ZUBY Dismantles Racism, Border Crisis, BLM, Elon Musk & Israel- Hamas PT 2

Summary

Impact Theory Podcast Summary

Episode: ZUBY Dismantles Racism, Border Crisis, BLM, Elon Musk & Israel-Hamas PT 2
Host: Tom Bilyeu
Guest: Zuby
Date: August 2, 2024

---

Episode Overview

In this intellectually charged installment, Tom Bilyeu sits down with rapper, author, and social commentator Zuby to dissect modern culture’s biggest controversies—race, tribalism, religious conflict, societal values, and the looming cultural collisions in the West. The duo explores the roots and consequences of tribal behaviors, the underpinnings and utility of religion, the mechanics of human flourishing, and the persistence of evil through history. From personal values and North Star philosophies to the intersection of ideology, violence, and humanity’s darker instincts, this episode offers a nuanced, unsparing critique of the challenges facing civilization.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Good Life & Role Models

• Zuby’s Ideal Life: (02:12)
  Zuby describes his parents as living his ideal life: longevity, strong faith, community impact, long marriage, and a close-knit family.

  “They've been married for almost 50 years, still totally in love with each other. They're close to God, they're close to their community. … That is what I aspire towards.” – Zuby (02:30)

The Value of Conservative Principles

• Advantages of Conservative Values: (04:32)
  Zuby argues conservative values are “rooted in reality” and survive because they serve a real purpose. He warns that abandoning these too quickly for new ideas is reckless.

  “If something has survived that long and helped human beings for that long, then there is a reason for it.” – Zuby (04:40)

Rooted in Reality vs. Useful Fictions

• Reality & Societal Debates: (05:52)
  Zuby points to modern debates (gender, policy, law enforcement) as examples of straying from reality.
• Useful Fictions: (08:52)
  Tom introduces the idea of “useful fictions”— constructs that aren’t strictly true but serve social good (e.g., money, religion).
• Consequences of Ignoring Reality: (10:05)

  “There can also be dangerous and destructive fictions. … You can choose to ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences.” – Zuby (10:10)

The North Star: What Guides ‘Good’?

• Personal North Stars: (13:48)
  Tom says, “I steer towards human flourishing.” Zuby names “godly righteousness,” but expands to include truth and liberty.

  “Truth is the check against tyranny. … You don't get tyranny when people are free to tell the truth and try to seek and decipher the truth.” – Zuby (17:20)

Truth, Liberty, and Righteousness

• Truth as a Foundation:
  Zuby distinguishes between “being truthful and getting it wrong versus lying,” emphasizing the personal and societal costs of perpetual lying or silence about truth.
• On Cowardice in Society:

  “Once everyone starts lying and everyone is fearful, … now you're in a really scary situation.” – Zuby (18:00)

• Courage to Speak Truth:

  “I get things wrong, but I don't knowingly lie.” – Zuby (20:28)

Religion as a ‘Proxy’ for Good Living

• Christianity’s Purpose: (21:52) Zuby affirms religion as foundational for his ethics.

  "Be aligned with God, the Ten Commandments, and the general teachings of Jesus Christ... If I were to give you a couple of North Stars... I would say truth and liberty." – Zuby (13:55, 21:52)

• Downstream Effects of Faith-Based Living: (22:11-22:26)
  Following these guides leads to human flourishing even if people fall short, forming societal glue, and self-correction is inevitable when off course.

Suffering, Meaning, and Resilience

• Handling Suffering: (26:08)
  Both agree that suffering is inescapable, but can lead to meaning when approached with self-awareness and humility.

  “Making meaning out of the suffering. You're absolutely right that we cannot escape suffering.” – Zuby (27:12)

“God-Shaped Hole”: Human Need for Worship

• Innate Religious Instinct: (29:05)
  Zuby calls humanity inherently religious, noting even militant atheism takes on religious characteristics.

  “Human beings are a religious species. … Religion is not new.” – Zuby (29:11)

The Looming Christian-Muslim Collision

• Potential for Religious Conflict in the West: (35:45)
  Tom speculates about a coming collision between Christianity and Islam. Zuby, drawing on experience in Saudi Arabia/UAE, refutes the necessity of such a clash.

  “What would cause that to happen is human sin itself… As soon as someone… is trying to justify [violence], then … they are absolutely in the wrong.” – Zuby (36:13)

Violence, Tribalism, and Law

• El Salvador Example: (41:18)
  Zuby illustrates that a tiny percentage commit most violence; religion/ideology often used as a mask for tribal violence, but human nature is the constant.
• Three Root Causes of War: (44:18)
  Tom claims wars happen due to (1) religious clash, (2) economic motive, and (3) religion being weaponized for economic gain. Zuby believes most are really about resources and power, not beliefs.

Israel-Palestine and Land Disputes

• Roots of Conflict: (45:48-47:00)
  Zuby acknowledges that hatred can be taught and that thought leaders on both sides have genocidal rhetoric, but stresses the tangled mix of land, history, and ideology is far more complicated and ancient.

Cycle of Hatred & Hope for the Century

• Historical Unpredictability & Awareness: (52:03)
  Reflecting on the Rwandan genocide, Zuby urges awareness of humanity’s propensity for evil and the historical risk of denying it.

Constraining Violence & Checking Values

• Rejecting Violence Despite Tribalism: (69:03-80:50)
  Zuby repeatedly insists that loving your neighbor, respecting the rule of law, and drawing a hard line at violence are universal standards, regardless of ideology, tribe, or religion.

  “Once you cross that line ... that has to be the line.” – Zuby (81:29)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Ignoring Foundations:
  “Sometimes we're moving forwards in very reckless ways, which are causing a lot of damage… People are sometimes quick to throw away … things that are considered traditional or old or conservative ... I think that's incredibly foolish.” – Zuby (05:05)

• On Reality and Policy:
  “Open borders. Defund the police. Let's just scrap the police and abolish the whole prison system just like that. ... That is not an idea that's rooted in reality.” – Zuby (07:46)

• On the Dangers of Lying (and Cowardice):
  “Once everyone starts lying and everyone is fearful… then that's when the system metastasizes … That's how you get tyranny.” – Zuby (17:57)

• On Fundamental Human Nature:
  “Human beings are a religious species. … Even militant atheism becomes religious in practice.” – Zuby (29:11-29:41)

• On the Root of War:
  “Virtually every war is about resources and influence and power. … Sometimes they use religion as justification.” – Zuby (44:53)

• On the Red Line of Violence:
  “As soon as someone crosses that line, and hits someone, shoots someone, attacks someone. No. … The rule of law is extremely important. There can't be a tolerance of that.” – Zuby (81:29)

---

Important Timestamps

• Zuby’s Definition of the Good Life: 02:12–04:25
• Conservative Value System: 04:32–05:47
• Rooted in Reality / Gender Debate: 05:52–08:44
• Useful Fictions (Money, Religion): 08:52–12:25
• North Stars (Truth, Liberty, Righteousness): 13:48–17:18
• Truth and Societal Consequences: 17:18–21:13
• Religion as Life Framework: 21:51–26:42
• Religious Instinct in Humans: 29:05–33:03
• Religion & Conflict, Christian-Muslim West: 35:45–36:13
• Causes of War (and El Salvador): 41:18–44:53
• Israel-Palestine Discussion: 45:48–47:00
• Reflection on Historical Violence (Rwanda): 52:03–54:00
• Drawing the Line at Violence, Rule of Law: 80:50–81:29

---

Conclusion & Takeaways

• Universal Red Lines: The furthest Zuby is willing to go is that, regardless of belief system or tribe, violence must not be tolerated in modern society.
• Human Nature & History: Both men agree we must be vigilant about humanity’s potential for evil, referencing 20th-century atrocities and tribal massacres as cautionary reminders.
• Checking Ideals Against Results: Whether secular or religious, ideas must be checked against real-world results—human flourishing is the ultimate litmus test.

---

Where to Follow Zuby

All Platforms: @zubymusic
Website: zubymusic.com

“If you go to zubymusic.com, you can find links to everything I do: my music, my podcast, my books, everything.” – Zuby (85:40)

---

Note: This summary omits ad breaks, intros, and promotional content, focusing solely on the episode’s core arguments and takeaways.

Transcript

[Narrator/Announcer]

You know what they say. Early bird gets the ultimate vacation home. Book early and save over $120 with VRBO because early gets you closer to the action, whether it's waves lapping at the shore or snoozing in a hammock that overlooks. Well, whatever you want it to so you can all enjoy the payoff come summer with Vrbo's early booking deals. Rise and shine. Average savings $141 select homes only. This is a paid message from GoFundMe. Meet Juan Naula. When his son was hospitalized for a viral infection, Juan started a GoFundMe to pay for medical expenses.

[Juan Naula]

It was 5k to pay the bill for my son and I need only 22 hours. It was amazing. People really trust on GoFundMe.

[Narrator/Announcer]

How did Juan raise $5,000 in less than a day? He posted a short video on GoFundMe telling his story in 30 seconds.

[Juan Naula]

30 seconds. Be specific. Be quick and tell. What are you going to be using the funds for? I was nervous to do it because it doesn't feel okay to ask money. But you shouldn't be nervous. Sometimes you just have to do it and see the results. We were able to save my son's life thanks to gofundme that we still have my son with us.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Start your GoFundMe today at gofundme.com that's gofundme.com gofundme.com this message reflects one person's experience.

[Zuby]

You're living in a society that is so safe and prosperous and comfortable that the greatest risk to your life is your own hands. There's ingredients and chemicals and weird things that are put in here that are not put in the food in Europe or in Australia and so on. As soon as someone crosses that line, right. And hits someone, shoots someone, attack someone. No. Right. And that's where the rule of law is extremely important. There can't be a tolerance of that. There can't be a tolerance of. Okay, well, you were justified because he thought the wrong thing.

[Tom]

Let me ask you, who's living your ideal life?

[Zuby]

My parents, my parents. They are now in their. My dad's in his late 70s, my mom's in her late 60s. They have five awesome kids, if I can say so myself. All my siblings are married. I'm the only one who's not married yet. They've all got kids. I have five nieces and five nephews. My parents have 10 grandkids with Lord willing more to come. And they're happy. They're Healthy. They live with meaning and purpose. They've been married for almost 50 years, still totally in love with each other. They're close to God, they're close to their community. They do a lot of good things, both in the UK and back home in Nigeria. They're just wonderful people. And that is what I aspire towards. I've achieved success in various areas so far and done, you know, taken some unorthodox paths and will continue to. But when I look at, okay, when I'm my dad's age, when I'm, like approaching 80 and I'm thinking, and I'm looking at my life, what would I like it to look like? And yeah, I see that he's a guy. I know he could. I don't even want to think about my dad dying, but he could die tomorrow and he'd be, like, fully content. He'd be like, cool, I did my job. God, I'm good. I did it. And so, yeah, I find that very aspirational. And my dad, he's a medical doctor and he's achieved a lot of success. He's been a doctor for over 50 years, still practicing. So he's helped thousands of people. He's so educated. He's done so much, such a smart guy. But I know with him, for sure, his relationship with God and his family and that legacy would be ultimate thing, that he's just like, yeah, I mean, that's why I even did all this. That's why I even worked so hard. He's made so many sacrifices moving to different countries and countless sacrifices. And yeah, that's my answer.

[Tom]

You once said that the conservative value system has advantages for people. I want to know what are those advantages?

[Zuby]

It works and it's rooted in reality. And I'd say by definition, something being culturally or socially conservative means that it is maintaining some type of status quo that has typically existed for centuries and sometimes millennia, and in most cases, not in all cases. If something has survived that long and persisted that long and helped human beings for that long, then there is a reason for it. And I think that one mistake we're making, particularly in the modern west, is the being very quick to throw away old ideas sometimes just because they're old, and embrace new ideas just because they're new, which is not very intelligent. I'm very open to new ideas and innovation and the world moving forward in good directions that help humanity. But I think sometimes we're moving forwards in very reckless ways, which are causing a lot of damage. And people want change just for the sake of change. And at the same time, people are sometimes quick to throw away and jettison things that are considered traditional or old or conservative and so on, just because they're not new. And I think that's incredibly foolish.

[Tom]

So talk to me about the idea of it being rooted in reality. What do you mean by that?

[Zuby]

What I mean is that it's funny because I think we live in a time where this is truer than ever, where in the past decade, 10 to 15 years in particular, if we look at our countries, if you look at the uk, if you look at the usa, if you look at Canada, you look at Australia, certain parts of Western Europe. I mean, Tom, we've had a. We're having a debate, quote, unquote, for the past 10 years about, you know, how many genders there are. Can a man be a woman? What is a woman? What is a man? Can a man get pregnant? Things that we'd worked out many thousands of years ago across all species, before people even knew what science was. And then Suddenly in what, 2012, 2014, all of a sudden, this becomes controversial for me to say that men don't get pregnant. I mean, you could talk to the most liberal person in the year 2008 and you would get zero pushback for that statement, right? There was nothing confusing about that. You asked them, you know, do you think men should be able to compete in women's sports? They're like, no, of course not. That's a crazy idea. Men are different from women. And now fast forward 10, 15 years, and these conversations are not just happening at the sort of ground level, but at the political level, at the policy level, at the legal level, all of these things. I mean, you think that we've solved all the actual issues if we're going to navel gaze and start discussing all of these things. And that's what I mean. That's just not rooted in reality and it shouldn't even be a political statement. So things have become politicized and have been split into left right issues or liberal conservative issues when they're not. And then on top of it, there's just a fear around it all. There's a fear of people saying, hey, I agree with everything you just said, but you know, I wouldn't be able to publicly say that, or I might get fired from my job if I say that, or so on. And that's just crazy. That's just insane. And then when people are pushing policies which. And advocating for ideas which just are not tenable, okay, so open borders Defund the police. Defund the police. All right, let's just. Guys, let's just scrap the police and abolish the whole prison system just like that. I mean, that is not an idea that's rooted in reality. I don't know how you can have any understanding of human nature and just the realities of the world and the harshness and the evil that exists in the world and think it's a good and sound idea to just scrap all law enforcement and just allow people to do whatever they want and hope that everyone's just going to be Kumbaya and all nice to each other. I would love to live in that world, but we. We never have. I mean, I live in the closest to it. I live in Dubai. It's probably as close as you're going to get to that. But even there, part of the reason that that is maintained is because of strict rule of law and application of it.

[Tom]

Okay, before we get to Dubai, do you believe in the idea of a useful fiction?

[Zuby]

I think so.

[Tom]

Okay, so I'll give.

[Zuby]

Tell me exactly what you mean by that.

[Tom]

Yeah, so money, to me, is a useful fiction. We'll almost certainly later talk about how the fiction side of it can derange money and become problematic. But the fact that neither gold nor seashells nor the paper that we use, or Bitcoin, none of those are real unto themselves. We have sort of grant. Not sort of. We have literally granted them magical powers and said this thing represents a story, a store of wealth or the ability to exchange for goods, or both. So that's a fiction that we all agree upon. I probably, knowing a little bit about your background, I might have a harder time convincing you that religion is a useful fiction. So we'll stick with money for now. But if we agree that there is a class of thing where we say, okay, this isn't strictly true, but it has tremendous value, why would it be better? I'm not sure what word will fit you the best there, but why would it be better for us to adopt a value system that is tied to reality when fictions can be useful?

[Zuby]

Mm. I would say because you can choose to ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of that. So I think that there can be useful fictions, but there can also be dangerous and destructive fictions. If you went out and you managed to convince a significant chunk of the population that one plus one doesn't equal two, but in fact equals three, then you've now broken mathematics. Downstream from that, you've broken computer science, you have Broken technology, you've broken engineering. I don't want to fly in a plane or drive over a bridge that's been created by engineers who don't believe in the basics of mathematics. Because now we've got, we've got a problem. So the issue is the, what are the real world impacts of these things? And I think that that's now what we are dealing with. I think with a lot of these ideas, even some of these things that I've spoken about 10 years ago, when they started to gain popularity, someone might just shrug their shoulders and think, okay, well you know, whatever, laissez faire, people can believe what they want, can do what they want, and so on and so forth. Doesn't affect me directly, so why should I care? By the way? I think that attitude is one of the things that's generally causing a lot of the problems in our society. And so I think that the results matter, the tangible results matter. If someone wants to look at data and science, that's one way of doing it. But a lot of the things that people are now needing studies to prove are things that, which we've intuitively known for thousands of years because we've had thousands of years of human experimentation. We can look not just at one country, but we can look at 200 plus countries and countries that have even ceased to exist. And we can see what they did right, we can see what they did wrong, we can see what led to the downfall of various empires, we can look to our ancestors, as I said before, we can see that the things that they did right which we want to take on and maintain, we can look at things that they obviously did wrong and where they erred and where they strayed. And we could say, okay, you know what guys, let's not repeat that again. And I think that that is wise to do both on an individual level and on a collective level.

[Tom]

So I love the idea that Jordan Peterson has popularized. It's certainly not his idea, but the fact that to sin comes from last or something like that, to miss the mark, right, so that your aim was poor. So if we talk about good and bad, which is inherent in what you're talking about, that some, there's one belief system that is checked against reality that yields good outcomes and then failing to take heed of the consequences of an action that is not tied to reality would be bad. So what is the bullseye that you're aiming at? It's what I call the North Star. What's your North Star do you mean?

[Zuby]

For me, personally what do you believe?

[Tom]

People like I steer towards human flourishing, which of course, we could do a whole podcast on how the hell you define that. But at least I have a thing that I run in my own head of. Does this lead closer to human flourishing or farther away? Which is why I'm just completely against anything that feels like it's on the slippery slope to tyranny that comes from my belief that tyranny is arguably the single thing that moves us most rapidly away from human flourishing. Yes, again, to be debated, but at least I have internal consistency in my mind. So that's my North Star. What North Star do you check good and bad against?

[Zuby]

For me personally, I would have to say godly righteousness.

[Tom]

Can you define that? Because I don't know what you mean by that.

[Zuby]

Well, yeah, I mean, I'm a Christian, so my worldview is based on that. Before anything political or culture wary or whatever, that's my fundamental. Those are. That's where my core values are aligned. Be aligned with God, the Ten Commandments, and the general teachings of Jesus Christ, and to try to live my life according to that righteously. In terms of things that are. To expand that out a little bit. If I were to give you a couple of North Stars, which might be perhaps clearer to understand for people who may not necessarily be religious, I would say righteousness still. And with that, I would say. I would say truth and liberty. And I think that I'd say them all together because I think just striving purely for liberty, for example, liberty in the absence of righteousness or in the absence of some type of moral and ethical framework is. It's not inherently good. I believe that as human beings are made in the image of God and we are made, we are made free, we are born free. And with liberty, that's not something that is granted to us from anything but our Creator. I just think by existing, you are essentially supposed to be free. Interestingly, I think even from a religious perspective, God's not saying, hey, I'm going to force you and mandate that. You know, I'm not even going to force you to worship me. Right? People have been rejecting God since the Old Testament. Go read it. It's just a cycle back and forth of rebellion and adherence and rebellion and adherence. So I think that liberty alone, in the absence of morality and ethics, it's just chaos, right? If it's just, okay, you are free to do whatever you want and that's that, then I think we can very quickly see how that doesn't lead to a great situation or society, it's just recklessness. Everyone just do whatever you want. If it makes you feel good, just go out there and do it. So regardless of the type of society, people immediately understand okay, we need certain boundaries, we need laws, we need social codes, we need sets of morals, we need sets of ethics. So I think that's where the righteousness aspect comes in. From taco night in Tulum to sushi in Tokyo, every bite is rewarding and Pulse worthy with MX Gold's 4X Membership Rewards points at restaurants worldwide. Wherever you dine, points are piling up. So bring your friends along for your next course. Because it's not all about the posts, it's about the company and the memories. How can Gold from Amex sweeten your next food moment? Learn more [e-mail] Explore Gold terms and points Cap apply if you work in

[Grainger Advertiser]

university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H Vac and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.

[Zuby]

And then I also think truth, because if you are pursuing truth. By the way, I love this question because I've never even thought about it like this before. I'm just sort of thinking on the fly here. And I think truth as well. I think that truth is an aspect of righteousness. I, I think that truth is a mass truth is the check against tyranny. Because you don't get tyranny when people are free to tell the truth and try to seek and decipher the truth. I know that you have studied a lot of tyranny throughout history, various authoritarian regimes, tyrannical regimes. It doesn't matter if it's a monarchy or if it's fascism or if it's communism. Whatever it is, one of the common things is the truth is massively suppressed and everyone is so afraid to speak the truth and to try to find the truth that everyone just goes along with a lie. And once everyone starts lying and everyone is fearful, and then that's when the system just metastasizes, right? It just, it ossifies. And now you're in a really scary situation because if you even do, if you even do say the truth, you're now at the stage where, okay, you might be brutalized, you might be thrown in a gulag, you might be killed and your family killed because you dared to say something that was true. And I think that when people lie constantly, whether by commission or by omission, then that has consequences, of course, for themselves. And that's something you'll feel in your consciousness and your soul. And as we say, you know, it might be hard to look at yourself in the mirror because you. You know, you're feeling like a coward, and you know you're not doing the right thing. But then on the grander scale, as you expand out to your family, to your community, to your nation, and to the world, that can have very dire and severe consequences. And oftentimes, I think people don't see that until it's a bit too late. And then they start wondering, well, how did we. How did we get here, Right? How have we arrived at this scenario? And it's like, well, nobody told the truth. Everyone was scared. And I think there's a big difference between being truthful and getting it wrong versus lying, right? So I don't run under the assumption that everything I think or believe or I say is right and correct, but I won't say anything that I don't believe to be true if I know that the truth is here. I'm not going to say something totally different. Every single day, I'm learning. I'm talking to other people. Iron is sharpening iron, and I'm getting smarter and being able to consider things from different ways. But I think I can genuinely say that it was funny. I was on. I was on a podcast not last year, and the host said that everybody lies. And I said, I don't lie. He was like, I don't think. He's like, you don't lie. I was like, no, I. I genuinely don't think I lie. Like, I don't. Like, I get things wrong, but I don't knowingly lie. I'm not going to go on a podcast or stand on a stage or go online and say something that I just straight up know. What about?

[Tom]

These jeans make my ass look fat.

[Zuby]

I will tell the truth.

[Tom]

Respect.

[Zuby]

I might phrase it in a way that, you know, lessens the blow, but, yeah, I will tell the truth. And that's something that's very important to me. And, you know, in the past few years, a lot of people have commented on, you know, my courage or bravery or whatever it is. And it's just. I just try to be truthful. I just try to be honest. I don't try. It's just maybe it's my default pattern. And perhaps also just having an awareness of what can happen when you start compromising on that and you start to wrap yourself in this web of deceit and you start to just kind of play along with things, you know, like obviously not to be true. It doesn't lead to good places.

[Tom]

Yeah. And if truth is one of your core tenants, I can certainly see adhering to that. Talking about righteousness, I want to understand that righteousness. I believe when I look at religion that they are proxies for how to live the good life. Now again, this, when you hit the word good, you know that there is a value system already inherent. There is a north star that they're aiming at. I believe that religions, all the ones that I'm aware of, are a book about how to live a life in accordance with that ultimate north star. You're Christian?

[Zuby]

Yeah, I'm a Christian.

[Tom]

Okay, so do you believe that the Christian faith puts righteousness and gives you the ten Commandments just as a quick stand in for the things that it's preaching as a way to get people to live a quote unquote good life?

[Zuby]

Yes, you could say that.

[Tom]

All right, what is the good life?

[Zuby]

I think the good life is, I mean it's going to sound like a, almost a repetition. I mean it's living in accordance with God and God's commandments. And I think that if you. Downstream from.

[Tom]

That's what I want to get.

[Zuby]

Yeah, sure. I'm going to say if it's downstream from that, then it leads to what you talk about. It leads to human flourishing. If people actually regardless of, I mean, I think it would be quite hard to disagree. Regardless of someone's position, whether they're totally atheistic or they're agnostic or they're a different religion or they're, you know, wherever they are. I think if we were to follow the commandments and the teachings of Jesus, even like just pretty the basic stuff, love your neighbor as yourself, the world or our societies would look very, very different. And one thing about being, even being a follower of Christ is we recognize that we ourselves are not perfect with this. Right. It's all a battle, it's all a struggle. Human beings are essentially, we're sinful. We are sinful creatures. We are naturally rebellious and we do things that are self serving and we get angry and we can experience jealousy and bitterness and resentment and anger and all types of things on different scales and levels. And that's when things that's when things go south. So I think that both on an individual level and on a societal level, it's like, hey, if you follow these guidelines, then that leads to the human flourishing for you as an individual. Also for your wife. If you treat your wife as you are commanded to, and wives treat their husbands as they are commanded to, and their children and children respect their parents and love them in the way that they're supposed to, and we just extend that out to the society, then in theory, cool. Yeah, there's no more war, there's no stealing, there's no more. These things are very clearly thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, right? Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's stuff, house, wife. And when we err, when we stray from that or we try to blow it up and I don't know, recreate it with some other ideology that we over intellectualize in some cases, then it just doesn't go well. Sometimes for some individual, you might be able to get away with it for a while and take pleasure in the hedonism and the materialism of it. But even the people who take that path, what I find so fascinating is even people who do take that path, those who are self aware and self correcting, they tend to come around, right? They tend to, okay, I tried all that and I still felt hollow, I still felt empty, I still felt that thing in me like what I'm doing isn't really, it's not right, it's not good, it's not righteous. So it's interesting that even when people stray extremely far out of those bounds, that they tend to correct because of reality, because of the results of it, because of the fruit that it bears. And so I just don't think you can get away from those what I would consider basic and fundamental truths.

[Tom]

I really wish more people were self correcting. I wish more people were willing to admit that they were wrong. But while I share a deep fundamental optimism for humans, I am tempered by the real world that has taught me to over and over that it takes a tremendous amount of self awareness and intellect.

[Zuby]

Humility, yes, humility is a huge one

[Tom]

also to really complicate things, humility. But also I think that the idea of the Luciferian intellect is also correct. And so even if you have all the things that would allow you to be self correcting, you can still spill over in the opposite direction. Humans are extraordinarily complicated. So I unfortunately think the Buddhists are probably closest to right in that all of life is suffering and that humans have A very hard time escaping that in any meaningful way. But before I derail us entirely on that.

[Zuby]

Oh no, that's fine. I was going to say, I think Christians believe the same thing. I mean, that is the story of Jesus. I mean, a story of suffering that is. I don't know if you can really top that one. As Jordan Peterson always says, you know, bury your cross and carry it, you know, carry a load and make a sacrifice, make sacrifices. And those sacrifices are ultimately worthwhile when you do them in accordance with a higher good.

[Tom]

Making meaning out of your burden.

[Zuby]

Yeah, making meaning out of the suffering. You're absolutely right that we cannot escape suffering. I mean, at a minimum, we are all going to. At a bare minimum, we're all going to die. That's a start.

[Tom]

Not a great start, Zubi. Sounds like an end to me.

[Zuby]

We're all going to die, right? Everyone we know, Everyone.

[Tom]

Brian Johnson, Brian, please.

[Zuby]

Everyone we know and love, we're going to die. We're all going to experience illness and sickness, probably various forms of injury, particularly as we get older. As amazing as someone's life may be and free of suffering and fun as it is now, long term, that's what it all trends towards. So, you know the question that people always ask, what's the meaning of life? What's the purpose? And so on, it's like, well, in that meantime, while we are here on this earthly realm, what do you do with that? How do you spend your time? How do you spend your resources, your energy, your time? What do you prioritize? What do you do? What do you avoid doing when you do things that are wrong? How do you account for that? How do you respond to it? And the people have been asking these questions for millennia through philosophy, religion, various ideologies and belief systems and everyone's got one. People like to pretend everyone operates under some amalgamation of, I don't want to say an ideology because I think that's a little bit too strong, but there was a term you used earlier. Was it value system? Value.

[Tom]

Oh, frame of reference. Frame of reference, yeah, everyone has a frame of reference. But I think what you're touching, touching on is more important, which I. The words I use for what I think you're trying to articulate right now is that everybody has a God shaped hole inside of them and they will fill it with something.

[Zuby]

Yes.

[Tom]

And that's something. Maybe drugs, maybe sex, maybe food, maybe religion, but it's going to get filled.

[Zuby]

Yeah, I agree with that. I would say that regardless of someone's ideas and Beliefs about how we got here and how we came to be. It seems self evident that human beings are a religious species. Sometimes people get sort of triggered or upset when I say that because they think I'm saying.

[Tom]

What do you mean by that then?

[Zuby]

Well, it's clear. I mean, I believe something like 90% of the world's population believes in God.

[Tom]

A God, right?

[Zuby]

In some form, yes, in some form believes in God or a supernatural higher power. And as far as I know, that has always been the case. Religion is not new religious belief. Worshiping gods, deities, even worshiping nature in some form, worshiping idols. These have always existed. I would even say that now, even in the times we live in now, a lot of people have replaced what we'd call traditional religion with other types of belief systems and ideologies and other isms and schisms. So it's very clear to me that human beings have a proclivity and there's something in us that makes us, we certainly have something in us that makes us worship. I mean, go to a music concert, go to a festival, go to like obviously, obviously you can go to a church or a synagogue or a mosque. But human beings worship. You know, we worship things and fundamentally we're social creatures. So we all want a sense of community. We all of course, want some sense of meaning, direction, purpose, morality. Hey, I'm on this big spinning rock. Like what is right and wrong? What is good and bad? How do I live my life? How do I interact with and treat other people? What should I pursue? So these are all questions that we just naturally, I think, ask ourselves as intelligent animals. I don't think that, you know, ducks and cockroaches are having these conversations, but human beings, we certainly are and we're trying to work it out. And so when I say that human beings are fundamentally religious, I just mean that that is, it's wired in us in some way. Whether someone just thinks that's purely evolution or someone thinks, hey, that is how we are created. And obviously we have this instinct because God put that instinct in us. Regardless of what somebody believes, I'm just saying that it is there. It is there. You could take someone who is like, there are people who are fanatically evangelical about their atheism, which I personally find hilarious. Like, I find that kind of funny when someone is so atheistic that it's becomes their, it becomes their religion, like that is their entity, it's in their bio on Twitter and on Instagram that they are an atheist. Like I don't even have Christian in my bio. And I'm like, so you're very expressly putting forward the thing that you're saying you don't even believe in. And that's how you're explicitly defining yourself. And you're dedicating sometimes hours, sometimes dozens of hours of a dozen hour, you know, dozens of hours a week to the pursuit of this, trying to proselytize and push other people. Like, I'm not an atheist, but I always like to imagine that if I were, I'd be like a atheist. Right. I wouldn't be like an anti theistic, like I need to go out there and convert other people. You know, get that percentage of the atheist population up. Right. Doesn't the Richard Dawkins? Yeah, I find that kind of odd. Even him. It's interesting because I think even he is sort of changing his stance on this a little bit. He's not as militant as he. He's not as militant as he used to be.

[Tom]

I'd have to look closer.

[Zuby]

But the clips that I've seen just going on recent interviews, I've seen anyway.

[Tom]

Yeah, the clips that I've seen, he does not seem comfortable when people say what you're saying now. So even if his stance is softening, I don't know that he views it as his stance.

[Zuby]

And he calls himself a cultural Christian.

[Tom]

Yes.

[Zuby]

And he talks about how much he likes many Christian teachings and he loves churches and he thinks that it's terrible that churches in the UK are being replaced by mosques and so on and so forth.

[Tom]

He said not too long ago. I mean, this has got to be last six months. So and so calls, like me, so and so calls himself a cultural Christian, but unlike me, he means it. And so I was like, yeah, this feels like the Dawkins that I know.

[Zuby]

Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I haven't spoken to him, so I don't want to.

[Tom]

In fairness, I haven't spoken to him in a long time either. But I have a feeling that he may not. May not. I do not speak for Richard Dawkins, let me be very clear. But he may not be the poster child that people want him to be.

[Zuby]

Sure.

[Grainger Advertiser]

If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H Vac and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win call 1-800-GRAINGER, visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

[Narrator/Announcer]

When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery. So you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

[Tom]

Now one thing I want to so I totally agree with you that we are a religious species. I like your definition that there is going to be a thing that is so all consuming of your identity because it gives you a value system that you can just wholesale say because I am this thing. Yes, I have a value system and I will live according to that. What I want to understand when a person looks at religion as a useful fiction then the, the religious collision that we're about to live through I don't think is a big deal. But when you really believe it is the true word of God and it is to be defended with your life, now you get something that can be, can have historically has had an extremely high cost in human life. And I believe that we are rushing towards a Western collision between Christianity and Islam.

[Zuby]

Interesting.

[Tom]

And I'm very curious, especially as somebody who grew up in Saudi Arabia and the uk, how you think that will play out? Will people find, hey, we are. It's. It's all the book of Abraham. And so we have a unity and they'll find that unity. Or like we have seen many times throughout history where these two religions collide that it is a game of conquest and taking over and winning and losing.

[Zuby]

Man, that's a, that's a huge and heavy question. And some, you know, I expect some people to disagree with everything I say. My perspective on this is. Personally, as someone who lived in Saudi Arabia for 20 years and who now lives in the United Arab Emirates, I have never seen that a gigantic clash and conflict between these worldviews and belief systems is necessary and inevitable at all. In fact, I think that what would cause that to happen is the human sin itself and people, people violate. Look, what is thou shalt not kill in Christianity, you are not supposed to. If you're, if you're a Christian, you're not meant to kill people. If you're a Muslim, you're not meant to kill people. If you are Jewish, you are not meant to kill people. Right? So if you are getting to the stage of fanaticism and extremism where you think that you are right and justified in slaughtering innocent people in the name of your religion, then, I mean, at its core, you. You violated it in the most massive way possible. We're going to have disagreements. I mean, the most obvious disagreement between the three Abrahamic religions, the three main ones, is who exactly was Jesus? Who exactly is Jesus Christ? Right? That's the most obvious differentiation between them. In Islam, he is a prophet and he's the Messiah, but they don't believe he's the son of God because they don't believe that God has or can have a son. Christianity, you obviously believe he is the son of God. You believe Father, Son, Holy Spirit, the Trinity. Judaism does not revere Jesus Christ in the same way that Islam does, let alone Christianity does. You know, they, depending on the Jewish person, they might just believe he was a person who was a heretic who was, you know, executed for his sins, or he was a false teacher or something like that. And the theological differences matter. If you're having a, you know, deep religious conversation or discussion or debate, then that obviously matters. But in terms of how we conduct ourselves here on this earth and how we interact with other people, then, yeah, look, we're not meant to hurt, kill, steal from each other or anyone. And as soon as someone, regardless of their viewpoint, is trying to justify that, then I would say they are absolutely in the wrong. And people, religious and irreligious alike, gosh, if there's one thing we should all be able to agree on, hey, let's not murder each other, right? I wish.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Zuby]

Yeah. And the thing is as well with this, Tom, is The truth is 99% of people agree with this, regardless of their claimed or actual belief systems. It's a very, very tiny percentage of humanity that chooses to do the worst stuff possible. And sadly, that has a very outsized impact and it taints our entire species. But I think the thing is as well is people can murder or kill or steal under any or no ideology. So you can have someone who goes and kills because, I don't know, you know, they don't have any strong belief system. They just, they just were angry or someone had something that they wanted and they decided to go and kill, or they were part of a gang which had some, you know, it was an initiation or they were running on. There's people, there are eco terrorists, there are people who think you should kill because of, you know, save the planet. So terminate the humans. Or like, there's all sorts of weird fringe beliefs. There's people who kill over politics. There are left wing extremists who kill. There are right wing extremists who kill. There are atheists who kill. There are Christians, there are Muslims, there are so on and so forth. And that's down to the individual, you know, that's the individual. Just on this note, it's fascinating because, I mean, thinking of numbers, I just. A couple weeks ago, I was in El Salvador. I was invited to Nayib Bukele's inauguration, which was cool because he's one of the only world leaders that I actually massively respect. So El Salvador used to be the most dangerous country in the world. It's crazy. At its worst, it had triple the homicide rate of Haiti.

[Juan Naula]

Whoa.

[Zuby]

All right.

[Tom]

Hey, set goals, man.

[Zuby]

Right? Like Haiti's. Haiti is not known to be, you know, some. Some lovely utopia. So it's now the safest country by homicide rate in the entire western hemisphere.

[Tom]

Wow.

[Zuby]

It's got a third of the murder rate of the usa. It's safer than Canada. Statistically, this all changed in under a decade. So it's a population of, I think about 6.3 million people. The President Bukele, he put between 60 and 70,000 people in prison, and that dropped the homicide rate by 97%. 1% of the population in prison drops the murder rate 97, 97%. So just that simple math says a lot to me in terms of what, how big a chunk of the human beings it is in any given society or culture that predates on everybody else. And I think you'll find that in virtually, you know, the numbers are going to vary slightly from country to country and city to city, but that's really the situation. So I think oftentimes, sadly, people sometimes blame things on. I think it's trendy to blame religion on certain things or blame certain ideologies and belief systems on things when it's not really that, it's just the human sin. Now, I agree that there can be an ideology that's so extreme that where, you know, homicidal or genocidal intention is coded within it, right? Where that is part of the ideology. And if someone starts following that and really believing it, obviously we have a problem. Right. But I've never come across someone who's like, all right, my goal is to follow Jesus and to live as closely as I can according to his teachings. Like, if that is your goal, you're not going to end up maybe you'll be a little too nice, right? A little too kind. People might try to take advantage of you in some ways, but, yeah, you're not going to go out there and be harming people or taking their stuff, let alone killing them. Like, that would be completely, completely counter to all of those teachings. And that would make someone, you know, not just a criminal, but a gigantic hypocrite.

[Tom]

So while I acquiesce to the extremely fascinating data point around El Salvador and obviously agree that in civilized nation, it's going to be a small percentage of the people that are doing the vast majority of the crime. I mean, even just power law dynamics. But if I isolate this back to religion, and before you and I were on camera, we happened to talk about something similar, and we were talking about history. And my whole thesis is if you want to understand the future, you need to only look to the past, because the past is just an explanation of what humans are like. And so if we look in the past of what humans are like, you find that wars really get fought for one of three reasons. Reason number one is a clash of religions. So my God says, you're bad and therefore clash, clash, economics. So I want your shit and I'm going to come take it. And then reason number three, which is maybe the most terrifying, which is God said I should come take your shit. And so normally, what's the difference between

[Zuby]

one and three there?

[Tom]

So the last one is I'm going to leverage the fact that you are a religious species and I'm going to get you all to mobilize, not because it's in your best interest. I'm the king. I mean, this is. I'm literally channeling the Crusades here. Okay, okay, so the Crusades started out as. No, for real. God really wants us to go rescue Jerusalem. And then it very quickly became I. I, as a lord, would go whip up people saying, hey, we're going to go rescue Jerusalem. And then they would never even go to Jerusalem because this was really about just getting an army together and going and doing something else. And you say that it's in the name of God.

[Zuby]

And then people go, I think that. I think that almost all wars are actually number two. I think sometimes they use number one and number three as justification and to rally and gain support from the population. But virtually every war is about resources and influence and power.

[Tom]

Okay, so give me a lens on Israel, Palestine. I don't need your take because I know it's uber complicated. But just from. Because what I'm really trying to tease out is your belief system around religion, how that informs this human flourishing. It gives us a way to live. But as somebody on the outside who doesn't believe, I'm like, hey, these are useful fictions, but I know where these things collide. And so Israel, Palestine is an easy thing to point at. Where I'd love your take on is religion playing any role in this or is this purely economic?

[Zuby]

I think it plays some role. It would be dishonest for me to say it plays no role. Of course it plays some role because religion. It does, yes, because there are. And like I'm not an, I'm not an expert at Christianity, let alone Islam or Judaism. I know from certain Muslims I've spoken to. In fact, there's a guy named Luay Al Sharif who's based in, he's Saudi, but he lives in the uae. But he was telling me that when he was a kid growing up in Saudi Arabia, you know, he was like, I hated Jews, right? He had been taught and kind of learned that he is supposed to. And there are certainly Muslims, I'm aware there are even also Christians, which is weird to me given Jesus. But there are people out there who they have been taught, they've been raised to hate. Just like if you were to go not so far back in history, there were white people who were born, who were raised and taught to be racist. They were taught to hate, to fear black people, to look down on them, whatever it might be. There were black people who are raised to, hey, the white man is the devil, you know, those blue eyed devils, whatever it is, there's people to this day that believe that, right? They, they hold on to that. Some it's, you could call it religion, some you could call it ideology. It could just be someone call it brain, I don't know, I don't really know what you call it. So you can certainly teach and learn hatred. And so there is no question, I'm far from any expert in the Israel, Israel, Palestine situation. But I know for a fact that there are, there is some percentage of those populations where there is a genuine hatred. There is a genuine hatred for the other tribe. And on both sides there are individuals who have genocidal beliefs and rhetoric around that, right? There are people who just think Israel should be wiped off of the map with everything that that entails. And there are Israelis, I don't think, I don't have no idea what the percentage is. I'd imagine it's a very small amount who also feel the same way, vice versa with that said, it's also a massive land dispute, right? The questions are about the legitimacy of this nation and everyone, depending on what side people are on, from what I've gathered. This is crazy, by the way. This is the first time I've ever even talked. Talked about this, touched on this issue in a podcast, because I just avoid it. There's an issue around the land and who owns it, who has a right to it. Some people want to start the story, you know, in the 1940s. You can go back many thousands of years. I mean, if you're reading the Old Testament of the Bible, you're going back thousands of years and you're talking. They're talking about Israelites in Israel, right? So doesn't strike me that this just, you know, popped up in the 1940s or something like that. So I don't know, man. These things are complicated, I think. And I think when you're just just widening the conversation a little bit, even when you're talking about land disputes, I mean, human beings have been conquering land for however long. I mean, who. Who own. Who. Who has the right to the usa? All right, there will be people who say. Who would say that the entire. That the USA is occupied right now. The Native Americans or even an individual tribe has rights to this specific land. And no matter how much time passes, hey, they were there before, and they should maintain that rights. Other people would say have a more of a might is right kind of argument and say, well, you know, it was conquered. A lot of people factor time into this time sort of matters where the longer you've held the land, the more your right to it kind of grows. I don't know if that is correct, but I just think that's how we. We. We tend to process it. But you can look at a lot of land all around the world. I mean, borders have been drawn and redrawn many, many times. And I think this is also, I think, in our lifetime, Tom. I think. I think we thought that we were just, like, past this all. I think this is why their reaction to Russia invading Ukraine was kind of how it was and the response to the Israel Palestine conflict, because there have been lots of conflicts throughout our relatively short lives. But I think these are just reminders of this tribal warfare and of the fact that war is a possibility. I mean, if you just go back in the 1900s, World War I, World War II, I mean, in Europe itself. Now, when people. Now when people think of Europe, they think of, like, a wonderful travel destination and tourism, right? Like, that's what people think now when they think of Europe. If you just go back under a hundred years ago, it was like if it was invading each other's lands. Cool. You know, we're going to roll in there with the tanks. We're going to go in there, like, we're going to expand this border. Like, Germany is growing and, oh, we're pushing back here. And it was just. Borders weren't really respected. And so I think we all thought that maybe there was some type of complacency where everyone just thought, okay, like, we're. That's history. We're past that. These are the lines on the map. Everyone respect those lines. And so when someone is like, nah, we want a little bit more, and it's just like, what? You can't do that. And I thought that we'd stopped doing that. And then people have that realization of, oh, okay, it's not static and stable and all peaceful, and we might like it to be, but there are still going to be these incursions. And I would like to think and hope that this century, God, I pray that this century is not like the previous one, because the 20th century was gnarly. Man, it was horrible. I think people forget how recent it is.

[Tom]

Yes.

[Zuby]

I think people forget just how recent it is.

[Tom]

When you look at Mao's timeline, it gets real, sweaty, real fast. I don't think he died until the 70s. Yeah, I don't think I was alive, but. Whoa, was it close?

[Zuby]

Yeah. Dude, I'll tell you what. I've been. I'm reading a book right now on something horrible that happened, you know, in our lifetime, but which I, you know, I'm reading a book on the Rwandan genocide right now. 1994, three months. About 800,000 people killed by their own neighbors with machetes.

[Tom]

That's the part that just.

[Zuby]

Okay, so, you know, we. We all go. But, you know, we study Nazism. If you're. Most people study that in school. If you're a bit more intellectually motivated, you'll study communism. But I was just like, okay, 1994. This is when I was eight years old. And by the way, I remember on the tv, like, hearing about stuff like Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and genocide. I didn't really know what these words meant, but I remember just like I have a recollection of in the TV in the background and them talking about something called a genocide, right? And just reading this book, it's so sobering and frightening because it didn't even like it really didn't make sense. It was just pure hatred and groupthink because people were killing their own neighbors. This wasn't like, okay, the government is rolling in and persecuting people. This is two ethnic groups, which by the way are not even ethnic groups in the hard way that we typically understand it. It was more of a class distinction. They speak the same language. Most of them are supposed to be Christians. These are people who went to church together, went to the same schools, played on the same football teams, farmed in the same places, everything. Lots of them even intermarried. And then literally an event happens and within 24 hours people are out there hacking their neighbors and friends to death. Some of them killing their own spouses and their own children because they're of a different ethnicity. And this went on for three months. It was like 100 days. Just this brutality for 100 days. Like 800,000 people slaughtered in 100 days. Obviously internationally, nobody stepped in to stop this. And it was just stuff like that freaks me out. But I think it's very important to read. I think it's important to read and understand because it shows you. I think it's important not to be black pilled on humanity and to think that we're just see the evil and the devilish intent and the homicide and genocide and stealing and all of that stuff. But it's important to recognize that we are capable of that. And I think that we tend to not really study that stuff in depth because we don't want to. It's not really fun studying the Third Reich or studying Mao's China, or studying reading the Gulag Archipelago, reading ordinary men, these types of books. It's brutal, but it's not fiction. And that's why it's so important to read it. Because then I think that's how you, I think that's how you check yourself. I think to be a good person in the way that I would, the way that I would describe it, I think you have to be very aware of your capacity for evil. I think that just believing, hey, I'm just a good person and I'm just inherently good and I don't, you know, I don't do bad. I think, I think it's a bit of a dangerous position because then when stuff goes sideways, when stuff hits the fan, you, you don't really have those boundaries. It's just like the scary part of all these situations is like obviously people thought somehow some way generally thought they were doing the right thing in all these situations. And it's weird to look back with an objective lens and be like, how can you think that doing what is the most heinous and disgusting and wrong thing obviously is the right thing. And then it's like, what was the buildup to this? What led to it? Why wasn't it stopped? You have bystander effect on a gigantic scale going on here. So I think when you just see that, if and when you ever encounter that type of situation or things are even tilting in that way, you talk a lot about the sort of creeping tyranny. And I think one of the reasons you're so sensitive to it is because you've studied it, right? So you can see the echoes, you can see the parallels and be like, ah, wait, this is reminding me, this thing is reminding me of that thing. And we're not there yet. But if you keep allowing this to escalate, we could, before we know it, we could get to a situation where like, I would imagine that if you were in, I don't know, if you were just a person in 1910 living in England, living in Germany, living in France, and someone were to tell you what was going to take place over the next 40 years, I think you would have been like, come on, man, we've evolved past that, right? We're modern people. What do you mean? It's 1910, it's not 1500, right? We're past all that. Like, that can't happen. What do you mean? Come on, we're not going to have these dictators and multiple genocides and 100 million plus deaths. Like that doesn't even, it doesn't even make sense. And it's like, okay, here we are now, 100ish years later. And I would also like to think and believe that, but it's just like, hey, we're in the first quarter of a new century. I don't know what happens in the 2000s, the 2000s, 2000s and so on. We can't predict it. I hope and I pray that it's going to be far less bloody and brutal and nasty than the previous century. But I think the way we prevent that is by being aware of its possibility. I think if we completely deny our capacity for evil and we deny that any of us could potentially be on the wrong side of those things, be on the wrong side of history, then that makes it more inevitable if people don't even recognize that there's that potential. And so I think that's the. There's a danger of focusing too much on the darkness. And there's also a massive danger in just ignoring it and pretending that, nah, we're past that. That's history. We're all good now. Because it could just take some type of scarcity of resources or a certain flashpoint event or something like that, which, you know, not to compare them directly, but look at the whole Covid situation, right? In 2019. If in summer 2019, someone told you what was going to take place from, you know, 2020 up until 2022, with like, all the. You would have been like, what? That doesn't make sense. Come on. People aren't going to do that. People aren't going to behave that way. Like, that doesn't. It doesn't add up. But yet it took place. And I think if people had more historical awareness and were able to. Were more sensitive to the tyranny and the way that they themselves could potentially, potentially participate in it, then I don't think it would have gone any further anywhere near as far as it did.

[Tom]

Yeah, agreed. I don't have a lot of optimism that we'll be able to convince people, the majority of people, to look at themselves and say, I have a potential for evil. But I think that it is because we have so much historical data, I think it is knowable to know what happens when these things collide that then will hopefully tell us why these things happen. My gut instinct, looking at historical context, is what ends up happening is religions get deformed in people's minds because there's a proxy for the life that you're trying to get people to live. And so they give you the religious framing. This is God. God is telling you to do these things, which I think is very helpful when you want compliance. Why should I do this? Because God told you to. I just saw he had to be a preacher. He talked like a preacher. And it was really gave this really powerful sermon about why people should be acting a certain way. And he's building to this punchline, you can feel it, about why people should do it. For me, the punchline would have to be because it leads to human flourishing. And this is obvious. And look at the data. But he goes, because God said to do it. And I was like, oh, wow. Like, that really is the best capstone. If people believe it, that's the best capstone. There's nobody else. There's no. Like, you've appealed to the highest authority. And so the problem becomes when you either misinterpret what God said or you fail to understand. Okay, language is tricky. So I might be misinterpreting this. What are we really trying to get to? Because all these words are a proxy to lead me somewhere. And if they're not leading me there now, we have a problem.

[Zuby]

It's interesting because the thing that came into my brain is to me, those punch lines are the same. As long as religion or human beings interpretation of it has not been massively corrupted, then it's not just, you know, God says so because he is a. Is a tyrant or a bully or something like that. If you believe that God's commandments are based on what leads to the maximal human flourishing, then it's ultimately the same. It's the same statement phrased in a different way. One is religious language, one is more secular language.

[Tom]

What I'm saying is you need look at the data.

[Zuby]

Yes.

[Tom]

And so if you're using a proxy, God told me.

[Zuby]

Yes.

[Tom]

And you're saying, okay, there's. We just killed 800,000 people. But God. This is all following God's lines. Like, I'm just doing what I was told.

[Zuby]

So all those people, they, they all stopped. They even. It's, it's. I'm reading a book called Machete Season.

[Tom]

These are horrifying titles.

[Zuby]

It's a horrifying title. So it's the guy who wrote it, he interviewed people who, he interviewed the killers. He interviewed about 12 people who participated in the massacre and interviews them. And it's interesting because there's a part I just read yesterday where they're talking about how they stopped everything church and religious related. They just. They stopped. Right? They. They totally stopped it because they were like, you know, they, they themselves had the conviction of like, wait, this is a hypocrisy. How can I be here?

[Tom]

You know, so religion would have been a constraining force and they had to.

[Zuby]

Exactly. Right. Yeah. The Rwandan genocide was not religious. It wasn't a religious. It wasn't a religious thing. Well then just like, just like the massacres of the Nazis and the massacres of Mao and the massacres of Stalin were not religious basis.

[Tom]

Those are fascinating because that's when you

[Zuby]

strip religion, strip it away and strip away the value of the human life.

[Tom]

Yes, but crusades were very much a religious thing. And if you listen to Yuval Noah Harari talk about the Israel Palestine conflict, he's like, we are literally killing each other, killing each other over Iraq. And it. Hearing him talk about it, especially because he's Israeli, so you'd expect him to be sort of culturally, religiously Jewish.

[Zuby]

He does he's very secular.

[Tom]

Very secular.

[Zuby]

He's extremely secular.

[Tom]

And so he's able to look at that and go, ah, this doesn't make any sense. We're just fighting over a rock. But when you're fighting over a rock that God told you to fight over, now all of a sudden it's like, you see how this stuff.

[Zuby]

But did God tell you to fight over it?

[Tom]

Well, so what I'm trying to get at is that people can arbitrate that however they want. What I'm saying is once you realize the Bible, the Torah, the whatever, whatever that is, a proxy for the good life. And if you're looking around you and you see, ooh, we're not achieving the good life, now it's pump the brakes. Now it's either. And I know how people interpret this, but it's either God wrote the wrong words or I am not understanding the words as written. Because if this book, adherence to this book is meant to lead me to the good life, and people are just dying left, right and center, we have a problem somewhere. And what I'm saying is that's where you want. Going back to your original statement that you have to check it against reality. And so what I'm trying to map in your thinking is you're very careful to say whatever you believe has to be checked against reality. I've heard you say other places. You didn't say today, but I've heard you say it other places. Reality is going to slap you in the face. You are going to encounter that this thing doesn't work. I'm interpreting doesn't work, meaning it doesn't lead to human flourishing. It does not yield the outcomes that everybody would say these are desirable outcomes. However, not saying you, but I'm saying there are times where religion, which works this incredible magic trick of meaning and purpose and getting people to do things that do lead to a good life will break down because people start getting lost in the. The proxy of do this, do that, ten Commandments, this, that, and the other, and they forget it's supposed to yield this outcome. And if not yielding this outcome, figure out what you have to do. Either refresh in how you're interpreting this, or, I mean, in. In my case, another option would be to depart the religion. But either way, you know, you're aiming for human flourishing. So what I want to understand is, given that we can point back to history and just show time and time and time again where the very fallible humans, I'm perfectly willing to say God's word Is perfect. Fine. But these very fallible humans, when encountering God's perfect word, still, like, get into just bloodshed left, right, and center.

[Zuby]

Okay. Would you agree that the greatest massacres and slaughters of the last century were all under atheistic regimes?

[Tom]

I will say that there are. So there is so much bloodshed under atheistic regimes that I certainly don't let them off the hook.

[Zuby]

Yeah.

[Tom]

So what I'm trying to map right now is how you think about how do you resolve religious disputes between religions?

[Zuby]

Oh, okay. With. Wow. I mean, gosh, there's multiple answers to this. I mean, I, this is, this is why it's funny, because it's kind of circular to me, because I would say by adhering to your religion.

[Tom]

So when you look back at history, it's. Every time is.

[Zuby]

So if, look, the, the, the most basic commandment, if you're talking ten commandments, you know, thou shalt not kill.

[Tom]

Okay, let's address that one.

[Zuby]

Okay.

[Tom]

At least in the Torah, Old Testament. Old Testament, there's a lot of.

[Zuby]

There's plenty of violence in that.

[Tom]

Well, not only that, but I don't know if it's in the, it's in the original Hebrew, as it has been relayed to me that there is a very conscious distinction in the word chosen in Hebrew for kill versus murder.

[Zuby]

Murder.

[Tom]

And what it says is thou shalt not murder.

[Zuby]

Yes.

[Tom]

So now it becomes a question of, well, what's the distinction? So if somebody's breaking into your house and they're trying to kill your wife, if you kill them, is that murder? Or are you doing exactly what God would want you to do in the face of that evil?

[Zuby]

No, it's, it's, it's self defense. And that's also in the Old Testament, that, that is self defense.

[Tom]

How do you, Zubi.

[Zuby]

Yes.

[Tom]

From a values perspective, think through the collision of religions. And for me, the, the importance of this question is. I see this coming.

[Zuby]

All right, so me personally, again, like, I grew up in Saudi Arabia as a Christian. I was surrounded from my, from very young age. I've been surrounded by everybody, different ethnicities, nationalities, belief systems and so on, growing. I have tons of Muslim friends, tons of Christian friends, tons of Jewish friends, atheistic friends, Hindu friends, so on and so forth. Love, our love for each other, being one another's friends, neighbors, countrymen, associates, colleagues, whatever it is that trumps. Well, firstly, there's no, like, within my own religion. I can't speak for every religion out there. There is no reason. There's no commandment or Word from God or anything saying that I am supposed to. To hate anyone, let alone because of their religion or their ethnicity background, anything like that. Quite the very opposite, in fact. Like, the Bible is totally opposed to those. The New Testament teachings are opposed to that. The story of the Good Samaritan, the Golden Rule, all of these things are. These are. This is not. Oh, everyone here is of the same. From the same region. It talks a lot about, you know, the foreigners and, you know, the Jews and the Gentiles and so on and so forth.

[Narrator/Announcer]

And.

[Zuby]

And the whole parable of the Good Samaritan. And I think sometimes people overlook this because the whole point, the whole reason it was a Samaritan is because Sumerians at that time were like the opponents, Right. But it was the Good Samaritan who actually helped a man who had been, you know, beaten and stripped and robbed and so on. And Jesus asked which of these people was his neighbor. Right. The Pharisee passes by. The person who's supposed to be, you know, a priest, a Levite, passes by and does not help this person. And the person who helps him is someone who, on paper, in terms of their tribes and their ethnic conflicts and whatever is supposed to be an enemy. I think the most radical commandment in Christianity is love your enemy.

[Tom]

Yep.

[Zuby]

Because that is not. That is not common sense.

[Tom]

But not all the world adheres to Christianity. So my question is about the collision of religions. So what I hear you saying is

[Zuby]

if you're thinking so you are. You're. You're probably thinking of, like, the more aggressive elements of Islam.

[Tom]

That is certainly a potential issue.

[Zuby]

Right.

[Tom]

But even if.

[Zuby]

More so, okay.

[Tom]

Even if you back out of that and just think from a value system perspective, if somebody's value system says, I must adhere to the. The word of my holy scripture, that's where already I start getting nervous.

[Zuby]

Okay.

[Tom]

Because I go, whoa, if the word of your holy scripture is infallible, then it might say some things that get deeply uncomfortable. Right. You can find things in the Bible that will stress you out if you have to adhere to every word of it.

[Zuby]

What specifically?

[Tom]

This is where I am not going to be the best. But I will say, obviously, stone Old Testament, but stoning people to death for homosexuality, as one example.

[Zuby]

Okay.

[Tom]

I'm sure there are many more that.

[Zuby]

So like Mosaic law. So the. Some of the Mosaic laws that were prescribed very specifically for the people at that time thousands of years ago.

[Tom]

I don't know what Mosaic law is, but also.

[Zuby]

Okay, well, Mosaic law is the law of, like, the the laws of Moses. So going back to the Old Testament, the Hebrews, Israelites, at a very specific time, they had certain laws and customs. This is where the, you know, don't eat shellfish, don't. Don't eat pork, don't wear clothing of, you know, two different fabrics together. Don't cut the sides of your beard and so on. Right. Like, these things that, you know, Christians don't generally adhere to because there's a separation between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, which is why, you know, you're not having Christian societies where they're out here stoning people or, or anything like that. So I'm curious, as in, like, within the New Testament, is there something there that strikes you as, hey, this is something that a person, even if they were to kind of take it out of context somewhat, that is, this is scary. Like, this is something that could lead to violence or something like that.

[Tom]

Because what causes me concern is that you don't have to go back farther

[Zuby]

than in

[Tom]

Ireland to see you get wars between Protestants and Catholics and people killing each other and bombing because they believe that they understand the true word of God better than the next person. So I'm just, just like.

[Zuby]

I get you. My, My point is simply that there is tribalism. Yeah. Tribalism exists. My point is that tribalism happens with or without religion.

[Tom]

Agreed.

[Zuby]

Someone can. We were just talking about the Rwandan genocide. Completely tribal. Right. These people are supposed to be of the same faith. Their countrymen, they're obviously the same race and whatever. So the. I'm not, I'm not an expert on, you know, the troubles of Northern Ireland between the clashes between the Protestants and the Catholics. But that strikes me as an. A tribal conflict. Right. So they're not there saying, hey, the Bible says that. I mean, the Bible doesn't even talk about Protestants and Catholics. Right. You're all bent to be.

[Tom]

No, but they do have interpretations. So they are saying you're interpreting that thing wrong that you said. But I don't want to get lost in this. What I'm trying to get to, okay, is that for me, when you have a clash of religions, you need only ask people, what is your North Star?

[Zuby]

Yes.

[Tom]

My belief is that either people are going to agree. Let's say Catholics and Protestants, they're going to describe the exact same North Star. And then I'm say, amazing. Is what you're doing right now achieving that North Star. No, it's not. And they're going to say one of two things. We have to push through this moment. Of bloodshed to get to the true word of, in this case, Christ. But that's literally irrelevant. Okay, now we know you guys are going to fight bloody to get on the other side and you don't care about that. And so I'm going to go, cool, that violates my value system. I'm saying you have to defuse this before this gets violent. And so that's my value system. But at least now you're giving me the thing I need to understand to predict your next move, which I'm all about predictive validity. So my predictive engine tells me that there is a coming collision between Christianity and Islam. So I'm just like, okay, word, same thing gonna be, hey, I need each group to tell me what their North Star is. What are we aiming for? Do we want human flourishing? Whatever, whatever. And we will either be like, oh, wow, okay, cool. You guys are both aiming for the same thing. Amazing. We about to live in harmony or do we have to push through some moment of bloodshed and only my way is going to win? And if we can all agree, okay, cool, this is North Star that we're aiming for. Now we have the barometer by which we can judge our current and future actions. Oh, I need to stop doing this because it's not yielding that or, hey, yeah, I'm going to fucking kill everybody I need to kill to get on the other side of this. And then I could be like, holy shit. But I'm trying to get people to articulate out loud, how are you going to handle this moment? I'm not saying either a right or wrong. I just want to know.

[Zuby]

Interesting. I think, I think maybe I'm struggling to understand the question because it's, to me it's like very, it's very simple. So I'm not trying to. I'm not trying to dance around any answers. I'm trying to. I'm trying to fully.

[Tom]

I'm probably doing a bad job of explaining.

[Zuby]

So, yeah, so I think, look, how about we can agree on no murder, no violence.

[Tom]

If we can agree on that.

[Zuby]

Yeah, if we can agree on that. I mean, generally, as a society, we agree on this. Like, if we didn't agree on this as a society, our nations would not function at all in any way. Look at the usa. The USA is in by many measures the most diverse country in the world. Certainly one of you've got probably 340, 350 million people scattered across thousands and thousands of miles. Different races, nationalities, backgrounds, ethnicities, religious systems, very different political ideologies. Very different ways of living. And you have to have certain basic agreements. So there's a massive amount of diversity. And as long as people respect certain basic principles, then it's okay. People can have conversations about, you know, how much diversity do they think good is bad or what immigration policy should be and so on and so forth. But if you can all agree, hey, despite our differences, political, by the way, I'd say the political differences are far more fiery in this country than the religious ones. Regardless of our political beliefs, our religious beliefs, where we're from, whatever, we need to agree on some real basic principles. And you can get these from the Ten Commandments or elsewhere. We don't steal, we don't kill, we don't rape, we don't assault. You can't hurt other people. You can disagree with someone entirely. You could take the most, the strongest evangelical right wing Christian and the most atheistic left wing communist person. And as long as they can agree, hey, we can fight with words, we can argue, we can debate, whatever. I'm not going to take your stuff and I'm not going to physically hurt you. I'm not going to hurt your family, I'm not going to damage your property. I'm not going to. If people can agree on that, we're good. Like I said, there's a tiny, tiny percentage of people who, with or without religion, they are, they have criminal intent and they don't respect that. They don't respect human life, they don't respect private property. They're willing to take what they want. They're willing to go out there, assault, and, and that's always existed. Sadly, if the state gets involved in that, then that's when I think we're really, really in trouble, which is why we always have to have that check against tyranny. But if it's just individuals, then the question is, okay, how do we deal with those? How do we deal? The question to me is more like how do we deal with violent individuals? Okay? Because I don't see a future where, you know, the majority of Muslims, the majority of Christians are wanting to have some like war and clash in this, in this modern era. Like, I don't, I don't see that. I don't think people want that smoke. I don't think that's what's in people's hearts. I mean, if you look even at terrorism, the majority of terrorism that happens in the Islamic world is directed at other Muslims. It's not even like it's, it's often tribal. Again, there might be the veneer of it being based on religion, oftentimes it's just tribal. It's like this group has some historical beef with the other group and maybe they, you know, use religion as their means to supposedly rationalize it or to rally other people to their cause by claiming that it's some type of religious fight. This is how I see. Again, I'm not an expert with what happened in Northern Ireland, but that is how I see it. Like, it is insane to me that a group of Catholics and Christians are going to start like bombing each other. They did, but I don't think that, I think they would have done it without the religion because we've seen, gosh. My point is just like human beings do this, right? Nazi Germany, that was not about religion. Maoist China, that was not about religion. Soviet Russia, it was not about religion. If you can go through all sorts of conflicts in Europe and in Asia and so on, China versus Japan, like none of that was fueled by religion. It's tribal. And religion is one thing that can make, that can put someone in a tribe. And you can go quite narrow with that because there's different denominations even within the same religion. But I think that oftentimes other things are conflated with tribalism. I think a lot of what people in the USA, for example, are in the UK call racism is tribalism. And you know, my family's originally from Nigeria. And something that's interesting, particularly for Western listeners to understand is that some of the inter tribal conflicts that exist within Nigeria and other African countries are far more venomous and serious than any quote, unquote, racism that exists in the USA or the UK between black people and white people or anything like that, right? So it's the tribalism. It's not, hey, your skin color is one way that that can happen. It can happen with nationality. It can be, oh, I'm British, you're French, so you know, we don't like each other. Like if, if you look at a British person and French person, like they don't look, look that different, right? Serbia and Croatian, Serbs and Croats, right? It can literally be, do Israelis and Palestinians, ethnically, are they totally different looking? And they're like, you're from the same region. To an outsider, you might just see a group of Israelis, see a group of Palestinians. I can't really tell the difference visually. So I think a lot of stuff is just tribalism. It's that in group, out group. And I think when the problem comes, when there is a hatred, an animosity and ultimately A disrespect for human life.

[Tom]

So I agree with you wildly on that. Tribalism is a huge problem. I just know if I ask you then, okay, what do we do about tribalism? You're going to come back to people need to adhere to Christian values.

[Zuby]

No, I wouldn't even come back to that.

[Tom]

So how do we then?

[Zuby]

If you want to say, if by Christian values you mean respect for the sanctity of life, love your neighbor as yourself, thou shall not steal, thou shalt not kill, then yeah, totally agree. But I'm also aware that you don't need to be a Christian to believe those things. I don't think those specific things are entirely unique to Christian teachings. Most atheists generally would agree on those points. Right? People of other faiths would agree on those points and that's what needs to be respected. Once you cross that line of, okay, I have a feeling or a belief or an opinion that's in my head, and other people have things in their head which I may agree with, disagree with, like dislike or whatever. Once you cross that line of, okay, therefore I am justified in hurting, stealing, killing, assaulting, no matter your ideology, no matter your supposed belief system or lack thereof, however way you're framing it. No. Right. That. That has to be. That has to be the line. I would say the exact same thing. Politically right people can have such varying political opinions. Left versus right, conservative, liberal, progressive, woke, anti woke, whatever. And they can, you know, verbally clash. They can have the battle of ideas, they can even yell at each other in certain times. As soon as someone crosses that line, right, and hit someone, you shoot someone, attack someone. No. Right. And that's where the rule of law is extremely important. There can't be a tolerance of that. There can't be a tolerance of, okay, well, you were justified because he thought the wrong thing. Right. Do you remember a few years ago? I say a few years. It's probably about eight years ago now. Do you remember that whole. That time when, like, there was that whole, like, punch a Nazi thing? Do you remember? Yes. Okay, I don't like Nazis, but I was like, no, actually, if it's just Nazi is hey, someone saying things you disagree with or you find distasteful and maybe they even upset you or make you angry? If it's like, hey, okay, you've got a green light to physically assault that person, nonviolent person, just saying things. I understand that gut reaction, that animalistic tendency, but it's like, no, actually that's crossing the line. Right? That's Crossing the line. When you start violently attacking someone because you don't like something that they said or you don't like a belief that is in their brain. So I actually remember that time because I remember even having arguments and debates with people who were saying, like, oh yeah, like that's totally fine, that's justified. Like. And I was like, well, slippery slope, right? Let's think about this. And also let's think about how loosely the word Nazi is being deployed, right? You're just starting to. They're just starting to kind of throw that out at anyone who's remotely conservative or right wing, you know, then what do we have? Punch a commie, punch a socialist, then what? Punch a liberal, punch a wokie. No, let's not go there. You know, that's why, I guess I think that it's, it's quite simple because I don't think it's. I think it's agnostic to the religion or the political belief or the ideology or the tribe or the race or the ethnicity or the nationality. I just think it's gotta be that line of, hey, no violence, no violence, right? This religion is growing, that religion is growing. I think by around 2060, I think the global populations of Muslims and Christianities are going to increase, equalize. So at the moment there's I think about 2.5 billion Christians. Islam, I think is between 1.5, it's about 1.5 billion, and it's the fastest growing. So that's when it's going to meet a point where the numbers are equal. I think at that point also, 40% of Christians will be in Sub Saharan Africa. So here's an interesting fact. I don't know if you know this because it doesn't feel it in the west, but the world is actually becoming more religious as a percentage.

[Tom]

All right, people that get value out of the way, you think, where should they follow you?

[Zuby]

Ubimusic on all social media. I'm very big on xubimusic, but I'm also on Instagram, I'm on YouTube, I'm on Facebook, and if you go to zubimusic.com, you can find links to everything I do. My music, my podcast, my books, everything. Zubimusic.com love it.

[Tom]

All right, everybody, speaking of things that you'll love, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care.

[Zuby]

Peace.