Acharya Prashant explains that many traditional evils such as malaria, polio, the caste system, untouchability, racism, and misogyny are either eradicated or on their way out. He refers to these as "old and petty evils" and questions what man will fight next once these are all defeated. He argues that the disappearance of these social ills is not due to a spiritual awakening or people discovering their inherent oneness, but rather because of desire. Desire, he states, is what truly drives these changes. To illustrate his point, he provides several examples. He suggests that a man's desire would overpower his social conditioning if faced with a "hugely gorgeous" woman from an "untouchable" caste. Similarly, a recruiter, driven by the desire for productivity and consumption, would hire a productive candidate regardless of their caste, motivated by greed and usefulness rather than love or fraternity. He asserts that desire is the force that has defeated all these social evils, not social reform movements. The advent of public transport, for instance, forced people of all castes to sit together out of a shared desire to reach their destinations. The speaker extends this logic to geopolitics, claiming that the Cold War ended due to the Soviet republics' desire for a more prosperous life, meaning desire defeated the USSR. He notes that for the sake of desire, people will collaborate with their worst enemies, a phenomenon visible in politics. Desire, therefore, defeats all the "petty evils." The central question then becomes, if desire is the force that conquers these lesser evils, who will defeat desire itself? He concludes that the great evil man must now fight is "man himself, man the god," and the ultimate challenge is to overcome desire.
