The President is just the Average American
Questioner: Hello Acharya Ji, namaste. My name is Piyush. I’m based out of New Jersey, United States. I’ve been here for a few years. I’ve been a participant in the Gita Samagam as well. Your teachings have really helped me. I really appreciate it.
Acharya Ji, my question today is on the geopolitical changes that are being witnessed in the world. To put some context, Acharya Ji, I understand that land acquisitions have always been part of human history. It was done through wars, trade, etc. But we also saw the installation of democracy, liberal ideas, globalization, and the world was a much more peaceful place.
However, there’s a new wave of imperialism that is being witnessed in recent years, with the Russia–Ukraine conflict, and more recently, the United States, which is the oldest democracy, known for its liberal values, inclusivity, etc. has also joined this race. President Trump has recently threatened to take over Greenland. He has already announced tariffs and threatened military action if needed. He has been vocal about his views even on world forums, such as a recent one happening in Davos.
So, Acharya Ji, I was curious about your views on these recent changes, on where the world is moving right now. What are the root causes behind it, and what does it hold? What does the new world order hold for the world in general?
Acharya Prashant: Well, there is nothing new in this new world order. Nothing new. We are the same people we were in 1945, when curtains fell on the various theaters of war. Right?
That world war happened because the various powers wanted to consume. It was their urge to have more and more and more that brought them into conflict with each other.
Japan, for example, wanted the resources of the entire Southeast Asia and China. The US too coveted those resources. Germany was not happy that Britain controlled so many colonies, and Germany had virtually none afterwardsly. So otherwise, these powers really didn’t have much against each other. They wanted to consume, and their consumptive interests got in each other’s way.
But then they looked at the millions of deaths, Russia, China, Europe. And they said, “Fine, no point killing each other. Live and let live.” And this you call liberalism. And this you were talking of as the period of intermittent peace, peace that lasted a few decades.
Now, even in this period of “Live and let live,” consumption was rising at an unprecedented rate. Simple, right?
Questioner: Correct.
Acharya Prashant: Look at the unit. Look at the human beings in this so-called period of peace. What was the human being doing? Increasing its consumption continuously, increasing the number of kills in an exponential way, be it per capita annual number of animals killed or per capita carbon dioxide emission. All of these kept rising in a big way even in this so-called period of peace. Right?
But the learning, the superficial learning from World War II, remained: don’t collide with each other, drive in your own lane, have more and more meat on your own plate. Don’t snatch it from the neighbors; buy it from the market.
Obviously, the whole thing had to come to a head because the earth cannot endlessly give, just as you cannot have an endless number of colonies, which was the root cause of World War II. Similarly, you cannot have endless consumption. And a lot of that which you call libertarian values are about consuming as much as you wish. And a lot of what you call liberal values are about distributing the consumption, let everybody in the society have at least a minimum level of consumption. This obviously cannot continue beyond a point.
The US has one of the biggest energy reserves in the world, and still it needs Venezuela. The US has the biggest nuclear arsenal, and it still needs Greenland and is crying hoarse: “We are insecure. We are insecure. Somebody will destroy us. Russia and China will dominate us. Therefore, we need a missile defense. Therefore, we need Greenland.”
This is the militarily most powerful country on the planet presenting an argument in defense of imperialist expansion. The argument is: “We are so weak somebody will kill us. Therefore, we need Greenland.”
So, what you are talking of as a period of peace was nothing but a blink. Nothing. Compared to the 60–80 years of human life, it looks long. It looks almost as long as human life itself. But otherwise, it was nothing.
Inwardly, we have continued to be exactly the same as we were on the day of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Have we changed internally? Then how can there be peace? What you are calling the period of stability, the United Nations appeared like a benevolent peacemaker for a few decades. There were relatively fewer wars. But even when there were relatively fewer wars, what was happening to the nuclear stockpile? It was amassing.
And all these curves will be so parallel to each other, and look dramatic actually. The rise in the nuclear stockpile, the rise in carbon dioxide parts per million, the rise in the number of animal deaths for human consumption, the rise in the area of forests being cleared due to human activity, the rise in the number of species going extinct, all these curves will be dramatically parallel to each other. Parallel and exponential.
And all these have to do with the core of man, which continues to remain ignorant and violent. And now that the planet has reached the edge of its capacity and has no more to offer, obviously these countries will again clash. And they are clashing for everything, for land, for water, for fuel, for space, for food.
So don’t let the ’50s, ’60s, ’80s deceive you, or even the two decades of the current century. They were, yes, relatively peaceful. When we consider the first half of the last century, compared to that all this period has been relatively quiet, but only superficially quiet, because we didn’t have our ears to the ground. So we failed to hear the rumblings, and now we act surprised. How come Trump has suddenly popped up?
And there is nothing sudden in this. Nothing sudden at all. He is representing the average American, and were the average American totally fed up of him, he would have been impeached by now. But that’s not the case. He’s not some dictator, and he is not new. This is his second term and the third election. The public knows very well what he is and what he stands for. And yet he was voted to power because that’s the way the public has always been, not just today.
In fact, if something must surprise you, it’s the peace that you experienced. Where did that peace come from when we continued to be aggressive and violent with our nails and fangs? Where did that peace come from?
The same applies to India also. People say, you know, “Oh, so much superstition is returning and people are again becoming religiously blind, and all that.” Sir, this is just a continuation of history. In fact, the 30–40 years in the middle were an aberration. What you find the average Indian displaying today is exactly what he has done over the last 1,000 years. Why should it surprise you? In fact, a few decades after independence, they should surprise you.
This is a very simple thing that we just don’t want to admit. No peace treaty will work. No League of Nations will work. No United Nations will work. No G2, G7, or G20 will work. No global summit will work as long as the human being remains who he is. Simple.
Why don’t you admit?
Because if you admit this, your power structures will crumble. Because if you admit this, there is no way you can continue feeding your parliaments and legislatures. You will know they are no good. If you admit this, even your religious structures will crumble. Everything that just massages you from the outside will be seen as worthless, and you’ll have to step into a totally new world.
That’s why you are afraid, and that’s why you will never admit that none of this institutional gymnastics is going to succeed. The moment you accept that, everything becomes redundant. Everything becomes redundant, and that scares you, because everything that you have is founded on deep, dead ignorance.
The moment you see that the problem does not lie in the institutions or the structures, the problem lies in the human being itself. The structures show up as totally needless, but we have been living sticking to and leaning on those structures. It scares us that those structures will be revealed as pointless. And you say, “No, no, no, it’s a very vague term, change the human being and we don’t know what it would lead to. Therefore, let’s stick to our lane.”
All of this, I repeat, is just theatrics. The man is the same. Simple. Back to the basics. Cut the crap. The man is the same. Therefore, Hiroshima and Nagasaki will revisit. They have to, because the man is the same. Or is he not?
But you come up with a lot of shock and surprise. But then, our entire DNA changed after 1945. We became peace-loving, friendly, nice, cordial neighbors. The world was such a pretty place. And now this old rascal, he’s walking all over the doll’s house.
Don’t mistake the effect for the cause. This president or that president, this prime minister or that prime minister, they are not the cause. They are the product of the societies we have built.
Most of them come from democracies. They are duly elected representatives. They are us. They are what the common man on the street is. Why blame the president? The president is simply a common American. Why blame him? Was the common American terribly sad in August 1945? Was he? No. Was the common German terribly sad at the Holocaust? No. Was the common Brit terribly guilty at all the colonial loot and massacre? That’s who we are, the Homo sapiens.
The Chinese kept telling the Japanese, “You need to at least express some regret for what you did to us.” China suffered one of the highest casualties in World War II, more than most European nations, in fact more than any of the European nations if you discount the USSR. China said the rape of Nanking and so many things, at least express some regret. The Japanese said no, no, no. Fine. Only recently was there some word of reconciliation from the Japanese.
So were the Japanese feeling guilty at what they did to China? No.
Even in India, do the so-called upper castes acknowledge what has happened to the so-called lower castes? No. That’s who we are. And you come up with such a befuddled face. “Sir, some disruption in our heaven. That old blonde monster is a bull in a china shop.” Nothing.
What do you mean by friendship?
The US–Canada border was supposed to be the most peaceful one in the entire world. And this one is saying, “I’ll turn Canada into whatever my nth number of state, 51st state.” Yeah. Gobble the entire country alive. Fifty-first state.
World War II started with great friendship between Germany and the USSR, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Agreement. You know what the agreement was about? Together we will eat up the entire Eastern Europe. I will keep one half of Poland, you keep the other half of Poland. And the Slav countries you can have them all.
And now you say, you know, friendship is being betrayed. Stalin also felt some kind of betrayal when Hitler opened up the Eastern Front, Operation Barbarossa. It is said that for one week he was sitting like this: What has happened?
Such was the quality of our international relations then, and such is the quality of our international relations now.
The entire world is bending over backwards to please Trump today. 1936 Olympics in Germany, the Berlin Olympics, even the British athletes were told to offer “Heil Hitler” so that Hitler doesn’t get annoyed, just as the entire world is pleasing Trump today. The entire world was pleasing Hitler in the second half of the 1930s.
We are much the same. History is repeating itself. And history is repeating itself does not mean that the current situation is a repeat of the World War II situation. No, World War II is a repeat of something else. And that is a repeat of something else. And everything is a repeat of that caveman who was trying to occupy the neighbor’s cave or the neighbor’s wife. They didn’t have any marriage system then, but whatever. And if you go back, it is about that Darwinian competition where one cell was trying to outgrow the other.
Why do you pretend as if we are nice people? We are not. And the sooner you admit it, the more peacefully you will vaporize, because the nuclear thing cannot be averted anyway.
And this one has put tariffs on, or threatened to put tariffs on, the UK, on France, on Germany. All these are the standard Western European liberal democracies, the bulwark of NATO. Imagine, imagine the UK being penalized by the US. How does one even conceive that? But that’s what there is, when it comes to greed and self-interest, there is nothing called friendship.
We are not nice people. Don’t flatter yourself. We are very, very animalistic and violent, extremely dangerous people.
Lots of ideologies just exist to convince us that we are half-decent. Democracy is simply an ideology with the assumption that people know how to vote. And that’s a very foolish assumption. Liberalism is an ideology. Libertarianism is an ideology. Socialism is an ideology. International peaceful coexistence and cooperation is just a concept. And this beast is so hungry and so desperate, so violent, it will eat up all the concepts.
Anybody talking of Tibet? That’s who we are. Might is right. But when Saddam Hussein captured Kuwait, he was put to death. Who’s talking of Tibet? Because Tibet has ice, not oil. Maybe when the planet will burn and we’ll need some ice, then there will be an international coalition to liberate Tibet.
You people, educated youngsters, think very seriously, but you always think outwards. You try to think in terms of systems, histories, processes, countries, nations, this and that. You never try to think in terms of the human being and the ego. That’s why you will never reach the place where the real trouble is. You will keep wandering in the architecture of thought, with its endless alleys and ways and subways, and thought will keep leading you here and there.
“You know, can we have something like enlightened self-interest when it comes to nationalism?” Wow, nice, a new branch of thought. “Can we have benevolent sovereignty as a new concept?” And it’ll do the circles and gain currency in the academic world, benevolent sovereignty, enlightened self-interest.
And you will think that by doing all this intellectual gymnastics you are coming somewhat close to the solution. You do not even know where the problem is. How will you know the solution?
The problem is not in all these structures of thought. The problem is here (pointing towards oneself). And your social system, your education system, does nothing to take the individual here. We are making a feeble attempt. It will not succeed.
But we’ll have some kind of satisfaction that we tried even beyond our capacity. In fact, the more we are trying, the more the gatekeepers on all sides are trying to limit our work. If our work implies the revelation of worthlessness of all kinds of structures, then you can imagine what the custodians of those structures would be doing to limit our work. They are acting behind the scenes. You do not see them. But they are continuously threatening and limiting and damaging this mission, and they are pretending that they are trying to find a solution to all kinds of global crises.
Questioner: Acharya Ji, I do want to address a point that you mentioned, that it is people like me, most of us, who are able to think about the outside. Especially with your teachings, personally, for me, I’m able to understand the happenings of the world way more easily. However, the insight that you mentioned, something which is so personal, there is a strong resistance. Even when you mentioned this, I understood that, okay, I’m the problem. Most of us are the problem outside. However, it is still very much difficult for something as simple. I just have basic tendencies. Those are a few things that are keeping me what I am. However, I’m able to understand the outside way more easily than I’m able to understand myself.
Acharya Prashant: No, it is not ability. It is not. No, no, not ability. It is intentionality. Come up with the right word. It is not easier to understand the external world. It is simply more comfortable. More comfortable. It is not more difficult to understand the inner world. It is simply more uncomfortable.
Most of us don’t have the guts to take on some psychological discomfort. So we keep pretending all our life that the problem lies outside. Pretend, pretend, pretend. Endlessly play the game as if, you know, if we can tweak a little with the electoral process, we will have a stronger democracy.
Is it a thing to do with the electoral process? And there are just so many kinds of democracies, right? The US is one kind, India is another kind, and the UK is altogether different. So you’ll say, “Oh, the problem is the kind of democracy.” The problem is the voter.
You can keep fiddling with the system. As long as the voter continues to be who he is, you will keep producing dictators through the democratic way. Think of the voter.
The voter is already carrying a dictator within and that’s called the ego. If the voter has no problem with the dictator within, why will he have a problem with the dictator outside?
In fact, he’s so comfortable and used to the dictator within that he’ll actually want a dictator outside. You’ll celebrate the dictator outside saying, “Oh, now we have a strong president.” It’s simply uncomfortable to unsettle yourself. That’s all.
We need institutions that do not exist as a product of the ego. We need institutions that exist to dismantle the ego. We have great institutions all over the world, at every level. But all those institutions are products of the ego. They don’t exist to show the mirror to the ego. And that’s the problem. Those institutions will not save you.
Questioner: Acharya Ji, discomfort is real. It exists. I often see it as a wall between me and something that I’m, the righteousness. I usually get defeated by that discomfort. I don’t want to get defeated by that discomfort. I see that happening. I see that wall building up, and yet the wall remains. What can I? I need to break the wall.
Acharya Prashant: Stop supporting it. Don’t break it. There is no wall. There is just your own arms holding those bricks together. Withdraw your support. The wall has no strength of its own. The strength of the wall is the strength of your arms.
Why are you lying to yourself? If any problem appears formidable, it has the backing of your own being. Otherwise, problems by definition are a contradiction. In the universe, everything is in harmony. There is no problem somewhere. So the problem, by definition, is a contradiction.
Contradictions cannot exist, but they can be forced to exist at great expense, with great effort, for just some time. That’s what we continuously keep doing, forcing problems to exist in the first place, and then investing in the problems, supporting the problems, so that the ego can remain at the other end of the duality and say, “You see, I have a problem.” And that certifies that I am. If I don’t exist, how can I have a problem? Since I have a problem, it proves that I exist.
Have you seen how scared people are of not having a problem? If they don’t have a problem, they will invent one. Because if no problem exists, then the ego is gone. So you will keep pretending continuously that you are trying to solve the problem. No, you are lying. You have a stake in supporting the problem. Just withdraw that support. That’s all.
Imagine the vacuum. If there were no problems, what would life be like? Most of us would just faint at the conception. If there were no problems, I’m gone. Finished. These problems are of our own making. Without self-knowledge, problems become the self.
Questioner: Thank you so much, Acharya Ji. I really appreciate it.
