Professor Jiang: "The West Will Burn!" I Predict This Happens By 2030 │ Jack Neel

0:00 Before we get into some of your other predictions, I want to understand how you make them. Uh what would you say is the most important framework you use for evaluating the past, present, and the future? Like how do you predict the future? >> Sure. So, in my um predictive model, there are three pillars. Okay, the most important is game theory. Second is historical patterns. The third is psychology. So, I'll explain one it one one by one, okay? Game theory, okay. So, game theory, I used to play a lot of poker, Texas Hold'em poker. And

0:46 when I'm playing poker, it's usually tournament poker, so I have a lot of time to kill. So, I spend a lot of time just analyzing the meta game, okay? Like like who are these people? Why are they doing what they're doing? And what I discovered playing poker is that there are no dumb players in the game. They're all rational, but they have their own different perspective on how the game should be played. So, their world view drives their strategy, which drives their action. And if you spend enough time just analyzing a player, you can figure out the person's entire strategy. Um and then I recognized that okay, well, we can apply this metaphor

1:31 to geopolitics. We would just say that each nation-state has its own particular world view as determined by its culture, its history, its political system. And then it's going to take this world view and develop a strategy for how to navigate the world. And sometimes these world views will come into conflict with each other. And so, once you start to recognize that the world is not set by a universal standard but rather that the world is flexible and dynamic and open and that each player is participating in a zero-sum game and trying to optimize his or her advantage in this game

2:18 then the world makes a lot more sense. But the problem with this is to do game theory properly you would need perfect information. Right? So go back to the poker table analogy where if I'm able to see everyone's cards, right? If I'm able to see everyone's minds, then I can predict exactly how they how they behave, right? Um but you don't have that perfect perfect information. You can only make guesses and and it's even and this is even more true in geopolitics because you don't have access to the nations' top minds. You don't know you don't know who the leaders are. You don't understand how the political system works. You don't understand this

3:03 dynamic, so it's very hard for you to to gauge the behavior. So what I what I do next then is fine. I don't have this perfect information. In fact, I don't have most of this information. But am I able to go back in history and look at events that are similar to today and then am I able to draw analogies between the past and the present? And this will help me, okay? And the third thing I will look at is that of eschatology, okay? And eschatology do you want me to explain what eschatology is or okay, sure. Okay. Eschatology comes from the Greek word eschaton, which means the end. So literally it means the study of the end. What it means is

3:49 that each religion has its own understanding and theory of how the world ends or how we become reunited with God. And um eschatology is often connected with the most extreme religious elements. And the reason why is that eschatology is very compelling. It's like a movie script. And it's as though people want to act it out. Because if you see the ending, right? If you if you know that Jesus can return if you act out certain things. For certain things if certain things were to line up together, if they were to align, then Jesus would return.

4:36 Then that makes you much more determined and motivated to actually fulfill this prophecy. Right? So, the prophecy becomes a plan. And that's the and why eschatology is important is that people who do believe in in this eschatology are much more motivated than others, much more energetic, much more cohesive than others, which means that they have more power than other people. And so, they are the players to watch out for in this game. And so, if you look at what's happening in the Middle East, you can make the argument that a lot of it is driven by eschatology in that you have these Christian Zionists. You have these religious Jews >> [snorts] >> who believe that by manipulating certain events in Middle East, by provoking a

5:21 war there basically, you will usher in the end times. Um you will you For Christian Zionists, it means the rapture and the return of Jesus. For religious Jews, it means the coming of the Messiah and the building of the of the third temple and the coming of the Messianic age. Okay? But also, what people don't appreciate is that not only is eschatology a prophecy and a plan, but it's also a hidden history. And the reason why is that we don't have much written history. Maybe since the Greeks, okay? But the Greeks go back, you know, 3,000 years. So so it's not that much. We've been around for at least 10,000 years. You've got to go Göbekli Tepe in

6:07 the Ice Age cave paintings. Okay, so we go back a long time. We we don't have that history. In fact, we don't have most of our history. So what religion does is that religion takes the broad history and allegorizes it into narratives, into stories, into religious beliefs that capture the essence of this history. So if we believe that history repeats itself or there's a certain pattern to history, what religion is is it deciphers for you or reveals to you these patterns of history. So think of astrology, right? Astrology is trying to reveal to you the patterns of the stars, the movement of the stars, which then [snorts] determines how events unfold in the real world. Right? Well, eschatology is very similar to astrology in this way in that

6:52 eschatology is not just a plan, it's not just a prophecy, but it's also a hidden framework of how events will turn out. Right? And if you look at eschatology, it's mainly about the decline of empire, decline of civilization. And this has happened a lot in human history. And if you look at what's happening today from a historical perspective, it is the decline of empire, decline of civilization. It's almost like the Bronze Age collapse. And so eschatology provides you with a with a pretty good framework of how this thing will unfold. Can you I think the eschatology portion is where a lot of people tune out of your work. They think conspiracy theorist, uh this guy like this doesn't make any sense that people would act in a certain way

7:38 based on the end times. Can you give me like a really simple example of how if you and I shared an eschatology, it would lead to our decisions in life being different. Like, can you give an example of this? >> Sure. Okay. So, let's look at the the most um dominant eschatologies, okay? So, you have first start with the uh Jewish eschatology. And the Jews believe that um they are the chosen people and they are God's the Yahweh's favorite people. And um the highlight or the apex of their civilization was King David's kingdom, the Davidic kingdom. Uh and um King Solomon, okay? And this was when King Solomon built Solomon's Temple,

8:24 which was a house of God. And this was where Yahweh lived to be with his people. But unfortunately, the Jewish people were not loyal. They were unfaithful. So, they started to marry foreign women, which brought in foreign gods. And then Yahweh became annoyed um angry at the infidelity of the Jews. So, he left. And that And this allowed uh invaders, such as the Babylonians and Assyrians, to conquer um Jerusalem. And eventually, this led to the Jewish diaspora, the scattering of the Jews. But even in even in the diaspora, they longed to return to Jerusalem to be

9:11 reunited with their God. And in the Jewish tradition, what the rabbis tell the Jewish people is when God is ready, when the Jewish people are ready for this reunion, the Messiah will come. The Messiah will lead the Jewish people back to the promised land. He will um build the nation of Israel and he will he will summon the diaspora to return to Israel and he will build the third temple. So, like God will come. Eventually, he will face um his enemies in the war of Gog and Magog, but he will triumph and this will

9:57 usher in the Messianic Age. So, as Jewish people, our main responsibility is to reflect deeply on who we are, engage in spiritual alchemy, and once we engage in a long process of redemption and we once our hearts open up to God, then God will send his Messiah. So, be a good person and wait and be patient, okay? So, so that's the standard mainstream Jewish understanding. >> [snorts] >> But then you have these extremists who believe that is not God's intention. God's intention is for the Jews to prove that they love God and they

10:44 will they desire reunion with God. And so, it must be the Jews to act out first before God sends his Messiah. And that means you must first resurrect reconstitute the nation of Israel you must build the third temple you must fight the war of Gog and Magog. And when the Jews have done all they can but the entire world seems to have united against Jews cuz that's what that's what the world does actually, unite against Jews. And when God sees that his people are in most desperate need, but he sees that his people have redeemed themselves, have repented, and yearn for reunion with God, then God

11:30 will intervene and set the world right. And that is when the Messianic Age will occur. But you must first make the sacrifice necessary in order to to welcome the Messiah and the coming of Yahweh. Okay? So you can see how in the first iteration, yeah, it's interesting. But in the second iteration, there's sort of a passion, an energy, an excitement to it where it's just like, "Wow, this is grand historical script being played out. It's all part of God's divine plan. And I can play my part in achieving this divine plan. So why shouldn't I? If I'm truly faithful, if I'm if I truly believe in God, if I want to prove myself worthy,

12:15 shouldn't I do my part to achieve this plan? Okay? So does the Jewish eschatology make sense to you? >> Yeah. It definitely makes sense. And I I I do want to clarify for people that you're not saying that these uh eschatologies are necessarily real. You're saying that this is what the people believe, so it changes the way that they act. And that's how you use it to predict the future. Do you think it's important for people to understand the law of uh eschatological convergence to understand how you predict the future? >> Sure. Sure. Okay. So um there are different there's the different eschatologies, okay? So I just mentioned the Jewish eschatology. But there are others. There's the Orthodox eschatology. There's the Catholic one. There's the um

13:01 Protestant one, the Christian Zionist one. Uh there's the Mormon one, okay? There's a Freemason one. So there are all these different eschatologies out there. And what you What's really interesting is at certain points, they converge together, meaning they align at certain points. Meaning that these are different religious traditions, and again, we're talking only about a minority, these extremists, right? May maybe 1% of the entire uh cohort, okay? But these are the most they're the most unified, they're the most determined, right? And if they're working together to achieve a certain script, and if the script is similar at similar at certain points, then you can be certain or confident that these things will turn out. Because, at the end of the day,

13:48 we're the players in this grand historical narrative. So, what what what we do is what determines the history. Um so if you just look at certain convergence points, it's amazing how they align, okay? So, one major convergence point is the reconstitution of the nation of Israel. This happened in 1948. Then, another convergence point is war and chaos in the Middle East, which is happening right now. Another convergence point is the building of the third temple. And this is this is problematic because right now, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is the third holiest site in the Muslim world, it actually sits on where the third temple should be. >> Mhm. >> And so, you would need to destroy the

14:34 third holiest site in the Islamic world in order to build your third temple. >> Is that in Jerusalem? >> It is it's all in Jerusalem, yes. Yes. >> [snorts] >> Um and so, um, it if the Al-Aqsa Mosque would be destroyed, this would trigger a religious war. But again if these eschatologies, um, are really powerful and true, they all agree there will be a religious war in the Middle East, which will lead eventually to the war of Gog and Magog, which is also what they agree on. They also agree, this is really interesting, is that America won't will not be part of this narrative. Right? America does not participate in

15:20 the Middle East. So, in other words, what they what they all believe is that America will lose this war against Iran and retreat back to North America and be engulfed in civil war. That's what they all believe. Um they also believe that um China will not participate in the Middle East affairs and and China will probably retreat also into its own borders and turtle up. Um yeah, so you have this convergence. And that's how I I'm able to make these predictions because well, you know, if they want to behave in this way and they're powerful people, well, they'll probably succeed. >> You made a series of predictions and I have some dates here.

16:06 What's your prediction for 2027? >> Sure. Okay. So, let's look at some major events that are happening right now. Okay? So, you've got this war in Iran that seems to be escalating day by day. Um you have the midterms coming up in November and people expect the Democrats to sweep the house in which case they'll probably impeach Donald Trump. And you also have basically global economic collapse because the Iranians have um closed the Strait of Hormuz. And so, fertilizer and oil, LNG, are not able to be transported around the world. Um it's 20% Um so, the uh Middle East

16:52 provides about 20% of the world the world's oil supply. Um and it's also high quality um that the rest of the world can't actually replicate. Um so, these are all very pressing issues right now. Right? So, my prediction for how things will unfold is that number one, I think this war between the States and Iran will only escalate. There can be no off-ramp because first of all, Donald Trump sees this war in Iran as crucial in achieving his Messianic mission, which we talked about earlier. The military-industrial complex, Pentagon, the military, once again to a war,

17:37 they don't back out. You know, they're what I mean it's I mean it's human nature, right? Where it's a sunk cost fallacy, where you've already invested so much into this war. And you're not going to say, "You know what? I've lost enough. I'm going to go home." Right? It's It's like going to a casino and you've lost a million dollars. You're not going to go home after losing a million dollars. You're like, "No, no, no. My luck My luck will turn around." Right? And also, like if I go home, my wife is going to shout at me for the rest of my life, so screw that. I'm going to stay here. Right? So, sunk cost fallacy, mission creep, the Pentagon will not abandon this war. It will only only escalate. You've got tens of thousands of troops being transported to the Middle East

18:23 anyway. Right? So, all the ingredients are in place for major escalation. Okay, so you'll see a ground invasion of Iran, which case it's going to be a quagmire. America's going to be stuck there for 4 years, I think, is optimistic. 4 years is optimistic, possibly 10, 20 years. Okay, so so that's one prediction. Another pre- prediction is that um the midterms will not go the way people expect them to go. I'm not saying they'll be canceled, but what what I'm saying is that right now Donald Trump and the Republicans are trying to pass something called the Safe America Act, right? Which is say that they want voter ID. Now, the Democrats are saying that that

19:10 voter ID is akin to voter suppression. And what The reason why is um if you have voter ID laws, then you need ICE officers in the polling stations. And we know what ICE is like, right? So, um we can imagine that there'll be intimidation. There'll be some fraud going on in November. Um there may be there may also be a cancellation of certain elections. I don't know how the midterms will turn out, but what I will say is that it's almost insignificant how the midterms turn out. Because it's possible the Republicans stay uh they they maintain the House and the Senate, which in which case um

19:57 Donald Trump continues his war. It's also possible the Democrats put up people called the Blue Dogs, who are national security apparatus uh people who are Democratic. Okay, so these are these are people who are CIA, who are Pentagon, and they would support this war. So, they come in into office, and they would impeach Donald Trump if he did not continue this war. Okay? But it's also possible the Democrats sweep sweep and they impeach Donald Trump, and this won't change anything because he still has the power to um fight this war to to the bitter end. Which and if he gets gets impeached, you can imagine that he he'd even more determined to fight uh this war. So, I don't know what the midterms will turn out, but I will say that it will not be the way people expect it to to work out.

20:44 I mean, there'll be a lot of surprises. And I will also say it won't change the trajectory of this war. I think the trajectory of this war is already set. Okay? I will also say that by 2027, you should have the framework for national draft already in place. It is possible they've already um passed that legislation to um create the national draft or it's possible that certain people have already been drafted. I think by 2027 ICE will be much more powerful than people imagine. I think I think they want to deploy

21:30 National Guard to all major cities in America because they're preparing for economic collapse, they're preparing for financial collapse, they're preparing for the national draft. They will need law enforcement and National Guard in all the major cities, especially in Democratic cities like Los Angeles and Boston and Chicago where they expect us the resistance to be the greatest. By 2027 all the ingredients for civil war should already be in place. I don't mean actually, you know, two militaries fighting each other, but I'm saying like nationwide discontent and riots and protests and insurgencies. Okay, so this is going to be low-level conflict, but it's going to be

22:15 what the civil war will look like for the next few years. So the global economy should have collapsed by 2027. So JP Morgan has a report saying that the world will run out run out of oil by the end of this month. And that's because of the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. Because of the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. But the world the problem with the world is that people are used to efficiency, which is to say getting resources as cheaply and as quickly as possible. The entire world is structured around efficiency. And the problem though is that efficiency and resilience are at odds with each other. So the example is just-in-time inventory, right? So

23:01 companies don't have inventory because they they don't want to bear the cost of inventory. So, they just use just-in-time um uh supply chains. Meaning like you will only keep this thing in place for a couple days before you ship it to another place. But what happens if there's a chokehold, right? On on a supply network like the Strait of Hormuz. Well, then then your entire system implodes. Because there's not enough inventory to go around. People aren't stocked up on necessities. Right? So, this crisis that we're seeing uh in the global economy will only get worse. And it's going to extend to every aspect of life. Where you think, "Okay, well, I don't drive a car or I don't fly a plane for next year." Like No, no, no. That's not how That's

23:48 not how these things work, man. Cheap energy is the foundation of the entire modern global economy. So, it's not just travel. It's also food, man. You know, it's possible they'll have to start rationing food. So, a few days ago um Prime Minister Albanese of Australia and Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the UK start to address their nations. And basically, their point is and it is very subtle language, but their point is "Buckle up, guys." Okay? Because right now it's going to be food shortages, but but imagine if there are um food rationing going on.

24:35 Right? So, this is a world that's unimaginable for most people. But it's a world of um of limited resources. It's a It's a It's a world of resource conflict. And it's a world in transition of collapse. So, um buckle up. >> Would you predict that by the end of 2027 will be the destruction of Al-Aqsa? >> Yeah, okay. So, let's go into what we know about Al-Aqsa so far. Okay. So, um there was a Jewish rabbi who is very well known in in Israel, but last June, during the 12-day war

25:21 between Israel, United States, and and Iran, he said, basically, "Wow, this war would be the perfect opportunity to stage a false flag operation, where the Iranian missile is flying over Al-Aqsa Al-Aqsa Mosque, we demolish it, and we blame it on the Iranians. Then the Persians and the Arabs would go to war against each other, and we could laugh our heads off. What a great way to to resolve the conflict in the Middle East, okay? So, that's one piece of evidence. Another piece of evidence is uh the idea of the red heifer. Um and so, the Jews the Messianic Jews want to rebuild

26:06 Solomon's Temple, build the third temple. But, to do so, you need you need to consecrate the ground. So, you need to make a a red heifer sacrifice. But, according to the Bible, the red heifer has to be perfect. And so, there's this guy, this farmer in Texas, who spent years and years and millions of dollars um genetically engineering perfect red heifers. Then he shipped them to Israel. And so, once they have um Al-Aqsa destroyed, they can make they make the red heifer sacrifice, and then build the third temple, okay? The third temple temple itself has already been designed and built, brick by brick. There's something called the Temple Institute in Jerusalem, and

26:53 they have built the third temple. Like but and all they do is move the third temple from the current location to the Al-Aqsa Mosque location. So, this can happen right away. Okay? That's another piece of evidence. Also, we know that they've been archaeological digs under the Al-Aqsa Mosque these past 2 years. So, if you want to do a controlled demolition, right? Well, that's what you do. You pretend it's an archaeological dig. You implant explosives under the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and then you pretend it's an Iranian missile, and then you blow up the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and then problem solved, right? It's not We didn't do it. It was the We didn't blow it up. Then you had Netanyahu last week say

27:39 that an Iranian missile was just so close to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. And he said, "Oh, you know, it's was so close, and there's there's a great danger that the Iranians will blow up all these holy sites. The The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the um uh Western Wall, the um uh Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Iranians are that crazy. So, watch out. It could happen. Okay? So, you have all these things lined up, and like you have to believe that given the fact that right now Israel is run by these religious fanatics. Given the fact that for decades these religious fanatics in America, the Christian Zionists, have been supporting Israel. Given the fact that this war provides perfect pretext

28:25 and excuse to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque, they'll probably try something, okay? But when I I don't I can't say. It could be 2027. It determines on how the war goes. Um I And also, like the thing about these religious people is they believe in astrology. They believe in in numerology, okay? So, they have So, if they were to do this, there has to be a ritual and there has to be a astrological alignment. >> Right. >> Right. So, they have it planned it out, but like I don't have access to this information, so I can't tell you, but they probably have it planned it out. And they'll probably enact a ritual um involving a false flag in order to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque. That That's my guess.

29:11 >> That part really fascinates me. Um and I think we'll touch into that later in the interview, but what would that trigger theoretically, the destruction of Al-Aqsa Mosque? >> Right. So, I I I I think they've already telegraphed the plan, which is like they pretend it's an Iranian missile. >> Yeah. >> And then they'll do a controlled demolition of the mosque and they'll blame it on the on the Iranians. And at this point the war will be so confusing because Americans have sent in ground troops and the war is raging on multiple fronts where the Iranians are also destroying the oil refineries, the desalination plants of the Middle East. The world The whole world, especially Africa is in terrible terrible economic um the um is in a terrible economic situation. There's There's There might be

29:56 >> [snorts] >> a food shortage in Africa. There could be a famine in Africa. And so, the entire world is really like distracted. >> Right. >> Right. So, then the Al-Aqsa Mosque is blown up and like people are like, "What? What was that? What is the Al-Aqsa Mosque?" Right? Because like people don't have enough food to eat. There's rioting in the streets. The grocery stores are empty. Right? People don't People are arguing like, "Okay, well, you know, I don't have a job and my bank account has gone to zero and there's no food and like everyone's fighting each other. Like Like who cares about the Al-Aqsa Mosque?" >> Right. Because it was an accidental destruction in theory. Do you think we're heading toward nuclear warfare? >> I am convinced nuclear weapons will will not be used in

30:42 this war. And the reason why is according to game theory Iran Israel, and the United States do not benefit at all from the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Okay, so let's go over Iran okay? Iran could in 3 weeks build 10 nuclear devices. Because they have the uranium and the technology to build a nuclear weapon is actually open source. You can actually go online and build and find this information, okay? It's not that hard. If Pakistan can build a nuclear weapon, so can Iran, okay? So, but Iran is not going to do that. And the reason why is that for them it's very important to maintain the moral high ground. And also the only way they can lose this war is

31:29 if nukes start flying, right? So, you have 10 nukes okay, you might destroy Israel, but then America has thousands of nuclear weapons to destroy you, right? So, that's not strategic. And the Iranians have demonstrated that they are very strategic and very thoughtful in their actions. They've shown a lot of restraint in this war uh so far, okay? So, Iran is not that interested in using their nuclear weapons. They probably don't even want a nuclear weapon okay? Israel is getting all it wants, right? Because Israel is trying to achieve the greater Israel project. They're trying to control the Middle East. So, it needs America and Iran to destroy each other. Right now, they're targeting uh they're

32:15 trying to target uh Iran's critical civilian infrastructure, including desalination plants, including power plants. In fact, Donald Trump has threatened to blow up every single power plant in Iran if he's losing this war. Um recently I I think I think I think yesterday really the Americans blew up a civilian bridge, okay? So, as this war escalates, the Americans are going to blow up every single piece of critical civilian infrastructure in Iran including bridges, power plants, reservoirs, desalination plants. So, that's going to take, you know, a few years for Iran to recover. So, Iran's not not going to be a threat to Israel in the long term, okay? America will send in ground troops into Iran at some point to win this war, and it'll be a quagmire

33:00 for the Americans. They might send send 100,000, they might send a half million, who knows? But, regardless of how many they send in, they're still going to lose the war because um Iran is much too big, and the Iranians are much much more much too determined. Right? So, it'll be like another Vietnam, in which case the Americans are forced out of the Middle East, and CENTCOM, the entire American military infrastructure then goes to Israel. Right? Israel now becomes the dominant power in the Middle East. So, for Israel's from Israel's perspective, you don't even want to win this war. You don't even want to participate in this war. You just want America and Iran to duke it out for as long as possible. Right? So, why use nuclear weapons?

33:46 The United States is If you're Donald Trump, you know, you're you're trying to rebuild America. And um you're you don't really care actually what happens in the Middle East. You win this war, great. You lose this war, I can deal with that. You care more about what happens in America. You care about using a national draft, you care about about ICE, you care about uh election tampering in order to consolidate your power in America. That's what you think about war. War drives political transformation. And so, Peter Hexev yesterday fired three top military generals. You can do that in a war, because they're not obeying you. They're not following their orders.

34:32 Right? So, war is a great mechanism of political transformation. And that's what Donald Trump is focused on, right? So, you want to drag this war out as long as possible because that gives you more power. Right? So, there was a press conference between Vladimir Zelenskyy and Donald Trump. And um basically a reporter asked Zelenskyy, um "Hey, when are you going to retire, man? You've been president for how long?" And Zelenskyy's like, "Well, we're in a war, so we've suspended the constitution." Donald Trump's like, "You can actually do that?" And Zelenskyy's like Zelenskyy said to him, "Oh, yeah, you like that, don't you?" Right? So, so he's telegraphing to you his intentions. They're not joking here. Right? So, the the longer this war drags on, the the more that America is mired down

35:17 in the Middle East, the more Donald Trump benefits politically and personally. So, why would he use nuclear weapons? >> Professor Zhang, a lot of what you predict is driven by economics. So, before we get into your next major prediction, you said money is alchemy used by the elites to enslave us. >> Sure. >> Why do you think consumerism is the perfection of slavery? And why do you see money as alchemy? >> Okay. All right. So, um this is a really complicated question, okay? So, I want to introduce two philosophers to help us structure our discussion. The first is Immanuel Kant. What Immanuel Kant says is that there's

36:05 no objective reality. Everything is a creation of our imagination. Right? So, he differentiates between noumena and phenomena. >> Mhm. >> Noumena are the things in themselves. The phenomena are the things to us. And so, what we do every day is we participate in reality. We create reality because we filter reality using time and space. So time and space exists to us. They are what is called the ego. But time and space don't actually exist outside of us. And so that's a really important idea to understand that reality is a hallucination. It's a collective creation.

36:50 So whatever we imagine reality it to be, reality becomes. So that's the first idea. Second idea is Plato's cave. So in his book The Republic, Plato writes about the allegory of the cave. So imagine um a cavern and everyone, a number of people are living there. They're all lined up one by one certain certain at a wall. Okay, and they're chained to this wall and their necks are shackled down. So they can't even move their necks to look around them. They can only stare directly into the wall. And behind them are some people. They, okay?

37:36 Plato never clarifies who they are. Doesn't really matter who they are. But what they do is they there's a fire behind them and they take puppets and they reflect these puppets onto the wall. And so we the only thing we can see is the wall, right? So we see these shadows. And we think that this is reality itself. We we know that you and I know better, but the people inside the cave because if they never been outside, they've never seen sunlight, they don't understand the concept of shadows. So they think these shadows are reality itself. And so what they do is they give names to these shadows. They create stories out of these shadows. They create a religion out of these shadows. So what these shadows are are way to structure and direct and focus our

38:23 attention. And in our world, that's what money is. Okay, money is alchemy. It doesn't exist outside of us. It's only because we believe it has a value, it has value. So, now the question is how did we get to this system? How was this system created? Well, believe it or not, but for the longest time, money was not an issue for people. So, for example, let's let's go to the Vikings. If you're a Viking, what you did was you spent most of your time farming or fishing. But now and then, you you and your mates got together and you go and raid an Irish village or an English village for fun, okay? And you would target monasteries because

39:09 in monasteries, there was a lot of gold. Um they would print books and then the the book covers would have a lot of gold. Especially Bibles. And then they would take this gold and maybe sell it. They might capture some slaves and then they would sell it to the Ottomans or the Byzantines, whoever, okay? And so, they would make a lot of money in these raids. The moment they got back home, they spent all this money on a feast for the community. And that's like literally how people spent their money. They didn't save it because there was no point. >> Right. >> Right? What like like I mean, you could save your money by digging a hole and putting all the gold in the ground, but like that's but why would you do that? That was that was that was pointless. What you cared about was your reputation

39:55 among your peers. What you cared about is was the community. What you cared about was leaving a legacy, a memory. And then so, the memory was not um money, the memory was the stories. And that's why they went and raided these Irish villages and these British villages. Not because they want the gold, the gold was useful, but what what was more useful to them was the stories that they could tell their friends about how they went over and killed a lot of people and did all did did did all all these amazing things. That's what their social currency was. Right? What they want to do was like sit in their longhouses in the cold of winter and there's a fire and they would tell each other these stories of you know, this great hero who went to Iceland and founded the colony there and

40:40 then he died for some for some silly reason. Okay? But they had all these great stories. And we still have them today. They they the um sagas. >> [snorts] >> All right, the Norse sagas. And and you know, they're wonderful stories. And that's how most people lived their lives in human history. This changed at a very particular time in human history. The year is 1694. Okay? 1694. The reason why is the Bank of England was chartered in uh England at this time. 1688 is something called the Glorious Revolution. So, think of the Glorious Revolution as a marriage between two Protestant uh empires. The British and the Dutch Republic. And at this time

41:25 in history, the Dutch Republic were the wealthiest people in the world because they controlled the spice trade in the Far East. So, their ships went to the Far East, collected spice, and then um um sold it through throughout Europe. And spice at this time in history was the most valuable commodity in the world because it made your food taste better, right? You couldn't actually use gold, but you could use spices. So, spices were the most valuable commodity in the world, especially from the Far East. Cinnamon, nutmeg, peppercorn, these things. The problem with the Dutch Republic is that it was inland. And so, the Habsburg Empire, the Catholic Church, uh the the the the the Spanish would come and conquer you. Right? So, there there's real anxiety where they were generating so much wealth,

42:10 but they had to protect this wealth. So, they decided like the best place to put your wealth was an island somewhere that no one can invade. That was of course England. So you have this marriage between England and the Dutch Republic. And now the question then is, okay, you have all this wealth generated by the Dutch, but how do you use it? How do you store it? How do you make more wealth creation, okay? And wait, sorry. I missed a very important point. Before no one cared about wealth creation. There was no point. But suddenly the Dutch cared about wealth creation. And the reason why is they were covetous, okay? So before the Protestant Reformation everyone was a Catholic in Europe and they believed that if I if I do good

42:55 works, if I obey the church I would go to heaven. So it's called just justification by works. If I just obey the Catholic Church, I could go to heaven. But over time the Catholic Church started to abuse this privilege. It became very corrupt. It started to sell privileges to people. You know, if you were like a terrible terrible aristocrat you could have all sorts of sins, but you had a lot of money, the Catholic Church would be, oh, that's fine. We'll we'll forgive you. And that's indulgences? Exactly. The the word is indulgences. That that is correct. And the idea of indulgences is that you don't go to hell, you go to purgatory. And then you go then you go to heaven because technically, you know, if you did all this evil in the world, you should go to hell, okay? But if you paid the Catholic Church enough money

43:40 the indulgence, then you could go to purgatory and shorten your stay there. And in order to build these monumental churches like St. Peter's Basilica, the church was selling indulgences left and right to anyone, okay? So this massive corruption scam. And so obviously a lot of people would be very angry at this. And so people like Martin Luther and John Calvin they started to question the authority of the church. And their main dispute, theological dispute, is you shouldn't be able to go to heaven just because you have money or because you bribed the priest. You should go to heaven because you have faith. But then the question then is like, how do you prove you have faith?

44:27 And so, John Calvin proposed the idea of um double predestination. And the idea of double predestination is that at the beginning of time, okay, before God created anything, he determined who would go to heaven and who would go to hell. That's double predestination. So, it didn't really matter if you obeyed the Catholic church. It really didn't even The Catholic church had no authority over you. So, you just ignore it and focus on your own internal salvation. Right? But then the question then is like, okay, then how do you know that you're one of the elect? Well, because you're successful in life. Because of your wealth. So, the more wealth you generate, the more you know that God favors you. But it was important not to spend this wealth.

45:13 Because then you show you are lustful. You are sinful, right? So, this creates a very complex psychology where you are anxious to make as much money as possible, but you can't spend any of it because you don't want to show that you are sinful. And this is what led to the modern financial system, right? Because now that the Dutch Republic, everyone's in the bank, and so the Dutch Republic can now take this wealth and then invest it in other places, okay? And And this is what leads to capitalism. >> And why's wealth specifically like a sign that you're favored by God? >> Right. So, um the question is how do you prove you're one of the elect

45:59 to yourself as well as to others? >> Mhm. >> And the And the answer is for your success. Because at this time in history, people haven't believed in God, and everyone believes that God is a source of your luck. >> Mhm. >> Right. >> So, if you have a good life, it means because you've been a pious person, and God favors you. If you became a very wealthy person, that also shows you that God favors you, right? So, wealth is the clearest indicator that to the community that you're a good person. Right? Because before, it was about storytelling, like how good of a storyteller were you? Now, it's about wealth creation. How good of a businessman are you? Right? The the >> Yeah, yeah, that That makes sense to me. I think it's the concept of like

46:45 resourcefulness because the claim is that people throughout history didn't value money, but they always thought that having resources was a sign that you were favored by the gods. That's right. Okay. That makes sense. Okay. >> And they define resources differently in different types. >> Right. >> Right? So, um the Dutch Republic has all this wealth. It can't spend it, but if it just leaves in a bank, all this gold, the Spanish are going to come and steal it, okay? So, they transfer all this gold to England, which has a Royal Navy, and which can protect this gold. Okay? But now, the question then is, how do you ensure that this gold creates more wealth? Because it's important to create wealth to show you're part of the elect. Right? So,

47:30 in 1694, they created something called the Bank of England. And the idea of the Bank of England is very simple. This will be a private bank, okay? Meaning like, if you put this gold into this bank, it's your gold. It's private, because you you have to prove to yourself and to God that you are wealthy, right? And And the deal is this. Parliament, the nation-state, would this money from you in order to finance wars. Because before the relationship was um wars at the time was fought by mer- by mercenaries. So you you need a lot of gold. You need a lot of like um capital. And so kings would borrow money from merchants usually. The problem is that

48:15 the king could die. The king could lose the war or the king could just be like I don't need to pay you back because I'm the king and you're not. Right? So there's a real risk uh when you lend money to the king. But now that you lend money to parliament now it's safe because every person in the country is obligated to pay back the debt. Um regardless of how poor this nation becomes as long as as long as the nation state is still standing, as long as parliament has authority, parliament must pay you back. Okay? So the idea is the Bank of England has all this private wealth and now it lends this money, what we call money printing, to parliament in order for parliament to finance public works projects, finance wars, finance everything. And and this led to the creation of the British Empire.

49:01 The problem with this is now parliament needs to expand this wealth. And how do you do that? Well, you conquer other territories, right? You go start wars. And this is what led to the expansion of the British Empire. This is what led to the colonization of um India. This is what led to um um the opium wars in China where Britain uh forced drugs upon the Chinese population. Because you're constantly looking for new markets in order to extract wealth. And and and this is what creates the idea of transnational capital. Okay? Um The first principle is the question of wealth for the for the purpose of wealth

49:48 creation. Okay? No other ends. It's not to make a better society. It's not to make a better world, it's not to improve the lot of humanity, it's just wealth creation. And that's all And that's all they care about. And that's number one. Number two is it's transnational, me- meaning what they care most about is the liquid movement of capital around the world. So, wherever there's an opportunity, they want to move that capital. So, an example, of course, is America's Gilded Age. When America was rapidly industrializing, and so the City of London, uh the Bank of England, um shifted a lot of transnational capital to America. The problem with America, though, is Americans hated uh the British at this time. And they hated transnational capital because they saw transnational capital as a source of all evil. So, what they did, which was which was

50:35 very clever, is they had agents um that they handpicked in order to um promote transnational capital in America. And these people are called John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, Commodore Vanderbilt. That's how they became very wealthy, right? Because Think Think Think about Think about this. How John D. Rockefeller came from nothing. And before he died, he monopolized the entire oil industry in America. How did he do that? Like, just do the math. It's impossible to like monopolize an entire nation's oil. You can monopolize maybe Ohio or Florida, sure, I can understand that. But you When you monopolize the entire nation of America?

51:21 That's ridiculous, okay? So, and so I think the best logical explanation is that transnational capital see like recognizes a potential and backed him and gave him the financing to buy all his competitors, which makes almost logical sense, right? >> [snorts] >> Um So, so that's what transnational capital does. It's only interested in wealth creation, it moves capital around from place to place, has absolutely no loyalty to nation, and it believes in open borders. It believes in uh It sees religion as a threat. It sees monarchies as a threat. And most people don't appreciate this, but transnational capital also financed the creation of Marxism. >> Mhm. >> Okay? In two aspects. The first aspect is if you go and look at the life of Karl Marx, he was being um bankrolled by

52:09 Friedrich Engels. Friedrich Engels' father was an industrialist. So, this is transnational capital. And why would they finance Karl Marx? And Karl Marx spent most of his life in Britain. Right? So, that's the first example. The second example is if you look at the Bolsheviks, this was an extreme French political party in Russia that no one liked. Everyone thought these people are crazy, they're fanatics, but they had access to transnational capital. They were financed by Wall Street. And so, during the Bolshevik Revolution, um transnational capital was bankrolling so that they could hire mercenaries to fight the war. They could bribe foreign governments not to intervene. They could pay off

52:54 generals of the white armies, and that's how they won the war with the help of transnational capital. So, um this dichotomy between capitalism and communism, it's it's all a false dialectic. It's meant to deceive you. Ultimately, what transnational capital is interested in is in seeking better investment opportunities. And Bolshevism made Russia a better investment opportunity for transnational capital, right? Because Because before you had the Tsar, and you had the Orthodox Church, and both were opposed to transnational capital. They saw it as the Antichrist system. They still call it the Antichrist system. Um >> Are you saying that communism was created by capitalist? >> Yes, in order to um um pave the way for the infiltration of

53:42 transnational transnational national capital into the world. Right? Because who opposes the money? Well, the king opposes transnational capital because he doesn't want his the national sovereignty to be um destroyed, right? Kings oppose transnational capital. Who else opposes transnational capital? Religious people, right? Because they see money as the source of all evil. Like guys, let's not focus on making money. Let's just focus on uh praying to God, on being good people. Right? So, with communism, communism is for it's considered like the apex of the enlightenment because it puts reason above everything else.

54:27 It puts it puts reason above God, country, and king. And no other I philosophy did that before, right? So, communism was crucial to the development and conquest of transnational capital. >> Was it a controlled opposition for them pretty much? >> Um so >> it was made to be an enemy so people promoted capitalism which in turn promotes transnational capital. >> Right. Okay. So, what we what we need to understand is for transnational capital to win, it needs to create an entire worldview, an entire religion, an entire philosophy uh so that it can infiltrate your mind, right? Because again, for most of human of human history, we didn't care about money. We cared about the community. We cared about our status

55:13 in in the community. So, what transnational capital did was not to not to not only did it sponsor um Marxism, but also sponsored other movements as well that were key to creating the world that we live in, okay? So, one person that they sponsored was John Locke who uh proposed that private property is an intrinsic right given to you by God. And and this was new at this time. At this time in history, people were pious and they didn't really care about private property. They cared about um their faith. They cared about the community. They cared about the relationship with God. Now John Locke is saying that private property is something given to you by

55:59 God and therefore it is protected by God. Another idea idea he he promoted was called something called empiricism. Which is to say like you can only know things that you experience. And this is again a radically different concept from religion, which is you should feel God in you. And there are these spirits, holy spirits, around you. And John Locke saying, "No, no, no, no, you guys you're just hallucinating. You're delusional." It's things only exist if you can experience them yourself. You can't just imagine things. You just can't believe these things. You have to be able to see these things. Right? And this gives us um David Hume. Who who who promoted the idea of skepticism, which is to say, "You know what? Even the things you see may not be true." Okay? Um you have to be skeptical about everything you

56:45 believe because a lot of things you believe may just be a product of custom and memorization as opposed to um um reality itself. So he he gives an example of let's just say you've seen 10,000 white swans. Now you can induce, the idea of induction, that all swans are white. But is that really true? Well, it's not true because there are black swans. Not that many, but there are. Which which is to say that all knowledge is based on induction. Right? Because it's impossible for you to see all swans. If you've seen 10,000 swans and they're all white, you have to believe that all swans are white. But that's not true. Right? Which which which is to say that your inductive ability is very limited.

57:31 So so so David Hume is questioning the very project of philosophy. He's questioning the very project of um enlightenment. And um science, okay? So, that's David Hume. Then you have Jer- Jeremy Bentham, who's And his idea is this, you have um you you you can only know things that you experience. And even these things you experience, you cannot know to be true. So, you can't actually appeal to you- universal principles. So, what's the solution to to this crisis? Utility. If it's useful to you, it must be good. What it What is useful, it gives you pleasure, it must be good. How do you know How do you know money creation is good? Because money

58:17 creation, you can buy things. And buying these things gives you pleasure. Therefore, you know it's good. And then from Jeremy Bentham, you have John Stuart Mill, his protégé. And then John Stuart Mill a- takes this idea of utilitarianism and applies it to all society. Which is say that how can we judge whether or not social policy is good or not? Because it's useful, because it appeals to our sense of pleasure. Therefore, feminism is good because it brings women into society. Therefore, liberalism is good because it empowers the individual. And

59:03 all these ideas together then form the framework for our society. Right? But again, what's important is these ideas are a- are outgrowth of transnational capital and its uh demand to control reality itself, our perception of reality itself, by making the world more materialistic, but by making money the main organizing principle of reality. Whereas before it might have been God or love or family or community.