What Are The Right Questions?

Why do we believe that the Pyramid of Giza and Mount Rushmore symbolize different kinds of political ideals? The purpose of both monuments was deification of the ruling elite—the ancient Egyptians wanted to venerate their pharaohs; the Americans wanted to venerate their presidents. The Americans have not mummified their founders but it can be argued that in a spiritual sense, they have—they have spent a massive amount of financial and intellectual resources on deifying the founders and transforming them into a modern counterpart of the ancient pharaohs. 

Why do we believe that the West, which came into being when the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the Americas, is founded on Ancient Greek philosophy? There is no connection between Greek philosophy and the West. The idea that the two are connected was developed in the eighteenth century (the so-called Age of Enlightenment) by French philosophers who were embarrassed by the barbarity with which the conquistadors, imperialists, slavers, colonizers, and settlers had won the Western empire. So these philosophers started claiming that the West had nothing to do with colonization and was founded on Ancient Greek philosophy. This was their rationalization, their propaganda, their myth—this has nothing to do with reality. 

Why do we believe that the philosophy of Ancient Athens is unique—that this kind of philosophical argumentation did not happen anywhere else? The German philosopher Karl Jaspers has written that all the major schools of philosophy and politics seem to have sprouted, apparently independently, in Persia, India, China, and Greece in the same period. He called this period the Axial Age (from 800 BC to 300 AD). During this period there was the rise of Zoroaster in Persia; the Vedic sages, the Buddha, and other thinkers in India; Confucius and Lao-Tse in China; and Pythagoras in Greece. All the important questions of philosophy and politics that we are deliberating to this day were conceived in this period. 

Why do we believe that the West, which venerates its political elites like Egyptians venerated their pharaohs, would be devoted to liberty, individualism, and property rights? In the last 500 years, the West has been the biggest violator of human rights and property rights. The notion that the West is founded on Ancient Greek philosophy enables the Western leaders to justify their destructive foreign policy. The Western elites are able to argue that since their way of life is more than 2000 years old, it is the best. In the twentieth century, America has repeatedly used its military power to impose Western culture on other nations. The choice that the Americans gave to the Middle Easterners, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Koreans, Africans, and South Americans was simple—become like us, hand over your natural resources to us, or we will destroy you.

Why do we believe that the European conquistadors and imperialists who committed genocides, plunder, rapes, and slavery on an world-historical scale, and wiped out several ancient cultures, were from an “enlightened” civilization which was motivated by the ideals of liberty, peace, human rights, and individualism? Between 1519 and 1526, Hernan Cortes wrote five letters (the English translation of these letters have been published in the book Five Letters of Relation) to the Spanish monarchs. Cortes has described his journey through the valley of Puebla where he interacted with several Native Indian city-states. About the city-state called Tlaxcala, Cortes said: It had a population of 150,000; in its markets, more than 30,000 people were involved in buying and selling; it had farms which measured thirty leagues in circumference. 

The Tlaxcala army was on the verge of wiping out Cortes and his band of conquistadors. But Cortes managed to convince the Tlaxcala that they should grant him an audience. The Tlaxcala did not have a European style monarchy—they were being governed by a group of elders. In his letters, Cortes seems to be amazed that such a large community, with extensive agricultural and manufacturing economy, could function smoothly without a monarch. The Tlaxcala held public debates (in the style of Athenian democracy) to take their political decisions. Cortes has described the debates which happened before the Tlaxcala agreed to accept the help of the conquistadors for defeating their ancient enemy, the Aztecs. 1000 Spaniards did not defeat the Aztecs—the Tlaxcala army of more than 20,000 native warriors was there to do the fighting. 

The Native Indian city-states of the Americas had much more liberty and individualism than the European nations from which the conquistadors and imperialists had arrived. The case can be made that the Europeans learned about liberty and individualism through their interaction with the native American tribes. It is the Western lies and propaganda which prevent us from seeing the truth that the Western culture is tyrannical, violent, and nihilistic—it is antithetical to rationality, liberty, morality, and individualism. To have the right answers we have to begin by asking the right questions.

On the Dark Ages, Slavery, and Work Ethic

The institution of slavery vanished from Europe during the Dark Ages, which followed the fall of the Roman Empire. Why did slavery come to an end in the Dark Ages? 

Some historians have credited Christianity for the end of slavery in the Dark Ages. This could be the case but the Christian thinkers were not explicitly against slavery. After the fifteenth century, the conquistadors (who were Catholic), and the imperialists (who were Catholic and Protestant) practiced slavery on a world-historical scale in the Americas and other colonies. 

It seems that feudalism had a much bigger role to play in the abolition of slavery in Europe than Christianity. The European feudal lords were opposed to the idea of having slaves. Instead of slaves, the feudal lords used local labor to manage the agriculture work of their vast land holdings. 

But the end of slavery led to Dark Ages in Europe. It is possible that the Europeans are not capable of creating a powerful empire unless they have access to cheap slave labor. Europe’s history shows that whenever there is large-scale opposition to slavery, there is decline in the continent’s economy and culture, and a new Dark Age begins.

After the fifteenth century, the rise of Europe as a global power has coincided with the rise of slavery. Around 1850, when European power was at its peak, the institution of slavery was also at a peak. The European slavers had transported between 12 to 18 million people from Africa to work as slaves in the Americas and in other colonies. The plantations, which were almost entirely dependent on African labor, were the backbone of the European economy in the Americas. 

Before the Africans arrived, the European settler population in the Americas was starving—the average life expectancy of the settlers was just 25 years. Most settlers used to die within five years of arrival in the Americas due to disease, bad living conditions, and starvation. The irony is that the Africans, with their capacity for hard work, saved the European population in the Americas and made the colonization of North America possible.

We read in history books that the West has won in the last 300 years because of the “Western work ethic.” The German philosopher Max Weber has talked about the “Protestant work ethic” being the cause of the success of Western capitalism. If the Europeans had a better work ethic, then why did they need millions of slaves in their colonies? Perhaps Max Weber was wrong. Perhaps he had overestimated the role played by the Protestant work ethic.

In the twentieth century, the USA and Europe had to transfer much of their agriculture production to South America and Africa, and their major industries to China, Japan, and other Asian countries. Perhaps this was because the work ethic in the non-European parts of the world was better than the European work ethic. If Weber had been exposed to the culture of Asia, he would have praised the Asian work ethic.

Europe’s Four World Conquests in 300 Years

In the last 300 years, the Europeans have conquered the world four times:

—the first time through their conquistadors, imperialists, slavers, and settlers. These groups committed plunder, rapine, and genocides on an unprecedented world-historical scale. They wiped out ancient tribes, nations, and civilizations, and colonized entire continents. 

—the second time through their utopian ideologies—religious fundamentalism (crusades and other movements), monarchism, communism, capitalism, nazism, racism, and fascism. These ideologies have caused (and are still causing) wars, insurgencies, revolutions, coups, massacres, social dislocations, and cultural alienations. 

—the third time by spreading European languages—primarily English, French, and Spanish—and European cultural and political norms. 

—the fourth time through powerful Western bureaucracies. These bureaucracies include military coalitions which are armed with weapons of mass destruction (including nuclear weapons), financial institutions (banking, insurance, and currency related entities), legal institutions (the UNO, the WHO, the IMF, and the World Bank), intellectual institutions (academia, mainstream media, movie industry, and think tanks), and the digital and electronics behemoths. 

Till the seventeenth century, Europe was the world’s backwater—so for the Europeans to conquer the world four times in the last 300 years is a remarkable turnaround. However, it would be foolish to claim that in all the four instances, Europeans did everything on their own. The other civilizations have contributed massively—especially in the second, third, and fourth instances. 

The question is: Where does European civilization go from here? Their four methods of world domination have by now been exposed, countered, compromised, and captured by other civilizations. Either the Europeans will come up with a fifth way of domination or they will lose their pole position in the world.

The Failing Bureaucrat: James Bond

James Bond is loyal to the state; he has charisma; he has access to secrets; he is an expert; he has the license to kill. These qualities and powers make James Bond the ultimate Western bureaucrat. He is the mythical symbol of Western power. 

Max Weber has defined the state as an institution which claims monopoly on the use of legitimate violence within a given territory. After winning the Second World War in 1945, America inherited the legacy of the British empire. The American establishment was convinced that it was their manifest destiny to Westernize and dominate the world, through trade and diplomacy if possible, and through violent means if necessary. 

James Bond was qualified to be the hatchet man for the American and British establishments. He possessed the necessary bureaucratic and militaristic skills. Since 1945, the James Bond type of operatives have been trying to further Western geopolitical interests through such techniques: coups, revolutions, insurgencies, assassinations, political blackmail, torture, mass terror, kidnappings, and stolen elections. 

The rule of history is—no matter how badass you are, you will at some point of time encounter someone who will be nastier and tougher. In the twenty-first century, the non-Western powers have developed their own bureaucracies that are as secretive and lethal as the Western ones. The Western strategists are proving incapable of countering the rising power of the rival bureaucracies. James Bond is now a failing bureaucrat.

The Empires Versus the Colonies

It has been the fate of every great empire of the past to be subjugated and destroyed by powers which were once its vassals or colonies. 

The Persian Empire was captured by its former vassals, the Macedonians (led by Alexander the Great). The Roman Empire was captured by its former vassals, a coalition of Central Asian and European barbarian tribes led by the Visigoths. The last traces of the Byzantine Empire were captured by the Ottomans, who were once the vassals of the Byzantine Emperors. The Arab movements, which ruled Southwestern Europe (the Iberian Peninsula—Spain and Portugal) for almost six hundred years (711 to 1492), were initially being supported by the Byzantine Emperors and the political establishment in Italy. The Zengid Empire was replaced by Saladin’s Ayyubid dynasty (the Zengid ruler Nur ad-Din was responsible for the rise of Saladin). Ayyubid dynasty was replaced by the forces led by their former slaves, the Mamluks, who established the powerful Mamluk dynasty. The Mongol Empire was captured by the powers that arose in their former colonies of Russia and China. The Ottoman Empire was dismembered, between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, by a series of coalitions in which its former vassals and colonies played an outsized role.

In the next 50 years, the colonial powers could get colonized by the people from their former colonies. Spain, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy could be captured by the forces from North and South Africa, the Middle East, China, Russia, and even South Asia. The American Empire, which has been dominating the world since 1945, could be captured by the forces belonging to South America, Africa, and the Middle East.

A Tale of Three Currencies: Ruble, Pound, Dollar

Soon after the 1917 Revolution, which brought the Bolsheviks to power in Russia, the Ruble collapsed. For ideological reasons, Lenin and Trotsky had sabotaged the Ruble by flooding the Russian economy with a massive amount of newly printed Rubles. They believed that once the Ruble became a worthless currency, due to inflation, they would have the power to create a communist society that was free of the taint of money. They planned to replace money with a rationing system based on coupons. Every citizen would get a certain number of coupons which they could use to procure their essential needs: food, housing, clothing, education, and other things. By 1921, it became clear that a nation without money could not function, and the Bolshevik government was forced to institute a new currency system.

The British were watching the Bolshevik experiment with interest. They decided to do away with the gold standard which had hitherto governed the monetary system of the Bank of England. The Bank of England had come into being in 1694 (four years after Britain’s defeat in the Battle of Beachy Head) when a consortium of English bankers gave a loan of 1.2 million pounds to the British Monarch at 8 percent interest. In return for the loan, the bankers were granted the monopoly on issuing banknotes. The bankers now had the right to monetize and circulate the royal debt. Thus, the British pound, which was based on the gold standard, was born. It went on to become the most stable currency in the world. In 1931, the British government stopped using the gold standard, and in 1946 the Bank of England was nationalized. 

The Americans were inspired by the Soviet and British experiments with paper currency. In 1933, they partially unpegged the dollar from the gold standard. In 1971, they unpegged the dollar fully. Since then all currencies of the world have become part of the global floating fiat currency regime. The greedy British and American establishments had thought that by unpegging their currencies from the gold standard, they would be able to transfer their inflation to other countries. They had underestimated the political and financial acumen of the Asian countries. While accepting massive tranches of American and European inflation (through their paper currency), the Asian nations managed to pull in a large number of American businesses. The result was that America lost most of its industries and the Asian nations became an industrial powerhouse. 

In the third decade of the twenty-first century, the endgame of the currency wars is being played. At the center of the battle is the American dollar. Since the dollar is the world’s most heavily traded currency, the American government has little control over its value in comparison to other currencies. Since 1933, the dollar has been fluctuating freely but its long-term trend is of continuous decline. Any geopolitical or economic crisis could lead to a stampede from the dollar. The American government will not be able to stabilize their currency. The dollar will die (so will many other paper currencies), and this will mark the end of America and the West. In the last twenty years, most major economies in Asia (and even the large multinational corporations) have been making extensive preparations for a post-dollar and post-America world.

The fall of America (and the West) will create new opportunities for mankind.

The False Terminology of History and Philosophy

What is the common feature in these terms which we often encounter in history and philosophy books: “State of Nature,” “Primitive Barter Society,” “Noble Savages,” “Primitive Cannibal Society,” “Aryan Invasion,” “the Fertile Crescent,” “the Classical Age,” “the Renaissance,” “the Scientific Revolution,” “the Enlightenment,” “the Dark Continent,” “Aryan Race,” “Classical Liberal Society,” and “Capitalist Free Market.”

Answer: Each of these terms represents a myth—they represent intellectual hoaxes and geopolitical propaganda. No historian or explorer has discovered the kind of people, societies, or movements that these terms seem to represent. There is no evidence that such people, societies, or movements ever existed. In many cases, the nature of the society, movement, or cultural system is fundamentally different from the impression that the term attributed to it creates. 

When you come across such terms in any text, the questions that you ought to be asking are: Who created these terms? When did they create these terms? What was their political ideology? What was their political agenda? Why did they select this particular term? Why not some other term? Is it possible that they selected a particular term because they wanted to prejudice the reader by planting a certain kind of impression in his mind?  

Exposition of history and philosophy is not the true purpose of these terms. These terms are aimed at establishing European supremacy. European scholars created rates terms in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, because they wanted people in all parts of the world to believe that Europe was the ultimate cradle of civilization, that the Europeans were mankind’s apex achievers, and that they were fit to rule all of humanity.

Locke’s Philosophy and the Eviction of the Natives

Why did the American founders use Locke’s philosophy to develop their system of property rights? Because by using Locke’s philosophy they could make the argument that only the European population was eligible for property rights, and that the native Indians were savages who did not deserve such rights. In his Second Treatise of Government (1690), Locke has argued that property rights are derived from labor. Those who work on the land—by farming, building infrastructure, and setting up industry—have rights, and those who are living in a State of Nature have no rights. 

Here’s a line from Locke’s Second Treatise of Government: "Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.” 

The founding fathers of America asserted that the native Indians were living in a State of Nature, since they got their essential needs through activities like forging, hunting, fishing, herding, and they were not radically transforming the landscape by building large plantations, towns, and industries. The Americans claimed that activities like forging, hunting, fishing, and herding did not amount to “mixing one’s labor with the land.” The lazy natives, the Americans argued, were not “improving landlords” who would make optimal use of the land, so they had no legal claims to own the land. Thus, the land in which the natives had lived for thousands of years was deemed vacant, and was opened up for the settlement of the rising European population.  

It was not true that the natives were lazy or were not working on the land. They were operating successful farms and fisheries for centuries before the Europeans arrived. They had built several cities the ruins of which exist till this day. They were responsible for clearing forests and building dams. All this was ignored by the American political elite—they continued to insist that the “merciless Indian savages,” who lived in a State of Nature, must be thrown out of North America and their land should be given to the European farmers and industrialists. Between 1776 to 1900 a significant part of the native population in the USA was either killed or evicted.

The Battleground of History and Philosophy

Why is European history and philosophy so rich? Because the European governments were very rich in the last 500 years. Much of the wealth that the conquistadors and imperialists plundered from the colonies was wasted by the European governments on fighting wars, building palaces and cathedrals, and enabling a lavish and dissolute political culture. A small part of plundered booty went into building new universities and learned societies which started pursuing historical and philosophical research. The history and philosophy that these institutions pursued was intended to propagate the supremacy of the European people and their culture. 

During the age of colonialism, the European intellectuals were promoting their own history and philosophy as mankind’s apex achievement because they wanted to represent the European population as the master race. They wanted the world to believe that the Europeans had the right to rule all cultures because their past was glorious. 

25,000 years ago, the Indian subcontinent became the world’s most crowded region—about 80 precent of humanity was living here. How can anyone believe that the region where 80 percent of humanity has thrived for thousands of years had no history and culture? Such a huge population could not have survived in this region unless there was political stability. Till 1450, India and China were the world’s biggest economies. In the 17th century, the Indian economy was about 25 percent of the world economy. The legendary riches of India made it a target for invaders from the Middle East and Europe.

Much of Ancient Greek philosophy that is available today is a modernist interpretation—it was written after the seventeenth century. Greek philosophy, we are told, stands for liberty and individualism. But Ancient Greece was a slave society. In Ancient Athens 70 percent of the population was slaves and 10 percent were metics. The quality of life was so bad in Ancient Greece that there were more Greeks living in the Persian Empire than the population of Athens, Sparta, and Corinth. 

In the colonial age, the conquistadors and imperialists were not liberty-minded; they were not individualists. They were united under the banner of “One God and One Monarch.” They committed brutal genocides in several continents. They enslaved millions of people, mainly from Africa. 

Freedom and individualism have never been European values—they are non-European values. Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, and all the empires of the European Middle Ages were hierarchical, tyrannical, and warlike. There was much more liberty and individualism in the native tribes of the Americas than in Europe. Most tribes of the Americas did not have a hereditary ruling class and a powerful priestly class; the tribal chiefs had little control over the tribal population. The Europeans were victorious because they were totally united, while the natives of the Americas were disunited. The natives were wild, free, and individualistic. No tribal chief could bring them together to fight the European invaders. 

In the middle of the twentieth century European colonialism came to an end and other cultures became free to pursue their own history and philosophy. The Europeans have had a 500-year head start in the area of history and philosophy. But the scholarship of other cultures has started catching up and it is becoming clear that the past of places like North Africa, the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, China, and some parts of the Americas was very complex—more complex than the history and philosophy of Europe.

The Fake Empire of Paper Currency

“The history of paper money issued by a government belongs indubitably to the Americans.” ~ John Kenneth Galbraith in Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went.  

For thousands of years, money used to be “hard” (i.e., linked to gold or silver). Till the early decades of the twentieth century most nations were using some kind of hard currency. The credit for making money “soft” (i.e., fiat) goes to America. In the 1970s, American president Nixon passed a series of orders which transformed the dollar into a fiat currency. The fait dollar (the paper dollar) had the potential to accommodate unlimited borrowing at low rates and prevent corporations from going bankrupt. 

The rise of the paper dollar led to an unprecedented debt-financed boom in America and Western Europe. Some Asian and South American countries also benefited from the boom. But this boom was not based on a rise in economic productivity—it was a fake boom. It was based on massive debt that had become possible with paper currency. This debt should have led to high inflation in America, but the Americans were able to take advantage of the dollar’s status as the Global Reserve Currency to transfer a significant part of their own inflation into other economies.

In the post-gold standard world, the dollar became America’s most lucrative export. The Americans were making money by printing money. Making money by minting or printing money is the world’s oldest scam, and American capitalism prospered from this scam. While paper currency can fuel the domestic economy for a few decades, it has a pernicious impact on the nation’s values and culture.

By the end of the twentieth century it was clear that the debt culture fueled by paper currency had led to a decline in America’s work ethic and moral values. Why should the Americans work hard, take risks, and live morally, when they could make money by printing dollars and using them to raise debt from every part of the globe?  Instead of productivity, debt became the fuel of American capitalism. The Americans started believing that they could keep borrowing and spending and that the rain of paper dollars would never end.

The decline in work ethic and moral values had an impact on American wars and industry. Since 1973, the Americans have not won a single war. Their economic competitiveness has declined. The Asian countries—Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, and India—have made economic progress, often at the cost of the American economy. American manufacturing and research has moved into Asian countries, and since 2008, the paper dollar has been showing signs of strain. America’s paper currency empire could collapse in 10 years.

Thatcher’s False Slogan: “There is No Alternative”

In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher popularized the slogan: “There is no alternative” (TINA). She was not the first Western politician to promulgate her own worldview as the only possible way for all of mankind. For 500 years, the West has been veritably obsessed with brainwashing people in all parts of the world to make them believe that there is no alternative to the Western way. 

When Columbus, Cortés, Pizarro, and other European conquistadors and imperialists were rampaging in the Americas, they were telling the natives something similar to what Thatcher was telling the world in the 1980s: There is no alternative to European religion and European power. When the Europeans were dragging millions of Africans across the Atlantic to labor as slaves in the American colonies, they were telling the Africans: Accept your fate because there is no alternative to slavery. When the British were expanding their dominion in India, during the eighteenth century, they were telling the Indians: There is no alternative to British rule. In the nineteenth century, the British were telling the Chinese: There is no alternative to British opium. In the 1950s, the Americans were telling the world: There is no alternative to American global bureaucracies—UNO, IMF, World Bank, GATT (WTO),  and other institutions. From 1960 till this day, the Americans have been massacring people in wars after wars to hammer home the message: There is no alternative to American capitalism. In the 1970s, when Nixon abolished the gold standard, he told the world: There is no alternative to America’s paper currency, the dollar. In the 1980s, Reagan joined Thatcher in declaring: There is no alternative to the Western way. In 1991, when the Soviet Union fell, the Western ideologues declared that the “end of history” had arrived and that henceforth there would be no alternative to Western rule.

“There is no alternative”: this Western slogan is bullshit. This slogan is totalitarian and genocidal, and it amounts to a war on imagination. The Western establishment does not want people in non-Western countries to put their imagination to work and think of a way of life that is better than the Western way. They want people everywhere to believe that the non-Western ideas just don’t work; only the Western ideas work. The truth is that the Western way is terrible and a better way is possible. There is always a better way. Once America falls, and Western power comes to an end, I am hopeful that the human imagination will become freed once again and we will be able to imagine hundreds of new systems which could be better than the Western way.

America Versus Germany

The history of the twentieth century is generally read as a battle between America and the Soviet Union. But the greatest battle of the twentieth century was between America and Germany. By 1900, it was clear that the British Empire was dying—both America and Germany were in a race to capture the legacy and power of the British. During the Second World War, the American Machiavellians delayed allied advance through Western and Central Europe. This gave the Soviet troops the time to race through Eastern Europe and capture almost half of Germany. With Eastern Germany going under Soviet control, Western Germany was too enfeebled to challenge American hegemony. Thus, America became the sole inheritor of the British Empire—it became the leader of the West and a superpower.

A Tale of Two Debtors: America and Haiti

“If you owe the bank a hundred thousand dollars, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank a hundred million dollars, you own the bank.” ~ the core principle of American banking. 

If we take the world as a giant bank, then America is the largest debtor of this bank. Total national debt of America is close to $27 trillion. With such a massive debt, America owns the world. When the American economy goes down the drain, which is likely to happen soon, the $27 trillion debt will be worthless and there will be an unprecedented global financial crisis. $22 trillion of the American debt is held by the public; $6 trillion is held by foreign governments. Japan holds $1.3 trillion in American debt. China holds $1.1 trillion.  

When the public and the nations buy American debt, they know that they will never get their money back. They treat the amount that they give to America as a “tribute.” The powerful empires always manage to extract tribute. The Roman Empire, the Hun Empire, the Mongol Empire—they used to demand gold and silver from their subjects and foreign governments as tribute. The only reason the foreign governments do not ask the Americans to honor their debt is because they treat these payments as “tribute” and not “debt.” 

The world is unfair. There is one law for America and another law for countries like Haiti. Haiti was founded by plantation slaves who fought for their independence against the colonial power France. They even managed to defeat the army sent by the European strongman Napoleon. Infuriated by the loss of Haiti, the French government insisted that the new republic owed it 150 million Francs for the plantations that had been expropriated from the French owners. 

The French and other European colonial powers were responsible for kidnapping millions of Africans and bringing them to Haiti and other places in the Americas to work as slaves. So many kidnapped slaves had been brought to Haiti that in 1804, when the country won its independence, about 90 percent of its population consisted of former slaves. These slaves were treated with great brutality—they were not given any legal recourse for gaining freedom. 

The sum of $150 million Francs that the French were demanding from Haiti was ten times the amount that the Americans had paid for the Louisiana purchase. The USA supported the French demand. President Jefferson was horrified by the news of slaves fighting for independence and taking control of Haiti. He feared that this kind of slave rebellion could happen in the American colonies. He worked to isolate Haiti diplomatically and politically. American ships collaborated with European ships in placing an embargo on Haiti. 

In July 1825, French King Charles X, sent warships to force Haiti to pay the amount. The American navy supported the French. To save its independence, Haiti’s fledgling government was forced to take a loan at a massive interest from a French bank. In today’s dollars, the Haitians have paid the French close to $30 billion. This was a mafia-type extortion by the French, and their European and American allies. 

Since the USA possesses a mighty military, no nation dares to send warships to American shores for placing an embargo on this country and forcing it to clear its $27 trillion debt. If any other country had borrowed trillions of dollars and wasted it on pointless wars, inflated bureaucracy, and madcap social sector schemes, as the Americans have done, by now its economy would have collapsed. Colonial imperialism came to an end in the 1940s, but financial imperialism through America continues till this day.

There is one way of ending financial imperialism: the gold standard. The biggest roadblock in the way of the gold standard is America. The Americans don’t want the gold standard because paper currency allows them to pile up debt and transfer their inflation to other countries. When there is decline in America’s military power, the world will have a chance to move towards the gold standard.

Western Warfare and Western Trade

“Trade cannot be maintained without war, nor war without trade.” ~ In this line, Jan Pieterszoon Coen, the most ruthless and successful conqueror of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the seventeenth century, has correctly identified the two pillars of Western success in the last 500 years. The two pillars are: warfare and trade. 

Since the fifteenth century, Western trade and warfare have marched together. Without genocides, enslavements, rapes, mass murders, mass evictions, drug smuggling, and destruction of whole societies—orchestrated by the European powers—the West would not have raced ahead of all other civilizations. History of the West in the last 500 years is not just a fairytale of progress; it is also a tale of barbarity and violence.   

The ideals of freedom, equality, and democracy are not the outcome of the Western philosophical tradition. Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, and Smith are not the fountainhead of Western success—ruthless imperialists like Jan Pieterszoon Coen are. Before Thomas Jefferson and other founders could announce their Declaration of Independence in 1776, the land of North America had to be conquered and tamed. Who did that? Answer: The conquistadors, enslavers, and imperialists. 

In their book The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, David Graeber and David Wengrow have convincingly argued that the Europeans learned about the ideals of freedom, equality, and democracy from the colonies that they had conquered. Some of the colonies had a far better political, religious, and industrial culture than most places in Europe. The Industrial Revolution would not have happened in Britain in the eighteenth century if the British had not colonized a significant part of India.

The Age of Imperialism was over by 1950, but America continued to wage wars to preserve Western hegemony. By the 1960s, American troops were stationed in 64 countries. Between 1946 to 2015, the Americans used military force overseas more than 370 times. They were involved in coups to install puppet regimes in many countries. The American wars and coups were not for propagating democracy and free markets; they were for for cheap petroleum and for safeguarding trade interests.

Civilization Versus the Noble Savages

The words “polite,” “politics,” and “police” are derived from the Greek word “polis,” which means city-state. This implies that a polite society stands on two legs: a good political establishment and an efficient law enforcement (policing) system. The Latin equivalent of “polis” is “civitas,” from which the words “civic,” “civility,” and “civilization” are derived. 

The suppression of base instincts and freedoms is a necessary condition for the creation of a powerful society or civilization. The civilized men, those who live in a powerful society, can never be free. They must live within the framework of laws passed by the political establishment and enforced by the system of policing. The bigger or more powerful the society or civilization, the more numerous are the regulations and restrictions, the more efficient is the policing system, and greater are the constraints imposed on the citizens. 

The notion that our ideal of liberty is the product of the “people of the polis,” or the civilized people, would have surprised the Enlightenment thinkers like Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau—they believed that the savages (the noble savages) enjoyed the greatest liberty.

The Spanish and the Treasures of the Americas

It took the Spanish 30 years, after Columbus arrived in the Americas in 1492, to discover the major hoards of gold and silver that the native Americans had accumulated. In 1521, the Spanish looted Tenochtitlan, the great capital city of the Aztec Empire. After that they stormed into Central America and plundered the treasures of the Chibcha of Columbia (this was probably the original El Dorado). In 1530, they arrived in Peru and captured the Inca Empire. When the major centers of population in South America had been plundered, the Spanish turned their attention to North America. 

The gold and silver that the Spanish plundered in the Americas was immediately melted and transformed into ingots, which were easier to transport by ship to Europe. They saved a few of the unusual pieces to provide the Spanish Monarchs with a view of the culture of the Americas. The chroniclers in Europe have written about the giant sun made out of gold, and the gold and silver plants, which had been taken from the garden of the Inca emperor. These and many other artifacts were melted to mint coins after they had been exhibited in front of the Spanish elite. 

The Spanish (and other European powers) took steps to keep the wealth that they were getting from the colonies a secret. But a lot of information can be gleaned from Spain’s financial records of this period. Based on these records, historians have estimated that from 1492 to 1800, between 145,000 to 165,000 tons of silver was shipped. The amount of gold shipped was between 2,739 and 2,846 tons. When the Spanish ran out of rich Indian nations to conquer, they started their mining operations. From 1500 to 1800, the mines in the Americas were providing 70 percent of the world's gold output and 85 percent of silver.

Those were the times when paper money was not introduced—so the financial impact of such massive quantities of gold and silver on the European economy was several times their monetary value. The European powers became flush with wealth which they could spend on creating new infrastructure and on improving their military and naval might.

The Fall of the West and a New Age for Mankind

“High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.” ~ Henry Kissinger in his book White House Years. 

Kissinger’s saying is true not only for individuals but also for nations. When a nation has raced past every other nation in the world, and has become a superpower, it acquires the capacity to take quick decisions on geopolitical issues but it becomes bereft of the capacity to create new intellectual capital. It loses the capacity to learn from past mistakes and its political culture becomes ossified. 

The more powerful the nation, the greater is the decline in its intellectual capabilities. Absolute power not only corrupts absolutely, it dumbs absolutely. 

A few decades as a superpower is enough to make a nation corrupt, insecure, and intellectually feeble. What kind of decisions can we expect from a superpower that is at the zenith of its power? These decisions will be of the calibre of the inept decisions that Emperor Caligula made for the Roman Empire during his reign of four years (16 March 37 – 24 January 41).

After the Second World War in 1945, America became the world’s superpower. In the same period, the country lost its capacity to create intellectual capital. The quality of American decision making has been declining since 1945. America was the architect of the worst political, economic, environmental, and medical disasters which struck the world after 1970. Instead of creating peace and prosperity, America’s decisions have led to new conflicts and tyrannies. 

The biggest nightmare for the Americans is not communism or terrorism. What they truly fear is that some non-Western nation will become more developed than the West. What they are truly after is global power. They intend to maintain Western hegemony perpetually. The foreign policy decisions that America has made after 1970 have led to disastrous outcomes, especially in the non-Western nations.

For the American establishment power is an aphrodisiac. (Kissinger has famously observed, “Power is an aphrodisiac”). While the Americans relish their aphrodisiac, their bad decisions destroy the lives of the folks in poor and developing countries.

Is the Pacifism of Germany and Japan Permanent?

In the first half of the twentieth century, Germany and Japan were the world’s most violent and warlike nations. The Germans wanted to dominate Europe, and the Japanese were intent on dominating Asia. But when they were defeated in the Second World War, they lost their appetite for warfare and became pacific.

Germany was broken into two parts—the Eastern part went under Soviet control and the Western part under American control. While Japan was not broken up, two of its industrial cities (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) were nuked, and other cities were extensively firebombed. After 1960, both nations have made an amazing economic and political recovery. In 1968, Japan became the world’s second largest economy, after the USA—it retained this status till 2010, when China raced ahead to become the second largest economy. The two halves of Germany were united in 1990, and the reunited country became the driver of European politics. Neither of the two nations has so far made an attempt to rekindle their violent and warlike character. They continue to be pacific, preferring to use diplomacy, not military power, to resolve their geopolitical problems. 

The transformation in the national culture of Germany and Japan, after the Second World War, was sudden. Such sudden cultural transformations are generally short-lived. Pacifism might not be as deeply rooted in the German and Japanese mind as it is in the Indian (Hindu) mind that has been exposed to pacifist ideologies and religions (Buddhism, Jainism, and other movements) for more than 3000 years. A violent and warlike nature could be simmering beneath the surface in the German and Japanese societies, and in the 21st century, these two societies could undergo another cultural transformation. They might discard their pacifism and become warlike.

On America's Aspiration to be the World's Professor

In the last two centuries, the American political establishment has taken its ideal of manifest destiny seriously—more seriously than it takes the ideals of democracy, liberty, and free markets. The rulers of America take it for granted that they are the good guys, that theirs is the only indispensable country on earth, and that it is their manifest destiny to be the professor to all of humanity. But this implies that all of humanity should become the obedient students of the American professor. Really?

In Defense of Tribalism

The reputation of a tribal society is abysmally low in our time, primarily because tribalism is believed to be incompatible with the modern capitalist or communist state, where social order is maintained by a big government (the leviathan, in the words of Thomas Hobbes). The large bureaucratic institutions, the crony-capitalist companies, the military and police apparatus, and intellectual institutions (academia and the mainstream media) are part of this big government. Since both capitalism and communism aspire for total power, they have vilified tribalism by spreading false propaganda.

In tribalism, social order and adherence to egalitarian principles is achieved through a very small government. Instead of police and law courts, the tribal elders use moral and religious teachings, and the notion of loyalty to traditions, to persuade their people to behave in an orderly manner. Those who break the tribal norms are punished by a committee of tribal elders. In good tribal societies, justice is swift and exemplary. People in tribal societies (at least, the men) are mostly armed, both men and women understand the tribal way of life, and they are capable of acting to defend themselves and their tribe. The tribal societies can be individualistic without devolving into anarchism and nihilism. When a society discards the tribal way of life, then the alternative is some form of capitalism or communism (ruled by a tyrannical leviathan). 

A good society should have elements of both—tribalism and a constitutional system of governance. In large democracies, every aspect of life does not have to be under the control of a centralized government. When some areas of society are under tribal control, it will ensure that the bureaucratic and intellectual establishments do not become too large, insular, and ossified. Even in matters of foreign policy, the government can be guided by tribal aspirations. There are several areas of social life, in which people can find much better resolution for their problems by coordinating with each other at a tribal level.

The West’s Totalitarian Mission to Promote Capitalism

Why did the capitalist mission (led by America and Britain) to build a democratic and free market utopia in central South America, the Middle East, and Africa fail? 

It failed because the mission was totalitarian—it was a brainchild of the Western political establishment. This establishment calls itself capitalist. They claim that they want to create a democratic and free market paradise. But what they are really after is total control. Their agenda is to create a global geopolitical order which perpetuates Western hegemony. 

The capitalist governments are as totalitarian (especially in the area of foreign policy) as the communist governments.

The masses in capitalist countries are brainwashed by academia and the 24/7 media—they are ignorant, naive, divided, and lacking in political skills. They are incapable of taking united action to force their government to change its foreign policy. The capitalist academia and media are part of the political establishment. They endeavor to keep the attention of the masses focused on irrelevant issues. The important issues are never analyzed and debated. 

The political weakness of the masses, gives the capitalist governments a complete monopoly on power. They have the absolute power to commit all kinds of atrocities anywhere in the world. The irony is that the erstwhile Soviet Union’s foreign policy was more transparent and non-violent than the foreign policy of the so-called bastions of democracy and capitalism, the USA and Britain.

The Four Stages of Capitalism

Capitalism has not made man a better being—it has transformed him into a much more deadly killer and plunderer. The philistines in the ancient age and the middle ages were armed with swords, spears, and clubs. The philistines in our times, thanks to capitalism, are armed with tanks, fighter planes, missiles, and nuclear weapons. 

By bringing the power of technology to the philistines, capitalism has worsened the state of humanity. The capitalists of our time might be dressed in Armani suits, they might have college degrees, they might be capable of sophisticated speech, but at the mental level they are no better than Genghis Khan’s Mongol warriors who smashed into several kingdoms, massacred millions, and conquered the largest land empire in history. 

Looking at the history of North America in the last 500 years, it can be surmised that a capitalist society passes through four stages:

First stage: Dominated by conquistadors, imperialists, warlords, and enslavers.

Second stage: Dominated by demagogues, robber barons, expansionists, technocrats, and conservatives.

Third stage: Dominated by fascists, democrats, liberals, hippies, libertarians, neoconservatives, and multinationals. 

Fourth stage (the final phase which is yet to arrive): Dominated by Crusaders, Nazis, Stalinists, or some new type of totalitarians. 

The number one capitalist country in the last 120 years, the USA, is now on the verge of reaching the fourth or the final stage of capitalism. This country has already lost a lot of its civil liberties and in the next 10 to 25 years, it will be under a tyrannical regime. Try to imagine the kind of destruction that a tyrannical regime can unleash once it gains control over the politics of the USA. 

The military infrastructure that American capitalism has created will fall into the hands of tyrants. In the initial days of the fourth stage, most Americans would not realize that they were living in a tyranny because their intellectuals and  24/7 media would convince them that their government was democratic.

The Problem of Great Art

“Art is what you can get away with.” ~ Andy Warhol (1987)

It is clear from Warhol’s work that he got away with a lot. But getting away with a lot was not his unique achievement; there are other famous artists who have gotten away with a lot. The world hails them as great masters because they could get away with a lot. 

Good art can never be defined. What is good art for one person might be utter thrash to another. Why do people claim that the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci is great art? There is no scientific or mathematical way of proving that the Mona Lisa is great art. A lot of propaganda and marketing has happened in the last 500 years to emblazon on mankind’s collective consciousness the idea that the Mona Lisa is great art. 

If an artist has access to propaganda and marketing, then like Andy Warhol, he can get away with a lot, he can make the world believe that his thrash is a great work of art. Propaganda and marketing, not just creativity, are the fountainhead of great art.

Imperialism, Racism, and the Human Genome

“Imperialists, calling upon Darwinism in defense of the subjugation of weaker races, could point to The Origin of Species, which had referred in its subtitle to The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. Darwin had been talking about pigeons, but the imperialists saw no reason why his theories should not apply to men… Had not Darwin himself written complacently in The Descent of Man of the likelihood that the backward races would disappear before the advance of higher civilizations.” ~ Richard Hofstadter in Social Darwinism in American Thought

Ethnic prejudice could be as old as civilization itself. Most societies of the past have used derogatory labels like “barbarians” and “philistines” to describe people of other ethnicities, but the modern notion of “racism” is of recent origin. The word “racism” appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1910. The idea of racial superiority was developed in the nineteenth century when Europe had colonized a large part of the globe and the European intellectuals were under pressure to come up with a moral justification for the domination of people of other races. 

Can it be true that the Europeans are racially superior? In the areas of politics, warfare, and technology, they were probably superior. I use the past tense “were” because they were not always superior. Their superiority manifested itself from the fifteenth century to 1950. There could be genes which determine performance in politics, warfare, and technology—perhaps the Europeans had evolved a dominant form of those genes. According to geneticists, about 14 percent of the human genome has changed in the last 30,000 years. Many changes in the human genome have happened in the last 5000 years. 

Being superior in the areas of politics, warfare, and technology does not make the Europeans morally, religiously, and intellectually superior. Some of history’s worst wars, massacres, genocides, enslavements, and civil wars have happened in lands that were under European domination. European societies are easily corrupted by wealth and power. Nihilism, anarchism, and utopianism are a much bigger problem in European populations than in Asian populations. Since 1950, European civilizations have been on the decline.

On Capitalism and Communism

Western capitalism must commence with an enormous act of conquest and theft. Those who want to create a capitalist paradise must be prepared to kill or evict those whose land and wealth they plan to steal. The same must be said about communism (and socialism). Both capitalism and communism are extremely violent and tyrannical Western ideologies. They never lead to the creation of liberty and free markets for all classes of people. The contest between capitalism and communism is a myth propagated by the Western ideologues and politicians. The truth is that these two ideologies thrive by feeding on each other. The communists win support by narrating the stories of the capitalist atrocities, while the capitalists win support by narrating the stories of the communist atrocities. Both ideologies must be rejected.

On The Brahmi Script

The Brahmi writing system was being used in the Indian subcontinent in the third century BCE. It was probably created through the efforts of Emperor Ashoka of Mauryan Dynasty who ruled from 268 to 232 BCE. He was the first emperor to rule over almost the entire South Asia—a densely populated area as large as Western Europe, stretching from present-day Afghanistan in the west to Bangladesh in the east, and covering much of central India. He ruled primarily from Pataliputra (in present day Patna), but he had provincial capitals in Taxila (in present day Pakistan) and Ujjain (in Madhya Pradesh). 

Ashoka’s rock edicts, which can be found in modern-day Pakistan and India, were written in Brahmi script. The Brahmi script has influenced the Sanskrit-based languages currently being used in North India, and the four Dravidian languages being used in South India. The languages in Southeast Asia are also influenced by Brahmi. Over the centuries, these languages have evolved and now their connection to a common Brahmi root is not easy to detect. The Brahmi script was deciphered in the 1830s by James Prinsep.

There are a number of theories about the origin of the Brahmi script. Some scholars have suggested that the Brahmi script was developed from the Semitic script via Aramaic. There are other scholars who insist that the Brahmi script comes from Indian sources. Several attempts have been made to connect the Brahmi script with the Indus script, but the connection between the two writing systems is not clear, since the Indus script remains undeciphered. 

The theory that I find plausible is that the Brahmi script was created on Ashoka’s initiative. He commanded his officials to create a writing system based on the existing sources. To fulfill his order, his officials used the system of record keeping then used by Indian merchants to develop the Brahmi script. The sounds in Brahmi script match the sounds of Pali and other popular Indic languages which are founded on Sanskrit. Pali is the language in which Buddha has preached. A number of Ashoka’s rock inscriptions are in Pali.

On Eric Hoffer’s View of Holy Cause

“Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.” ~ Eric Hoffer in The True Believer.

This statement by Eric Hoffer is not logical because he fails to define the term “ourselves.” How do we recognize ourselves? A consciousness cannot focus on itself. The only way a man can become conscious of himself is by becoming conscious of something else. The term “ourselves” does not represent a vacuum—it represents our worldly experiences, including our experiences of the causes that we see as “holy.” 

Who are we? How can we know ourselves without considering the causes that we see as holy. We can’t. A man without faith must be a man without a self. He will be a faceless stranger to himself. Faith in a holy cause is the fountainhead of faith in ourselves.

On the Sintashta-Arkaim Culture

An eastward migration from the Poltavka culture (an outgrowth of the Yamnaya culture) gave rise to the Sintashta-Arkaim culture during the Middle Bronze Age (2100 BCE to 1800 BCE). This culture was located east of the Ural Mountains in the northern steppes. 

The archeological evidence seems to indicate that the Sintashta were highly militaristic—they created extensively fortified settlements, 23 of which have been found. The weapons found on their sites include spearheads, trilobed arrowheads, chisels, and large shaft-hole axes, It is not known why the Sintashta created such fortified settlements which are unusual in the nomadic steppe culture. Against what enemy were they defending their settlements? 

The funerary complexes located outside the Sintashta sites contain the remains of extravagant sacrifices, including whole horses. They also contain the remains of some of the earliest chariots. Some scholars have theorized that there are parallels between the funeral services in the Sintashta sites, and the funeral rituals described in the Rig Veda. They suggest that the Sintashta might be the inventors of the chariots with spoked wheels. 

The word “asva” (horse) occurs in the Rig Veda 792 times, and the word for chariot, “ratha,” is equally numerous. In verse 1.162.22 of the Rig Veda a prayer that accompanies a horse sacrifice is described—the verse says: “May this Steed bring us all-sustaining riches, wealth in good kine, good horses, manly offspring.” 

Did the people who built these strongholds [Sintashta fortifications] invent chariots? Were they the original Aryans, the ancestors of the people who later composed the Rig Veda and the Avesta? These two questions are asked by David W. Anthony in his book The Horse, the Wheel, and Language.

There is a problem with the thesis that seeks to connect the Sintashta with the creators of the Rig Veda: There is not a shred of evidence that the Sintashta spoke an ancient version of Proto-Indo-European which is supposed to have led to the development of Sanskrit and several other languages. We don’t know what the language of the Sintashta was.

The Problem of History: Emic and Etic Perceptions

“History is the memory of states.” ~ Henry Kissinger in A World Restored. Kissinger's words can be taken as a critique of Western historiography—he has divulged that the history written by Western historians is essentially a memory of the Western states. 

History is of two types: Emic and Etic. Emic history gives you the perceptions of the people from within the civilization or social group. Etic history gives you the perceptions of the people from outside the civilization or social group. Since much of world’s history has been written by Western scholars, when you read a book on the history of the West, you generally have an emic perspective (the perceptions of insiders, the Westerners), but when you read a book on the history of Asia, the Americas, and Africa, you generally have an etic perspective (the perceptions of outsiders—the Western view of other civilizations).

The history of the conflicts between the Ancient Greeks and the Persian Empire, comes mostly from the records of the Greek elites. The Persians did not leave self-glorifying records. The Greek elites did that and they have a stranglehold on history. The quality of life was much better in the Persian Empire as compared to the Greek city-states which were plagued with violence and poverty—that is why the Persian Empire was home to more Greeks than the combined population of Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes, and Argos. The Greek city-states had a huge slave population (in Athens and Sparta 75 percent of the people were slaves).

We know little about the people that the Romans (during the Roman Empire) described as barbarians. We have no information on the Hun Empire, even though in the third and fourth centuries, the Huns were a significant empire in Eurasia. We know about the Western view of the Mongol Empire but we know little about the Mongol perspective. When you read the history of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, you are reading how the European imperialists (Columbus, the conquistadors like Hernán Cortés, the Catholic preachers, and the European settlers) viewed the Arawaks, the Aztecs, the Incas, and the Native Indians. 

After reading the books based on the accounts of the Spanish conquerors, people become convinced that when Columbus and the conquistadors arrived, the Americas were a land of philistines, savages, and cannibals. The Western historians do not tell you about how the Arawaks saw Columbus, the Aztecs and Incas saw the conquistadors, and the Native Indians saw the European settlers.   

We know little about the towns and cities that existed in North America before the Spanish, British, and the French arrived. We know little about the culture that existed in Africa before the Dutch and the British arrived. We read the history of the Boer Wars mostly from the perspective of the British and the Dutch—we know little about the view of the Africans in whose land this war was being fought. We know how the British, in the nineteenth century, viewed the Chinese but we know little about how the Chinese viewed the British. When we read the history of India, we read mostly about the perceptions of the British imperialists and their Indian devotees.

History shows the West in good light, not because they have always been the best, but because they have written most of history. In his novel 1984, George Orwell said: "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” As long as the West continues to have a stranglehold on the past (history), it will control the present and the foreseeable future.

The Yamnaya Migrations and Lactose Intolerance

The closest ancestors of modern humans first appeared 200,000 years ago in Africa. It seems that for 97 percent of the period of their existence, the human populations were lactose intolerant— they could not consume dairy products. In Southern Africa lactose intolerance is still fairly high. The country with the highest lactose intolerance is South Korea. In his book The Horse, the Wheel, and Language, David W. Anthony writes: “Recent genetic research on the worldwide distribution of the mutation that created lactose tolerance, which made a dairy-based diet possible, indicates that it probably emerged first in the steppes west of the Ural Mountains between about 4600 and 2800 BCE…”  

This means that the Yamnaya could be the world’s first lactose tolerant population. Historians believe that they spoke a late Proto-Indo-European language which they implanted in the regions where they migrated: Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia. David W. Anthony conjectures that since the cows give more milk than any other herd animal (twice as much as the mares and five times more than goats), the Yamnaya developed the religious practice of revering their cows. In their culture, cows symbolized prosperity and the blessings of the divine. The Yamnaya probably counted their wealth in cows—those of high social status would maintain large herds. The Sintashta and the Andronovo cultures are also identified with the Yamnaya culture. 

One of the implications of this finding is that the religious practice of revering the cow did not originate in South Asia (India) but somewhere in the Central Steppes. In my opinion, the problem with this thesis is that it is based on genetic research that is centered on European populations. The only reason the Yamnaya were intensely investigated by the geneticists is because they had a European connection. The Yamnaya invaded (or migrated) into Europe about 5000 years ago, and they completely replaced Europe’s original population of native hunter-gatherers. Hardly any trace of Europe’s original population, the population before the Yamnaya arrived, can be found. Currently the lactose intolerance level in Europe is between 18 percent to 26 percent.  

The genome of the ancient populations of the non-European populations has not been extensively studied. There could be other ancient populations which became lactose tolerant at the same time or before the Yamnaya did. 

The Yamnaya arrived in India between 2000 and 1600 BC. Their mingling with the natives of North India is believed to be the cause of the higher lactose tolerance in the North Indians vis-à-vis the South Indians. A study shows that lactose intolerance was 27.4 percent in a sample group taken from New Delhi, and it was 66.6 percent in a sample group taken from two South Indian centers at Trivandrum and Pondicherry. In East Indians lactose intolerance is higher—this is because of their mingling with the East Asian populations which are lactose intolerant. These inferences have been developed from the study of samples taken from a few urban centers. The countryside was not a part of the study.

The Funeral of the Western Empire

“Knowledge advances, funeral by funeral.” ~ Paul Samuelson

Samuelson is right. Most intellectuals, especially those who occupy influential positions in universities, research institutions, and think tanks, tend to extreme conservatism. They stick to their theories with the tenacity of bloodsucking leeches sticking to their prey. They use their influence and power to prevent the analysis of new evidence and the acceptance of new theories. Until they die, and a new generation takes over, the advancement of knowledge is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. 

The phenomena of advancement happening funeral by funeral applies to the empires too. It is the fate of all empires to become ossified and decadent—they lose their zeal to conquer, build new infrastructure, conduct scientific research, create new technological marvels, organize new philosophical movements, and create new institutions to transform the global economy and politics. There is decline in their moral values, work ethic, and political and artistic standards. 

When such ossified and decadent empires accumulate too much geopolitical power, they have a pernicious impact on the entire planet—because they use their military and technological might to hinder progress and push humanity deeper into the abyss of tyranny and nihilism. The decline of such empires is generally in the long term interests of mankind, as this clears the space for the rise of new empires which could prove to be more energetic, creative, and innovative. 

I see the West (primarily America and Britain) as an ossified and decadent empire. Since the eighteenth century, the West has been exercising a disproportionate amount of power on global economy and politics. The Western empire started declining after 1930. Between 2030 and 2050, I expect it to fall. Until the West falls, or is radically transformed, there will be no further progress. The funeral of the West will be the biggest event of this century—just as the fall of the Soviet Union was the biggest event of the last. 

The post-Western world will be a new world—I believe, a better world.

Genes, Race and Human History

“Analysis of genomes from around the world establishes that there is indeed a biological reality to race, despite the official statements to the contrary of leading social science organizations.”

“Racism and discrimination are wrong as a matter of principle, not of science. Science is about what is, not what ought to be. Its shifting sands do not support values, so it is foolish to place them there.” 

~ Nicholas Wade in A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History

If you want to accuse someone (or something) of racism, then you should begin with the human genome which is the fountainhead of all races. The difference between the capacities of various races are so clear that only a politically correct intellectual could ignore or evade it. In his book, Nicholas Wade accuses the community of academicians and scientists of suppressing the scientific truth about the significant racial differences among human populations. 

The Ashkenazi Jews have won a disproportionate number of Nobel Prizes (about 100 times the world average). Since 1980, every finalist in the 100-meter race at Olympic games has had a West African ancestry. The Tibetans and Andean highlanders are suited for living at high altitudes. Some populations are lactose tolerant. In some populations there is a high incidence of certain devastating diseases. Some populations have high average IQ. The East Asians score around 105 on IQ tests—this makes them intelligent but intelligence does not imply morality. 

Wade notes that there are three principal races: East Asians (Chinese, Japanese and Koreans), Africans (those living south of the Sahara), and Caucasians (Europeans and the people of the Near East and the Indian subcontinent). The first modern humans appeared 200,000 years ago, and it took them 185,000 years to settle down in different geographically isolated communities. The races that we see today were created in the last 15,000 years through a process of natural selection in the three primary racial groups. 

The most troublesome argument that Wade makes is that “genes and culture interact.” The orthodox academicians prefer to see genes and culture as entirely separate realms. Wade writes: “Each of the major civilizations has developed the institutions appropriate for its circumstances and survival. But these institutions, though heavily imbued with cultural traditions, rest on a bedrock of genetically shaped human behavior.”

This means that economic systems, political institutions, and moral norms are not easy to transfer from one culture to another. “American institutions cannot be successfully implanted in Iraq, for instance, because Iraqis have different social behaviors, including a base in tribalism and a well-founded distrust of central government, just as it would be impossible to import Iraqi tribal politics into the United States.”

We are free to ignore the revelations that genetic science is making but that will not make the differences between the populations vanish. The troublesome truth is that race is not a human invention. The differences between the populations are biological. Biology creates the races and the races create their culture—having said this, I will argue that the differences are not insurmountable. Within populations, some people do well. If some can do well in certain kinds of activities, then why can’t the rest?

There are sections in Wade’s book which are speculative. In his discussion of human behavior, he talks about an “inbuilt sense of morality,” which is not convincing. It is understandable that he has included the speculative sections. Concrete information is not available. The human genome was decoded just eighteen years ago—in 2003. In the next twenty years more information will become available. Overall, Wade has given a fine explanation of the role that genes play in creating the races and driving history.

The Battle for the Rig Veda and Sanskrit

The Europeans are capable of weaponizing anything, even ancient religious texts. In the late eighteenth century, they became aware of the Rig Veda, and within a century they had weaponized several of its concepts and verses. The Rig Veda is the oldest Vedic text—it has been revered as a holy text by the Hindus of South Asia for more than 3500 years. The story of the European weaponization of the concepts and verses of Rig Veda begins in 1783 when Sir William Jones, a British judge in India, decided to learn Sanskrit. 

By 1786, Jones had reached a startling conclusion, which he expressed in a line that is often quoted: 

“The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.” 

Jones concluded that Sanskrit had originated from an ancient parent language (Proto-Indo-European) which gave rise to Greek and Latin. He posited that Persian, Celtic, and German too were linked to the same parent language. His theory of a civilization that spoke an ancient language called Proto-Indo-European led many scholars in Europe and India to ask such questions: Who were the people who spoke this language? Where did they live? Where was the Rig Veda composed? 

Germany was in the middle of an intense Romantic movement in those days—and some German scholars proclaimed that Germany was the home of the ancients who spoke the parent language. 

The Rig Veda talks about the Aryans who are people of divine virtues and great abilities. In Europe, the term “Aryan” was appropriated to refer to the ancient European master race who brought civilization to mankind. In his 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race, American author Madison Grant claimed that the Nordic people (British, Scots, Irish, and German) were the descendants of the original Aryans, and that America was meant to be an Aryan homeland. (This book was a bestseller, and was praised by Hitler.) 

The Europeans associated the term “Aryan” with racial purity even though the Rig Veda does not preach racial purity. Most verses in the Rig Veda are focused on cosmology, history, moral values, and the right ways of performing prayers and sacrifices.

Grant warned against the weakening of the superior American (Aryan) bloodline by interbreeding with inferior races. In the category of inferior races, he included the Jews, Czechs, Poles, and Italians. Some German scholars started arguing that there was a connection between the Rig Veda’s conception of Aryans and Plato’s discussion of Atlantis. They said that the German Aryans were the original inhabitants of the Platonic Atlantis and that they were the original speakers of the ancient language which had given rise to Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and other languages. 

In the 1930s, the Nazis of Germany adopted the Hindu Swastika as a symbol for their movement. But the Swastika has nothing to do with Nazism. It has served as a Hindu symbol for divinity and spirituality since 1000 BC. It is often used in Hindu marriage ceremonies. In the Vedas, there are several references to the word “Swasti”. The Swastika is mentioned in Pāṇini’s Ashtadhyayi and other Hindu texts. The Buddhist and Jain movements have used the Swastika for their religious rituals since ancient times.

On Political Power and Biracial Couplings

The biracial couplings which took place during the age of imperialism were mostly between European men (who were politically powerful) and non-European women (who were often powerless). The Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors coupled with native women and created a new people—the mestizos. The word “mestizo” comes from the Spanish word “mestizaje,” which means miscegenation. 

The most famous biracial coupling of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries was between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, a black slave girl. They began their relationship in 1787, not long after the American constitutional convention, when Jefferson was in France on some political business. There was a thirty-years age difference between them—Jefferson was 44 and Sally was 14. They had six children together. Their relationship was disputed by some scholars but a genetic study conducted in 1998 confirmed a Y-chromosome match between the male-line descendants of Eston Hemings Jefferson (Sally’s youngest son) and the male-line descendants of Jefferson’s paternal uncle. 

Jefferson was a powerful and wealthy man—he was one of the founding fathers of America and later on he became the president. He owned a large plantation in Virginia, a state where 40 percent of the population was enslaved. Sally, being his slave, was dependent on him. In France, slavery was illegal. Sally could have continued to live in France as a free woman. According to their son, Madison Hemings, she agreed to return to America with Jefferson on the condition that their children would eventually be set free. 

Sally was biracial, since she had three European grandparents. She continued to be a slave because, under Virginia law, the status of a slave was maternally inherited. There was a reason why Virginia had this law. Almost all the biracial couplings in America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were between European men and African women. There were hardly any African men uniting with European women. By linking the status of a slave to the maternal line, the state of Virginia was ensuring that power remained in the hands of European men. 

The genetic pattern of the present day African Americans shows that the Jefferson-Sally kind of biracial couplings were common. The contribution of European men in the genetic makeup of the present day African American population is four times higher than the contribution of European women. In the time of slavery, the sex bias would be far greater than this. The civil rights movement, and the cultural transformation and sex revolution after 1960, resulted in an increase in the number of couplings between African men and European women. 

Throughout the history of mankind, men in positions of power have spread their seed on women from weaker sections of society. A 2003 study on the places where the Mongols had ruled shows that a significant part of the population had descended from one ancestor: Genghis Khan. Between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Genghis Khan and his descendants had conquered the largest contiguous land empire in history. The powerful men of the past have left an extraordinary impact on the subsequent populations.

On Reagan’s Naive War on Communism

"I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written." ~ Ronald Reagan. This is such a naive statement. 

Communism is not a sad, bizarre chapter of human history, as he asserts—it is the foundational doctrine of the Western civilization. He and Margaret Thatcher tried to make the case that communism was a Russian phenomena, and that once the Soviet Union was defeated, communism would vanish. They failed to remind their people that communism was a Western ideology—conceived and propagated between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries by white intellectuals and politicians in England, Germany, France, and America.

In the time of Reagan, communist doctrine was thriving in the American government, universities, media, entertainment industry, and big businesses. It was thriving on a much higher scale in Western Europe. There is some truth in the statement which the communist intellectuals, who feel frustrated by the fall of the Soviet Union, often make:  “The Soviet Union was not real socialism.” Western liberty and capitalism are a myth—in 1991, when the Soviet Union was dying, “real socialism” was thriving in the USA and Western Europe.  

If Reagan and Thatcher were serious about fighting communism, they would have done something to reform the intellectual, financial, and political establishments in their own nations. They did nothing of that sort. Being conservatives they found it easier to put the blame on outsiders—the Asians, in this case. It is hard for the Western conservatives to introspect and examine the flaws in their own character, history, and culture. They prefer to blame the outsiders for every woe that bedevils their society.  

To defeat the Soviet Union, Reagan’s government trained, financed, and armed the religious fundamentalist forces in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, North Africa, and South Asia. America’s flawed “war on communism” was the progenitor of America’s equally flawed “war on terror” which is still raging in several parts of Asia, Europe, and Africa. Reagan destabilized South America by authorizing the intervention in Nicaragua and other South American countries (in the name of stopping communism and the war on drugs).

The irony is that 42 years after Reagan’s presidency, communism continues to be the world’s most powerful ideology and political movement, while America is a spent force—some analysts say that the “last pages of the American Empire even now are being written.” In the twenty-first century, America represents the last stand of the Western civilization, which has dominated the world since the sixteenth century.

Is Man the Highest Product of Evolution?

The Darwinian theory posits that man is the highest product of evolution—that man is the last of the great species to emerge. But it is not necessary that the highest product should come at the end of a process. A glitch in the process of evolution could have led to a steep downfall in the quality of the creatures being produced by the process of evolution. What if the highest product of evolution was created tens of thousands of years or even millions of years ago? We might not be the last of the great species. The best outcome of earthly evolution might be lost in the mists of prehistory, and we might never discover the truth about the creatures that were smarter than us.

On The Yamnaya Migrations

The Yamnaya civilization emerged five thousand years ago (around 3300 BC) in the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester, and Ural rivers (the Pontic steppes). In his book Who We Are and How We Got Here, David Reich says that the Maikop culture or the people who preceded them made a genetic contribution to the Yamnaya population. Maikop technology of horse-drawn wheeled carts, and their way of raising mounds of earth and stone over graves, known as Krugans, was passed on to the Yamnaya. 

The Yamnaya spoke a late Proto-Indo-European language. About 46 percent of the world’s population (3.2 billion people) speaks an Indo-European language as their first language. They could be biologically related to the Yamnaya. There are striking parallels between the Yamnaya and Europe’s Corded Ware culture—both could have descended from genetically similar pre-Yamnaya populations. The presence of Corded Ware culture is seen as evidence of the Westward expansion of the Yamnaya.

In his book The Horse, the Wheel, and Language, David W. Anthony says that Yamnaya were more efficient in managing their resources than their predecessors, the Maikop culture and others, and they replaced the population of any area that they came to dominate. Genetic studies show that the Yamnaya started dominating Europe in 3000 BC, and their descendants reached South Asia in a thousand years (between 2000 to 1800 BC). They transformed the demography of Europe and several parts of Asia.

Britain is separated from the rest of Europe by the English Channel, but the Yamnaya found a way of moving into the British Isles. 90% of the people who built the Stonehenge no longer exist. They were replaced by people who have Yamnaya ancestry.

Genetic studies show that the present day population in North India has a connection with the Yamnaya. The period between 2000 and 1800 BC, when the Yamnaya are believed to have arrived in North India coincides with the fall of the Harappa Civilization. Some historians have suggested that the Yamnaya were responsible for the fall of the Harappa Civilization but there is no evidence to back this claim. The Harappans were not a warlike people. Historian Gordon Childe found the Harappa civilization to be unique in its lack of attention to weapons of war. 

The ruins of Harappan towns and cities show no sign of external attack. Most buildings are well-preserved and seem to have been abandoned. For some reason, the Harappans left their homes and migrated to other parts of India. Disease, environmental factors, and sudden decline in trade (due to the fall of the Mesopotamian civilization) could have something to do with the fall of the Harappa civilization. 

It is often suggested that the branch of Yamnaya civilization which arrived in North India spoke Vedic Sanskrit and they could be the primary creators of several ancient Hindu texts (particularly the early Vedic texts). After 1800 BC, Vedic Sanskrit started taking root in North India. Some scholars have posited that the present day Tamil language has some similarities to the Harappa script. If this is true, then it is possible that as the Yamnaya dominance solidified in North India, the Harappans migrated to the South.

The Harappans were acquainted with horses and chariots but the Yamnaya could have played a major role in popularizing the use of horse-drawn wheeled chariots for transportation and warfare. The Harappa script has not been deciphered, and there is a lot of controversy about Harappan religion and politics. We don’t know if there is any connection between Yamnaya and Harappan religious and political thinking. The word “Yamnaya” means related to pits (or graves) in Russian, but in Sanskrit, it points towards “Yama,” the Hindu god of Death and Justice.

From Civilization to Barbarism

“I want to know what were the steps by which men passed from barbarism to civilization.” ~ Voltaire 

I want to know the exact opposite—I want to know what were the steps by which men passed from civilization to barbarism. Barbarism is the fountainhead of civilization. The barbarians were the founders of all the past and present civilizations. Unless you understand barbarism, you will not understand civilization.

The Myth of Democracy and Capitalism

Democracy and capitalism are the trappings or “packaging” of the exercise of political power; they cannot be the fountainhead of liberty, free markets, and good life. A nation can be democratic and yet be a brutish and extremely poor slave society—example, Ancient Athens. A nation can be capitalist but its economy might be in the control of oligarchs and crony capitalists—example, Mussolini’s fascist Italy. The history of the twentieth century tells us that the democratic and capitalist nations are as tyrannical, corrupt, and warlike as the nations which shun democracy and capitalism. It is a myth that a nation makes economic progress when it is democratic and capitalist. When the West became the world’s dominant power (between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries) it was being ruled by very tyrannical monarchs and warlords. After 1980, China became the world’s largest economy despite being a fascist state.

The Rediscovery of Neanderthals

The first Neanderthal remains were discovered in Belgium in 1829. But the recognition of Neanderthals as ancient hominid creatures happened after the discovery of remains in Germany’s Neander Valley in 1856. During the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, researchers depicted Neanderthals as cannibalistic unintelligent brutes. Such views of Neanderthals became popular during the age of imperialism, because then the Europeans tended to demonize all non-European cultures. 

In his Views and Reviews essay, Sir Harry Johnston, the British explorer, botanist, and colonial administrator, wrote: “The dim racial remembrance of such gorilla-like monsters, with cunning brains, shambling gait, hairy bodies, strong teeth, and possibly cannibalistic tendencies, may be the germ of the ogre in folklore…” Till this day we know very little about the brains, bodies, and food habits of Neanderthals, but Harry Johnston could decide, by virtue of his imperialistic mindset, that they were gorilla-like, cunning, and cannibalistic. 

Johnston and other European researchers demonized Neanderthals just as Columbus had demonized the native population of the Caribbean islands, and the conquistadors had demonized the Aztecs and the Incas. In a letter to the Monarchs of Spain, Columbus had described the cannibals of the Caribbean islands thusly: “there were men with one eye, and others with dogs’ noses, who ate men, and that when they took a man, they cut off his head and drank his blood and castrated him.” 

In the 1940s, when imperialism came to an end, and the non-European cultures started asserting their political, cultural, and moral values, some scientists and writers began to take a new look at the neanderthals. Rejecting the biased approach of scholars like Harry Johnston, they started looking at Neanderthals as people. 

In his 1955 novel, The Inheritors, William Golding does not accept the idea that Neanderthals were unredeemed brutes. He intuits their spirituality and humaneness. He gives them the marvelous capacity of telepathy, which enables them to convey their thoughts without pictures and words, even though they possess a basic language. Their sense of smell is so sharp that they can analyze an environment with their noses. Their feet can read the vibrations in the ground. They do not create, which is their limitation. They take whatever nature provides them. 

Golding portrays the last surviving band of neanderthals as meek, intelligent, and compassionate people who were wiped out by the barbaric Homo Sapiens. When there was a clash of civilizations, the meek did not inherit the earth, they were killed.

In the 1990s, Neanderthal DNA was isolated and analyzed, and it became clear that most groups of human beings have up to 2 percent Neanderthal DNA. To explain the presence of Neanderthal DNA in humans, researchers have come up with the theory that between 50,000 to 40,000 years ago, primitive humans had mated with Neanderthals. Mating does not happen without exchange of culture. We have inherited not just Neanderthal DNA but also Neanderthal culture. That is why Golding calls his novel The Inheritors.

Thomas Sowell: Defender of Slavery and Imperialism

“Thus slavery has been depicted as if it were a peculiarity of white people against black people in the United States, or in Western societies. No one dreams of demanding reparations from North Africans for all the Europeans brought there as slaves by Barbary Coast pirates, even though these European slaves greatly outnumbered the African slaves brought to the United States and to the thirteen colonies from which it was formed.” ~ writes Thomas Sowell in Chapter 9 of his book Intellectuals and Society. 

Sowell has a polemical style and he is good at coining quotable sentences. Most of his books are bestsellers. His articles are widely read. But he is not a serious historian. In his books and articles, he often inserts blatant exaggerations, outright falsehoods, and biased analysis, which have nothing to do with real history but are intended to make his readers (most of whom are American conservatives) feel good about their culture and history. No serious historian would believe that the Europeans enslaved by the Barbary Coast pirates outnumbered the African slaves brought to the thirteen colonies of America. 

The Barbary Coast pirates were operating in densely populated areas where farming was traditionally done by local farmers. They did not need hundreds of thousands of slaves, since they were not in the business of building industrial-scale plantations in sparsely populated lands like the Americas and Australia. Most importantly, more than a million Europeans in the lands of the Barbary Coast pirates would be hard to control—they would have rebelled like Spartacus. The Barbary Coast pirates never developed the systems of crushing the spirit and mind of their slaves like the Western slavers did. 

In the notes section of his book, Sowell reveals that he is making the claim regarding European slaves on the basis of Robert C. Davis’s book, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters. Davis is the only historian who has claimed that the Barbary pirates had captured and sold between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans. These figures have been strongly disputed by other historians. In his two books, The Corsairs of Malta and Barbary and The Pirate Wars, David Earle says that Davis’s figures are a “gross exaggeration.” Earle also notes that the ringleaders of the Barbary pirates were Europeans: John Ward and Zymen Danseker, Hayreddin Barbarossa and Oruç Reis. 

In the same chapter, Sowell comes up with an outrageous defense of Western imperialism. He tries to make the case that Western imperialism was not too bad since most great civilizations had conquered other territories in the past. Here’s an excerpt: “it is impossible to read much of the history of the world, ancient or modern, without encountering the bloody trail of conquerors and the sufferings they inflicted on the conquered. Like slavery, imperialism encompassed every branch of the human race, both as conquerors and conquered. It was an evil that was never localized…” He adds that the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs were tyrannical empires. 

Sowell does not stand for liberty and free markets. He is a defender of Western slavery and Western imperialism. He is a conservative polemicist.

A J Ayer’s Near Death Experience

A year before A J Ayer (1910-1989) died of pneumonia, he choked on a piece of salmon, lost consciousness, and in a technical sense died. For four minutes his heart had stopped until he was revived. Within a day, he had recovered sufficiently to chat about his near death experience. 

He claimed that he saw a bright light which he believed was created by the government of the universe. He could not see the ministers who were in charge of the light but at a distance, he could see the ministers who were in charge of time. Ayer was instantly struck by the thought that Albert Einstein had theorized that space and time were the same. So he tried to attract the attention of the ministers of time by walking up and down and waving his watch and chain. His failure to attract the attention of the ministers of time made him feel desperate but before he could make other efforts, he regained consciousness. 

Ayer, a lifelong atheist, was shaken by the near death experience as it provided a "rather strong evidence that death does not put an end to consciousness.”