Secret History #2: How Societies Collapse

The podcast episode begins with a review of the previous class, which covered monotheism and its impact on the development of money, the individual, and the nation-state. The speaker then transitions to the central question of the day: why do societies rise and fall? The speaker posits that the world is currently in decline, citing examples such as conflicts, climate change, unemployment, lower birth rates, and increased stress. The speaker introduces three theories to explain this decline: financialization (Thomas Piketty), elite over-production (Peter Turchin), and the civilizational life cycle (Oswald Spengler). Combining these theories, the speaker presents a model of societal structure with elite families at the core, controlling finance, religion, and intelligence, and the middle class acting as managers over the people. The speaker predicts a decline in democracy and freedom, economic collapse, increased immigration, civil conflict, and foreign wars in the Western world over the next 5 to 20 years.