Is America Declining Like the Roman Empire? | Bret Weinstein - PT 2

Summary

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Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu

Episode: Is America Declining Like the Roman Empire? | Bret Weinstein - PT 2

Guest: Bret Weinstein

Release Date: September 6, 2024

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Overview

In this episode, Tom Bilyeu continues his deep conversation with evolutionary biologist and commentator Bret Weinstein. The discussion centers on American political decline—specifically the parallels between the current state of the United States and the fall of the Roman Empire. The episode moves through themes of political hopelessness, polarization of media narratives, the importance of inspiring leadership, the dangers of tribalism, and the cycles of violence and genocide throughout history. Weinstein and Bilyeu dissect the cultural, psychological, and institutional mechanisms at play, and they wrestle with questions of whether optimism for renewal is justified or naive.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Hopelessness and the Challenge of Building a Movement

Timestamp: 00:45 – 06:44

• Tom expresses skepticism about the feasibility of new political movements (e.g., Unity 2020) gaining traction in the current cynical, distracted environment.
  • “If I wasn't obsessed with you as a thinker, I just wouldn't pay attention because I don't have enough details…so I'm just not even gonna think about it … it’s just too fucking late.” (Bilyeu, 00:45)
• Bret responds that a movement must have a meaningful groundswell to empower candidates and that even if electoral victory fails, the process can unite disparate reform efforts (e.g., open source, crypto, Game B).
  • “Even before you get to the question of what happens next if the United States fails because we tear ourselves apart, that empowers China ... we’re putting the world in jeopardy here.” (Weinstein, 03:29)

2. Narrative, Media Polarization, and the Problem of ‘Sex Appeal’

Timestamp: 06:44 – 13:11

• Tom connects polarization to the modern media environment—different news outlets create differing realities, fueling tribalism.
  • “If I see the same thing being covered on CNN versus Fox, it actually looks like different things happened. I mean, it's so fucking bizarre…this is fundamentally problematic.” (Bilyeu, 07:28)
• He stresses that for a movement to capture imagination, it needs charismatic leaders and a compelling “hook.”
  • “I think the real answer…is you don’t have sex appeal yet. So, like, what is going to be the hook? … There’s a cacophony of voices.” (Bilyeu, 06:44)
• Bret agrees charisma and narrative “magic” are needed; strong ideas must be wedded to effective communicators.
  • “You need an idea that’ll work and you need somebody who understands narrative and sex appeal…so that it can live. And how do we do it?” (Weinstein, 13:01)

3. Leadership, Inspiration, and the Power of Example

Timestamp: 13:11 – 18:22

• Tom highlights Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela as examples of leadership that can “give chills” and inspire hope, regardless of policy agreement.
  • “When Barack Obama came along, ignore the effect of the policies, when he got elected, man, it was fucking electric … I loved the slogan, the whole notion of hope…” (Bilyeu, 14:51)
• He insists that inspiring, authoritative, and collaborating leaders are essential to unite people—without them, the faceless nature of many movements is a flaw.

4. Parallels to the Roman Empire and Roots of Societal Collapse

Timestamp: 19:40 – 22:27, 52:17 – 53:34

• Tom asks why the comparison of American decline to the Roman Empire has become so prominent.
  • “Why has it become a meme to say that America is collapsing like the Roman Empire?” (Bilyeu, 19:40; repeated at 52:17)
• Bret links collapse to the ending of economic growth, resource scarcity, and the resurgence of tribalism.
  • “Human beings detect the failure of growth because the failure of growth is not an economic fact. It's a fact of resource scarcity…when the music stops and there are way too few chairs…blood is thicker than water. And that’s the rule that governs the day.” (Weinstein, 20:15; 21:17)
• He notes antisemitism and other forms of scapegoating always flare up in such circumstances as mechanisms of false growth—one group appropriating the assets of another.

5. Genocidal Impulse, Historical Analogies, and Present Conflicts

Timestamp: 22:27 – 37:48

• Tom pushes Bret to clarify what makes diaspora groups like Jews or Chinese targets during times of crisis.
  • “Why does being in diaspora…make you a target?” (Bilyeu, 22:27)
• Bret explains that such groups are scapegoated for societal woes, leading to plunder masked as righteousness or necessity—culminating in genocide or war:
  • “You create growth for one population by targeting another population. And when that happens inside a landmass, we call it genocide; across a border, we call it war.” (Weinstein, 24:16)
• On Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Gaza:
  • Ukraine: “If there's one thing I know, it's that I don't know enough to understand it. … There was a question about NATO expansion…my own government is in the hands of people who had their hands on stuff inside of Ukraine utterly mysteriously.” (Weinstein, 26:56)
  • Israel/Gaza: “You have innocent people trapped on both sides…and you have a genocidal influence on both sides of that conflict…Netanyahu shouldn’t be in charge of it.” (Weinstein, 28:30; 34:44)
• Humanity’s dark inheritance is confronted:
  • “We are all the product of genocides…all the product of multiple rapes. … The potential for rape and genocide is something we all carry…There is so much hope in that recognition…we can actually sit and write down our values.” (Weinstein, 35:04; 36:02)

6. The Crisis of Shared Values and Epistemic ‘Delusion’

Timestamp: 37:48 – 44:17

• Tom details how worldviews—rooted in both what one believes ‘is’ and what ought to be—make genuine communication almost impossible, especially on contested topics like Gaza.
  • “Each side thinks the other's trying to play a linguistic game…they see the world so ferociously in one way…there is literally nothing that you could show them…to make them go, oh, I see your point.” (Bilyeu, 39:00)
• Bret calls this the “Cartesian Crisis”—the breakdown of common factual ground due to institutional abdication and systematic narrative distortion.
  • “I call this the Cartesian crisis…the systematically induced blindness that is being inflicted on the public is creating a scenario in which we really can't establish much of anything.” (Weinstein, 41:42)
• Science is presented as the only effective, nonpartisan sense-making tool, but it too has been politicized.
  • “Science works because it is built to tell you what you do not believe…it belongs to no one, or it belongs to us all equally…” (Weinstein, 43:10)

7. The Role of Self-Interest, Progress, and Market Solutions

Timestamp: 45:05 – 52:17

• Tom proposes that self-interest (“greed”)—especially concern for one's children—could overcome ideological and tribal divides, if channeled into a shared vision of progress and human flourishing.
  • “…there is no way for us to come to a consens[us]. The only way to get us to operate in mutually beneficial ways is to tap into other base shit…get people obsessed with the future of their children.” (Bilyeu, 45:05)
• Bret broadens it to “reciprocity” and explains how Western interference (e.g., Iran) has undermined indigenous modernization, fueling lineage-against-lineage violence instead of cooperative competition.
  • “Our meddling in the Middle east has set the course to lineage against lineage violence, which we now largely wrongly blame on the content of the religious doctrine.…” (Weinstein, 47:45)
• For long-term peace and innovation, markets must reward those who genuinely add value and internalize all costs:
  • “…if you did internalize all of the costs of every product and every process…the only people who profited were people who made things that actually made us better off, you don’t need to do anything else. That solves the entire problem right there.” (Weinstein, 51:19)

8. Sense-Making Breakdown and the Fight Over Facts

Timestamp: 53:34 – 55:00

• Tom asks why “sense-making” has become so difficult.
• Bret points to institutional antagonists, entrenched interests, and narrative control—especially evident in COVID, where clear, basic scientific questions are continually obfuscated.
  • “We keep injuring ourselves because something is acting to keep us in the dark…We have a mind-numbing set of denials … and anybody who has gone through the process of studying science knows these are not difficult questions.” (Weinstein, 54:47)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Hopelessness and the Need for a Movement’s “Hook”:
  • “You don’t have sex appeal yet. So, like, what is going to be the hook?” (Bilyeu, 06:44)
• On Media Polarization:
  • “If I see the same thing being covered on CNN versus Fox, it actually looks like different things happened.” (Bilyeu, 07:28)
• On Leadership:
  • “You need an orator…or a dual set of orators who I can see actually functioning together … that I believe have…hardcore motherfucker but at the same time…lift them up.” (Bilyeu, 14:51)
• On Genocidal Impulse:
  • “You create growth for one population by targeting another population...inside a landmass, we call it genocide; across a border, we call it war.” (Weinstein, 24:16)
• On Our Ancestry:
  • “We are all the product of genocides…all the product of multiple rapes…The potential for rape and genocide is something we all carry...There is so much hope in that recognition.” (Weinstein, 35:04; 36:02)
• On the Cartesian Crisis:
  • “The systematically induced blindness that is being inflicted on the public is creating a scenario in which we really can't establish much of anything.” (Weinstein, 41:42)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Hopelessness & Movement Skepticism: 00:45 – 06:44
• Media Polarization & Narrative Sex Appeal: 06:44 – 13:11
• Charismatic Leadership & Inspiration: 13:11 – 18:22
• Parallels to Rome & Societal Collapse: 19:40 – 22:27, 52:17 – 53:34
• Genocidal Impulse and History: 22:27 – 37:48
• Shared Values & The Cartesian Crisis: 37:48 – 44:17
• Markets, Greed & Interference: 45:05 – 52:17
• Sense-Making Breakdown in COVID & Science: 53:34 – 55:00

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Conclusion

This episode of Impact Theory delivers a sobering yet thought-provoking analysis of America's current political and cultural crossroads. Bret Weinstein argues for a new enlightenment built on uniting reformist energies, scientific rigor, and courageous, charismatic leadership. Both speakers emphasize the need for shared values and honest sense-making as prerequisites for navigating the looming threats of division, tribalism, and decay. Going beyond platitudes, the conversation offers a nuanced diagnosis and a call to action—highlighting that, despite dark historical cycles, hope persists if society can foster truth, leadership, and reciprocity.

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

I'm Tom Bilyeu and this is Impact Theory. Today we're diving right back into part two with none other than Brett Weinstein. So as we, there's some way that you guys see that we can get on the ballot in time. When do you plan to announce who the candidates are and what does that. Is that process of selecting those candidates something that you pass off? Or do you have to have the unity, the Unity party that has their own sort of version of the DNC that does this? Because I will say I'm the guy that you probably are aiming at convincing, right? Like, I'm ready, I'm ready to be convinced. But right now I feel like if I wasn't obsessed with you as a thinker, I just wouldn't pay attention because I don't have enough details. So it's like. And if I'm saying that, like, there's just not enough details here. So I'm just not even gonna think about it because I go to a pessimistic place, if they're never even gonna be able to get on the ballot, it's just too fucking late. And that there is hopelessness in that. But I think that that level of sort of just unquestioned hopelessness, right? I've, I'm only processing through this because I'm sitting in front of you now, right? So otherwise I wouldn't, it just would be sort of background like, oh, that'd be cool. But, you know, we're just. It's not gonna happen in time.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

How do, how do we give the, the, you know, the optimism and the sense of like, shit, this could really happen.

[C]

Okay, so there are a couple answers to the question. One, I don't think there's any point in actually attempting to deliver a ticket if we don't have the groundswell that makes it plausible, because for one thing, what it does is it actually damages the people who we would name. Right.

[B]

Interesting.

[C]

We want them empowered. In order to empower them to work on our behalf, they have to be drafted into this movement, which requires the groundswell. If we don't get the groundswell, then it doesn't make sense to do it. However, here's the thing that I think you're looking for. Let's say that this plan fails and we're not on track by. Well, we can't actually say when because we don't know how the ballots are going to be delivered and therefore when voting is actually going to take place. But let's say we're not on track in time, but let's say that we have managed to. To accumulate a movement of people that understands that we are now rolling the dice with all of the most dangerous processes on earth. Right. A, the world superpower is now gambling with the possibility of civil war. Right. We haven't even begun to talk about what happens if we fragment. Not only is there no geographical solution that suggests itself in this case, but somehow we're talking about not only a nuclear arsenal, but. But we're talking about nuclear reactors that need to be carefully managed. How, you know, how is a transition to some other structure in which the United States ceases to exist going to work? So all I'm saying is the magnitude of the danger that we are putting the world in. Even before you get to the question of what happens next if the United States fails because we tear ourselves apart, that empowers China. Is China the next, you know, pole of the. Of the world, single pole, you know, is it going to be Russia? What happens in the absence of a powerful United States? We're putting the world in jeopardy here. So we're putting the world in jeopardy. The process seems to be moving incredibly rapidly such that we can have a discussion about whether or not there's going to be something to salvage in 2024 or not. This is an amazing level of danger that we are putting ourselves and the world in. In light of that, it seems to me that it makes sense for every person with ears to hear that predicament to gather around. Well, what is the chance that we can row to shore? Why wouldn't you take a shot at something like Unity 2020? And here's the thing. If it fails to elect a ticket to the White House, it could still cause all of the projects that aim for a better world to collect into One, we've got the open source movement, we've got the cryptocurrency movement, we've got makers, we've got Game B. Right? All of these things. We've got idw. All of these things aim to solve problems in the legacy world. Why wouldn't they join together and understand that, in effect, the entire game is, can we bring the things that we've learned in all of these different contexts into a structure that has the power to implement them or to clear the obstacles? So, in essence, the answer to your question is whether we succeed or fail in 2020, we can succeed in creating the best hope for the future. Will it be enough? Nobody can guarantee that. I certainly won't. But is it the best hope we've got? I haven't heard a better one. So, you know what's holding us back from just simply getting behind this idea? It doesn't carry any ideological content that would cause anybody to look at it and say, oh, that's not. That's not me. Right? It has deliberately been pruned of ideological content so that it can cause these other things to gravitate to each other. And isn't that the movement that we're looking for, one that understands the value of crypto and open source and all of these other things?

[B]

I think the real answer to the question of what's holding us back is you don't have sex appeal yet. So, like, what. What is going to be the hook? You know what I mean? So part. And I have not thought through this well enough to know if what I'm about to say is actually true or not. I feel very confident about what I just said. You lack a hook that's sexy enough to get people excited. But there is. There's so much noise right now. I can't tell you how much my YouTube viewing habits have changed in the last, like, three months. It is so surreal to me even to think, like, now I'm just sort of almost like I'm watching news, right? I'm looking for things that came out right now that are super contextual to what's happening in this moment. There's. There's a cacophony of voices. And because I was apolitical and didn't watch news, I didn't even realize that that news had become kabuki theater. And it's so weird to see, like, if I see the same thing being covered on CNN versus Fox, it actually looks like different things happened. And I mean, it's so fucking bizarre and not having an allegiance in either direction. I'm just like, this is fundamentally problematic. Like if you follow this out to its natural conclusion, you're just more and more and more polarized because there's this weird friction. In fact, I know I'm going a field of where I was originally headed, but this is actually interesting. So there's a weird friction as you adopt one narrative or the other of the same factual thing that happened, but one narrative feels right to you, feels like you're now cheering for your team. Yes, they're covering it in a way that speaks to me. There's friction in the other one because neither are true. So the other one isn't, oh, I'm getting to truth. It's. You're asking me to actually adopt the opposing team's narrative, which already didn't resonate with me on a subconscious level anyway. So now that I'm consciously looking at it, it really feels anathema to who I am. This does not feel good. I don't like this. So it is far easier to go from one interpretation to another if both had a sincere effort to get to the facts. And one just missed something or, you know, that wasn't said as well as it could be. And so you could gravitate to, oh, I see, this is actually what happened. Cool, I can make that leap. But when the sense making apparatus is intentionally now so deep into the world of narrative, I can't cross that divide. And so that's what scares me is there's already people seek things that confirm the confirmation bias, confirm what they already believe. But that's a lot less problematic when the disconfirming evidence doesn't trigger some weird destruction of your identity in the way that now it forces you to, because you have polarized narratives. And how we get past that and have sex appeal is where like this starts to worry me. So my we. You cannot let me end this interview without us talking about shutdown stem. Which to me, when I look around and I go, okay, people with guns and riots and stuff, okay, that's all troubling, but the one that scares the shit out of me is shutdown stem. And we can get into why. But the once people detach themselves from what works, what moves you towards your goal, then you can no longer in any effective way move forward. And that's what worries me. So when I think about what the effective way forward here is. In this moment with Unity 2020, you have to capture the imagination of people and you're competing against a narrative that gets people feeling like there is a dragon to be slayed and they're willing to run out in the streets. It's intoxicating. And even if, like, dude, I know, you know, Mao's China, the revolution, the Red Guard that rose up, and you had students actually killing teachers and. Dude, when I stop and think about what I was like in high school, and this really bothered. This really bothers me. I remember when Jordan Peterson said, when you look back on World War II, don't imagine yourself hiding, you know, a Jewish person in your addict. Think of yourself as an SS Guard. And I thought, oh, God. But when I think about me being 16, during the uprising of the Red Guard, I had to put dunce caps on my teachers and, you know, hit them with a stick. I would have, dude, because it just. It felt so. I felt so right about everything at that age.

[C]

Well, I get that. I have to say, I think Jordan Peterson is right. Although, personally, I. There's not. I feel a certain amount of security that I wouldn't have ended up an SS Guard. No, no. Not because I'm Jewish. Let's put me in, you know, in an. I don't know, Aryan skin or something. Somehow there's something about me that is so incompatible with a certain kind of authority that I just. It's impossible.

[B]

Your movements with Evergreen make that hard to argue.

[C]

Yeah. Well, anyway, let's go back to the question of sex appeal, for one. Here's the thing. There's a saying that I'm very fond of. It's a Hopi saying. We are the ones we've been waiting for. Right? And I think it's just impossibly deep, actually. And so here's the thing. You're. You're a guy who's trying to build a new Disney, right? You're the sex appeal guy, right? You know, we're in danger. That's part of why we're having this conversation. So the question is, what is the answer to that? I know full well that you're right, that at some level, what I have deployed reaches a certain number of people who were ready, but it doesn't reach a large enough group. Now, it's not that there's anything wrong with the idea, I'm sure of that, but you're right. The question is, can you deliver it narratively in a way that people get it instantly. They understand what it is, why they have to be part of it. And it seems to me that this is the same. The same question we were dealing with earlier. The dynamic tension that really is where all Magic comes from, right? You need an idea that'll work and you need somebody who understands narrative and sex appeal and all of that so that it can, it can live. And how do we do it?

[B]

Yeah, as a sex appeal guy, I will tell you, you're never going to get it off the ground without real people. Because you're asking me to get excited about a faceless idea. And we're seeing now with some of the movements going on that are creating madness, you can do it. And I think over a long enough time period, you could get people behind this idea. But if you think about the current wave of madness, which I don't even know what name to assign it, but it started in the 60s, 70s, I mean, this has been going now for 40 or 50 years and it was a long game strategy and it's worked really well. But you talk about, and this is so important and so powerful. So when I public speak, my message is almost always revolves around humans are the ultimate adaptation machine. And the way that you say that is we've offloaded a lot of our abilities not to genetics, but to culture. And by putting it in the software layer, we're able to change very rapidly. So if I had a gun to my head and you said, dude, you know the mechanisms that are at work here, what do you do? I say I need people and I need people with personality. I need people with charisma. When Barack Obama came along, ignore the effect of the policies, when he got elected, man, it was fucking electric. And, and I was over the moon. I loved the slogan, the whole notion of hope, having a person, you know, I mean, we're still shouting distance from the civil rights movement and in, what was it, 42 years later you have a black president. I mean, I was like, fuck yes, man. Like, that was so thrilling to me. And when Coleman Hughes and I were talking not too long ago, I asked him like, who do you think could have led us? What president would you want leading us through this moment? Now he's someone who's been very critical of Obama and he said Obama. And I was like, fuck. You might be right. Because, you know, in this weird world where moral authority is like, you almost just have to take that off the table. And he's such a powerful orator. So you need an orator who actually, you need a dual set of orators who I can see actually functioning together that I don't think they're going to get into a stalemate that I believe have like, they've got that tough nut, hardcore motherfucker but at the same time, like, we're gonna fight for people and lift them up. And I have to believe that they can coalesce and work well together. Which is another fear that if I have, I'm sure many other people have, which is like, dude, my wife and I run our company together. Now, when the lawyer set it up, I said, create the ultimate divorce nightmare. I do not want 51%. I want 50%. My wife's gonna have 50%. And yes, that means that we could hit loggerheads and this could all blow up. But because my highest value marriage, I want to send a very clear sign to my wife. I don't need authority over you. Because she was like, no, no, you take the 51%. I was like, I don't need that. I'm going to be able to convince you. You're going to be able to convince me because I want to listen to you. I want whatever best idea. And in the wedding sense, we are both patriots. We care about this business. We care about this marriage. We're both willing to do what is right.

[C]

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[A]

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[B]

Now, finding that in two people is going to be crazy hard. But if you could find them and then we had somebody to rally around, somebody that could inspire us, give us chills right when they're up there and they're like. Because there is a Martin Luther King's I had a dream speech put to music. Dude, it's unbelievable. And if we had somebody that can rally like that, I will make the assumption. You've read Long Walk to Freedom?

[C]

No.

[B]

Oh, my God. You're gonna love it. Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom fucking blew my mind. And it made me ache for the fact that I read that after he died, and I was just like, I need to know somebody like this. So if we had a leader. Look, you've talked about this. I'm literally seeing from your hymn book, we need this dual pair of leaders to be inspiring, to give us the chills, and it has to happen right the fuck now. Which is why I'm like, I don't see how you pull this off. I get why you're not naming them, but I don't see how you pull it off unless you do.

[C]

Well, in some sense, I think you're pointing to the right answer, which is what drives this is patriotism in the best sense of the term, which means that the people you're talking about have to be willing to take the risk. And I don't think it's a huge risk. I think people in general understand that we're in a very tough spot, and therefore, anybody who takes a shot at doing something on our behalf is worth honoring, even if it doesn't work. But somebody has to take the reputational risk of saying, actually, you know what? Long shot as this may be, we're in dire straits, and I'm stepping up. So I guess the question is, if I accept your framework, and I think your framework is largely accurate, then maybe. Maybe it's time. I don't think it's so hard to find people who could inhabit the role. We have a list of people on both left and right who I think make for compelling pairs. The question is, is anybody ready to step up in a dangerous moment without. Without the guarantee that the groundswell will emerge? In other words, are they willing to proceed the groundswell rather than follow it?

[B]

Why has it become a meme to say that America is collapsing like the Roman Empire? Growth is petered out. We borrowed from the future. We can't do that anymore, and now we're getting tribal.

[C]

Yes, But I don't believe that it is hopeless, if I'm honest. I believe we will probably screw it up and it will become inevitable.

[B]

Lovely.

[C]

Yeah. But there's a reason that I'm taking the risks that I am to talk about these things in public, which is, I believe we still have the potential to rescue Western civilization and probably, if I'm honest about it, to present a 2.0 version that is capable of dealing with the. The novelty that the 1.0 version is straining under the. The key thing is human beings detect the failure of growth because the failure of growth is not an economic fact. It's a fact of resource scarcity. And it has applied to all of our ancestors for three and a half billion years. So it's not that, you know, growth didn't get invented in a modern economic context. Economics formalized an understanding of something that is as primal as anything else. What must be true in order for us not to descend into this other phase, the phase where musical chairs. The music stops and there are way too few chairs in which blood is thicker than water. And that's the rule that governs the day. The way to avoid that fate is to a recognize that it predicts a great deal about the noises people will make as it's happening. So I'm watching the shocking rise in antisemitism, and I'm thinking it's right on time. Why? Because when I did my work back in college about Hitler as a rational monster, I understood that the targeting of Jews was a predictable phenomenon. That Jews, because they live as a diaspora are and because they succeed as a diaspora are a. An obvious target when the music stops.

[B]

Get very concrete about that. Why does being in diaspora, which for people that aren't familiar with that, you're an outside group living in another country. So people often refer to the Chinese as being part of a diaspora because they have a strong sense of the homeland, but yet they may live somewhere else.

[C]

Yep. So let's say you've got a population and it's industrious and capable for whatever reason. I would argue that those reasons are largely cultural, maybe entirely so, but it accumulates some wealth, it achieves some position in society, and then the racist impulses return. And one way that you can generate growth for a population is to come up with an excuse to transfer the wealth of another population. So the obvious thing to do is to say, well, you know, geez, the reason that Germany Lost World War I was a Jewish fifth column and the sorry state of Germany today is the result of being stabbed in the back by these people. I mean, maybe they shouldn't even be called people. Maybe they're vermin, they're diseased, they're disgusting. Right. You start making those noises and you justify a significant transfer of wealth from one population to another. But, and this goes back to the question about the founding Fathers. Obviously the time period is different, but if you imagine that Germany prior to the Holocaust was a place that involved a few lineages, and then one lineage starts playing against the others. Right. Well, you create growth for the one lineage without having to invent a new technology or discover some more efficient way of accomplishing something. It's phony growth. What is it made of? It's made of the stuff that the people you're killing are leaving behind. It's made of their homes. Right. You're creating something that feels like growth for one population by targeting another population. And when that happens inside of a landmass, we call it genocide. And when it happens across a border, we call it war. But they're the same process, right? You come up with an excuse to attack some population that can't defend itself and you create the appearance of growth through theft. Right. I mean, if you had a company and it could steal from some other company, it would feel like, oh, well, the value of this company just rose. And the point is, yes, you took stuff from somebody else. So I knew that at the point that the growth ran out, you were going to get rabid anti Semitism and frankly, it precedes other forms of virulent racism. But you're going to see those too. And I know where this heads. You're going to come up with excuses for doing away with people who aren't entitled to what they have. And that does end in genocide. So, you know, I think the bad news is this is where we are in history. The good news is we actually have much better tools than we did when this happened previously to understand what's taking place and to change course. But the way you would have to do that is you would have to create a mechanism whereby the population was immunized from the immediate sense of peril that comes when you run out of new ways to generate well being. Right. When growth is not a sustainable process. And the fact that our institutions pretend like all you've got to do is, you know, is keep the thing pointed in the right direction and there will always be plenty of growth. That's not true. Growth comes from somewhere and it does not come from that somewhere regularly. You cannot just create a system that hums along and is always making new stuff. There's boom and there's bust, and you can't afford to have the bust triggering these genocidal impulses, which is what they will do if you don't figure out how to address the question.

[B]

Okay, so right now we have two wars going on. One in Ukraine and Russia, one in Israel, Gaza. Are they both the genocidal impulse?

[C]

This is tricky. I will say something is going on in Ukraine. And if there's one thing I know, it's that I don't know enough to understand it. Okay, there's the obvious part of it, right? There's Russia having attacked a sovereign nation, and now a generation of young men have been sacrificed to this battle. So I have nothing but compassion for the Ukrainian people in that circumstance. But I also know that there was a question about NATO expansion, and NATO behaved in a way that. That did not allay Russia's fears. And more to the point, I know that my own government is in the hands of people who had their hands on stuff inside of Ukraine utterly mysteriously, before this war broke out. Why is the son of the president involved as some kind of energy expert inside of Ukraine? This is a story about things I don't know, right? So I don't. I can't say how genocide maps onto the conflict in Ukraine. I can say it's a complicated puzzle. Israel and Gaza. The unspeakable truth is that you have innocent people trapped on both sides of that conflict, and you have a genocidal influence on both sides of that conflict. It's something I have not. I don't think I've said that publicly. I've implied it, and I've hoped that people would get it. And I've been told by both sides that I'm a terrible person. But what I said at the beginning of the conflict was that it was threatening to drag the entire world back into lineage against lineage violence, that if we want to save the west and save the world, we have to rescue the Middle east from this predicament. Because I don't think either side is being irrational. I think they both understand that they are in a fight to the death. And in a fight to the death, the rules are quite different than you would expect. So there. There are clearly a majority in Israel who wish to be part of the modern world, would like to get along with their neighbors. I believe that is clear. I cannot say the same thing about the leadership. And I am particularly troubled by the fact that Netanyahu himself, who I must say engaged in absolutely alarming behavior during the pandemic, also appears to have been a facilitator of Hamas in advance of October 7th. In what way? What I've seen is video that appears to be Netanyahu advocating for the cynical fueling of Hamas for the purpose of dividing the Palestinians. Now, my feeling is, whatever that was, everybody who participated in any way in making October 7th occur has no business anywhere near any kind of power. This is the last person that should be in charge of a military engagement in Gaza. And I don't know what his motives are. I. I Honestly can't say. All I can say is that he appears to be a madman. And Netanyahu? Yes.

[B]

Do you think that Netanyahu is responsible for October 7th?

[C]

If what I have seen that I believe to be credible evidence of his arguing to fund Hamas? If that is accurate, then he is responsible in some way in like a

[B]

conspiratorial hey guys, here's the money. I know you're gonna do it kinda way.

[C]

If we believe in the consent of the governed and somebody else from outside the governed acts to choose your leaders and those leaders behave badly and you suffer mightily because of the bad behavior of leaders that somebody else chose for you, you're responsible. Do I know what he was really thinking? How would I know? I couldn't possibly be more of an outsider to this.

[B]

Is this a hypothesis or a thesis?

[C]

No, it's an extrapolation. I don't know how it could be any clearer. Palestinians are people. I believe that the right that allows me as a governed person, consent over that process of governance extends to all people. Or it should.

[A]

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[B]

Do you think it matters where we define a people? Is that a relevant part of this? Or it just.

[C]

It's a practical question, but I, you know, this is, this is going to

[B]

drag us because I don't know if you're saying that based on the UN Charter, which talks about a people and there are certain protections afforded to them, or if you just mean, look, any group of people, whether it's somebody in a city or whatever.

[C]

Look, if you're going to be governed, you have a. A right to consent in the consent of the governed sense of that term. I believe people have a right to self determination. I am not an expert on Palestinians or the Palestinian mindset. I do not know what the people of Gaza would have done without Netanyahu's meddling, without. Maybe it would have been the same thing. I don't know what Israel is supposed to do in light of this absolutely barbaric attack, but I do know that whatever engaged in that attack put Israel in a bind. There was no way for Israel not to respond to that attack. The brutality was calculated to make it impossible for Israel to choose. It was calculated to bring about a response that would be overwhelming because somebody thought that was a good idea. Presumably Hamas thought that would be a good idea. Now, Hamas should be wiped from the earth. There's no question about that. These are terrible people. Whatever they were thinking, these are terrible people, and eliminating them would make the world a better place. That's obviously not the same thing as the Palestinian people. And given the way Hamas embeds itself, what Israel is supposed to do is not obvious. But if there's one thing that is obvious, Netanyahu shouldn't be in charge of it.

[B]

Okay, so that was born of the question as to whether or not there is a genocidal impulse that we can actually put to bed through conversation by getting people to understand what it is, pulling it into the public consciousness, and by doing so, eradicate this kind of thing.

[C]

Well, let me. Let me add one thing just so it's clear. We are all the product of genocides.

[B]

That does not track for me.

[C]

Human history is long. Yep. People killing their competitors is common in history. Most of it has been lost. It wasn't recorded.

[B]

You're just saying we are the. We're the ones that won.

[C]

Yeah, we're here. And we are also, it is fair to say, all the product of multiple rapes. Human history is very long.

[B]

Give me a percentage. What percentage of people do you have are downstream of a rape?

[C]

Oh, I think all of us.

[B]

Literally 100.

[C]

Yeah. I think you. As soon as you realize how long a period of ancestry we're talking about, the chances that there's not a rape somewhere in each of our backgrounds is approaching zero.

[B]

That's dark.

[C]

It's dark, but it's also. Yeah, it's dark. Look at it. But once you have looked at it, realize what that means. The potential for rape and genocide is something we all carry. We are also capable of getting past it. There is so much hope in that recognition. Once you realize that, you are not condemned to live this reality just because it had a significance in ancestral times. That's where liberation comes from. We don't have to live that way. We can actually sit and write down our values, and we can say, what is the system that actually makes us realize those values at the highest level? Right. What would we like to happen with rape? Well, we would like it to go to zero. Likewise, genocide. That's what it means when we say never again. So when I say that there is A genocidal impulse on both sides. We are seeing the predictable outcome of a zero sum game in the Middle east that is triggering potentials that we all carry. Right. We can see exactly why we have to take these potentials seriously in this conflagration. And the right thing to do is actually not beat each or beat each other over the head, each side accusing the other side of genocide. The correct thing to do is to recognize this was predictable and we have the power, if we'll stop dicking around with nonsense, we have the power to make the future better than the past.

[B]

Man. I'm with you. And look, this has just become an interview where throwing out a platitude of I hope everything's going to be okay just does not feel right. So I will ask the. The more revealing question. It is not agreed upon as to whether what's happening right now is genocide. And this is. There are several things you feel like nobody's listening to you. You're screaming from the rooftops and people just aren't getting it. I have a very similar sense when I talk to people about somebody's frame of reference the whole life, beer goggles that will control how they interpret what people are calling facts. And people oft quote Ben Shapiro and say, facts don't care about your feelings, bro. We, we cannot agree on what the facts are, or certainly we can't agree on what the facts mean. And I actually don't think people are playing a game. I think people don't understand how distorted all of our worldviews are that we actually see only the distortions. And to us, you're going to get people that look at this and go, obviously what's happening in Gaza is a genocide, obviously. And you're going to get people that, obviously, that's not genocide. This is crazy. I can't even believe we're having this conversation. And each side thinks the other's trying to play a linguistic game or something like that. And they're missing what I think is the real truth, which is they. They see the world so ferociously in one way, there is literally nothing that you could show them. And I mean nothing that would make them go, oh, I see your point. And because there is literally nothing that you could show them, like, let's set the. The Jews aside for a second because this just gets so weird so fast. Especially right now in Rwanda, like, almost a million people were hacked to death with machetes in like six weeks. So that's insane. And it keeps happening. Now, I've not researched the Rwandan genocide. So for all I know, they were both like, yeah, this is genocide and it's completely justified. Which then just enters another problem, which is, yes, genocide. What's the problem? People really become convinced I am doing God's bidding, I am doing the just and right thing in what I'm doing. And the only way that I see getting to the other side of that is everybody has to wake up to one simple fact. Ideas control everything. And what I mean by that are you believe certain things to be true, you confuse it for objective reality, which is physics, but you believe certain things are true, call it is. Then you have a set of things, your values, that you believe ought to be true. And so now you have is, which they confuse for objective reality and ought, which they often confuse with just self evident or divine, whatever. And like this is non negotiable. And both of those things will be ferociously debated by the other side, who sees the truth of neither. They have their own is and their own ought. And so until we all go, huh, I know I'm in the grips of a delusion, I cannot see things clearly. And so we all have to come to some set of shared values. And then you build up from that. If we can't share values, I don't. No matter how much you talk about genocide, you will death loop because people just sidestep it by saying, but this isn't genocide or genocide is right, yeah, it is genocide, but it's what we have to do.

[C]

That was a very good summation. It overlaps many things that I also believe. I think distinguishing between beliefs and values is crucial. What you're, what you're saying with respect to we are all suffering a delusion, I agree, is correct. I call this the Cartesian crisis, and I think we are knee deep in it. And it is, if you understand its implications, it's terrifying. The Cartesian Crisis. I, I named it that after Descartes, who became spooked when he realized that all of the things that he thought were facts. What you say, you think it's physics, but it's beliefs, he had not established himself and therefore was taking it on some kind of authority. The problem is that the systematically induced blindness that is being inflicted on the public is creating a scenario in which we really can't establish much of anything. And that does leave us vulnerable to being sold a narrative right. It just fills the vacuum of what you might actually believe in common. The obvious right thing for us to want is an agreement on basics, that enlightenment is better than deciding what you're allowed to believe. For example, let's pursue enlightenment. Let us agree to share facts. We can differ over values. We should talk about which values should govern how we are to live. But we should not be differing over the basic facts. And we should be, and this is crucial, using the one tool that actually allows us to establish those facts in a way that is utterly nonpartisan. Science works because it is built to tell you what you do not believe. It corrects for biases. If it were not for this one value, it wouldn't be worth doing. It's too cumbersome and slow. But because it is the only system that allows you to see exactly the thing that you do not expect, it has the capability of telling us what is true and to know that it is true on the basis that it predicts things better than some other idea. So that's the tool. It belongs to no one, or it belongs to us all equally. And those who politicize it are putting us all in jeopardy. This is really. This is why I'm trying to bring this tool to people in this way and show them that it applies to the things that they're battling over and that the only, the only way out is through. We have to learn to wield this tool, to figure out where we even are. In an era where all of the institutions that should be doing that job are failing at once, we're going to have to build institutions that work. Some people think we can rescue the institutions we have. I'm less and less convinced of that. But I know that we can build something that does the job and we have to stop bludgeoning each other over the product of scientific inquiry. You know, the facts are what they are, and then the values tell you what to think about them. And if you divide things in that way so that we're not battling over the facts based on the. The idea that they are somehow themselves immoral, then there's. There's hope.

[B]

Can I try an idea out on you, please? All right. I think that the way the human animal is designed, that there is no way for us to come to a consens. The only way to get us to operate in mutually beneficial ways is to tap into other base shit, which I will just round to greed. But I don't mean in a bad way. I think the only way out for something like Israel, Hamas is to get people obsessed with the future of their children. If you believe that the brightest future for your kids could be getting killed, being martyred, going to heaven, then that idea traps you. Now, violence is rad. Like, that's a great way to ensure that your child has a wonderful future. If, on the other hand, you believe my child's future can be full of education, and I guess I'll say terrestrial love here on this planet for at least this period of time, and. And tomorrow's gonna be better than today, and that they're gonna make progress and it's gonna be wonderful, and they're gonna grow up and they're gonna fall in love and they're gonna have kids, and, you know, this is gonna go on forever. That feels like when I look backwards to identify how to move forwards, I go, yes, you want progress, health and safety, love for one's kin, to see them grow up, et cetera, et cetera.

[C]

I think you're right. On the question of Islam, I will just simply point out that there are numerous examples in the Middle east in which Islamic states attempted to modernize. We're embracing values that were not exactly Western, but we're moving in that direction. And I believe that, unfortunately, for reasons that in the end, were profoundly economic, we have disrupted this process. We in the west have disrupted this process, and it has created a conflagration that did not need to happen.

[B]

How did we disrupt it?

[C]

Well, the Shah of Iran was installed to basically facilitate transfer of economic resources. We overrode a democratic impulse in Iran, and it has resulted in a theocratic rebellion. So what would have happened if we had not meddled in Iran? Would Iran today be where it is? Or is that entirely the result of resentment against the west that has left a vacuum that has been filled by a. Well, to connect it to an earlier part of the conversation, you have these two bases for cooperation. You have reciprocity, which I would argue is the way the modern world should be structured. And there is lineage against lineage violence. And I believe that our meddling in the Middle east has set the course to lineage against lineage violence, which we now largely wrongly blame on the content of. Of the religious doctrine. Right? The religious doctrine does contain this violence, but the question is exactly as is the case with Israel, right? The Old Testament contains some really toxic stuff, but most Israelis want to be part of the modern world, right? The fact that there's this bad stuff in the founding documents is not fate. So I'm not sure what to do with that. And I've gotten detained trying to. Trying to explain this connection. But the right thing to do is to recognize that we are all better off, all of humanity is better off if we do embrace. You're calling it greed. I wouldn't use that term. But if we recognize that humanity is improved when human beings are enabled to compete in a way that ecologically we would call exploitation competition. There's two kinds of competition. You've got exploitation competition and interference competition. Right. If I bomb your factory so you can't make stuff, I am arguably competing with you. But it's a destructive kind of competition. If I try to make better stuff than you in order to out compete you in the market, and you try to make better stuff than me because you want to succeed, then the point is, what we get is an improvement in the quality of the things we have access to. So what you really want at the end of the day, and I'm not telling you I know how to instantiate this, but you what you really want at the end of the day is for people to profit when they bring things to the table that improve the quality, the length of human life. The way to do that, to the extent that there's something we can describe, is to internalize all of the costs of our activities and let the market solve the problem. If you let the market solve the problem, and if somehow, and I'm not claiming I know how to do it because it may just simply not be possible, but if you did internalize all of the costs of every product and every process so that at the end of the day, the only people who profited were people who made things that actually made us better off, you don't need to do anything else that solves the entire problem right there. Then you get people spending their time trying to figure out how to improve the standing of humanity, and when they succeed, the quality of their personal life gets enhanced. That's what you want. That allows the market to do what it's good at without interfering with our values, and it minimally facilitates or it prevents the outbreak of tyrannical impulses. The market simply tells us what things should be augmented and which things should be abandoned based on whether or not their impact on humanity was positive.

[B]

Yeah. Why has it become a meme to say that America is collapsing like the Roman Empire? What are people trying to deal with when they say that?

[C]

I think there is a palpable sensation that the system is coming apart. So I think it's not incorrect to think of collapse occurring. I think of it as a slow motion collapse. I don't think of the Roman Empire very frequently other than just the simple fact that something that seemed as robust as it must have been can also come apart. I also remember from childhood the surprise collapse of the Soviet Union. But once you recognize that things that seem like they are forever still end, it's not hard to recognize the signs in where we are now. I guess I'm glad we're finally having that discussion, because the risk that the Republic was going to come apart was there and has been for decades. And if, if we are going to get through this phase, either by rescuing the Republic or figuring out how to walk away from a crash landing, it's going to be because we understand what the implications are.

[B]

I've heard you say that the rational optimist position isn't wrong. We can get there, but we're not going to get there by accident. So what is it that is being chipped away at now that's stopping us from naturally ending up on the optimistic path?

[C]

I think we have antagonists to our ability to understand where we are. And in fact, I've grown tired of the idea of sense making. You know, that that concept became hackneyed. But there is some need to grapple with the evidence around you and to put it together into some kind of model. And we have some force that is opposed to our ability to do that. Well, it is denying us basic information on readily answerable questions that would allow us to navigate the most basic issues of life well. And so we keep injuring ourselves because something is. Is acting to keep us in the dark.

[B]

What are some of the things that it's stopping us from seeing?

[C]

Well, let's take an obvious question from the COVID crisis. We were told that the MRNA shots were safe and effective. They have now been given to literally billions of people. We have highly credible claims of certain patterns of pathology that have arisen downstream. And we have a mind numbing set of denials over the connection between, for example, tumors, various kinds of cardiac issues. And anybody who has gone through the process of studying science knows that these are not difficult questions. There are difficult questions, but the simple Are people who took these shots more prone to X, Y or Z condition than people who didn't take them? That is not a hard thing to ascertain. And yet we are just simply going to battle over it till the end of time because it has somehow become important that we not be able to reach a scientifically robust conclusion about it.