Lex Fridman PodcastDan Carlin: Hardcore History | Lex Fridman Podcast #136
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,061 words- 0:00 – 2:36
Introduction
- LFLex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Dan Carlin, host of Hardcore History and Common Sense podcasts. To me, Hardcore History is one of, if not the greatest podcast ever made. Dan and Joe Rogan are probably the two main people who got me to fall in love with the medium of podcasting, as a fan and eventually as a podcaster myself. Meeting Dan was surreal. To me, he was not just a mere human like the rest of us, since his voice has been a guide through some of the darkest moments of human history for me. Meeting him was like meeting Genghis Khan, Stalin, Hitler, Alexander the Great and all of the most powerful leaders in history all at once in a crappy hotel room in the middle of Oregon. It turns out that he is, in fact, just a human and truly one of the good ones. This was a pleasure and an honor for me. Quick mention of a sponsor, followed by some thoughts related to the episode. First is Athletic Greens, the all-in-one drink that I start every day with to cover all my nutritional bases. Second is SimpliSafe, a home security company I use to monitor and protect my apartment. Third is Magic Spoon, low carb, keto-friendly cereal that I think is delicious. And finally, Cash App, the app I use to send money to friends for food and drinks. Please check out these sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that I think we're living through one of the most challenging moments in American history. To me, the way out is through reason and love. Both require a deep understanding of human nature and of human history. This conversation is about both. I am perhaps hopelessly optimistic about our future, but if indeed we stand at the precipice of the great filter watching our world consumed by fire, think of this little podcast conversation as the appetizer to the final meal before the apocalypse. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with five stars on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter @lexfriedman. And now, finally, here's my conversation with the great Dan Carlin.
- 2:36 – 9:33
Nature of evil
- LFLex Fridman
Let's start with the highest philosophical question. Do you think human beings are fundamentally good or are all of us capable of both good and evil and it's the environment that molds how we, uh, the trajectory that we take through life?
- DCDan Carlin
How do we define evil? Evil seems to be a situational eye of the beholder kind of question. So if we define evil, maybe I can get a better idea of, of... An- and that could be a whole show, couldn't it?
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah. (laughs)
- DCDan Carlin
Defining evil. But, but, but when we say evil, what do we mean?
- LFLex Fridman
That's a slippery one, but I think there's some way in which your existence, your presence in the world leads to pain and suffering and destruction for many others in the rest of the world. So you, you steal the resources and you use them to create more suffering than there was before in the world. So I suppose it's somehow deeply connected to this other slippery word which is suffering, is you create suffering in the world, you bring suffering to the world.
- DCDan Carlin
But here's the problem, I think, with it-
- LFLex Fridman
Yes.
- DCDan Carlin
... because I fully see where you're going with that and, and I, I understand it. The problem is, is the question of the reason for inflicting suffering. So sometimes one might inflict suffering upon one group of individuals in order to maximize a lack of suffering with another group of individual, or one who might not be considered evil at all might make the rational, seemingly rational choice of inflicting pain and suffering on a smaller group of people in order to maximize the opposite of that for a larger group of people.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, that's one of the dark things about... I've spoken and read the work of Stephen Kotkin, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the historian, and he's basically a Stalin, uh, a Joseph Stalin scholar.
- DCDan Carlin
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
And one of the things I realized, I'm not sure where to put Hitler, but with Stalin, it really seems that he was sane and he thought he was doing good for the world. He- I- I really believe from everything I've read about Stalin that he believed that communism is good for the world and if you have to kill a few people along the way, if y- it's like you said, the small groups, if you have to sort of remove the people that stand in the way of this utopian system of communism then that's actually good for the world. And y- it didn't seem to me that he could even consider the possibility that he was evil. He really thought he was doing good for the world. And that stuck with me because he's one of the most... It is to our definition of evil, he seems to have brought more evil onto this world than almost any human in history and I don't know what to do with that.
- DCDan Carlin
Well, I'm fascinated with the concept, so fascinated by it that the very first Hardcore History show we ever did, which was a full 15 or 16 minutes-
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- DCDan Carlin
... um, was called Alexander versus Hitler. And the entire question about it was the motivations, right? So if you go to a court of law because you killed somebody, one of the things they're going to consider is why did you kill them, right? And if you killed somebody, for example, in self-defense, you're going to be treated differently than if you malicious killed, killed somebody maliciously to take their wallet, right?
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DCDan Carlin
And in the show we, we wondered 'cause, you know, I don't really make, uh, pronouncements, but we wondered about...Uh, if you believe Hitler's writings, for example, Mein Kampf, uh, which, you know, is written by a guy who's a political figure who wants to get a- so I mean it's about as- as believable as any other political tract would be. But in his mind, the things that he said that he had to do were designed to- for the betterment of the German people, right? Whereas Alexander the Great, once again this is somebody from more than 2,000 years ago, so, with lots of propaganda in the intervening years.
- LFLex Fridman
Right.
- DCDan Carlin
But one of the- the views of Alexander the Great is that the reason he did what he did was to, for lack of a better word, write his name in a more permanent graffiti on the pages of history, right?
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DCDan Carlin
In other words, to glorify himself. And if that's the case, does that make Alexander a worse person than Hitler because Hitler thought he was doing good, whereas Alexander, if you believe the interpretation, was simply trying to exalt Alexander. So the- the motivations of the people doing these things, it seems to me, matter. Um, I don't think you can just sit there and go, "The only thing that matters is the end result," because that might have been an unintentional byproduct. Uh, in which case that person, had you been able to show them the future, might have changed what they were doing. So were they evil or misguided or wrong or made the wro- you know? So and I hate to do that because there's certain people like Hitler that I don't feel deserve the benefit of the doubt.
- LFLex Fridman
Right.
- DCDan Carlin
Uh, at the same time if you're fascinated by the concept of evil and you delve into it deeply enough, you're going to want to understand why these evil people did what they did, and sometimes it can confuse the hell out of you. You know, who- who wants to sit there and try to see things from Hitler's point of view, to get a better understanding and- and sort of commiserate with...
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- DCDan Carlin
So, um, but I'm fa- obviously first history show, I'm fascinated with the concept.
- LFLex Fridman
So do you think it's possible if we put ourselves in the mindset of some of the people that have let- created so much suffering in the world, that all of them had their motivations were- had good intentions underlying them?
- DCDan Carlin
No. I don't th- uh, I mean, it becau- it's simply 'cause there's so many. I mean, and the law of averages would- would-
- LFLex Fridman
Right.
- DCDan Carlin
...would suggest that that's not true.
- LFLex Fridman
I guess is pure evil possible? Meaning, you, uh, again it's slippery but you- the suffering is the goal. Uh-
- DCDan Carlin
Suffering, yeah. I- intentional suffering. Uh.
- 9:33 – 14:41
Is violence and force fundamental to human civilization?
- LFLex Fridman
do you put... As somebody who is fascinated by military history, where do you put violence as, uh, a- a- as in terms of the human condition? Is it core to being human or is it just a little, uh, tool that we use every once in a while?
- DCDan Carlin
So I'm gonna respond to your question with a question. What do you see the difference being between violence and force? Let me- let me go farther. I'm not sure that violence is something that we have to put up with as human beings forever, that we must resign ourselves to violence forever. But I have a much harder time seeing us able to abolish force. And I- there's going to be some ground where if those two things are not the same, and I don't know, that maybe they are, where there's certainly some crossover. And the re- I- I think force, uh, and you know, you're an engineer, you'll understand this better than I, but think about it as a physical law. Um, if you can't stop something from moving in a certain direction without pushing back in that same direction, um, I'm not- I'm not sure that you can have a society or a civilization without the ability to use a counterforce when things are going wrong, whether it's on an individual level, right? A person attacks another person so you step in to save that person. Um, or on, uh, you know, even at the highest levels of politics or anything else, a counterforce to stop the, uh, inertia or the impetus of- of- of- of another moving. So I think that force is- is a simple almost law of physics in human interaction, especially at the civilizational level. I think civilization requires a certain amount of if not violence, then force. So, um, and again they- they've- they've talked, I mean, it goes back into St. Augustine, all kinds of Christian beliefs about the- the proper use of force and people have- have philosophically tried to decide between can you have a, sort of an Ahimsa, uh, Buddhist sort of we, you know, we'll be nonviolent toward everything and exert no force or- or there's a reason to have force in order to create the space for good. Uh, I think force is inevitable. Now we can talk and- and I've not come up to the conclusion myself, uh, if there is a distinction to be made between force and violence. I mean is- is, um, is a nonviolent force enough or is violence when done for the cause of good a different thing than violence done either for the cause of evil as you would say, or simply for random reasons? I mean we humans lack control sometimes. We can be violent for no apparent reason or goal, um, and that's, I mean, list- you look at the, uh, criminal justice system alone, the way we- we, um, interact with people who are acting out in ways that we as a society decided is- is intolerable, can you deal with that without force and at some level violence? I don't know. Can you maintain peacefulness without force? I don't know.
- LFLex Fridman
Just to, uh, be a little bit more specific about the idea of force, do you put force as general enough to include force in the space of ideas? So, you mentioned Buddhism or, uh, religion or just Twitter (laughs) .
- DCDan Carlin
I can think of no things farther apart than that.
- LFLex Fridman
Okay (laughs) . Is, uh, the battles we do in the space of ideas, of, um, you know, the great debates throughout history, do you put force into that or do you, uh, in this conversation, are we trying to, right now, keep it to just physical force? In saying that you- you have an intuition that force might be with us much longer than violence.
- DCDan Carlin
I think the two bleed together. So, um, take ... Because it's- it's always- it's always my go-to example, I'm afraid, and I'm sure the- the listeners all hate it, but-
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs) .
- DCDan Carlin
... but take- take Germany during, uh, uh, the 1920s, early 1930s before the Nazis came to power. Uh, and they were always involved in some level of force, you know, beating up in the streets or whatever it might be, but think about it more like an intellectual discussion until a certain point. Um, i- is there, it- it would be difficult, I imagine, to keep the intellectual counterforce of ideas from, at some point, degenerating into something that's more, um, coercion, um, counterforce if we want to use the phrases we were just talking about. So I think the two are- are intimately connected. I mean, th- uh, actions follow thought, right? And at a certain point, I think especially when- when one is not achieving the goals that they want to achieve through, uh, peaceful discussion or argumentation or, um, trying to convince the other side, that sometimes the next level of operations is something a little bit more physically, uh, imposing, if that makes sense. We go from the intellectual to the physical.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, so it- it too easily spills over-
- DCDan Carlin
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
... into violence.
- DCDan Carlin
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
But-
- DCDan Carlin
And one leads to the other, often.
- 14:41 – 24:21
Will we always have war?
- DCDan Carlin
- LFLex Fridman
So you kind of implied a, perhaps, a hopeful message, but let me ask you in the form of a question. Do you think we'll always have war?
- DCDan Carlin
I think it goes to the force question too. So for example, um, what do you do ... I mean, we- we're- we're- let's- let's play with nation states now, although I don't know that nation states, uh, are something we should think of as a permanent construct-
- LFLex Fridman
Interesting.
- DCDan Carlin
... forever. Um, but how is one nation state supposed to prevent another nation state from acting in ways that it would see as either detrimental to the global community or detrimental to the interest of their own nation state? Um, you know, and I- I think- I think we've had this question of, going back to ancient times, but certainly in the 20th century this has come up quite a bit. I mean, the whole Second World War argument sometimes revolves around the idea of what the proper counterforce should be. Uh, can you create an entity, a league of nations, a United Nations, uh, a one world entity maybe even, that- that alleviates the need for counterforce involving mass violence and armies and navies and those things? Uh, I think that's an open discussion we're still having.
- LFLex Fridman
It's good to think through that because, um, having a s- like a United Nations, there's usually a centralized control, so there's humans at the top, there's committees and, uh, usually, like, leaders emerge as singular figures that then can become corrupted by power, and it's just a really important... It feels like a really important thought experiment and something to really rigorously think through, how can you construct systems of government that, uh, are stable enough to push us towards less and less war, and less and less unstable and, another tough word, which is unfair, of application of force? You know, it's- that's really at the core of the question that we're trying to figure out as humans. As our weapons get better and better and better at destroying ourselves, it feels like it's important to think about how we minimize the over-application or unfair application of force.
- DCDan Carlin
There's other elements that come into play too. You and I are discussing this at the very high intellectual level of things, but there's also a tail wagging the dog element to this. So think of a society of warriors, uh, a tribal society from a long time ago. Um, how much do the fact that you have warriors in your society and that their reason for existing, what they take pride in, what they train for, um, w- their status in their own civilization, how much does that itself drive the responses of that society, right? Um, uh, how much do you need war to legitimize warriors? Um, you know, that's the old argument that you get to, and we've had this in the 20th century too, that- that the creation of arms and armies creates a- an incentive to use them, right? And- and that they themselves can drive that incentive as- as a justification for their reasons for existence, you know? Um, that's where we start to talk about the interactivity of all these different elements of society upon one another. So when we talk about, you know, governments and war, well, you need to take into account the various things those governments have put into place in terms of systems and armies and things like that to s- to protect themselves, right? For reasons we can all understand. But they exert a force on your- your range of choices, don't they?
- LFLex Fridman
It's true. You're making me realize that, uh, in my upbringing, and I think upbringing of many, warriors are heroes. You know, to me, I don't know where that feeling comes from, but to sort of, uh, uh, die fighting (laughs) is, um-... is an honorable way to die. It feels like that.
- DCDan Carlin
I've always had a problem with this because, as a person interested in military history, I-
- LFLex Fridman
Right.
- DCDan Carlin
... the distinction is important. Um, and I try to make it at different levels. So at base level, the, the people who are out there on the front lines doing the fighting, uh, to me those people can be compared with police officers and firemen and people that... Firepersons.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs) .
- DCDan Carlin
Um, but I mean people that are, are, um, involved in an ethical, uh, attempt to perform a task which ultimately, uh, one can see in many situations as being a saving sort of task, right? Or, or if nothing else, a self-sacrifice for what they see as the greater good. Now, I draw a distinction between the individuals and the entity that they're a part of, a military, and I certainly draw a distinction between the military and then the entire, for lack of a better word, military-industrial complex that that service is a part of. Uh, I feel a lot less, um, moral attachment to, uh, to those upper echelons than I do the people on the ground. The people on the ground could be any of us, and have been in a lot of st- You know, we have a very professional, uh, sort of military now where it's a very, uh, uh, a subset of the population, but in other periods of time, we've had conscription and drafts, and the- and it hasn't been a subset of the population. It's been the population, right? And so it is the society oftentimes going to war, and I make a distinction between those warriors and the entities either in the system that they're a part of, the military, or the people that control the military at the highest political levels. I feel, um, a lot less moral attachment to them, and I- and I have m- I'm much harsher about how I feel about them. I do not consider, um, the military itself to be heroic, and I do not consider the military-industrial complex to be heroic. I do think that is a tail wagging the dog situation. I do think that draws us into looking at, um, military endeavors as a solution to the problem much more quickly than we otherwise might, and to be honest, to tie it all together, I actually look at the- at the victims of this as the soldiers we were talking about. I mean, if you- if you set a fire to send firemen into to fight-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DCDan Carlin
... um, then I feel bad for the firemen. I feel like you've abused the trust that you give those people, right? So when- when people talk about war, I always think that the people that we have to make sure that a war is really necessary, uh, in order to protect are the people that you're gonna send over there to fight that. The- the greatest victims in our society of war are often the warriors. So I- I- in my mind, um, you know, when we see these people coming home from places like Iraq, a place where I would have made the argument and did at the time that we didn't belong, to me, those people are victims, and I know they don't like to think about themselves that way 'cause it runs totally counter to the- to the ethos. But if you're sending people to protect this country's shores, those are heroes. If you're sending people to go do something that they otherwise probably don't need to do but they're there for political reasons or anything else you want to put in that's not defense-related, well then you've made victims of our heroes. And so I- I- I feel like we do a lot of talk about our troops and our soldiers and stuff, but we don't treat them as valuable-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DCDan Carlin
... as we- as- as- as the rhetoric makes them sound. Otherwise, we would be more, um- we would be much more careful about where we put them. If you're gonna send my son, and I don't have a son, I have daughters, but if you're gonna send my son into harm's way, I'm going to demand that you really need to be sending him into harm's way, and I'm going to be angry at you if you put him into harm's way if he doesn't- i- i- if it doesn't warrant it. And so I have much more suspicion about the system that sends these people into these situations where they're required to be heroic than I do the people on the ground that I look at as, um, either, uh, the people that are defending us, uh, you know, in- in situations like the s- you know, the second World War, for example, or- or the people that, um, turn out to be the individual victims of a system where they're just a cog in a machine and the machine doesn't really care as much about them as- as the- the rhetoric and the propaganda, uh, would insinuate.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, and, uh, as my own family history, it would be nice if we could talk about there's a gray area in- in the places that you're talking about in t-
- DCDan Carlin
There's a gray area in everything.
- LFLex Fridman
In everything. But when that gray area is part of your own blood, as it is for me, it's- it's worth shining a light on somehow.
- DCDan Carlin
Sure. Give me an example of what you mean.
- LFLex Fridman
So you did a- a program of four episodes of Ghosts of the Ostfront.
- DCDan Carlin
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
So I was born in, uh, the Soviet Union. I was raised in Moscow. My dad was born and raised in Kiev. My grandmother, who just recently passed away, was, um, uh, raised in Ukraine. She-
- DCDan Carlin
What city?
- LFLex Fridman
It's a small city on the border between Russia and Ukraine.
- DCDan Carlin
I have a grandfather born in Kiev.
- LFLex Fridman
In Kiev?
- DCDan Carlin
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
The interesting thing about the timing of everything, as you might be able to connect, is she survived... She's the most badass woman f- of, uh, I've ever encountered in my life, and most of the warrior spirit I carry is probably from her. Uh, she survived Holodomor, the Ukrainian starvation of the '30s. She was a beautiful teenage girl during the Nazi occupation of... So she survived all of that, and of course family that ev- everybody, you know, and- and so many people died through that whole process, so...
- 24:21 – 32:15
The Russian front in World War II
- LFLex Fridman
And one of the things you talk about in- in your program is that the gray area is even with the warriors, it happened to them, just like as you're saying now. It, uh... They didn't have a choice. So my- my grandfather on the- on the other side, he was, uh, a machine gunner-... uh, that was in Ukraine, that, that-
- DCDan Carlin
In the Red Army?
- LFLex Fridman
In the Red Army, yeah.
- DCDan Carlin
Okay.
- LFLex Fridman
And they threw, uh, like the, the statement was that there's, I don't know if it's obvious or not, but the rule was there's no surrender. So you, you better die. So you, I mean, the, you're basically, the goal was when he was fighting, and he was lucky enough, one of the only to survive by being wounded early on, is there was a march of, uh, Nazis towards, I guess, Moscow. And the whole goal in, in Ukraine was to slow every, to, to slow them into the w- into the winter. I mean, I view him as such a hero. And, uh, he believed that he's indestructible, which is survivor bias, and (laughs) that, you know, bullets can't hurt him, and that's what everybody believed. And of course, basically everyone that, uh... He quickly rose through the ranks, let's just put it this way, because everybody died. It's, it's, it's l- it was just bodies dragging these heavy machine guns, like, tr- always, you know, always slowly retreating, shooting, and retreating, shooting and retreating. And I don't know, he was a hero to me. Like, I always... I grew up thinking that he was the one that sort of defeated the Nazis, right? And but the reality, th- there could be another perspective which is, all of this happened to him, uh, by the incompetence of Stalin, the incompeten- incompetence. And, uh, men of, uh, the Soviet Union being used like pawns in a, in a shittily played game of chess, right? So, like, one narrative is of him as a victim, as, as you're kind of describing. And it then... Somehow that's more paralyzing and that's more... I don't know. It feels better to think of him as a hero, and as Russia, Soviet Union saving the world. I mean, that narrative also is in the United States that, uh, that, uh, United States was key in saving the world from the Nazis. It feels like that narrative is powerful for people. I'm not sure, and I carry it still with me, but when I think about the right way to think about that war, I'm not sure if that's the correct narrative.
- DCDan Carlin
Let me suggest something. There's a line that, uh, that a marine named Eugene Sledge, uh, had said once, and I, I keep it on my phone because it's, it's... It makes a real distinction. And he said, "The front line is really where the war is. And anybody even 100 yards behind the front line doesn't know what it's really like." Now the difference is, is there are lots of people miles behind the front line that are in danger, right? You can be in a medical unit in the rear and artillery could strike you, planes could strike. I mean, you, you could be in danger. But at the front line there are two different things. One is, um, that, that... And at least, and I'm doing a lot of reading on this right now, I'm reading a lot of veterans' accounts. James Jones who wrote, uh, uh, books like From Here to Eternity, fictional accounts of the Second World War, but he based them on his own service. He was at, uh, Guadalcanal, for example, in 1942. And Jones had said that the evolution of a soldier in front line action requires an almost surrendering to the idea that you're going to live, that you, you are, you, you become accustomed to the idea that you're going to die.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DCDan Carlin
And he said you're a different person simply for considering that thought seriously, because most of us don't. But what that allows you to do is to do that job at the front line, right? If you're too concerned about your own life, um, you, you become less of a good guy at your job, right? The other thing that the people in the one, in the 100 yards at the front line do that the people in the rear medical unit really don't is you kill, and you kill a lot, right? You don't just, "Oh, there's a sniper back here so I shot him." It's, "We go from one position to another and we kill lots of people." Those things will change you, and what that tends to do, not universally 'cause I've read accounts from, uh, Red Army soldiers and they're very patriotic, right? But a lot of that patriotism comes through years later as part of the nostalgia and the remembering. When you're down at that front 100 yards, it is often boiled down to a very small world. So your grandfather... Was it your grandfather?
- LFLex Fridman
Grandfather.
- DCDan Carlin
... at the machine gun, he's concerned about his position and his comrades and the people who he owes a responsibility to. And those, it's a very small world at that point. And to me, that's where the heroism is, right? He's not fighting for some giant world civilizational thing. He's fighting to save the people next to him, and, and his own life at the same time because they're saving him too. And, and that, there is a h- a huge amount of heroism to that, and that gets to our question about force earlier. Why would you use force? Well, how about to protect these people on either side of me, right? Their lives. Um, now is there hatred? Yeah, I hated the Germans for what they were doing. As a matter of fact, I, uh, I got a, uh, a note from a Pole not that long ago, and I have this tendency to refer to the Nazis, right? The regime that was... And he said, "Why do you keep calling them Nazis?" He says, "Say, say what they were. They were Germans." And this guy wanted me to not absolve Germany by saying, "Oh, it was this awful group of people that took over your country." He said, "The Germans did this." And there's that bitterness where he says, "Let's not forget, you know, what they did to us, and why... and what we had to do back," right? Um, so for me, when we talk about these combat situations, the reason I call these people heroic is because of they're fighting to defend things we could all understand. I mean, if you come after my brother......and I take a machine gun and shoot you, um, and you're going to overrun me. I mean, you're going to, though, that becomes a situation where we talked about counterforce earlier. Um, much easier to call yourself a hero when you're saving people or you're saving this town right behind you and you know if they get through your machine gun, they're going to burn these villages, they're going to throw these people out in the middle of winter, these families. That to me is a very different sort of heroism than this amorphous idea of patriotism. You know, patriotism is a thing that we often get, um, used with, right? People, people manipulate us through love of country and all this because they understand that this is something we feel very strongly, but they use it against us sometimes in order to whip up a war fever or to get people... I mean, there's a great line, and I wish I could remember it in its entirety, that Hermann Goring had said about how easy it was to get the people into a war. He says, "You know, you just appeal to their patriotism." I mean, there- there's buttons that you can push and they take advantage of things like love of country and the way we, um, the way we have a loyalty and an admiration to the warriors who put their lives on the line. These are manipulatable things in the human species that reliably can be counted on to move us in directions that, in a more, um, sober, reflective state of mind, we would consider differently. It gets the... I mean, you get this war fever up and people, people wave flags and they start denouncing the enemy and they start signing... You, you know, we've seen it over and over and over again, e- in ancient times this happened.
- LFLex Fridman
But
- 32:15 – 44:58
Ideologies of the US, the Soviet Union, and China
- LFLex Fridman
the love of country is also beautiful. So I haven't seen it in America as much, though people in America love their country. Like, this patriotism is strong in America. But it's not as strong as I remember, even with my sort of being younger, the love of the Soviet Union.
- DCDan Carlin
Now was it the Soviet Union? This requires a distinction. Or was it Mother Russia?
- LFLex Fridman
What it really was was the Communist Party.
- DCDan Carlin
Okay, so was this... It was the system-
- LFLex Fridman
So the-
- DCDan Carlin
...in place, okay.
- LFLex Fridman
The system in place, like loving... I haven't quite deeply psychoanalyzed exactly what you love. I think you love the... That like populous message of the worker, of the common man, the common person.
- DCDan Carlin
So, so let me, let me draw the comparison then. Um, and I often say this, that, that the United States, like the Soviet Union, is an ideological based society, right? So you take a country like France. Y- It doesn't matter which French government you're in now, the French have been the French for a long time, right? Uh, y- it's, it's not based on an ideology, right? Whereas what unites the United States is an ideology, freedom, liberty, the Constitution. This is what draws... You know, the E Pluribus Unum kind of th- the idea, right? This, out of many, one. Well, what, what binds all these unique different people? These shared beliefs, this ideology. The Soviet Union was the same way, because as you know, the Soviet Union, Russia was merely one part of the Soviet Union, and if you believe the rhetoric until Stalin's time, everybody was going to be united under this ideological banner someday, right? It was, it was a global revolution. Um, so ideological societies are different, and to be a fan of the ideological framework and goal, I mean, I'm a liberty person, right? I would like to see everybody in the world have my system of government, which is part of a, of a bias, right? Because they might not want that. But I think it's better for everyone because I think it's better for me. At the same time, uh, when the ideology... If you consider, and, you know, this stems from ideas of the Enlightenment and there's a bias there, so my bias are toward the... But you feel, and this is why you say, "We're going to bring freedom to Iraq, we're going to bring freedom to here, we're going to bring freedom..." Because we think we're spreading to you something that is just undeniably positive. "We're going to free you and give you this." Um, it's hard for me to, to wipe my own bias away from there, right? I, because if I were in Iraq, for example, I would want freedom, right? But if you then leave and let the Iraqis vote for whomever they want, are they going to vote for somebody that will... I mean, you know, you look at, at Russia now, and I hear from Russians quite a bit because so much of my, um, my views on Russia and the Soviet Union were formed in my formative years and, and, you know, we were not hearing from many people in the Soviet Union back then, but now you do. You hear from Russians today who will say, "Your views on Stalin are archaic and cold." You know, so, so you try to reorient your beliefs a little bit, but it goes to this idea of if you gave the people in Russia a free and fair vote, will they vote for somebody who promises them a free and open society based on Enlightenment democratic principles? Or will they vote for somebody, we in the US would go, "What are they doing? They're voting for some strongman who's just going..." You know, so, um, I think it's very hard to throw away our own, uh, biases and, and preconceptions and, and, you know, it's an all eye of the beholder kind of thing. But when you're talking about ideological societies, it is very diff- difficult to throw off all the years of indoctrination into the superiority of your system. I mean, listen, in the Soviet Union, Marxism, one way or another, was part of every classroom, you know, you could be studying geometry and they'll throw Marxism in there somehow because that's what united the society and that's what gave it a higher purpose and that's what made it, in the minds of the people who were its defenders, a superior, morally superior system, and we do the same thing here. In fact, most people do, but see, you're still French no matter what-
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- DCDan Carlin
...the, what, what the ideology or the government might be. So, so in that sense, it's funny that there would be a cold war with these two systems because they're both ideologically based systems involving peoples of many different backgrounds who are united under the umbrella of the ideology.
- LFLex Fridman
First of all, that's brilliantly put. I'm in a funny position that, uh, in my formative years, so I came here when I was 13....is when I, you know... Teenage is your first love or whatever. As I fall in l- I fe- fell in love with the American set of ideas of freedom and individualism.
- DCDan Carlin
They're compelling, aren't they?
- LFLex Fridman
Yes.
- DCDan Carlin
They're compelling, yes.
- LFLex Fridman
But I also remember, it's like you remember, like, maybe an ex-girlfriend or something like that. (laughs) I also remember loving, as a very different human, the, the Soviet idea. Like we had the national anthem, which is still the- I think the most badass national anthem, which is of the Soviet Union. Like saying, "We're the indestructible nat-" I mean, just the words are so... Like, Americans' words are like, "Oh, we're nice, like w- we're freedom." But like r- Russian, Soviet Union national anthem was like, "We're bad motherfuckers. Nobody will destroy us." Uh, I just remember feeling pride in the nation as a kid, like dumb, not knowing anything 'cause we all had to recite the stuff. It was, um... There was a uniformity to everything. There was pride underlying everything. I didn't think about all the destructive nature of the bureaucracy, the incompetence, the, you know... All the things that come with the implementation of communism, especially, uh, around the '80s and 90s. But I, I remember what it's like to love th- that set of ideas. So I'm in a funny place of like remember, like switching the love, 'cause I'm... You know, I kinda joke around about being Russian. But, you know, my, my long-term monogamous relationship is now with the idea, the American ideal. Like I'm stuck with it in my mind. But I remember what it was like, uh, to, to love it and I, and I, I think about that too when people criticize China or they criticize the current state of affairs with how Stalin is remembered and how Putin is. To know that the... You can't always wear the American ideal of individualism, radical individualism and freedom in analyzing the ways of the world elsewhere. Like in China, in Russia, that it does... If you don't take yourself too seriously, as Americans all do, as I do, it's, it's kind of a beautiful love to have for your government, to believe in the nation, to let go of yourself and your rights and your freedoms to believe in something bigger than yourself. That's actually... Uh, that's a kind of freedom. That's... You're actually liberating yourself. If you think, like, life is suffering, you're, you're giving into the flow of the water, the flow, the way of the world by giving away more power from yourself and giving it to what you would conceive as, as the power of the people together. Together we will do great things. And really believing in the ideals of, um, w- in that ca- in this case, I don't even know what you would call Russia, but whatever the heck that is, authoritarian, powerful state, powerful leader, believing that can be, um, as beautiful as believing the American ideal.
- DCDan Carlin
Not just that. Let me add to what you're saying. I- i- and I'm very... I spend a lot of time trying to get out of my own biases. Uh, it is a, it is a f- a fruitless endeavor long term, but you try to be better than, than you normally are. One of the critiques that China, and I always... You know, as an American I tend to think about this as their government, right? This is a rationale that their government puts forward. But what you just said, you know, is actually, uh, i- if you can make that viewpoint beautiful, it's kind of a beautiful way of approaching it. The Chinese would say that what we call human rights in the United States and what we consider to be everybody's birthright around the world is instead Western rights. That's the words they use, Western rights. It's a, it's a fundamentally Western-oriented, and I'll go back to the Enlightenment, Enlightenment-based ideas, um, on what constitutes the rights of man. And they would suggest that that's not internationally and always applicable, right? That you can make a case... And again, I don't believe this, uh, this runs against my own personal views, but that you could make a case that the collective wellbeing of a very large group of people outweighs the individual needs of any single person, especially if those things are in conflict with each other, right? I- if you cannot provide for the greater good because everyone's so individualistic, well then really, what is the better thing to do, right? To suppress individualism so everybody's better off? Um, I think trying to recognize how someone else might see that is important if we wanna... You know, you had talked about eliminating war. We talk about eliminating conflict. Uh, the first need to do that is to try to understand how someone else might view something differently than yourself. Um, I'm famously one of those people who buys into the ideas of, of, of traditional Americanism, right? I- and, and look what a lot of people who, who live today, I mean, they would seem to think that things like, um, patriotism requires a, a belief in the strong military and all these things we have today. But that is a corruption of traditional Americanism, which viewed all those things with suspicion in the first 100 years of the republic because they saw it as an enemy to the very things that Americans celebrated, right? How could you have freedom and liberty and individualistic, um, um, expression if you had an overriding military that was always fighting wars a- and, and the founders of this country looked to other examples, like Europe for example, and saw that standing militaries, for example, standing armies were the enemy of liberty? Well, we have a standing army now, um, and it, and, and, and one that is totally interwoven in our entire society. If you could, if you could go back in time and talk to John Quincy Adams, right? Early president of the United States, and show him what we have now, he would think it was awful....and horrible, and that somewhere along the line, the Americans had lost their way and forgotten what they were all about. But we have so successfully interwoven this modern, uh, military industrial complex with the, the traditional, uh, um, benefits of the American system and ideology, so that they've become intertwined in our thinking. Whereas 150 years ago, they were actually considered to be, uh, at opposite polarities and a threat to one another. Um, so when you talk about the love of the nation, I tend to be suspicious of those things. I tend to be suspicious of government. I tend to, tend to try very hard to not be manipulated, and I feel like a large part of what they do is manipulation and propaganda. And so, um, I think a healthy skepticism of the nation state is actually 100% Americanism in the traditional sense of the word. But I also have to recognize, as you so eloquently stated, um, Americanism is not necessarily universal at all. And so I think we have to try to be more understanding. See, our, our, the, the traditional American viewpoint is that if a place like China does not allow their people individual human rights, then they're being denied something. They're being denied... and, and 100 years ago, they would have said their God-given rights. Man is born free, and if he's not free, it's because of something done to him, right? The government has taken away his God-given rights.
- LFLex Fridman
I'm getting excited just listening to that.
- DCDan Carlin
Ah, well-
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- DCDan Carlin
Well, but I mean, but I mean, I think, I think the idea that this is universal is, in and of itself, a bias. Now, do I want freedom for everybody else? I sure do. But the people in the Soviet Union who, who really bought into that wanted the workers of the world to unite and not be exploited by, you know, the, the greedy, blood-sucking people who worked them to death and pocketed all of the fruits of their labor. If you frame it that way, that sounds like justice as well, you know? So it is an eye of the beholder sort of thing.
- 44:58 – 57:33
Putin
- DCDan Carlin
- LFLex Fridman
I'd love to talk to you about Vladimir Putin, sort of while we're in this feeling and wave of empathy, and trying to understand others that are not like us. One of the reasons I started this podcast is because I believe that there's a few people I could talk to. Some of it is ego, some of it is stupidity, is there's some people I could talk to that not many others can talk to. The one person I was, I was thinking about was Vladimir Putin.
- DCDan Carlin
Do you still speak the language?
- LFLex Fridman
I speak the language very well.
- DCDan Carlin
That makes it even eas- I mean, you might be, you might be appointed for that job.
- LFLex Fridman
That's the context in which I'm asking you this question. What are your thoughts about Vladimir Putin from a historical context? Have you studied him? Have you thought about him?
- DCDan Carlin
Yes. Uh, stu- studied is a, is a loaded word. Um, here's, here's... And again, I, I, I find it hard sometimes to not filter things through an American lens. So as an American, I would say that the Russians should be allowed to have any leader that they wanna have. But what an American would say is, "But there should be elections," right? So if the Russians choose Vladimir Putin and they keep choosing him, that's their business. Where, where as an American I would have a problem is when that leader stops letting the Russians make that decision. And we would say, "Well, now you're no longer ruling by the consent of the governed. You've become the equivalent of a person who may be oppressing your people. You might as well be a dictator," right? Now, there's a difference between a freely elected and re-elected and re-elected and re-elected dictator, right? If that's what they want. And, and look, I, I, it would be silly to broad brush the Russians like it would be silly to broad brush anyone, right? Millions and millions of people with different opinions amongst them all. But they seem to like a strong person at the helm. And listen, there's a giant chunk of Americans who do too, um, in their own country. But an American would say, "As long as the freedom of choice is, is given to the Russians to decide this, and not taken away from them," right? It's one thing to say he was freely elected, but a long time ago, and we've done away with elections since then, is, is a different story, too. So my attitude on, on Vladimir Putin is, if that's who the Russian people want and you give them the choice, right? If he's only there because they keep electing him, that's a very different story. When, when he stops offering them the option of choosing him or not choosing him, that's when it begins to look nefarious to someone born and raised with the mindset and the ideology that is an integral part of, of yours truly, and that I can't... You know, you, you can see gray areas and nuance all you like, but it's hard to escape, as you were... And you, you, you alluded to this, too. It's hard to escape what was indoctrinated into your bones in your formative years. Uh, it's like ex- you know, your bones are growing, right?
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah. (laughs)
- DCDan Carlin
And, and you can't go back. I mean, so to me, this is so much a part of who I am, that I have a hard time jettisoning that and saying, "Oh, no, Vladimir Putin not being elected anymore is just fine." Uh, I'm too much of a product of my upbringing to go there. Does that make sense?
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, absolutely. But of course, there's, (laughs) like we were saying, there's gray areas.
- DCDan Carlin
Of course.
- LFLex Fridman
Which is, I believe... I, I have to think through this, but I think there is a point at which Adolf Hitler became the popular choice in Nazi Germany in the '30s. There's a... In the, in the same way, from an American perspective, you can start to criticize some sh- in a shallow way, some in a deep way. The way that Putin has, uh, has maintained power is by controlling the press, so limiting one other freedom that we Americans value, which is the, the freedom of the press or freedom of speech, that he... It is very possible... Now things are-... changing now, but for most of his presidency, he was the popular choice and sometimes by far. And, you know, I have, I actually don't have real family in Russia who don't love Putin. I, the only people who write to me about Putin and not liking him are like sort of activists who are young, right?
- DCDan Carlin
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
But what, like, to me, they're strangers. I don't know anything about them.The people I do know who have a big family in Russia, they love Putin. They-
- DCDan Carlin
Do they miss elections?
- LFLex Fridman
(sighs)
- DCDan Carlin
Would they want the choice to prove it at the ballot box? And, and, or, or are they so in love with him that they're, they wouldn't want to take a chance that someone might vote him out?
- LFLex Fridman
No. They don't think of it this way and... They are aware of the incredible bureaucracy and corruption that is lurking in the shadows which is true in Russia.
- DCDan Carlin
Right. Everywhere.
- LFLex Fridman
Everywhere. But like, there's something about the Russian... It, it's the remnants. It's, corruption is so deeply part of the Russian, sov- the Soviet system that even the overthrow of the Soviet, the, the br- the breaking apart of the Soviet Union and, uh, Putin coming and reforming a lot of the system, it's still deeply in there and, and they're aware of that. That's part of the... Like, the love for Putin is partially grounded in the fear of what happens when the corrupt take over, the greedy take over and they, they see Putin as the stabilizer, as like a hard, like force that says-
- DCDan Carlin
A counterforce, right? Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
A counterforce that, "Get your shit together." Like, basically, from the Western perspective, Putin is, is terrible. But from, from the Russian perspective, Putin is, is the only thing holding this thing together before it goes, it collapses. Now, the, from the, like Garry Kasparov has been loud on this. You know, a lot of people from the Western perspective say, "Well, if it has to collapse, let it collapse." You know, that's-
- DCDan Carlin
That's easier said than done when you don't have to live through that.
- LFLex Fridman
Exactly.
- DCDan Carlin
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
And so for anyone worrying about their family, about... And they also remember the, the inflation and the economic instability and the suffering and the starvation that happened in the '90s with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and they saw the kind of reform and the economic vibrancy that happened when Putin took power that they think like, "This guy is holding it together." And they see elections as potentially being mechanisms by which the corrupt people can manipulate the system unfairly as opposed to letting the people speak with their voice. They somehow figure out a way to, uh, manipulate, uh, the elections to elect somebody, uh, like w- one of them Western revolutionaries. And so, I think one of the beliefs that's important to the American system is the belief in the electoral system that the voice of the people can be heard in the various systems of government, whether it's judicial, whether it's, uh, uh... I mean, basically the assumption is that the system works well enough for you to be able to, uh, elect the popular choice.
- DCDan Carlin
Okay. So, there's a couple of things that come to mind on that. Th- the first one has to do with the idea of oligarchs. Um, there's a belief in political science, uh, you know, it's, it's not the, the overall belief, but, but that every society is sort of an oligarchy really if you break it down, right?
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs) Right.
- DCDan Carlin
So, what you're talking about are some of the people who would form, uh, an oligarchic class in, in, in Russia and that Putin is the guy who can harness, uh, uh, the power of the state to keep those people in check. The problem, of course, in a system like that, a strongman system, right, uh, where you have somebody who can, who can hold the reins and, and steer the ship when the ship is violently in a storm is the succession. So, if you're not creating a system that can operate without you, then that terrible instability and that terrible future that you, that you justified the strongman for is just awaiting your future, right? I mean, un- unless, unless he's actively building the system that will outlive him and allow successors to do what he's doing, then, then what you've done here is create a temporary, I would think, a temporary stability here because it's the same problem you have in a monarchy, right? Um, where, where you have this one king and he's particularly good or you think he's particularly good, but he's gonna turn that job over to somebody else down the road and the system doesn't guarantee because no one's really worked on... And again, you're, you would tell me if, if, if Putin is putting into place... I know he's talked about it over the years, putting into place a system that can outlive him and that will create the stability that the people in Russia like him for-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- 57:33 – 1:04:58
Journalism is broken
- LFLex Fridman
And I, I do believe that, like, as somebody who thinks clickbait journalism is broken, journalists annoy the hell out of me.
- DCDan Carlin
Clickbait journalism's working perfectly. (laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- DCDan Carlin
Journalism's broken.
- LFLex Fridman
Jour- journalism.
- DCDan Carlin
Clickbait thing is working great.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs) Exactly. Uh, uh, so I understand from Putin's perspective that journalism, journalists can be seen as the enemy of the state because people think journalists write these deep, beautiful, philosophical pieces about criticizing the structure of government and the proper policy, what it... you know, the steps that we need to take to make a greater nation. No. They, they're unfairly take stuff out of context, they, uh, they're critical in ways that's like shallow and not interesting, they, they call you a racist or a sexist or they make up stuff all the time. So I, I can put myself in the mindset of a person that thinks that it is okay to remove that kind of shallow, uh, fake news voice from the system. The problem is, of course, that is a slippery slope to then you remove all the annoying people from the system, and then you change what annoying means, which annoying starts becoming a thing that like anyone who opposes the, the system... I mean, I get, I get the, um, the slippery... Uh, it's, it's obvious that it becomes a slippery slope. But I can also put myself in the mindset of the people that see it's, it's okay to remove the liars from the system, uh, uh, as long as it's good for Russia.
- DCDan Carlin
And, and-
- LFLex Fridman
Okay.
- DCDan Carlin
So herein lies, and this again, the m- traditional American perspective, because we've had yellow, so-called yellow journalism since the founding of the republic. That's nothing new. Um, but, but the problem then comes into play, when you remove journalists, even... You know, it, it's a broad brush thing 'cause but you remove both the, the crappy ones who are lying and the ones who are telling the truth too, you're left with simply the, the approved government journalists, right? The ones who are towing the government's line. In which case, the truth as you see it is a different kind of fake news, right? It's the fake news from the government instead of the clickbait news, and, oh yeah, maybe truth mixed into all that too in some of the outlets. The problem I always have with our system here in the United States right now is trying to tease the truth out from all the falsehoods... And look, um, I've got 30 years in journalism. My job used to be to go through, before the internet, all the newspapers and, and find the... I used to know all the journalists by name, and I could pick out, you know, who they were and, and, and, and I have a hard time picking out the truth from the falsehoods. So I think constantly, how are people who don't have all this background, who have lives or who are trained in other specialties, how do they do it? But if the government is the only approved outlet for truth, a traditional American, and a lot of other traditional societies based on these ideas of the enlightenment that I talked about earlier, would see that as a disaster waiting to happen, or a tyranny in progress. Does that make sense?
- LFLex Fridman
Oh, it totally makes sense, and I would agree with you. I still agree with you, but it is clear that something about the freedom of the press and freedom of speech in today, like literally the last few years with the internet, is changing. And the argument, you know, it, you, you could say that the American system of freedom of speech is, is broken because the... Here's, here's the belief I grew up on and I still hold, but I'm starting to be sort of trying to see multiple v- views on it. My belief was that freedom of speech... results in a stable trajectory towards truth, always. So like, truth will emerge. That was my sort of faith and belief that, that yeah, there's going to be lies all over the place, but there'll be like a stable thing that is true, that's carried forward to the public. Now, it feels like it's possible to go towards a world where nothing is true, or truth is, is something that groups of people convince themselves of, and there's multiple groups of people. And the idea of some universal truth, I, I suppose is the better thing, is, uh, is something that we can no longer exist under. Like, some people believe that the Green Bay Packers is the best, uh, football team, and some people can think of the Patriots, and they deeply believe it, to where they call the other groups liars. Now, that's fun for sports, that's fun for favorite flavors of ice cream, but they might believe that about science, about, uh, uh, various aspects of, uh, politics, various aspects of sort of, uh, different policies within the function of our government, and like, that's not just like some weird thing we complain about, but that would be the nature of things. Like, truth is something we could no longer have.
- DCDan Carlin
Well, let's, and, and let me de-romanticize the American history of this too, because the American press was often just as biased, just as... I mean, I always look to the 1970s as the high watermark of the American journalistic, um, you know, the post-Watergate era, where it was actively going after, um, uh, the abuses of the government and all these things. But there was a famous speech, very quiet though, very quiet, given by Katharine Graham, who was a Washington Post editor, I believe, and, uh, I actually, somebody sent it to me. We had to get it off of a journalism, uh, like a JSTOR kind of thing.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DCDan Carlin
And she, at a, at a luncheon, um, assured that the g- to the government people at the luncheon, "Don't worry, this is not gonna be something that we make a trend. We're not..." Because the position of the government is still something that was carried, you know, the, the, the newspapers were the water... And the newspapers were the big thing up until certainly the late '60s, early '70s. The newspapers were still the water carrier of the government, right? And they were the water carriers of the owners of the newspaper. So, let's not pretend there was some angelic, wonderful time, and, and I'm saying to me, 'cause I was the one who brought it up. Um, let's not pretend there was any super age of truthful journalism and all that. And I mean, you go to the revolutionary period in American history, and it looks every bit as bad as today, right?
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah. That's a hopeful message actually. So, things may not be as bad as they, as they look because those were- (laughs)
- DCDan Carlin
Well, let's look at it more like a stock market, and that you have fluctuations in the truthfulness or, or believability of the press, and there are periods where it was higher than other periods. The funny thing about the so-called clickbait era, and I do think it's terrible, but I mean, it, it resembles earlier eras to me. So, I always compare it to when I was a kid growing up, when I thought journalism was as good as it's ever gotten. It was never perfect, um, but it's also something that you see very rarely in, in other governments around the world, and there's a reason that journalists are often killed, uh, regularly in a lot of countries, and it's because they report on things that the authorities do not want reported on. And I've always thought that that was what journalism should do. But it's gotta be truthful. Otherwise, it's just a different kind of propaganda, right?
- 1:04:58 – 1:19:19
Genghis Khan
- DCDan Carlin
- LFLex Fridman
Can we talk about Genghis Khan?
- DCDan Carlin
Sure.
- LFLex Fridman
Jenghis Khan?
- DCDan Carlin
Sure.
- LFLex Fridman
By the way, is it Jenghis Khan or Genghis Khan?
- DCDan Carlin
It's not Genghis Khan. It's either Jenghis Khan or Chingish Khan.
- LFLex Fridman
So let's go with, uh, Jenghis Khan.
- DCDan Carlin
That's the only thing I'll be able to say with any certain-
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- DCDan Carlin
... last certain thing I'll say about it.
- LFLex Fridman
Uh, it's like, I don't know, GIF versus JIF? Uh, (laughs) I don't know if you know about those but they-
- DCDan Carlin
I don't know how the, I don't know how it ever got started the wrong way-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DCDan Carlin
... but yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
Uh, so first of all, your episodes on, uh, Jenghis Khan, for many people, are the favorite. It's fascinating to think about events that had so much, like, in their ripples, had so much impact on so much of human civilization. In your view, was he an evil man? Let's go start our discussion of evil. Another way to put it is, I've read he's much loved in much par- in many parts of the world, like Mongolia, and I've also read arguments that say they, he was quite a progressive for the time. So, where do you put him? Is he a progressive or is he an evil destroyer of humans?
- DCDan Carlin
As I often say, I'm not a historian, which is why what I try to bring to the Hardcore History podcasts are these subthemes. So each show has a s- and they're not, I try to kind of soft pedal them, so they're not-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DCDan Carlin
... always like really right in front of your face. Um, in that episode, the soft pedaling subtheme had to do with what we, uh, refer to as a historical arsonist, and it's because some historians have taken the position that sometimes, and, and most of this is earlier, so historians don't do this very much anymore, but these were the wonderful questions I grew up with that blend, it's almost the, the intersection between history and philosophy.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DCDan Carlin
And the idea was that sometimes the world has become so overwhelmed with bureaucracy or corruption or just stagnation, that somebody has to come in or some group of people or some force has to come in and do the equivalent of a forest fire to clear out all the dead wood so that the forest itself can be rejuvenated and i- and society can then move forward. And there's a lot of these periods where the historians of the past will portray these figures who come in and do horrific things as-... creating an almost service for, for mankind, right?
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DCDan Carlin
Uh, creating the foundations for a new world that will be better than the old one, and it's a recurring theme. And so this was the sub-theme, uh, of the, of the Khan's podcast, because otherwise, you don't need me to tell you the story of the Mongols.
- LFLex Fridman
Right.
- DCDan Carlin
But I'm gonna bring up the historical arsonist element. Um, and but this gets to how the Khan has been portrayed, right? If you wanna say, "Oh, yes, he cleared out the deadwood and made for a, for..." Well, then it's a positive thing. If you say, "My family was in the forest fire that he set." I- you're not gonna see it that way. Um, much of what Genghis Khan is credited with on the upside, right? So things like religious toleration, and you'll say, "Well, he was a, uh, a religiously, the Mongols were religious, uh, uh, religiously tolerant." And then so this makes them almost like a liberal reformer kind of thing. But this needs to be seen within the context of, of their empire, which was, uh, very much like the Roman viewpoint, which is the Romans didn't care a lot of time what your local people worshiped. They wanted stability, and if that kept stability and kept you paying taxes and didn't require the legionaries to come in and, and... Then they didn't care, right? And, and the Khans were the same way. Like they don't care what you're practicing as long as it doesn't disrupt their empire and cause them trouble. But what I always like to point out is, yes, but the Khan could still come in with his representatives to your town, decide your daughter was a beautiful woman that they wanted in the Khan's concubine gr- a- and they would take them. So how liberal an empire is this, right? So, so many of the things that they get...
- LFLex Fridman
(clears throat)
- DCDan Carlin
... credit for as though they're some kind of nice guys may, in another way of looking at it, just be a simple mechanism of control, right? A way to keep the empire stable. They're not doing it out of the goodness of their heart. They have decided that this is the be- And I love because the Mongols were what we would call a pagan people now, I love the fact that they... And I think we called it, I forgot the term we used. It had to do with like, like they were hedging their bets religiously, right?
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- DCDan Carlin
They didn't know which god was the right one, so as long as you're all praying for the health of the Khan, we're maximizing the chances that whoever the gods are, they get the message, right? Um, so I think it's been portrayed as something like a liberal empire, and it... The idea of Mongol universiality, universiality is, is more about conquering the world.
- LFLex Fridman
Right.
- 1:19:19 – 1:27:04
Greatest leader in history
- DCDan Carlin
- LFLex Fridman
To linger on the little thread that you started pulling on this man, Genghis Khan, that was a leader.
- DCDan Carlin
Temujin, yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
What do you think makes a great leader? Maybe if you have other examples throughout history. And great, again, let's lose that term, use that term loosely, meaning-
- DCDan Carlin
Yeah, I was gonna ask for a definition.
- LFLex Fridman
Great uniter of, whether it's evil or good, it doesn't matter.... is there somebody who stands out to you, Alexander the Great, so we're talking about military or ideologies, you know, some people bring up FDR or, or, I mean, it could be the founding fathers of this country, or we can go to, uh, was he man o- uh, man of the century up there, Hitler, of, uh, the 20th century and Stalin, and these people had really, uh, uh, amassed the amount of power that probably has never been seen in the history of the world. Is there somebody who stands out to you by way of, uh, trying to define what makes a great uniter, great leader in one man or woman maybe in the future?
- DCDan Carlin
Mm. It's an interesting question and, uh, one I've thought a lot about because, well, let's take Alexander the Great as an example because Alexander fascinated the world of his time, fascinated... E- ever since people have been fascinated with the guy. But Alexander was a hereditary monarch, right?
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DCDan Carlin
He, he was handed the kingdom. He-
- LFLex Fridman
Which is fascinating.
- DCDan Carlin
Right, but he did not need to rise from nothing-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DCDan Carlin
... to get that job. In fact, he reminds me of a lot of other leaders, of Frederick the Great, for example, in Prussia. These are people who inherited the greatest army of their day. Alexander, unless he was an imbecile, was going to be great no matter what because, I mean, if you inherit the Wehrmacht, you're gonna be able to do something with it, right? Uh, Alexander's father may have been greater. Philip, uh, he... Philip II was the guy who, who literally did create, uh, a, a, a strong kingdom from a disjointed group of people that were continually beset by their neighbors. He's the one that reformed that army, uh, took things that he had learned from other, uh, Greek leaders like the Theban leader at Pamphildes, um, a- a- a- and, and then laboriously over his lifetime stabilized the frontiers, built the system. He lost an eye doing it, he, he, w- he, he, his leg was made lame. I mean, he... This was a man who looked like he built the empire and led from, from the front ranks. I mean, um, so, and then, and then who may have been killed by his son, we don't know who assassinated Philip, um, but then handed the greatest army the world had ever seen to his son who then did great things with it. Uh, you see this, this pattern many times, so in my mind, I'm not sure Alexander really can be that great when you compare him to people who arose from nothing. So the difference between what we would call in the United States the self-made man or the one who inherits a fortune. Uh, there's an old line that, you know, uh, it's, it's a slur but, uh, it's about rich people and it's, it's like he was born on, he was born on third base and thought he hit a triple, right?
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DCDan Carlin
Um, Philip was born at home plate and he had to hit... Alexander started on third base, and so I try to draw a distinction, uh, between them. Genghis Khan is tough because there's two traditions. The tradition that we grew up with here in the United States and that I grew up learning was that he was a self-made man.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DCDan Carlin
Uh, but there is a tradition, and it may be one of those things that's put after the fact because a lo- a long time ago, whether or not you had blue blood in your veins was an important distinction.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DCDan Carlin
And so the distinction that you'll h- often hear from Mongolian history, uh, is that this was a, a nobleman who had been deprived of his inheritance, so he was a blue blood anyway. I don't know which is true. Uh, there's certainly... I mean, when you look at a Genghis Khan though, you have to go, "That is a wicked amount of, uh, of things to have achieved." Uh, he's very impressive as a figure. Attila's very impressive as a figure. Um, Hitler's an interesting figure. He's one of those people c- 'cause, you know, the more you study about Hitler, the more you wonder where the defining moment was because, um, if you look at his life, I mean, Hitler was a relatively common soldier in the first World War. I mean, he, he was brave, he got, uh, he got some decorations. In fact, the highest decoration he got in the first World War was given to him by a Jewish officer and it was, uh... He often didn't talk about that decoration even though it was the more prestigious one-
Episode duration: 3:21:25
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