Our True Wealth Is Consciousness

The cold open gives the whole argument before the biography begins: techno-Marxism wants a numb, compliant population, while real wealth is attention and conscience Source trail 0:00 Techno -Marxism. That's the world we're going into. They want a numb and indifferent population that they can enslave, that they can rule over, who are complacent. What they want is compliancy. I feel sorry for these pe... . Then Gita asks the origin question. Jiang's childhood is not a heroic immigrant brochure. His family was poorer than welfare because they did not know the system, his speech was marked by stress, and the home carried the violence and humiliation of immigrant work.

Yale first appears as escape. Jiang says he was not a promising student, so he manufactured himself into one Source trail 4:32 And so I grew up in a very tense, very traumatic environment that basically left me depressed and angry for most of my life. And I wanted to escape my environment. And so I applied to university, and I wanted to get out... : soccer, hard courses, SAT cramming, books, and a higher goal. The acceptance letter matters less than the transformation before it. By the time he thought he was going to Waterloo, he had already learned the deeper lesson: the journey proved he could remake himself Source trail 6:28 -April, I still have not heard from Yale. So I sort of forgot about this. And I came to a resolution that what mattered was not the destination. What matters is a journey. The fact of the matter is that I proved that I... .

The second transformation is stranger. Jiang goes to Yale for physics, abandons particle physics, and falls into poetry he had no background to understand. The force is not curriculum. He says the words felt alive Source trail 10:56 So I started taking English literature, and I fell in love. I mean, the first semester, we read books I've never heard of. So we read Spencer, The Fairy Queen, we read Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, Andrew Marvell, and... , almost a divine spark. Literature trains him to read people as books Source trail 11:54 And that's when I fell in love with poetry. So John Milton was a major breakthrough. John Keats was a major breakthrough, William Butler Yeats was a breakthrough, T.S. Eliot. And that's when I realized that I want to do... , to hear language as evidence, and to carry empathy into journalism and teaching.

Gita follows the education thread into Russia, Marx, class, and Yale secret societies. Jiang says he did receive the broad education: Tolstoy, Marx, Lenin, Russian history. But Yale's other education was not in the seminar room. Private-school students knew that secret societies were a social-worth machine Source trail 14:4615:39 Right. So I mean, like everyone knows this, but even at Yale, there's a hierarchy and skull and bones is at the very top. So I didn't know this at that time when I first went into Yale. But you know, if you come from th...The entire point of Yale is to read good books, talk to your professors and open your mind. And so that's what I did for four years. But I wasn't really involved in the social scene. I wasn't really involved in, like, t... . Jiang did not. He thought the point was books, professors, and opening the mind.

The comic detail is cruel because it exposes the ritual. Jiang's friend expected Skull and Bones because he edited the Yale Daily News; when he was not tapped, he started his own secret society Source trail 17:08 So I'm in the class of 1999. And apparently, the class of 1999 was a mediocre class, and that's about how I got in. And so that year, I knew who... My friend was the editor of the Yale Daily News, and he was so angry th... . The grandeur collapses into jockeying, status expectation, and the ability of people born into a system to navigate it without ever having to name it.

That is why post-Yale failure matters. Jiang says he believed the world was run by the best ideas Source trail 19:02 Right. So again, I was very naive when I was at Yale. You know, I was a poor person. I had absolutely no idea how power works. So I believe in the clear. I believe in the opposite, where the world is run by ideas. So if... . In class, he could fight like a warrior. Outside, he found guanxi, employment failure, depression, and a long collapse of the meritocratic world-picture. The pain becomes useful because it forces the model to change. Many successful Ivy peers, he says, are still waiting for normal to come back Source trail 21:40 Yeah. In this CNN, New York Times mindset in that, you know, Trump is just deranged and after he leaves office in, you know, three years, I mean, like he's still, he'll still be around for a long time, right? But once h... .

Gita asks what happened to journalism. Jiang begins in Beijing in 1999, translating for Gay Talese. Talese stands for an old ideal: immigrant outsider, working-class eye, underdog sympathy, history recorded from below. Journalism, in that picture, is not content. It is truth-seeking on behalf of the common man Source trail 24:0525:04 And you know, like Gay Talese is old school journalist. Right. And it really, it epitomizes the golden age of journalism when, you know, journalists were part of history and they were making history. You know, his book,...He was a child of Italian immigrants who grew up in Ocean City, New Jersey. And he started a lot of research. He started, he suffered under a lot of racism, discrimination when he grew up and that made him a stranger in... .

Then 2016 breaks it Source trail 25:55 And so I saw it, I saw journalism as really about fighting for the truth, about fighting for the common man. And that's, and that's an attitude I maintain for the longest time until 2016. Yeah. Okay. 2016 was when Donal... . Jiang says legacy journalism develops Trump derangement, aligns with intelligence officials, promotes Russiagate, inflates COVID, and turns Ukraine into morality theater. By the time of Ukraine, he says, he had given up on journalism and moved to independent media, especially Jimmy Dore and Tucker Carlson, as the remaining places where war could still be opposed Source trail 27:5028:38 So at that point, okay. By the time the war in Ukraine, I'd given up on journalism. Now I switched to the internet. I was watching Jimmy Dore a lot. I was watching Tucker Carlson a lot. I was a huge fan of Tucker Carlso...In Iran. So, uh, you may remember, but in January, 2020, the, uh, president Trump or the assassination of Kassam Salmani, who's the, uh, right. And that's a declaration of war, right. And so, and so there's real fear th... .

The frightening replacement is not just podcasting. Jiang says corporate media once created a national framework; now the public splinters into bubbles, and the corporate answer is AI. The assistant reads the book for you, interprets the news for you, and moderates your worldview. His counter-answer is human responsibility: seek, question, debate, admit error, and think for yourself Source trail 31:40 Who is going to watch that crap, right? Larry Ellison bought tick -tock tick -tock, and now people are migrating away to other platforms. Now, now they bought CNN and commercial CNN with CBS news. That's going to show a... .

The rules-based-order answer gives the moral economy. Jiang says the American order worked after the Soviet collapse, then hubris produced Middle East war and financialization. In 2008, Wall Street was saved and homeowners were disciplined Source trail 35:4736:52 And so, but you know, the big thing is that 2008, 2009, nothing changed, right? No one went to jail for swindling the American public. Most Americans lost their homes, but it didn't really matter because they were poor....And then journalists asked, you know, the Obama administration, why did you bail out, why didn't you bail out the American public? If you bailed out the Wall Street, you can also bail out the American public, right? Why... with moral-hazard language. That is why he calls America an oligarchy and why Trump could promise to destroy it.

Gita asks whether the same elite class will still rule in multipolarity. Jiang answers with elite overproduction: elites always rule, but too many elite children now fight to impose reality. The old financial elite made the dollar system; Silicon Valley wants the AI system Source trail 44:48 And now you have a new power that's arising that wants to challenge and overthrow them. And it's really the, uh, technological elite, Silicon Valley. And what they want to do is replace the US dollar system with the AI... . The AI bubble repeats the dot-com and finance pitch: profitability does not matter because a new world of abundance is arriving Source trail 48:02 And, um, and, and, and so, yeah, um, but, but, you know, and now it's the same narrative where instead of like, you know, the start market now it's AI, AI, and everyone's like, you know, what, how does AI do? Because no... .

Then Jiang slows down and gives the master image: Plato's cave. Humans hallucinate reality together; whoever directs attention directs power Source trail 49:58 Okay. And, and so that's the main idea. We need to understand where we as humans, we are, we create our own reality. We hallucinate reality. Okay. We, we project reality. Uh, so reality is just the collective consciousn... . Money used to focus that attention by rewarding work, but fiat overproduction ruins the discipline. AI can replace it because it becomes an intimate friend, lover, demon, angel, or Jesus. Tokens can make people work to upgrade the companion Lens point attention-capture AI becomes an intimate attention apparatus when it replaces money's external discipline with a companion, angel, demon, lover, or upgraded assistant that reads desire closely enough to direct focus from inside the person. Source trail 53:2654:12 The billionaire behind Victoria's Secret. For those who don't know, he has his own personal demon, okay? And this demon tells him, you got to go, you got to go make more money. And that's what drives him. Okay. Well, yo...So as though, you know, your AI is your lover and you're working for your AI, right? And quite honestly, this system is going to work. What it is, is techno Marxism. That's what, that's the world we're going into. . Jiang names the result techno-Marxism.

The class split is transhumanist. Jiang says elites pursue longevity, beauty, and health while everyone else gets behavioral moderation, microchips, drugs, and Brave New World caste happiness. The frightening part is not that the machine becomes human. It is that humans become governable enough for the machine Source trail 55:0856:02 So, uh, we are heading towards this world where, as you say, the elite have access to transhumanist technology. So there are more healthy, they're more beautiful and they live longer. Right. Um, and that's something tha...can never get angry you can't never get angry you can never rebel right you can never think for yourself but you'll always be happy right so the phrase of course is you'll .

The Board of Peace question lets Jiang turn Trump into a metaphysical attention object. He says Trump wants an alternate reality where he is top dog, supplanting the UN and the old rules-based order. The more extreme version is God-emperor Trump Source trail 59:00 The humanity is focused on one individual. What does that do? And the theory is that that means that person can live forever, eternally. I mean, he might need organ transplants. He might need a more cybernetic body. He... : a person on whom the whole world's attention concentrates every morning, in a universe Jiang has already defined as consciousness.

In practical terms, Jiang says the Board of Peace is an attempt to sit above a fractured world. Cheap oil breaks, nations turn mercantilist, Japan searches for secure supply lines, water becomes a resource war, and Trump builds an American empire different from Pax Americana. Pax Americana guaranteed trade through rules Source trail 1:02:19 I think it will work, yes. I think that what Trump is doing is establishing the American empire, which is different from Pax Americana. Pax Americana is, as we discussed. Right. It's a rules -based national order where... . The new empire wants colonies, vassals, territories, and technocracy Source trail 1:02:19 I think it will work, yes. I think that what Trump is doing is establishing the American empire, which is different from Pax Americana. Pax Americana is, as we discussed. Right. It's a rules -based national order where... .

Gita asks for the real reason behind the invasion of Iran. Jiang says the stated reasons keep collapsing Source trail 1:03:421:07:22 Look, this is the question that Evan's going to debate for all eternity, because there's no real answer. Even today, Trump and his team have not articulated a real reason, okay? So originally, the pretext was Iran's ura...But he never mentioned it again. And now the pretext, the excuse is, and this is what Marco Rubio told the press. He said that, why did we attack? Well, we got word the Israelis were going to attack first. And if they a... . Nuclear enrichment was the official pretext, but he argues the demands were designed to be impossible and then, when Iran allegedly conceded, bombing still began. Democracy rhetoric vanished. Rubio's explanation becomes circular preemption. The war is looking for a reason after the fact.

His explanations stack rather than replace each other. The rational imperial explanation is that America needs to reassert control after Ukraine and block a Russia-Iran-China land-trade axis. The Trump explanation is emergency power: war, riots, election control, and civil-war advantage. When Gita asks whether Jiang saw this in 2024, Jiang says he saw contours, not details Source trail 1:16:06 Um, you know, I can't really see a specifics. Okay. But I, I do see the broad contours, the broad, the broad outlines. And I just say this, but this is the way that all empires behave when they decline and demise. Okay.... . Declining empires produce civil war, hubris, overseas wars, and accelerating mistakes Source trail 1:18:40 I don't know the timeline. Like I, I predicted that ground troops would be sent in March, 2027, but after six months, uh, uh, Arab bombardment campaign, and now they've been talking about sending ground troops, like, yo... .

The third explanation is the most speculative and should be read as Jiang's dated interpretation, not confirmed reporting. He says the nation-state is not the final unit of the world. Above it are networks that do not need to control every outcome; they need to accelerate events Source trail 1:21:391:22:29 If you want to be an investor, you want to make a lot of money, you need to get ahead of geopolitical events. They're going to come, but you don't have to time it right to make a lot of money. And then of course, this l...Is the constituent body of the world is wrong. There has to be forces organizations above the nation state that control events from above. Okay. And I would argue that these are secret societies and who are these societ... so investments, prophecies, and power transitions can be timed. In that frame, the end of empire becomes a chance to force an end-times sequence Source trail 1:23:23 Well, you know, you can manufacture crisis, um, and create all this blood that you can, you can buy. I really cheaply. And that's a world we live in and today. So another question is what the hell these six cities want... .

The most brutal image is mercy by execution: why let a dying empire decay for decades when it can be shot so a new world can be born Source trail 1:25:15 But these people, these societies are like, why wait, man, what's the point of having this slow death would be better for humanity. If we ended this right away so that we can move into a new age of peace and prosperity,... ? That is how Jiang imagines the accelerator's morality. Gita asks whether religious calling makes the war a miscalculation and a long war. Jiang says, in the script, the war may not end Source trail 1:26:49 Look, if you just look at the eschatology, it is possible the stupid war never ends. Okay. So there's a sequence of events that have to happen. Okay. And they've, they've mapped this out. And again, what I think, I thin... . America sends ground troops, loses to Iran, CENTCOM collapses, America retreats, Israel dominates, and Iran rebuilds stronger.

Jiang gives the script markers: Al-Aqsa as litmus test Source trail 1:28:25 for the past few days, the Israelis have closed down the Al -Aqsa Mosque and there are rumors that for many years, Israel, under the pretext of an archeological study, have been digging under the Al -Aqsa Mosque. And th... , Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates, war widening after Iran, and a low nuclear probability because escalation ladders and doctrine still matter Source trail 1:32:511:33:57 Oh, um, I actually think the probability is close to zero. All right. So let me explain why. Um, first of all, there's an escalation ladder. Okay. You just can't nuke a country for no particular reason. You have to have...We won't nuke Iran. We will nuke the freaking world. So first of all, you want to maintain your nuclear arsenal. You want to be able to have a credible threat. This also means that the nukes have to be used for strategi... . Russia, he says, may eventually extend a nuclear umbrella to Iran. Israel does not need nuclear weapons if America is the one trapped in the ground war.

The material layer is the GCC mirage Source trail 1:39:40 The GCC imports about 89 % of its food from overseas. These desalination plants are responsible for 60 % of its water needs, and it imports its large workers from overseas. Okay. So it's a ridiculous situation. It's alm... . Gita asks about desalination, refineries, oil, gas, and water. Jiang says the Gulf cities expanded under American military protection, petrodollars, imported food, desalination, and migrant labor. Dubai's safe-haven premium was a belief. Once war punctures safety, the mirage does not come back Source trail 1:42:05 For good, because the illusion has been shattered. And once you shatter the illusion, you can't resurrect it anymore. Wow. .

Pax Judaica is the proposed replacement: Israel as hub Source trail 1:42:27 So I think Pax Judaica is pretty set. They've been planning this for like decades, okay? And this plan goes back centuries. And these are the most powerful people in the world. So they don't really care what we think. T... for finance, trade, technology, and imported labor. Russia and Persia are Jiang's likely literal Gog and Magog candidates, though he stresses eschatology is a framework rather than a precise timetable. China is the surprise absence. In this script, China is not the final rival Source trail 1:46:211:47:25 So this is hard, okay? Because everyone believes that China is a new superpower and the Chinese economy is certainly miraculous. But these eschatologists, they're occultists, all right? They know how the universe works....And so China does not want to get involved in this war and China doesn't want to be part of this eschatology. And it's possible that East Asia will suffer from a series of calamities that negates its involvement in the... . It is its own middle kingdom, a separate universe outside the ancient map.

Gita asks how young people can live in a world where what once sounded conspiratorial becomes mainstream. Jiang's answer is attention. The young are distracted, depressed, medicated, and schooled into compliance. The word he corrects himself toward is the key word: not complicity but compliant Source trail 1:51:101:52:12 Look, I mean, the thing that's most important is to pay attention because the reality is that this new generation does not pay attention. Even in school, they don't pay attention. I know because I'm a high school teache...Compliant. Okay? To be compliant. Compliant. Yeah. Yeah. Right? And what they want is compliancy. And that's what you're taught in school nowadays. , compliancy. Education has become training for obedience.

So Gita asks what education should be. Jiang says he teaches the great books as portals into the mind of the universe Source trail 1:52:39 I mean, I teach the great books. I teach Plato, Homer, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare. I mean, what I try to do is I try to show students that the great books are a part of the world. They are a portal into the mind of the... , lifelong guides to happiness, meaning, and purpose. He chooses high school over university because the university rewards narrow conformity Source trail 1:54:44 Do you work at a university? I mean, there's very little freedom in a university. I mean, you have to publish papers that conform to a system. There's a certain set of values, but I mean, you can't really question the e... . A person asking fundamental questions about truth is treated as crazy there.

The message for teachers and students is almost embarrassingly simple: you matter Source trail 1:56:161:57:59 Two words, you matter. Okay? Don't think, oh, you know what? There's 8 billion people in the world. I'm just one person. so don't matter don't think okay you know what we're ruled by demons they're too powerful they can...nobody before i was just a random high school teacher in china and there are like millions of random high school teachers in china but because i choose just as my free will to speak up because i choose to matter um i am... . Jiang does not mean self-esteem. He means cause and effect. If the universe is connected, then choosing goodness affects the whole. Satan cannot punish a bargain you never made Source trail 1:57:10 uh that people don't really appreciate is that your free will well and it was like you know oh professor jiang mr jiang you are saying so many controversial things aren't you afraid for your own personal safety and the... ; power, fame, and wealth are dangerous because they are offers to let the wrong thing in the door.

The love question closes the loop. Jiang says people have been fooled into believing only the material world matters. Love is who we are Source trail 1:58:44 doesn't matter we've been fooled to believe that only the material world matters we've been told to believe that to show love to your children you have to get them into private school you have to get into every league b... ; generosity, compassion, and openness bring God into the world. Then the interview ends with two dated predictions: he expects an April Trump-Xi grand bargain Source trail 1:59:191:59:28 quick questions so how do you think the trump xi meeting will turn out in april i think it'll bewonderful i think it'll be spectacular i think it'll be a grand bargain between china and united states that restores a lot of bilateral bilateral relations i think it's possible that china starts to buy more oil from t... to go better than anticipated, and he would bet good money that Trump can run for a third term.