? The Cambridge Analytica scandal happened, right? What's the Cambridge Analytica scandal? Basically, this company was able to access 50 million Facebook users' personal data and then create microtargeting that allowed the Trump team to sway the election in their favor, right? You guys know this, right?

The head of Facebook was Mark Zuckerberg. Who was head of the Trump social media team responsible for this microtargeting? You guys know?

Questioner: Kushner.

Professor Jiang: Jared Kushner. You're like, “Wait a minute here. What's going on?” But you just connect the dots, you get a really interesting story.

Questioner: Did you read the article yesterday about Amodei's wife, CEO of Anthropic? His wife tried to raise money from Jeffrey Epstein for a female porn site, and she dated Sergey Brin as the CEO. It's a Wall Street article.

Professor Jiang: It's a very small circle of people, right? It's a very small circle of people. You're always able to connect these people together. Jeffrey Epstein is another person who is probably also Chabad-Lubavitch.

Question: How can young people use the occult and philosophy for good?

Questioner: You still recommend children and young people study the occult and great books, and you talk about the importance of artists as prophets. How do you think young people can use these ideas that philosophers and intellectuals, entrepreneurs have used to spread ideas for good, and to use the occult and philosophy to create new creative ideas?

Professor Jiang: I think people often look to me for ideas, but that's not how these things work. Once you connect back to the Monad, the Monad will show you the path forward because we're here for our own individual experience, right? We all came here for a purpose, and what's important is to know our purpose, discover our telos, and also to constantly connect to the Monad to seek guidance.

My advice is to open yourself up to the Monad, to the universal consciousness, and that will show you the path. Looking to me won't solve anything.

Question: When you connect to the Monad, what is your path?

Professor Jiang: What is my path?

Questioner: Yeah.

Professor Jiang: My path is to be a teacher, right? From my life, I ask myself, what are things that I do that are smooth? What are things that I do which are not smooth? If it's smooth, it means I'm probably following the path the Monad wants for me. If it's not going well, then it's probably not the path I want.

What I've learned is to trust the universe more. I'm in New York City because the Monad wants me here, right? There was actually a possibility I didn't get into New York City because I'm traveling with my son, and I didn't know this, but in the United States you need a travel letter to travel, and I didn't have a travel letter. There's a real fear that I'd miss my flight.

I think before, maybe five years ago, I would have been really anxious. But I told myself, “If I get into the United States, it's because the Monad wants me here. If I don't get in, it's because the Monad doesn't want me here.” I'm trusting the universe more, right?

Question: What are you seeing on the ground in China?

Questioner: I don't know if you've moved out of China yet, but you had mentioned that once you do, you may be able to share more about what you're seeing in there. I don't know if you're able to share what you're seeing on the ground in China.

Professor Jiang: I just think that the situation in China is hopeless because you have this leadership in place that is very arrogant, very indifferent, and just very stubborn. The people are so materialistic. You can't connect back to the Monad if you don't actually believe in the Monad.

I think that in the future, because of all these calamities, those who are spiritual in nature will be most able to survive the coming crisis. The Chinese people are not at all spiritual. The Japanese are, but the Chinese are not.

Reading, belief, and a possible collapse

Question: Can you give us a more comprehensive book list?

Questioner: Can you give us a book list? I know you have great books that you talked about, but can you give us a bigger, more comprehensive book list?

Professor Jiang: Yeah. I've taught the great books before, but I would say the most important thing is just to start reading books you enjoy reading. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to read the great books, but it just means you have to get in the process of reading every day for an hour.

Questioner: Yeah, I am doing that, but I still look forward to your book list. I started The Peloponnesian War. That is a difficult word for me.

Professor Jiang: I highly recommend the Russian novelists, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

Questioner: I have read some.

Question: What happens to China after Xi?

Questioner: You said that China is going to close up, repeat the history.

Professor Jiang: It's going to close its borders, yeah.

Questioner: But what will happen to China after Xi? He's 74 years old, I believe. What will happen after him? Because after Mao died, things changed.

Professor Jiang: One strange thing that I don't think people appreciate is how long these guys can live for. Trump is 80, right? I was talking to some friends in Los Angeles, and they're convinced he cannot finish his term. He's going to die in office, or he'll be forced to resign.

These guys are where they are because they have this steel determination. They love power. You put them in a position of power, they can live for a long, long time, right? Look at someone like Biden. The guy was senile. The guy's brain did not function, but he was able to finish his term, right?

In the year 2020, we had a bet: is Biden able to finish his term, given his medical ailments? I think most people would be like, “No, he won't be able to finish his term, and Kamala Harris will be the first female president of the United States.” I think most people would say that, and people who knew his predicament would say that. But he finished his term.

I think it's hard to appreciate how, once you're in that position, whether you be Putin or Xi or Trump, you never want to let go. You want to cling on until they snatch it from you.

Questioner: But they will die eventually.

Professor Jiang: Says who? How do you know? How do you know that they'll die?

Questioner: Nobody has lived forever.

Professor Jiang: How do you know that?

Questioner: You mean the latest technology will make them live forever?

Professor Jiang: I think modern technology will surprise you. I think nowadays, with the idea of blood transfusion and organ transplants, remember, they have access to the most advanced technology in the world.

Questioner: Do you see any hope if Xi never dies?

Professor Jiang: I didn't say they will never die, but I'm just saying we don't know when they will die. I think they will live a lot longer than you assume they will live.

Question: What makes you believe in God or the Monad?

Questioner: You use the word Monad and God a lot. Do you believe in God, a god, or do you use God and Monad interchangeably? I guess, what makes you believe?

Professor Jiang: For me, why I like the idea of the Monad is it explains a lot of issues that I couldn't explain before. For example, human consciousness is something that I could never explain before, right? I did a lot of research in neuroscience. I know about how memory forms and how the brain works and the synapses and all that, but it was never really fulfilling. It didn't really explain to me what was going on.

Now the Monad idea, our consciousness is scattered across different dimensions, and our ideas, our intuition comes to us from the Monad, I think makes a lot more sense than the traditional neuroscience, materialistic perspective. For me, it's just satisfying to think that there's a Monad. I just went through life not being able to answer a lot of questions, and the Monad helps me answer all the questions.

Emotionally, in my heart, I believe it's right, right? Because at the end of the day, you can only trust your heart. You can only trust yourself. Anyone who tells you not to trust yourself, “Trust the science,” that person is probably Tony Fauci, right? You shouldn't trust the guy.

Question: Why compare the next 50 years to the Bronze Age collapse?

Questioner: Across multiple podcasts, and in this lecture too, you alluded to a Bronze Age-type collapse in the next 50 years. Especially if reality plays according to the model that you built out, you use the term Bronze Age collapse instead of something like—there have been great dips throughout history, like the Great Depression or after World War II. But you're comparing the next 50 years to the Bronze Age collapse that ushered in around half a millennium of dark ages.

First of all, what's the probability, in your honest opinion, of that actually happening? Number two, what will actually happen that you compare it to the Bronze Age collapse and not to something like the Great Depression or after World War II?

Professor Jiang: My logic is very simple. Right now, there are 8 billion people in the world, and these 8 billion people all want to live, right? They all want to survive. The problem is we are able to support 8 billion people because of access to cheap energy, mainly from the Middle East.

If you remove the GCC from the equation, let's pretend the GCC doesn't even exist, you would lose access to fertilizer—not all fertilizer, but a lot of fertilizer. You lose access to cheap energy. Then there's a possibility of famine in Africa, of social revolution throughout Europe.

What people don't appreciate about the Bronze Age collapse is things were perfectly normal until they weren't. If you lived during the Bronze Age, you would think, “Wow, we live in a perfect world because everything is interconnected.” You assume that this interconnection leads to resilience. It leads to dexterity, but it's the opposite. It actually leads to fragility. If there's one problem that arises somewhere, it cascades across the entire world.

Again, I hate to say this, but you've got 8 billion people, and there are only resources enough to support 2 billion people. This includes water and food, right? What are people going to do? You have kids, and you're in Africa, and there's not enough food and water. What do you do? You migrate, right? You migrate. You join bands of pirates, bandits, because that's the best way to survive. Then you become an army, right? Then you try to overwhelm the defense of Europe, which leads to wars. This is what happened during the Bronze Age.

Migration is going to be a huge problem in this world over the next 10 years because there's not enough food to feed people. Famine is going to be a huge issue, and this will lead to war. This is not World War III. This is a breakdown of civilization.

When this happens, when people don't have enough to eat, human decency goes out the window. “I don't care that you're a human being. You have food. You have water, and I need it from you, so I'm going to kill you.” It's either you—it's dog-eat-dog, right?

Questioner: Do you think that's engineered too?

Professor Jiang: I think it's the path of least resistance, right? “I don't want it to happen, but if it happens, I have a bunker in New Zealand. I have a helicopter that can transport me to somewhere else. I have this mansion in the Pacific Palisades, and I can build a fortress.” It's the path of least resistance. I think these people in charge, the problem is not that they're evil, the problem is they're just—

Question: What would the collapse look like, and how would you survive?

Questioner: Do you have a vivid picture in your head of how this will look? I remember you talking about it in a podcast where you believe that in the next 50 years there will be two sects of humanity. One will believe in AI as a god, and the other one will reject AI as a god. Is that a part of your model of how this collapse will look? Also, how would you survive in this world that you envision?

Professor Jiang: I think what's going to happen is just a process of constant change, constant revolution, the breakdown of social order. I think that those who will thrive, or those who survive, are those who are deeply spiritual, those who believe that they're connected to the Monad and that they're here for a purpose. Their purpose is often to help others, and these people will become leaders. People will congregate towards these people, and then the Monad will show them the path forward.

I can't visualize for you what it will be like because every year will be different. Just imagine the amount of change we've had these past six months. It's been crazy, right? The pace of change, the acceleration, is just off the charts. I can't tell you what the world will be like over the next 50 years because every year, every year will be different.

But I can tell you to reclaim your spiritual heritage, to remember you do come from a Monad, that each of us comes from a Monad. But most of us choose to forget that because it's just easier for us.

A national draft and starting a family

Question: How could a national draft happen?

Questioner: The national draft: you've alluded to it many times. You talked about it a lot. I just don't see how it's feasible. I'm 22 years old. I was previously enlisted to go into the Marines before tearing my rotator cuff. I have a lot of friends that are actively in the military. There was recently a news story where people are throwing themselves off of ships currently. I just don't see how it's feasible, how a draft could possibly happen.

Everybody my age is currently being propagandized to hate Israel, to hate America. How are they going to use us as a tool to work for them?

Professor Jiang: I think a national draft doesn't necessarily mean going in the army. But imagine a scenario where you have economic collapse. The AI bubble collapses, the private credit bubble collapses, and a lot of wealth is just evaporated, right?

Young people nowadays think that they have a cushion, which is their parents. Their parents have a few million dollars in property and in the stock market, and they think, “Worst-case scenario, my parents will bail me out.” But let's imagine a scenario where the stock market collapses. The economy is in tatters. Now people are desperate. Now you have a Great Depression scenario, right?

What's the solution to the Great Depression? Basically, a national draft, right? Basically, jobs for everyone, and then sending everyone to World War II. World War II happened because of 10 years of desperation, anxiety. People were happy to go to war, right? You're like, “Right now, there's no way I'd go to war,” but five years from now things could be very different.

Questioner: On the same platforms that Zuckerberg owns, there's constantly reels being pushed: we're going to be used as drone bait. I feel like everybody would rather go to jail than even serve in a nonviolent part of the military. But you're just saying because of that, we're going to be desperate. We'll work for them anyways.

Professor Jiang: I think so. I think if there's a situation where you either work for the government in infrastructure building or whatever, or be homeless, you would work for the government. That's what I think the national draft is. The national draft should be a national works program.

Question: What if a draft pulls me away from my family?

Questioner: My last question: 22 years old, I'm inspired by you. I would like to start a family. I see that it is the greatest means of purpose, but I'm concerned if I get pulled away from the beginning of my family. I don't have a question, but—

Professor Jiang: That's a great question, and I keep on saying this, but if you just do your purpose, the universe will pave the way for you. Ten years ago, I was unemployed. I had no real job prospects, but I fell in love with a woman, and as a manifestation, expression of our love, we had children.

This was a time when there was no way I could support a child. After we had a child, I wrote a book, and this book got me a job, and this job allowed me to put videos on YouTube. Each time we had a child, it seemed like the universe smiled upon us even more.

It's an act of faith. Having a family is an act of faith. If you just say, “If I do a cost-benefit analysis, I should have a family,” you get nowhere. But if you're like, “If I have a family,” if you do that, then what happens is, “Oh my God, now I must do what is necessary in order to raise a family.” Then you will it, then you manifest it, and then your life becomes different.

Consciousness, teaching, and the dollar

Question: Could the collective unconscious work through secret societies?

Questioner: You had said that your view of these secret societies is a nonlinear evolution. It's a broken chain for secret societies. Since they seem to share so many common interests since the Eleusinian mystery days up until now, do you think that it could be the collective unconscious working through people and wearing the face of these organizations to get to some kind of goal? With that, how do you reconcile negative forces like this in the collective unconscious with your beliefs regarding the Monad being all good and whatnot?

Professor Jiang: There are different theories out there. One theory is there are certain individuals whose spiritual practice is so great that they're able to transcend, and they're able to embed themselves in the universal consciousness. Then these people are able to communicate with others, and then they're able to incarnate and influence worldly affairs. These people, in the past, we've given names to, like Satan or devils or Nephilim or whatever. I think there's a lot of validity to this theory.

The question then is, how can we reconcile this with the Monad? What Dante would say is, if the Monad truly loves us, the Monad's gift to us is free will. You can choose to do whatever you want. You can choose to create this world that we live in, which is very technologically advanced, materialistic, but which has led to tremendous human suffering. We choose to do this, or we can choose to create another world. But for the imagination to truly be effective, there has to be complete freedom.

I think that to say, “These people are evil, and they are manipulating human events for the wrong things,” that's not what the Monad would say. The Monad would say, “If these people can choose to do these things, you can choose to do other things as well.” Even though they seem to have all the power, your imagination is the true power. If you have faith in your imagination, then that will be your light.

Question: What do you think of idealism as a framework of the world?

Questioner: A follow-up question based on that imagination: what is your opinion on Plotinus', Proclus', and, eventually, George Berkeley's view of idealism as a metaphysical framework of the world, and the projecting of the world arising from consciousness leading to matter rather than matter leading to consciousness?

Professor Jiang: I think that makes a lot more sense than matter leading to consciousness. I think the universe is consciousness, and this material world is a simulation, or it's a delusion that we've created for ourselves. That explains a lot more than the reverse. For example, how do you explain consciousness, right? If you just use the emergent materialistic framework, you cannot explain consciousness, and that's why they don't even bother trying to answer the question of where consciousness comes from.

Question: What teaching practices would you recommend at middle school level?

Questioner: As a fellow teacher, what tips and pedagogical practices would you recommend to somebody who works at the middle school level, where they don't have as much of an extensive vocabulary as high school, and where you use narration, storytelling as methodologies? What other techniques would you recommend where there may be language barriers?

Professor Jiang: I would say the three most powerful words you can ever utter as a teacher are “I am wrong.” If you do that every single day, I guarantee your students will be very different, regardless of the age group or the language barrier. If you just say every day, if you just make a conscious effort to say, “I am wrong,” what that does is it models self-reflection and humility and self-forgiveness in the student.

If the teacher can say, “I am wrong,” that gives permission to the student to say, “I can be wrong as well, and I should just accept I can be wrong, and then learn from my mistakes and improve.” That's the greatest gift you can ever give to your students.

Question: What would replace the US dollar?

Questioner: Regarding the dollar, what are the few key consequential events that you foresee happening, and what does the replacement look like?

Professor Jiang: The US dollar?

Questioner: Yeah.

Professor Jiang: JD Vance has come out and said that he thinks the US dollar as the global reserve currency is a bad idea. A lot of people are saying, “I think they're trying to signal the US dollar is not going to be the global reserve currency anymore.” No one wants to be the global reserve currency because, as I pointed out before, it's a dumb thing to do.

Why would you want to be the global reserve currency? You have no control over your currency. It leads to financial speculation, and then you have to invest a lot in the military, right? No one wants to be the global reserve currency, and I think, by default, there'll be a basket in place. Already you have these European banks saying, “We'll start using the Chinese renminbi more.”

I think the US dollar will still be around because it's a default option, and there's no other alternative. It's not that the US dollar will be replaced. It's more like you have total global economic collapse, right? The currency is no longer relevant because nations are no longer able to trade with each other.

Questioner: The plumbing will break, and there will be fireworks.

Professor Jiang: I think we're heading towards a calamity beyond anyone's imagination. I think if you just look at the progress of things these past six months, it's just astonishing. Can you imagine six months before we'd be in a room saying how the United States is in a war against Iran? Even today, we don't know why this war started. The United States has absolutely no strategy to win this war, but the United States refuses to withdraw from this war. It's the most silly thing ever.

I think the stupidity and the arrogance of the leaders today is just beyond anyone's imagination.

Preparing for change and understanding personal tragedy

Question: How important is gardening as a way to survive?

Questioner: I just want to tie into this individual's question in front of me, finding the source of wealth. There's the Bronze Age collapse analogy. My thing is, I'm learning about these AI data centers and the amount of water that they consume.

You place a lot of emphasis on our wealth being imagination, and that's a major part of it. But I think in the physical world, a lot of our wealth, and especially in a Bronze Age collapse scenario, would come from the land and the amount of crops that we were able to grow from the land and provide for those people around us, right?

My conspiracy theory is they're consuming so much water to deny a level of wealth that the average individual could get from being able to produce the crops that they have for themselves. How much importance would you place on personal and familial gardening and plant cultivation as a way to survive what is coming?

Professor Jiang: I think most people will die not because they lack access to food and water. I think it's just because they cannot accept that the world is collapsing around them. They're so focused, they're so pigheaded about the world. They're so invested in the world that they refuse to accept change is possible.

Listen, if you just talk to ordinary middle-class Americans, they're like, “When Trump leaves office, things will go back to normal.” They literally believe this. How can you actually believe this? But they literally believe this, and they choose to put their heads in the sand. When that happens, they'll just break down mentally, and then they'll just die.

Does that make sense? It's not a question of “Can you access food and water?” Because if you want to, you can still access food and water. It's just people would rather die than accept that they're wrong. That'll be a lot of people.

Questioner: This room is getting our head out of the sand.

Professor Jiang: Exactly. Exactly. You've been awakened. You're out of the Matrix now, right?

Question: How does free will relate to personal tragedies?

Questioner: Dante says free will is foundational. How does that influence your understanding of these personal tragedies you see in the news? For example, a mother with postpartum depression killing her children, or a kid that's been on SSRIs his whole life going crazy. How do we, as a society, come to a shared understanding about those things? What do we take away from that?

Professor Jiang: That's a really good question. Again, we all come here for our own individual experience, and why we've come is something that is unique to us. For example, for most of my life I've struggled with why I had the childhood that I had because I grew up as a poor immigrant in Toronto, where I suffered a lot of racism and bullying. My family was very, very poor. They're still very, very poor. I grew up in a culture, a Chinese culture, that I felt was very anti-intellectual.

For the longest time, for decades, I suffered from depression. I felt traumatized because of my childhood in Toronto and my education at Yale. I just was very angry and depressed at the world. I was like, “Why am I here? What purpose does it serve anyone for me to suffer like this? There can't be a God because no God would be this evil to make me suffer.” I just felt like my life was pointless, and there was no God. There couldn't be a God because it was so chaotic.

But now, looking back at my life, I felt like the only path to my own personal enlightenment, my own personal salvation, was through this path. If I really wanted to open my eyes and see the truth, I needed an intense period of personal suffering and personal questioning. There's really no other way, right?

How am I able to be so creative? I think that my creativity comes from these decades of personal trauma. I'm not saying personal trauma leads to creativity. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying to traumatize your kids, man. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying we all came for a purpose, and this purpose determines a lot of things that happen in our life.

I think that I came with a specific purpose of trying to enlighten others, and that means, first of all, seeking self-enlightenment. That can only be done through personal tragedy and personal trauma. I don't know why these things happen to people, but I would say, if they look deep within themselves, they will find a deeper meaning behind all these tragedies.

Questioner: I think a lot of people in this room, and I know certainly for myself, have gone through something traumatic that made them ask more questions about the world, and that's what opens them up to your ideas.

Professor Jiang: That's right.

Questioner: I don't know how to get through to people who haven't had that. It's like talking to a robot. They just can't hear you out.

Professor Jiang: I've been a teacher for my entire adult life, and for the longest time I was not reaching people. People thought I was crazy. Imagine, 10 years ago, you watch my YouTube videos, you would think I'm insane. But I kept on doing what I'm doing because, for me, it's not about reaching others. It's about learning things for myself. I have this passion for truth-seeking, for my own personal enlightenment. What others do and think doesn't really matter to me.

But because I had this passion for truth-seeking, that's allowed me to reach many people when the time is appropriate. I would just say, do what is right in your heart. What is right in your heart is to pursue the truth. I could imagine myself working a job I didn't like, saying things that I didn't believe, even though that's what most people do. That's why I've been poor my life, because I'd rather be poor than live the lie. A lot of things are just a personal choice, and what others choose, I think, is not really relevant.

Faith, parenting, and waking up

Question: How can I share faith and hope while feeling judged by my religion?

Questioner: I'm from Colombia. I live in a very poor neighborhood in Jackson Heights in Queens. There are a lot of kids and youth. They don't have religious studies in their schools. Fathers, moms, they work two jobs, seven days a week.

I'm dealing with something. I want to spread the word of faith and hope, but how do I overcome the fact that I feel judged by my religion when my religion tells me that if you don't behave well, then you go to hell? You have to behave well in order to go to heaven. My question would be, how do I overcome that bridge of me going to people and saying, “Hey, there is hope, there is love to share”? I don't know if I make myself—

Professor Jiang: Yeah, I understand. I don't think it's important to convince others. I think it's just important to live the truth yourself, and then, when you do that, what happens is others will naturally gravitate towards you, right? If that makes sense, right? Rather than trying to convince others, you just live the truth yourself. Then others will come find you.

Question: Has your understanding of the world changed how you raise your child?

Questioner: Knowing what you know about history and where the world seems to be heading, has that changed the way you are raising your own child? What are the things that you are most intentional about as a parent?

Professor Jiang: That's a great question. When I first had my child, I thought I knew how to raise a child perfectly because I've been working in education for the past 20 years, and I read a lot of books. I knew all about neuroscience.

What I realized is the child is not yours. The child is from God, and you're blessed to be with a child. But the child has come with his or her own purpose, his or her own telos, and he or she is going to seek a path that is right for him or her. You can provide some support, but you cannot actually direct the child in the way that you want. If you try to control the child, it's going to lead to a lot of unhappiness because the child will be unhappy, and the child will make you unhappy.

One thing that I've learned to do is basically trust the child and let him or her seek the path that he or she wants. My child, who's eight, doesn't speak any English because he doesn't want to learn English, right? I speak English. If he wanted to learn English, he would ask me, “Can you teach me English?” He's never done that, right?

I've learned to let go and see each child as a child of God and not as my child.

Question: Would you have settled for comfort?

Questioner: I just wanted to know, in your life, when you said 10 years ago or so you had no job and whatnot, could you have had a job that was comfortable, and you decided to not take that route because it wasn't true to you? Basically, I'm trying to say, would you have settled for comfort had it been possible back then, or you didn't want to in order to pursue your—

Professor Jiang: That's a great question. I'm very strange. I think that what makes me unique is, my entire life, I've absolutely refused to compromise because I went to Yale. I'm a very good writer. I'm a very good communicator, and I could have easily settled for a corporate job or done public relations.

I could have also, in China, helped students apply to Yale University, and that's very lucrative. But I just chose to live a life of poverty rather than compromise, rather than doing things I don't like. A lot of the reason why is, when I do things I don't like, I can't sleep.

The most miserable six months of my life was when I was working for the United Nations in Afghanistan. If you've ever worked for the United Nations, it is the best job possible. It is the easiest job possible because no one actually does any work, and you're there collecting a huge paycheck. It's very prestigious. They give you this blue passport, and it feels really good.

But I couldn't sleep because I knew that what I was doing came at the cost of the local Afghan people. The local Afghan people were starving, and I was making six figures a year, and I was having lunch at a restaurant that was five stars. I couldn't live with myself. I literally could not sleep the entire time. I was grinding my teeth. I had anxiety.

After that, I just learned I'd rather suffer than betray myself. I think that's actually true for everyone. It's just maybe others have a higher tolerance than I do.

Questioner: Could you sleep while suffering at that time? Could you sleep when you were suffering?

Professor Jiang: I could not sleep. I could not sleep. I literally could not sleep. I just rolled in bed all the time, and I hated myself. My entire body was shaking the entire time because I knew this was evil. The fact that you're in Afghanistan and people here were starving, and you were collecting this six-figure paycheck, and also you were part of this evil occupation force, right? Because the Americans weren't there to help the Afghan people. They were there to do drug smuggling. Drug smuggling.

When the Americans went in, opium production went like that. During the Taliban, you didn't have any opium production. Then the Americans came, and they basically facilitated opium production so that the Sackler family could produce their fentanyl drugs, the opiates, which led to suicides, a suicide epidemic throughout the country. I knew this because you could see it, so I couldn't sleep at all. I was so relieved after I quit.

Question: What advice would you give someone going through the allegory of the cave?

Questioner: I had a friend who showed me your YouTube channel a few months back. When I came across Plato's allegory of the cave, it was hell. What kind of advice would you have for somebody going through that kind of realization that none of it's real?

Professor Jiang: I would say that's what waking up looks like. You go through hell, right? Remember, when Plato talks about the allegory of the cave, he's not like, the guy walks into the light, and he's happy, happy. No, no, he's going through hell.

Questioner: I wept a lot.

Professor Jiang: You weep. What's happening, the occultist would say you're going through spiritual alchemy. But the neuroscientist would just say you're going through semantic reconnections. It's a hellish process. Your brain is just literally reconfiguring itself to reconceive the world in a new way, right? It is hellish, and it is painful. But once you go through it, you can never go back, right? Then you're happier for it.

I think that's why a lot of people don't go through this process because they know that to see things in this way, even though it's the truth, means basically abandoning everything that you've known and embracing the unknown. They don't want to go through this. That's why I think we should be sympathetic or tolerant or respectful, right? Just say, “Just because I went through it doesn't mean you have to go through it.”

But once you go through it, then you can never go back, and you know how the world works. This is just a phase, a stage in our lives, and we are eternal. Our souls are eternal. When we come back at a later stage, we will be much more enlightened. We will be much happier, and we won't have to go through the same process again.