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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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