TRIGGERnometry - The West's True Story - Konstantin Kisin

00:00:00.700 Broadway's smash hit, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto.

00:00:06.520 The true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love,

00:00:11.780 including America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.

00:00:15.780 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.

00:00:22.660 April 28th through June 7th, 2026, The Princess of Wales Theatre.

00:00:27.120 Get tickets at Mirvish.com.

00:00:30.000 Jordan Peterson's Alliance for Responsible Citizenship asked me to contribute an essay to a book

00:00:40.980 about the unique foundations of Western civilization. Here it is.

00:00:45.820 Across the Western world, we live in an age of almost unlimited prosperity, freedom, and opportunity.

00:00:51.840 While much of the rest of the world continues to suffer from the scourges that have plagued humanity

00:00:56.580 since the dawn of time, the average Western citizen is remarkably free from the risk of starvation,

00:01:02.840 preventable disease, and crushing poverty. And although the threat of war has come closer,

00:01:07.800 we enjoyed close to eight decades of almost entirely uninterrupted peace.

00:01:12.560 Yet most of us are profoundly unaware how unusual and precious our freedoms and comforts are.

00:01:17.640 They are an inheritance which all too often we take for granted, which instead we should cherish and

00:01:23.580 protect. What is more, even those of us who grasp the astonishing scale of these achievements

00:01:28.840 frequently struggle to articulate how we reach them. Indeed, many of us are now confused about

00:01:34.820 the concept of the West itself. In recent years, some have begun to ask questions about why countries

00:01:40.540 all over the globe, from Australia to the United States, are all described with the same geographical

00:01:45.880 designation. This, often deliberate confusion, is a sign that we have forgotten who we are.

00:01:52.340 The critics are right. The West is not a geographical location. It is a set of cultural and philosophical

00:01:58.160 ideas we have inherited from the ancient Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman civilizations.

00:02:03.600 These ideas are not the same as they were 2,000 years ago. On the contrary, they've been refined,

00:02:09.300 filtered and improved through the centuries to bring us the technological progress, individual

00:02:14.740 liberty and prosperity we now enjoy. Curiously, many Westerners now deny the very existence of our

00:02:21.160 disproportionate success. To describe our extraordinary achievements risks being accused of being some

00:02:27.780 sort of supremacist who is merely describing his own sense of unearned superiority and not the reality

00:02:34.220 on the ground. But the evidence is very clear. The world is, and has been, voting with its feet for

00:02:40.360 some time. One need only visit any Western country to see the extraordinary pull our societies have for

00:02:46.260 those who, like me, were not fortunate enough to have been born here. Millions of people risk their

00:02:52.040 lives every year to enter Western countries by any means they can, and no one does the opposite.

00:02:57.620 One does not see large movements of people emigrating to Vladimir Putin's Russia, Xi Jinping's China,

00:03:04.080 Kim Jong-un's North Korea, or the theocracy in Iran. This extraordinary fact, which we all take for 0.99

00:03:10.000 granted, requires some sort of explanation. Why is this happening? To describe an entire culture in a

00:03:17.020 short chapter is, of course, impossible. Whole libraries have been written about the evolution of

00:03:21.620 our thinking that explore what makes us different. We ought to begin, however, by deciding not to be

00:03:27.480 afraid of the word different. If we acknowledge the reality that our civilization generates different

00:03:33.500 outputs to others, we must then necessarily acknowledge that the inputs must be different too.

00:03:39.620 When asked what makes us different, we often reach for words like democracy, freedom, and capitalism,

00:03:45.060 but many of us have forgotten why they're valuable and what they actually mean.

00:03:49.140 Let us therefore focus on three critical pillars of the modern West, which sit underneath the

00:03:55.220 slogans. The first of these is the central premise of our civilization, the idea of the sanctity of

00:04:02.060 the individual. This notion, which would have been considered radical throughout most of human history

00:04:07.260 and remains so outside of our civilization, posits that every individual has an inherent moral value,

00:04:14.380 which cannot be forcefully denied for the needs of the collective. This comes from the

00:04:18.940 Judeo-Christian concept of imago dei, human beings made in the image of God, and thereby having

00:04:25.200 innate human dignity. From this central tenet of our worldview flows the form of government we now call

00:04:31.240 democracy, which evolved from the idea of representative government. That one should have a say in how one is

00:04:37.180 governed is another radical Western idea, which is a natural consequence of the belief that every individual

00:04:43.080 matters. In many other cultures, the people who rule over you are not viewed as a choice, but rather as an

00:04:49.920 act of God or a natural ascendancy of power. Sometimes the rule is bad and that must be endured. At other times

00:04:56.980 he is good and for that we must be thankful. Like any system, government by consent has both strengths

00:05:02.700 and weaknesses. Its big strength is a responsiveness to feedback and the ability to either hold failing leaders

00:05:09.200 to account or to remove them. This impetus seeps into all the hierarchies of our society, which become

00:05:16.560 flatter and less rigid as a result. The armies of Western countries, for example, fight better because

00:05:22.680 the feedback from the soldier on the ground is more likely to reach the generals through more transparent

00:05:27.020 and accountable channels of communication. The second pillar of our civilization is derived significantly

00:05:32.760 from the first, but nonetheless has a prominence and function of its own. We believe that wherever

00:05:38.640 possible, the freedom of human beings to speak their mind, pursue their interests and engage in business,

00:05:44.060 research and creativity of every kind ought not to be constrained without a significant and pressing

00:05:49.280 reason. Put simply, we think that all other things being equal, the more freedoms we enjoy, the better.

00:05:57.260 But of course, this does not mean the freedom to do whatever you want without any constraint

00:06:01.620 whatsoever. Clearly, even in a democracy, freedom is constrained by the rule of law. And yet the law

00:06:08.180 is there to protect freedom for everyone and ensure that when one person exercises their freedoms,

00:06:13.500 they do not infringe or undermine the freedom of other people. Freedom is not the right to do what

00:06:19.560 we want, but what we ought to. It is the freedom to live up to the very best of our potential, to create,

00:06:26.320 to innovate, to debate, explore, question, believe and flourish. This is not true of other more

00:06:31.220 collectivist cultures, where the individual's first job is to subjugate his own preferences to the needs

00:06:37.200 of the group. While the collectivist system has some advantages, it is necessarily a break on

00:06:42.920 innovation and growth. Innovation is a process of changing the status quo, and that requires doing

00:06:49.080 things differently. Societies which encourage their citizens to suppress their own differences,

00:06:54.660 stymie their technological, scientific, cultural and economic development. A key product of the value

00:06:59.900 we place on freedom of all kinds is freedom of expression, which is fundamental to everything our

00:07:05.180 societies are and do. Representative government is impossible without the free expression of political

00:07:10.600 opinions and robust debate. Pioneering research is impossible in an environment in which people dare not

00:07:16.880 express controversial ideas, because pioneering ideas are by the very nature frequently controversial.

00:07:23.500 But even more fundamental is the fact that human beings cannot think without speaking.

00:07:29.380 The scientific reasons for this are outside of my areas of expertise, but we all know the experience

00:07:34.120 of talking or writing in order to understand our own thoughts. Not only that, we also all know the

00:07:39.580 experience of listening to someone who is freely expressing their ideas and modifying our thinking as a

00:07:45.140 result. In other words, to think well, one has to be able to speak freely and hear and consider the

00:07:51.980 free speech of others. Finally, the unbelievable increase in the living standards we've witnessed,

00:07:56.860 not just of Western citizens, but of the entire world, has only occurred in the last two centuries.

00:08:03.440 Before that, everyone but a handful of monarchs and their aristocrats lived in miserable, crushing

00:08:08.280 poverty. The reason humanity no longer suffers under these conditions has its roots in the Industrial

00:08:13.940 Revolution, which converted the gains of science into technological achievements that have transformed the world

00:08:19.940 and continued to do so. That this revolution occurred in England was no accident. As we just discussed,

00:08:26.680 it was facilitated by a number of factors, including the intellectual freedoms of the Enlightenment,

00:08:31.920 which fostered a culture of scientific inquiry and innovation, and also a strong legal system,

00:08:37.500 whose basis was the evolving notion of the need to protect the rights of individuals.

00:08:41.420 But crucially, prominent among these rights was the right to private property, under the law,

00:08:47.580 which protected investments and encouraged innovation. Western culture, more than any other,

00:08:52.960 has the intellectual and legal framework, which is a facilitator of capitalism. We believe that if

00:08:58.540 you create something of value to your fellow citizens, you should enjoy the rewards of your

00:09:02.800 contribution and be protected from their arbitrary seizure or expropriation. Contrast this protection,

00:09:09.340 for example, with a communist worldview in which people who accumulate wealth unnecessarily eyed

00:09:14.860 with suspicion and hostility. During the Soviet period, everyone from the aristocracy all the way down

00:09:20.460 to the rich peasants was stripped of their property for precisely this reason. To this day, many countries

00:09:26.160 do not have true private property rights. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, for example, was believed to have been

00:09:31.240 the richest man in Russia until he crossed Vladimir Putin, at which point he was imprisoned and almost all of

00:09:37.900 his property was removed from his possession under various pretenses. The same is true of Chinese 1.00

00:09:43.160 billionaires who remain prosperous only as long as they remain loyal servants of the Chinese Communist 0.98

00:09:47.580 Party. The horrors inflicted on both the Chinese and Soviet people by these regimes are truly

00:09:52.940 unspeakable. From the millions who starved as a result of government mismanagement to millions more

00:09:58.380 who found themselves sent to hard labor camps or simply executed for the crime of speaking their mind

00:10:03.320 or having the temerity to disagree with their government, the extent of the cruelty collectivist

00:10:08.700 ideologues necessarily inflict on their citizens is beyond measure. One only has to read Alexander

00:10:14.960 Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago or accounts of the Cultural Revolution in China or any of the

00:10:20.860 memoirs published more recently by the survivors of North Korea's prison camps to know this.

00:10:26.200 Capitalism creates unprecedented prosperity because instead of applying a collectivist top-down model,

00:10:32.180 it has instead harnessed the greatest driver of human behavior, incentives. When properly aligned,

00:10:38.920 the capitalist system encourages us to act in the service of our fellow man precisely because doing

00:10:44.180 so is beneficial to us. Rather than attempting to beat out of us our selfish desires to usher in utopia,

00:10:51.440 the West-invented capitalist model deals with reality. In societies with rigid hierarchies,

00:10:57.460 where frequently a single man and his entrenched service bureaucracy are in charge, this is not the

00:11:03.000 case. It is not to your benefit to serve your fellow man. What benefits you the most is serving

00:11:08.280 the hierarchy, often to the detriment of your fellow man. These three principal values, the sanctity of

00:11:14.560 the individual, freedom of expression and other basic freedoms such as freedom of conscience,

00:11:18.920 association and assembly and innovation, including private property rights and entrepreneurialism,

00:11:24.120 are the reason for our success. And the proof of their power is in the fact that other countries

00:11:29.500 which were not traditionally part of our civilization, but which adopted them, such as Japan, South Korea

00:11:34.940 and Taiwan, now enjoy many of the same benefits. Millions lifted out of poverty, children who would

00:11:41.160 have once died in infancy living to adulthood, and freedoms their ancestors could never have imagined.

00:11:47.040 The question is increasingly being asked as to how best to preserve and protect these achievements.

00:11:51.440 There are many things that we can campaign for and demand from our elected representatives.

00:11:56.620 However, the most powerful thing each of us can do is pass on the understanding of the uniqueness of

00:12:02.040 our great inheritance to our children. In a society that is as comfortable as ours, that is no small

00:12:07.620 task, but it is possible. One of the most effective tools for doing so is travel. As we say in Russian,

00:12:14.820 everything is understood in comparison. The more we see the world beyond the confines of our own

00:12:19.920 civilization, the more our privilege stands out. There is always room for improvement, of course,

00:12:25.520 and as the technological, geopolitical, social, and cultural landscape changes, we must continue to

00:12:30.680 adapt these values to the reality of the present day. As long as we retain the right to choose who

00:12:35.880 governs us, are able to speak freely, and can profit from improving the lives of our fellow citizens,

00:12:41.040 we're sure to do so.

00:12:49.920 Broadway's smash hit, the Neil Diamond musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto. The true

00:13:01.480 story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love, including

00:13:06.740 America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline. Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit

00:13:13.740 is here. The Neil Diamond musical, A Beautiful Noise, now through June 7th, 2026, at the Princess of

00:13:20.460 Wales Theatre. Get tickets at mirvish.com.

TRIGGERnometry - February 14, 2025

The West's True Story - Konstantin Kisin

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