Objectively Speaking with Johan Norberg Transcript

What can we learn from history’s greatest civilizations? Returning for a third time to Objectively Speaking, Johan Norberg is no stranger to The Atlas Society, having joined us previously to discuss his books Open: The Story of Human Progress and The Capitalist Manifesto. He now joins CEO Jennifer Grossman to talk about his latest book, Peak Human: What We Can Learn From History’s Greatest Civilizations, which explores the rise and fall of past societies to uncover the ideas, institutions, and innovations that fueled their success—and the mistakes that led to their decline. Watch the interview HERE or read the transcript below.  

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JAG: Jennifer Anju Grossman

JN: Johan Norberg

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JAG: Hi everyone. Welcome to the 279th episode of Objectively Speaking. I'm JAG, CEO of The Atlas Society. I'm very excited to have returning guest Johan Norberg. He's actually the first three-timer we've had on the show. He's joining us to talk about his new book, Peak Human: What We Can Learn From History's Greatest Civilizations. Johan, thank you for joining us.

JN: Thank you. What an honor to be back the third time.

JAG: You previously joined us on this podcast to discuss two of your prior books, Open: The Story of Human Progress and The Capitalist Manifesto. What was the inspiration for your newest book, Peak Human?

I would very much like to find something in history that helps us to prolong the lifespan of this civilization, hopefully make it even better.

JN: Well, I love history and I love this civilization that we're in. I happen to think that this is at least compared to other earlier civilizations, a golden age. I would very much like to find something in history that helps us to prolong the lifespan of this civilization, hopefully make it even better.

JAG: Well, that is one of the things that I really enjoyed about your book because we've had Peter Diamandis on to talk about his books, Abundance and Bold, and you know, a lot of the language around progress doesn't, I think maybe up till now, also take account of the threats, that it's not automatic. I think that by having a book in which you look at seven civilizations that flourished and then faltered, we can maybe take some lessons and not take progress for granted. In that sense, you begin the book by recounting a trip to Athens and how visiting the ruins of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum left you with a sense of sadness. Why was that?

JN: Yes, this was my first trip to Athens and I wanted to go to some of those extraordinary places, a pilgrimage. I don't know what I should have expected, but you know, it wasn't that impressive. Instead of bustling creativity, there was silence, emptiness, actually a little bit of garbage around. Not a very neat place. And silence, except for an odd passerby, slightly intoxicated, asking me for a cigarette. It gave me that sense about the loss of civilizations, the transience of civilizations, the extraordinary fact that this periphery of the world became the cradle of civilization. But at the same time, how it could fall to the extent that it didn't feel like the cradle of civilization, but more like an abandoned parking lot or something like that. I haven't stopped thinking about that since. Why is that? Why do they rise, civilizations, and how do they fall?

JAG: You examine seven civilizations at their peaks. Why these specific ones. How did they illustrate that no two Golden Ages are alike and yet they share some common drivers like openness and innovation?

The Golden Age was not fate. It wasn't something God-given. It wasn't a tradition. It was a choice to learn and grow and innovate.

JN: Well, I listened to and talked to some great scholars about history and economic history, where it could have been a longer list, but I had to settle with just a few. In that case, are there any places that were extraordinary in terms of creativity with lots of innovations in different spheres of life: scientific, technological, economic, cultural creativity? Then I came up with this list, and what I find most interesting is that there's this discussion that we have a battle between civilizations, that there is just one real civilization, and then they battle against the other civilizations, usually some Judeo-Christian, European civilization. But what I find here is that they were pagans, they were Muslims, Confucians, Catholics, Calvinists and secular. It wasn't religion, it wasn't geography. It's what they did with their ideas. The Golden Age was not fate. It wasn't something God-given. It wasn't a tradition. It was a choice to learn and grow and innovate. That's why even this short list of seven civilizations, I think, makes that quite clear.

JAG: A lot of our listeners and viewers are history buffs. One of the things I enjoyed most about your book was the many historical misconceptions that you tackle. One of them was about the supposed greatness of the Spartan army. What do we get wrong about the legendary Spartans and what does it reveal about what makes some civilizations not flourish and others flourish?

JN: Yes, for some reason, the Spartans have a very good reputation and lots of young men think that that must have been the Golden Age, but it really wasn't because they didn't leave us with any philosophy, any great institutions, any literature, poetry, architecture, anything like that. But people say they were good fighters. If you really look at the historical record, you notice that, yes, they trained more than others. They were good infantry soldiers, but they were incredibly uninventive in warfare and mostly tried the same thing over and over again. 

The Spartans, they never mastered logistics or siege warfare or naval operations or anything like that. They were inflexible and very uncreative.

Unlike the Athenians, who whenever they've been through a battle, looked at, “Okay, what worked, what didn't? Is there anything we can pick up from our opponents? Is there anything we can change?” They constantly became better at it, whereas the Spartans, they never mastered logistics or siege warfare or naval operations or anything like that. They were inflexible and very uncreative. That's why in the end, it's not just that they didn't leave us with a great culture, they were actually quite bad warriors in the long run.

JAG: Interesting. Are there any parallels between the way that the Athenian aristocrats admired the totalitarian control Spartan leadership wielded and the way some Western leaders pined for the centralized power of Communist China during the pandemic?

JN: That's a great question. That's a great point, and I think you're absolutely right. One reason why the Spartans got this great reputation in ancient times was that some Athenian aristocrats much preferred an oligarchy despotic like Sparta to the vulgar democracy of Athens. They all thought, oh, what could I do with all that power if I had it? I think lots of Western intellectuals think of China in the same way. We have all these ideas about being China for a day. The things we could do: we could innovate, we could tell everyone to behave in a nice environmental way, and things like that. Definitely, during the pandemic we saw that there was no scientific basis for locking everything down. It's just that Communist China did. Then for some reason, all our political leaders, except Sweden, decided that, oh, we'd better do the same thing. If they can do it, why shouldn't we? It's very much like the Sparta envy.

JAG: Yes. Of course, at The Atlas Society, our chief interest is philosophy. I was fascinated by your recounting of the remarkable career of Aristotle, whose philosophical insights influenced Ayn Rand. Aristotle sought to take discussion of metaphysics and ethics out of the realm of myths and mysticism into the realm of reason and science. Across the civilizations you explore, how does the prevalence of religiosity and superstition affect conditions that allow for innovation and human flourishing?

JN: Yes, I'm glad you mentioned that because I think it's amazing to see how Aristotle makes guest appearances in most of these golden ages, in fact. He might not have been most influential in Athens, but actually in some of the subsequent cultures. Partly because of his philosophy in itself obviously, but also his idea of intellectual innovation. The fact that looking at reality and trying to make sense out of it, that's something that is a very powerful idea and it helps many other cultures. 

For example, in the Abbasid Caliphate, remember this is the Arab Muslim civilization in the 8th-9th century. One of the reasons why they, at least this is their story, why they became prosperous, more intellectually open and curious and scientifically minded was a dream that a 9th century, Caliph Al Mamun, had about Aristotle, how Aristotle told him that, look, truth is not down to tradition or orthodoxy. It's something you find out. It's something you learn by looking at reality. When you do that, you can accomplish great things because you notice regularities in the world. Out of that you learn about natural laws. You can even learn to manipulate it through technology and to begin to create wealth. Oftentimes the decline of these civilizations, they come when they begin to abandon Aristotelian ideas, like later on in the Abbasid Caliphate. 

If you live in a world of perpetual miracles, you live in chaos. There's nothing, no way to make sense of the world, nothing on which to build science, technology, and wealth.

Al Ghazali, the philosopher, scholar, just like Augustine, by the way, in Christian Rome, said that, look, there are no patterns in reality, no natural laws. We might observe fire and then we observe something burn, but there's nowhere can we see an act of ignition because it's an act of God. Because God can do anything if he feels differently. Another day this won't happen. It's a world of perpetual miracles. If you live in a world of perpetual miracles, you live in chaos. There's nothing, no way to make sense of the world, nothing on which to build science, technology, and wealth.

JAG: Well, it's very interesting and I think timely because we are seeing these conversations, particularly on the right, about whether or not we need to turn back to some theocracy and become much more mystical. We've seen iterations of this in the past with Whitaker Chambers and others. Again, a lot of important lessons, cautionary tales from the book. Now, I should have mentioned at the beginning that Johan is joining us from Sweden where he's giving up his dinner hour for us. We're very grateful for that. 

Speaking of Sweden, another one of the surprises from your book was the obsession with ancient Rome shared by so many in the present, particularly among men, including one-in-20 male Swedes who think about Rome every day. Wow, I wish I had a man who thought about me as much as he thinks about Rome. Do you count yourself among the Rome-obsessed Swedes? What do you think drives that fascination?

That took a lot of decentralization. They really had to. You can't control that from Rome. You need to give powers and some freedoms to the provinces and to citizens.

JN: I do. I belong to those who think of Rome every day. Just like the TikTok meme tells us, it's not just a Swedish obsession; we notice it in many other places around the world as well. I think that's because there's so much to think about the concept of Roman law and the fact that so many of our legal concepts are still in Latin. Obviously Latin, the language. We have great architecture, the urban grid, so many things we got from the Romans. But I also think there's something about just the fact that they managed to keep it all together for such a long time. The European power managed to build a huge land empire for such a long time. Interestingly, that took a lot of decentralization. They really had to. You can't control that from Rome. You need to give powers and some freedoms to the provinces and to citizens.

But also I think that one reason why we all think of it is that it collapsed as well. I think that speaks to some fear within ourselves. That's one reason why our Founding Fathers, the American Founding Fathers, constantly thought about Rome and the Roman Republic. Because there was a fall before the fall of the Roman Empire, the fact that they experimented with a republic, but then strong men like Caesar began to undermine it. Ever since then we all, I think, fear that this is our memento mori, our insight that we too might die someday and so might our culture.

JAG: How did changes in the way taxes were levied in ancient Rome change incentives, which in turn led to greater prosperity?

JN: You see, this is why you're great, because nobody else asks me about the tax system of Rome. This is really something that made them successful because early on they had a tax system which was quite ruthless and confiscatory. Some people taxed farmers, they got the right to tax provinces for a limited period of time. They weren't interested in the long term prosperity of these provinces. Then, obviously, we know tax collectors and what they do: they take anything they can lay their hands on. There were no real incentives to really invest and to do something risky that might pay off in a decade's time or so. 

What changed? This is actually Augustus, the first real emperor. He was a ruthless guy, but he understood something about incentives. He switched that into a more stable, regular, predictable system with mostly predictable taxes on land, inheritance and a poll tax. Rather than having marginal taxes on incomes and on wealth, then we had that predictable system. Which meant that there were no extra marginal taxes on more work, on risk taking, on business ventures, on trade. You got to keep most of what you did. That obviously resulted in an explosion of creativity and of business.

JAG: Well, the only regret that I have for this interview is that with these seven civilizations rising and falling, we're not going to be able to cover all of them in depth. Which is why you need to go out and buy that book. I also do want to get to some of our audience questions. I'm going to turn and dip into those lockstockandbarrelasks which civilization is most underrated in the modern imagination?

JN: Wow. I would say the Dutch Republic in the 16th and 17th century because I think they have a strong claim to having created the modern world in a way. It's so unlikely because they were some eccentric merchants in the northwestern periphery of Europe and they rebelled against the strongest empire on the planet in those times and that's the Spanish Habsburg Empire. They obviously had everything. The Spanish Habsburgs, they had the church, they had colonies in America, they had gold and silver, they had huge armies. 

The Dutch, they didn't have anything... But that's the thing that forced them to become innovative, to start to experiment with new business models, technologies, financial ways of making risky ventures and trade possible.

The Dutch, they didn't have anything, they didn't have a monarch, no state church, no army, no navy, they didn't even have land on which to stand and grow food. But that's the thing that forced them to become innovative, to start to experiment with new business models, technologies, financial ways of making risky ventures and trade possible. That turned them into not just (I don't want to spoil too much of the book) an eight-year war against this mighty empire, but at the end of it all, it's the Dutch who have the biggest and strongest and richest empire. Whereas the Spanish Habsburgs, they've declared state bankruptcy five times. That's a remarkable achievement. But, also, those ideas that they had: intellectual curiosity, free markets, limited government, that's exactly what put Britain on that track later, then America. I'd say that the Dutch are seriously underrated.

JAG: Yes, no one is thinking of the Dutch Republic daily, but perhaps we should. Reading about the Dutch Republic and how it didn't have much land, it didn't have resources, actually reminded me of Israel and how again, not just necessity, but almost scarcity as the mother-of-invention, having to find ways to be creative despite challenges. Okay, question from Elation, “To what extent do exceptional individuals, artists, inventors, philosophers, entrepreneurs, drive civilizational peaks?” Great question.

JN: Yes, because they do, in so many different ways, from art to architecture to technology. We have some impressive minds who really help to move us along at the same time. I mean, everyone from Leonardo to Galilei to Newton and so on. Incredibly impressive characters, but they also needed some freedom because we had some people like that in areas that experienced the Dark Ages, but they didn't manage to unleash their creativity in those places. 

I would say the ones who are most important for the rise of civilizations and perhaps for the decline of civilizations, are the ones who are in two areas: One is politics because if you create free and open civilizations, then you make it possible for all these other geniuses to contribute. But also, I'd say philosophy. Those who really move the intellectual atmosphere of a culture in a strong, particular way, and obviously Aristotle being one of them, they are the ones who create the soil in which other great things can grow.

JAG: All right, so since we talked about the Dutch Republic as being underrated, and I have so many things to cover, I'm going to prioritize that chapter. At a time of fierce debate about immigration, I thought your chapter on the Dutch Golden Age provided some interesting food for thought. What did Dutch competition for migrants, again, this scarcity of not even having enough people and workers, they were actively competing for migrants and refugees in the 17th century, what does that illustrate about prevailing cultural values that led to economic and artistic flourishing?

JN: Yes, you're absolutely right. They even put ads in French-language newspapers to attract Huguenot refugees. In this era, the Dutch Republic was called the Great Ark of the Refugees because they were open to Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, Protestants from France, and everyone who escaped from the Thirty Year’s War and other places. You know that sometimes we talk about four founders of the Enlightenment: Descartes, Spinoza, Bayle and John Locke. All of them lived in the Dutch Republic, but more interestingly, all of them came from elsewhere. Spinoza was born there, but the son of Portuguese Jews, whereas Bayle and Descartes were from France, Locke from England. 

All of them escaped there because the Dutch Republic was open to eccentric ideas, not just from great thinkers who kick-started the Enlightenment, but also skilled artisans, manufacturers, engineers and bankers.

All of them escaped there because the Dutch Republic was open to eccentric ideas, not just from great thinkers who kick-started the Enlightenment, but also skilled artisans, manufacturers, engineers and bankers. I think that the important reason was that they had a commercial ethos, unlike the Spanish Habsburgs. They didn't want to achieve mind control, they didn't want to impose an orthodoxy. They wanted to prosper and find more people to learn from and to do business with. Then you benefit from more people, from more brains and more talent. In fact, that's one of the reasons why they revolted against Spain, because Spain said, look, now we're coming here with the Spanish Inquisition. But whereas the city of Antwerp then said, look, heretics come here to trade and it's bad for business to kill the customers. We don't want that.

JAG: Yes, well, obviously again, at The Atlas Society, we are fierce moral defenders of capitalism and its moral superiority. Yes, I am interested in taxes and financial innovations. Amsterdam created many financial innovations. Joint  stock companies, stock exchanges, insurance markets. Perhaps you could zero in on the role of the East India Company in particular.

JN: Yes, absolutely. It's an interesting case because created in 1602, it has a claim to be the first multinational corporation as well as the first joint-stock company. They created the first stock exchange in Amsterdam at that time. That's a revolution. We rarely think of that today. But before you had a stock exchange, before you had limited liability companies, you had to ask some wealthy patrons (often the court and a few nobles) ask them, so are you interested in this risky venture? Obviously that puts a limit to what you can achieve. Now in Amsterdam, they could raise money in markets. It gave them a very broad capital base and allowed every investor to take a smaller risk. It funded more experiments. 

Definitely, the East India Company did that through trade with the East. So did the British. But the British didn't have a stock exchange. They didn't invest like that. They had a royal exchange in those days, but they only exchanged it, exchanged goods, not stocks, because they thought that stockbrokers—they're rude and noisy people. We don't want that here. The English East India Company had to raise separate funds for every journey, whereas the Dutch, they could just constantly raise capital and then experiment with it in more ways. That's the reason why they became the masters of the world.

JAG: You talked about the British thinking, oh, those dirty, little, commercial people; how uncouth that is. Talk about attitudes towards commerce, towards merchants. I thought in your chapter on the Abbasid Golden Age, you mentioned how in 1001 Nights there were stories that were widely known in which the heroes, the protagonists, were merchants who were out there hustling, trying to create wealth. Compare that, say, to Renaissance stories in which the heroes were always or often princes battling for honor or for the princess.

We have Sinbad, the sailor who did seven magical voyages. This Baghdad merchant, he defies shipwrecks and monsters and cannibals, but not to kill people and steal their land, which is the usual European story at this time, but to do business and to restore the family fortune.

JN: Yes, That's that. I found that incredibly interesting. We have Sinbad, the sailor who did seven magical voyages. This Baghdad merchant, he defies shipwrecks and monsters and cannibals, but not to kill people and steal their land, which is the usual European story at this time, but to do business and to restore the family fortune. This is actually a typical story of the Abbasid Arab era and this set them apart quite dramatically. Even in ancient European cultures where we had quite advanced thinkers, Aristotle and Cicero and so on, even they thought that doing business is actually quite vulgar. Selling your labor or anything like that, that's not what a gentleman does. They had trade, they had private property, and they had commerce. But mostly they left that to foreigners and to slaves because it was not really dignified. But actually in Islamic culture in these times, it was. You're right to point to literature because that tells something important about a culture, that it wasn't just bookkeeping and accounting, but trade, business. It was an adventure, a journey of exploration and innovation. That's why in those times they also were so much more prosperous than Europe.

JAG: Do you think that Islam, being the only major religion founded by a merchant, had anything to do with how commerce was viewed?

JN: Definitely, I think so. That's one reason why it's so unfortunate that Muslim states today are usually command economies with some combination of nationalism and socialism. Usually. Now, the Quran is filled with the vocabulary of the marketplace: talks about trade by mutual consent to why that's a good, even a dignified thing. Jesus said that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. But Muhammad on the other side said that the merchant who is truthful and honest, he's with the prophets, with the martyrs, even. So, yes, there's something there.

JAG: I'd never heard of Mu’tazilah. I'm not sure I'm getting that right, that religious school. But I was fascinated; fascinated not just by how it promoted greater rationalism, but by how it later morphed into a vehicle for religious inquisition and oppression. Can you elaborate a bit about that aspect of the culture and whether it contributed to the decline of that civilization?

Future caliphs who were more orthodox and traditionalist, they began to persecute the Mu’tazili and instead they began to torture them for believing in reason and objectivity.

JN: Yes, that's a great story. It's also a sad story because this group really emphasized rationality and free will, the power of individual reason, and they used that to understand the world and science, even to understand morality, nature, the word of God. They even said, which was obviously incredibly radical in those times, that when reason and facts collide with the Quran, then we have to reinterpret the Quran because obviously we've understood it wrong in that case. They argued that that was possible because they thought that the Quran was created and not eternal, as more orthodox theologians claimed. That was a dangerous thought. Obviously.

But unfortunately, they also became dangerous to themselves. Which you hinted at, because at one point in time they even became a state religion used by the caliphs to impose the idea that this is the right, correct way of thinking. You would think that's a good thing, it's rationality. It's about facts and reason. But using government force, those means, it really poisoned the whole idea. The caliph even began to punish dissenters, traditionalists who believed that the Quran was eternal. They set up an inquisition in the 830s where even one traditionalist scholar was famously tortured for believing that the Quran was sacred and eternal. That was obviously bad in itself. It also made a martyr out of the traditionalists and made the Mu’tazili unpopular. It legitimized government control of religion. Obviously then in an ironic twist, it was used against them quite soon. Future caliphs who were more orthodox and traditionalist, they began to persecute the Mu’tazili and instead they began to torture them for believing in reason and objectivity.

JAG: All right, as mentioned, we do not have enough time to really delve into each of these civilizations. But let's take a peek at your chapter on the Song dynasty. You describe the technological achievements such as the invention of gunpowder, movable-type printing, advanced shipbuilding, sophisticated metallurgy. What cultural or institutional factors allowed that explosion of innovation?

It seems like the Chinese, when they get the chance, when they have some freedom, they become remarkably innovative. It created this general sense that it's a good thing to experiment, to take risks, and try to expand knowledge and technological capacity.

JN: An important factor was that the old, centralized and somewhat feudalist system began to break down in a period, in a time of crisis. The governments that appeared in the 10th, 11th century in China, had to pay the military instead of pay volunteers. In that case they needed revenue. This created this interesting, double-good whammy where they didn't have to control people, but their occupations, to have this centralization. On the other hand, they did need a lot of production and innovation to get some tax out of that. The Song dynasty actively encouraged mobility, commerce, urbanization through property rights and more commercial relationships. It seems like the Chinese, when they get the chance, when they have some freedom, they become remarkably innovative. It created this general sense that it's a good thing to experiment, to take risks, and try to expand knowledge and technological capacity. They were quite impressive.

JAG: It's interesting we're talking about civilizations, but I think that also this is like a business book as well because in reading it I was thinking about organizations and what leads organizations to flourish and what leads them to stagnate, and about experimentation, openness, willingness to copy innovations or adapt them. Certainly a lot of that has been responsible for the success of The Atlas Society. Sometimes I say, well, gosh, anybody could just copy what we're doing. But I think there is something about organizational culture that makes it less appealing or even intolerable to copy or innovate, or there's just this inertia that can happen or just a sense of orthodoxy. We have to do it this way, and there are these rules. Yet another reason to buy the book. 

Now, again, the Song dynasty—many, many achievements. But despite all of this, they eventually fell to the Mongols. Was this primarily a military failure, or did deeper economic or institutional weaknesses make them vulnerable?

JN: I think that good historians can disagree here, but what we do know is that this was the most difficult of all the Mongol conquests. Remember, they wreaked havoc everywhere, and often they triumphed in a manner of weeks or months. But it actually took them some 30 years to conquer Song China, or 30 years to even begin to expand onto Song China's territory. The war in itself lasted almost half a century. Six Mongol emperors died without seeing their troops enter the Chinese capital. I think that many of the innovations of the Song dynasty in warfare, in technology, the way they used gunpowder and the navy, helped them to survive longer against the Mongols than other civilizations did.

JAG: All right, as mentioned at the outset, you described the sadness that you felt wandering about Greek ruins. But in your chapter—and this is definitely one of my favorite chapters—on Renaissance Italy, you describe how a few of those at the time wandering about Roman ruins became obsessed with the idea of recovering and restoring something that had been lost. How did this venue contribute to a rekindled appetite for innovation?

But there was another group of thinkers, scholars, legal thinkers, and poets who walked around there and saw it as proof that if it had once been possible, it could be so again. It showed them what mankind is capable of.

JN: That's a very interesting question. I think you can react in two different ways. If you're every day walking through ruins of buildings that were so impressive that you couldn't wrap your head around it, you didn't understand the material they used or how they could erect those buildings some like Augustine's brand of Christians, they said, oh, this is proof of mankind's fall because once upon a time, we might have been great, but everything has been poisoned and we're all hopeless nowadays. 

But there was another group of thinkers, scholars, legal thinkers, and poets who walked around there and saw it as proof that if it had once been possible, it could be so again. It showed them what mankind is capable of. Then when you combine those ruins and that understanding with Marco Polo stories about China and daily trade with the Arab world, where you saw that they had superior technology, finance, and prosperity, they understood that, oh, humanity can do this in this day and age as well. That spurred them on to, well, to have a rebirth of civilization. Obviously, the Renaissance is the French word for rebirth.

JAG: How did the invention of the modern mirror in Venice contribute to the rise of individualism more broadly at that time?

JN: This is incredibly fascinating, I think, because the mirror was new, the glass mirror with tin and mercury coating. There were old bronze mirrors, but they were very expensive and they didn't reflect much light. When you read about them in the Bible, it's a metaphor for not seeing the whole truth. We “see in a mirror darkly” and things like that. The Venetians during the Renaissance, they came up with this great invention. Finally we get to look at ourselves and see what we look like, and also to begin to understand how others have been looking at us all this time. 

According to some historians, like Ian Mortimer, this is the first time that people for real, not just a few thinkers, but broadly among those who could afford a mirror, began to think about unique characteristics. They began to think of themselves more as individuals than as members of a group. You can see this as well in the record, that this is when people begin to order portraits of themselves. This is when their diaries are no longer just filled with formalities, requests, and stuff like that, but also more about their thoughts, their perspective on the world. It tells you that there's something about seeing yourself from the outside that makes you discover yourself in a way.

JAG: This was an era that produced many Renaissance geniuses. Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo. How did this epoch of so much creativity and innovation eventually lose steam?

They began to use religion more politically and began to try to impose orthodoxies, and then abandoned much of the academic freedom and the intellectual openness before starting burning books, burning dissenters.

JN: Yes, it's amazing that so many geniuses were alive at the same time. Probably partly because they learned from each other, they were inspired by each other. Also they competed. Da Vinci and Michelangelo, they didn't really like one another. Michelangelo complained that da Vinci was a great procrastinator who never finished his works, whereas Leonardo said that Michelangelo's muscular figures looked more like sacks of walnuts. They might both have a point, but the most important thing is that that spurred them on, that very rivalry. 

But at some point, you begin to lose that. This is something we see again and again in these cultures, that you lose this spirit of innovation, of creativity. It's partly a cultural phenomenon, partly it's political. During the Renaissance, late Renaissance, what happened is much like in the Arab world, in fact. Religious rivalry—we have the Protestant Reformation going on--and both sides were like competing fanaticisms. They wanted complete control. They began to use religion more politically and began to try to impose orthodoxies, and then abandoned much of the academic freedom and the intellectual openness before starting burning books, burning dissenters. Then, obviously, many scientists preferred life to fame.

JAG: Yes, self-censorship. All right, going to turn to a few more audience questions. Lisa Moran asks, “Do you see civilizations in danger of gradual or rapid decline or nations flourishing on the verge of entering a golden age?” I think she's talking about today. Is there a tipping point driving this, either for better or for worse?

JN: I think about that a lot. I think that there are many danger signs right now in our world. We do see innovation is always controversial. It's difficult. Incumbents—political, intellectual, and economic ones—don't really like it. We have a tendency in most cultures to build up control regulations, lots of unsustainable debts. We try to restrict trade because we want stability and control. We've got all of that today. It's risky. It's a dangerous moment. Obviously, we have huge authoritarian powers like Russia and China trying to crush independent neighbors. It's a risky moment in time. 

I also see lots of creativity and lots of innovation, especially when I look at the economy, at technology, which gives me hope. It depends on whether I read about political news or technology and science. I think that we can live through many of these horrors. Many of these civilizations that we've been talking about, they faced problems, but they managed to bounce back. But that took a conscious effort. It took a battle of ideas. That would be my response. It's a dangerous moment. It doesn't have to mean that this is the end in any way. But it could. But that's dependent on what we do. Golden ages are not a fate. It's a choice.

JAG: All right. MyModernGalt asks, what's one misconception about civilizational collapse? Is there a specific fault issue that people get wrong?

I think that is one of the reasons why civilizations start to decline, that in times of crisis, we often think that we need one big guy, one strong government to protect us against all these dangers.

JN: That's a great question. There's something, I think. Well, there are probably many. But one thing I hear a lot is a simplified version of bad times create strong men, and strong men create good times, but good times create weak men, and that creates bad times. There is this sense that there's some decadence, especially in democratic consumer societies. I mean there's a point. There's a kernel of truth, that in complacency, if we take things for granted, if we don't understand that growth and discovery takes hard work, takes specific institutions, and we also have to fight for them, then we lose it. 

But often this strongman meme is a distortion where they think we have to have stronger leaders and they have to act more forcefully, top-down in a Spartan way. I think that is one of the reasons why civilizations start to decline, that in times of crisis, we often think that we need one big guy, one strong government to protect us against all these dangers. We lose track of the understanding that most of the great solutions to our problems come from these open societies and free markets that allow for more people to think, to work to contribute better solutions to our problems. Instead, we think that just one guy should point us in the right direction. They usually point us in the wrong direction.

JAG: All right, with about 11 minutes left, I think we actually have timed this and we've gotten to most of my questions. Apologies if we didn't get to all of the audience questions. Moving to your last chapter on the Anglosphere, what is the biggest misconception about the Industrial Revolution? You set this up in talking about the spectacle that the British put on at their Olympic Games.

The only writers to voice consistent dissatisfaction with the Industrial Revolution were the poets and the writers. They might have rather different concerns than the farmers and the factory workers.

JN: Yes, right. Was it 2012 when they had these Olympic Games and they had this section called Pandemonium. It's like hell. That's when you have the smokestacks and the capitalists with high hats and cigars forcing, uprooting farmers from their land and forcing them to work in industries. Obviously, that's the historical amnesia that we might get when we're too complacent, when we take wealth for granted, when we don't understand that the Industrial Revolution is not what gave us poverty, exploitation and child labor. In reality, it's what ended it, what got us out of it and unleashed unprecedented wealth throughout the world. 

We can look at the data and point this out. Over the past 200 years, we've reduced extreme poverty from almost 9 out of 10 people around the world to less than 1 out of 10 people today. It's been extraordinary. But I do understand why people always think of poverty and child labor when they think of the Industrial Revolution. Because it was the first time that we began to care about those problems. Because it used to be fate, the poor will always be among us. That's what Jesus said, but he hadn't seen railways and steam engines. That's what made it possible for us to create more and then obviously to increase our living standards. In this book I make a lot of use of a great, great research project by Emma Griffin, a British historian who, instead of looking at the data and the economic historians and their perspective on things, she looked at the diaries of what people did write who actually lived through the Industrial Revolution. 

Then she finds out that people always talked about not some good old days in the rural past when they go to factories, but how awful it was and the fact that they managed to now start to feed their kids, give them an education, raise wages, live better lives. Some even reported that children started to fuss over the food that they would and would not eat, which seemed incomprehensible to them who had been leading lives, and they always thought that they would, where they were close to subsistence level. Griffin points out that the only writers to voice consistent dissatisfaction with the Industrial Revolution were the poets and the writers. They might have rather different concerns than the farmers and the factory workers.

JAG: You recount other misconceptions about that era and those concern the origins of the abolitionist movement. Could you lay those out for us?

JN: Yes. Right now there are two competing stories about the Anglosphere and Britain and America. Two competing, I'd say, falsifications of history going on. One of them being the leftist progressive, take that 1619 Project and so on, that slavery is what America is built upon. That's the whole American idea in a way. The other falsehood is this Trumpist project to try to eradicate the memory of slavery and remove all the stories about slavery in American history. Of course, there was slavery and that's important to remember. But it's also important to remember that there was slavery everywhere. Up until that point, all civilizations that had a chance, they had slavery, even escaped or freed slaves got slaves. Everybody took it for granted. 

What set the Anglo-American tradition apart was not that it had slavery, but that it ended it. The ideas that we have a natural right to self-ownership and to freedom began to take root and they began to convince other countries. The British even fitted this huge fleet of 25 ships, some 2,000 men who fought against slave traders on the West African coast. Britain and America, they were obviously fierce opponents by then. But America joined in this fight after having abolished and outlawed the slave trade. It's important to remember that the abolitionist movement, now we think that that's obvious, that's where everybody would have belonged. But that was a tiny minority and it was an Anglo phenomenon led by Quakers, manufacturers and classical liberal economists who were the first in the world to build a real movement against slavery. 

Often, by the way, opposed again by the poets and writers. In fact, Thomas Carlyle, who coined the term dismal science, did it because he thought that the economists were so dismal because they just thought that we should leave everybody alone, even people of another race, rather than having this glorious God-given hierarchy between races.

JAG: At the close of your book, you observe that we have had a run of about 200 years in our own golden age, and that few golden ages last much longer than that. What does history tell you of our chances of maintaining and growing it?

I'd say it's a call to arms because I am worried about many of the tendencies that we see. The backlash against capitalism, against trade, immigration, unsustainable debts. But the thing is, we can do something about it.

JN: I often think of Afghanistan and the reason is that in the 9th century the leading civilization scientifically, technologically, economically back then was the Abbasid Caliphate. It was a huge free-trade area all the way from North Africa to Central Asia. Afghanistan was part of the leading culture on the planet. Today, obviously it is one of the poorest and most oppressed countries on the planet. That tells me two things. First of all, it tells me that golden ages are possible everywhere. It's not about geography, it's not about the people or the religion, your tradition. It's what you do, it's what you believe in, it's about your ideas and what you decide to do. 

But it also means that yes, it's not impossible anywhere, but it's not guaranteed to last anywhere. The fact that we've been the leaders of the world for a few centuries doesn't mean a thing on the historical timeline because the center of gravity keeps changing according to what we do. To me it's both comforting and worrying. I'd say it's a call to arms because I am worried about many of the tendencies that we see. The backlash against capitalism, against trade, immigration, unsustainable debts. But the thing is, we can do something about it. Cultures, this is something I've learned, don't die of old age. It's not like they have a DNA and they're programmed to die. At a certain point they die, as one historian put it, of murder or suicide. Usually it's suicide. In the end, it's in our hands and it's about the battle of ideas.

JAG: Well, speaking of that battle of ideas, reading your book I couldn't help but draw some parallels with this book, Atlas Shrugged, because in a way, it is a story about the battle of ideas and cultural values. Hopefully everybody here that's watching and listening, has read it. I'm not going to give a spoiler, but it's also a story about civilizational collapse. Any thoughts on ways that Ayn Rand may have been trying to warn us of the choices that we make in urging us to not let it go? She talked about Atlas Shrugged not as a prophecy of unavoidable disaster, but as a testament to man's power to avoid it if he chooses to change course.

JN: Yes, two thoughts about that. The first one is that the culture, the cultural atmosphere, the sense of life is so incredibly important for progress or decline. One case which I find remarkable, and it still puzzles historians of technology and innovation, is the flying shuttle, which was a way of making weaving more productive during the Industrial Revolution and then eventually to automate it completely. The extraordinary thing is that it was so simple in its design. It didn't take any specialized knowledge or any specialized material. Any weaver should have, through a process of trial and error, been able to come up with it, but for 5,000 years, nobody did. 

That tells me something about how rare real innovation is. It takes the culture that we got during the Industrial Revolution, that of excitement over discovery and innovation. We need that. I think that Ayn Rand points that out remarkably well. The fact that we need to see the achievements of others and understand that it's possible to do it ourselves. Then my second thought is that one of the best ways of explaining this is to talk about those achievements and those ideas, but also about how fragile they might be if we don't fight for them. The fact that we might, it might peter out and it might be lost. I think that Atlas Shrugged does both of these things in a wonderful way that still excites and still is important to read or reread.

JAG: I will look forward to rereading Peak Human. I urge everybody listening and watching to do the same. Also, I will put in a plug for the audiobook, which has got a great narrator. As I said, this is Johan's third turn here on Objectively Speaking, and I have a feeling he'll probably be the first four-timer. So, Johan, what's next for you and how can we best follow you?

JN: My next project is to try to condense this book into something that's a little bit more easily accessible for classrooms, for schools, and high schools in the US with the Cato Sphere Project. That's one of the things I'll be doing next. Apart from that, lots of translations, in fact, of this book. I'll be traveling the world to talk about it, I hope.

JAG: Well, and no firm commitments yet, but hopefully one of those places that you might be traveling to is Porto, Portugal, for our NICON conference in September. Again, no pressure, but we would love to have you there and anyone who wants to attend that conference just go to the events page of The Atlas Society and you can find more information. Thank you, Johan, as always, a pleasure.

JN: Thank you. My pleasure.

JAG: Thanks to everyone else who joined us, all of those great questions. Make sure to join us next week when Josh Hammer will be on to talk about his book Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West. I'll see you then.