The Law of Proximity

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0:00Last night there was a major escalation in this war. So, the Israelis have bombed the Iranian uh oil fields. And in response, the Iranians now are attacking the um energy infrastructure of the GCC. Okay, so let's have a look at what this attack looks like. This is Qatar. Okay, so Qatar provides 20% of the world's LNG. Um and this is a major escalation. And again, um as I pointed out last class, the first strategy of Iran is to destroy the global economy, okay? And this is how it will do so. It also attacked Tel Aviv in response for the assassination of their de facto leader, Ali Ali Larijani, okay? So, this is what the attack looks like. Um as you can see from this picture, this is a cluster warhead, and it is impossible for air defense to stop this. So, Tel Aviv is getting pummeled. We don't have footage because it's being censored right now. And you would think that um Israelis would want this war to end as soon as possible because Tel Aviv and other cities are getting just destroyed in this war. And again, there's really no way for the Israelis to defend themselves against um Iranian ballistic missiles.

2:01But unfortunately, there are many Israelis who are very happy about all this destruction. All right? And so this is one of the uh more influential rabbis in Jerusalem. He's talking in Hebrew, but what he's saying is that this war of destruction it will bring about the return of the Sorry, not the return, the coming of the Messiah. And it will happen on Thursday, which is today. Okay? So they are not at all saddened by what is happening. In fact, they are quite animated. They're very excited about what's happening. So again, you cannot look at this war from a geopolitical lens. You have to look at it from an eschatological perspective. All right? So um let us look at where we are in the war so far. And as you can see, it is a regional war, and both sides are seeking maximalist objectives. And what this means is the United States and Israel wants to destroy Israel, especially its capacity to be a nation-state. And so right now, um the Americans and Israelis are attacking their leadership, decapitating their leadership, as well as targeting their economy. And later on, um as this war progresses and escalates, they will start to target in civilian critical infrastructure, including water. Okay? And it's already happening. Um they also want to have a divide and rule uh strategy where they want to provoke ethnic conflict in Iran and divide uh Iran up into ethnic enclaves. And this is what we call Balkanization. The Iranians on the other hand want to

4:02destroy the entire global economy. You do that by attacking the energy infrastructure of the GCC. Because again, the entire basis of the global global economy is cheap energy. Okay? So, as this war progresses, you will notice certain things. All right? So, eventually, the Americans will have no choice but to launch a ground invasion. [snorts] And one possible attack vector is here, which is Kharg Island. This is where Iran stores about 9% of its oil for export. And so, the idea is that if you take Kharg Island, you will destroy the Iranian economy and thus its capacity to sustain this war. The problem with Kharg Island is that it's easy to take, but it's hard to defend because of the coastline, right? Which case, you have to also take the coastline. But then, you deal with the Zagros Mountains. And so, you have to expand outwards. Okay? So, this is what we call mission creep. Where you cannot justify the war. So, what you do is you put in some soldiers and then the mission creep becomes just just justification for the war. Okay? So, that's one thing to spot as you read the news. Kharg Island will be a flash point. Another flash point will be Saudi Arabia. Because right now, the Iranians are attacking Saudi Arabia. Now, what Saudi Arabia can do is declare war on Iran. This is important because Saudi Arabia has a mutual defense pact with Pakistan. So, that if any are attacked, the other is obligated to come to each other's defense, okay? This is important because as you can see, Pakistan opens up the eastern front, okay? So it's possible the Americans can attack from the east.

6:02The other thing The other thing that's important is that Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And um um it is possible nuclear weapons are used. I again, I strongly believe tactical nuclear weapons will not be used, okay? But once Pakistan is in the war, nuclear warheads are now at play. Okay? Another thing to watch is how this war expands elsewhere, okay? Because when the time is appropriate, what will happen is that um the Iranians will activate their proxies, uh the Houthis, and they will close off another critical choke point, okay? So now, what hap- what's going to happen is that there will be two critical maritime choke points that are closed off, thus isolating the GCC and thus cutting off the world's access to cheap energy. And when they do that, we we can expect global retaliation and other forces what to come in to secure cheap energy. Okay? It's possible the South Koreans, the Japanese are forced into this war because they are so dependent on GCC energy. All right? All right. So these are things that we will um uh look for in the next few weeks. Something else that is um um creating attention on online is people are speculating that Benjamin Netanyahu is dead. And the reason why is that he's he's not been seen in a public setting for many days. There have been cabinet meetings and Netanyahu usually chairs them and he's not there, okay? The other thing is that there are fake AI videos of him giving speeches. And it's pretty blatant these are fake. So, people are speculating that he is dead and they're trying to cover it up. Uh this is a picture of him visiting a

8:04cafe in uh Jerusalem to prove he's not dead. The problem is that this cafe is in a mountain and it will take him about like 50 minutes to drive there. So, why does he go there? Why doesn't he just have a cabinet meeting or get on the phone with Donald Trump to prove he's still alive? All right? So, but I personally don't believe he is dead. He could be hiding somewhere um or he could be injured. What we do know is that the Iranians are killing a lot of senior Israeli officials, including the head of Mossad, their spy agency. And Netanyahu's residence was also targeted in Tel Aviv. So, that's that's a really interesting question. How are the Iranians able to target so many so so many of the top leadership of the Israelis, okay? But not only that, but uh this is Ali Larijani and he is the head, the de facto head of the Iran war effort. [snorts] And he was assassinated um yesterday or 2 days ago and the Iranians have confirmed this, okay? So, he's confirmed to be dead. And um people, analysts, are extremely worried about this because he is a very pragmatic person and so you can negotiate with him, right? So, once this uh war reaches a certain point where both sides are exhausted, then it is possible to approach him and say, "You know what? Let's just negotiate a ceasefire." And he'd be willing to because he's very experienced. He's also very influential, so he's able to bring together the different factions of the Iranian government and negotiate a ceasefire. With him dead, it is now almost impossible to foresee a ceasefire. Okay? So, let's discuss why um you really don't want to do this sort of stuff. You don't really want to kill

10:05um other nations' leaders, okay? And so you let's just use a analogy. Let's imagine in the streets there are two gangs at war with with each other, okay? Gang A and Gang B. Okay? Gang A, Gang B. [snorts] And if you look at gangs, they are structured as hierarchies, okay? But there's a lot of autonomy among the different sections, okay? And what holds uh the gangs together, of course, is the leader. So, when these two gangs go to war, what they try to avoid is killing each others' leader. Why? Because um a war is often used to achieve certain political objectives, right? And so the point isn't to kill everyone, the point is to negotiate um a treaty that is most beneficial to you. And you do that by negotiating with each others' leaders, okay? Because they have the authority to implement the treaty. That's the first reason. The second reason is if you kill the leader, then more people there'll be a competition to replace the leader, right? And during a gang war, the person who is most violent, the most extreme, will often become the new leader, okay? So, by killing this leader, not only do you cause uh conflict among the gang, but you also cause a massive escalation in the conflict um between these two gangs, and there's really no way out. That That is why historically you do not target other nations' leaders because then there's no off-ramp. Okay? So, by targeting um Larijani, Israelis and Americans have ensured that there will be no off-ramp now. This war will

12:05be fought to the bitter end. And unfortunately, as we discussed previously, that is the objective here. Israelis and Americans are interested in maximalist aims to destroy Iran permanently. Okay? And the Iranians are also maximalist in that they want to destroy the global economy permanently in order to restructure reality itself. All right. Okay. So, this leaves us with three major questions that I want to look at today, okay? The first big question is how are these leaders dying? [snorts] It's not that easy to kill a leader, right? Because he's protected by security. And usually we There are two ways to figure out where the leader is, okay? There's human intelligence, called HUMINT, and there's signal intelligence, called SIGINT. Okay? Human intelligence, signal intelligence. Signal intelligence just means electronic eavesdropping, where I listen in on your telephone calls, where I track your IP address, okay? And Israelis and Americans are obviously very sophisticated in that. And the Americans and Israelis are saying that we are using electronic surveillance in order to track these people down. I don't think that's convincing. I think the most um import the most important source, the most reliable source of information is human intelligence. Having spies embedded in local networks to spot for you where they are, okay? That's the most um that's the best way to figure out where they are. So then this raise the question, how are these Israeli citizens getting this human intelligence, okay? All right, that's the first question we want to look at. How are these leaders dying? Second question is like, why are they dying? Like, what's the point of killing them?

14:07Right? Because once they die, they can just be replaced. And they're often replaced by a more extreme um individual, okay? So that's the second question we we want to look at. And the third question we want to look at is what does this mean for the war and the world? Okay? What do these decapitation strikes ultimately mean for how this war will progress and how this will affect the world the world in general, okay? All right, so those those are the three big questions I want to look at. So to answer these three questions, I want to introduce a new idea to you, okay? It's called a law of proximity. The law of proximity, the idea is this. [clears throat] Whenever you play a game, you're not just playing one game. You're playing many, many different games. And the game that you choose to play is the one that is most proximate to you, the one that is close most close to you. And that impacts your decision-making the most. Okay? So that's the law of proximity. So let me explain to you what this uh means using a analogy, okay? Let's just use your life. You are probably actually multiple games every single day. All right, so let's let's let's let's examine this. The first game you play, of course, is the family game, right? So, you might have parents and you have siblings, okay? And the game you're playing, of course, is to win attention from your parents. And to do so, depending on who your siblings are, you might use different strategies including doing well in school or being a pain in the ass. Unfortunately, my kids choose to be a pain in the ass, okay? Um yes. The parents are playing another game, which is

16:08[clears throat] um social um um prestige, right? So, they're competing against other parents to have the best family possible, all right? So, and then not only do you play game at at um home, but you also play games at school, right? All right, so when you go to school, you're competing against your classmates for attention and popularity, but you're also playing um a game in the school to get the best grades so that you can you you can get into a good college, right? Then you go to work where you're competing in order to win the favor of your boss and to be popular among your colleagues. Then you play a city game where you live in Beijing and you want Beijing to be better than maybe Shanghai or Shenzhen, okay? And then you play a game of maybe nation where you want China to be stronger than Japan, okay? So, as you can see, every single day you're playing multiple games even though even though you may not recognize it. And again, what's important is the game that is most important to you is the game which you are most close to, right? The one that you can see in front of you. Okay, does that Does that make sense? Okay. But, this is also true for nations as well, where we think that the game is uh um between nations. But, really the game is within nations. And the conflict within nations is the one conflict that determines how nations behave against each other. All right. So, we So, today what what we will do is we will look at three examples of of this, okay? We will look at the civil conflicts in America, in Israel, and in Iran to figure out why

18:09they behave the way they do, and then figure out how this war will progress. Okay. So, clearly, there is a civil conflict right now in America. Okay, you have the Democrats [clears throat] and you have Republicans. Now, what's odd is that even though these two different political parties are war with each other, they both support the war because their calculus is different. Okay? So, why do the Democrats support this war? Well, it's because they believe that this war will be extremely unpopular in America, which will allow the Democrats to dominate in the midterms in November, and then win the presidential presidential election in 20 uh 28. And they believe that this war will be so unpopular, it will destroy Donald Trump and um allow the Democrats to rule forever. It will basically destroy the Republican Party. All right? And so, that is your strategy. And if you think about it, actually makes a lot of sense. The Republicans have a different strategy, which is this war may be unpopular, and this war [snorts] may um um make America lose, but it's okay. Why? Because in a time of war, the president has something called the Emergency Powers Act, okay? Emergency Powers. Emergency Powers allows the president to essentially suspend the Constitution and to suspend or delay elections. Also, um the Republicans want to pass pass something called Safe America Act. [clears throat] Okay? The Safe America Act.

20:10Um which means that if you are a voter, you must present ID in order to vote. And you think that this is um well, reasonable, but historically, the idea of checking ID is a way to discriminate against minorities, right? To have police officers there to scare uh minorities. And that's traditionally how um racism was enforced in in America. Okay? So, in other words, the Republicans have many different strategies of either cheating or manipulating the elections. They can also, I have to say this, but if the war is going really badly, what they will do is call up a national draft and cancel the elections, okay? All right? So, these are two different strategies going on. But as you can see, this is not really about America defeating Iran. This is really about the Democrats or Republicans trying to obtain power and keep it, okay? All right. But, what's important for us to understand is that it's not just about the Democrats and Republicans at war with each other. There's actually a much deeper divide in America, okay? And this divide is a conflict between the um elite and the counter-elite. [clears throat] Remember how we introduced the idea of elite overproduction, right? Uh this is a Peter Turchin idea. And he argues that what leads to civil war is that you have too much too many elite who want to be the ones in power. Power is a zero-sum game, and therefore when you have elite overproduction, they have to go to war against each other in order to um have the power, okay? And so,

22:10what's going on? Who are the elite and who's the counter-elite? Well, I mean, to put it very simply, the Democrats represent the elite, and the Republicans represent the counter-elite, okay? So, um the Basically, the elite is the empire. And counter-elite is um MAGA, which is America first. And so, they have two different um um ideals for America. The empire is to maintain the current global order, right? And MAGA is to retreat back into Western Hemisphere and focus on um Americans' core national interests. All right. They're also divided into finance and um AI, okay? So, in other words, Wall Street are the main backers of the current elite. And then Silicon Valley are the main backers of the counter elite. Okay? So, this these people are interested in maintaining the status quo. They are interested in a revolution. All right? And so, this is the main divide in America that will eventually lead to a civil war, like like an actual civil war. Okay? But, right now, um they're fighting over foreign policy. So, I will discuss this more in um the future. Okay? But, um I want I present to you now. So, let me give you a con- concrete example of why they're fighting. Why are people in finance fighting uh with people in AI? And there's a very good reason. Because if you're able to control Washington D.C., if you're able to control the levers of government, you're able to make a lot of money for yourself. Okay? So, let's look at this concretely. [clears throat]

24:10Okay. What people don't really understand is that both finance and AI are bubbles that will burst. They're parasites. Okay? So, finance um is a parasite because there's something called a private credit bubble. All right? Private credit bubble it I mean, the idea of private credit is very simple. Rather than banks issuing loans to companies, companies privately issue loans to other companies. And you would think that these companies would be very careful with who they lend to and how much they lend to, right? That's not true, though. Okay? Why? Because in 2008, these banks destroyed the global economy and the American government bailed them out. Right? They suffered no consequences. This This idea of moral hazard. If you do not suffer consequences for your stupidity, well, you're just going to be more stupid in the future, okay? So, these companies believe that we control Washington D.C. Therefore, we can be as risky and stupid as we want. So, they're giving out lots and lots of silly loans to companies because they collect a fee for these loans, right? And then, when these loans don't actually work out, meaning the companies go bankrupt, what they do is they say, "Oh, we'll we'll lend you some more money to keep afloat, okay?" So, now this problem has reached about $2 trillion. And so, they think that, "Okay, well, worst-case scenario, the government will bail us out if we all go bankrupt because we're too big to fail and all our friends are in government." Okay? That's their mentality. And in 2008, that worked. But there's a problem today, which is there's also another group that's doing the same crap, okay? And it's called the AI bubble.

26:10All right. So, if you look at AI bubble, you have you got companies like Microsoft, um OpenAI, uh Oracle, Nvidia, uh okay, lots lots lots and lots of different companies. And the way they operate is they just lend money to each other, okay? It's like, I give you a billion dollars, then you give me a billion dollars, and now we have two billion dollars. Okay? It's a circle jerk. And and it's getting a lot of money from the GCC and other investors. The problem, of course, is what's happening in the war, right? So, if the GCC can no longer put more money into this bubble, then eventually this bubble will have to burst. But they're like, "That's Why? Because we control Trump. We control the White House. We are the stock market. Therefore, Washington D.C. will bail us out, okay? So, that's the war going on where you have two parasitic forces, the finance sector and the and the tech sector, and they are all looking for government bailout when their bubble burst. But they the government doesn't have infinite money. It can only bail one side, right? So, they're going to fight over with the government they're going to fight over who bails who out, okay? If the Democrats can win the House and the presidency in the 2028, then the private credit people will get bailed out. But if Trump and his people stay in power in 2028, then the AI people will get bailed out, okay? So, that's the civil war going on in America uh right now. We'll discuss this more later in the future, but I just present it to you uh right now, okay? And then of course you have the um Israelis, Israel. People don't really appreciate how divided Israel is. This is about 2020 when you have like a million people in Tel Aviv calling for the resignation, the impeachment, uh the jailing of Prime Minister

28:11Netanyahu. Because Netanyahu, like most Israeli politicians, is very corrupt. Okay? Um and to avoid going to jail, Netanyahu proposed changing the judiciary, changing changing the laws. And so, there's these massive protests against Netanyahu. And at this point in Israel, um it seemed as though Netanyahu was going to fall from power and go to jail for the rest of his life. But then of course, October 7th happened. Okay? October 7th happened, and then we or Israel is now in permanent war. That gives him emergency powers, okay? All right. To give you a sense of how divided Israel is, let's look at the Knesset, which is a parliament. Guys, this is a lot of political parties. As you can see, none of them are dominant, okay? The biggest Likud, which is Netanyahu's party party, it has about 30 members. But, it cannot rule by itself. Therefore, it has to join with other political parties, okay? It has to be a coalition. But, look you look at its enemies. Well, its enemies also have a lot. So, it seems as though Israel is a extremely divided society, and it is, okay? People don't really appreciate this. You know, a lot of people talk about a Jewish global conspiracy. What people don't really understand is the Jewish people have never ever gotten along. So, you go back to the to the time of Jesus, and there were like three major factions in Jerusalem. There were the Sadducees, there were the Pharisees, and the Essenes. They all hated each other. In in the year 70, the Romans sent a huge army to destroy Jerusalem. Okay, and you would think at this time the people in Jerusalem would get together and unite and defend Jerusalem because otherwise they'd all be killed. Well, they didn't get together, okay? And the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and burned down the second temple and massacred a

30:11lot of Jews. So, the Jews have always had this problem where they're extremely creative and intellectual, but that just leads to massive infighting, okay? [clears throat] All right. So, these are the leaders of uh the different political parties of Israel. And again, I hate to say this, but like they really hate each other. It's not, you know, uh like a show. They genuinely hate each other. And that's why um Israel has been politically been so dysfunctional these past few decades, okay? All right. So, now I want to discuss where the major conflict in Israel is. Okay, so I would say there like the two major conflict is represented by Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. These are two cities in Israel and they are the two major cities of Israel and they represent two different centers of gravity, two different visions for Israel. Uh, Tel Aviv is democratic. [clears throat] Jerusalem is a theocracy. Meaning it's it's religious, okay? Uh, Tel Aviv is um, open. Meaning it actually has a lot of homosexuals, right? And you can imagine people in Jerusalem aren't happy about this. So, they're very conservative. [clears throat] Okay. [snorts] Okay, cosmopolitan. [clears throat] Uh, tradition. All right. So, these are two vastly different um, visions of for Israel where Tel Aviv is this is open, democratic, modern, progressive city. Lots of homosexuals, lots of open ideas, very secular, very outward looking, very western. Jerusalem is the complete opposite, okay? Very religious, very conservative. And they again, they hate each other.

32:12And the fact that Tel Aviv is getting destroyed right now in this war, people in Jerusalem are actually okay with this, okay? They're not like, "Oh my god, they're killing Israelis." No, no, no. Tel Aviv is the great Satan. Let's just destroy it so that we can um, build a theocracy, okay? All right. So, let's look closely at where they where they disagree, okay? So, Israel is kingdom David. [clears throat] Right? But, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem perceive David differently. Okay? So, for people in Tel Aviv, David was the king when Israel was at the height of its glory, when it was an open, cosmopolitan, [snorts] creative, innovative empire. And that's what they want Israel to be. The people in Jerusalem see this see David as a different person. They see David as primarily a um uh poet prophet. And they see David as the exemplar. As the favorite of God because he redeemed himself and repented himself in the eyes of God, okay? So, redemption and repentance. All right. And what they focus on is the story of David where David is king and one day he wakes up and finds he's in love with Bathsheba. And so, he basically has sex with Bathsheba. Bathsheba gets pregnant and that's a problem because Bathsheba is married to someone else, Uriah the Hittite. So, what does David do? David has him killed, okay? And David can do this because he's king. But, God finds out and sends the prophet Nathan to tell David, "You've sinned."

34:12And at first David refuses to admit that he's in the wrong. But then, there's his child with Bathsheba dies. And David falls into tremendous grief. And every day he's praying to God for forgiveness. He's asking for redemption. He is repenting. And God forgives him. And in this process, not only does David become a better person, but he becomes united with God. Because now they're best friends. Now they talk every day. And that's what the vision for that people in Judaism have for Israel. A nation that engages in redemption and repentance. They don't care about this war. Don't care about Iran. Don't care about the United States. Don't care about the greater Israel project. They care about the Jews finding God again and being loyal to God. And that is what will bring peace to the world, okay? That is how they see the world. This is how how they perceive things. They They believe that in every person there's a divine soul, okay? That comes from God. But it is a It is trapped in the animal soul. Okay? So Tel Aviv is the animal soul. [clears throat] And this is the divine soul. All right? So what the animal soul is, you seek material comfort. You want to have sex. You want to get drunk. You want to party. You want to drive a drive a Ferrari, okay? This is all animal. But inside of you is the divine soul that only seeks to be with God. Okay? And so we are constantly in a struggle between the animal soul and the divine soul. And so from their perspective, Tel Aviv represents the animal soul of Israel. Jerusalem represents the divine soul of Israel. So it's okay if Iran is

36:12destroying Tel Aviv. Good. Also, they recognize that war is good because if people really want to find God again, they need to suffer. They need They need to lose everything before they recognize the glory of God, okay? So think of um the book of Job. When Job was Job is a character in the Bible who's very wealthy. And and so God decides, you know what? Maybe he's only faithful to me because he's very wealthy. So, Job loses everything and this heightens his faith in God, okay? So, that's the vision that these crazy religious zealots have in Jerusalem, which is like let's destroy Israel so that we can refine, rediscover our love for God, okay? The destruction of Israel will lead to the redemption and repentance of the Israeli people and therefore peace in this world. The Messiah will finally come. That's why the rabbi was constantly talking about um on Thursday the Messiah will come because he feels it's so close. There's so much destruction. There's so much war. So, the Messiah must come because now the Jews recognize that only God can save them. Therefore, when you will it, when you pray for the Messiah, when you want in your heart, that's when the Messiah will come. Okay, but you need to create the conditions when people really want the Messiah. Okay? So, that's the civil conflict going on in um Israel. And again, these people in Jerusalem, these fanatics, they don't really care if the world if the world is destroyed because this world is fake anyway. Who cares? What matters is the divine soul, okay? All right. Yeah. Um you have you have a question,

38:12um Vincent? Like you said the Messiah is coming today, which is Thursday, and like No, I didn't say that. Uh? I didn't say that. The rabbi said that. Uh, the the rabbi said that like the Messiah is coming today, but like will the coming of Messiah really affect China and those countries or is uh all their personal beliefs? Okay, listen. I I know this is hard for you guys to understand. But, China doesn't matter, okay? Only Israel matters. United States, China, Russia, does that matter? Look at that. Matters is Israel. Okay? Only matters is the people in Israel, the Jews. Their spiritual state will determine the fate of the world. Once the Jews um unified with God, then peace and prosperity will come for the rest of the world, okay? All right? [clears throat] Okay. So, um now I want to talk about Iran. Okay? This is the political government structure of Iran. Now, one thing I notice is that it's very complicated, okay? It's divided into the religious aspects, okay? Some of the experts, and the secular aspect, which is um the um uh government, okay? So, it's a government, but the Islamic clerics are at the very top. And this is the dual identity of Iran, okay? And this is the uh their last presidential election. As you can see, it's a pretty divided country, where people in the middle voted for Jalali, but people in the outskirts voted for uh uh Peseschkian, okay? So, there's a lot of conflict in

40:14Iran. Not just political, religious, but also ethnic as well. All right. So So let me explain very quickly what I see is the major divide in Iraq, okay? So of course, you have um the Islamic theocracy and they're in conflict with um secular nationalists. And then of course, there's ethnic groups as well. I don't really think the ethnic groups matter that much, okay? What really matters is the conflict between the secular nationalists and the Islamic theocracy. All right. So basically, the rural-urban divide. Uh people who are educated and want to see Iran as a secular state that promotes democracy and progress and science versus these um religious individuals, okay? Now, what happens is that in a war, um you become more extreme. So what happened is that is the Islamic theocracy will transition into Shia eschatology or martyrdom, okay? Where they think that this war is about return having a 12th Imam, Mahdi, who is the basically the Messiah, return to lead them to war against the Great Satan, which is Israel and the United States, okay? So over time, uh the Islamists will become much more radical. This will force the secular nationalists to also become much more radical as well. So they will become Persian exceptionalists, okay? What What this just means is that

42:16Persian exceptionalism which just means that Persia is the greatest civilization in human history and therefore is worth dying for. It's worth fighting for. The survival of the Persian civilization is much more important than the survival of the Iranian state. Okay? So, the great question for the Iranians is are they able to reconcile the differences between these two strands of the culture or will this lead to civil war in Iran, okay? Um we are seeing civil war in Israel, we're seeing civil war in America. [music] Iran cannot afford to fight a civil war at this time because they're being bombarded by two very public nations, the Israel and America, okay? But unfortunately, the law of proximity teaches us that people are much more interested in their own internal conflict than the outside global conflict, okay? And so, this understanding now gives us um helps us answer the three big questions of today, right? How are these leaders getting killed? Why are they getting killed? And what will this mean for the rest of the world, okay? And so, the first two questions, how they getting killed, why they getting killed, they're getting killed because of all these civil conflicts within these nations, okay? These different factions are providing intelligence to their enemies in order to limit their internal enemies. Right? That's Again, I don't have evidence, but I think according to game theory, that's the best explanation for how these leaders are getting killed because again, it's not that easy as a foreign nation to identify the location precisely of that leader, okay? And what we're seeing in this war

44:17is both the Iranians and Israelis are doing a very excellent job of killing each other's leaders. And that's not actually common. All right? So, I think this a civil conflict within these nations offers the best guide, the best understanding of why this of why this is happening, okay? This third question is where's the where's the uh world going? As you can see from these conflicts, um it seems as though the world can only become much more theocratic in the end, okay? So, what's happening is, at the end of the day, this war in Iran uh in the Middle East, it's really a war between two different competing visions of the world, okay? You You have the global secular financial order. Okay? And this is the world that we live in today. And they're fighting, again, a nationalist theocracy. Theocratic order. All right? So, this is what we can expect over the next 5 to 10 years, where Iran becomes much more theocratic and extremely nationalistic. Israel, a balanced democracy, then braces theocracy. America will also abandon democracy and embrace theocracy. Because that is a general trend of the world. Okay? All right? Okay. So, um what I want to do in next class is discuss how the world will change in the next 5 to 10 years. All right? Okay, any questions? Okay. Uh you mentioned that Israel have um two divided parts and one represents the

46:18animal soul and the other represents the divine soul. Like I I can substitute this logic to a a single person like like people are always struggled with like identify or not like separating the divine soul and pursue the a divine soul, but they cannot get rid of the animal soul. Is there a way or we can only struggle at us in our lives? Okay, so first of all, it's important to understand that that this is how religious people in Israel frame the um conflict in Israel, okay? What the a conflict between the animal soul and the divine soul. Um the people in Tel Aviv would frame the debate as one between progress and tradition, right? Going forward or staying backward. All right? So so um that is uh so people in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem would would see this in a in a different way. Um but as you point out, there's some validity to this idea that we're all struggle uh between the animal soul and the divine soul. And I would say that for the past 20 years, we only have been indulging in the animal soul, okay? We've abandoned divine soul. And that's why I think people are so desperate for uh change. And And this is what's leading to so much conflict around the world, where the human soul is is off balance. Okay? Where we are too materialistic and not spiritual enough. And what we know from history is that if you if a a society goes too far in one extreme, they swing back to the extreme. Okay? And that's what we're seeing where one good outcome, I [music] think, of all this conflict around the world is people start to recognize limitations of money, [music] of materialism, of individualism. They start to embrace more spirituality, community, family.

48:21Because quite honestly, you don't have a choice in the matter, okay? If you if you're like, you know, I want to buy myself a Gulfstream jet and I want to have like, you know, a huge company, you're you're you're you're going to be disappointed, okay? Um as I will show you next class, the world is heading towards an economic depression. Okay? Basically, a a splintering, a rupture in the world. And so, you're not going to be able to to afford to fly to Maldives for vacation. There won't be avocados in the supermarket. Okay? But that's this this But all this means is now you have a chance to focus more on introspection, on reflection, on family, on asking yourself, what makes me happy? What gives me meaning and purpose in life? And the answer, of course, is each other. Okay? And maybe this is a good thing. Maybe this is the intention of the universe. Maybe, as the people in Jerusalem would say, this is really the plan of God. Okay? And I I don't It's unfortunate that all this war and suffering is happening, but again, what a lot of people who are religious will tell you is we can only find redemption through suffering and through pain and through tragedy. All right? Okay? Any more questions, guys? Okay. All right. I'll see you next class.