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How Islam Saved Western Civilization — Transcript

by Dr. Roy Casagranda · 20,137 words · 3,070 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:02[Music]
0:03to start I I actually want to start by
0:07uh admitting something which is so the
0:09title of this talk is how Islam saved
0:11Western
0:13Civilization for the record I believe
0:16that that is a totally accurate
0:18statement there's nothing I didn't this
0:21isn't an attempt to back away from that
0:24title at all the thing I want to admit
0:26is the title of this talk is how Islam
0:29saved Western Civilization I have nested
0:32a contradiction in the title that I'm
0:35going to show you later on purpose
0:39because I like to do things like that I
0:42I it's just my nature so I just want you
0:44to know I'm admitting this right off the
0:46start
0:48um so to start this thing off though I
0:51also want to admit something else which
0:53is that I picked the title because
0:55there's a book that kind of inspired me
0:58but the book is deeply flawed and the
1:01book is how the Irish saved civilization
1:05I got the book I I want to say like 22
1:08years ago and I I hate doing this
1:12because I feel like it feels like I'm
1:13picking on somebody but the book is
1:16deeply flawed it's riddled with two
1:19contradictions in fact and the reason
1:22I'm bringing this up is because those
1:23are some of the contradictions I want to
1:25tease out in this talk so here's the
1:27premise of the book on September 4 476
1:31ad the Roman Empire collapsed it was a
1:34very sad day there was much
1:37lamenting and then the Irish saved
1:40civilization because the Irish had
1:42already converted to Christianity and
1:44Christianity of course is the core of
1:46civilization and so the Irish went to
1:49Europe and converted those awful Pagan
1:51Germanic tribesmen to Christianity and
1:55saved civilization in the
1:58process that's
2:00wrong on multiple levels the first and
2:03most obvious level is Rome didn't fall
2:06on September 4476 ad so if the whole
2:09idea is that the Irish Sav civilization
2:11from collapse but it didn't collapse
2:14then were the premise is already shot
2:16out of the water we're already in
2:18trouble Rome fell May 29
2:211453 it's almost a th000 years later
2:25this is a this isn't a small error this
2:27is a gigantic error so that's one
2:31problem another problem with the primis
2:33is the following most of the Germanic
2:35tribesmen were Christian so if the Irish
2:38were converting them to Christianity
2:40that's
2:42odd it's like when President William
2:44McKinley said we're Conquering the
2:46Philippines to make it Christian and
2:48there you know like 80% of the Filipino
2:50population went were were
2:53catholic of course what McKinley meant
2:55was to make them Protestant but anyway
2:57that's a different story we're just
2:59going to Genesis sign 800,000 of these
3:01folks and hopefully flipped them over to
3:03protestantism didn't
3:05work um
3:08so this cont the second contradiction
3:11that they were going to convert the
3:12jeremic tribesman into Christianity is
3:14actually shockingly similar to the
3:17McKinley thing I just brought up not all
3:20of the Germanic tribesmen had converted
3:22some of them were still Pagan but the
3:24ones that that had converted were the
3:27wrong kind of Christian that's what he
3:32really
3:33means in 325 ad emperor
3:37Constantine decided that Christianity
3:41was too unwieldy of a religion it it was
3:44it was too complicated too mysterious
3:47there were too many moving parts and it
3:49needed to be toned down a little bit in
3:52part to get rid of some of the
3:53contradictions like for example the
3:55Trinity it was driving everybody nuts
3:58right how does this work he's what and
4:00and so Constantine said I want 318 of
4:04you theologians to go to
4:06NAA and figure out how to make
4:09Christianity into something a little bit
4:11more manageable because if Rome Rome had
4:14already majority was already majority
4:16Christian at that point if if the Roman
4:19Empire is going to use Christianity as
4:21the state religion to manipulate people
4:24we we as the politician class need to be
4:26able to know what Christianity is how
4:29can we ulate people through religion if
4:31we don't understand the
4:33religion so they get together at NAA
4:37they they they come up with a solution
4:38for the Trinity there were 30 gospels
4:41they threw 26 away they ordered them
4:44destroyed it didn't quite work uh we
4:48have the other 26 um most of them were
4:51found in Egypt by a by a farmer who was
4:54in the desert digging out phosphorus and
4:57he hit a jar with his with his shovel
5:00and he heard it crack and he pulled the
5:03jar out and he saw these leatherbound
5:05books I think I want to say it was 46 47
5:08and he pulls out the leather bomb books
5:09and he's like I don't know what these
5:11are but I know who will know and he went
5:13to the he was Muslim he went to the
5:15nearby Church the Coptic Orthodox church
5:19and he handed them to the priest and the
5:21priest went oh I know what these are
5:24these are the 26
5:26Apocrypha and the church then
5:28immediately declared it a miracle that
5:30somehow the 26 Apocrypha had survived
5:33and the Coptic Church claims that all 30
5:36gospels are legit and rejects the
5:39rejection of the 26 Apocrypha Apocrypha
5:42means wrong right so it rejects the
5:45wrong the Declaration that they're
5:50wrong at
5:52NAA the 318 also had a conversation
5:55about one other problem and the problem
5:59was
6:00how to understand Christ's
6:04nature on Earth if he was God then how
6:10did he manage sin for
6:12example there was a guy named Aras of
6:15Alexandria he was actually from Karan
6:18long story he was living in
6:21Alexandria that's why he made his
6:24career um Aras of Alexandria went here's
6:27my suggestion Jesus was God pure God
6:31total God as a result he was never
6:33tempted done no
6:35sin but the majority said no that's
6:39wrong Jesus was God in a man's body the
6:43body was
6:45tempted
6:46therefore he did experience what it
6:49would be like to be tempted but because
6:51he was God he overcame it and there was
6:52no sin that became Orthodox
6:57Doctrine the other part became heresy
7:00it's known as the Aryan heresy Aryan
7:02with an i not a y i is Aras of of
7:07Alexandria why is the the horse people
7:10who conquered India to
7:13Ireland
7:15so um that's the area in heresy it took
7:19off in Egypt it took off in
7:22Syria and the Germanic tribesman really
7:25liked it so that's what's being
7:29converted they're being taken away from
7:32the Aryan heresy into what we we would
7:35have considered mainstream Christianity
7:36of course in the United States the
7:38average American Christian is an Aran
7:39heretic I can prove it to you there is a
7:43Greek guy who wrote a book called The
7:45Last Temptation Of Christ his name was
7:47Nikos kazin sakis The Last Temptation Of
7:50Christ is Orthodox Christian belief
7:54Christ was tempted as a man but overcame
7:56it because he was God
8:00Americans went nuts when scorsi turned
8:03this into a movie The French also went
8:06nuts they actually set a historical
8:08movie theater on fire while people were
8:11in it because they couldn't believe that
8:14a movie that could be this heretical
8:16could be made when the reality was they
8:19were the Heretics that was that was the
8:22church's official
8:23[Laughter]
8:26belief only one that thinks that's
8:28hilarious all right
8:30fine these are the types of
8:32contradictions I want to
8:34tackle right this the assumptions that
8:37we go into these conversations with like
8:40oh the Germanic tribesmen are pagans and
8:43oh right and and the reality is is it's
8:45way more complicated so to do that I
8:48want to start with a definition of
8:49Western
8:51Civilization I've covered this before in
8:53other lectures but I have to treat every
8:55lecture like a standalone so if you've
8:57heard me before forgive me for any
8:59redundancy I will try not to focus too
9:02much on this particular definition just
9:03because I've covered it in other
9:05lectures but but I still need to do this
9:08so if you take a college level course
9:13intro to Western
9:14civilization and for the record uh I'm a
9:17political scientist but uh history is
9:21obviously a thing of mine and I did
9:23teach for a few years with the
9:25University of Maryland uh University
9:28College and I did teach their intro to a
9:31western civilization class so I'm also
9:33te telling you this as a person as a
9:37recovering uh intro to civilization
9:40Professor usually every school is
9:43probably a little bit different because
9:44it depends on the textbook in the
9:45professor but usually the class starts
9:49in 5,400 BC sorry 3,400 BC or if you're
9:54like me and you reject BC because it's
9:57confusing 5,400 years
10:00ago and
10:02then um the class usually goes it
10:06depends again on the text and the
10:08professor but it usually goes to
10:101648 with the end of the 30 Years War
10:13which didn't end in 1648 and lasted
10:16about 50 years just for the record just
10:19so just to make things not work and then
10:23intro to Western Civ 2 usually starts in
10:251648 and goes to the
10:28present which I've always thought was
10:30remarkable because it shows our bias for
10:32the Contemporary period because we're
10:35going to take 5,000 years of
10:38History 5,400 years ago to 400 years ago
10:43and we're going to compress that into 16
10:45weeks and then we're going to do three
10:46and a half centuries in in 16
10:49weeks it seems like an unfair
10:52distribution we're literally giving the
10:54recent centuries 17 times the attention
10:57that we gave the old centuy
11:01but okay set that aside for a moment
11:04odds are good that your professor will
11:07start this class with maybe one maybe
11:11two but probably one lecture on
11:14Mesopotamia and Sumer and the and the
11:17beginning of
11:19writing and then maybe the second
11:21lecture will briefly cover
11:23Egypt and then from there your professor
11:26is going to probably go on and spend a
11:28huge amount of time on the Greeks an
11:31enormous amount of time on the Romans
11:33and then the middle middle ages kick in
11:36maybe a lecture on the Middle Ages they
11:38lasted a thousand years maybe it gets a
11:40lecture and then there'll be a lecture
11:43or two at the end of the class because
11:46the Italians go hey I have an idea let's
11:48do the Renaissance and that's a really
11:50exciting time period and then the class
11:52ends with the start with the completion
11:55of the 30 Years War when Protestants and
11:58Catholics Slaughter each other Wholesale
11:59in
12:00Europe um the 30 years war is one of my
12:03favorite Wars because Spain and Sweden
12:06fight each
12:07other you know what I mean they just you
12:10almost don't need to know anything else
12:11about the war that they fought three
12:14battles in Germany the Spanish Army and
12:18the Swedish army met in Germany and they
12:21they beat the crap out of each other uh
12:23for the
12:24record the swedes while they were in
12:26Germany plundered it so did the Spanish
12:28of course
12:30you're in Germany come on first going to
12:32plunder and they stole a bunch of stuff
12:33from the city of wburg and they took it
12:35back to Sweden and a bunch of that ended
12:37up in museums and the City of wburg a
12:40few years ago sued Sweden to get their
12:42stuff back from
12:441648 and the European Union went no
12:46sorry too bad you lost it I thought wow
12:51why you ask well because if Stockholm
12:56had to return to wburg it's plundered
12:58good
12:59then Berlin and London would have to
13:02return to Egypt and Iraq it's plundered
13:05Goods that would have been a
13:08catastrophic event for museums in Europe
13:12right um one of my favorite museums on
13:14the planet is the pergam and Museum it's
13:16in Berlin uh if you if you love anything
13:20to do with the Middle East it is amazing
13:22you have to go to the pergamin in ban
13:25they have a whole greek temple that the
13:28Germans took out of turkey Stone by
13:31Stone they have uh the gates of
13:34Babylon that they took out of Iraq Stone
13:37by Stone and they erected erected it
13:40inside a building specifically
13:43constructed to have these two marbles
13:46inside them and in a way I'm grateful
13:49because you can go see it they're intact
13:52they're preserved in a way I'm horrified
13:55because these weren't German National
13:58Treasures I have actually been to the
14:00Temple of pergamin that's in Berlin in
14:03Turkey I've been to pergamin and there's
14:06like the you know where it is she like
14:08wow so I've been to both I've seen where
14:10it's supposed to be and I've seen where
14:11it
14:14is the reason why I'm bringing up the
14:18class is because nested in it is a
14:21really interesting admission and then a
14:24massive
14:26Omission the admission
14:29is that Western Civilization started on
14:31the banks of the Euphrates the Tigris
14:33and the Nile and then they're never
14:36talked about
14:38again that's it cover it for a week and
14:41then in the next 31 weeks we're going to
14:45talk about how amazing European
14:46civilization really
14:48was now obviously European
14:51civilization's amazing I mean I'm after
14:53all speaking a European language in
14:55North America you don't get here and
14:58conquer two whole continents with at
15:00least not having a really strong
15:03propensity to violence you know what I
15:05mean there has to be something there it
15:07didn't just
15:09happen I'm I'm 0% Native American 23 and
15:14me broke my heart I was really hoping
15:16I'd be like I could have my little
15:17Dances with Wolves
15:19fantasy just no
15:23so you know here we are shame um
15:31so there it's not to reject that there
15:33doesn't need to be a story about Europe
15:35it's to wonder about the question wait a
15:39minute you started in Sumer now I
15:41wouldn't have started in Sumer for a
15:43different reason I'm a political
15:45scientist I'm not a historian historians
15:47start in Sumer because 5,400 years ago
15:50is when they mostly agree there's a
15:53little bit of disagreement that that's
15:55when writing started what a historian is
15:58they're different from a political
15:59scientist a historian believes that
16:02Civilization starts with writing because
16:04a historian is a literary critic who
16:06does
16:08nonfiction the difference between a
16:10historian and an English major is
16:12English Majors do fiction historians do
16:14non-fiction so if there isn't something
16:17written there's nothing for historians
16:19to talk
16:20about I on the other hand don't care
16:22about that the only thing I care about
16:24is
16:25politics so I think government start
16:28start S I I think government starts
16:31civilization not writing in
16:35fact why did writing happen in the first
16:39place what happened was bureaucrats were
16:41trying to figure out how to keep track
16:43of how many cows they had how much wheat
16:45they had stored in the greeneries how
16:47many swords they had how many horses
16:50they had and they went the politician
16:53class went to the bureaucrats and said
16:55you need to come up with some mechanism
16:57to keep track of all of this
16:59and so the bureaucrats began coming up
17:01with symbol sets for numbers and for
17:04items and over time those symbol sets
17:07evolved into writing in other words
17:10government had to come
17:13first the year is
17:186,264 according to the ancient Egyptian
17:23calendar at some point an ancient
17:26Egyptian politician said you know what
17:29sucks that the farmers don't know what
17:31day to plant their crop every year if we
17:34made a calendar and kept track of when
17:36spring started that would really make
17:38our lives easier in other words even the
17:41Advent of the calendar isn't the start
17:43of civilization there was a government
17:45before
17:47that by the way just for the record the
17:50Egyptian calendar doesn't have leap
17:52years in it so it's off by
17:540.24 years it's actually 0.23 39 I think
18:00so in other words you need to do a leap
18:02year every four years but every hundred
18:05years you need to skip leap year but
18:07every thousand years you need to go
18:09ahead and do the leap year you would
18:10have normally skipped so in the year
18:132000 we were supposed to skip that leap
18:15year but we weren't because it was the
18:17Thousand-Year point so that was the
18:19that's why we went ahead and did it
18:21anyway really complicated but a lot of
18:24fun the ancient Egyptians because they
18:26don't have that they're calendar is so
18:29old they're off by 4
18:32years in other words a way to think of
18:34it is the first day of spring has
18:36rotated through every single day of
18:38their calendar four
18:42times so it's really the year 6000
18:45260 not
18:4764 I'm bringing that up because what
18:50that meant then was Farmers every four
18:52years had to actually move the date one
18:54day right because the start of spring
18:57and Egyptians were like people can keep
18:59track of that let's just move on this
19:01calendar will be too too wonky
19:03complicated
19:04otherwise Egypt probably created
19:07government about
19:086,500 years ago so civilization in Egypt
19:12is probably about 6,500 years old we
19:15think that the Sumerians probably
19:18started government a couple of centuries
19:20later so the Sumerians beat Egypt to
19:22writing but the Egyptians beat the
19:24Sumerians to government and the two of
19:26them were always really close to each
19:28other when Whenever there was a
19:29development so it just kept whoever was
19:31first the other guy was second Sumer in
19:33Egypt they just kept flipping back and
19:35forth in
19:38developments so another way to look at
19:40this is Egypt was conquered by the
19:42Romans in 31 BC this is a pretty
19:45catastrophic event for Egypt at every
19:48level in part because the Romans were
19:51rough to give you an idea what I mean by
19:53the Romans were
19:54rough when guas ulius Kaiser the guy
19:58incorrectly call Julius Caesar uh his
20:01first name was gas his last name was
20:03Julius his name that con that modified
20:06his last name was Kaiser uh yeah gas
20:11Julius Kaiser Julius is his his actual
20:13last name what what type of ulius was he
20:16he was a Kaiser ulius that that's how
20:19his name actually worked but anyway so
20:21the guy that you guys incorrectly called
20:22Julius
20:23Caesar um when he conquered Gaul today
20:27France
20:29he killed 1 million of the Celtic
20:34population living in Gul now you go how
20:37bad was that exactly there were 3
20:39million Gs he murdered onethird of the
20:43population he enslaved another
20:47million and then he turned and looked at
20:49the remaining million and went welcome
20:51to the Roman Empire oh sorry
20:55Republic CU they hadn't quite yet made
20:58it an Empire
20:59Empire right that that was the Roman way
21:02now the Romans varied in how cruel they
21:05were so when they got to DEA they killed
21:08and enslaved everybody in fact they were
21:11so thorough about destroying DEA you
21:14don't know where DEA is it's effectively
21:17been erased from history I'll tell you
21:21where it is it's
21:24Romania as in the Romans erased it from
21:28existence and then named it after
21:30themselves and it still holds the new
21:34name when the Romans conquered Egypt
21:36they wanted to crush the Egyptian
21:39population so they did things like they
21:41banned Egyptians from owning land they
21:43banned Egyptians from riding horses they
21:46banned Egyptians from doing anything but
21:48wearing the color blue Egyptians had to
21:51always wear
21:54blue and the Romans did this because
21:56they knew that the Egyptian population
21:58was going to be complicated to rule over
22:00and
22:01then they were right the Egyptians kept
22:03rebelling so the Romans kept massacring
22:06them by mass crucifixions they were
22:10Romans loved crucifixions and they would
22:12just crucify whole segments of the
22:14Egyptian population and then say look
22:16this is going to happen to you if you
22:17keep rebelling and of course the
22:19Egyptians just kept
22:21rebelling so if we decide that Egyptian
22:24civilization stopped abruptly in 31 BC
22:26I'm happy to do that for a purpose of
22:29this
22:30conversation then by the time it got to
22:3231 BC Egypt's civilization was 4,000
22:35years
22:36old another way to think of
22:39this is when Alexander the Great
22:43conquered
22:44Egypt and went to the
22:46pyramids for the first time and gazed
22:50upon the
22:51pyramids the Giza Pyramids which were
22:54not the oldest pyramids right the Sakara
22:56pyramids are the oldest pyramids the
22:57Giza Pyramids are 200 years younger the
23:00Giza Pyramids were 2,300 years old for
23:04him so when he was looking at the
23:06pyramids he was going I can't believe
23:09this is 23 centuries old that's so
23:12insanely
23:14ancient he was 23 centuries
23:18ago he we are as far from Alexander the
23:21Great as the pyramids were from
23:26him just to give you a little sense of
23:28this in other words one lecture on Egypt
23:33seems probably
23:35inappropriate one lecture on Mesopotamia
23:38probably seems like a little too much if
23:40you're admitting that's the founding of
23:42your civilization that's a really
23:43strange thing you could do this as an
23:46exercise try to figure out your favorite
23:48musical instruments all of them and then
23:51look at who invented them about 85 90%
23:55of the musical instruments on the planet
23:57today were invented by the ancient
23:59Egyptians so if you're into music like
24:01how can you ignore
24:03that the rest were invented by Persians
24:06although the Mesopotamians invented the
24:09bagpipe do you want me to say that again
24:11it wasn't the Cs when the Cs were
24:13migrating through Mesopotamia they heard
24:16the bagpipe and they went oh that is a
24:18nice sound they grabbed it and took it
24:21across North Africa and then invaded
24:24Europe one time I had a CD with bagpipe
24:28music I plugged it into my car I had a
24:31Irish friend Connor and he was in the
24:34car with me and I said listen to this
24:37and he's he's like this is really
24:40strange bagpipe music and I'm like do
24:42you like does it feel like Ireland he
24:46goes yeah a little bit it was tanisian
24:48bagpipe music because the tunisians
24:50still play the bagpipe because it never
24:53went
24:54away right so there are exceptions
25:00but here's another way of thinking of
25:01this this strangeness of the way the
25:04course is
25:05taught it's the equivalent of doing this
25:09having a course on English
25:12civilization and then you're going to
25:14make it a 32- we course because you're
25:15going to have a part one and a part two
25:18and of course uh English civilization if
25:21you if you take the moment that the
25:23anglos and the and the Utes and the zax
25:25are invading invading Britain
25:29we're talking about a400 year old
25:31civilization the point where the angles
25:33take over is not 1100 years ago so I
25:36don't know do you want to do the point
25:37where they invaded or the point where
25:38they conquered I pick one go with it and
25:42then what you do is you cover the first
25:44part of English History all the way to
25:471776 in the first
25:49course and then in the second course you
25:52just actually no you wouldn't even cover
25:54it in the first you would you would do
25:56English history in the first course like
25:58the first maybe two weeks and then the
26:02rest of the course you just talk about
26:03the United
26:04States you just do 30 weeks of US
26:07history and at the end if somebody goes
26:09wait a minute I thought this was a
26:10course on English civilization you go we
26:12are England we are English civilization
26:15you well I mean yeah we're a piece of
26:18English civilization gone Rogue but what
26:21about England no no that's done they
26:24don't do that anymore they're not
26:25English we're English
26:29do you see how weird this is how could
26:31Western Civilization have been born in
26:33Egypt and Iraq and then suddenly
26:35vanished after being there for thousands
26:38of years that you don't even Dain to
26:39have a conversation
26:43about when when Julius Caesar is
26:45massacring the
26:47GS Egypt is already 4,000 years
26:52old right Egypt had a civil war that won
26:55170 years
26:59United States is what 240 230 something
27:03depending on do you start it with
27:04Declaration of Independence or the
27:05moment the Constitution went into effect
27:07I don't I've never figured out which one
27:09I want one of those two is
27:11right right I mean Egypt has has a
27:15sneeze that lasted almost as long as
27:17United States has been
27:19around so so that's another weirdness
27:22about the conversation that we're going
27:24to have tonight is I I need you to
27:27reframe the way think about
27:29this that this civilization that was
27:31birthed in the banks of the Tigris the
27:34Euphrates and the Nile can't possibly
27:37have stopped being there but if you've
27:40been listening to the news lately it
27:43gets really interesting because when
27:45Russia invaded Ukraine all I hear now is
27:48Russia almost accepted Western culture
27:52Russia almost accepted Western democracy
27:56the West is supporting Ukraine
27:59West West West it's the old conversation
28:04from the Cold War reborn again so we got
28:08to go back a little bit here before the
28:10Cold War to understand some terminology
28:13when the English were Conquering the
28:14world when the English were making the
28:16world England they didn't finish
28:18obviously they didn't finish they they
28:20got 40% done and and they ran out of
28:23steam but 40% is amazing think about it
28:27that tiny itty bitty teeny weeny little
28:31island where they boil their steak and
28:33Fry their
28:34Tomatoes where it's always
28:37raining somehow conquered 40% of the
28:41planet I still can't wrap my mind around
28:44it they only ruled it for 200 years but
28:47still that's I don't know I don't even
28:49know what to make of
28:51that that's talent there was Talent
28:53there I'm not denying the talent just
28:56incredible Talent cuz a lot of it was n
28:58violence right the English would plant a
29:00flag and the Indians are looking at it
29:02going what is that it's a flag what does
29:04it do it means we conquered you and the
29:06indans are like oh crap you mean if we
29:10had gotten to your tiny little island
29:11and planted the Indian flag we would
29:12have conquered you and the English are
29:14like yep that's how this works we we got
29:17you so there was a little bit of Psych
29:19psyching them out right that was also
29:22going
29:22on
29:24so when the English had done this they
29:28decided that they needed to make this
29:32idea of the East there needed to be this
29:36concept of the East the
29:38other the the nefarious the sneaky the
29:43mysterious the
29:45strange and so they came up with this
29:48idea of making the East being basically
29:52Asia and and then going from there now
29:55the Romans had this a little bit and the
29:57Greek GRE s had this a little bit so it
29:59wasn't that the English made it up
30:00completely from their own minds for the
30:03RO for the Greeks it was the Persians
30:05for the Romans it was still the
30:08Persians and so the English kind of had
30:11oh yeah this worked really well for the
30:13Greeks and the Romans we want to have
30:16this for ourselves so what they did was
30:19they named the far end of Asia the Far
30:23East they took the southern middle part
30:26of Asia and they called it the Middle
30:28East and then they took the Western end
30:31of Asia and they called it the ne East
30:34because it was near
30:36Europe in other words what we call the
30:39Middle East was the near East what we
30:41call South Asia was the M the Middle
30:44East the near East is what we call the
30:46Middle East today what we call South
30:48Asia today was the Middle
30:50East but then the Cold War
30:53started and we went we Americans went
30:57huh
30:58we can keep this East West thing going
31:01but now we need the Russians to be the
31:03East because the East is evil and
31:07dangerous and exotic and
31:10strange so we'll make the Russians the
31:13new NE East and we'll do the Eastern
31:16block States as the new near East but if
31:20that's the near East then then the
31:21Middle East can't be the near East
31:23anymore so we renamed the near East the
31:26Middle East but then we needed a new
31:28name for the old Middle East so we named
31:31it South
31:32Asia in our new naming scheme the
31:35Eastern block States and the Soviet
31:37Union it never caught nobody started
31:40calling that the near East but they did
31:42call it the East and the Eastern Block
31:44in other words it partially worked it
31:46worked well enough it got what they
31:48wanted and now in effect what they had
31:52done was they had successfully divorced
31:54East Germany East from Western
31:57civilization and the minds of
32:01people but this isn't the first time
32:03that they divor that somebody has
32:04divorced Western Civilization from the
32:06minds of people we had already done it
32:08to Egypt and
32:11Iraq right I just got through showing
32:13you that the West was founded in Egypt
32:15and Iraq and yet somehow we believe it's
32:18not in the West in fact even middle
32:21easterners will say it's not in the
32:23west it's part of everybody's
32:27understanding of the world now and this
32:29is of course at the heart of orientalism
32:31because the goal is to make it seem that
32:35the East is
32:36irrational it's
32:39inefficient it's it's authoritarian and
32:43the West is democratic and
32:45liberated and it everybody's happy it's
32:48all about ice
32:49cream we we buil it into
32:52everything so I don't know if you've
32:54ever watched The Man in the high tower
32:56it's probably not worth watching
32:58uh the first season is the first season
33:00was really really amazing but then after
33:02that it kind of falls apart a little bit
33:03and you could tell they just didn't know
33:05where to go but it's about what would
33:07have happened if Japan and Germany had
33:09won World War
33:10II and so it's really weird watching
33:12Americans walking around in SS
33:15uniforms you know Goose stepping around
33:18just like oh
33:20God so the first season the whole time
33:22you keep thinking oh this is horrific
33:24well not to ruin the story at any to for
33:28you in case you haven't seen it but at
33:30one point there is a good Japanese right
33:32that's a fun Trope good Japanese bad
33:35Japanese uh right we do this all the
33:37time good good Native American bad
33:39Native American we have that's how we C
33:41the it's downtown abbey everybody
33:44upstairs is wonderful some of the people
33:47downstairs are wonderful but some of the
33:49people downstairs are not wonderful
33:51because we all know there are good lower
33:53class people but you know there's scum
33:54lower class people but upper class
33:56people are all wonderful
33:58because the guy who wrote Downtown Abby
33:59of course is a member of the nobility
34:01and so it's a giant propaganda piece uh
34:04just just remember also he villainized
34:07gay people which is interesting that
34:10Americans like this show so much um
34:16so
34:19um the I've lost my train of thought can
34:23you edit
34:25this
34:26the near East Middle East near East
34:29Middle East
34:30thing and then I why did I get into
34:33downtown Avenue you you were talking
34:35about Orient with the idea that they're
34:36trying to make the others the bad guys
34:38oh I know it was it was the the good
34:41Japanese the bad Japanese there we go so
34:43okay so there's a there's a there's this
34:44good Japanese guy and he's trying to
34:48figure out the mess that they're in
34:51because the Japanese are controlling
34:52California and they can barely hold on
34:54to it things are falling apart and they
34:56know that the Nazis are coming for
34:58because right of course they are just of
35:00course why would you make it ever
35:03anything with the Nazis they're
35:04eventually going to come for you they
35:07went for each other right the Nazis
35:09spent a huge chunk of their time killing
35:10each other trying to move up in rank so
35:14this Japanese guy I'm trying not to ruin
35:16this but there's a scene where he
35:18figures out what would have
35:19happened if Japan in Germany hadn't
35:22conquered the United
35:24States and what he sees is children
35:27licking ice cream and I thought really
35:30that's what you went
35:31to that was the big moment the big
35:34breakthrough moment there's balloons and
35:36there's children licking ice cream
35:38that's the difference that's the
35:39quantitative that was the qualitative
35:42difference that you saw between Nazism
35:45and what we have surely there's
35:46something
35:50more so now I need to get into the
35:52conversation of identity
35:54because a part of all of this is ident
35:57identity so a few years ago I had a
36:00conversation with a Christian Egyptian
36:03woman a Coptic woman and she
36:06said I'm an easterner and we in the
36:10East and I was like Wow here we go she's
36:15saying I'm an easterner she's embraced
36:17this idea so now we need to get into
36:20identity we do something really
36:22interesting with
36:24identity identity is complicated in
36:27that's part of this problem because it's
36:30nested in the concept of Western
36:33Civilization so in other words when I
36:35talk about Western
36:37Civilization I can't help but also then
36:39talk about identity because it plays
36:42such a massive role in The Way We shape
36:45our conversations the way we understand
36:48who we are as individuals but also what
36:51we understand other people to be because
36:54this is part of the other Rising process
36:59so this identity conversation I want to
37:02I want to bring up something interesting
37:04and it'll seem weird because it but it
37:06but it but when you think about it it's
37:07the right thing to do especially since I
37:09brought up the Irish earlier just to be
37:11clear I'm not I I didn't like that book
37:13How the Irish save civilization I love
37:16the Irish so when the English start the
37:20next round of the troubles when they
37:21pull Northern Ireland out of the EU and
37:25the Irish go no and stuff starts getting
37:27BL blown up and people start getting
37:28shot again because the English are
37:29idiots and they brexit it I'm going to
37:32be on Ireland side I just I'm outing
37:34myself right
37:36now when we talk about American
37:39Presidents you will hear people say
37:42Kennedy is the first Irish
37:44president that's an interesting
37:46statement because it's a loaded
37:48statement he probably isn't and the
37:51reason I'm saying that is we we've had
37:5346 presidents and 23 of them had Irish
37:56ancestry including Andrew Jackson and
37:59James K pulk and US Grant now I don't
38:03think three men walked around going I am
38:05Irish
38:07American but then when you say Kennedy's
38:09the first Irish president it's kind of
38:11weird because what are you saying that
38:13because they didn't identify as Irish
38:15first they're not
38:17Irish and what we really mean is Kennedy
38:20was the first Catholic
38:24President right you see see what I'm
38:26saying like for example
38:28if I told you Reagan was Irish does that
38:30come as a surprise if you're my age it
38:33probably doesn't because there was
38:35conversation about Reagan being Irish in
38:37the 80s because the Speaker of the House
38:39tip O'Neal was also Irish and so there
38:42was this weird thing where there was
38:43this Catholic Irish speaker of the house
38:45and this Protestant Irish president and
38:47they were hanging out in friends and
38:49they were friends one was a Democrat one
38:52was a republican but they liked each
38:54other and they got bills passed they
38:56worked together so there was that
38:58conversation but since then I doubt very
39:00much there's been much of a conversation
39:02in fact Biden is Irish he's not only
39:06Irish but United States after a few
39:09Generations nobody's only one thing
39:11anyway you know what I mean you could
39:14try but y y'all ain't going to succeed
39:18your children your grandchildren your
39:20great-grandchildren somebody is going to
39:22start makes rating This I Promise
39:25You So
39:27we don't run around talking about
39:29Biden's irishness we still don't t stop
39:32talking about Kennedy's
39:34irishness in fact Biden's the second
39:37Catholic President I the majority of
39:40Americans know this I think it's
39:4360% but it's not an important
39:46conversation and in part because we're
39:50in a different
39:51place right the identity stuff has
39:54shifted a little
39:55bit one the way the identity thing gets
40:00to Biden is his
40:02religiosity when Democrats are asked how
40:05religious is he by the way the majority
40:07of Republicans know he's a he's a
40:09Catholic 55% of Republicans say yes
40:11Biden's a Catholic but when when people
40:13are asked is Biden religious 90% of
40:17Democrats say yes he's at least a little
40:21religious 45% of Republicans say
40:25yes in other words the way we we stick
40:30identity on people has everything to do
40:34with the identity we hold for
40:39ourselves I mean I guess we could ask
40:43Biden it never occurred to anybody to
40:45ask Biden I guess because he would think
40:48he'd be the
40:50expert like the fact that we have to
40:52survey Americans and they all have an
40:53opinion that's also fascinating to me
40:56like how does everybody have an opinion
40:57did you research did you look it up did
41:01you how did you how did you form you
41:03know what Biden's religiosity is how how
41:05did you figure this out it's like this
41:11mystery my point is that when we think
41:14of how we when we think of people we we
41:16stick an identity marker on them and the
41:19identity markers can be really
41:20complicated because they can involve
41:22nationality they can involve religion
41:24they can involve
41:25race right and those identi identity
41:28markers that were important at one point
41:30might be not important later
41:33on and so in the mix when we have a
41:37conversation about western civilization
41:39and the west and then how we think of
41:41ourselves that's what this is also
41:44about and usually when we say the West
41:47we think of Athens and Rome and England
41:52and maybe even Germany and
41:54France reluctantly Spain
41:57and even though we think of Italy we're
41:59I'm sorry Rome we're probably a little
42:01iffy about
42:02Italy which is another contradiction in
42:05this
42:06thing
42:07right so let me give you an example what
42:10I mean by
42:11this so when I was
42:14taught the part where they talk about
42:17the steam engine I I'm probably
42:19remembering this incorrectly but I swear
42:22at one point probably third grade I I I
42:25have it in my head and I'm probably
42:27wrong I was taught that Robert Fulton
42:31invented the steam engine now the funny
42:33thing about that of course is the steam
42:34engine was like a century old at that
42:37point so it'd be really hard for him to
42:39have invented the steam engine but it's
42:41the same type of story that we did with
42:42everything right Ben Franklin invented
42:44the glasses it's not true he didn't
42:46invent the glass that Henry Ford
42:49invented the car again not true even the
42:53stuff that you think is true is probably
42:55wrong it looks like an i an Australian
42:58family did flight before the Wright
42:59brothers and and an English guy
43:02definitely did the light bulb before
43:04Edison in other words everything we were
43:06taught was wrong at that level but okay
43:09so then later on in my life as by the
43:12time I'm in college I was taught that
43:15the steam engine was invented by Thomas
43:17Savory and Thomas newoman Savory did the
43:21first one and then newcom did the next
43:23one and so you know you need to mention
43:25both of them
43:27cool that's interesting but it's not
43:31true there was an Italian before Thomas
43:34sa a guy named javanni uh branka who did
43:39a steam engine before him in fact there
43:42was a guy before him a Spaniard his name
43:45was
43:46hero uh they uh um I'm having a CO Rin
43:51moment
43:53they aan Dean
43:57bont I think that's his name we're going
43:59to go with
44:00that and he invented the steam engine
44:03like 200 years before Robert Fon stuck
44:05one in a
44:07boat a hundred years before Thomas Avery
44:10and Thomas newoman and honestly that's
44:13not the start of the steam engine either
44:16there was a a Turk named takad who
44:19invented the steam engine in
44:221551 60 years before the Spaniard did
44:26it in the Ottoman
44:28Empire in fact that's still not the
44:31birth of the steam engine the steam
44:34engine was made by a guy named
44:38Haron
44:40Haron was in the Library of Alexandria
44:43in
44:45Egypt and he made the steam engine
44:481,500 years before Takia do we've had
44:52the steam engine for 2,000 years now
44:57now when I mentioned Haron I didn't say
45:00it I almost said it but I caught myself
45:03I almost said he was a Greek from
45:06Alexandria Egypt at The Great Library
45:08who invented the steam engine and the
45:10reason I caught myself is because of the
45:13identity thing which I'm going to I'm
45:15not done talking about but before I
45:17before I move away from Heron I just
45:19want to point out what he did he made
45:20two steam engines in fact one of them
45:23was actually a static rocket and it just
45:26spun
45:28so he didn't just invent the steam
45:29engine he also invented the world's
45:31first ever rocket it didn't go anywhere
45:33but it was a
45:36rocket the other thing he did was he
45:39made a mechanical play with gears I was
45:44also taught that the gear was invented
45:46like 300 years
45:48ago but he 2,000 years ago made a play
45:52that actually had gears in it in fact we
45:55now have a thing called the antia device
45:59the antia device was found off the coast
46:01of
46:02antia it's a metal
46:05box for the longest time archaeologists
46:07had no idea what to do with it somebody
46:09went what if we x-rayed
46:11it and they did it they x-rayed it it
46:14has gears in it the thing is 2,000 years
46:17old and then they figured out what it
46:19was well recently we finally figured out
46:23what this thing was it was a computer
46:27it was an analog computer a mechanical
46:28computer not a digital computer it
46:30wasn't electronic it had gears in it and
46:34what you would do is you would enter the
46:35date on the top and then it would rotate
46:40the constellations into place so it was
46:43an as
46:44astronomical Dei computer so you could
46:47know what what constellations you would
46:50see that
46:52night think about how complicated it
46:55would have been to put that kind of data
46:58into the form of gears and then stick it
47:01into a box and make it work where you're
47:04putting something as complicated as a
47:06date into it by rotating the
47:09gears this is not
47:12nothing so Haron had this thing with
47:15gears in it with levers by the way with
47:18bells and whistles on it you would turn
47:21it on and then you would go sit down and
47:23watch and what the gears would do is it
47:25would cause the scenes to shift and you
47:28could have an object move across for
47:30example you could have waves and then a
47:33boat and then you could have sound
47:35effects with the the Bell and the
47:37whistle and the clacking and then the
47:40scene could shift because you had all
47:42these different things that would move
47:43into place and you could have a scene
47:46where a boat goes across the water and
47:48lands on the shore and a hero moves out
47:51in other words he invented a TV it was
47:55just a mechanical
47:57TV 2,000 years ago is that crazy is that
48:02crazy now I said already I almost
48:05admitted to you he was
48:07Greek so let me tell you what why I'm
48:10telling you this so
48:12my uh my family from my father's mother
48:17so my grandmother's family or Finland
48:21sensar that means a swed from
48:23Finland so I was raised to believe I was
48:27a Swede CU swedes are cool and I was
48:31raised to be racist against fins is it
48:34racist are fins a race anti-nationalist
48:37against fins there because fins are a
48:39nation not a
48:41Race So in other words I was taught fins
48:44suck swedes are
48:46wonderful now here's the weird thing
48:49about Finland sensar is there swedes
48:51from
48:53Finland and the reason there were swedes
48:55in Finland is Sweden conquered Finland
48:58so they were the Nobles who went in to
49:01rule Finnish land and peasant tized the
49:04fins so they were not good guys and they
49:08ruled over Finland in this really nasty
49:10way for centuries and then in the
49:13Napoleonic Wars Sweden picked the wrong
49:16side and they sided with the French the
49:18French lost I don't know if you know
49:20that uh Napoleon Was Defeated and so as
49:24part of Sweden's punishment Russia took
49:26Finland from it the Russians then went
49:29to the swedes living in Finland and they
49:31said hey you guys know how to control
49:34these fins and rule them you already
49:37have your little Thom set up with Barons
49:40and dukes and counts and stuff you keep
49:43doing that but in our name and we'll
49:46leave you where you are and you just pay
49:48us taxes and the finon fenar went yeah
49:52it's a good deal so basically we lost
49:54nothing losing to you in the war and
49:56they're like yeah
49:58sure that's how you want to feel about
50:00it in other
50:03words the Finland sensar are not the
50:05most popular people in Finland they're
50:08about 6% of the population and
50:12they're you know it's an ugly
50:15history I'm owning this I'm not going to
50:18try and sugarcoat or gas light you my
50:21ancestors were on the wrong side just so
50:24we're
50:25clear until World War II and then we
50:28made up for it uh the swedes fought side
50:30by side with the fins against the
50:32Russians and All Is Forgiven and the
50:35fins and the swedes are like the bopsy
50:36twins of Europe now I don't know if you
50:38caught this in the news a few months ago
50:41but the prime minister of Finland said
50:43we want to join NATO but we can't unless
50:45the swedes join and it's because Finland
50:47will never do anything without Sweden
50:49and Sweden will never do anything out
50:50without Finland and Sweden said we've
50:52we've been holding on to our neutrality
50:54for a long time but if you need to join
50:56NATO and we think you do cuz the
50:58Russians are a real threat we have to
51:00join NATO to support you like that's how
51:02their relationship is they're very cute
51:05they should totally just get married and
51:07get it over with they are they're
51:09already married so in other words if I
51:12went to Finland even though there might
51:14be some latent resentment left I'm
51:16probably okay I'm not like scared or
51:18anything about
51:20it I took 23 in me don't Don't do 23 in
51:24me if you're a racist I'm just telling
51:26you right now you're going to it's going
51:28to upend your entire worldview of
51:30yourself it turns out my grandmother was
51:33mostly
51:34Finnish it's like oh no like so now I
51:38have to oh I've have spent years now
51:41trying to overcome my anti finnishness
51:43and embrace the fact that I'm more
51:45finnished than
51:47Swedish but am
51:50I so she had a Swedish name she spoke
51:54Swedish she identified as Swedish
51:57it's just genetically she was mostly
52:00finish see how complicated this guy all
52:03of a sudden but now here's the really
52:04weird twist and it's why I'm bringing
52:06this
52:07on if you're a 6% minority in a
52:12place and you only want to breed with
52:15your own
52:17Nation it's going to get Cousy really
52:21fast you know what I mean you're
52:24probably doing your children in
52:26grandchildren a huge
52:29disservice at some point you're going to
52:31want to open up to the possibility of
52:34marrying into one of the
52:36locals and that's what my ancestors did
52:38so what I am is I'm paternally Swedish
52:41and I had a Swedish male ancestor who
52:44kept who who married a Finn and then
52:47maybe he married a SW that child married
52:50a swed but then there were like two more
52:52fins and then and then the swed again in
52:56other words words as time went by we
52:59effectively became genetically Finnish
53:02cuz that Swedish DNA just kept shrinking
53:05every time there was a marriage to a
53:09local and that's what happened to
53:12Heron when the Greeks conquered Egypt
53:16300 300 years before Heron's birth the
53:20Greeks definitely separated themselves
53:22out from the Egyptians because they saw
53:23the Egyptians as as inferior
53:26but after 15
53:29Generations there was no way Haron
53:32wasn't part
53:35Egyptian in other words calling Heron
53:38the Greek scientist from Egypt is really
53:40an interesting proposition because how
53:43Greek was he how Egyptian was he after
53:4715 Generations in Egypt how Greek were
53:50the
53:51Greeks if nothing else their culture was
53:53modified by the Egyptians they lived
53:55around
53:57their DNA was modified because you know
53:59they were marrying into them not
54:04Cleopatra but when I say when I said
54:06Cleopatra you went oh the Egyptian F the
54:09woman Cleopatra by the way it's the
54:12seventh I'm keeping track I know yall
54:15mostly aren't Cleopatra the 7th is the
54:18famous One Cleopatra I 7th that you
54:22identify as Egyptian was 0% egyp
54:28so it her family tree is wonky and
54:32difficult because on two occasions she
54:35had an uncle Mary and
54:37niece so I don't know how to do this
54:41because I I can't count the generations
54:44back because what am I supposed to do
54:45with the niece uncle thing
54:49twice so there's two ways to count it
54:52right you count seven generations
54:54because you count the nie as a separate
54:56gener
54:57or five generations and you make your
54:58life not a nightmare so I'm doing
55:01five if you go back five generations the
55:05way to do this is the math on this the
55:07math is fun and a really cool thing is
55:09just about everything in the universe
55:11can be described as ma by math right you
55:14take two to the power
55:16of the generation you're trying to go to
55:19so you're zero Generations away from you
55:21two to the zero power is one your
55:23parents are one generation away from you
55:25two to the first power is two your
55:27grandparents are two away from you so
55:29two squar is four your
55:31great-grandparents are 2 cubed that's
55:33eight by the time you go five
55:35generations back so three greats and
55:36then grandparents you end up with 32
55:40ancestors you should have 32 great great
55:44great
55:45grandparents she had
55:47four a Persian and three
55:52Greeks it's actually worse if you go one
55:54generation forward you go to the fourth
55:56generation she only had
55:59two and then when she got to the two
56:02that two had three kids one of the kids
56:06married his niece his niece was the
56:10product of his brother and sister so I
56:12don't even know where to go other than
56:14oh my
56:19God but notice what we do we go
56:22Cleopatra the Egyptian Haron the Greek
56:27Haron was definitely very Egyptian by
56:30the time we got to the first century ad
56:33Cleopatra was definitely very not
56:36Egyptian at all in any way shape or form
56:39because she had been so secluded from
56:40Egyptian culture because the Greeks
56:42looked down on the Egyptians so
56:44intensely that they went out of their
56:47way to inbreed to try to prevent Gyptian
56:50DNA from entering the royal
56:54family it's intense
56:57let me give you another example what I
56:58mean by this the guy who invented
57:01philosophy some people call him Talis
57:05thalis Americans usually say phes so I'm
57:08just going to say thees to make our
57:09lives easy phes the Greek philosopher
57:14who invented philosophy wasn't Greek he
57:18wasn't
57:19Greek Isn't that cool the guy who
57:21invented Greek philosophy wasn't
57:23Greek he lived in a Greek City the city
57:26was called mtos mtos is today in
57:30Turkey he spoke Greek but he also spoke
57:35Phoenician because his family was from
57:37Lebanon they were Phoenicians they had
57:40moved to mtos for business purposes he
57:43grew up in miletos and then produced the
57:45world's first ever work of philosophy a
57:48book titled water is best a Phoenician
57:52invented philosophy in a Greek City in
57:56what is today
57:58turkey but when we think of thees we
58:01think of a Greek when we think of Haron
58:04we think of a Greek when we think of
58:05Cleopatra we think of an Egyptian that's
58:08what I mean what we do is we have this
58:11tendency to be selective with how we
58:14apply our the
58:16identities and that gets all sorts of
58:19messy okay so now let's do this let's
58:22shift now that I've got you thinking
58:24about identity and how we're caress with
58:26it now I want to now I want to found
58:29Western Civilization so what is it that
58:31makes something West and something not
58:33West so this is part of the reason why
58:36my title was meant to bring out
58:40contradictions the East West Paradigm at
58:43some level is
58:45nonsensical because it assumes that
58:47there isn't connectivity and con with
58:49the other side in cultural sharing so at
58:52some level there is no Western
58:55Civilization that's a construct that's
58:57part of our
58:59imagination at another level there is a
59:01western civilization because there is a
59:03geographical region that had a lot more
59:06connection with other place than than
59:08with other places one way to think of
59:11this then would be if you made the indis
59:14river the boundary for Western
59:17Civilization everything to the west of
59:18the Indus is Western Civilization but
59:20that doesn't mean everything to the east
59:21of the Indus is indis civilization or is
59:24Eastern civilization because if nothing
59:26else Indian civilization is so different
59:29from Korean or Japanese
59:31civilization right it it's Preposterous
59:34actually to start lumping together but
59:37everything west of the Indus does have
59:39strong connectivity and here's why it's
59:43the
59:44Mediterranean when we think of bodies of
59:47water we usually think of them as
59:50dividers that's because of our bias the
59:53Pacific and the Atlantic are dividers
59:55because because they're so big they
59:57really do divide the old world from the
1:00:00new
1:00:01world but the Mediterranean isn't a
1:00:04divider it's a connector it has the
1:00:06exact opposite role it's just small
1:00:09enough of a body of water that getting
1:00:11across it isn't too too difficult it's
1:00:15insulated enough that it does have
1:00:17tempests which are the Mediterranean
1:00:20Cyclones but they're never as intense as
1:00:22hurricanes the ancient world you just
1:00:24didn't sail during The Tempest season
1:00:27which was basically Fallen winter you
1:00:29just stayed out of the Seas and yeah
1:00:31that way you could avoid it and so what
1:00:32ends up happening is the Mediterranean
1:00:34connects because it's a highway it's way
1:00:37easier to move goods and people by boat
1:00:39than it is by land land is a pain
1:00:42because you've got to build a road then
1:00:43you got to maintain the road you've got
1:00:45to make wagons and the wheels are
1:00:47constantly breaking and you can hardly
1:00:49put anything in a wagon and then you
1:00:51have all these stupid animals you have
1:00:52to feed right and they a then they need
1:00:56water or they'll die and right so if
1:00:58you're trying to get from Egypt to
1:01:00Morocco don't go by land go by sea
1:01:03you'll get there really fast it'll be
1:01:06very efficient and your life will be
1:01:08relatively
1:01:09easy so what ends up happening then is
1:01:12all the civilizations near and around
1:01:14the Mediterranean end up intimately
1:01:17connected together so if we if we accept
1:01:20that premise then yeah there is some
1:01:23regionalism to it even though at some
1:01:25some level it's still a little bit of an
1:01:27artificial
1:01:29device in other words I'm admitting that
1:01:33we're we're maybe doing a little bit of
1:01:36a stretch here but let's do it anyway
1:01:37for the sake of the
1:01:39exercise so Okay so we've accepted that
1:01:41it was born in in Iraq in Egypt and then
1:01:46we've created a geographical boundary
1:01:48for it now we can talk about the
1:01:50elements so some of the elements of of
1:01:54Western Civilization tends to be that
1:01:57they were western civilization was Pagan
1:01:59with pantheons the Egyptian Pantheon the
1:02:01Roman Pantheon the Greek pantheon the
1:02:04pantheon that went through the Fertile
1:02:06Crescent but then there's this this
1:02:09other religion Judaism which was by the
1:02:12way henotheistic originally not
1:02:14monotheistic so it wasn't that the Jews
1:02:17said there was only one God monotheism
1:02:19says there's only one God the Jews said
1:02:21there is only one God for us y all have
1:02:24a different God that's henotheism it's
1:02:27an important distinction it's not to say
1:02:29that there isn't some monotheism in
1:02:31Judaism today I'm talking about ancient
1:02:33Judaism they were henotheistic um a lot
1:02:36of Jews are still henotheistic
1:02:38today um so in other
1:02:41words there was this henotheistic
1:02:44religion that then spawned off
1:02:46Christianity and then later on Judaism
1:02:48I'm sorry Islam so two two two religions
1:02:52came off of this one religion and that's
1:02:55what we tend to think of as a western
1:02:57trait Christianity not the other two not
1:03:00Judaism and Islam so much but definitely
1:03:01Christianity although maybe Judaism is a
1:03:04little bit better accepted today but not
1:03:07for the bulk of European history right
1:03:11European history is pogram after pogram
1:03:13after pogram after pogram until we get
1:03:16to the pogram of pograms the
1:03:18Holocaust and then Europeans go okay I
1:03:21guess we should stop killing them but
1:03:23it's like this reluctant almost I I miss
1:03:29it
1:03:31so if we accept that that's the
1:03:33religious background for this then
1:03:36there's the birth of government in Egypt
1:03:38there's the birth of writing in
1:03:40Sumer what are the other
1:03:45elements one of the other one one place
1:03:48you can look to is the 18th dynasty of
1:03:51Egypt the 18th dynasty of Egypt did
1:03:54something really remarkable one of the
1:03:56things it did was it actually started an
1:04:00Empire Egypt built the world's first
1:04:03Empire that stretched from one country
1:04:05to the next the 18th Dynasty conquered
1:04:08part of Libya they conquered
1:04:10Karan Eastern Libya they conquered the
1:04:13northern part of the Sudan they went
1:04:15into Palestine they went all the way
1:04:17into Syria and they created an
1:04:21Empire well imperialism is the history
1:04:24of Western Civilization
1:04:26so there's that element that's
1:04:29interesting the the 18th Dynasty also
1:04:32invented a uh convenience industry so
1:04:38for example you could write down on a
1:04:41stone they like to use uh Limestone
1:04:43slabs you could write down on a slab the
1:04:48your laundry list and send your laundry
1:04:51and it would they would wash it and then
1:04:52they would bring it to you or you could
1:04:54put a grocery list and you could call
1:04:57them up on the phone no that's not right
1:04:59you oh you enter it into your lap no
1:05:01that's not right either you would give
1:05:03the list to a boy and the boy would take
1:05:05it to the store he'd buy your groceries
1:05:07and bring them to
1:05:09you there was this entire giant
1:05:13apparatus built around convenience in
1:05:16the 18th Dynasty in
1:05:20Egypt they took history to a new level
1:05:24so by the end of the 18th Dynasty they
1:05:27did a better job of chronicling their
1:05:29events so that by the 19th Dynasty they
1:05:32were doing a really good job of it 18th
1:05:34Dynasty they were still figuring this
1:05:35out so they would for example one of the
1:05:37things that we know is to hutos III was
1:05:41an amazing F be as a warrior he would
1:05:44lead his men into battle from the front
1:05:47line and he and he was a general and he
1:05:49commanded his men and he never lost the
1:05:51battle and we know that he was in 17
1:05:54military campaigns because they
1:05:56chronicled all that by the way there
1:05:58were prolific
1:05:59writers they wrote poetry they wrote
1:06:03Love Letters they kept track of who
1:06:05lived where so they did their own they
1:06:07did a census there is a little town in
1:06:11Upper Egypt if you go there it's de Al
1:06:15Med where we know more about the people
1:06:18living in that town over the course of a
1:06:20400e span of time because we have their
1:06:23notes we have their love letters
1:06:26we have the Poetry that are writing each
1:06:28other we have their laundry list and we
1:06:31have their grocery lists we know
1:06:33intimate details about where each person
1:06:36lived and What kind of Life they lived
1:06:38we know more about them from 3,500 years
1:06:41ago than we know about Americans from
1:06:44200 years
1:06:46ago in other words that's a hint of the
1:06:49kind
1:06:50of hyper chronicling that you all do now
1:06:54on social media
1:06:56what did you eat today all I got to do
1:06:58is look at your social media account I
1:06:59will
1:07:01know how's your dog doing you've told me
1:07:04that
1:07:06too what's the latest choreographed
1:07:09picture of the idyllic life you're
1:07:11leading where you were careful not to
1:07:14show the the factory in front of your
1:07:15front door by taking the picture in an
1:07:17angle so that all we saw was the sky and
1:07:20the
1:07:21trees it's all there
1:07:26make sure not to give anybody your
1:07:27address because they can Google Map it
1:07:28and they'll see the factory you know
1:07:31just carefully
1:07:36choreograph fast forward make it uh 6th
1:07:41Century
1:07:43BC there's a guy named Cyrus the Great
1:07:47kuros Persian in fact he's the guy who
1:07:50creates the Persian Empire when he does
1:07:52it he issues the world's first ever Bill
1:07:55of
1:07:57Rights when I say Bill of Rights you
1:07:59think Western Civilization there it is
1:08:02the Persians they beat everybody to it
1:08:05by the way just for the record that Bill
1:08:07of Rights that's almost 2,600 years old
1:08:10it's over 2,500 years old almost 26
1:08:14centuries ban
1:08:18slavery human
1:08:20sacrifice and it guaranteed freedom of
1:08:23religion in fact it encouraged Freedom
1:08:27religion the Persians told everybody in
1:08:30the Empire if your temples are in
1:08:32disrepair we will fix it for you using
1:08:36Government
1:08:38funding so after the Neo Babylonian
1:08:41Empire to conquer the Jews in Palestine
1:08:44and dragged some of those Jews to
1:08:47Babylon not to be slaves but to live in
1:08:50Babylon they were forcibly relocated to
1:08:53Babylon when s when Kash conquered
1:08:55Babylon he told the Jews no you can live
1:08:58anywhere you want we're not doing that
1:08:59anymore there's no there's no slavery in
1:09:01my Empire there's no forced living
1:09:03anywhere in my
1:09:04Empire and so a bunch of them wanted to
1:09:06go back to Palestine the Temple of
1:09:08Solomon had been destroyed by the Neo
1:09:11Babylonians because they hated the Jews
1:09:13and they just wanted to hurt them so
1:09:14they tore down the Temple of Solomon and
1:09:16when they read the the Bill of Rights
1:09:18they go hey uh can we get a new Temple
1:09:22of Solomon Kos is likees of course
1:09:25everybody gets their temples
1:09:28rebuilt
1:09:29and he said okay yeah show me the
1:09:33plans and let's just say they added
1:09:36stuff from the original Temple for
1:09:38example they built a giant human-made
1:09:41Mesa and then put the second temple of
1:09:43Solomon on top and so kurash is looking
1:09:46at it and he goes wait what that's
1:09:49that's a that's like a mountain a flat
1:09:52mountain the Babylonians tore that down
1:09:55I don't even know how anybody built it
1:09:57let alone tore it down and Jews are like
1:10:00yeah they really hated us and so Kos
1:10:03goes well I we're going to do it we
1:10:05promised you we'd do it we're going to
1:10:07build it but I only know one people on
1:10:09Earth that can build
1:10:11mountains it'll be Persian gold but it's
1:10:14going to be Egyptian
1:10:15engineers and they went and grabbed
1:10:17Egyptian
1:10:18engineers and they built the temple
1:10:20mount with Persian gold
1:10:25and that's why kurash is in the
1:10:31Bible phes shortly afterwards a few
1:10:34decades later invents philosophy in
1:10:38Milos it spreads it goes to Athens the
1:10:41Athenians fall in love with it a woman
1:10:44named aasia teaches
1:10:48Socrates well that got left out of your
1:10:50stories didn't it socrates's teacher was
1:10:54a woman
1:10:56named aasia the reason why that got left
1:10:59out of your history is
1:11:00because once we became
1:11:03Christian we didn't like the idea that
1:11:05women were teachers and leaders and so
1:11:08there was a systematic attempt to delete
1:11:11all the women leaders and all the women
1:11:13philosophers from the history
1:11:16textbooks and so if you look up aspasia
1:11:18you will find people saying yeah she may
1:11:22not have been real why would Socrates
1:11:25tell us that a mythical person taught
1:11:27him philosophy what what's the point in
1:11:30even making up the
1:11:31story what's the likelihood that she
1:11:34wasn't real it's
1:11:36Preposterous but it fits our patriarchal
1:11:43orientation the the Persians and the
1:11:45Greeks are in this epic back and forth
1:11:49and eventually the Persians get bored
1:11:50with the Greeks and stop fighting them
1:11:52and then Alexander the Great conquers
1:11:54them out of the the blue and this this
1:11:57unbelievable
1:11:59event and then that Greek civilization
1:12:02starts to come apart and gets replaced
1:12:04by this Roman civilization and the
1:12:07Romans are amazing conquerors they take
1:12:10the Greek fail lanks they they upgrade
1:12:12it they turn it in the Roman legion the
1:12:14Persians eventually recover from the G
1:12:17Greek conquest and now the new Clash is
1:12:19between the Persians and the Romans and
1:12:21it'll
1:12:23last 50 no yeah 53 BC when the Battle of
1:12:29kar until the rise of Islam when it ends
1:12:33so uh the the Muslims start conquering
1:12:36Persia in
1:12:38633 so 53 BC to 633 almost seven
1:12:43centuries the the Persians and the
1:12:45Romans fight it out brutal nasty
1:12:48knockdown drag out
1:12:50fights but in the middle of all of this
1:12:53there's one thing that's really powerful
1:12:55and important for our purposes and it's
1:12:58The Great
1:12:59Library one of the Greeks who went with
1:13:03Alexander and conquered the Persians his
1:13:05name was
1:13:06pomos pomy the first sotier pomy the
1:13:11Savior that's the title he took he goes
1:13:15and carves Egypt out of this Greek
1:13:18Empire when Alexander the Great dies
1:13:21because he thought Egypt was the best
1:13:22piece of real estate in Alexander's
1:13:24Empire
1:13:25and then he founds The Great
1:13:29Library the idea behind The Great
1:13:31Library is it'll be the world's
1:13:32repository for
1:13:34information and what they're going to do
1:13:36is they're going to bring books from
1:13:38every society and every culture there
1:13:40and keep a copy and they're going to
1:13:43invent things the first thing on Earth
1:13:45called a museum was one of the buildings
1:13:48at The Great Library it was a museum for
1:13:51all the latest Advanced tech there there
1:13:55was no such thing as
1:13:56copyright the idea was that you could go
1:13:59to Alexandria visit the library see the
1:14:02museum see the advanced Tech and then
1:14:05build on it but then once you built on
1:14:07it you were supposed to bring your
1:14:08advances there so that the next
1:14:10generation of advances could be made B
1:14:12based on
1:14:13yours that was the idea behind the
1:14:16museum not so you could stick art and
1:14:17ancient relics in it it was supposed to
1:14:19be so that the world could Advance
1:14:21technologically at its height The Great
1:14:23Library may have reached as many as a
1:14:26million books I actually think a million
1:14:28is probably the right number I've seen 2
1:14:31million feel like that's too many I've
1:14:33seen 200,000 I feel like that's too few
1:14:36to give you an idea what a million books
1:14:40is the Library of Congress the United
1:14:42States Library of Congress reached the 1
1:14:45million bookmark in
1:14:491905 so in terms of quantity of
1:14:53information The Great Library was on par
1:14:56with where we were in
1:14:581905 quality no but quantity yes because
1:15:02right by 1905 we had flight the light
1:15:04bulb and steam
1:15:07trains but remember
1:15:10Heron he was at The Great Library so
1:15:12they had steam they just hadn't made
1:15:14trains
1:15:16yet if they had had a little bit more
1:15:18time they might have but they run out of
1:15:21time they run out of time because rum
1:15:25converts to
1:15:26Christianity now this isn't me a bashing
1:15:29Christianity I'm not I'm not in the mood
1:15:32to bash anybody I just want to tell you
1:15:34the
1:15:35story because it's important that we
1:15:37acknowledge what
1:15:38happened as Rome switched to being
1:15:42Christian and dumped its pagan Roots it
1:15:45also started to slowly move away from
1:15:48this idea that it needed to be Advanced
1:15:51technologically and in 391 ad it took
1:15:55that to the maximum level when Emperor
1:15:58theodosius issued a decree declaring
1:16:02that the Roman Empire was not it wasn't
1:16:04just that Christianity was the official
1:16:05religion it wasn't just that
1:16:07Christianity was the state's religion it
1:16:11was also the only
1:16:13religion non-christians were no longer
1:16:15welcome in the
1:16:17Empire Jews and pagans needed to convert
1:16:21or
1:16:22leave and when that happened
1:16:25the Archbishop of Alexandria Archbishop
1:16:29Theophilus issued his own decree asking
1:16:32the Christian population of Alexandria
1:16:34to to go ahead and get rid of the pagans
1:16:36and the
1:16:37Jews they went to the Jewish quarter
1:16:40Alexandria was the largest Jewish City
1:16:43on the
1:16:45planet Alexandria is where the septent
1:16:50was made so the second Greek far to
1:16:55second pomy
1:16:56philadelphus had such a Jewish large
1:16:59Jewish population in Alexandria that
1:17:01couldn't speak Hebrew so they didn't
1:17:04know how to read their holy texts that
1:17:07he decided to commission a Greek
1:17:10translation of the Old Testament into
1:17:12Greek so that the Greek speaking Jews
1:17:14living in Alexandria would be able to
1:17:16access their holy text so he he got 70
1:17:19something rabbis we don't know the exact
1:17:22number and he made the septent which
1:17:24means
1:17:2670 and the sepu was because he had 70
1:17:30rabbis translate the Old Testament so
1:17:32that it could weed out bias and error
1:17:34and they would merge the 70 translations
1:17:36into one so they could get an accurate
1:17:39translation uh we have since rece found
1:17:43the the Dead Sea Scrolls which are which
1:17:46were older but not by much I think it
1:17:48were two or 300 years old so now we have
1:17:51the original Old Testament material in
1:17:53the original Hebrew and we've compared
1:17:55them you don't need to change your
1:17:57translations except the you into spot on
1:18:00it was an amazing
1:18:02translation in other words he pulled it
1:18:08off the mob goes to the Jewish quarter
1:18:11and just Begins massacring the
1:18:13Jews when they're done destroying the
1:18:16Jewish quter which won't be inhabited
1:18:18again for another another 1,500
1:18:21years they then go and try to find the
1:18:24pagan an the problem with the pagans is
1:18:27they were intermingled with the
1:18:28Christians so you just literally had to
1:18:30knock on doors and go you Pagan pretty
1:18:32much everybody is going to deny it so
1:18:34then you go who are your Pagan neighbors
1:18:37and then right now you can find out cu
1:18:39right people at each other out it's
1:18:41hilarious um just ask just ask uh the
1:18:45yugoslavs when they decided to kill each
1:18:47other in Bosnia
1:18:49herzo
1:18:50[Music]
1:18:52um they then go to The Great Library The
1:18:56Great Library was run by a woman named
1:18:59HIPAA HIPAA wasn't wasn't actually
1:19:02technically a pagan she was she was a
1:19:04theist so she did believe that there was
1:19:06an entity created the universe single
1:19:08entity but she didn't think that anybody
1:19:11could know its nature so she rejected
1:19:13Christianity and but the majority of the
1:19:16students at The Great Library and the
1:19:17majority of the professors at The Great
1:19:18Library were in fact
1:19:22Pagan and so the mob sites to get rid of
1:19:25The Great
1:19:26Library and they destroy
1:19:29it but we as a society get lucky
1:19:35because before they destroyed it by a
1:19:39few decades there was a Persian Emperor
1:19:41who got jealous of The Great Library his
1:19:44name was shaur shaur the great shaur
1:19:48wanted his own Great Library he defeats
1:19:51a Roman Emperor Valyrian he captures two
1:19:54intact Roman Legions he sells one into
1:19:57slavery in China takes the money from
1:20:00the sale and then he uses that money and
1:20:03orders the Roman Legions to build him
1:20:05two brand new cities one of them is
1:20:07gundi shapur in gundi shapur he builds
1:20:10an academy that will be the Persian
1:20:12equivalent to The Great Library and he
1:20:15starts collecting books he's having
1:20:17trouble getting Roman books because the
1:20:19Romans and the Persians hate each other
1:20:20so much but he has he's having no
1:20:22trouble getting Chinese techs an Indian
1:20:25text and so he's adding those to the
1:20:27Persian knowledge Lau he gets Lau one of
1:20:32the greatest philosophers in human
1:20:35history not not him but his books right
1:20:38that Lau was 600 years earlier but he
1:20:40gets his books which is amazing because
1:20:43when chin the Great unifies India he
1:20:46bans lau and starts wiping out La lau's
1:20:49works but now there's a place for them
1:20:52to survive
1:20:54when the Great Library is burnt a group
1:20:57of Romans decide to recover and they do
1:20:59it at the Academy The Academy of Athens
1:21:03when they do this at the Academy of
1:21:05Athens
1:21:06[Music]
1:21:08um that gets banned so they get some of
1:21:11the books together at the
1:21:13Academy but Emperor Justinian goes nah
1:21:16we got rid of the Great Library we don't
1:21:18need an academy to replace it those
1:21:21Greek scholars in 529 when the academy
1:21:24is band grab all their books they jump
1:21:28on a ship they head to Syria they cross
1:21:31Syria they get to what would roughly be
1:21:33the Iraq Syria border today it was
1:21:35roughly where the Roman Persian border
1:21:38was and they they approached the
1:21:40Persians and they say we want Asylum and
1:21:43the Persians go yeah of course who would
1:21:45want to live under a Roman rule anyway
1:21:48these guys are
1:21:49crazy and they go yeah not for us only
1:21:52we want Asylum for our books and the
1:21:54Persians go your books they go yeah
1:21:57we're we're bringing everything we have
1:21:58left that hasn't been burnt by Christian
1:22:01mobs and the Persians go oh come with us
1:22:04and they take them to gandi shapur and
1:22:07they take all those books and they merge
1:22:08them
1:22:11in Emperor kro is the guy who does
1:22:17this so now at the great at at gondi
1:22:20chapur they have all these Roman and
1:22:22Greek and Egyptian works and they're
1:22:25sitting there with all these Chinese and
1:22:27Persian and Indian works and they kind
1:22:30of recovered the loss of The Great
1:22:32Library a little
1:22:34bit Rome and Persia keep fighting they
1:22:37do one giant slugfest in the early 600s
1:22:41it's nasty brutal Affair the Persians
1:22:45capture turkey Syria Palestine Egypt
1:22:48they are the it looks like Rome is going
1:22:51to go down in a ball of flames but the
1:22:53Romans somehow how we get out of it in
1:22:56part because one of the Persian
1:22:59generals uh decides to Rebel he takes
1:23:02the chunk of Rome that he captured he
1:23:03creates a third Little Empire eventually
1:23:06he invades Persia overthrows the Persian
1:23:08Emperor becomes the new Persian Emperor
1:23:10and is stabbed to death a few days later
1:23:13and the Romans are like
1:23:15wow because militarily it was touching
1:23:17go there for a
1:23:20while and then something amazing happens
1:23:26there's a new
1:23:29religion and it's
1:23:32Islam the prophet Muhammad dies in
1:23:36632 that year the khif his follower the
1:23:41first ruler after the
1:23:44prophet orders that the Arabian
1:23:47Peninsula be conquered in
1:23:49unified for the first time in Arab
1:23:51history the Arabian Peninsula was ruled
1:23:54by a single state within a
1:23:58year that same year
1:24:01633 Abu Bak
1:24:05launches two armies at the same time
1:24:08simultaneously one into the Persian
1:24:10Empire one into the Roman
1:24:12Empire
1:24:14outnumbered
1:24:16outmanned out technology there's no way
1:24:19the Arabs should Prevail within a few
1:24:22decades they completely conquer the
1:24:25Persian Empire it was
1:24:2712200 years old at that
1:24:32point can you imagine a 1200y old Empire
1:24:35you can't comprehend it not being
1:24:37there they bring the Romans to their
1:24:39knees they don't finish them off but by
1:24:42the time they're done so from 6:33 the
1:24:45moment they start the Conquering to 711
1:24:49the moment they've conquered Spain they
1:24:50owned everything from Pakistan to Spain
1:24:53and Central Asia they built the largest
1:24:55Empire in human history in just a few
1:24:58decades 60% of the world's Christian
1:25:03population the Empire itself was 2%
1:25:08Muslim but it owned 60% of the world's
1:25:11Christians it was an Empire of Buddhists
1:25:14and Hindus there were even some pagans
1:25:16hanging
1:25:18around and zor
1:25:21asrian the Arabs were a strange
1:25:24conqueror population because they
1:25:27weren't forcibly converting people by
1:25:29the sword they weren't Mass genociding
1:25:31whole populations they weren't enslaving
1:25:34onethird of Gaul they did fight in
1:25:37France just for the record uh 7
1:25:40725 that's the year stuck in my head
1:25:43that's probably wrong uh the Battle of T
1:25:45also known as a battle of pitier against
1:25:47Char Matel and the French win just for
1:25:50the record but the Arabs as they were
1:25:53retreating carved off narbon and
1:25:55continue to rule a pece of France for a
1:25:57few
1:25:59centuries these Arabs were actually shot
1:26:02or humble so when they conquered Persia
1:26:06they went to the Persians and they went
1:26:07dude we don't know how to run an Empire
1:26:10this is way over our pay grade we we've
1:26:13never we just started ruling
1:26:17ourselves we we don't know what we're
1:26:19doing here you guys are amazing at this
1:26:22what we need you to do is keep running
1:26:23the Empire we don't even know how to
1:26:26mint
1:26:27coins the first Arab
1:26:30coins show three men standing next to
1:26:35each
1:26:36other they're holding a cross in one
1:26:38hand and a a globe with a cross sticking
1:26:42out of it so they had a cross in both
1:26:44hands because they took the Roman mint
1:26:47and they just began counterfeiting Roman
1:26:50coins in fact the word felo which is the
1:26:53word for money comes from the Roman FIS
1:26:57which was one of the coins that they
1:26:58were
1:27:02counterfeiting those Arabs walked into
1:27:05gondi shapur after conquering it and
1:27:09they turned to the Persians they went
1:27:10what's that and the Persians go it's an
1:27:12academy the Arabs go cool what is that
1:27:16they go it's a repository of all the
1:27:17knowledge of the world that we that we
1:27:19know of and the Arabs go show us and the
1:27:23Persians go what choice do we have take
1:27:25them in and the Arabs go teach us and
1:27:30the Persians go what choice do we have
1:27:31we
1:27:32will it takes a while doesn't happen
1:27:35right
1:27:36away but in the 8th Century alindi
1:27:40begins converting these texts from Greek
1:27:45to Arabic and that's a huge leap because
1:27:48now it means a larger portion of the
1:27:49population can start to read them a guy
1:27:52named alazmi
1:27:54a
1:27:55Persian a Muslim Persian in the Arab
1:27:59Empire decides to start focusing heavily
1:28:03on Hindu
1:28:05mathematics
1:28:08Alm invents algebra and Arabic numerals
1:28:12so the next time you're doing math
1:28:15remember to thank Ali that you're not
1:28:18using an abacus to do Roman numerals
1:28:21which are impossible really try
1:28:24set up no Roman numerals put a minus
1:28:26sign under and try and subtract Roman
1:28:28numerals from Roman numerals you'll tear
1:28:31your hair out forget multiplication and
1:28:33division almi creates a math system that
1:28:36you can work on he's so Advanced he
1:28:40invents
1:28:41algorithms 1,200 years
1:28:44ago in fact algorithm was the Roman
1:28:48attempt to say his name Al algorithm so
1:28:53every time say algorithm you're actually
1:28:55saying this Persian philosopher's
1:28:59name then in the 10th Century there's a
1:29:04guy named
1:29:05farabi the Romans call him farius or
1:29:08alabas because the Arabs called him
1:29:12alarabi farabi
1:29:15realized that he had a problem he wanted
1:29:19to talk about everything and anything
1:29:21under the sun he wanted no limits he was
1:29:23a polyman
1:29:24he wanted to talk about psychology and
1:29:26politics he wanted to do astronomy he he
1:29:29wanted to do
1:29:31religion he
1:29:33knew he was eventually going to step on
1:29:36somebody's toes and he was going to get
1:29:39it so what he did was he put made he
1:29:43wrote all the books he wanted to and
1:29:46then he put it in his will that when he
1:29:48died they would get
1:29:50published and so as a result we don't
1:29:52really know as much about them because
1:29:54during his lifetime he spent it as like
1:29:56a gardener and what he would do is he
1:29:58would Garden at the palace and he would
1:30:02listen to all the political
1:30:03conversations inside pretending that
1:30:05he's tending to the Roses or something
1:30:08but in reality he was writing it all
1:30:11down he's going to ask really strange
1:30:14questions questions that maybe not many
1:30:18folks had asked before so when the
1:30:20Persians made their empire they did
1:30:22something completely unexpected
1:30:25completely
1:30:27bizarre when you would get conquered by
1:30:31uh kurash the great or subsequent
1:30:33Persians you weren't subjugated enslaved
1:30:37you became a partner of the
1:30:39empire in other
1:30:41words you were you were in a good place
1:30:43being conquered it wasn't that horrible
1:30:46which is strange because that's usually
1:30:48not how it is in fact kurash insisted on
1:30:53the diversity being held up if you go
1:30:58to if you go to Persia I I went in 2002
1:31:02it's fantastic good luck getting a Visa
1:31:06it was a nightmare I didn't like I'll
1:31:08never try again it's not going to happen
1:31:11I give up but if I could go again I
1:31:13would definitely do it when you get to T
1:31:16jamid there's walls that show people in
1:31:19every kind of dress imaginable because
1:31:22it's a celebration of the nation
1:31:25the Romans
1:31:27erected a
1:31:29monument to the massacre of the
1:31:33daans I'm pretty sure that in Rome there
1:31:36is the only Monument commemorating
1:31:39genocide it's still there you can go see
1:31:41it it's in your art textbook your art
1:31:44history textbook they show you the
1:31:45bottom Parts they never show you the top
1:31:47because the bottom parts of the tower
1:31:49show the the Roman army getting getting
1:31:52together to go and everybody's excited
1:31:53about that at the top it shows the
1:31:56genocide the Arabs are like the
1:31:59Persians they they they didn't reject
1:32:01the different cultures they didn't
1:32:03reject the different religions they
1:32:05embraced them and they accepted them and
1:32:06they said yeah cool keep doing your
1:32:08thing if you want to convert do
1:32:12it in other words this wasn't a forced
1:32:14Empire like so many empires in our
1:32:19history alarabi asks a question though
1:32:22that throws everybody
1:32:24off because so if I say you're tolerant
1:32:29that doesn't mean you love the other guy
1:32:31we should be a tolerant Society that's a
1:32:34really low bar right tolerant is yeah
1:32:38yeah the world would be better if you
1:32:40weren't here but I guess I'll tolerate
1:32:43you that's not especially amazing when a
1:32:46person says I'm tolerant of others what
1:32:49I what I think would be really amazing
1:32:51is if you said I really love others
1:32:54that's a different level and alarabi
1:32:56asks that question and he does it in a
1:32:59way that makes everybody
1:33:01uncomfortable so the first two names of
1:33:03God God has 99 days 99 Names rman the
1:33:08the beneficient and the merciful and
1:33:12it's pure Mercy it's not human mercery
1:33:15right where you surrender to me and I'm
1:33:17like I could kill you but I guess I
1:33:19won't not that it's pure
1:33:22Mercy the fif th name is
1:33:25alhak which means the truth alarabi asks
1:33:29the most annoying question ever if God
1:33:33is beneficient and he's
1:33:37merciful then why on Earth are only 20%
1:33:41of the world's population Christians
1:33:43Jews and Muslims because in Islam right
1:33:45it's built in that Christians Jews and
1:33:47Muslims can get to heaven in fact they
1:33:50expanded it to include zoroastrians
1:33:54what about the other 80% did God set
1:33:56them up to fail it's not their fault
1:33:57that they don't know about the three
1:33:59abrahamic
1:34:00religions so is God condemning them to
1:34:03all eternity in hell this is why he
1:34:06couldn't publish while he was
1:34:08alive and then he goes I have no choice
1:34:11but to believe that God gave Hindus
1:34:14Hinduism and God gave zor asrian zor
1:34:17asianism and God gave Buddhist
1:34:20Buddhism but if God is alhak if he's the
1:34:23truth he can't possibly have lied to
1:34:26them therefore every religion must have
1:34:31access to Heaven therefore every
1:34:34religion should get equal
1:34:39respect in fact he went one step further
1:34:42and said when you think about it then
1:34:44the only way to truly know God would be
1:34:47to know every
1:34:50religion he starts a whole movement the
1:34:53Sufi
1:34:54the sufis go oh wow that's amazing no
1:34:58bounds on what we can study we can go
1:35:01learn yoga from India and bring it
1:35:06back
1:35:08alarabi wasn't just a polymath he was a
1:35:12genius and the way I can be certain in
1:35:14that statement was because of the
1:35:16following so there's another Persian his
1:35:19name Isn Sina IBN Sina
1:35:24uh says to us that I read Aristotle 40
1:35:29times now he didn't read Aristotle 40
1:35:32times we actually don't know how many
1:35:33times he read
1:35:34him I read Aristotle 40 times was an
1:35:39idiom it meant I memorized Aristotle
1:35:42word for
1:35:44word when he said I read Aristotle 40
1:35:46times what he meant was you can tell me
1:35:49the
1:35:50politics page five third chapter and he
1:35:54could tell it to you word for word he
1:35:56had the text memorized in his
1:36:00head he said after saying this I don't
1:36:04know what it says I'm sure there's some
1:36:06incredible genius here I can't tap into
1:36:09it the words don't make sense the reason
1:36:13the words didn't make sense was they
1:36:15were
1:36:16idiomatic that is to say Aristotle
1:36:19taught in idioms well he taught in
1:36:22idioms that by the first century ad were
1:36:27now a thousand years
1:36:30old and even the Greeks didn't know
1:36:32those idioms so it wasn't like the Arabs
1:36:34could go to the Greeks and go dude what
1:36:35does this idiom mean because the
1:36:37language had evolved and those idioms
1:36:39were forgotten so whether you read it in
1:36:42the original Greek or you read it in
1:36:44alind Translation either way you still
1:36:47didn't know what the idioms meant nobody
1:36:48did even the Greeks couldn't read
1:36:51Aristotle and so there's stumped they
1:36:54don't know what to do and Ian goes I
1:36:56know there's a genius in here I got to
1:36:58tap into it how do I tap into it one day
1:37:01he's in the books book section of the
1:37:03bazaar and he passes by a book and it
1:37:07says it's written by fari it says
1:37:11alfarabi's idiomatic
1:37:14translation of
1:37:16Aristotle alarabi would read an idiom
1:37:19try to guess what it meant he'd plug it
1:37:22in see if it worked if it didn't work
1:37:24he'd come back try a different one and
1:37:27he kept doing this until he decoded the
1:37:29idioms and he realized what each idiom
1:37:32meant and now you could know Aristotle
1:37:36and what he was saying IMA reads this
1:37:39figures out what the idioms are he
1:37:41already has the text memorized IA
1:37:44suddenly instantly knows
1:37:46Aristotle and he goes
1:37:49nuts what he realizes is that Aristotle
1:37:53is on to something about the nature of
1:37:57the
1:37:58universe so Aristotle says so I guess I
1:38:03have to tell you what Plato says Plato
1:38:05says that there is three realities
1:38:08there's the reality we experience so
1:38:10this floor that wall the chair my suit
1:38:15me but that's not the real real the real
1:38:19real the realer real is what's in my
1:38:21head so my imagination of a chair is
1:38:24realer than an actual
1:38:26chair my understanding of the wall is a
1:38:29better is better than the actual wall
1:38:31and he goes but that's not the real real
1:38:33either reality exists in a plane of
1:38:36existence that he calls the forms or the
1:38:39edios and so what happens is if I'm
1:38:42going to make a chair I I my mind
1:38:45reaches up into the edios grabs the true
1:38:48chair brings it into my head but it's a
1:38:50copy copy is Never As Good As the
1:38:52original
1:38:54and then my hands take the copy in my
1:38:57head and make a physical copy so the
1:39:00chair that chair is a copy of the copy
1:39:03of the real thing Aristotle reads this
1:39:06and goes oh my God what a bunch of
1:39:08nonsense what even is that it's
1:39:11nonsensical Aristotle says no the chair
1:39:14is a collection of
1:39:16Essences this chair is black so it has
1:39:19black Essence it's plastic so it has
1:39:21plastic Essence it's shaped in a
1:39:23specific way it has chair Essence that a
1:39:26thing is a series of
1:39:29Essences
1:39:31inago those Essences are actually
1:39:34information for example there might be a
1:39:37scratch on that chair and in the shape
1:39:39of the chair itself is information and
1:39:42the molecular construction you didn't
1:39:43have the concept of molecules but they
1:39:44did have the concept of atoms the the
1:39:47the construction the material in there
1:39:49that's also
1:39:51information but he takes it once step
1:39:53further he goes so when that chair was
1:39:56originally made it was not perfect but
1:39:58it was close to perfect because it
1:40:00probably didn't have any scratches on it
1:40:02it didn't have any damage it didn't have
1:40:04any wear and tear on
1:40:05it but then as time goes by more
1:40:09information is added to the chair
1:40:11because it gets bumped and it gets
1:40:14scratched in other words there's a
1:40:16relationship between information and
1:40:18time take me for example when I was born
1:40:21I was a lot easier to describe in part
1:40:23because I was a lot smaller but also I
1:40:26had fewer scars and there was a lot less
1:40:29information in my head so the
1:40:31description of me was really easy But as
1:40:34time goes forward the description of me
1:40:35becomes more and more
1:40:37complicated until finally I die and my
1:40:42cells break apart and Decay back into
1:40:45the Earth the description of me becomes
1:40:48extraordinarily complicated at that
1:40:50point in other words as time goes by the
1:40:54universe increases the amount of
1:40:57information and then he goes oh
1:41:03wow what if we ran the clock
1:41:07backwards so instead of us thinking
1:41:10about the future where there's more
1:41:11information if we go back there's less
1:41:13and less
1:41:15information and he
1:41:17goes okay so at some point we reach a
1:41:21moment where there's the minimum amount
1:41:24of information necessary for the
1:41:27universe itself to unravel from that
1:41:30moment he calls that point in time in
1:41:33that information packet necessary
1:41:38being in other words a thousand years
1:41:41ago
1:41:44IA
1:41:45described big bang and
1:41:49singularities and entropy
1:41:54also that was not a major achievement
1:41:57for him his real achievement was he's
1:41:59the guy who invented modern
1:42:01medicine so if you look him up it'll say
1:42:04the father of modern medicine some of
1:42:06you will get confused and go I thought
1:42:07hypoc hypocrates was the father of
1:42:09medicine yeah because you're forgetting
1:42:11I said modern I didn't say medicine I
1:42:13said modern
1:42:15medicine until IA medicine looked like
1:42:19this there was disease and the way
1:42:22disease affected you
1:42:24but was based on did you eat fish and
1:42:26drink milk and did a black cat walk in
1:42:29front of you was Jupiter in alignment
1:42:31with Saturn if so when disease hits you
1:42:35you're going to bleed from the eyes and
1:42:37have uncontrollable bowel movements IA
1:42:40walks up and goes this is nonsense what
1:42:43are you talking about there isn't
1:42:45disease there's diseases they're all
1:42:48different and they have different
1:42:49transmission vectors so one disease you
1:42:52sneak on it you get it another disease
1:42:55you touch fecal matter and you get it
1:42:56another disease is
1:42:59bloodborne another disease is comes by
1:43:01insects another disease comes from from
1:43:03rats in other words what we need to do
1:43:07is we need to think about the
1:43:08transmission vectors in his book here
1:43:11you go can
1:43:14canp Canon means law q a n u
1:43:21n so if you you're if you're
1:43:24in physics and they say you need to read
1:43:27the
1:43:28Canon Canon c a n o n not c a n n o n
1:43:35means law because it's an Arabic word
1:43:38you're using an Arabic wordun is
1:43:41QA n u
1:43:43n it doesn't have to be but that's how
1:43:46I'm spelling it it could be with two o's
1:43:49or so
1:43:53the Canon of medicine is the book he
1:43:55writes in it he includes hundreds of
1:43:58cures we still use a bunch of those
1:44:00cures today in Europe and and the Middle
1:44:03East his book is still necessary reading
1:44:06in medical
1:44:07school but that's not what's interesting
1:44:10about him here's what he says he says
1:44:13you know what's better than all these
1:44:14cures I stuck in here
1:44:17prevention your goal is not to get the
1:44:20disease to begin with if you cannot get
1:44:22the disease that's way better than
1:44:23getting the disease risking dying and
1:44:25getting cured and then dealing with the
1:44:27side effects of the disease
1:44:29later that's why he's the father of
1:44:31modern medicine he's that guy who said
1:44:34interrupt the transmission vectors so
1:44:37when I was taught this in school I was
1:44:39taught that seml viice the Hungarian
1:44:41figured this out yes semv the Hungarian
1:44:45figured it out again 800 years after imn
1:44:48Sina figured that out first imn Sina had
1:44:52a contemporary
1:44:54his name wasam actually for the record
1:44:57neither guy was actually
1:45:00called uh their names were shockingly
1:45:02similar and so it's it's hard to keep
1:45:05them apart Abu Ali
1:45:08alassan
1:45:13Abdullah Alam I think Isam and then Abu
1:45:17Ali Al
1:45:18Hussein
1:45:20abdah so we just went screw it we're
1:45:22just going to use the last parts of
1:45:24their names which is like their
1:45:25grandfather's name and we're just going
1:45:27to reject the rest of it so that I don't
1:45:29have to remember which Abu Ali I'm
1:45:30talking about we can move on so
1:45:35Alam was from Iraq he was from Basra he
1:45:39ended up uh by the way alarabi actually
1:45:43was a student of ishak after Bagdad was
1:45:46created uh that became the repository of
1:45:48knowledge bad was the center of it all
1:45:51and ishak was a Christian Arab and I
1:45:54just thought I'd throw that in there cuz
1:45:55I want to make sure that I didn't ignore
1:45:57the fact that this isn't just a Muslim
1:45:59project this was also a Christian and
1:46:01for that matter there were Jews involved
1:46:03in this as well because right this was a
1:46:06tolerant society that embraced the
1:46:08differences and allow them to thrive and
1:46:11so uh IM alham goes to Cairo and he
1:46:15starts working at
1:46:18Alazar um as a professor Alazar was a
1:46:20brand new uh School and mosque in a
1:46:24brand new city Cairo is like the baby of
1:46:27the of the Middle East it's only a
1:46:29thousand years old which is a joke for
1:46:31age right everybody's like oh Cairo so
1:46:36young it's such a noob and so iel heam
1:46:39is right there at the beginning and he
1:46:41writes a book which in 10:21 is the book
1:46:45of Optics we think alham wrote 120 books
1:46:50we we have 30 of them missing 90 the of
1:46:54the 30 that we have they're almost on
1:46:56all on mathematics he was a mathematical
1:46:59genius uh he started doing calculus
1:47:01before anybody so yeah sorry it wasn't
1:47:03liit or Newton it was imel hyam um he's
1:47:07the guy who came up with the scientific
1:47:09method so when I was a kid I was taught
1:47:11it was either Galileo or it was Francis
1:47:15Bacon Galileo
1:47:17Galo maybe did something cool with
1:47:21cannonballs at the tower Leaning Tower
1:47:23Pizza I don't know gal Galileo galile I
1:47:26mispronounced his name um it's probably
1:47:29apocryphal it probably didn't really
1:47:31happen but if he did do the Cannonball
1:47:32thing that's all sorts of fun because
1:47:35you just say Look Out Below and then he
1:47:36drops cannonballs um the reason he did
1:47:39it was he was trying to prove whether or
1:47:41not Aristotle's assumptions about the
1:47:43heavier object will hit the ground first
1:47:45was true or not and of course they saw
1:47:46the two objects hit the ground at the
1:47:48same time he had a solid Cannonball and
1:47:50a hollow Cannonball so if Aristotle was
1:47:53right the solid one would hit
1:47:57first Aristotle wasn't right well but he
1:47:59was kind of but that's too complicated
1:48:01we don't need to do that it turns out it
1:48:03is true the heavier object will hit
1:48:05first it's just the cannonballs relative
1:48:07to the size of the Earth who cares so
1:48:10the only way you can measure the heavier
1:48:11one hitting first is if you had lasers
1:48:13sophisticated enough to pick up the the
1:48:16nanc difference between contact in other
1:48:19words if I had an object the size of the
1:48:21Moon an object size of Mars and I ran
1:48:23them towards the Earth the Mars siiz
1:48:26object would hit first but anyway that's
1:48:29because of the way gravity Works um so
1:48:33it was Imam he had a six-step method for
1:48:36the scientific method he's the guy who
1:48:38figured out the lens I'm very grateful
1:48:40every day I wake up I go thank you and I
1:48:43put them on he reinvented the camera
1:48:46obscura Lau invented the world's first
1:48:49camera obscura but his material was
1:48:51largely destroyed and not enough of it
1:48:53made it through imel ham reinvented the
1:48:56camera obscura during this time period
1:48:59actually before this time period around
1:49:01the year 800 the Arabs invented modern
1:49:04agriculture the way they did that was
1:49:07they
1:49:08deezed the population of farmers that
1:49:11they had inherited when they conquered
1:49:13the Persian and Roman Empires and they
1:49:15created private property with the hope
1:49:18that then the peasants who were now free
1:49:20who now owned their own land could do
1:49:22whatever they wanted to with it they
1:49:24would experiment and they'd figure out
1:49:26the best ways to do agriculture instead
1:49:28of just doing the same old thing over
1:49:30and over again in other words the
1:49:32incentive of profit motivation might
1:49:35trigger something and it does one of the
1:49:38things that they figure out is crop
1:49:40rotation they're the guys who invent
1:49:42that they also realize don't keep
1:49:44planting the same crop over and over
1:49:45again what if there's a blight what if
1:49:48there's an insect plague you're reliant
1:49:50on one food makes you D Dangerously
1:49:53at the mercy of that food and so you
1:49:55need to have Diversified crops so one of
1:49:57the things the Arabs did was they went
1:49:59around looking for new things to grow
1:50:02and they're the guys who start the
1:50:03coffee
1:50:04industry they take these beans that they
1:50:07find in Ethiopia that they realize they
1:50:09can do something with and they bring
1:50:11them to Yemen and they plant them in the
1:50:13province of Yemen named
1:50:18mocha and start the coffee industry they
1:50:21also realized you can pack fresh food on
1:50:24a ship and send it to the other side of
1:50:28Asia all you had to do is pack it full
1:50:30of ice and so they were sending F fresh
1:50:34food to China and India by packing ships
1:50:37full of
1:50:39ice they had plumbing and by Plumbing I
1:50:43mean fresh water was pumped in sewage
1:50:46water was pumped out they invented water
1:50:49wheels to make the pumping work so you
1:50:51could just use the power of River to run
1:50:53your
1:50:54pump they lit up their streets at
1:51:00night so in other words if you walk down
1:51:03the streets of
1:51:04bagad a thousand years
1:51:07ago as you're walking down that street
1:51:10at night there were oil lamps in other
1:51:13words if I took a
1:51:16satellite and I put it in orbit around
1:51:18the Earth a thousand years ago and I
1:51:20stuck it so it was always at night so
1:51:22I'd see the whole planet at night
1:51:24photographed it the whole planet's pitch
1:51:27dark except for
1:51:30everything from Iraq to Pakistan the
1:51:34night the cities twinkled like they do
1:51:41now alham speculated that all objects in
1:51:45the universe exerted
1:51:47gravity I don't know how you observe
1:51:50that I mean I get that the floor was
1:51:52exerting gravity over me but he said all
1:51:54objects how is the wall pulling me I
1:51:57don't experience that he also said light
1:52:00has a finite speed and it travels in
1:52:04waves his book of Optics was 1021 this
1:52:08was a thousand one years
1:52:12ago they dabbled in
1:52:16Psychology IUN comes along IUN says it's
1:52:22okay T to read history but you need to
1:52:24be a skeptic historians
1:52:27lie don't believe everything you
1:52:30read don't read Herodotus and take him
1:52:33at his word because he's a
1:52:35liar we we need to think about what he's
1:52:38saying and ask why is he saying what
1:52:40he's saying he also says we should have
1:52:44a systematic study of
1:52:46politics and sociology and
1:52:50demographics in other words he's the
1:52:52inventor of the social sciences
1:52:54including their little separate
1:52:57categories in other words he's the
1:52:59founder of political
1:53:02science myones is a Jewish Arab from
1:53:08Spain he laments the death of Hebrew so
1:53:13Hebrew died harder than Latin died I can
1:53:16learn ltin I can learn the vocabulary I
1:53:18can learn the grammar and I can have a
1:53:20conversation with you when Hebrew they
1:53:22lost a lot of vocabulary and they lost
1:53:26the grammar system they kind of vaguely
1:53:28knew what the grammar system ought to
1:53:30look like because they had holy texts
1:53:33but it wasn't enough it wasn't enough to
1:53:35reconstruct the language it wasn't
1:53:37enough to learn it and speak it so
1:53:39here's what my manad did he realized
1:53:42that Hebrew and Arabic were very close
1:53:45cousins maybe brother and sister
1:53:47actually so he took Arabic grammar he
1:53:50studied it until he understood it he
1:53:52took Arabic grammar he took he took the
1:53:55Hebrew vocabulary that they had from the
1:53:57holy text he plugged it in and then
1:54:00whenever he was missing a word he just
1:54:02grabbed the Arabic word and stuck it in
1:54:05and he brought Hebrew
1:54:07back which is
1:54:10unbelievable name another language that
1:54:13was resurrected from Death I don't know
1:54:16of one languages die that's it they're
1:54:19finished except for Hebrew
1:54:23that's that time
1:54:26period so notice the dates though we are
1:54:29told that the Dark Ages start when Rome
1:54:32falls on September 4 476 ad I told you
1:54:37at the beginning Rome didn't fall that
1:54:38day it fell May 29 1453 how do I
1:54:42know on that date in September in 476
1:54:47all that happened was ramulus Augustus
1:54:49the Western Roman Emperor took off his
1:54:51purple robe stuck it in a box with a
1:54:53note sent it to Emperor Zeno the Eastern
1:54:57Roman Emperor and said there's no reason
1:54:58for two Emperors let's just do one
1:55:01you're it I
1:55:03abdicate that's not the same as Rome
1:55:06fell on May 29
1:55:091453 ottoman soldiers entered
1:55:13Constantinople the Roman capital and
1:55:16captured
1:55:17it and Rome ceased to own any real
1:55:21estate
1:55:22that's when a state Falls is when it
1:55:24doesn't own real
1:55:26estate that's how I know Rome didn't
1:55:28fall that
1:55:29moment but what we are told is that the
1:55:33Dark Ages the Middle Ages the medieval
1:55:36period starts with the fall of Rome in
1:55:39476 and doesn't end until sometime
1:55:43around 1492 that it lasts a thousand
1:55:46years there's a thousand years without
1:55:48knowledge but I just showed you that
1:55:50there was actually extraordinary
1:55:52developments that were taking place
1:55:54including calculus 600 years before
1:55:57Newton innel heyam stated Newton's first
1:56:01law of motion 600 years before Newton he
1:56:04he actually described Kepler's first law
1:56:07of planetary motion 500 years before
1:56:14Kepler one I was working on my gra my
1:56:18graduate
1:56:19degree I started to get into haiger who
1:56:22is very controversial but that doesn't
1:56:24mean you throw the baby out with a bath
1:56:26water he was a Nazi for 11 months bad
1:56:29hidinger bad bad he denounced the Nazi
1:56:32party after 11 months and said you're
1:56:34all a bunch of charlatans I reject you
1:56:36and then he spent the rest of World War
1:56:38II as an outcast but still that 11
1:56:41months were gross uh he got his
1:56:44Professor fired and then took his job
1:56:46his Professor was guy named hurl he was
1:56:48Jewish I I'm doing this because I just
1:56:50don't want anybody to be confused about
1:56:52why I'm reading
1:56:53haiger I'm reading heiger and I realized
1:56:57something in his
1:56:59bibliography he's quoting Alam
1:57:03Anda and at the time I didn't know who
1:57:05they were so I went who are these
1:57:09guys when he was quoting IA the reason
1:57:12he was quoting imn Sina is because his
1:57:14teacher who surl who by the way was
1:57:16brilliant he shouldn't have fired him
1:57:18this is ugly who surl had taken he
1:57:23and Ian merged them and created a new
1:57:26branch of philosophy called
1:57:28phenomenology so when haiger was taking
1:57:30his thing on being in time to the next
1:57:33level he was building off of that and
1:57:36then of
1:57:38course um that became the moment when
1:57:43philosophy in the world completely
1:57:46changed everybody who hates haiger is
1:57:49still a hiigaran There's No Going Back
1:57:52haiger changed philosophy he grabbed it
1:57:54he shook it he flipped it upside down
1:57:56and he redid it but part of his
1:58:00inspiration for this was that
1:58:02conversation I had with you earlier
1:58:03about I Sina and the nature of the
1:58:06universe he took and built on that and
1:58:10then
1:58:11changed philosophy
1:58:14forever so even though the guy was a
1:58:17thousand-year-old thinker he was still
1:58:20playing a major role 100 years ago and
1:58:22changing the way we do
1:58:24philosophy in other words there's no
1:58:27separation between any of this it's all
1:58:29connected
1:58:30together one last
1:58:33thing so the Arabs had idiomatically
1:58:36translated Aristotle into Arabic when
1:58:39the Spanish were conquering Spain from
1:58:42the Muslims they kept encountering
1:58:44libraries the popes kept issuing edicts
1:58:48to burn all the
1:58:49books just like when they had burnt The
1:58:51Great Library just when they shut down
1:58:53the Academy of Athens they wanted to
1:58:55continue this the thinking went you only
1:58:58need one book it's the Bible why are we
1:59:00doing the science stuff we don't need
1:59:01this what we need to do is Purge the
1:59:03libraries of all these books that make
1:59:05me feel uncomfortable oh no that's now
1:59:07oh wait no that was then too it's so
1:59:09confusing how nothing
1:59:14changes we don't
1:59:17learn well the monks who were set us who
1:59:20were ordered to destroy the books were
1:59:22the benedictines and the Dominican monks
1:59:25the benedictines and the Dominican monks
1:59:28didn't obey the
1:59:31order what they did was they dug giant
1:59:34underground libraries beneath their
1:59:37monasteries when they would show up to
1:59:39the place with the Muslim library that
1:59:41they had to burn they would read they
1:59:43would have a guy
1:59:44read they had a guy who would stand here
1:59:47and they had the book they would turn
1:59:48the book so it was facing him so he
1:59:49could read it he was a human card cattle
1:59:52he knew the list the names of all the
1:59:54books they had in their secret
1:59:55underground Library so as you would walk
1:59:58by he'd read it if he recognize the book
2:00:00he'd give you one signal and you dump it
2:00:02in a pile in the middle of the town he
2:00:05give if he didn't recognize it he'd give
2:00:07you another signal and you'd walk over
2:00:09to a cart where they had a hidden panel
2:00:11and you'd Slide the book into that and
2:00:13then you'd walk back and you'd go grab
2:00:15another book and then you'd carry it so
2:00:18that that guy could read it and oh that
2:00:20one goes in this pile and then
2:00:22afterwards they'd set that pile on fire
2:00:24so they could show everybody they were
2:00:25burning the books and then they'd sneak
2:00:28the other books into their underground
2:00:31Library where they were busy translating
2:00:34it from Arabic into ancient Greek and
2:00:38Latin and that's how we have Plato and
2:00:43Aristotle we would have lost it all
2:00:46because the Christians were going around
2:00:47burning
2:00:49everything what happened that was not
2:00:52not only did the Benedictine and the
2:00:54Dominican monks have second second
2:00:57thoughts about this and refus to follow
2:00:59their orders it's good to not follow
2:01:02orders
2:01:03sometimes but the Italians went you know
2:01:06what I
2:01:07miss the good old days when we had
2:01:10science and math and philosophy why
2:01:13don't we do that again and sometime
2:01:16around
2:01:171300 they do the
2:01:19Renaissance 1300 the CR Crusades end in
2:01:231291 after the Crusaders start coming
2:01:26back they go you know what we saw when
2:01:28we were there murdering all those
2:01:30Muslims and Jews they had indoor
2:01:33plumbing and medicine and crop
2:01:38rotation they're talking about things
2:01:40have
2:01:42gravity and that light has a finite
2:01:45speed and that the Universe originates
2:01:48from a point of information
2:01:52and the Italians go oh wow that's so
2:01:56cool let's do that
2:02:01here isn't that
2:02:03crazy all right let's do Q&A for a few
2:02:05minutes and then and then we have to go
2:02:08absolutely okay so the question is does
2:02:10the Arabs being in Sicily for two
2:02:12centuries have an impact on the creation
2:02:14of the Renaissance the answer is yeah
2:02:16there was a guy named Frederick II he
2:02:18happens to be one of my favorite ever
2:02:19rulers so the Vikings conquer northern
2:02:24France at one point they renamed
2:02:26northern France after themselves they
2:02:28were the northmen Nordman Northman they
2:02:30rename it after themselves they call
2:02:32they were called the Normans they call
2:02:34it
2:02:35normandi the nor Normans at some point
2:02:38get really bored they're like dude I'm
2:02:40sick of watching peasants grow things
2:02:42when was the LA so they're saying it in
2:02:44French but with a viking accent right
2:02:46because they stopped speaking German and
2:02:48they started speaking French so just
2:02:50imagine you know like
2:02:52the the little thing I can't do
2:02:55it right something like that that means
2:02:57happy birthday um so get that going in
2:03:00your head but do it in
2:03:04French that must have been horrific for
2:03:06French speakers to hear this and they
2:03:08one day they just like you know what
2:03:09dude let's go kill somebody now the
2:03:12original killing event they went to
2:03:14Spain actually and they captured barbos
2:03:17which today is Saragosa it was a Muslim
2:03:20City they capture it and they're like
2:03:23wow this is awesome so I need you to
2:03:27have in your head red head and blond
2:03:29head Vikings with long hair and braids
2:03:32and big beards right and they're just
2:03:35they're just you know they got an axe
2:03:37they're ready to hack people to death
2:03:39they get there and they see the Arabs
2:03:42doing philosophy and Math and Science
2:03:44and they go this is so cool they take
2:03:47off their Viking clothing they start
2:03:49wearing jelas and they walk around
2:03:52learning Arabic and they blend into Arab
2:03:55Society in Saragosa in Spain well word
2:03:59gets back to Normandy and the Normans
2:04:00are like man we could do this on a
2:04:03larger scale so a group of them get in a
2:04:05ship they sail all the way around Sicily
2:04:08I'm sorry around Spain to Sicily they
2:04:11get to Sicily they conquer it and then
2:04:15there then they have this really
2:04:16interesting situation because there's
2:04:17all these arabic speaking people living
2:04:19there there are there are people who are
2:04:21speaking Italian living there and
2:04:24they're Christian cuz they had converted
2:04:27right it didn't it didn't tone them down
2:04:29yet they get tone down later right
2:04:30they're still they're still little
2:04:33sociopaths and then little by little
2:04:35they start to marry into German royalty
2:04:37this is this is complicated and
2:04:40eventually there's a guy named Frederick
2:04:41II if you look at coins from the time
2:04:44period in Sicily one side is in Arabic
2:04:46the other side is in Latin Frederick II
2:04:50actually had
2:04:52a bureaucracy made up of Christians Jews
2:04:55and Muslims and he learned Arabic he
2:04:58didn't just learn Arabic he spoke
2:05:00Italian and German and French and like I
2:05:02think two other languages the dude was
2:05:04just is that a polyglot I forget what
2:05:06the de there's a polyot a polyglot
2:05:08anyway whatever it is he was that guy
2:05:11and he would read texts in the original
2:05:13Arabic and then sometimes he translate
2:05:15them in Latin he even did his own
2:05:17science he's so in love with the Muslim
2:05:20world that that after throwing the
2:05:23Crusaders out he was approached to see
2:05:26if he wanted the title of king of
2:05:28Jerusalem and he didn't send an army and
2:05:31Conquer it was just a symbolic
2:05:34gesture he eventually will become the
2:05:36Holy Roman Emperor which means he also
2:05:38owned Italy and Germany and he's
2:05:40spreading his ideas he got into falconry
2:05:43right the quintessential Arab sport like
2:05:46he's out there with Falcons reading
2:05:47original Arabic script learning how to
2:05:49do this
2:05:52uh and it pissed off the popes he got
2:05:54excommunicated twice he led an army to
2:05:58Rome twice he conquered it and captured
2:06:02the pope and cut his head off a couple
2:06:03of times and instituted new popes a
2:06:06couple of times because all that sciency
2:06:10stuff that he was learning was
2:06:11apparently corrupting his soul but yeah
2:06:13it's the same time period it's that it's
2:06:16that moment when Italy is
2:06:18rethinking maybe burning the books
2:06:20wasn't a great idea idea so you have two
2:06:23ways of thinking about this you can
2:06:25pretend that Islam held on to Western
2:06:27civilization while western civilization
2:06:29was burning itself to the ground and
2:06:31then Western Civilization just
2:06:32reconstituted itself or you can realize
2:06:36the truth which is that the Arabs were
2:06:38Western Civilization all along the Islam
2:06:41didn't necessarily save something that
2:06:43it wasn't it saved itself it just took
2:06:46it to a new level the Arabs weren't
2:06:48doing something that was alien to them
2:06:51they were part of western civilization
2:06:53they even had a western civilization
2:06:55religion because right it's an Islam is
2:06:57an abrahamic religion so they had all
2:06:58these Western Civilization Traditions
2:07:01when they conquered that part of Rome
2:07:03and Persia that that was part of western
2:07:05civilization that had never stopped
2:07:06being Western Civilization what happened
2:07:09is you were taught it in an islamophobic
2:07:12way so all the Muslim parts were just
2:07:15simply
2:07:17deleted and so now we think of this as
2:07:20an East West divide and somehow the
2:07:22Muslims are on the on the east side of
2:07:23it they're not that woman when she told
2:07:25me Egyptians are easterners she's just
2:07:28flat out wrong this is part of
2:07:31orientalism it's an attempt to make you
2:07:33see the world as US versus them it's not
2:07:36it's just
2:07:38not in Texas for example we do community
2:07:41property divorce we got that from Mexico
2:07:44Mexico's Catholic it didn't have
2:07:48divorce Mexico got it from Spain Spain
2:07:52is Catholic Spain didn't have
2:07:54divorce when the Arabs ruled Spain they
2:07:57got sick of all the deadbeat husbands
2:07:59who were divorcing their wives for
2:08:02younger models and then leaving the
2:08:04children to be raised by those divorced
2:08:08wives who no longer had a source of
2:08:09income so there were all these kids
2:08:10living in the streets so what what they
2:08:13what they did in Spain was they created
2:08:15a system where all the property
2:08:16generated from the moment of the
2:08:18marriage's start to the moment of the
2:08:19marriage's end got split in half period
2:08:21end the story that's community property
2:08:24law so you know you'll hear this thing
2:08:26that conservatives will say I'm worried
2:08:28about Sharia law well then don't get
2:08:32divorced because that's Muslim
2:08:35law the taco when the Spanish conquered
2:08:39Mexico they said make this the thing
2:08:41they were saying to make was Sherma
2:08:43because the Spanish were Arabs they were
2:08:45just self-hating Arabs who rejected
2:08:47their arabness so they had flatbread
2:08:50food with meat in the middle and then
2:08:52vegetables and a sauce you put on it
2:08:54that they would fold like this the
2:08:55Aztecs go we don't have those
2:08:57ingredients the Spanish go you're are
2:08:59slaves we going to kill you make it
2:09:00anyway so the Mexicans went fine and
2:09:03then they made a tortilla and they put
2:09:05meat on it and they did a salsa because
2:09:09they needed the ingredients because they
2:09:10didn't have tahina and they were just
2:09:12stuck so the next time you're eating
2:09:14tacos remember that it's actually
2:09:17originally Arab food it's just a Native
2:09:19American version of Arab food al pastor
2:09:22you're like ah that'll work I'll eat
2:09:24pork that way I don't have to actually
2:09:26eat Arab food because Arabs don't eat
2:09:28pork so about a little bit less than 200
2:09:31years ago 150 years ago Arabs started to
2:09:33move to
2:09:34Mexico those Arabs wanted to make
2:09:36Shawarma they're like my God tacos are
2:09:38basically just Shawarma how did that
2:09:40happen because they didn't know the
2:09:41original story so they're sitting there
2:09:43going ah I want to make the Sharma with
2:09:45lamb I need a fatty
2:09:48meat there just isn't enough fatty meat
2:09:51in
2:09:53park and so the Arab
2:09:57Mexicans if you've ever been to Mexico
2:10:00and you've eaten a pastor off the thing
2:10:03it's the Sharma thing but it's got pork
2:10:06on it in other words alpastor is Arab
2:10:09food
2:10:12twice we're all interconnected there's
2:10:15no separating any of this out from
2:10:17anything our languages like
2:10:20this Admiral is an Arabic word Zenith
2:10:23nater algebra those are all Arabic words
2:10:26zero is an Arabic word apricot is an
2:10:30Arabic word there's no winning if you
2:10:33really wanted to do this because we
2:10:35there's no separating us out from each
2:10:39other okay so the question is why did
2:10:42Christianity reject all that
2:10:45philosophy and you know right set
2:10:47everything on fire at the same time that
2:10:49Muslims were embracing it I don't think
2:10:52there's a simple answer I think you know
2:10:54there's there's a historical moment that
2:10:56Christians found themselves in as the
2:10:59Roman Empire was in Decline right the
2:11:01Roman Empire almost went away in the 3rd
2:11:03Century Diocesan saved it and
2:11:05reconstituted it by that point it goes
2:11:08christian and then on that as as the
2:11:12Roman Empire goes christian it's it's in
2:11:13a terrible position it's economy is
2:11:16garbage um the population is poor the
2:11:20population is small
2:11:22Rome at one point was a million and a
2:11:24half people by the time we get to the
2:11:266th Century ad there was about 50,000
2:11:29Romans living in the city so so Rome
2:11:32itself was diminished and I think in
2:11:35that moment there was this sense of it's
2:11:40hopeless everything is falling apart
2:11:42around us let's turn to religion we'll
2:11:45focus on religion we'll just try to save
2:11:47our souls we're not going to worry about
2:11:49the material world
2:11:51and so I think that was the basis of the
2:11:54rejection that it it came out of a sense
2:11:56of
2:11:59Despair but in the in the same time the
2:12:02Muslims were making this brand new
2:12:03Empire they were filled with Vigor they
2:12:05had this new religion there there was
2:12:07hope there were dreams they encountered
2:12:10philosophy and they fell in love with it
2:12:12and they ran with it and so I think
2:12:14there was a little bit of that going on
2:12:16because right then Christians go oh my
2:12:19God why do we burn all that and then
2:12:20they bring get back and the next thing
2:12:22you know Britain conquers 40% of the
2:12:25planet and so there's this pendulum
2:12:29swing and I I gotta say I like one end
2:12:32of the swing I do I love science I love
2:12:35things like antibiotics antibiotics are
2:12:38wonderful I love calculus I think it's a
2:12:41great thing you should learn it uh
2:12:44physics boundless love of physics when
2:12:47that pendulum comes swinging back the
2:12:49other way and we're setting books
2:12:51Sunfire and pulling them out of
2:12:52libraries in Texas it freaks me out cuz
2:12:56I've seen this play before I've read
2:12:58about it anyway it wasn't there and I
2:13:00know how this story ends and you're not
2:13:03going to like
2:13:05it you're not we don't need to do this
2:13:08again we've done it before it wasn't
2:13:11great it wasn't
2:13:13great just for the record
2:13:16[Music]

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