Why Don't Jews Own Guns？
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Summary
Why don t Jews own guns? Is it because they don t believe in them? Or because they're anti-gun control? Or maybe it's because they just don't think they should have them? And if they did have them, would they have kept them in their homes, in their cars, or in their pockets?
Transcript
00:00:03.060
So if our book, The Pragmatist Guide to Religion, used one of those cheeky titles where somebody, you know, like, why don't zebras get cancer or something like that, you know, where it's like one interesting thing that the book like goes too deeply into, it would be, why don't Jews own guns?
00:00:24.920
If you want to go into all the stats and the citations, you can go look at the book.
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If I was to expect, like, if you look at Jewish history, there are two things that I would expect of every Jew.
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And this is very interesting to me because if you look at our cultural background, like our cultivar, if you want to call it that, it tells us to do both of those things.
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It tells us, you know, do arms training when you were a young kid.
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We have a gun in almost every room of our house.
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I decided to add a little screenshot here of Simone's standing desk where she works, where within arm's reach is an AR-15.
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And right behind her in that shot is a Remington.
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And right where I'm laying down to record this right now where I edit the videos next to my bed is a Walter CCP pistol.
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There's almost nowhere in our house where we spend a significant amount of time where there is not a firearm within arm's reach.
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You know, and if you look at modern times, it's a uniquely interesting question.
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Like even in Israel, gun ownership rates are very low.
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I mean, like people in the army, they're trained in gun use, you know?
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Like they should be one of the most gun literate and thus gun having people, I would suspect, in any population.
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If you look in Israel and we keep, you know, I read these horrifying stories of what happened when Hamas first attacked.
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And I keep wondering, why didn't this old lady have an AR-15 on her wall?
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It's not like they didn't know that this attack may happen.
00:02:04.800
Well, and when you think about this attack, if these, if people in all of these areas, and I don't know what the concealed carry laws are in Israel, you know, like, but for example, if the people at this festival, if, you know, 25% of them had concealed carry, this would have played out very different.
00:02:18.820
If, you know, everyone had weapons in their house, if they lived in a kibbutz, especially if it was a kibbutz close to the border, like, this would have played out very differently.
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You know, the story, these terrifying stories of, you know, two kids alone at home, you know, their mom in another place on the phone with them as their home is being.
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I mean, if they had guns, again, this, this could have played out super differently.
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And I'm saying here, you know, there are like progressive Jews.
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They look at what happened and they're like, oh my God, I, I, I, I, I never expected the, the, the people of Gaza to do this.
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And everyone else is like, what are you talking about?
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They're like Muslims going around and beheading people.
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And then, and then of course everyone else is like, what are you, what are you talking about?
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I, I can't see any other reason this could have happened and, and worse.
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And I mean, we're talking about this and we're not going to do a full episode on, on this particular topic, but I have just been so ashamed even with how little I think of progressives in the U S how they have treated these horrifying massacres.
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I saw a top post on Reddit arguing that the, the, the massacre of the babies was their heads being cut off, was a fake stunt perpetrated.
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This is on front page of Reddit, or at least my front page perpetrated by the Israeli government.
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Where this is coming from, the, the baby beheadings didn't happen thing, is it was reported that 40 babies were killed and some were beheaded.
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And then some people started saying that 40 babies were beheaded and then people were like, what?
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It's so weird watching progressives defend Hamas because it's like Hamas is trying their hardest to let everyone know like just how brutal they are.
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And then Hamas has to like go out and do something over the top again because they're like, no, look, we really are.
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Like, we want you to know what we're all about.
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You know, we've heard about them being from, from our contacts who are at school there right now being canceled.
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So all of the students, these are grad students, by the way, can go out and protest the bus that is protesting that horrifying letter that said that Hamas has 0% blame for this.
00:05:09.140
And if you look at the things leading up to this, people are like, oh, Israel was so horrible to the people of Gaza.
00:05:13.280
The very reason why Israel didn't expect to be attacked right now was because they had been so quickly and, and, and, and hugely loosening sanctions on Gaza and increasing work visas to the people of Gaza because they were trying to do this deal with Saudi Arabia.
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They had been really focused recently on increasing quality of life there.
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And so when they saw really huge troop movements in the area that were really obvious, they were like, oh, the one, these movements are so obvious that it must be something else.
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Like it can't possibly be that they're about to attack us because they wouldn't make it this obvious, especially given, you know, the way the people would react, given all of the, the, the looser sanctions and stuff like this.
00:06:03.640
And I think that this is where this mindset where it's like, oh, they're attacking us because they're mad at us.
00:06:08.580
It's like, no, they're attacking you because it's like theologically mandated that you cease existing in this area.
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They still have to kill you if, if they follow this cultural tradition.
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And I should be clear, not all Islamic cultural traditions feel that way.
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I mean, there's a reason why other Islamic countries have refused to take Palestinian refugees throughout this attack.
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There's a reason why other Arab countries have refused to accept Palestine as a state under their control, because it is a radically different Islamic culture than other Islamic cultures.
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Also, as another quick side note here, I want to dispel a misconception that has been going around a lot,
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that Hamas was only supported by a minority of Gazans, or it was like, it's not a mainstream organization within Gaza.
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Over 50% of the population in Gaza supports Hamas.
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To put this in context, only 37% of Germans supported Hitler's rise to power.
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I think it's important for people to ask themselves, why are people pretending like Hamas is this weird splinter organization
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controlling the people of Gaza, and forcing them to do things they don't want to,
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but we don't pretend that that was the case of the Nazis and the Germans during World War II.
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And all of this, oh, they were in an open-air prison, they were being abused, and that's why they did it,
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sounds very similar to talk about the Nazis, where, oh, the Treaty of Versailles was so abusive to them,
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you know, look at the hyperinflation they were experiencing, look at the absolute poverty so many people in Germany were experiencing,
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I also want to be clear, I am not saying that innocent people are not suffering.
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There are many, many innocent people suffering in Gaza right now.
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But, when we look at this in the context of other wars,
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we are weirdly treating this very, very differently than we would, say,
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think of the people of the southern United States during General Sherman's total war campaign,
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which was absolutely horrifying in the number of civilian casualties,
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which famously killed more civilians than the atomic bombs did in Japan.
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The atomic bombs killed around 120,000 Japanese,
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while the firebombing of Dresden killed around 135,000 Germans.
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One of the themes of this episode is going to be the actual key to answering the question of
00:08:34.500
why do Jews own guns in such low numbers comes from understanding that Jews are not a monolithic entity,
00:08:41.440
and that there are many very different subcultural groups within the Jewish tradition.
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Diaspora, tradition, history, whatever word you want to use.
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And some of them have actually been incredibly militaristic, just not the ones that survived.
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But before I give anything away, something that is worth noting here,
00:09:00.780
because we made a tweet to this, and we can't do a whole episode on it,
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but it actually is a very important concept to discuss, is why progressives hate Jews so much.
00:09:13.160
It seems like the natural result of progressive philosophy,
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but I think a lot of people don't think their philosophy through.
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They're just like, oh, progressives are the nice ones, right?
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And progressives, like anyone who's slightly different from the norm,
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But to the average nobody who knows nothing, those are the Jews.
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Yeah, and I think that this is actually one of the, this is a totally different tangent.
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But I think the seeing Jews as a universalized entity rather than progressive versus orthodox Jews.
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You know, in the U.S., we don't confuse, you know, Unitarian Universalist Christians with like,
00:10:00.540
I guess I'd call them real Christians, like Catholics and stuff.
00:10:07.880
which are used to justify anti-Semitism with orthodox Jewish communities.
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I think to a great extent, that's because you don't encounter orthodox Jews.
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Like, you may see them, but you've never talked to one.
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And they're also not talking, like normally, there's like a couple on YouTube who are like,
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Or like, this is what an orthodox Jewish party is like.
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But like, no one's really talking to you about like their day-to-day.
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This is maybe a whole other video that we might do on this and anti-Semitism.
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Why is their philosophy always going to end up hating Jews?
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The reason why is because the progressive philosophy is based on a core assumption,
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which is that all differences between success of groups, of groups of people,
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whether they're cultural or ethnic or anything groups,
00:11:00.660
because of systemic discrimination and disenfranchisement combined with outright oppression.
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So, in other words, if there is a difference, if some group is different, it's because they've
00:11:16.560
Because underlying everything, all groups are the same.
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As we say, to a conservative, diversity has value.
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But diversity has value because we're different.
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That's where the value in diversity comes from.
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To a progressive, diversity has value only in that it increases the number of victims that
00:11:30.860
they have available for them to convert, not because they really believe that anyone's
00:11:35.240
And this is, if you don't believe that anyone's really different, if you do believe that all
00:11:39.700
differences between groups are caused by systemic discrimination and oppression, if
00:11:43.740
there's a group out there, i.e. Jews, that is both wealthier than other groups on average,
00:11:50.240
more successful than like academia, you know, you look at the number of politicians who have
00:11:53.980
Jewish ancestry, or you look at the number of famous intellectuals that have Jewish ancestry,
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or you look at the number of Nobel Prize winners that have Jewish ancestry, they always out-compete.
00:12:07.940
And so you see this cultural group, and then you also see that this is a cultural group
00:12:14.040
that claims that it was historically oppressed and that it even still faces oppression.
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And this is why, in progressive circles, it is so offensive to even point out that Jews are
00:12:29.540
successful and that they do disproportionately out-compete other groups, both economically,
00:12:37.760
And it's because what's the logical assumption there?
00:12:39.980
Well, they must be lying about their oppression.
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They, one, and you increasingly see this within progressive circles, they must be lying about
00:12:50.460
And two, they must not be participating in the oppression of other groups.
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Because if you're successful, you're successful because of some zero-sum game that you've played
00:13:04.080
Whereas conservatives would look at those things and they'd be like, oh, these are things we
00:13:10.240
Now, of course, there's some conservative groups that are just like ethno-nationalists
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and just really only care about their own group competing, which is, you know, they're
00:13:18.360
not going to be long for this world, given the world that we're entering.
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But, you know, obviously they'll be anti-Semitic, but they'll be anti pretty much all other
00:13:25.580
groups that they don't identify as their own group.
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Well, they might have a unique hatred for Jewish people because they are out-competing
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And people often hate people more when they're out-competing them.
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But there is a path towards acceptance within the conservative movement.
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There is not a path towards acceptance within the progressive movement so long as they hold
00:13:47.900
on to this ideology that all differences between groups are due to oppression and discrimination.
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And so it makes a lot of sense that we see these cultural power centers in the U.S. have
00:13:58.940
responded so bizarrely, from my perspective, to all of this.
00:14:03.200
And I think in a way that has really broken the trust of a lot of people who formerly didn't
00:14:07.880
realize how crazy and how hateful these groups were in terms of their, you know, like the
00:14:13.580
Harvard letter is found by 31 student organizations saying Israel was 100% at fault for this and
00:14:18.880
that classes are still being canceled so that they can go double down on their support for
00:14:24.040
So with that all out of the way, you know, we're sort of giving the cultural context right
00:14:30.660
Why would gun ownership rates be so low in Jewish communities?
00:14:34.160
Well, first you have to look at the history here.
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Judaism underwent something very unique after the Second Temple period, which can almost be
00:14:44.020
thought of as sort of like a Cambrian explosion or a, what's the word in biology?
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So in radiation, if you look at the Cambrian, like some of my favorite periods in history,
00:14:55.080
you can look at like the Cambrian explosion or the Triassic.
00:14:59.120
If you look at the dinosaurs of the Triassic or all the animals of the Triassic, because
00:15:03.360
a lot of them weren't dinosaurs yet, a lot of them looked really weird.
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If you look at the Cambrian explosion, the animals that came out of the Cambrian explosion,
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They typically happen after a mass extinction event.
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So what it means is a lot of the ecological niches that used to be held by specialists
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get wiped out and groups that weren't really built for those ecological niches quickly evolved
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Well, that can happen with a cultural group as well.
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When the Second Temple period happened, when the Jewish people were dispersed all over the
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world, they began to fill lots of very unusual cultural niches if you look at the Jewish people
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So before that, Jews were really sort of one cultural group.
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You know, they were a people, a government, and everything like that.
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After that, you had, like if we're talking about like weird Jewish cultural niches, one,
00:16:01.340
you know, to this topic was a mercenary cultural group that specifically specialized almost in
00:16:08.640
being like the 10,000 from like the Greek period, where it was Jews that you knew that you would
00:16:13.560
hire when you wanted specific functions fulfilled within your military.
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They could even like move between forces, like, oh, this king wants to hire us now, this
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I guess they weren't, I mean, if you're a militaristic group, you're probably not reproducing
00:16:40.480
Actually, what happened to them is actually just a useful thing.
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This is a specialization that has repeatedly evolved throughout human history for different cultural
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As I mentioned, the Greeks did this for a period where you would actually get Greeks in different
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parts of the world because their phalanx was with such a powerful, like military pattern.
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Where Greeks would hire them to perform this specialized function.
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And you see different groups sort of evolve this cultural specialization, and they never
00:17:07.000
Whenever, okay, so again, we're going to go to great extinction periods.
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Whenever there's a great extinction period and you're talking about biology, the groups that
00:17:14.460
die out are the groups that are the most specialized.
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This is why the dinosaurs died out, but the like crocodiles and alligators didn't.
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So groups that survive are the groups that are more generalist.
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When you're going through major societal change, the ultra specialized cultures are the ones that
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And the generalist cultures are the ones that are most likely to survive.
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When a group is pro-gun, one of the things that is most associated with that is a rural
00:17:59.440
And you typically see a cluster of behavior patterns that are associated with that.
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And when a group is intergenerationally in cities and they really become city specialists,
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you will get usually a hatred of dogs or a dislike of dogs or prohibitions against dogs.
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My hypothesis is that cities have their own protective systems and are more closely governed.
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And therefore, the administrators of the city don't like when people have their own
00:18:41.460
That's partially true, but it's more than that.
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So when you think about cultural groups that are city specialized, right?
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The two that really jump out to me are the Jewish cultural group today.
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And it's another cultural group that is anti-dog and often doesn't have guns as high
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a rate as other cultural groups, which is some Muslim specializations.
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And many people think of Muslims because early Muslims were not.
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Early Muslims were entirely a martial specialization almost.
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But they conquered a lot of regions, became very erudite, very intellectual, and some factions
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lost those traditions and became more of city specialists.
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Now, when I mentioned the dog thing, a lot of modern Jews who just aren't that familiar
00:19:22.220
with recent Jewish history do not know that Jews have historically, and if you want to go
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into all the citations in this, you can look at the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion
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But I think a famous quote here, this is from a quote from the guy who wrote Fiddler on the
00:19:34.520
Roof, you know, famous Jew into Jewish culture.
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If a Jew has a dog, either that dog is no dog or that man is no Jew.
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So if you look historically, this was something that a lot of Jewish people knew about Jewish
00:19:50.460
But recently, if you look at the more like Reformed Jews and stuff like that, where Jewish
00:19:54.680
culture is degrading faster, a lot of them have forgot these traditions.
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We've also spoken with rabbis who are like well-known rabbis and are like, wait, what?
00:20:02.380
And then they like look into it and they're like, oh shit.
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So what's interesting about both of these traditions is they are not encoded into Jewish
00:20:16.960
These are completely cultural preferences, right?
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And so again, that makes it weird that these cultural references that are not theologically
00:20:24.220
encoded because there have been Jews in certain periods of history where both gun and dog
00:20:29.020
ownership was really common or other type of weapon like martial specialization and in
00:20:36.960
So the pogroms, like when I'm like, I would expect all Jews to have a gun.
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The thing that immediately went to me is pogroms, right?
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Like Nazis were not the first time this happened, right?
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So like they have a strong cultural memory of people coming in and killing them.
00:20:54.940
So occasionally European monarchs would just be like, okay, we're going to kill all the
00:21:04.900
They were just a really easy group to scapegoat as, as were any group that were of minority
00:21:11.600
population was a significantly different culture than the mainstream population.
00:21:19.880
The offensive term would be gypsies, but it's a term that more people would know.
00:21:23.900
So when these pogroms happened, after this sort of radiation event in, in Jewish cultural
00:21:30.540
history, there were lots of different Jewish cultural specializations.
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There were some Jews that had rural specialization.
00:21:36.760
There were some Jews that had martial specializations.
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There were some Jews that had urban based specializations.
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The difference is, is it the rural specialized Jews, if they say, Hey, we need you all out
00:21:47.880
of here, all your property, all your wealth, everything your family has is in the land.
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If you leave, you need to then go like kill other people to get them off the land, to take
00:22:01.600
That's the only way you're going to be able to feed your family again.
00:22:04.440
And that's also like the odds of that actually working are astronomically low.
00:22:13.120
So you, you actually sort of have to stay and defend your territory or you have to get
00:22:25.480
People might not know what I'm referencing here, but there actually is a rural specialized Jewish
00:22:30.840
population called the crypto Jews, which were rural specialized Jews, mostly from the Spanish
00:22:40.060
So there's a lot in the Americas that they've mostly lost their cultural traditions.
00:22:43.720
It's more like a cultural memory now, but they were called the crypto Jews because they hid that
00:22:49.980
Crypto, you know, meaning like encoded, hidden, right?
00:22:52.280
Um, of the rural specialized Jewish populations, that was the only group that survived.
00:23:00.240
These were the ones who got really good at hiding it.
00:23:02.080
But even then they didn't transfer it very well intergenerationally.
00:23:04.760
Whereas if you have an urban specialization, even though it's easier to target you, it's also easier to leave.
00:23:12.940
You can, you, you, you have a skill typically like jewel making or shoe making or something like that.
00:23:20.240
And often typically a skill because you would have been discriminated against by the local guilds,
00:23:25.100
that there aren't a lot of guilds around or the guilds around are more, you know, open to so that you can
00:23:30.640
then pick up, go to another city, take most of your wealth with you, like any, anything that you've accumulated
00:23:37.680
And this was actually core to this Jewish group thriving as much as they did.
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Because every time one of these pogroms would happen, they'd all leave one city or one geographic region.
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And then they'd go and settle in a bunch of other cities.
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But they would have extended family networks in these cities because there was this similar cultural group
00:23:58.620
And so it was very easy for them to assimilate into these communities because they already had networks
00:24:04.300
in these communities that had a history of needing to take in this type of refugee.
00:24:09.020
And so it allowed for there to be kin networks where you would be as a Jewish person, much more closely related
00:24:17.500
to Jewish people in the other major cities than you would be related than like me as a British person
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be related to an average, you know, guild specialist in something in, in France or in Germany.
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Whereas the Jewish people in London would have fairly close relatives in Berlin and Paris.
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Now this is really important for one specific specialization, which is banking.
00:24:40.880
If you were going to, to, so, so a lot of people think the only reason Jews became specialists in banking
00:24:46.120
during this period was because they didn't have prohibitions against usury in their religious traditions,
00:24:52.440
whereas Christians and Muslims did so that they were able to become bankers.
00:24:55.820
But that, while that was a reason, it probably wasn't the core reason.
00:25:00.220
The core reason was actually the close family networks, which were created by urban specialization
00:25:07.380
But this, we still haven't gotten to why no guns yet, right?
00:25:10.280
Like, it seems like you would want to defend yourself during one of these pogroms.
00:25:15.980
So suppose they come in and they're like, okay, it's the Jews' fault that like, we're not getting water,
00:25:21.060
like there's not enough rain or something, or, or there's too much corruption in government.
00:25:24.700
They'll find something and they'll blame the Jews.
00:25:28.600
And they would go in and they would do like lynchings often, but they would get it out of their system.
00:25:35.940
It was rare for them to kill like more than 20% of a population.
00:25:41.660
If they had guns, if they fought back, they would kill 100% of the population.
00:25:48.240
So the other reason why they weren't armed is basically if they were and they didn't totally nail it,
00:25:56.780
But then I guess the problem now is you've got all these Jewish groups living in kibbutzim,
00:26:02.880
So Israel and modern warfare changes everything.
00:26:08.560
Do you think it's going to change after this incident?
00:26:10.400
Maybe it induces evolutionary pressures, but Jews actually have such an advantage in modern
00:26:20.680
If you had a friend or relative who was kidnapped, who lost someone, who had someone killed,
00:26:26.140
even if you just like know someone's like third hand, I feel like I would arm my whole
00:26:32.000
Like, so that is your cultural tradition that's telling you to do this.
00:26:41.140
You think every time a Pogrom happened in medieval Europe, this hadn't happened.
00:26:45.320
Everyone there didn't know somebody else, at least within two generations.
00:26:48.920
But they were living in, we'll say, enemy territory.
00:26:54.480
So the optimization function has changed with Israel.
00:27:01.500
They don't have to get along with some other security force.
00:27:06.400
Well, Simone, the point being, Israel changes everything, but it hasn't had time to exert
00:27:12.640
And we're talking about cultural evolutionary pressure.
00:27:14.340
The reason it hasn't had time to exert cultural evolutionary pressure is something very specific,
00:27:24.260
So if you talk about Marshall specialized cultures, our culture is a Marshall specialized culture.
00:27:28.720
You, as a kid, were taught how to use firearms, bows and arrows.
00:27:32.360
When did you, I remember Simone was like, my family wasn't like that big into bows and arrows.
00:27:38.900
Like, I remember there was like a year when we weren't allowed to use them because like
00:27:43.920
There was just like the always told it Christmas family story of how like one of my uncles shot
00:27:54.680
But do you understand how insane that sounds to other cultural backgrounds?
00:27:59.880
A child shot another child in the eye was a bow and arrow.
00:28:03.700
And then the next generation is like, yeah, let's keep doing that bow and arrow training.
00:28:12.000
Well, I wouldn't call our culture Marshall because it's more the Scots-Irish.
00:28:15.340
I would call it like ruffian, you know, because Marshall implies like, you know, joining a
00:28:26.200
So you look at the training that Simone and I received as kids.
00:28:28.620
Me from like an erudite, I'd say fairly upper class family got training that as an adult,
00:28:34.120
I realized when I talked to people from other cultural groups, they're like, that's like
00:28:40.240
Like, why were they teaching little kids how to use a bunch of weapons?
00:28:49.920
Doesn't that seem weird to you when like now a majority of parents are tracking their
00:28:56.000
Are they not also going to teach them how to defend themselves to use weapons?
00:29:02.340
Like a core tradition in my family was learning how to, you know, take apart fireworks, build
00:29:08.140
them into bigger fireworks so that you could blow stuff up.
00:29:12.460
This might be part of the way the tradition is meant to be passed down.
00:29:15.560
I remember when my family showed me one of our family friends, he came over and his hand,
00:29:20.680
he only had one finger on it and it was very mangled and he had got it by blowing up his
00:29:23.940
hand while playing with fireworks when he was a kid.
00:29:25.740
And they were like, okay, just keep in mind, you could blow off your hand and here are the
00:29:30.860
And then they let me go play alone with my brother.
00:29:33.800
You know, we were probably like, I don't know, seven and eight in the woods with fireworks.
00:29:37.380
And so I think that there might even be a tradition of talking about or showing injuries related
00:29:42.880
to the weapons right before they give them to you as like a way of like, don't kill yourself.
00:29:48.120
But they also let you play unsupervised with them, which I think is another thing that would
00:29:52.320
be very surprising to groups that are not from martial traditions, but for groups from
00:29:57.200
martial traditions, they would think of this as just completely the most normal childish
00:30:02.300
They would just be like, this is just normal childhood fun.
00:30:06.340
There is nothing weird about you playing with weapons as a kid.
00:30:10.220
And actually, if you even look at like my family history, so I look at movies made about
00:30:15.040
my family or groups that my family was involved with, and they always involved child soldiers.
00:30:29.260
Last time I checked the gun, don't care who's pulling the trigger.
00:30:38.320
I want you two to start with the officers and work your way down.
00:30:47.220
Samuel, after your first shot, I want you to reload for your brother, Nathan.
00:30:49.520
Like, and I can see a lot of people being like, why would you focus on teaching your kids how to use
00:30:56.760
Why would you focus on making sure your kids know all these skills?
00:30:59.840
But if you look at all of these various things there are within our culture, which is a very
00:31:05.140
You, when you were courting me, you showed me your knife collection, right?
00:31:09.220
So I knew you were feminine, but you were signaling something to me, right?
00:31:13.420
Like you were like, yes, I am from a martial culture.
00:31:22.200
And in martial cultures, like when you talk about the most extreme martial cultures, there's
00:31:27.820
The most extreme martial cultures, women are also engaged in the martial applications.
00:31:32.700
Middling martial cultures, women are not engaged in it.
00:31:36.640
And then the anti-martial cultures, neither the men or the women are expected to learn
00:31:40.360
But in the most extreme martial cultures, women typically, and these are typically the
00:31:43.860
cultures that live in the most rural, most sort of dangerous areas.
00:31:48.720
Well, so what's so weird though, is that both men and women participate in the Israeli
00:31:58.220
So if you look at martial cultures, where do they typically come from?
00:32:01.260
And these were the cultures that did really well in the old West in the US.
00:32:07.420
Not in rural areas, but rural areas without persistently stable governing structures.
00:32:12.300
That, so like, you know, Scottish-Irish territory, stuff like that, like where most of our ancestors
00:32:24.140
So you see that, which is very different than the environments where the Jewish culture
00:32:31.020
Because, I mean, if you are making your money off banking, you need like civilization, like
00:32:36.860
But martial cultures have a huge downside to them when it comes to modern warfare.
00:32:43.460
They are specifically specialized at home self-defense.
00:32:54.240
And these skills are protect your house skills.
00:32:56.840
But they often are much more tribal, much less trusting of command structures.
00:33:02.320
So if you look at Simone and I, we have an almost intrinsic disdain, like our entire cultural
00:33:07.040
background, of bureaucracies, of government, of hierarchy, these things are very, very bad
00:33:14.080
if you're going to be very, very good in a modern military context.
00:33:21.240
But when you look at modern military actions, they require bureaucracy.
00:33:30.140
They require this sort of complex organizational structure, which mirrored city life.
00:33:36.280
And this is what you see in the Yom Kippur War.
00:33:39.340
And I think this is what we're going to see in this war as well, that a lot of people
00:33:42.240
are like, oh, this is going to be really grueling for the Israeli defense forces, everything
00:33:47.340
You look at the Yom Kippur War, they were attacked.
00:33:49.480
So when we think of Israel now, we think of a force that is militarily more complex than
00:33:54.620
When the Yom Kippur War happened, they were attacked by surprise, and they actually had
00:33:59.520
less military equipment than their neighbors, and the military equipment they had was significantly
00:34:04.940
They were being attacked by better-funded groups, with more troops, with more everything,
00:34:12.880
The level to which they crushed the people who were attacking them, given that they should
00:34:17.480
have been on the back foot, under-armed, under-technologied.
00:34:21.420
It was because their forces were much more internally coherent, whereas the forces that were attacking
00:34:28.300
them came from much more rural cultural traditions.
00:34:31.540
So these were more rural Islamic cultural traditions that lacked internal cohesion and
00:34:37.060
were much more sort of like war bands, I'm going to get my own thing.
00:34:41.420
And the military orders culturally that they were able to follow were similar to probably
00:34:45.520
the sophistication of the orders that our culture could follow, which were less.
00:34:49.080
I'm not saying this is an insult to their culture.
00:34:51.120
I'm saying that their culture is like my culture.
00:34:54.840
If actually, if you look at the sort of parallels with all of these militia groups that you
00:34:59.860
see in the U.S., they're far more likely to be associated with our culture and to have
00:35:06.560
So when you look at January 6th, I mean, they were just always going to be way too disorganized
00:35:14.840
Like, I don't think we're ever going to see a very organized rebellion because of the
00:35:18.740
nature of our militaristic tendencies culturally.
00:35:21.520
However, you cannot, you cannot like take these people by storm.
00:35:26.300
You cannot force them to do things like, you know, you attack their ground and you're on
00:35:30.360
So like, it's this tension is very hard to hold, but they are not good at taking over
00:35:36.800
So you couldn't invade their land, but they are not going to take over.
00:35:44.960
And this is why, despite having a culture that encourages gun ownership at much lower
00:35:52.540
rates than other cultures, at much lower rates than I think would be sane, Israel and Jews
00:35:57.620
as a cultural group are so militaristically competent.
00:36:00.920
Also, technology is a huge part of military power.
00:36:05.020
A group that specializes in urban knowledge work is of course going to be more technologically
00:36:12.420
competent in terms of, and this is, none of this is like a genetic thing or anything like
00:36:16.620
We're talking just about cultural specializations here.
00:36:19.460
And you can actually see these cultural specializations.
00:36:21.840
One of the things that we joke about in our book, as I wrap up here, is you go to Israel,
00:36:26.720
they, the Jewish groups that survived, most of them.
00:36:29.540
Now there were like the, the mountain Jews of Dagestan, for example, which were a militaristic
00:36:34.100
Jewish group that survived up until the time of the state of Israel and then moved into
00:36:38.460
You know, so there were a few Jewish populations that survived that were very different cultural
00:36:42.900
groups that were militaristic, but are aware of these martial factions, but most of
00:36:51.600
Because that sounds like something you made up from like Team America, World Police.
00:36:55.640
It's a, it's a thing, the mountain, hold on, I'm just Googling it.
00:37:06.660
They were, obviously you hear about them in the, in the mountains of Dagestan, right?
00:37:11.020
Like obviously they're in a rural defensive area.
00:37:13.740
It would make sense to develop a cultural specialization around defending territory.
00:37:20.820
So, so what was really interesting and almost kind of humorous is if you go to Israel, because
00:37:27.560
this cultural group had recently been so recently urban specialized.
00:37:32.800
It's something like 98% of Jews live in like an urban center.
00:37:35.640
I don't remember exactly, but it's like a really high percentage.
00:37:38.260
You go and you look at, at their, the settlements when they do move into these rural areas.
00:37:44.380
And I'll, I'll put some, some screenshots of these.
00:37:48.000
They look like little miniature recreations of cities is very odd looking.
00:37:56.340
The dominant Korean cultural group is an urban specialized cultural group.
00:37:59.400
And if you look at some rural Korean places, you'll see like these little clusters of
00:38:07.160
It's a very odd thing to see, but it's a different urban cultural group taking advantage
00:38:16.360
I, and I think that in the question from all of this is, well, should Jewish culture change?
00:38:27.380
I don't think that there is enough cultural evolutionary pressure.
00:38:30.620
There is just not enough incursions that kill enough people for the Jewish cultural groups,
00:38:36.920
because there are many cultural groups of Jews within Israel.
00:38:39.520
Like after the state of Israel was formed, you began to see this, this new blossoming
00:38:46.640
Like we talked about a radiation event that is almost as big as the one that happened after
00:38:50.620
this period, because you're, you're moving a culture that was specialized for one type
00:38:56.380
of cultural niche into an environment where they need to fill all cultural niches.
00:39:00.040
So you're going to have a huge amount of cultural radiation, but there isn't enough pressure
00:39:06.680
But you could say, okay, but what if I was intentionally designing like a Jewish cultural
00:39:12.160
I would say that I, and you are too culturally biased.
00:39:16.060
Like lots of Jewish friends with our Jewish friends in the U.S.
00:39:18.940
Although to me, maybe this is the bias speaking, but like they already have the gun training.
00:39:24.940
Like why not just buy, buy the fricking gun and just have it, just have it, just have it.
00:39:28.560
It's not like I'm planning on shooting someone with the Beretta back there, but like,
00:39:31.880
I mean, and now you've got, but you wanted recently, she demanded that we also, every
00:39:44.660
You said that you thought you could ready it quicker than a gun.
00:39:48.100
If they, if they're hanging right there, like, it's just, you know, you don't have to unlock,
00:39:57.020
I understand what you're saying, but I think it's very interesting that every time we've
00:40:02.260
had a new, like for people who aren't from a martial culture, one of the things, and
00:40:05.860
I think that this would be the antithesis of somebody from a non-martial culture, the
00:40:09.920
Every time we've gone through a big gun or weapon buying spree or shipping spree, it's
00:40:14.880
When you first got pregnant, your family got a gun.
00:40:28.860
Another really interesting thing is how people from martial cultures relate to self-dispence.
00:40:33.420
I mean, I just mean interesting from the perspective of somebody who's not from a martial culture
00:40:37.400
Because some people who aren't from martial cultures, like, pretend they're from martial
00:40:40.740
cultures because they think it makes them look more manually.
00:40:42.840
Like, Andrew Tate, for example, right, with his whole sword thing.
00:40:46.040
And yeah, we keep swords in the house, but the swords are toys.
00:40:50.620
Simone does make me keep, I guess you would call it in video game culture, a melee weapon
00:40:57.620
It is a sledgehammer because she says it would be easier to wield if our house was invaded
00:41:06.420
I mean, it's about practicality versus impracticality.
00:41:08.620
And it's something that martial cultures often really value to the extent where, you know,
00:41:13.820
when my cousins found out that her family trained in throwing axes, they made fun of them for
00:41:23.240
Like, it's feminine to really believe you could use something like a sword in self-defense
00:41:28.860
better than a sledgehammer or a throwing axe better than a gun.
00:41:32.020
Also, interesting side note here is I've noticed that martial cultures that were active recently
00:41:37.020
often look down upon or just don't actively laud as much physical strength and laud much
00:41:44.140
more knowledge of guns, improvised weaponry, stuff like that.
00:41:47.620
Whereas martial cultures that were more active in their martial phase, much further pack in
00:41:52.620
history, are much more interested in being physically strong and tough.
00:41:57.560
So an example would here be like our martial culture, which was active very recently during
00:42:00.940
the Old West, during the Civil War, versus martial cultures in Europe, which are much more
00:42:07.860
interested in like, okay, I've got to be tough and stuff like that.
00:42:10.100
And it's just because of the type of weapon that was used during these two periods.
00:42:13.960
Whereas, you know, in the Old West, you know, being tough and strong just wasn't as important
00:42:21.900
Whereas if you're looking at like late medieval Europe, being tough and strong actually mattered.
00:42:31.660
The risk of a child killing themselves is higher than the risk of somebody being killed during
00:42:38.120
That's the thing is, is you keep your ammo separate, you lock your gun.
00:42:41.200
Like, and you know, I mean, these kids, keep in mind, you know, a lot of these kids living
00:42:45.640
in Cuba, they are doing way more, way earlier than kids here.
00:42:49.620
They're way less infantilized than they are in our culture.
00:42:53.440
I mean, like if families that infantilize their children to an immense extent here will
00:42:58.540
still have guns in their houses, then like that is no excuse.
00:43:02.840
But the point I was making earlier is that when we meet with our Jewish friends and you
00:43:06.160
can attest with this, because again, we have a lot of, you know, Jewish friends, like our
00:43:09.780
cultures historically have gotten along very well because they're both symbiotic cultures.
00:43:13.780
And we talk about this in the book, which means that typically they're going to get along
00:43:16.740
Like our parting advice is, please move out of the city, please get guns.
00:43:21.340
You're not safe, but that's just sort of the way our culture always feels.
00:43:24.880
You're never safe if you're in a city and unarmed.
00:43:31.880
I think it's a bias because clearly they're doing better than us right now.
00:43:36.620
They didn't do better when people raided their houses and killed and tortured and kidnapped
00:43:44.080
Simone, on the whole, and this is how cultural evolution works.
00:43:51.840
It's not about the individual in these previous pogroms.
00:43:56.240
If you live in a martial society, you often live in a blood honor society.
00:44:00.060
So that means if somebody comes and they kill 10% of your population, they come in, they
00:44:06.860
You then have like a blood oath against them and you are going to kill every one of them
00:44:11.620
for multiple generations and you are going to go out and make their life a living hell
00:44:15.460
as much as you can and as intergenerationally as you can.
00:44:20.140
Jews couldn't afford to do that given the frequency of pogroms.
00:44:27.000
Suppose they reacted to this the way you would have reacted to this.
00:44:30.880
And I know the way people of our cultural group would react to this.
00:44:43.900
Yeah, very humane compared to what my cultural group would demand and historically has done
00:44:55.080
I'm just saying it's what feels right, you know, because that's the way culture is.
00:45:03.080
And that's very much what you are talking about here.
00:45:05.160
And so the point being is it may be that what feels right for you isn't intergenerationally
00:45:11.780
what's going to lead a culture to out-compete other cultures.
00:45:18.060
Anyway, nuanced topic that I hope people don't take too harshly because it could be seen as
00:45:24.120
offensive just saying, ah, different cultures are different.
00:45:34.260
Although they're not totally unique as a cultural group.
00:45:36.680
There's been different urban specialized cultures, which have sort of co-evolved into similar
00:45:42.880
Jews are just really interesting right now because now they have their own country and
00:45:53.100
I mean, long-term outlook, look, I'm very bullish on Israel and the Jewish people.
00:45:56.720
They are like, people are like, why are you so obsessed with Jews?
00:46:01.760
We have the thesis that different cultural groups are different and that wealth seems
00:46:08.680
to, across cultural groups, make people infertile.
00:46:12.440
Oh, except for this one cultural group that is somehow not entirely immune to this, but
00:46:17.160
dramatically more immune to this than any other cultural group in the world.
00:46:20.900
Wealth does not lower their fertility rate as much as anyone else.
00:46:24.000
And they are a very technophilic cultural group compared with other cultural groups with
00:46:33.300
Why would we not be like, oh, there's something here that we need to learn from and we need
00:46:40.740
There's something that they're obviously doing right from a pronatalist perspective.
00:46:47.840
Yeah, but the Amish don't have, you know, international relevance or influence.
00:46:54.540
The Amish aren't also known for producing some of the most influential, you know, spinoff
00:47:00.100
So yeah, if the Mormons had maintained a high fertility rate, we'd be just as focused on
00:47:06.380
Their culture was unable to compete with the virus and it crashed.
00:47:09.440
There are still many impactful and powerful Mormons in the United States, especially.
00:47:16.220
They can produce really competent, like their culture leads to a lot of competence, but
00:47:20.520
it was unable to motivate high fertility in the face of prosperity.
00:47:27.340
But I expect some Mormon cultural groups are going to survive and then explode afterwards.
00:47:32.220
I mean, the Desnats are already showing basically like the fact that Desnats are becoming this
00:47:38.180
I think the Desnet is the successful iteration of the Mormon.
00:47:41.820
Well, because it's, it's, it's basically where people.
00:47:43.780
Well, so then this is where Desnet is short for desert nationalists.
00:47:47.320
This is a group of Mormons that are essentially saying, no, we're going to keep this religion
00:47:51.460
hard while the religion in the mainstream sense as the institution is softening.
00:47:57.100
So as this, as this, as the Mormon culture becomes soft, which ultimately means it will
00:48:01.860
There is this faction that is saying, okay, well, we're staying hard.
00:48:06.180
And also we're going to like police you and shame you for going soft.
00:48:12.600
Well, because they seem to also be going in a hard direction.
00:48:14.400
So anyway, like there's hope for them, but this video is running long.