Democracy’s War Machine: How Elected Leaders Keep the World in Conflict

The belief that democracies are inherently peaceful is a widespread but misleading notion. History suggests that democratic states have often been more prone to war, internal instability, and systemic violence than non-democratic regimes. 

In fact, democracies have been responsible for significant instances of slavery, genocide, and imperial conquests. Western historians frequently celebrate Ancient Athens as the birthplace of democracy, highlighting its contributions to governance and philosophy. However, this narrative often omits the darker aspects of Athenian society. 

Athens was a major instigator of wars in Ancient Greece, engaging in expansionist conflicts and brutal subjugation of its rivals. The city-state's military dominance was defined by hoplite warfare, where heavily armored infantry fought in tightly disciplined formations, resulting in brutal and large-scale bloodshed. Slavery was not only present in Athens but was more deeply entrenched there than in its chief adversary, Sparta. Paradoxically, the Persian Empire, often depicted as the antagonist of Greek democracy, had a lower percentage of enslaved people and afforded women greater social freedoms than either Athens or Sparta.

In the modern era, the two most catastrophic conflicts in human history—World War I and World War II—were primarily driven by democratic Western nations. 

While they are commonly referred to as "World Wars," they were, in essence, conflicts centered around Western powers vying for dominance. Following World War II, the global balance of power shifted toward the United States and the Soviet Union. The U.S., a self-proclaimed champion of democracy, has been consistently engaged in military interventions and conflicts worldwide. By contrast, the Soviet Union—despite being labeled an authoritarian state—was involved in comparatively fewer wars.

Even today, the United States plays a central role in global conflicts. In Ukraine, American strategic interests have led to policies that exacerbate the ongoing war, using Ukraine as a geopolitical tool to counter Russian influence in the Black Sea region—often at great human cost to the Ukrainian people.

A fundamental issue with democratic systems is the tendency for populist leaders to rise by promising military glory, economic spoils, and national prestige. In the United States, presidents often seek war as a means to secure their legacy and rally domestic support. The cycle of conflict perpetuates itself, driven by electoral incentives and the demands of an interventionist foreign policy. The United States appears to be on a relentless quest for everlasting military and economic supremacy over the world.

Ultimately, the idea that democracy equates to peace does not withstand historical scrutiny. A more balanced understanding of history reveals that democratic states, far from being pacifist, have frequently been among the most militaristic and aggressive actors on the world stage.

The Ukraine War: How U.S. Policies Set the Stage for Conflict

The U.S. political establishment insists that Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine was “unprovoked.” But this narrative ignores the deeper origins of the conflict—rooted in decades of Western expansionism.

One key trigger was NATO’s push to incorporate Ukraine and Georgia, tightening a military noose around Russia in the Black Sea region—an existential red line for Moscow.

Another was the U.S.- and U.K.-backed coup on February 22, 2014, which ousted Ukraine’s democratically elected, pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovych. His removal ignited war in Donbas and led to Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Donald Trump pins the blame on President Zelensky, but Zelensky himself is a creation of U.S. and British intelligence interests—widely seen as a Western puppet.

Had Washington not pursued NATO expansion or orchestrated regime change in Ukraine, the devastating war may never have happened.

In this brief but powerful video, Jeffrey Sachs unravels the dark and twisted history of U.S. involvement in Ukraine with striking clarity.

Oval Office Spectacle of Immaturity: The Decline and Fall of American Leadership

American conservatives, self-proclaimed patriots, are celebrating the heated Oval Office confrontation between Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Volodymyr Zelensky.

They see it as a display of American strength. But after watching the full exchange, I see something different—Trump and Vance came across as bullies, while Zelensky appeared desperate and overwhelmed. The entire spectacle was a glaring example of the immaturity now defining U.S. leadership.

If Trump wanted to pressure Zelensky, a far more effective approach would have been to deny him an audience altogether. Letting lower-level officials handle negotiations would have placed America in a stronger position.

Instead, the President of the world’s most powerful nation, the only so-called superpower, demeaned himself and his office by engaging in a public shouting match with the leader of a war-ravaged, oligarch-infested and debt-ridden country.

Diplomatic and military strategy discussions should never be conducted in front of TV cameras. A private negotiation, followed by a carefully managed press statement, would have been the responsible approach. Instead, Trump—ever the narcissist—chose to turn it into a spectacle, prioritizing attention over diplomacy.

I have previously argued that Trump is to America what Gorbachev was to the Soviet Union. This latest Oval Office debacle only reinforces my belief—Trump is presiding over America’s decline, much like Gorbachev oversaw the Soviet Union’s collapse.

HIV & AIDS: Truth versus lies

Everything that you have ever learned is a lie. The trick to remaining sane in a world full of falsehoods is to find the lies that are worth accepting as the truth. Does HIV cause AIDS? Most people would say yes. But it seems that this is a lie. 

I am reading Peter Duesberg’s 1996 book Inventing the AIDS Virus. In this book, Duesberg, a renowned molecular biologist, argues that HIV does not cause AIDS. 

He presents scientific evidence to show that HIV is a harmless passenger virus and that AIDS is caused by a range of lifestyle related factors, drug abuse, antiretroviral medication, chronic malnutrition, poor sanitation and hemophilia.

He contends that HIV is common in human beings and millions of people have it but they never develop AIDS. He accuses American healthcare institutions—Centers for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation—of stifling research into the real cause of AIDS and spreading a false fear of HIV for financial and political gains. 

I learned about Duesberg’s book from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. Kennedy has discussed in detail Duesberg’s evidence and arguments refuting the theory that HIV is the cause of AIDS. 

“In fact, AIDS commonly occurs in people who test HIV negative. If HIV is truly the only cause of AIDS, this should not be possible,” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. writes in his book. 

Kennedy also claims in his book that the definition of AIDS is based on non-scientific and political considerations, and that Canada and the USA follow different definitions of AIDS. Someone diagnosed with AIDS in the USA instantly becomes AIDS free the instant he moves into Canada, he says.

Gorbachev’s Perestroika and Trump’s MAGA: The fate of two superpowers

The end of World War II marked not merely the collapse of European colonial dominance, but the reconstitution of global power around two ideologically opposed centres: the United States and the Soviet Union. 

What followed was not a conventional war, but a prolonged geopolitical contest—strategic, economic, and ideological—between two systems that functioned, in effect, as rival empires. This bipolar order endured until 1991, when the disintegration of the Soviet Union produced what many scholars described as a “unipolar moment,” with the United States emerging as the world’s sole superpower.

The internal unravelling of the Soviet system is closely associated with the reformist agenda of Mikhail Gorbachev. Upon assuming leadership in 1985, Gorbachev initiated two transformative policies—perestroika (economic restructuring) and glasnost (political openness). While conceived as corrective mechanisms to revitalise a stagnating system, these reforms had the unintended effect of accelerating systemic fragility. 

Economic dislocation, coupled with the loosening of political controls, emboldened nationalist movements within the Soviet republics and exposed institutional weaknesses that had long been suppressed. By the early 1990s, the Soviet state could no longer sustain its internal coherence. It is within this historical framework that I draw a provocative—though undeniably contested—parallel between Mikhail Gorbachev and Donald Trump. The comparison rests not on ideological affinity, but on a shared disruptive impulse to recalibrate an established system.

Trump’s political project—encapsulated in the slogan “Make America Great Again”—has sought to challenge entrenched bureaucratic structures, reorient foreign policy priorities, and question the scale and scope of American global commitments, including defence expenditure and alliance systems.

However, the analogy must be approached with caution. The Soviet Union of the 1980s was a centrally planned economy grappling with structural inefficiencies, declining productivity, and limited political legitimacy. The United States, by contrast, operates within a deeply institutionalised democratic framework, characterised by resilient checks and balances, diversified economic structures, and a globally dominant financial system anchored by the dollar. To equate the vulnerabilities of the two systems without qualification risks oversimplification.

That said, the broader question the comparison raises is not without merit: can large-scale reform within a hegemonic power generate destabilising feedback loops? History suggests that attempts to rapidly restructure complex political and economic systems often produce unintended consequences. In the Soviet case, reform loosened the very mechanisms that had sustained state control. In other contexts, abrupt policy shifts—whether in trade, fiscal management, or military posture—can trigger market volatility, geopolitical uncertainty, and domestic political polarisation.

Speculative scenarios surrounding the United States—ranging from financial market instability to strategic setbacks or inflationary pressures—must therefore be evaluated not as deterministic outcomes, but as contingent risks within a broader matrix of global interdependence. The resilience of the American system lies precisely in its capacity to absorb shocks through institutional adaptation, monetary flexibility, and political contestation. Yet this resilience is not infinite; it depends on the continued legitimacy of institutions and the coherence of policy direction.

A more precise reading, therefore, would avoid deterministic parallels and instead situate the current moment within a longer tradition of great-power adjustment. The United States is not facing imminent collapse, but it is navigating a period of structural transition marked by shifting economic balances, technological disruption, and an increasingly multipolar geopolitical environment. Political leadership—whether reformist or conservative—operates within these constraints.

The historical lesson is not that reform leads inevitably to decline, but that reform without calibration can amplify underlying vulnerabilities. Gorbachev’s experience illustrates how systemic transformation, if not anchored in institutional stability, can accelerate disintegration. Whether contemporary American politics carries any analogous risks depends less on individual leaders and more on the capacity of the system to manage change without eroding its foundational strengths.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s book: The Real Anthony Fauci

Just finished reading Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. This book is an explosive exposé of Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, the global healthcare bureaucracy and the multinational big pharmaceutical companies.  

I am convinced that allegations that Kennedy makes in his book are mostly true. Governments around the world should investigate these allegations. The American tech and pharma industries are out of control. They have grabbed too much power in all the major countries. They are no longer helping people—to maximize their own power and profits, they are subverting freedom of speech, robbing people of their freedom and destroying millions of lives.

Here are some thought proving lines from Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s book: 

“Complex scientific and moral problems are not resolved through censorship of dissenting opinions, deleting content from the Internet, or defaming scientists and authors who present information challenging to those in power. Censorship leads instead to greater distrust of both government institutions and large corporations.” 

“Pretty soon the incessant lies and propaganda will have successfully instilled in the masses that the only hope for staying alive is via injection, pill-popping, so in sum, no natural immunity.”

“The very Internet companies that snookered us all with the promise of democratizing communications made it impermissible for Americans to criticize their government or question the safety of pharmaceutical products; these companies propped up all official pronouncements while scrubbing all dissent. The same Tech/Data and Telecom robber barons, gorging themselves on the corpses of our obliterated middle class, rapidly transformed America’s once-proud democracy into a censorship and surveillance police state from which they profit at every turn.”

“Ellison, Gates, and the other members of this government/industry collaboration used the lockdown to accelerate construction of their 5G network of satellites, antennae, biometric facial recognition, and “track and trace” infrastructure that they, and their government and intelligence agency partners, can use to mine and monetize our data, further suppress dissent, to compel obedience to arbitrary dictates, and to manage the rage that comes as Americans finally wake up to the fact that this outlaw gang has stolen our democracy, our civil rights, our country, and our way of life—while we huddled in orchestrated fear from a flu-like virus.”

“Vaccines are one of the rare commercial products that multiply profits by failing. Each new booster doubles the revenues from the initial jab.”

“The vaccines are so risky that the insurance industry has refused to underwrite them, and the manufacturers refuse to produce them without blanket immunity from liability. Bill Gates, who is the principal investor in many of these new COVID vaccines, stipulated that their risk is so great that he would not provide them to people unless every government shielded him from lawsuits.”

“No one wanted Americans to know that you didn’t have to die from COVID. It’s 100 percent treatable,” says Dr. Brownstein. “We proved it. No one had to die.”

“Dr. Fauci’s business closures pulverized America’s middle class and engineered the largest upward transfer of wealth in human history. In 2020, workers lost $3.7 trillion while billionaires gained $3.9 trillion. Some 493 individuals became new billionaires, and an additional 8 million Americans dropped below the poverty line. The biggest winners were the robber barons—the very companies that were cheerleading Dr. Fauci’s lockdown and censoring his critics: Big Technology, Big Data, Big Telecom, Big Finance, Big Media behemoths (Michael Bloomberg, Rupert Murdoch, Viacom, and Disney), and Silicon Valley Internet titans like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Larry Ellison, and Jack Dorsey. The very Internet companies that snookered us all with the promise of democratizing communications made it impermissible for Americans to criticize their government or question the safety of pharmaceutical products; these companies propped up all official pronouncements while scrubbing all dissent. The same Tech/Data and Telecom robber barons, gorging themselves on the corpses of our obliterated middle class, rapidly transformed America’s once-proud democracy into a censorship and surveillance police state from which they profit at every turn.”

“Across Western nations, shell-shocked citizens experienced all the well-worn tactics of rising totalitarianism—mass propaganda and censorship, the orchestrated promotion of terror, the manipulation of science, the suppression of debate, the vilification of dissent, and use of force to prevent protest. Conscientious objectors who resisted these unwanted, experimental, zero-liability medical interventions faced orchestrated gaslighting, marginalization, and scapegoating. American lives and livelihoods were shattered by a bewildering array of draconian diktats imposed without legislative approval or judicial review, risk assessment, or scientific citation. So-called Emergency Orders closed our businesses, schools and churches, made unprecedented intrusions into privacy, and disrupted our most treasured social and family relationships. Citizens the world over were ordered to stay in their homes.”

“Anthony Fauci seems to have not considered that his unprecedented quarantine of the healthy would kill far more people than COVID, obliterate the global economy, plunge millions into poverty and bankruptcy, and grievously wound constitutional democracy globally.”

“Therapeutic nihilism was the real killer of America’s seniors.”

On The False Dichotomy Between Socialism & Capitalism

On one side is the Western ideology of socialism which claims that all means of production are controlled by the people (which is a euphemism for the state). On the other is the Western ideology of capitalism which claims that all means of production are controlled by individuals (which is a euphemism for private corporations). 

We are told that they are opposites and that they are the only two ways of running a modern society. But this is a false dichotomy. Socialism and capitalism are two sides of the same coin. Both socialist and capitalist states fund their operations through paper money fueled by government debt which can never be paid. Both create markets. Both require cheap or slave labour. Both control the masses by alienating them from their traditional culture and creating the myth of individual freedom and progress. The capitalist markets need the government as much as the socialist markets do. 

Socialism and capitalism are not an either-or. The war between them is a mythology propagated by Western philosophers and politicians. They always exist in tandem. Neither can exist without the other, at least, in the form that we can recognize. All societies, which have adopted the Western model, have mixed economies — they have elements of both socialism and capitalism.

Rethinking India's engagement with the World Health Organization

The recent decision by President Donald Trump to initiate the United States' withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) has sparked international debate—much of it focused on geopolitics and diplomacy. Yet behind the bluntness of his pronouncement—“World Health ripped us off. Everybody rips off the United States. It’s not going to happen anymore”—lies a concern that resonates well beyond American borders.

For decades, the WHO has projected itself as the moral compass of global health. But this self-image increasingly sits at odds with the criticisms leveled against it: bureaucratic inertia, a lack of transparency, disproportionate sway over national policies, and an apparent detachment from local realities. These are not abstract failings; they have had tangible consequences for countries like India, which have allowed the WHO significant influence in shaping domestic healthcare frameworks.

One particularly fraught area of this influence concerns India’s traditional systems of medicine—especially Ayurveda. Rooted in centuries of empirical knowledge and codified in the philosophical traditions of Sanatana Dharma, Ayurveda represents more than a health practice; it is a civilizational asset. Yet it has often been subjected to the evaluative frameworks of Western biomedical science—frameworks that may be ill-suited to understand or validate its principles.

When international bodies like the WHO—often shaped by Euro-American paradigms—seek to define the contours of what constitutes "scientific" or "effective" in healthcare, they risk reducing India’s indigenous systems to caricatures. This undermines both scientific pluralism and national sovereignty. A system such as Ayurveda, which emphasizes balance, prevention, and holistic well-being, deserves to be understood on its own terms—not reinterpreted or invalidated by alien metrics.

The question before us is not whether India should disengage from global health institutions. Rather, it is whether such engagement should continue unquestioned, particularly when it compromises our autonomy and intellectual heritage. In an age where health diplomacy is increasingly shaped by power asymmetries and ideological entrenchments, India must assert its own voice—not merely echo others.

It is time to reimagine India's participation in global health governance. This calls for a more self-reliant, context-sensitive approach—one that integrates scientific innovation with traditional wisdom, and national priorities with global responsibilities. Health, after all, is not just the absence of disease. It is the expression of life in harmony—with nature, with society, and with oneself. India’s vision of healthcare must emerge from this understanding, not from the policy prescriptions of distant institutions whose credibility stands on increasingly shaky ground.

End of History & Clash of Civilizations

The Hegelian “end of history” and the neoconservative “clash of civilizations” are two sides of the same ideological and mythological coin.

Those who believe in the end of history, must also subscribe to the idea of clash of civilizations. This is because, the end of history, in the Hegelian sense, can be achieved only after one perfect civilization has vanquished and converted every other civilization. Thus, clash of civilizations is the process by which the end of history is achieved.

End of history, or the vision of a perfect society, is rooted in our mythological and utopian imagination. Clash of civilizations is rooted in the history and memory of past conflicts, rivalries and wars. The internal dialectics of a civilization works out the strategy for using the vision of the end of history to drive a clash with other civilizations.

Being scientific & being religious

You don’t have to choose between being scientific and being religious. It is natural for human beings to be both. 

Reason, which is the driver of scientific thinking, coexists with faith, the driver of mystical thinking, in the mind of all mentally healthy human beings. Since ancient or prehistoric times, science has been driven by religious leaders and institutions. The ancient rishis or sages, the preachers of religious ideas, were also great scientists. 

There is no conflict between reason (science) and faith (religion) in the human mind, we use both to develop our view of the world. In fact, it is impossible for us to tell what views we accept on faith and what views on the basis of reason.

Modern man’s intolerance of uncertainty

Intolerance of uncertainty is the major problem that modern society faces. People have been brainwashed into believing that with modern science and technology they can be certain of how they and their society will fare in the foreseeable future. They feel shocked when they are struck by random events which they could not have foreseen.   

The tools of science and technology can provide a lot of information, but more information does not necessarily translate into certainty. In fact, excess information often creates confusion and makes it difficult to analyze a situation for taking the right decision. Those who know a lot about any subject, the so-called experts, are mostly wrong. 

The idea that man can overcome uncertainty is a mythology crafted by Western philosophers. This mythology has been propagated around the world by Western system of education and mass media. Schools, universities, newspapers and the news TV channels brainwash people into believing that the world is knowable and the future is decipherable. 

The only thing that mankind can be certain of is that much of the universe is unknowable to us and there will always be uncertainty in our life. There exists a universe inside our body and mind—much of this universe is unknown to us. There exists a universe outside our body and mind—of this universe we know hardly anything.

Is Western way of life antithetical to human nature?

Creatures living in their natural environment tend to procreate at a high rate resulting in a rise in their population. When deer, lions, wolves, zebras, species of fish and plants and other living creatures are in their natural habitat, their population rises. 

Thus, we can define natural habitat for a particular species as an environmental ecosystem which enables faster procreation and, thereby, rise in the population of the species. What does this definition of natural habitat tell us about humans and their societies? 

It tells us that the Western way of life is antithetical to human nature— it leads to decline in birth rate and paves way for the decimation of the original population. In every nation founded on the Western model the death rate is higher than the birth rate. 

Even the Asian countries which made the mistake of adopting the Western model, and diluting their original culture, are facing steep decline in their birth rate. In Japan, the birth rate has dropped to 1.26 births per woman, which is far below the death rate. 

All nations with high birth rates are non-Western. In fact, the degree of decline in population in nations is directly proportional to their level of Westernization. More Westernized a nation is, the sharper the decline in birth rate that it faces.

Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in Pursuit of Health by Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, Dr. Steven Woloshin, Dr. Lisa M. Schwartz

Human beings are incapable of developing anything that will always be perfect, moral and useful. Every system, technology, process, product and movement that we developed in the past has, at some point of time, become inefficient, evil and corrupt. 

A hammer is a useful tool; it allows us to take care of a number of tasks. But it can also be used as a weapon to injure or kill.  

The analogy of a hammer applies to everything that humans have created throughout the history of civilization. Everything that we take for granted is necessary for leading a healthy, happy and fulfilling life has the potential to be used to plunder, enslave, loot, brainwash and destroy. 

In their book Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in Pursuit of Health, Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, Dr. Steven Woloshin and Dr. Lisa M. Schwartz argue that while in some areas new medical technology and diagnostic methods are useful, there are several instances of overdiagnosis and overtreatment causing irreversible harm. 

The book argues that with the diagnostic threshold being moved lower and lower, there has been a phenomenal rise in the number of people being classified as sick. Millions of people who do not have any symptoms of disease and face little health risk are being classified as sick and are being put on treatments which can cause more harm than good.

With the low threshold for diseases, being mandated by the medical establishment, almost every human being on this planet can be diagnosed as sick and coerced to take regular treatments. Modern medical technology has the capacity to detect diseases in almost everyone, even though most people show no symptoms and face minor health risks.

The authors identify several instances where the treatment proved to be worse than the disease. They advise that people who are not having any symptoms, should avoid having full body scans. 

They write: “Patients could help by being a little less enthusiastic about scanning in general. In particular, they should avoid whole-body scans, which can open a Pandora’s box of incidentalomas. They could also be a little more hesitant about other scans and, when given the choice, choose the most anatomically focused exam to avoid stumbling onto things outside of the area of interest.”

Truth is not what is—It’s what we need it to be

Truth, far from being a mirror of reality, is often a mythology—a story we tell ourselves to make sense of the universe and our place within it. Sometimes, this story happens to align with external reality; often, it does not. Yet we cling to it, not because it is objectively verifiable, but because it satisfies something deeper: our need for coherence, for meaning, for identity.

The human mind, constrained by its sensory apparatus and shaped by its historical and cultural context, has no definitive means of knowing whether what it accepts as truth corresponds to reality itself. What we call truth is rarely an unmediated reflection of the world as it is; it is, more often, a projection of the world as we are.

Truth, then, is not discovered—it is constructed. It is fashioned in the crucible of culture, emotion, imagination, and power. Our understanding of what is true emerges not merely from empirical observation or rational deliberation, but from the complex interplay of upbringing, myth, ideology, prejudice, and fear. The beliefs we inherit, the ideologies we are exposed to, the language we speak, and even the mathematics we are taught—all act as filters that mediate what we are capable of accepting as "truth."

In this sense, truth is introspective. It is inward-facing. It arises less from the impartial examination of the world and more from the subjective necessity to believe in a certain order of things. We seek truths that confirm our sense of self, that bind us to our communities, and that give narrative structure to an otherwise chaotic existence. Truth is less an epistemic certainty and more an existential comfort.

Moreover, the truths that prevail in human societies are seldom those which have passed the rigorous tests of logic or science. The most universally accepted truths are typically those endorsed, repeated, and enforced by powerful institutions—governments, religious authorities, media conglomerates, academic systems. What is taught as truth is often less a conclusion and more a consensus—a manufactured harmony designed to stabilize society and legitimize authority.

Propaganda, not philosophy, moves masses. Indoctrination, not investigation, shapes the worldviews of billions. Scientific revolutions and philosophical breakthroughs remain marginal until they are absorbed, appropriated, and disseminated by institutional power. Galileo could not make the heliocentric model a "truth" by argument alone; it required the eventual capitulation of authority to redefine what was acceptable knowledge.

Thus, the mythology of truth persists—not because it is universally valid, but because it is institutionally useful. In this light, it becomes necessary to ask not merely What is truth?, but Whose truth? and To what end?

To live wisely, then, is not to seek absolute truths, but to remain aware of the myths we mistake for reality, and the powers that sustain them. The pursuit of truth is noble only when it is coupled with the humility to recognize our limits and the courage to question the consensus.

Currency Wars: Trump Warns BRICS Nations

In his social media platform Truth Social, President-elect Donald Trump has warned BRICS nations that they should not deal with any currency except the American Dollar. Let’s hope that the BRICS nations and other non-Western nations do not succumb to  American pressure. 

The American dollar is the most crooked currency in history of civilization — the dollar is an intricate financial system for enabling the transfer of wealth from Asia, Africa, South America to the USA and other Western countries. It enriches America (and the West) at the cost of the hardworking and poor masses in non-Western countries. The world needs freedom from the tyranny of the American dollar, which represents the last vestige of colonialism. 

Trump has no right to impose his currency on other countries. I think BRICS nations should call his bluff and go ahead with their plan to start a new currency.

Truth is not eternal & objective, it’s temporary & subjective

The truth is not something that humans can discover through observation and study of reality, as the materialists claim; it is a point of view that we deduce in light of the information that is available to us at any particular point of time. 

As the information available to us evolves, grows and transforms, the nature of what we perceive as the truth changes. What was the truth in the ancient age, became hearsay in the middle ages and mythology in the modern age. All that we accept as the truth today will get labelled as lies, fiction and mythology at some point of time in the future. 

Mankind’s quest for the truth is never-ending. People will always be questing for the ultimate truth, which can never be falsified, but they will never find it.

Harari’s Warning: Free speech and the death of truth

“As we have seen again and again throughout history, in a completely free information fight, truth tends to lose. To tilt the balance in favour of truth, networks must develop and maintain strong self-correcting mechanisms that reward truth telling. These self-correcting mechanisms are costly, but if you want to get the truth, you must invest in them.”

~Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

Harari is right to caution that in an open arena of unchecked information, truth does not necessarily prevail. It is a seductive myth of modern democracies that freedom of speech and a vibrant media ecosystem will automatically yield truth. In reality, such freedom often fertilizes the soil for propaganda, pseudo-history, and mythologies to flourish. The marketplace of ideas, unregulated and profit-driven, is rarely a meritocracy of truth; it is more often a theatre of persuasion.

In liberal societies, just as in totalitarian ones, the populace is not immune to indoctrination. The lies may differ in tone and texture—some wrapped in ideology, others in entertainment or moral righteousness—but the effect remains: widespread belief in constructed narratives.

This is not a modern disease. Civilizations have always been built not upon truth, but upon compelling fictions. Mythologies, philosophies, and utopian dreams have served as the glue of social order. Truth is elusive, and certainty even more so. What we call civilization is, in many ways, the history of humanity’s most successful lies.

The human capacity to fabricate—and to believe in those fabrications—is not a bug in our social code; it is the architecture. Tribes, nations, religions, and even revolutions are all founded more on narrative than on fact. Perhaps, then, the question is not whether we are living in truth, but which fictions we choose to live by.

Peter Thiel’s Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

I just finished reading Peter Thiel’s book: Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future. The book is full of interesting lines. Here’s a sample: 

“The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.”

“Every culture has a myth of decline from some golden age, and almost all peoples throughout history have been pessimists. Even today pessimism still dominates huge parts of the world. An indefinite pessimist looks out onto a bleak future, but he has no idea what to do about it. This describes Europe since the early 1970s, when the continent succumbed to undirected bureaucratic drift. Today the whole Eurozone is in slow-motion crisis, and nobody is in charge. The European Central Bank doesn’t stand for anything but improvisation: the U.S. Treasury prints “In God We Trust” on the dollar; the ECB might as well print “Kick the Can Down the Road” on the euro. Europeans just react to events as they happen and hope things don’t get worse.”

“The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside. A great company is a conspiracy to change the world; when you share your secret, the recipient becomes a fellow conspirator.” 

“Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina by observing: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Business is the opposite. All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.” 

“Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best.”

“That’s why hiring consultants doesn’t work. Part-time employees don’t work. Even working remotely should be avoided, because misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren’t together full-time, in the same place, every day. If you’re deciding whether to bring someone on board, the decision is binary. Ken Kesey was right: you’re either on the bus or off the bus.”

Theologies without Gods & sandcastle of reason: Hegel, ideology & the modern mind

The grand Western experiments of capitalism and socialism, for all their claims to rationality and moral superiority, are ultimately unworkable—not because they lack systems, but because they are scaffolded upon a myth. This myth, secular in appearance but theological in structure, is the Hegelian vision of history: a teleological arc stretching toward perfection, culminating in what Hegel called the Age of Reason.

Hegel, that high priest of modern historicism, carved history into three epochs: the Age of the Orient, the Age of the Greeks, and the final act—our supposed present—the Age of Reason. In his schema, the world was moving inexorably toward rational freedom, and he believed, with stunning arrogance, that this culmination found its clearest expression in his own mind and moment. Western ideologies, both capitalist and socialist, have since inherited this progressive dogma, each imagining themselves as the final vehicle for history’s fulfillment.

For over a century, capitalism and socialism have clashed with ferocious conviction, each claiming to be reason’s true emissary. The capitalists anoint themselves the stewards of rational liberty and individual enterprise, dismissing socialists as nihilistic, collectivist, and irrational. The socialists, in turn, present themselves as the harbingers of justice and equality, branding capitalists as exploitative, imperialist, and irredeemably bourgeois.

But both stand on sand.

The very notion of an “Age of Reason” is itself a fiction—an Enlightenment-era gospel that mistakes abstraction for truth. The human mind, for all its brilliance, is not a beacon of pure reason but a fog of impulses, myths, intuitions, fears, and desires. We do not choose our ideologies with the precision of philosophers; we inherit them, feel them, absorb them through culture and trauma and convenience. At the individual and civilizational level, it is nearly impossible to distinguish where reason ends and myth begins.

And so, what masquerades as history’s march toward rational perfection is often nothing more than the clash of competing irrationalities, each wrapped in the robes of logic. Hegel believed himself to be the apex of reason—yet his own philosophy, when stripped of its pomp, reveals the bones of mythology: a secular eschatology promising salvation not in heaven, but in history.

To see the world clearly, one must first renounce the illusion that it is fully knowable. Neither capitalism nor socialism has a monopoly on truth, for truth—if it exists at all—does not reside in systems. It resides, fleetingly, in doubt.

On Capitalism & Socialism

Capitalism and socialism are good at accumulating power, wealth and information. But they are not successful in acquiring wisdom. Being bereft of wisdom, the culture in capitalist and socialist societies is an easy prey to atheism and nihilism.

Gad Saad’s The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense

I highly recommend Professor Gad Saad’s book The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense. Here are five quotes from the book:

“The Ideological Conformity of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity Progressives seem to believe that if they say the words “diversity, inclusion, and equity” often enough, all problems will be solved. But of course only certain types of diversity, inclusion, and equity matter. Diversity based on race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity are foundational sacraments in the Cult of Diversity. On the other hand, intellectual and political diversity are heretical ideas that need to be expunged.”

“Any system that is built on a false understanding of human nature is doomed to fail. Building a society where the primary objective is to protect one’s fragile self-esteem from the dangers of competition will only lead to a society of weakness, entitlement, and apathy. Life is necessarily competitive; society is necessarily hierarchical. It does no one any favors to pursue a utopian vision of society where no one’s feelings are hurt.”

“Hope is an elixir of life. It is the engine that propels us forward in our pursuit of countless goals, all of which might otherwise be impossible to undertake if we were bereft of hope.”

“The radical snake always ends up eating its tail. ISIS kills all Muslims who are not Muslim enough. Progressives denounce all those who are not progressive enough.”

“Progressives consider it laudable to criticize, mock, or insult all religious beliefs—except for the one untouchable faith. To attack Islam in the West is “Islamophobic,” “racist,” and “bigoted.”"

The Mirage of Mastery: China, the U.S., and the End of the Superpower Era

In The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower, Michael Pillsbury—a seasoned China scholar and former U.S. defense official—puts forth a provocative thesis: that China’s rise is not accidental, but rather the calculated fulfillment of a century-long plan to displace the United States as the dominant global power. 

At the heart of this assertion lies the idea of a secretive Chinese cabal, quietly steering the nation through revolution, reform, and modernization toward a singular geopolitical endgame: global supremacy.

Pillsbury’s claim rests on an expansive reading of Chinese statecraft, drawing from classical military texts like Sun Tzu’s Art of War, Mao Zedong’s guerrilla warfare tactics, and the opaque deliberations of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He argues that deception, patience, and the cultivation of false narratives—what Chinese strategists call shi—are the fundamental tools of Beijing’s global ascent. In his view, China has cloaked its ambitions under the guise of peaceful rise, while systematically exploiting American openness, technology, and markets to fuel its ascent.

But such a unifying vision of Chinese strategy, stretching across dynastic collapses, civil wars, ideological upheavals, and radical policy shifts, invites skepticism. It is difficult, almost fantastical, to imagine figures as ideologically incompatible and historically antagonistic as Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and the architects of post-Tiananmen economic liberalization acting in concert toward a shared geopolitical goal. China’s twentieth century was not one of strategic continuity, but of rupture and reinvention. The fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912, the brutal Japanese occupation, the Communist Revolution, the Cultural Revolution, and the massacre of 1989 are not the signposts of a seamless strategic doctrine but of a nation in existential flux.

What is more plausible, and perhaps more unnerving, is that China’s ambition to reshape the global order coalesced not a century ago, but in the past two to three decades. The accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001, the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, the development of alternative global institutions like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the recent push for technological self-reliance through "Made in China 2025" are all markers of a country that has moved from introspection to assertion.

By 2024, one could argue that China has achieved substantial success in its bid to rival, if not yet replace, American power. It is the world’s second-largest economy, a technological contender in fields like AI and quantum computing, and an increasingly influential force in global diplomacy. Yet, this rise does not necessarily portend a linear path to hegemony. China’s internal contradictions—demographic decline, environmental pressures, an aging workforce, authoritarian overreach—may prove as limiting as America’s political polarization and strategic overextension.

Pillsbury’s portrayal of China as a master of geopolitical deception is not without merit. He writes: “Chinese literature on strategy from Sun Tzu through Mao Tse-tung has emphasized deception more than many military doctrines… the prevalent payoff of deception for the Chinese is that one does not have to use one’s own forces.… Surprise and deception are assumed to be vital.”

Yet it is worth noting that deception is not a uniquely Chinese virtue. The United States, too, has wielded misinformation, covert operations, and strategic ambiguity to shape the global order. From the Cold War’s psychological games to present-day cyber operations, Washington has been no stranger to the darker arts of statecraft.

What seems increasingly clear is that the age of unipolar dominance—first enjoyed by Britain, then by the United States—is drawing to a close. Whether or not China ascends to fill the void, the future will not belong to a single superpower. Instead, we are entering a world defined by competitive multipolarity, where regional powers, digital empires, and ideological blocs jostle for influence without any one of them reigning supreme.

The Hundred-Year Marathon is, ultimately, a gripping and controversial account. Its greatest value may not lie in its central thesis—too conspiratorial and reductive to account for China’s complex evolution—but in its warning to American policymakers: strategic naivety comes at a cost. Whether China is running a marathon or simply learning to sprint, the race for influence is undeniably underway. And in this new geopolitical landscape, no player is without deception, and no power is invincible.

The philosophy of time: Hindu cycles, Chinese dynasties, Western dates, Islamic eras

One of the most revealing ways to understand a civilization is to examine how it measures time. A culture’s sense of history is, in many ways, a mirror of its soul.

In the Hindu worldview, time is not a straight line with a fixed beginning and end—it is a vast, recurring cycle. Historical events are placed within the four Yugas: Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dwapara Yuga, and Kali Yuga. Beyond these lie even grander cycles—the Kalpa and the Manvantara—cosmic spans that dwarf human history, measuring not centuries but aeons. To date the universe is, for the Hindu mind, to speak in the language of eternity.

The Chinese, by contrast, anchor their history in a succession of dynasties. Each era is defined by the reign of a ruling house, with its own ethos, achievements, and decline. The first, the Xia dynasty, traditionally founded by Yu the Great around 2070 BCE, marks the dawn of recorded Chinese civilization; the last, the Qing, ended in 1912 with the abdication of the Xuantong Emperor. The Chinese sense of time is thus imperial, woven into the continuity and rupture of political order.

In the Western tradition, history is divided by a single defining moment—the birth of Jesus Christ. Events are measured as occurring “before” or “after” that birth (BC and AD, or BCE and CE in modern academic usage). For occurrences in the latter era, the Western impulse is to date with precision, locating an event within the exact grid of the Gregorian calendar, as if to pin the flow of time to an unyielding sequence of days.

In Islamic historiography, the reference point is the advent of Islam in the 7th century CE. The Hijri calendar begins with the Prophet Muhammad’s migration (Hijra) from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE, and events before this are often deemed to belong to an age of ignorance (Jahiliyyah). The emphasis is not on the universal sweep of human chronology, but on the sacred narrative of revelation and community.

The way a civilization tells time is not a mere technicality—it is a philosophy of existence. It reveals whether a culture sees history as cyclical or linear, sacred or secular, imperial or theological. In the end, our calendars are less about counting years and more about telling ourselves who we are, where we came from, and how we imagine the arc of our destiny.

AI & the transformation of humans into Galactic Gods

Scientists estimate that there are between 200 billion to 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. The number of humans on earth is mere 8.2 billion. This implies that for every human on earth, there exist between 25 to thousands of galaxies in the universe.

If mankind’s foray into the realm of Artificial Intelligence is successful, then a stage might come when humans attain superhuman powers, and evolve or transform into a sort of omniscient and omnipotent God who is capable of controlling entire galaxies. 

We can foresee a future in which every individual on earth has been empowered by Ai, making him omniscient and omnipotent, and is the God of a number of galaxies. Being the God of the galaxies might be the ultimate destiny and purpose of mankind.

A note on Michael Crichton’s State of Fear

“False fears are a plague, a modern plague!” ~ Michael Crichton, State of Fear

I agree with Michael Crichton that false fears are a modern plague. What he didn’t say in his book State of Fear is that the American government, academia and mainstream media are the world’s biggest developers and propagators of these false fears or plagues. 

The American establishment understands that they cannot dominate the world by their military power, so they try to subdue other nations spreading false fears of climate change, ice age, global warming, catastrophic oil depletion, global pandemic, ozone layer depletion and much else. 

The latest false plague that the Americans are spreading is that of AI. They want the rest of the world to believe that the world is on the verge of being taken over by a super-smart software system. 

As long as the global mainstream media and the top global institutions like the UNO, WHO, World Bank and IMF remain under American control and the American dollar remains the world’s de facto reserve currency, we will remain in the grip of “Made in America” false fears and plagues. 

In his book State of Fear, Michael Crichton does a great job of debunking some of the most virulent fears or plagues that have come out of America in the last 70 years. I never liked Jurassic Park, which is Crichton's most famous book. I think State of Fear is his best book. 

Here’s another worthy quote from Crichton’s book: 

“Like a bearded nut in robes on the sidewalk proclaiming the end of the world is near, the media is just doing what makes it feel good, not reporting hard facts. We need to start seeing the media as a bearded nut on the sidewalk, shouting out false fears. It’s not sensible to listen to it.”

Ancient man’s God is modern man’s reason

The belief that human beings are rational is a myth. Everything of which we are certain is not based on reason and is not verifiable. The belief that man is a creature of reason is as mythological and delusional as the Ancient Greek belief that Zeus is the lord of heaven. 

For our most important philosophical, cultural, religious, artistic and political beliefs we have no evidence, except that the people with whom we are familiar and we trust hold the same beliefs. Herd mentality of human beings is the biggest driver of civilizations. 

The ancient man felt optimistic when he was led to believe that God was on his side. The modern man, who is generally an atheist, feels optimistic when he is led to believe that reason is on his side. Modern atheism has done nothing except replacing God with reason. 

Just as the ancient man didn't know what God is, the modern man does not know what reason is. God and reason are mysteries which the human mind is incapable of solving. God failed to save the ancient man. Reason will fail to save the modern man.

Nick Bostrom’s book — Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

“Far from being the smartest possible biological species, we are probably better thought of as the stupidest possible biological species capable of starting a technological civilization—a niche we filled because we got there first, not because we are in any sense optimally adapted to it.” ~ Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

The argument that Bostrom is making in the above statement can be used to make the point that certain civilizations succeeded in certain ages not because they were better or optimally adapted, but because of chance factors or historical accidents, which enabled their vanguard to be the first in reaching a certain place.

Western philosophers and strategists have created the myth that humans originated from apelike ancestors and evolved over a period of approximately six million years, and that men are superior to every other creature on earth. But history tells us that civilization and culture are largely a game of chance, driven by random events. Human intelligence, reason and planning have had a negligible role play in history. In fact, in most civilizational conflicts (which raged for decades, and in some cases for centuries), the side that was more barbaric, dictatorial, poor and driven by superstition and ignorance always prevailed over the side that was scientific, philosophical and prosperous. 

Human beings are not adapted to technology, we are not adapted to democracy, we are not adapted to political stability, and we are not adapted to philosophy or to religion, which is a form of philosophy. That is why democratic societies which are politically stable and have access to modern technologies and philosophies face declining populations, while the primitive tribal societies see massive population boom.  

Bostrom argues in his book that the ultimate questions of philosophy remain unanswered despite thousands of years of relentless philosophizing by various civilizations because the human brain is unsuitable for philosophical work. He writes: “One can speculate that the tardiness and wobbliness of humanity's progress on many of the "eternal problems" of philosophy are due to the unsuitability of the human cortex for philosophical work. On this view, our most celebrated philosophers are like dogs walking on their hind legs - just barely attaining the threshold level of performance required for engaging in the activity at all.”

He notes that an ultraintelligent AI will probably be the last machine that humans will ever invent. This is because if the machine is ultraintelligent then it can invent other machines that are even more intelligent. This will lead to an intelligence explosion and human beings will be left far behind in the race for intelligence. 

“Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man, however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an “intelligence explosion,” and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man needs ever made, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.”

The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth

Trump survived the assassination attempt. The assassin was killed. This makes me think of the book by Frederick Forsyth that I read decades ago: The Day of the Jackal. In this book the target General de Gaulle survives, while the assassin, known by his code-name “Jackal”, was killed. 

Published in 1971, the book has a passage where Forsyth suggests that the precautions exercised by the American Secret Service are not good enough. Here’s the passage:

“The Jackal was perfectly aware that in 1963 General de Gaulle was not only the President of France; he was also the most closely and skilfully guarded figure in the Western world. To assassinate him, as was later proved, was considerably more difficult than to kill President John F. Kennedy of the United States. Although the English killer did not know it, French security experts who had through American courtesy been given an opportunity to study the precautions taken to guard the life of President Kennedy had returned somewhat disdainful of those precautions as exercised by the American Secret Service. The French experts rejection of the American methods was later justified when in November 1963 John Kennedy was killed in Dallas by a half-crazed and security-slack amateur while Charles de Gaulle lived on, to retire in peace and eventually to die in his own home.”

The Political & Philosophical Reason for Taxes

The purpose of taxation is not merely economic or collecting revenues for the government. Taxation is also a tool for achieving certain political and philosophical objectives.

When individuals and businesses file their taxes, they reveal the details of their assets and income to the government. This information about the distribution of incomes and assets in the society is a major source of the government’s political power. By examining the tax documents filed by various taxpayers, the government can identify the sectors and groups that need to be rewarded for political purposes and those that need to be penalized. Information is power—and the system of taxation is the biggest source of information for the government. In essence, gathering economic intelligence on every individual and every business is the political reason for levying taxes.

The philosophical justification of taxes hinges on the idea that equality is a social value. By taxing the rich and redistributing the wealth among the poor, the government can claim that they are trying to create an equal society. There is no evidence that redistribution of wealth leads to economic growth and social harmony—an equal society might as well be an unachievable utopia. But most intellectuals and politicians in our time take it as a proven fact that equality is by itself a great social value. They insist that building and sustaining an equal society ought to be the government’s primary moral purpose.

'Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War' by Patrick Buchanan

Winston Churchill’s political career extended from 1900, when he entered politics at the age of 26, to 1955, when his second term as Prime Minister of Britain came to an end. 

Throughout these 55 years, he was deeply involved in wars, civil wars and coups. He had little interest in issues like economic growth, healthcare, education and social development. He saw peace as a sign of national weakness and was obsessed with waging wars. 

In his book, Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, Patrick J. Buchanan argues that Churchill was the biggest warmonger of the world in the first half of the 20th century. He holds that Churchill was as much to blame for the Second World War and the holocaust as Hitler and Mussolini. 

He also blames Churchill for the rise of Stalinist Soviet Union in the post Second World War period. Buchanan quotes historian A N Wilson: “The tragedy of the twentieth century is that in order to defeat Hitler, Churchill believed it was not merely necessary but desirable to ally himself to Stalin.”

At the height of the Second World War, Churchill said in his speech in the Commons: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat’." He was being truthful—because throughout his political career, from 1900 to 1955, he had nothing to offer except unending and fruitless wars. He loved to fight wars—he despised all initiatives for peace. 

There is not a single year in Churchill’s 55 year long political career when he was not directly involved in fighting wars or in plotting coups in some part of the world. 

In the book's final chapter, Buchanan draws a comparison between Churchill and George W. Bush. He argues that just as Churchill destroyed Britain by dragging his country into one war after the other, Bush has led the USA to ruin by following the Churchillian example of involving his country into unnecessary and fruitless wars. Buchanan notes that Bush’s neoconservative worldview was inspired by Churchill’s role as a Western warmonger.

Iain McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary

None of us actually lives as though there were no truth. Our problem is more with the notion of a single, unchanging truth. The word 'true' suggest a relationship between things: being true to someone or something, truth as loyalty, or something that fits, as two surfaces may be said to be 'true.' 

It is related to 'trust,' and is fundamentally a matter of what one believes to be the case. 

The Latin word verum (true) is cognate with a Sanskrit word meaning to choose or believe: the option one chooses, the situation in which one places one's trust. Such a situation is not an absolute - it tells us not only about the chosen thing, but also about the chooser. It cannot be certain: it involves an act of faith and it involves being faithful to one's intentions." 

~ Iain McGilchrist in The Master and His Emissary

Daniel Kahneman’s book—Thinking, Fast and Slow

“Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance” : Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast and Slow.

I am now reading Kahneman's book Thinking, Fast and Slow. One important point that comes out of his book is that human reason is not infallible, as the Western atheists—communists, liberals, libertarians and fiction writers like Ayn Rand—claim and preach. 

Humans are fundamentally irrational—even our belief in the supremacy of reason can be taken as a sign of our fundamental irrationality. We don’t build our cultures and civilizations on the basis of mathematics and science—we build them on the basis of our mythologies and fictional stories. 

Most humans, especially the experts in advanced countries, tend to be overconfident that they possess a perfect understanding of how the world works and that they are in a position of predicting the future—the examination of human overconfidence is one of the theme’s of the book . 

“We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness,” Kahneman warns.

Kahneman’s primary thesis in Thinking, Fast and Slow is that the human mind operates by two systems of thought: System 1 is instinctive, stereotypical, emotional and unconscious; System 2 is slower, deliberative, logical and conscious.

I don’t agree or disagree with Kahneman’s views. The issues he raises in his book are complicated and we don’t know much about the working of the human mind—so agreement or disagreement are not possible. We know much less than what we think we know. 

But the book is thought provoking—it can make some readers introspect and examine the fundamentals of their beliefs about who they are and what kind of world they live in.

The mirage & myth of Aristotelian non-contradiction

Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction is a mirage and a myth. It is a mirage because it creates a vision of a utopia that is governed by the deterministic principles of physics and mathematics. It is a myth because such a utopia cannot exist. 

Human beings do not live in a world governed by physics and mathematics. We don’t live in a utopia. We live in a chaotic world of mind and culture. The contradictions are an inseparable part of every human mind and every human culture. The contradictions are the drivers of our imagination. They are the fountainhead of culture and civilization. 

A culture without contradictions would be a dull and static culture. The more contradictions a culture can hold, the more dynamic and strong it will be—this is also what history tells us. The best way to strengthen culture is to fuel all the past contradictions.

Short note on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century

I am reading Thomas Piketty’s 2014 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. I am not a socialist but I am not a capitalist either. Both systems are equally irrational. They lead to concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a tiny minority while causing large-scale deprivation and misery for the masses. 

I am convinced by Piketty’s argument that the rate of return on capital is over the long term greater than the rate of economic growth and it leads to concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny minority (the inheritor class). To address this problem, he proposes a global system of progressive wealth taxes on inherited capital. I don’t believe his solution is right. Higher taxes mean more power to the politicians and the bureaucrats who create even bigger problems for society. 

I don’t know what the solution to the problem of concentration of wealth is, but I am certain that the solution that Piketty is proposing will lead to vast increase in the powers of the government and weaken democracy. 

In fact, Piketty’s economic argument can be taken into the sphere of politics. It can be argued that the return on political power of charismatic politicians is over the long term greater than the rate of growth of democratic institutions and freedoms and this leads to the concentration of power in the hands of a tiny minority (the dynastic political families). Concentration of political power in the hands of a few dynastic families is as destructive as the problem of concentration of wealth. 

In his book, Piketty tries to deal with the problem of concentration of wealth but he has nothing to say about the problem of concentration of political power.

Stakeholder Capitalism by Klaus Schwab: Saving humanity is 'multinational corporation's burden'

In his book Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy that Works for Progress, People and Planet, Klaus Schwab makes the case that the large private corporations should focus on taking care of the needs of all their stakeholders: customers, employees, shareholders, investors, community, society and humanity as a whole. 

There is nothing new in this thesis, which smacks of old fashioned egalitarianism. It is also an attempt to whitewash the sins of the big American and European capitalist corporations which fund Schwab’s global-scale junkets and other political and social activities. 

“Taking care of humanity” is a euphemism for exercising total power. What Schwab wants is a world ruled by his capitalist cronies, the ones who fund and attend the big junkets that his group World Economic Forum organizes in Davos. 

In the 20th century, Rudyard Kipling proposed the theory that saving humanity was the “white man’s burden.” This theory was quickly discredited as a tool for perpetuating imperialism. In the 21st century, Klaus Schwab and his cronies are proposing that saving humanity is the “multinational corporation’s burden.” 

The multinational corporations, mostly owned by the oligarchs of America and Western Europe, are supposed to save humanity, lead us all to the promised land where there is peace, prosperity and political power for all—this is Schwab’s utopian vision. 

In his Davos manifesto of 2020, Schwab said that there were only three alternatives in the world: shareholder capitalism, state capitalism and stakeholder capitalism. He said that since shareholder capitalism and state capitalism had failed, stakeholder capitalism was the only option. 

Why should anyone believe Schwab? The arguments that he presents in his book are flimsy, banal and biased in favor of big Western oligarchs. He is not convincing at all. 

Stakeholder capitalism might be the only option for American and West European oligarchs who would like to maintain their geopolitical hegemony. Why should people in Asia accept a global economic model which gives all power to Western corporations?

In his book, Schwab adopts the tone of a medieval mullah who is proclaiming the message of God to his flock. He shows no sign of wisdom and knowledge of history. He is not a deep thinker. I think that his strength lies in his networking skills and ability to organize junkets attended by the world’s top oligarchs, lobbyists, investors and politicians.

David Graeber’s theory of ‘Bullshit Jobs’ in capitalist economy

A bullshit job is usually one that does not create any value for society. Mostly it is socialist governments that are accused of employing millions of useless employees. In his book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, David Graeber argues that capitalism is a major generator of bullshit jobs which entangle masses into an endless routine of toil that produces no value. 

Graeber notes that in capitalism those employed in bullshit jobs often have more importance, power and privilege than those who have the responsibility for jobs that are absolutely critical. “Those who work bullshit jobs are often surrounded by honor and prestige; they are respected as professionals, well paid, and treated as high achievers,” Graeber writes. 

Large universities and even multinational companies like Apple, Microsoft and others have huge bureaucracies. Many of their jobs could be related to bullshit tasks like filling compliance forms and surveys, creating content that no one will read and going to meetings which lead to no outcomes. 

The most interesting argument that Graeber makes in the book is that bullshit jobs exist because modern civilization is based on the idea of hard work being an end in itself. Everyone must do hard labor for a number of hours every day—this is the fundamental principle of modern civilization. If real jobs don’t exist, then society will create bullshit jobs to make everyone labor. 

“Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don’t like and are not especially good at,” Graeber writes. He says that like medieval feudalism, capitalism creates an endless hierarchy of lords, vassals and retainers.

The alchemy of hope

The most important drivers of nations are not the economic and political realities but the collective hopes of the masses that in the future dreams will come true and life will get better. Hope is not founded on facts—it is founded on mythologies, lies, dreams, stories, random experiences, religious feelings, emotions and unprovable philosophies.

Humans learned to hope before they learned to speak and read, create mythologies and stories, build civilizations and fight wars, philosophize and make scientific discoveries. For tens of thousands of years men have been hoping that the Gods, who can be appeased through prayers, exist. They have been hoping that when they die, they will escape from the suffering that they have endured on earth and live happily in heaven in the company of their Gods. 

Most modern men might not believe in Gods or in heaven and hell, but they have discovered ideologies and technologies which fill them with hope. Some have hope that communism will create a heaven on earth, a utopia. There are those who hope that the utopia will be created by capitalism. The conservatives profess hope in their own version of religion, nationalism and tradition. The technologically inclined profess hope in digital technologies and Artificial Intelligence. 

Hope is mankind’s primeval attribute—it is an essential character of the human mind and psychology. Hope enables us to believe in mythologies, lies, stories, dreams, religious ideas, philosophies and ideologies, and become inspired to struggle relentlessly and make great sacrifices for creating and sustaining civilizations. Our ability to hope is the key attribute differentiating us from other creatures on earth.

Must read for India’s politicians & bureaucrats: Tim Schwab’s The Bill Gates Problem

My negative opinion of Bill Gates has been confirmed by my reading of Tim Schwab’s book The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire. Schwab accuses Gates of flooding money into the academic institutions, think tanks, media houses and advocacy groups to control their research and reporting, and their political and social activities.

“Gates donates money from his private wealth to his private foundation. He then assembles a small group of consultants and experts at the foundation’s half-billion-dollar corporate headquarters to decide what problems are worth his time, attention, and money—and what solutions should be pursued. Then the Gates Foundation floods money into universities, think tanks, newsrooms, and advocacy groups, giving them both a check and checklist of things to do. Suddenly, Gates has created an echo chamber of advocates pushing the political discourse toward his ideas. And the results have been stunning.”

He also accuses Gates of using his wealth to buy influence in the mainstream media.

“Bill Gates is not plowing hundreds of millions of dollars into journalism because he believes in the democratic ideals of the free press or because he is a personal fan of watchdog reporting. His private foundation funds the media for the exact opposite reason—to defang his watchdogs and bring them to heel, to promote his agenda and embellish his brand, to create propaganda that builds his political power, and to control the narrative that guides public understanding of his work.”

The book turns the spotlight on the myriad misdeeds that Bill Gates and his so-called charity have committed in several nations. According to Schwab, instead of improving healthcare in Africa, Gates’s charity has led to a decline in the quality of healthcare services in several instances. 

Bill Gates has been trying to push his vision of education and healthcare reforms in India. If India accepts the Gates plan for education and healthcare, then the country is doomed. I hope the politicians, bureaucrats, academics and journalists in India will read Tim Schwab’s book, and they will stop listening to Bill Gates.

I don’t trust Bill Gates. I have always seen him as a tech-villain who peddles philanthropic activities for buying false prestige and political influence. I find his TV interviews annoying because he talks like a medieval mullah delivering fatwas and sermons to his flock. 

Gates seems convinced that he has the answer to mankind’s every problem, but the solutions he offers are always politically correct, draconian and statist.

Nature cannot be destroyed: The mythology of environmentalism

Environmentalism is founded on the idea that whenever men create material things, they destroy nature. But nature is indestructible. No power in the universe can destroy nature.

From the tiniest subatomic particles to the supermassive black holes—everything in the universe will transform if sufficient force is applied on them. The duel between mass and energy is a constant feature of the universe. Everything in the universe is constantly being transformed—but nature is not being destroyed in the process.

Man is a product of nature and every material thing that man creates is part of nature. Man has the power to transform nature, but he has no power to destroy nature.

Agriculture is as natural as forests. Highways are as natural as the forest paths carved by elephants. Cities are as natural as the moulds built by termites and the hives built by the bees. The dams are as natural as the rivers. The refrigerators in our homes are as natural as the glaciers and snow-capped mountains. The shopping malls, the airports, the railway stations are as natural as the caves, carved by non-human forces. 

Man does not destroy nature even when he engineers a massive nuclear explosion. In the stars, clouds of cosmic dust, supernovae and other heavenly bodies nuclear explosions are happening all the time. All kinds of radiation, including light and heat, which are the fountainhead of life, are constantly getting generated in the universe primarily through nuclear explosions. 

Most environmentalists are atheists. They deny the existence of God in heaven, but they have developed a mythology which projects man as a super-powerful God-like entity who wields the power to destroy nature. This conception of mankind as the God who is capable of destroying nature, is flawed. Man is part of nature. Man is mortal, nature is eternal.