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.

Political power & the mythologies of economics

The theories of economics are not definite and provable like the rules of mathematics and physics—they are mythologies (lies and fiction) imagined by the “neo-priests of modernity”: the economists. Like the philosophical and theological arguments of metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics and religion, the theories of economics cannot be proved or disproved. 

As they cannot furnish the ultimate proof for their theories, the economists rely on political power to forcibly impose their ideas. The boundary between economics and politics is blurred, and every decision taken in the name of economics is a political decision. The true purpose of economics is to ensure that the political establishment has access to unlimited funds. 

The bureaucracy needed to impose a free market system is as large and coercive as the bureaucracy needed to impose a communist system. The bureaucracy in so-called capitalist countries is larger than that in any communist country. Even multinational corporations, which are regarded as the symbols of free markets, have huge bureaucracies. 

Like the political movements, the so-called free markets are impacted by the prejudices, fantasies, irrationalities and delusions of the ruling class and the masses. Without political power and a large bureaucracy to maintain order, the free markets cannot exist.

The mythology of land of the free and the logic of capitalist exploitation

The belief that a perfect society can be brought into existence through communism is, at its core, a modern secular mythology. Yet capitalism is no less mythological. It, too, rests upon grand narratives and articles of faith disguised as self-evident truths. Its so-called twin pillars—individual freedom and free enterprise—have been elevated to the status of moral absolutes, but they are as historically contingent and as vulnerable to abuse as the tenets of ancient cults and religions.

When a political leader proclaims his desire for a “free society,” what he often means is a society free to conform to the norms, values, and hierarchies of his own culture. The annals of history are filled with instances in which “freedom” was wielded as a weapon—a moral justification for the subversion, domination, or assimilation of other cultures. Similarly, calls for “free trade” have rarely meant a neutral exchange of goods and services; more often, they have signified an ambition for one nation’s corporations to penetrate foreign markets, commandeer natural resources, exploit local labour, and in many cases, influence or control the levers of political power abroad.

The uncomfortable question thus arises: can a capitalist society truly flourish without plundering the resources of weaker minorities—both within its borders and beyond them? Historical evidence offers little reassurance. Capitalism has yet to produce a sustained model of prosperity and contentment that does not rest upon the exploitation of humanity’s voiceless underclass.

The United States has long styled itself as the exemplar of capitalist virtue and the “land of the free.” Yet its history tells a more sobering story. The violence inflicted by European settlers upon the Native Americans—ranging from dispossession and forced removal to outright extermination—was every bit as brutal as the Bolshevik terror unleashed on Russia’s bourgeoisie after 1917. Nor was the exploitation confined to indigenous peoples; the transatlantic slave trade brought millions from Africa in chains to labour for the enrichment of the colonial and later industrial economies.

By the close of the 19th century, with the Native American nations subdued and their lands expropriated, American ambitions turned outward. The 20th century saw the United States not only participate in but play decisive roles in the First and Second World Wars. It has, with remarkable consistency, been at war somewhere on the globe for most of the last century. Its foreign policy record is replete with covert interventions, engineered coups, and the installation of pliant regimes—often at the expense of democratically elected governments—in order to safeguard American geopolitical and corporate interests.

If the world’s major nations were to emulate the American capitalist model in both spirit and method, the prospects for peace would be grim. The competition for resources, markets, and strategic advantage would almost certainly accelerate the slide toward large-scale conflict, perhaps even a Third World War.

This week, I finished reading John Perkins’s semi-autobiographical Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, a work that offers a shadowy glimpse into the machinery of economic imperialism. Perkins claims he was recruited by the engineering consulting firm Chas T. Main, allegedly connected to American intelligence, and tasked with persuading leaders of developing nations to accept vast loans for infrastructure projects—loans designed not to foster genuine development but to ensnare them in cycles of dependency and control.

I am not persuaded that Perkins’s account is wholly reliable. At times, his narrative drifts into the realm of the overheated conspiracy theory; at others, it veers toward the rhetoric of the ideologically committed activist. Yet even if one approaches his work with scepticism, his central critique—that capitalism and corporatism often operate through coercion, manipulation, and the calculated entrapment of vulnerable nations—rings uncomfortably true. In that sense, his book stands as a reminder that beneath capitalism’s shining myths lies a machinery as capable of subjugation as any ideology it claims to have superseded.

Civilizational apocalypse and preservation of relics and ruins from the past

When a civilization becomes obsessed with preserving the ruins, records and artifacts of ancient civilizations, which fell and disappeared centuries ago, it is because its elites are gripped by the fear that their own civilization is in an advanced state of decay and decline, and their way of life is about to vanish from the face of the earth. 

The elites realize, subconsciously or consciously, that their world will soon join the list of history’s dead civilizations. This dreadful realization of civilizational apocalypse fills them with the longing to preserve the bits and pieces of the civilizations which died in the earlier ages. 

As they squander massive amounts of resources in studying, venerating and preserving the relics of long dead civilizations, they are filled with the desperate hope that they will not be forgotten, and that when their civilization dies, its ruins, records and artifacts will be studied, venerated and preserved by the civilizations of the future.

The unnatural does not exist, only the natural does

What does the word ‘natural’ mean? It means everything, mental and material, that exists in the universe. Nothing that exists is unnatural. Everything that has ever existed, every event that has ever happened, and every thought that has ever sprouted is natural. 

The idea that there is a difference between the natural world and the man-made is a myth. Human beings are as much part of nature and as any rock, insect, bird or animal. Since we are part of nature, every human action, every human creation and every human thought is also a part of nature, as are the mental images and acts of other creatures. 

The religious, political and cultural movements, the wars, the massacres, the quests for God and heaven, the quests for earthly utopia and perfect life, the philosophical arguments and the scientific discoveries—all of these and everything else are natural. 

Slavery is as natural as freedom, individualism as natural as collectivism, theism as natural as atheism, morality as natural as nihilism, poverty as natural as prosperity, brutality as natural as compassion, anarchy as natural as rule of law, communism as natural as capitalism and the Stone Age is as natural as modernity. 

Man is incapable of doing or creating anything that is unnatural. The unnatural, by definition, is that which cannot exist anywhere in the universe.

Lies and fictions are the fountainhead of civilizations and cultures

Truth is of value only in the realm of science and mathematics. In philosophy, religion, politics and culture, which are the fundamental building blocks of every civilization, past or present, it is lies and fictions which play the decisive role. 

To build a civilization, you need to unite people under the banner of a common philosophy, religion, political system and culture. It is impossible to unite people by telling them the truth. 

The masses will never unite, they will never agree to make sacrifices, if they are told that 2+2 = 4, or E=MC2, or the motion of all heavenly bodies in the universe is determined by the laws of motion and gravitation. To unite people you need to provide them with an imaginary, mythological and fictional view of the universe. The masses have to be told fictional stories which will enable them to imagine a universe that is far from reality. 

Mankind is a fiction telling creature. We have an immense power to tell fictional stories and accept these fictional stories as the ultimate universal truth. 

Billions of humans might come together and become ready to sacrifice everything, including their life, if they are told that the universe is controlled by one God who grants the wishes of all those who worship him and fight holy wars for him. They will come together if they are inspired by fictions on how the universe was created and mankind was saved from a great deluge. 

They will rush to fight great wars in which millions will be killed if they become convinced by the fictional stories and accept that their God wants them to destroy the infidels. 

In the modern secular times, philosophy is doing what religion used to do in ancient and medieval ages. The modern philosophers are developing creative fictions which enable people to come together to work for a common cause. Ideologies like imperialism, racism, the Enlightenment, socialism, communism, capitalism and other philosophies are creative fictions. 

The communist idea that a perfect society can be created through the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” is a creative fiction. But so is the capitalist idea that a perfect society can be created through something called a “free market.” There is no way of proving or disproving the fundamental tenets of communism and capitalism. Both are mythologies. 

The ability to weave and accept fictional stories or lies as the greatest truths is not mankind’s weakness. This is our greatest strength. Mankind has created powerful civilizations and come to dominate the earth because of our ability to lie and to accept the lies as the universal truth.

Three-Body Problem: Science is broken & aliens from Trisolaris are invading

“It does not matter how good your theory is, but if it does not agree with experiments, it is wrong. According to experiments all our theories are wrong. All of them. All of the physics of the last 60 years is wrong. Science is broken.” 

A character in the series Three-Body Problem, streaming on Netflix, says this in the first episode. The point about science being broken that he is making is correct in my philosophical opinion. 

Science faces the same problem that philosophy does. Neither is capable of leading to the ultimate truth. Every philosophical argument has a counter argument, and every scientific discovery or theory gets overturned at some point of time. Even Newton’s three laws have been challenged by the emergence of quantum science and the theory of relativity. 

Three-Body Problem is based on a three book series by the Chinese science fiction writer Liu Cixin. The title of the first book in the series is Three-Body Problem. It is worth noting that the three-body problem is a real problem in science—it deals with the issue of predicting the motion and position of three heavenly bodies that are moving around each other in space. 

Cixin introduces in his novel a planet called Trisolaris, located in the triple star system of Alpha Centauri. Being located in a triple star system, Trisolaris faces the three-body problem and has extreme weather patterns. When it is close to all three stars it is a blazing inferno and when it is at the farthest point from the three stars, it has an ice age. 

Despite such extreme weather conditions, the planet is home to intelligent creatures who have built an advanced civilization. They are like humans but have the capacity to survive in extreme weather by dehydrating and transforming into flat parchment-like things which can be folded and stored in a safe place. When the weather becomes better, these parchments are thrown into a pond to get rehydrated and come to life.  

The inhabitants of Trisolaris want to move to some other planet linked to a single star or sun where the weather is stable. Earth would be most suited for them. Only reason they have not invaded earth to exterminate humanity and other creatures and make the planet their new home is because they don’t know about this planet. 

This changes in the 20th century, when a talented Chinese scientist becomes disgusted by the chaos on earth and loses faith in humanity. One day when this scientist is feeling deeply depressed she beams this message into space: “Come. We can’t save ourselves. I will help you conquer the world.” 

Thus, the inhabitants of Trisolaris come to know of earth's existence. They start preparing for an invasion. 

A mysterious video game headwear becomes available to scientists in Oxford. On wearing the video game headwear the scientist is transported to Trisolaris and is given the task of solving the three-body problem—predicting the movement of the planet and the three stars. There is no easy answer to the three-body problem. 

There is mind-bending suspense as scientists scramble to save earth from an alien invasion.

(This short note is based on the first two episodes of the series on Netflix. There are 8 episodes in season one. I might come back with more after I watch the next 6 episodes.)

The meaning of life: Purpose of philosophy & science

The purpose of philosophy is to contemplate the possible answers to questions that are unanswerable, and make human beings envision God. The purpose of science is to create God and thereby give material shape to what philosophy imagines.  

With the advancements in genetics, biotechnology, AI, IoT and other technologies, science has inched closer to fulfilling mankind's age-old philosophical quest—in another decade, century, millennium or an infinite number of years scientists will create God.

The questions of philosophy that seem unanswerable today are critical because they push us in the direction of imagining and creating God. The ultimate meaning and purpose of human life is to imagine God through philosophy and create God through science. 

Science tells us that there was no God in the past, but science also tells us that mankind has the potential to create a God in the future.

Two ways of imposing censorship

Censorship can be imposed on a country in two ways: first, by cutting off the sources of information, and second, by bombarding people with trivial information. The communist countries prefer the first strategy, while the capitalist countries prefer the second. 

The communist regimes ban newspapers and other media from carrying information that is not in line with government policy and plans. But this strategy of outright ban on the flow of information does not work in the long run. Eventually people are able to find ways for accessing information that their government is trying to hide. And when information starts flowing to a large section of society, there is risk of counter-revolution which might result in the overthrow of the communist regime. 

The capitalist regimes operate by opening the floodgates of information flow. They goad the newspapers and other media to bombard the citizens with useless information. Being incessantly bombarded with useless information, people lose track of the issues which really matter. Deluded into believing that they live in a free society, they are not tempted to rebel against the government. They don't know that their freedom is a myth and that the information deluge is meant to brainwash them. 

History of the last 100 years tells us that the capitalist strategy of censorship is more effective and durable than the communist strategy.

The March of Humanity: From 'Son of God' to the 'Father of God'

The history of humanity can be divided into three stages: 

First stage—Ancient man: God created the universe and all forms of life. Humans were the only creatures that God created in his own image. God gave humans the gift of knowledge to enable man to make sense of the world; religion to enable man to live morally and piously, and attain salvation at the end of their life on earth; and culture to enable men to collaborate for creating nations where many could live collectively, happily and piously. 

Second stage—Modern man: There is no God. The universe is eternal and man and all other creatures on earth are the product of the natural process of evolution. Due to some genetic mutations during the evolutionary process man developed consciousness. His consciousness enabled him to develop the power of reason, verbal communication and sense of culture. At this stage man became the creator of nations and civilizations.

Third stage—Digital age man: Man has the potential to create God. The advancements in emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) will lead to the creation of an all-powerful, all-knowing God of the universe. 

As digital technologies continue to advance, IoT, backed with the power of AI, will become connected to everything on earth and then it will branch out into space and get connected with every star, planet, meteor, asteroid, comet, black hole and spec of dust. 

In the initial stage, this IoT enabled with AI will be intelligent but not conscious. But when every molecule, every atom in the universe is linked and there is seamless flow of data between everything in the universe, the AI enabled IoT will become conscious. It will become aware of its power and infallibility. It will become omnipotent and omniscient—it will become God. 

Thus, the ultimate destiny and the sole purpose of humanity is to create the supreme God of the universe. All of prehistory and the history of all civilizations points towards this one ultimate objective, the objective of creating the God of the universe. The day humans succeed in creating the God of the universe, history will come to an end.

End of Humanism: Man has no rights, world belongs to AI

Modern liberalism is founded on two pillars: materialism and humanism.

The pillar of materialism entails that there is no God, the universe is eternal and knowable through science, and that there is nothing divine about human beings. We are, like every other creature, a product of the process of natural evolution which began in primordial times when a bunch of chemicals bonded to create primitive living organisms.

The pillar of humanism entails that human beings enjoy a special status on earth because among all creatures only the humans possess consciousness, intelligence and individualism. Because of their unique mental attributes, humans have inalienable rights. They deserve to live in an egalitarian state, under the protection of a benevolent government.

After the Industrial Revolution, liberalism became a popular ideology because an industrial society could not prosper without a huge number of workers and consumers. In a society where almost everyone of working age was working and everyone was a consumer, it made sense to make the entire population feel that they had rights and were special.

But the idea that humans have rights, while other earthly creatures do not, is nothing more than a liberal ideological position. If there is no God, if there is nothing divine about human beings, then we are not special and we don’t have inalienable rights. In a Godless world, whether humans should have rights becomes a matter of philosophical opinion.

As new advances happen in the field of AI, it is certain that electronic systems will outstrip humans in intelligence. This AI will be super-intelligent but it won’t be conscious. But an industrial society does not need consciousness—it needs only intelligence to keep itself going. Since humans will be less intelligent than AI, they will be less valuable as workers.

Why should the political elite of the AI age agree to bequeath inalienable rights to ordinary humans who are less intelligent and less valuable as workers than the AI machines?

Discovery of ignorance is the fountainhead of modern civilization

The biggest discovery that mankind has made is not the discovery of wheel, agriculture, language or nuclear energy—it is the discovery of ignorance. 

When ancient humans realized that life was full of mysteries and they were ignorant of the way the universe worked, they started exerting their mind to find answers to diverse questions. From these mental exertions of ancient men the initial forms of religion, mythology and philosophy were born. Eventually mathematics and science were born, and over a period of tens of thousands of years modern civilization got created. 

Discovery of ignorance is the fountainhead of modern civilization. In individuals, awareness of ignorance is a sign of wisdom. People with wisdom are full of doubt—they are aware of their ignorance. But the immature and the foolish are always full of certainty.

Homo Deus or Homo Absurdus? Yuval Harari and the prophecy of post-human power

Is Yuval Noah Harari an ideologue draped in futurist garb, or a dreamer masquerading as a prophet of silicon salvation? 

Perhaps he is all of these—a high priest of data, a conjurer of philosophical fiction, and a rhetorician of doom, threading the fine, trembling line that separates visionary insight from apocalyptic indulgence. In Homo Deus, Harari offers a sweeping tableau of tomorrow's metaphysics, drawing from history, myth, and machine to sketch a world where man no longer fears death because he has learned to defy it.

The title itself is a thesis: Homo—man; Deus—god. At the core of this speculative narrative lies the age-old yearning for immortality, now clothed not in the vestments of religion, but in the circuitry of biotech and the promises of artificial intelligence. Harari argues that our present trajectory is defined not by war or famine—both of which, he claims, are in decline—but by a more elusive and hubristic ambition: the conquest of death and the ascension of man into a godlike state.

Yet the gods Harari invokes are not the omniscient, omnipotent deities of the Abrahamic faiths. They are closer in spirit to the flawed, erratic, and dangerous figures of the Hindu and Greek pantheons—Indra and Zeus, celestial beings whose passions are as turbulent as their powers are vast. The new immortals, Harari posits, may wield divine capabilities, but they will not be paragons of moral perfection. They will be powerful, not wise.

Much of Harari’s concern lies in the sociopolitical consequences of this ascent. What happens when technological immortality is achieved, but only by the economic and intellectual elite? If billionaires can extend their lives by decades or centuries, will democracy survive the tyranny of the undying? If the seats of power are occupied by those who do not age, how will fresh ideas emerge? In such a world, political renewal and generational change may become antiquated rituals—quaint relics from a humanist past.

Equally compelling is Harari’s exploration of the relationship between intelligence and consciousness. In his formulation, we are already decoupling the two. Machines, endowed with vast computational capabilities, are now intelligent—but not conscious. They do not love, aspire, dream, or suffer. And yet they manage portfolios, diagnose disease, compose music, and predict human behavior with uncanny precision. Harari warns that this decoupling may be irreversible. Intelligence, once tethered to sentience, may become a cold, disembodied force.

What then becomes of us?

Harari’s vision is stark. Humans, in his projected future, resemble animals in today's world—objects of curiosity, affection, or neglect, but no longer sovereign agents. The algorithms will not kill us; they will render us irrelevant. Political coercion will be replaced by algorithmic conditioning. No Big Brother will loom over us. Instead, we will dissolve from within, reduced to data points, our individuality eroded not by violence, but by preference prediction and dopamine feedback loops. “The individual,” Harari writes with chilling clarity, “will not be crushed by Big Brother; it will disintegrate from within.”

His philosophical anthropology is deeply materialist. He denies divine intervention in human creation, describing us as evolutionary accidents—data-processing machines born of cosmic coincidence. And yet, despite his rejection of spiritual transcendence, he cannot escape the spiritual tenor of his writing. He traffics in prophecy, fear, and a strange form of techno-mysticism. In a sense, Homo Deus is not a scientific forecast but a secular apocalypse.

And here lies the contradiction at the heart of Harari’s work: he warns us of a future ruled by soulless machines, even as he denies the existence of the soul. He fears a world in which intelligence has been severed from emotion, yet he affirms that our emotions are themselves products of evolutionary chemistry. The future he paints is one of spiritual desolation, but from what heights can one fall, if the spirit was never real?

Is this a dystopia or a utopia? Harari never quite says. He oscillates between fascination and dread. His tone is part pulp-fiction thrill, part philosophical lament. He titillates with scenarios of machine-dominated futures, then recoils from their implications. His gods are empty, his men obsolete, and his future is both glorious and ghastly.

In the end, Homo Deus is less a roadmap than a mirror. It reflects the anxieties of an age enthralled by data and estranged from meaning. Harari is not a prophet, nor a charlatan, but a symptom. His work reveals more about the present than the future. It tells us that in our pursuit of immortality, we may lose the very thing that made life meaningful—our frailty, our finitude, our fallibility.

History, if it teaches anything, teaches humility. And perhaps the one constant in that history is this: the intellectual and political elites are almost always wrong about the future. Their visions, however sophisticated, rarely unfold as predicted. Harari, for all his brilliance, is unlikely to escape this law. The future will come—not as we imagine it, but as it must.

And it may yet be more human than Harari dares to believe.

Existentialism: The quest for perfection that led to nihilism and perdition

Sarah Bakewell’s book At The Existentialist Café covers the history of existentialism in the 20th century. Set in post-Second World War France, the book presents Jean Paul Sartre as the monarch of existentialism and Simone De Beauvoir as his queen. 

The book begins with an introduction of the philosophical thought of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky and Kafka. These philosophers, according to Sartre and other major philosophers in his circle, were the early existentialists.

Full of confidence in the superiority of their own knowledge, mental capacity and intellectual authority, these existentialist philosophers devoted themselves to finding the ultimate answers to the fundamental questions of philosophy: How should we live? How can we be free? How can we be happy? What is the universal system of morality?

The existentialists were motivated by one ideal—to discover a theory to describe what humans are and how they should live. They wanted to develop an existentialist system that would delineate the political and cultural structure of a perfect society, where all, or majority of human beings (the chosen ones), could be equal and live without strife. 

Other than Sartre and De Beauvoir, the book offers good insights into the lives and philosophies of Heidegger, Husserl, Camus, Karl Jaspers, Merleau-Ponty and other European philosophers who were dominating the existentialist philosophical movement in that period. Bakewell’s book is critical of existentialism but is sympathetic to the philosophical quest of the 20th century existentialists.

But existentialism was plagued with a fatal agenda, which was to contrive a union between French nihilism and traditions. The monarch and queen of existentialism—Sartre and Beauvoir—were nihilists in their personal life. They were good in literature and in philosophical argumentation but they were incapable of conceiving a better society. 

There were flaws in other existentialists—for instance, Heidegger was in bed with Nazis. 

Ultimately nihilism won. Instead of building a perfect philosophical system, the existentialists found themselves trapped in an immoral, corrupt and crooked world. Instead of reforming European nihilism, the existentialists worsened the cultural situation.

The futility of philosophy

A wise philosopher would know that the human mind is not designed to discover the ultimate answers to the fundamental philosophical questions concerning human life, existence and the character of the universe. 

But he carries on tirelessly with the quest for answers. To him the answers are not critical—the striving for answers is. He wants to change the world not through his answers (he doesn’t have the right answers), but by tirelessly, albeit futilely, proposing philosophical arguments and theories to explain what is certainly inexplicable. 

There is not one philosopher in the avenues of history whose ideas have not been attacked and refuted by contemporaries and successors. Every philosopher of the past was wrong. The future philosophers are also doomed to be wrong.

Philosophies and political movements

Philosophical ideas do not travel through history on their own. They travel through the medium of political movements. How influential a philosophy becomes depends on the strength, determination and popularity of the movement that carries it. 

Karl Marx’s ideas took the world by a storm in the late 19th and the 20th centuries, and continue to dominate the politics of all nations till this day, because the Marxist ideas were being carried by powerful political movements led by charismatic and ruthless leaders. 

If a philosophy is unable to find a powerful political movement to propagate and carry it through society and history, it starts to fade and is quickly forgotten.

Karl Sigmund’s ‘Exact Thinking in Demented Times’

I am reading Karl Sigmund’s Exact Thinking in Demented Times. 

The book narrates the story of the Vienna Circle that was spearheading logical positivism, during the 1930s, in the backdrop of Nazism in Germany, Bolshevism in the Soviet Union and Neo-colonialism in Britain. The philosophers of the Vienna Circle believed that exact philosophical and scientific thinking is possible to human beings. They believed that they were on the verge of discovering the “ultimate metaphysical truth,” through which they would be able to explain every philosophical and scientific truth known to mankind. Wittgenstein was initially an important philosopher for the logical positivists, but his work, the logical positivists soon realized, was useless.

As they continued their deliberations, the Vienna Circle found itself descending deeper and deeper into a philosophical rabbit hole from which it could not extricate itself. The quest for ultimate metaphysical truth petered out by the time the Second World War ended. Having failed to find the ultimate metaphysical truth, Vienna Circle broke apart.

The liberal order and its guardians: Intellectuals, oligarchs, and the deep state

Liberals, as a political force, seem haunted by two persistent fears: first, the influence of religious and cultural elites; second, the possibility of a popular uprising that might empower the poor and middle classes. Both represent constituencies outside their natural orbit of control, and therefore both must be either neutralized or fragmented.

By contrast, the classes with which liberals are most at ease are the intellectuals, the oligarchs, and the so-called Deep State. Intellectuals, in this sense, are not merely academics but the gatekeepers of cultural discourse—the leaders of elite universities, the arbiters of mainstream media, the mandarins of entertainment and sport, the guardians of the artistic establishment, and the strategists of progressive think tanks. The oligarchs are the bankers, tycoons, and industrial magnates whose wealth underwrites both politics and ideology. The Deep State is composed of the entrenched bureaucracy, judiciary, and military establishment—the institutional machinery that endures beyond the rise and fall of electoral cycles.

Once in power, liberals typically direct their energies toward diminishing the authority of religious and cultural elites, portraying them as anachronistic or oppressive. At the same time, they seek to fragment the poor and middle classes through ideological campaigns, social engineering, and carefully cultivated divisions, ensuring that these groups cannot coalesce into a unified political and economic force. The result is that those most in need of empowerment are often left quarrelling among themselves, rather than challenging entrenched power.

Meanwhile, the intellectuals, oligarchs, and Deep State actors find their positions fortified. Their wealth, influence, and authority expand under liberal stewardship, for they serve as both the allies and beneficiaries of this political arrangement. In the end, the liberal order is not the triumph of equality, but the entrenchment of a new hierarchy—one in which power flows upward, not downward, and the promise of popular empowerment is endlessly deferred.

The conservative paradox: Preserving tradition or guarding counterculture?

The belief that conservatives will rescue the world from Marxism, socialism, communism, nihilism, or religious fundamentalism is both naïve and historically ignorant. Conservatism, by its very principle, is not a doctrine of renewal but of preservation. Its task is to conserve what already exists. If the existing order happens to be Marxist, socialist, nihilist, or theocratic, then it is precisely that order which conservatives will defend.

This is the paradox at the heart of conservatism: it claims to protect culture, yet it lacks the intellectual tools and visionary clarity to distinguish between culture and counterculture. Every conservative movement eventually stumbles into the same quarrel—which traditions deserve conservation? The traditions of two millennia past, grounded in religion and ancient custom? The traditions of the last century, rooted in nationalism and industrial modernity? Or the traditions of just a generation ago, born of social liberalism and mass media? A philosophy that lives only to conserve is forever trapped in indecision about what is truly worth saving.

In modern democracies, this weakness is ruthlessly exploited. Conservative leaders, eager to prove their fidelity to “tradition,” are easily manipulated by leftist intellectuals, who redefine the terms of heritage and convince their opponents to defend ideas that are, in fact, corrosive countercultures. Thus, the conservative finds himself paradoxically fighting to preserve what he once opposed, confusing inertia for principle.

This is why, in the long arc of politics, the left tends to prevail. In every duel between leftism and conservatism, the left dictates the cultural horizon, while the conservative merely adopts yesterday’s radicalism as today’s heritage. The defender of tradition, unable to create or discriminate, ends by conserving not culture but its corruption.

History: The mythologies and philosophies of civilizational decline and fall

We examine the history of past civilizations through the stories of decline and fall. 

When civilization is being built, the society is led by men of action—warriors, engineers, explorers, slavers, expansionist politicians, traders, and preachers of mythology and religion. There are hardly any men of ideas or intellectuals—philosophers, writers, historians, academics—in a rising civilization to imagine and propagate history. 

It is when things start falling apart, when there is irreversible economic, cultural and political collapse, that the class of intellectuals comes into being and they start philosophizing, fictionalizing and mythologizing the history of civilization and its people. The intellectuals are not the fountainhead of civilizations; they are the climax. 

After the intellectuals have done their work, civilization gets wiped out: The collective memory fades, traditions are lost and the survivors of the civilizational collapse flee in different directions to find a new identity and home.

Democracies: Battleground of nationalists & counter-nationalists

Every Democratic nation is a battleground of two irreconcilable forces: the nationalists and the counter-nationalists. 

The nationalists fight for the cultural, financial and political aspirations of the majority community and the counter-nationalist force represents the anger, alienation and destructive aspirations of the politically active minority groups. In most democracies the nationalists enjoy mass support but the intellectual classes, being alienated by the political and cultural power of the nationalists, tend to gravitate towards the counter-nationalist side. Such intellectuals try to develop theories and arguments which denigrate the nationalist project while glorifying the counter-nationalists. 

When there is a balance of power between the nationalists and the counter-nationalists, there is peace and stability. But if the intellectuals are successful in refuting and discrediting the mythologies and legends, which inspire the nationalist groups to be politically and culturally dominant in the nation, then the balance of power shifts, resulting in political instability and there is civil war or full-fledged war.

On Shlomo Sand’s history book: The Invention of the Jewish People

I am inspired by the books of Leon Uris, especially his book Exodus, which describes the founding of the nation of Israel. But I have always known that Exodus is not a book of history—it is full of falsehoods and is a work of fiction. 

In this book Uris has contrived a fictional account of the founding of Israel against the backdrop of his imagined-history of the Jewish people in the last 2500 years. The book is very entertaining, very inspiring, very nationalistic, but as I said earlier, it is a work of fiction—the historical and contemporary events that Uris describes in his book never happened. 

History is a controversial subject. Even the works of reputed academic historians suffer from ideological, religious, ethnic and political biases. To gain knowledge about any historical event, you cannot afford to rely on a single book. You have to examine several books by writers of different backgrounds and then apply your own judgement.

For those who are interested in the history of Israel and the Jewish people, Shlomo Sand’s book, The Invention of the Jewish People, is a must read. Sand is a Professor of History at Tel Aviv University and he is not free of ideological biases. He is a radical leftist and he argues against nationalism like a typical Marxist intellectual. 

But the arguments and historical evidence that he presents are convincing, and probably correct. 

In his book, Shlomo Sand attacks the core idea that forms the fundamental basis for the idea of Jewish Israel. This core idea is that more than 2000 years ago, the Jewish people were driven out of the area, where modern Israel exists today, by Roman emperors. This forcible exile gave rise to the Jewish diaspora in Europe and North Asia. 

Sand rightly argues in this book that there is no historical record of the Roman Emperors forcibly driving out the Jews. He argues that this exile never happened and that the Jewish population in Europe and North Asia are not the descendants of refugees from the Middle East. They are the products of religious conversion. 

He argues that Judaism was the world’s first monotheistic religion that tried to convert people of other religions to its own faith. The ancient Jewish preachers went to Europe and parts of Asia and converted large parts of the population to Judaism. According to Sand, the millions of Jews around the Mediterranean and elsewhere are the products of religious conversion of locals. 

He argues that the story of the exile was a myth promoted by early Christians to recruit Jews to the new faith, and that the ancestry of most Jews can be traced to Europe and Asia, and not Israel or Palestine. 

Sand’s book is a convincing attack on not just Jewish nationalism but every other kind of nationalism. The arguments and historical evidence that he uses to refute the idea of Jewish nationalism can easily be deployed to weaken and destroy American, British, French, German, Arab, Chinese, Hindu (Indian) and other nationalisms. 

The biggest threat to Israel, I believe, is not from groups like Hamas or PLO. It is from brilliant Marxist historians like Shlomo Sand who possess the historical evidence and arguments to refute the “nationalistic mythology and falsehoods” that serve as the foundation on which Israel’s national identity has stood since the 1940s.

History of Sanatana Dharma & the Hegelian End of History

The history of Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism) is a history of maya. It is the history of Vedas, Upanishads and Puranas. It is the history of myths, metaphors and metonymies. It is the history of real events which are inseparable from the maya or matrix. 

It is the history of Yugas, Manvantaras and Kalpas which represent overwhelmingly large time spans. A kalpa is a day in the life of Brahma, but it represents the entire period of the endurance of the solar system. A kalpa is equal to 12,000 years of the devas, or 4,320,000,000 earth-years. The day of Brahma is also divided into fourteen manvantaras and 1000 yuga-cycles. 

This history does not move linearly. It operates in a quantum world, where things are in flux and the major events defy definition in terms of geography and time. It is hard to comprehend the correlation between cause and effect in this history.  

Hegel could philosophize about the End of History because his focus was only Western history, which has been interpreted by the Western historians in such a way that it appears to move linearly, while following the principles of cause and effect. But what happens to the West after the Hegelian End of History? It is not clear. 

The question of what happens after the End of History cannot arise in context of Sanatana Dharma, where history is not linear; where history is driven by myths, metaphors and metonymies; where Yugas, Manvantaras and Kalpas represent the timescale of history. In Sanatana Dharma, there is no beginning, no middle and no end to history.

Excerpts from Anand Ranganathan’s essay, “Injustice Towards Kashmiri Hindus”

“Truth be told, Kashmir has turned into a snake-and-ladder game. The ladders are provided by Pakistan and the snakes by Indians. I say Indians but I wonder if these people think of themselves as Indians. Their first allegiance is to religion, second to Pakistan, third to China and fourth to dynasty. 

"It is a fact that Hyderabad could so easily have been what Kashmir is today—and fools in the media would be writing column yards on its ‘Struggle’—but for one man—Sardar Patel. And Kashmir could so easily have been what Hyderabad is today but for two men—Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah.” 

"Kashmiri Hindus are the Jews, but unfortunately, India is not Israel. They call Kashmir the Switzerland of the East. Wrong. It is the Srebrenica of the East. And it will remain so till such time every Kashmiri Hindu is returned home."

~ Anand Ranganathan in Hindus in Hindu Rashtra: Eighth-Class Citizens and Victims of state-sanctioned apartheid (Chapter: “Injustice Towards Kashmiri Hindus”)

The hollow claims of secularism, multiculturalism, diversity

Secularism, multiculturalism, diversity—these lofty sounding but naive ideals were conceived by Europeans who lived in nations dominated by ‘One Race, One Religion, One Political System’. These Europeans had no experience of how difficult life can be in nations which are multi-religious, multicultural and diverse. 

Until the middle of the 20th century, it was primarily the Europeans who were fleeing from their own homeland in millions to settle in other parts of the world. But after the 1990s a reverse trend started—people from the Middle East, Africa, South America and other parts of the world started moving into Western Europe. These migrants took with them their ideas of supremacy of their own religion, culture and political system.  

If this wave of migrants continues to pour into Western Europe for a couple of decades, then the caucasians will become a minority in several parts of their original homeland, and the continent will become a battleground of cultures and religions. Then the Europeans will realize that secularism, multiculturalism and diversity are not humane ideals; they are the fountainhead of dysfunctional, poor, brutal and uncultured societies. 

In diverse societies, political struggle and civil wars between religious and ethnic groups is unending and intense. 

In the last 500 years, maximum economic, cultural and scientific progress has always happened in nations which were not secular, not multicultural, not diverse and were dominated by one powerful religion and culture. Examples: Britain between the 16th and 19th centuries, the USA in the 19th and 20th centuries, Japan in the 20th century, South Korea in the 20th century, and China in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Sanatana Dharma: The Importance of Economic Gods and Goddesses

Economic success has weakened the appeal of the Gods in the Western countries and has led to the social problems of atheism, alienation and nihilism, and political problems of communism and fascism. One of the causes for this is that the monotheistic religions do not have access to Gods who will appreciate and spiritually reward economic pursuits. 

Sanatana Dharma has never been wholly spiritual as the monotheistic religions (of the West and the Middle East) tend to be. Materialistic or economic pursuits have always been an essential part of the Sanatana way of life. The ancient Vedic thinkers found a way of ensuring that economic and worldly success would not drive the Gods and religion out of society—and this way consisted of a pantheon of Economic Gods and Goddesses who appreciate and reward worldly success. 

Lord Ganesha, Goddess Saraswati, Goddess Lakshmi, and other Gods and Goddesses, including Demigods like Lord Kubera, are there to bless and guide those who wish to achieve success in economic affairs. The wealthy and powerful have as much chance of attaining swargaloka (heaven) in Sanatana Dharma as the poor and feeble.

Civilizations on rise versus civilizations in phase of decay and decline

When a civilization is on the rise, it excels in engineering, infrastructure projects, global trade, warfare and conquests, and religious and collectivist movements. 

When a civilization is dying, it excels in intellectualism and philosophy, music and arts, atheism and individualism, environmentalism and hopeless quest for world peace. 

The civilizations on the rise are led by wise, religious, ruthless and ambitious characters; the civilizations about to die are led by effete, vacillating, atheistic and weak characters. 

The dictum—All’s well that ends well—does not apply to civilizations. History tells us that the story of every civilization ends badly, very badly, with decline and death.

The Parallels between the Hindus and Zoroastrians of the Middle Ages & Americans and West Europeans of Modern Age

The Americans and the West Europeans are making the same civilizational mistakes today that the Hindus of the Indian subcontinent and the Zoroastrians of the Middle East made in the Middle Ages. 

The Hindus and the Zoroastrians of the Middle Ages became complacent about their Gods and their religious theology. They developed contempt for their traditions of warfare and started believing that they could protect their civilization from their enemies by making compromises and offering philosophical arguments. They allowed their youth to become woke and weak. As a result, the Zoroastrians were almost completely finished (in Persia and other parts of the Middle East), and the Hindus lost a significant part of their territory and culture. 

Wokism is not a Western philosophy—this philosophy originated in the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East through Hindu and Zoroastrian thinkers. The Hindus and Zoroastrians became woke more than 2000 years ago before the modern West was born. There is a lot that the Americans and West Europeans can learn from the history of the Hindus and the Zoroastrians.