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The Psychological Trick Empires Use to Destroy Themselves · Chapter by Chapter — The Lost Library

• 0:00
  Welcome to the deep dive. So I want you to imagine it is
• 0:04
  the year 410 AD. Oh man, what a time.
• 0:09
  Right, the unthinkable has just happened.
• 0:11
  Rome, the Eternal City, the invincible mistress of the world
• 0:15
  for like over 1000 years is burning.
• 0:18
  The Goths have breached the walls and civilization as they
• 0:21
  knew it just collapsed in on itself.
• 0:23
  It was total chaos. Complete chaos.
• 0:25
  And the population, specifically the Pagan population, is
• 0:28
  absolutely panicking. I mean, they're looking for a
• 0:30
  scapegoat, naturally, and they end up pointing their fingers at
• 0:33
  this relatively new religion, Christianity.
• 0:36
  Right, The argument sweeping the streets was basically, you know
• 0:40
  that the old gods are angry because people abandoned their
• 0:42
  temples. Like this catastrophic
• 0:44
  destruction is just divine punishment for ignoring Jupiter
• 0:47
  and Mars. Exactly.
• 0:48
  So today we are taking a stack of source material to unpack, an
• 0:52
  absolute Titan of historical text.
• 0:55
  A massive text. Oh yeah, we're looking at
• 0:57
  excerpts from a 19th century translated Mass.
• 1:00
  Mr. Peace, Saint Augustine's, the City of God.
• 1:02
  And the mission here is to discover why a collapsing empire
• 1:07
  blamed a new religion, and how Augustine diagnosed a flaw in
• 1:12
  their society that perfectly mirrors our own today it.
• 1:16
  Really is a staggering moment in human history.
• 1:18
  I mean, the psychological blow to the Roman world was just
• 1:21
  absolute. Because it wasn't just the
• 1:23
  people in the city. Right.
• 1:24
  No, not at all. People who had never even been
• 1:26
  to Rome, people living provinces away.
• 1:29
  They felt the ground shift beneath their feet.
• 1:33
  The Eternal Empire was mortal, after all.
• 1:35
  And you know, Agustin steps into this chaos not just to play
• 1:38
  defense for Christianity, but to offer a completely radical
• 1:43
  structural diagnosis of what actually caused the collapse.
• 1:46
  And his central argument is incredibly bold.
• 1:49
  It really is, he argues. Rome wasn't destroyed by a lack
• 1:52
  of religion, it was destroyed by a misplaced religion.
• 1:54
  OK, let's unpack this because to understand how a society
• 1:57
  substitutes the state or you know, ambition for deeper
• 2:00
  meaning, we first have to look at how Augustine dismantled the
• 2:03
  Romans own mythological safety net.
• 2:05
  Yeah, he doesn't mess around. No, he doesn't start with lofty
• 2:08
  theology. He comes out swinging with hard,
• 2:11
  immediate historical facts about the invasion itself.
• 2:14
  Right, he points to a glaring anomaly in the sack of Rome that
• 2:17
  everyone was just ignoring. Which is what?
• 2:19
  Well, during the invasion, the barbarian Goths actually spared
• 2:23
  anyone who fled into the Christian churches.
• 2:25
  Wait, really? Yeah, they use these massive
• 2:28
  basilicas as sanctuaries, and the Barbarians actually
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  respected that. That is wild.
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  And Agustin highlights that this act of mercy was completely
• 2:37
  unheard of in the traditional custom of war of the ancient
• 2:41
  world. The historical sources
• 2:43
  absolutely back him up on that, too.
• 2:45
  I mean, you look at ancient warfare and the standard
• 2:48
  operating procedure was total annihilation.
• 2:51
  Oh. Completely.
• 2:52
  Like Roman generals and the Greek heroes they modeled
• 2:55
  themselves after, they had absolutely no problem dragging
• 2:58
  refugees away from Pagan altars. Just slaughtering them right
• 3:02
  inside the temples. Exactly.
• 3:03
  The concept of sanctuary wasn't respected by the very gods the
• 3:07
  Romans were claiming would have saved them.
• 3:09
  And he brings receipts, too. He points to the fall of Troy.
• 3:14
  Right, which is a big deal for them.
• 3:16
  Huge. The Romans trace their entire
• 3:19
  lineage back to Troy, and they worshipped the Trojan gods.
• 3:23
  So Augustine basically asks, well, how did that work out for?
• 3:26
  Them. Yeah, exactly.
• 3:27
  Troy had its gods built temples to them and it still fell
• 3:31
  completely to the Greeks. Didn't the gods get stolen too?
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  Yes, the Trojan gods couldn't even protect themselves from
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  being taken as war loot. That is so embarrassing.
• 3:41
  Augustine uses this sharp irony to point out that it wasn't the
• 3:44
  gods protecting the city, it was the city guards trying
• 3:48
  desperately to protect the statues of the gods.
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  It's such a brilliant framing. I mean, think about it like
• 3:53
  this. It's like paying a fortune for a
• 3:55
  premium home security system that has a documented public
• 3:59
  history of never stopping a single burglar.
• 4:01
  Yeah. Then when you finally switch to
• 4:03
  a new system and your house gets you, blame the new system.
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  While completely ignoring that your old system was literally
• 4:10
  useless. Exactly.
• 4:12
  The pagans were blaming the only institution, the Christian
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  churches, that actually provided any physical sanctuary during
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  the sack. And then he pushes the knife
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  even deeper by bringing up segundum.
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  Oh. This story is brutal.
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  It is so. Gunton was a city in Spain that
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  was fiercely, famously loyal to Rome and to the Roman gods.
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  When Hannibal besieged them, they refused to surrender out of
• 4:36
  pure loyalty to Rome. They held out for months.
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  And they starved. They starved, they kept their
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  treaties, they prayed to the gods, and they were ultimately
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  slaughtered and burned to the ground.
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  While the Roman gods supposedly just sat back and watched.
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  Right, so Augustine's point is just devastating.
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  He asks. If these gods were the great
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  guardians of prosperity, why do they let their most faithful,
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  dedicated allies burn to ash? It exposes a massive
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  contradiction, and beyond just being physically useless in a
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  military conflict, the sources emphasize a total moral
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  bankruptcy. Oh, definitely, Gustin asked
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  this really penetrating question.
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  You know, where were the moral laws of these gods?
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  That is where his critique really moves from history into
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  philosophy. He looks at the civic religion
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  of Rome and points out that the gods never issued commandments
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  on how to live a virtuous just life.
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  Right. They never told the citizens how
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  to actually be good people. No, instead, what these gods
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  supposedly demanded were these obscene theatrical plays and
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  bloody sacrifices. Just massive public festivals
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  celebrating their own mythical infidelities, rapes and crimes.
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  Yeah, the gods were essentially demanding a cosmic reality TV
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  show based on their own terrible behavior.
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  Which is incredibly hypocritical when you consider a Roman law.
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  Augustine points out that the very behaviors the gods demanded
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  to be celebrated in the temples. Were behaviors a Roman
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  magistrate would severely punish a citizen for in the streets.
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  Exactly. The civic religion offered no
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  moral compass at all. It was just a transactional
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  system to try and bribe powerful volatile entities for earthly
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  success. OK but wait, so if these gods
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  were objectively terrible at protecting them and gave them
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  absolutely 0 moral guidance, how did Rome conquer the known
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  world? That's the big question.
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  Right. What was actually fueling them?
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  Because they didn't just survive, they thrived for a very
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  long time. This is the paradox Augustine
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  has to solve. What was their true religion if
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  not Jupiter and Mars? Their true religion was
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  themselves. Yeah, Augustine diagnosis that
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  Rome was driven by a massive all consuming lust for domination.
• 6:41
  They essentially turned their own desires into deities.
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  How do you mean? Well they didn't just worship
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  the traditional pantheon with like lightning bolts and
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  Tritons, they made abstract concepts like victory and
• 6:53
  Felicity, which just means happiness or earthly success
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  into literal goddesses. And they built magnificent
• 7:00
  temples to them. Yes, they were worshipping the
• 7:02
  gifts rather than the giver. Rome was an empire fueled by
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  this desperate, insatiable desire for human praise and
• 7:10
  earthly glory. So they literally worship their
• 7:12
  own ambition. Exactly.
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  That completely strips away the romantic PR of the Roman
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  Republic. I mean we are so used to the
• 7:18
  marble statues and the stoic philosophy.
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  Yeah, the romanticized version. But Augustine just exposes the
• 7:24
  raw mechanics of power underneath all of that.
• 7:26
  And there's this one quote from the text that just stops you in
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  your tracks. It's the story of Alexander the
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  Great and the captured pirate. It's one of the most famous
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  messages in the entire work. So a pirate is captured and
• 7:39
  brought in chains before Alexander the Great, the master
• 7:42
  of the known world, right? Alexander looks down at him and
• 7:45
  asks what he means by keeping hostile possession of the sea.
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  Why is he harassing ships? And the pirate's response is
• 7:51
  just incredible. The pirate looks right back at
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  the most powerful man on earth and answers with absolute bold
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  pride. He says what thou meanest by
• 8:00
  seizing the whole earth. Oh man, he basically says
• 8:03
  Because I do it with a pity ship I'm called a robber whilst thou
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  who dust it with a great fleet art styled Emperor.
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  That is just incredible. It completely reframes the
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  concept of empire. It's essentially just organized
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  crime with better branding. Yep.
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  And Augustine uses this interaction to deliver a
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  stinging foundational conclusion about human governance.
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  What does he say? He writes just as being taken
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  away. Then what are kingdoms but great
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  robberies? OK, but let me push back on that
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  though, because I want to linger on this tension for a second.
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  Didn't this intense drive for glory, this lust for domination,
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  actually work on a practical level?
• 8:44
  Well, the Romans certainly thought so.
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  Right, because if we look at the legacy of Rome, that ambition
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  built the aqueducts that provided clean water.
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  It built a legal system that forms the basis of Western law
• 8:55
  today. It built a sprawling
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  civilization with thousands of miles of roads.
• 9:01
  True. Here's where it gets really
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  interesting. Isn't ambition, even ruthless
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  ambition, a net positive if it creates a stable, thriving
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  society? Well you are echoing the exact
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  defense the Romans used. They pointed to their roads and
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  their green shipments as proof of the righteousness.
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  True, but Augustine forces us to look at the Ledger.
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  Yes, they build aqueducts, but who built them?
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  Slaves, mostly. Exactly.
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  Millions of enslaved people taken from conquered nations,
• 9:27
  the peace they established, the Plaques Romana was maintained
• 9:30
  through endless border wars, the crucifixion of dissidents and a
• 9:33
  culture that watched people be slaughtered in the Coliseum for
• 9:36
  afternoon entertainment. So the infrastructure was
• 9:38
  magnificent, but the soul of the society was rotting.
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  Precisely. He doesn't deny their
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  achievements, he just questions the moral cost of those
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  achievements. And that brings us to the core
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  thesis of his entire massive work, which is the division of
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  humanity into what he calls 2 cities.
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  OK, tell me about these two cities.
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  To answer the question of whether that ambition was worth
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  it, Augustine looks at the extreme consequences of this
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  lust for human praise, and he points to the famous Roman
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  historical example of Brutus. And just to clarify, this is the
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  ancient Brutus, the one who helped found the Roman Republic
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  by overthrowing the kings. Well, not the guy who stabbed
• 10:17
  Julius Caesar centuries later, got it.
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  So this Brutus discovered that his own teenage sons were part
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  of a conspiracy against the New Republic, and to prove his
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  loyalty to the state, he ordered them to be executed.
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  And he stood there and watched it happen.
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  And the terrifying thing isn't just that he did it, it's that
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  the Romans celebrated him for it.
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  They revered him for it. It was considered the ultimate
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  pinnacle act of Roman patriotism.
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  But Agustin looks at this story and is horrified.
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  Because it's fundamentally unnatural.
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  Exactly, he says. This is the tragedy of the
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  earthly city. It perfectly illustrates a
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  society that is completely ruled by the lust to rule.
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  So the earthly city loves itself.
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  It loves itself and it seeks glory from men above all else.
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  Brutus sacrificed his own flesh and blood not for ultimate
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  eternal justice, but for the praise of his fellow citizens
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  and the preservation of his own political power structure.
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  He elevated the state above humanity itself.
• 11:15
  Yeah. And he contrasts this earthly
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  city with the city of God. Which is what exactly?
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  The city of God isn't Rome or Jerusalem or any physical nation
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  state. It is a community of people
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  across time who live by faith. They operate as strangers or
• 11:30
  pilgrims in the world. So they have a totally different
• 11:32
  value system. Completely.
• 11:34
  They don't see glory from men, they see glory in God.
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  They valued true justice and humility over domination and
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  winning at all costs. You know, to explain how a
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  society slides into becoming that earthly city.
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  The sources highlight a brilliant philosophical concept
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  Augustine introduces, which is deficient causes.
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  Oh, this is such a good concept. I really want to make sure we
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  dig into this because it totally shifts how you view human
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  behavior. It is a profound psychological
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  insight that was just revolutionary at the time.
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  Augustine argues that evil isn't a stand alone entity.
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  Right. It's not like a dark substance
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  you can put in jar or a rival God fighting the good God.
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  Evil is entirely A misdirected will.
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  It's a deficient cause. Let me make sure I'm wrapping my
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  head around this mechanism. So evil isn't a dark cloud that
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  possesses a person or a society, It's more like a cancer.
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  It's just your own body cells which are normally good and
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  necessary mutating and over prioritizing their own growth at
• 12:33
  the expense of the whole system. I love that analogy.
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  So Rome's ambition was just a natural desire for security and
• 12:39
  success, but metastasizing and taking over the host.
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  That is a phenomenal way to look at it.
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  Evil happens when a society or an individual takes a lesser
• 12:49
  good, like gold or career success or the security of the
• 12:52
  state, and loves it to the detriment of a higher good.
• 12:56
  Like ultimate truth or compassion or justice?
• 12:58
  Exactly. The desire for a stable state
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  isn't inherently evil, but elevating the state above human
• 13:05
  life or moral integrity, that misdirection of love, that
• 13:08
  metastasizing priority, that is where the evil.
• 13:11
  Lies. It's what happens when you take
• 13:13
  something that is perfectly fine in moderation, like patriotism
• 13:17
  or public approval or even your own family success, and you
• 13:21
  elevate it into your ultimate purpose.
• 13:23
  Right, it comes your God. And once it's your God, you will
• 13:26
  sacrifice everything else on its altar.
• 13:28
  Your ethics, your Peace of Mind, your relationships.
• 13:31
  Rome made the state their God, and it demanded endless blood.
• 13:34
  Which naturally leads Augustine back to those Pagan we started
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  with. Right, because there's a paradox
• 13:39
  here. Yeah.
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  If this earthly city is so destructive and these Pagan gods
• 13:43
  are just masks for human ambition, why were the Romans so
• 13:47
  incredibly attached to them? The question They didn't just
• 13:49
  passively accept them, they fought for them.
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  They sacrificed to them. So, Augustine argues, they
• 13:55
  weren't just culturally stubborn, they were actually
• 13:57
  being manipulated. We have to step into the ancient
• 13:59
  mindset here. Augustine engages in this fierce
• 14:03
  debate with the Platonist philosophers of his time,
• 14:06
  thinkers like Apulius. Now, these philosophers are
• 14:09
  highly educated. They didn't believe the crass
• 14:12
  myths about Jupiter literally turning into a swamp.
• 14:15
  They intellectualized they. Did they claimed the universe
• 14:19
  was a tiered system? You had the pure ethereal gods
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  way up high who are too perfect to ever touch The Dirty material
• 14:27
  earth. So they needed middle men to
• 14:29
  handle the operations down here. Exactly.
• 14:31
  The philosophers claimed there were demons and they use this
• 14:34
  word in a neutral sense, meaning spirits in the air who acted as
• 14:37
  messengers between the pure gods and lowly humans.
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  They handle the players going up and the blessings coming down.
• 14:44
  It's literally cosmic middle management.
• 14:46
  Yes, but Augustine completely dismantles this
• 14:49
  intellectualization. He looks at the philosophers and
• 14:53
  says look at what these so-called mediators actually
• 14:56
  demand from you to do their job. Right.
• 14:58
  The reality of it. They demand those obscene
• 15:00
  theatrical plays. They demand bloody animal
• 15:03
  sacrifices. They demand dark magical arts to
• 15:06
  compel them to work. Wait, let me clarify something
• 15:09
  on behalf of anyone listening. Is Augustine saying the Roman
• 15:12
  gods didn't exist at all, like they were just figments of
• 15:15
  collective imagination? Or is he saying they did exist,
• 15:19
  but they were actually malicious entities running a massive
• 15:23
  cosmic protection racket on the Roman people?
• 15:25
  He is absolutely arguing the latter.
• 15:27
  Wow, really? Yes, he acknowledges the
• 15:30
  spiritual reality of these entities, but he identifies them
• 15:33
  as malignant spirits. His logic is devastatingly
• 15:36
  simple. If these entities demand things
• 15:39
  that actively pollute the human soul, they aren't helping humans
• 15:42
  reach the divine. They're keeping them trapped in
• 15:44
  the dirt. Exact.
• 15:45
  They are feeding on the dysfunction.
• 15:47
  They aren't messengers, they are wardens.
• 15:49
  Yes, the demons use the Romans own lust for power, their pride
• 15:55
  and their state worship against. Them, so they're weaponizing
• 15:57
  their ambition. They are.
• 15:58
  They encourage the Romans to worship the state and pursue
• 16:01
  endless wars because that very behavior keeps them alienated
• 16:05
  from true, peaceful communion with God.
• 16:08
  It's a closed loop of misery disguised as glory.
• 16:12
  So what does this all mean? We've covered a lot of ground
• 16:14
  today. The fall of an empire, the
• 16:15
  failure of the Old Gods, the insatiable lust for domination,
• 16:19
  and this profound idea of misdirected love feeding
• 16:22
  societal decay. Yeah, it's heavy stuff.
• 16:25
  How do we take Augustine's 5th century diagnosis and apply it
• 16:28
  to the world you and I are walking around in today?
• 16:30
  Well, we have to realize that Augustine isn't just giving a
• 16:33
  history lesson about men in Togus, right?
• 16:35
  He is diagnosing a universal, permanent human condition.
• 16:39
  His analysis is incredibly prophetic.
• 16:41
  Whenever a society or an individual strips away true
• 16:44
  spiritual or moral meaning, a vacuum is created.
• 16:47
  And nature of whores of vacuum. Exactly.
• 16:50
  And human beings, by our very nature, cannot tolerate that
• 16:54
  vacuum. We will inevitably always
• 16:56
  replace it with the worship of something lesser.
• 16:58
  We just build new temples to new gods.
• 17:01
  I mean, we might not sacrifice bulls to Jupiter anymore, but we
• 17:04
  absolutely create modern secular versions of religion.
• 17:09
  You see it everywhere once you put on Augustine's lenses.
• 17:13
  Look at the absolute worship of politics today.
• 17:15
  Oh yeah. A political party or a specific
• 17:18
  ideology becomes the singular source of all truth and
• 17:21
  righteousness. If you belong to the party, you
• 17:24
  are saved. If you oppose it, you are evil.
• 17:26
  Or look at the worship of celebrity.
• 17:28
  We track the lives, the breakups and the opinions of famous
• 17:31
  people as if they are mythological figures on Mount
• 17:34
  Olympus whose lives somehow dictate our own value.
• 17:37
  Or nationalism, where the state is elevated beyond any moral
• 17:40
  critique. If the state does it, it must be
• 17:42
  right and anyone who questions the state is a heretic.
• 17:45
  And we see it so clearly in these hyper intense online
• 17:47
  tribes to your collective identity demands complete
• 17:50
  ideological purity. You have to use the exact right
• 17:53
  words, hold the exact right opinions.
• 17:55
  And if you step out of line, you are excommunicated.
• 17:58
  I mean, we don't call it excommunication anymore.
• 18:00
  We call it being cancelled. But the psychological mechanism
• 18:03
  is identical. It's exactly the same.
• 18:05
  It's a secular religion enforcing its boundaries.
• 18:08
  And that is the exact dynamic Augustine was warning about.
• 18:12
  When the state or your political tribe or the pursuit of fame
• 18:16
  becomes your ultimate concern, when it becomes your God, you
• 18:20
  are living firmly in the earthly city.
• 18:22
  You are participating in that lust for domination.
• 18:25
  Right. And just like it did for Rome,
• 18:28
  it might bring you temporary success, it might give you a
• 18:31
  fleeting feeling of belonging or power, but it ultimately leaves
• 18:35
  the soul polluted and trapped. Because those lesser gods always
• 18:38
  demand sacrifices. And those sacrifices end up
• 18:41
  damaging your humanity. They demand you give up your
• 18:43
  inner peace for the sake of winning the argument online.
• 18:47
  They demand you sacrifice your relationships with your family
• 18:49
  just to win an election. Or sacrifice your ethics to get
• 18:52
  the promotion. But Augusta is reminding us
• 18:55
  across 16 centuries that we don't have to live that way.
• 18:59
  We can choose the mindset of the city of God.
• 19:02
  We can choose to value humility over domination.
• 19:05
  We can choose to pursue true justice rather than just seeking
• 19:09
  the applause of the crowd. And we can recognize that our
• 19:12
  ultimate citizenship, our ultimate worth, isn't tied to
• 19:16
  any shifting, temporary earthly power structure.
• 19:19
  That is a profound lens to view our own modern chaos through.
• 19:23
  And I want to leave you with one final thing to Mull over as you
• 19:26
  go about your day. Yeah, think back to Augustine's
• 19:29
  definition of a Kingdom that operates without true justice.
• 19:32
  He asked. Justice being taken away, Then
• 19:35
  what are kingdoms but great robberies such?
• 19:37
  A powerful quote. If we apply that today, if we
• 19:40
  strip away the grand titles, the multimillion dollar PR
• 19:43
  campaigns, the slick branding and the fame from the modern
• 19:46
  institutions, the massive corporations where the
• 19:48
  ideological tribes we dedicate so much of our precious time and
• 19:52
  energy to, how many of them are just great robberies in
• 19:54
  disguise? Are you giving your devotion to
• 19:56
  something that is quietly robbing you of your deeper
• 19:59
  purpose? Thank you for joining us on this
• 20:02
  deep dive into the source material.
• 20:04
  We will cash you next time.