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Per my latest project, this will be the first entry of hundreds regarding a current nation state. Each blog entry will dive into the notable history of the area, the people, and the timeline for the official statehood of the country being discussed. If any country peaks your interest, I will try to link a couple of resources for anyone interested to do a deeper dive. Now, onto our first nation, the current Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
Everyone in the western world and Russia are aware of Afghanistan. Due to the country being constantly at war since the late 1970s, Afghanistan has been the headquarters of imperial activity due to its centralized location and plentiful natural resources. Afghanistan is known for its agricultural and mining economy with many key elements needed for our present-day technological world that can be found deep in the Hindu Kush mountain range that litters the north and northeastern section of the country. Due to its incredibly inhospitable terrain, Afghanistan has gotten the nickname, “The Graveyard of Empires.” Going back to antiquity, the Sikhs and the Safavids of Persia were repelled by the Afghani tribes. The only two imperial entities to capture Afghanistan are two of the most famous historical figures, Alexander the Great and the Mongols ruled by Genghis Khan. After the Mongol Empire broke apart into four regions, Afghanistan became part of the Chagatai Khanate but quickly rebelled against their new overlords. The Khanate was gone by the mid-14th Century. Alexander took the region known as Bactria back in 327 BC during a brutal campaign and faced increased resistance during the Greek rule there. The Greco-Bastrian Kingdom lasted over 200 years before collapsing around 120 BC. In recent times, the British were kicked out of the country once and for all in 1919 followed by the Soviets in 1989 and finally, the United States in 2021. Afghanistan can be conquered as each of these nations can attest. The problem which even Alexander the Great understood is the difficulty of hanging onto this desolate region. Eventually, the local tribes do succeed over time. A few key events that have occurred in Afghan history. Afghanistan does not have a dominant tribe that rules the nation. Even though the nation is 99% Islamic, the Pashtun tribe is the largest minority representing about 40% of the population. The Tajiks (Who will be discussed later) and the Hazara are also well represented. Before the Islamic religion became prominent in the region during the 7th Century, Afghanistan due to its decentralization and local tribal communities had dozens of ancient religions such as Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, other ancient Iranian religions, and Hinduism as just a few examples of the diverse amount of beliefs that populated the countryside. The capture of Afghanistan by the Muslims took 400 years when Mahmud of Ghanzi eliminated the last remaining Hindus and essentially Islamized the country permanently and became the first Sultan. After Mahmud, Afghanistan had a few short-lived empires during the medieval era. The most famous was the Timurid Empire established in the late 14th Century after the Mongols were repelled. Under this empire, there was a Timurid Renaissance which became the hub for arts and science inside the Islamic world from the 14th to 16th Century. The Timurid Renaissance is considered one of the Golden Ages of Islamic thought and invention and is often compared to the Italian Renaissance for its importance. Probably the most famous export of Afghanistan are Afghan rugs. Going back to the time before Christ, the people of the region took pride in their incredibly well-designed and handcrafted rugs. Here is a summary of their history. Afghan rugs have a very long history, with their roots in the hand-woven traditions of Central Asian nomadic tribes dating back over 2,000 years. Developed by the Bactrian and Sogdian people that were native to this region, these ancient, handcrafted textiles evolved over centuries and began being exported to other parts of the world beginning around the 1600s.
I hope you enjoyed this short summary about the complex nation of Afghanistan. I intend to do these posts in an alternating alphabetic order. Next, will be the last country alphabetically, Zimbabwe before we jump back into the “A’s.” Here are a few resources if you want to learn more about this country including its most famous novel. THE KITE RUNNER by Khaled Hosseini. Historically, there are a few fascinating books. Amazon.com: Afghanistan: A History from 1260 to the Present, Expanded and Updated Edition: 9781789145885: Lee, Jonathan L.: Books Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History, Second Edition: Barfield, Thomas J.: 9780691238562: Amazon.com: Books And of course, Western involvement in the country Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001: Coll, Steve: 9780143034667: Amazon.com: Books Games without Rules: The Often-Interrupted History of Afghanistan: Ansary, Tamim: 9781610393195: Amazon.com: Books
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Due to my recent interest in political history and geography, I began to wonder about the current state of the world. Why is it that we have six continents carved up with defined borders that contain almost two hundred unique nations? How did we arrive at that number? According to the countries that are recognized by the UN, we have 193 states. But per the UN’s own recognition of additional states, we have 195 (Two UN dependency states: Vatican City and Palestine). Some countries recognize more. For instance, the United States recognizes 196 nations including Kosovo (Claimed by Serbia), Niue and the Cook Islands (Often claimed by New Zealand). Besides these nation states, there are either 58 according to WorldAtlas or 71 according to Visual Capitalist dependencies and territories that are part of larger, imperial nations scattered around the globe. Any of these dependencies could become a new nation state upon declaring independence. In all, these nation-state/dependencies total over 17,500 global ethnicities. Since I was brought onto this Earth in 1974, we have added 57 nations to this planet net total losing some massive countries and empires (Like the Soviet Union) and gaining many others like the remnants of the collapsed Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, the end of the British Empire, along with the end of all colonization in Africa. Despite historical studies that often focus on famous empires like the Egyptians, Romans and Mongolians, the nation state is new to the human experience. The Peace of Westphalia signed in 1648 that ended the dual THIRTY YEARS WAR (Often referred to by historians as the first actual world war) and EIGHTY YEARS WAR (The War for Dutch Independence that started their empire and began the decline of the Spanish) which caused approximately eight million deaths helped create a new geo-political reality called the Westphalian system. This new political system was based around the idea of respecting individual nation state sovereignty. The Peace of Westphalia, which is often taught as a historical afterthought, remains as important as any other era like the Renaissance or the Middle Ages due to the changes it created. The idea was formulated by the natural law theorist Hugo Grotius and the state theorist Jean Bodin and is still engrained into the UN Charter,
“Nothing shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.” This international system was practiced by civilized nations until the dual World Wars in the 20th Century where new ideologies revolving around class conflict and new financial ideas clashed for supremacy. Even though peace was temporarily created inside Europe, all the Westphalian nations continued fighting wars on a regular basis into the mid-19th Century, often expanding their borders to gain more territorial sovereignty over a larger chunk of the planet. These essays will dive into each nation’s history, founding, and current political system practiced whether a Republic, a Kingdom, a Federation, etc. When a territory or exception to the rule is discussed based on the current global order, this will also get its own essay explaining its circumstances. I hope you enjoy this project. Have a good 2026 everyone. Before beginning my big project in 2026 (Which may include a Rumble channel), I want to reflect on the year that just ended. 2025 feels like the fastest year from start to finish in my lifetime. If reaching middle age is a race to the end, than the sweet taste of death will be upon me much faster than anticipated. In 2025, I traveled more outside of the country than ever before. Due to being unemployed for a large chunk of the year, the family decided to spend some of our hard-earned savings on experiencing the different nation states and cultures of this planet. Back in March, we spent ten days in Mexico, a country I have always loved. In September, we spent fourteen days in South Korea and Japan. And during Thanksgiving weekend, we spent a few days on two Caribbean islands (Cozumel in Mexico and Roatan in Honduras) as well as experiencing Mayan ruins on a boat ride in Belize. Throwing in my Southern European adventure in late October/early November of 2023, I have visited eleven nations in a little over 14 months. I will admit to being fatigued and exhausted by all of this. Since I am starting a new higher paying job in Texas during the first week of 2026, I am looking forward to a slower, more boring life researching cultures and spending more time on the couch reading historical novels in my free time while helping my son get through high school.
As this will be my last blog of 2025, I want to make a few recommendations for entertainment that was released over this current year. 2025 may go down historically as one of the worst years of American culture in history. There is so much garbage in video games, television, and the film worlds. Hollywood is on its last legs and deservedly so. Video games which had their apex in the 2000s/early 2010s began their terminal decline to the eventual reality of super mergers and less creativity. And television’s golden age ended when the COVID lockdowns struck. But there were a few gems if you look hard enough. Films My two favorite movies this year are EDDINGTON and THE LIFE OF CHUCK. I have written about EDDINGTON here. THE LIFE OF CHUCK directed by arguably this decade’s best director Mike Flanagan (Especially for his television content) is a sci-fi ghost story with a large dose of philosophy that hits all the right notes. One of the most positive films I have seen in a very long time. WAKE UP DEAD MAN or KNIVES OUT 3 directed by the ever-dependable Rian Johnson is the best of the trilogy and a solid third place for the year. He somehow blends a murder mystery with a story about faith. Highly recommended for those who have not seen it. If you notice the pattern above, if a film has a good director (And in this case, all three directors of these films are highly respected), Hollywood still puts out some good content. You must look for it through all the political bullshit. In terms of video games, I have nothing to recommend. I have downloaded a very popular, highly rated game called CLAIR OBSCUR: EXPEDITION 33 for future play which I will review if the game is life changing in any way. Finally, television really begun its descent to the bottom. The two best shows were both from the science fiction genre. Everything else while good either felt underwhelming or disappointing compared to previous seasons. SEVERANCE Season 2 was one of the few fantastic shows with a continued star making turn by Adam Scott. The other show which has not completed its first season is PLUR1BUS which is the new show from creator Vince Gilligan. The first season of all his shows are the weakest before they evolve into must watch television. This first season has been amazing. Both these shows happen to be on Apple TV. So either you already have the membership, or buy the subscription for one month and power watch these shows (The other great sci fi show on Apple TV is DARK MATTER. Don’t miss that one either.) To show you where my head is at for the future, I have become fascinated with the religion of Zoroastrianism. This religion was the foundation of multiple Persian Empires before the time of Christ until the Islamic takeover of that area by the Rashidun Caliphate in the 7th Century which evolved into the Abassid Caliphate which lasted into the 1500s and was more heavily influenced by Persian culture. Zoroastrianism has an interesting back story. It was the foundation of the early Persian Empires, the Achaemenid, the Parthian and finally, the Sasanian which fell to the Caliphate. This religion was monotheistic and very similar to Christianity and Buddhism in many ways. Zoroastrianism was a very positive religion revolving around a God-like entity named Ahura Mazda who is in an eternal battle with the evil Angra Mainyu who creates destructive thoughts. Historians are still torn about how much influence Zoroastrians had on the Christian church and Buddhist spirituality. Without a doubt, Zoroastrians have the best place of worship (Fire temples) on the planet. There is one located near Houston that I will likely attend soon for curiosity’s sake. Anyway, Merry Christmas and a Happy 2026 to everyone. See you next year. Before beginning my long-term project (Which I will mention at the end of this rant), I wanted to write a blog that was pure speculation with questions. Since the COVID lockdowns in March of 2020, many of my core beliefs have been ripped out of my brain and flushed down the proverbial mental toilet. I have always leaned politically libertarian with my beliefs and have always perceived that an administrative government inside any nation state inflicts more harm than good on its population. As it increases in size and power, it becomes even more tyrannical, inefficient, and distant from the common voter. Despite seeing this in various government agencies throughout my life, the United States government still seemed like it was a necessary evil and manageable in size. It engages in more harm than good most of the time. Oe so I thought. With the degradation of our culture witnessed during COVID, it became very clear that almost all our institutions outside of our massive, corrupt government were also broken including banks, employers, the education system, the medical industry, charities, etc. This revelation has completely revamped my naivety about how society is supposed to function. When you do a deep dive into the people who are the most successful, especially at the management/administration level, you quickly realize that orthodoxy and a dogmatic belief in a broken system is the quickest path to an upper middle-class lifestyle. Questioning orthodoxies is not the path to success in a world that is heavily controlled by the interests of billionaire tyrants. Here are a couple of questions that have been banging around inside my brain over the last half decade.
1) During a period of collective orthodoxy with a good majority of individuals believing in false ideals, does this explain religious beliefs and some of the interesting questions asked by people like Elon Musk? Do we live in a simulation? Is there a God-like figure manipulating our lives with an Xbox controller and pressing buttons just to see how humanity reacts? Were the Wachowski Brothers right and our lives are also simulated while we are being harvested for our bio-energy? The answers to these questions are unknowable. But ask yourself this? If our world wasn’t filled with so much bullshit propaganda, tyrannical leaders, and political and tribal divisions, would we really be asking ourselves these questions? Back during the Roman Empire before the rise of Christianity, the Roman people used Gods as symbols to explain concepts that were outside the norm of understanding. The chaos of the world was unpredictable. If the island of Cyprus got hit with a hurricane, it meant that Neptune (Or in Greek, Poseidon) was likely angry with humanity. Living inside this bizarre 21st Century world, I understand these beliefs and why the Romans embraced this. Regarding Christianity, the thriving Roman Empire saw this religious sect as a cult during its heyday. As the Western Roman Empire began to crumble in the 3rd Century, more people turned to this new religion. It provided a form of mental comfort and meaning in a world bombarded with barbarian raiders striking all over Europe. When radical and often violent events don’t make sense and originate outside of a person’s reality, it may appear that supernatural forces are impacting your life. It may feel like the devil (Hades) has come to take your soul away to the underworld. For those who do pay attention and can perceive how insane the world has gotten, it makes sense that young people are flocking to religion since the COVID era. Individuals need some form of guidance, and the Gods of technology and government administration have turned out to be false prophets. So, religion is once again becoming the guiding principle for many youthful lives. 2) Has democracy failed? In a capitalist system where money leads to influence and power, is “reality” the world that the people with the most wealth and power inflict upon us through various psychological means? Is the “truth” whatever the most powerful people say it is? These questions have made me remember the infamous GRAND INQUISITOR poem from THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Dostoyevsky. After capturing Jesus during the Inquisition, the Grand Inquisitor explains to Him how the world works. For humanity to unite, have success, and to get three meals a day, people need to allow the forces of the Devil to control them. Even the Church Jesus’s followers helped create to spread His message used the exact same tactics of control to gain its influence. The Inquisitor’s entire speech is given to demoralize Jesus and inform Him that his faith in humanity was misguided. On this note, it does appear we live inside a world loaded with fake science, false beliefs and false prophets, and even a form of monetary exchange that can be manipulated and counterfeited at will. Nothing feels honest or real in this world anymore. Every single truth can be questioned and likely considered a fabrication if “studies” were allowed to take place. And what we often believe is exactly what people with the influence want us to believe. Whether the constant dogmatic opinions and advertising propaganda is true is insignificant. A wealthy individual with influence can achieve his self-interested goals and continue to attain personal wealth and power at our expense. With any democracy, propaganda will always be present and controlled by the people with the most influence over our culture. Corporations spend billions of dollars on advertising to influence your mind even if what they are promoting is a lie. Per this wonderful quote from an article discussing our present-day cowardice regarding COVID: “The language used wasn’t scientific; it was religious. “Do your part,” “Protect the vulnerable,” “Follow the science.” Dogmas, not method. Questioning became heresy. “Denier,” “anti-science,” “murderer.” Moral accusations, not scientific disagreement. Experts as priests. Young people as sacrificial offerings. Obedience as virtue. All for a “greater good” that never existed, that was a deception. In the Cold War, the military-industrial lobby controlled fear. During Covid, the pharmaceutical lobby was the one running the show. Decisions favored record profits while 160 million people were pushed into extreme poverty. Not a coincidence. We are, in fact, the most cowardly society of all time. It wasn’t cowardice to be afraid of Covid. The fear was legitimate. The disease was real. The deaths were real. The cowardice was something else. It was accepting the moral inversion — old people sacrificing the young — without anyone raising a voice. It was obeying misleading propaganda from corporations with a $33 billion history of fraud fines. It was creating nothing — no art, no movement, no meaningful culture — from the greatest collective trauma in decades. It was forgetting quickly when remembering became inconvenient. The Cold War gave us “Born to Be Wild” and the slogan “Make love, not war.” Covid gave us vaccine passports and delivery apps. No transformative art. No revolution of thought.” Maybe the Grand Inquisitor was correct. 3) What is there to believe in? The most important of all these questions asked above. Living in a world where the truth seems to be in flux depending on which president or political party rules, the answer lies within yourself. A person with a healthy sense of personal morality and integrity will know how to live their life inside a world that feels like a construct created inside a virtual reality program. For every individual, they need to discover their purpose outside of the constant and persistent noise forced upon us that exists to destroy our individuality. Without gaining this insight, you may end up lost in the woods forever. IN TWO WEEKS: I will begin writing blogs about the origin of every nation state on the Earth with an introduction. Until then, I wish everyone a peaceful Holiday season. As a new project is beginning to come alive in my brain, I want to recommend a couple of websites run by an individual I have followed for decades and another run by two brothers that have created the best philosophical website on YouTube. For those who pay attention to my personal website, I put many recommendations on my front page that are hyperlinked. Those websites are my personal “bubble.” The reason these were selected is because over years of living inside a controversial and often propagandistic political climate, the information they provide holds up factually against almost any other website online. No provider of news is perfect but depending on the subject or the political situation, I often default to those websites listed. Last week, I spent 150 dollars to add two more websites to my recommendation list.
I adore Scott Horton. No person has more in-depth knowledge and understanding of American foreign policy in the 21st Century. His three books on the War on Terror, War in Afghanistan, and the War in Ukraine will be read by generations in the future to describe exactly what happened during one of the most hubristic moments in this country’s history. Horton also debates pro-war neo-conservatives and often dissects them live. Last week, Scott launched the Scott Horton Academy located here. As an individual who has met Scott multiple times including at the recent 90th birthday party for Ron Paul, I subscribed. The history provided at this Academy will be cited and researched hundreds of years down the line. Here is a sample of his first five classes. Four of them will be taught by individuals that have a different specialization than Scott but can bring expertise in different subjects. The Truth Behind the War on Terrorism by Scott Horton On the media, 40 Years of Hard-Hitting Investigative Journalism by James Bovard The Reality of the Israeli Palestinian Conflict by Ramzy Baroud Trail of Tears: American Stalemate and Defeat Since 1945 by Bill Buppert And Coming Soon The Origin of Christian Zionism by Father Francisco If you want to be knowledgeable on topics that are not taught anymore in our university system, I recommend all these courses. Finally, the best YouTube channel is The Academy of Ideas. Started by a couple of brothers from Canada, the website evaluates our present-day circumstances and the mindsets and psychology that have gotten us into our 21st Century dilemma. These videos are incredibly well researched and highly recommended. I began my annual membership last week. Besides the insights they provide, they also take incredible snapshots of paintings and incorporate them into the subject matter that is being discussed. If you adore Karl Jung like I do or want to dive into an original anti-authoritarian perspective on how sociopaths control our thoughts, this website will not disappoint. Next week, I am going to announce my next project. Feel free to subscribe to both these wonderful websites if they appeal to your interest. One of the best moments of my trip to Tokyo occurred on the last full day inside the city. In Akihabara, the consumer stores are beyond belief in size and scope. Yodobashi Camera is a nine-story store with each floor being about the size of a Home Depot. There are hundreds if not thousands of people wandering around inside. On our first night in Tokyo, my partner left her glasses in this store. One of the things you may not know about Japan is that theft is incredibly rare. If something is misplaced, the store will likely still have it. I dropped my passport in Osaka, and an older woman chased me down and gave it back to me. The Japanese will find the item and return it to the store management out of courtesy if they can’t find the owner. On this day, we went back to this store to find my partner’s glasses which she left on a table on the 2nd floor. Like a moment out of the movie LOST IN TRANSLATION which will make you appreciate the brilliance of that film more, the girl we approached at customer service did not speak English. For foreigners, most Japanese people do not speak English unlike Europe where about 40% do. My partner immediately took out Google Translate to converse with this girl. In response, the customer service girl took out Google Translate to respond to the questions. After twenty minutes of sitting back and witnessing this, the girl went into lost and found and retrieved my partner’s glasses. Despite the shocking aspect of getting back our glasses inside a store that sees tens of thousands of people wandering through it every day, the memory that this created will remain one of the highlights of this Japanese adventure.
Upon landing in Tokyo, it is impossible to perceive the incredible size of this city. Tokyo is the largest city in the world by population with over 37 million people living inside its city limits. The city is broken into 23 wards with each one having as many as a dozen subdistricts inside them. During our almost four complete days, we were only able to see six of these wards (Taito, Sumida, Chiyoda, Chuo, Koto and Shibuya) and about a dozen subdistricts (Including Akihabara which is part of Chiyoda where we stayed for three nights). Each ward feels like a massive city. Imagine taking the downtowns of the United States 23 largest cities with their own unique features and cultural experiences and combining them into one massive megacity and this gives you an idea of the enormity of Tokyo. During our four days there, we moved around the city from morning to night and experienced as much as we could in the time allotted. In most cities, we would have likely done at least half of the best experiences during a similar timeframe. In Tokyo, we just scratched the surface of all the city’s activities. Here is a breakdown by day: Day 1: Docked inside the Koto Ward at the international ship terminal. Took an Uber to DiverCity Plaza (Our first massive mall) which is part of an entertainment complex in the area that includes Tokyo Joypolis and the Toyota Basketball Arena and walked to the Tokyo Teleport Station in Aomi to take the subway to Shibuya ward. Spent half the day in Shibuya at the famous Shibuya Scramble Crossing made famous by every movie shot in Japan and often included inside every tourist brochure. Ate at a ramen place and decided to do some shopping. Tokyo allows select stores due to the weakness of the Japanese yen to sell tax free consumer goods if you spend a minimum of 5000 yen (About 33 dollars) at the store. Passports and ID must be shown to remove the taxes. Prices in Japan are anywhere from 20-50% cheaper than the United States. We loaded up on shoes, tech products, and cheap snacks. Later in Harajuku, which is north and in the Shibuya ward, my partner went crazy over the incredibly cheap makeup selection. Since I love history, we incorporated a stop to a famous Shinto Temple nearby called the Meiji Jingu Higashijimon and walked the Gyeon (Garden) nearby. This was the Meiji Royal family’s favorite location in Tokyo, and the queen often was present in this garden and served tea in a hut inside the grounds to any invited guests. Shibuya also had a Tower Records store that my family had to grab and drag me out kicking and screaming after spending an hour there reminiscing about this amazing musical store from my childhood. Took the subway back to our ship and crashed into our bed for one final night. Day 2: Got up and took the subway to Asakusabashi which is a residential neighborhood next to Akihabara Electric Town. On day three, we also found ourselves in the residential area of Oshiage near the Tokyo Skytree in the Sumida ward. Despite the massive population of Tokyo, these residential areas are incredibly quiet. Most people travel via subway or bicycle, so street traffic is light, and everyone keeps to themselves in their humble abodes. I have never been to a city this large with such quiet residential communities that resemble ghost towns in the evening. After checking in, my partner and I were disappointed to find out that the Sumo arena and museum nearby were sold out due to an ongoing tournament, so we went into Marunouchi, part of the Chiyoda ward, and watched a troupe practicing a performance they were putting on for the city later that evening. We moved into the Imperial Palace gardens and walked miles enjoying the old guard stations, the ruins and ancient walls of the palace grounds, and the beautiful garden that used to be the center of the city of Edo (Which became Tokyo in 1868). Part of the Imperial Grounds is roped off as the current Japanese royal family lives there. After this, we took the local bus through the upscale Ginza neighborhood down to the Tsukiji market in the Chuo ward and enjoyed some very rare and surprisingly cheap sushi while also getting ripped off buying a beef dish for our son. We walked into Ginza and enjoyed the rich upscale aspect of this area. During the evening, we met back in our hotel and went into Akihabara for the first time (Where my partner would lose her glasses) and experienced the crazy anime and tech stores and the multi-story retro arcades. NOTE: Another thing about Japan. You never have to worry about being thirsty. Every street corner inside all the cities during our Japanese tour has vending machines with an incredibly large selection of drinks from basic water bottles to coffees, to the most unique, sweet Japanese refreshments. The drinks can usually be bought for about 1 to 2 dollars American (125 to 400 yen). Often, these vending machines would be the only place where you could find a trash can in the city. Day 3: This was our most active day. Went into Asakusa in the Taito ward to see one last historical place, the famous Buddhist temple of Senso-Ji, the oldest temple in Tokyo. The temple grounds have Nakamise Shopping Street that occupies the walk from the outside gate to its entrance. The best Udon noodle restaurant of this trip was in this market, Udon Asakuza Kanoya. The ubiquitous mile-long mall was located to the west. Asakusa had a nicer vibe as the buildings were not stacked, and it had a smaller town feel but with its own unique cultural vibe. After spending half a day here, we moved over to the famous Tokyo Skytree which sits on top of another massive mall. This was the most frustrating part of the trip. For the first time, the Skytree felt like all 37 million Tokyo residents were enjoying it with us. The amount of people walking around this area was insane. The wait to get to the top of the Skytree was over five hours. After learning about the history of the Skytree in the lobby, my partner and I decided to forego this attraction and walk the beautiful Oyokagawa Shinsui Park along a canal where cherry blossoms bloom in season (Not during September though) which ended up in the residential community of Oshiage that housed the Tobacco and Salt Museum located in the Sumida ward. Due to how quiet the museum was, we bought tickets and spent a good 90 minutes here learning more things about the history of tobacco and salt than anyone on this planet should know. Afterwards, we walked into the humble and poorer subdistrict of Azumabashi and again headed back to Akihabara where we wandered around Electric Town playing video games and eating. AMAZING EXPERIENCE PART 5: TOKYO EFFICIENCY In a city like New Delhi or New York or Los Angeles, observing the city from the sky would seem like a nightmare of headlights and red stoplights for miles upon miles of endless roads. This will not be an experience you will have in Tokyo. While we planned our day, Google was very accurate on its time predictions about how long it takes to get to each location in Tokyo. The subway or elevated train was the quickest form of travel over 90% of the time. The only exceptions to this were the local bus we took from the Imperial Palace to Tsukiji and the Uber we took from our cruise ship to the Plaza in Aomi inside the Koto ward. No location took us longer than an hour to travel to. The trains run about every five minutes. They are often packed and always on time. Using Google as a resource is incredibly important as many of the signs are in Japanese. Google will also explain very accurately the subway route you need to take to your location. With these subways, they can often change the name of the line you are on while moving into the next district. Be patient with this. Google will often tell you to stay on the train as the name of the line changes. In the two occasions this happened to me, Google Maps was correct, and it will eventually soothe that voice in your mind that questions the directions being shown. The most helpful aspect is that the subway stations are often numbered, and this helps in finding the proper track and location. Upon arriving, buying the Suica card is essential to enjoying Tokyo. The card is only available to buy at major subway terminals. The first purchase can be made with a credit card (2000 yen or about 14 dollars). After the initial purchase, money can only be added to the card in most locations with cash. Bringing cash into Tokyo is necessary as without it, your experience will be limited. Experiencing the efficiency of the subway system and the generosity and calmness of the people as everyone matriculates like insects through the winding underground caverns of the long walkways and staircases is an experience everyone visiting Tokyo needs to have. Not many people drive in Tokyo. Once you take the subway and bullet trains a couple of times, it will make perfect sense as to why. Day 4: Every vacation must end. Since we booked this vacation through a travel agency, the flight back was out of Tokyo-Narita, the furthest of Tokyo’s two international airports. This airport is located a good hour outside of Tokyo to the east. The airport in the city is called Haneda and is located south in Ota City near Kawasaki. Narita requires a good 90-minute train ride from the airport to get into the city. Since we needed to be there by 1 pm, we enjoyed our last breakfast at a coffee shop in Akihabara and went on our way. The train ride took us through the suburban Katsushika City and the outskirts town of Kamagaya. After we cleared the massive Tokyo urban area, Japan turned into a rural wonderland with farmland and beautiful green pastures for miles on end until you dump into the international airport. If you have extra money on your Suica cards (Which we did), you can use it at this airport to buy tax free goods and food to drain the remaining balance. I hope you enjoyed this reflection on my recent trip to Tokyo. The last couple of years being a world traveler and moving my countries visited up from the low single digits into the teens has been the most incredible learning experience. Please leave any questions and feedback in the comments.  My previous post exposed some of my issues with the Asian Far East in terms of how an American feels about a foreign nation that has a history and culture that evolved to be quite different from our own. (Part 2 will discuss Greater Japan and South Korea while Part 3 will finish these areas and include the wonderful city of Tokyo.) Before moving on, I want to make a couple of comments that may be perceived as negative but since weather is not something anyone can control, I want to discuss this in the introductory paragraph. During my 12 days in the Far East, I have never encountered worse humidity. I currently live about an hour north of Houston, Texas on a lake. I have been to New Orleans and Florida in the summer. These are considered some of the most humid locations inside the United States. No place inside the United States has ever felt as miserable as South Korea and Japan. During our trip there, the weather was consistently between 85 to 95 degrees with over 80% humidity almost every single day. Since we engaged in lots of physical exercise (More on this later), upon returning to our ship, we were drenched in sweat and smelling of body odor, bad breath, and drenched clothing. This forced us to fork over sixty dollars on the ship to have our clothes washed because not only did we not pack enough to account for this humidity, but we also packed too many long sleeves and heavy pants that made the experience of walking around Japan even more miserable. Due to my own ignorance, I knew that Japan was humid in the summer. But I did not expect it to feel like wading inside swamp water during the entire trip. Just a warning for anyone that wants to visit between June and September.
To give you a summary of the trip, we experienced South Korea and Japan by water which I highly recommend. Our flight into Incheon, South Korea took a total of 18 hours counting the 14 hours from Houston to Taiwan, the one-hour layover in the Taipei airport (One of the nicest airports in my experiences), followed by another three-hour flight to South Korea. By the time we hit baggage claim in Incheon, I was mentally fried. After our drive through dystopian South Korea (Mentioned in my previous post) to board our boat, we had been up a total of 27 hours. Our itinerary was as follows: Day 0: Incheon, South Korea (About 60 kilometers AKA 36 miles from downtown Seoul) Day 1: Jeju Island, South Korea Day 2: Sasebo/Nagasaki, Japan Day 3: Beppu, Japan Day 4: Hiroshima, Japan Day 5: Kochi, Japan Day 6: Osaka/Kyoto, Japan Day 7: Nagoya, Japan Day 8: Shizuoka, Japan Day 9-12: Tokyo, Japan Besides Jeju Island off the coast of South Korea, we were able to enjoy three of Japan’s largest islands, (Leaving the northern island of Hokkaido, home to Sapporo and many beautiful mountain ranges and national parks out of the equation.) Kyushu, Shikoku, and the most famous, Honshu. Every day, we spent a full day from morning till the evening in each city, ate dinner, fell asleep, and woke up the next day in a new city. This was like our experience in Europe last October where the morning would bring us a completely different and unique cultural experience. Japan and South Korea’s cultures are not that different. But the cities we went to were completely unique from one another. AMAZING EXPERIENCE PART 1: THE FOOD Last year, I spent an inordinate amount of time boasting on this blog and to friends and family about the food experience in Europe, ranging from the pasta, to the alcohol, and raving about the perfect cup of coffee every morning no matter what country I woke up in. Of course, Asian food evolved out of a completely different region and culture and in our present day, some form of Far East Asian food is often the favorite for a discerning foodophile. So, is it better overall than European food? NO Is it better quality than American food? YES Did I have some of the best Korean and Japanese food experiences of my life? ABSOLUTELY. On this trip, I can confidently say that I had three meals that were better than any Asian food eaten inside the United States. KOREAN BBQ: On Jeju Island, I had the best Korean BBQ of my life. The island is famous for its Jeju Black PIgs whose meat called Black Pork is used in various dishes on the island. Jeju has an area called the Black Pork Street where all the restaurants that are authorized to sell this meat are located. Due to the need to preserve the DNA integrity of this pig, bringing pork on or off the island is strictly banned. Once you taste the meat, you will understand why. Black pork cooked on a grill slowly has a richer, deeper pork flavor. One of the most incredible meals of my lifetime and not a bad experience to have on your first and only full day on South Korea land. SEAFOOD CHINESE NOODLE DISH: Sasebo was our most disappointing day in Japan. This was not the fault of the city. Our time inside the city was too short to enjoy most of the activities which were one to two hours out of the city including Nagasaki to the south and our port time was a pathetic six hours in length (No other city was less than nine hours.). (NOTE: Sasebo is home to a United States Naval Base, and we met a couple of sailors walking through the city.) After matriculating through the city and experiencing our first Buddhist Shinto Temple (And Japan’s humidity) and their incredible miles long outdoor malls (The first of many), we wanted to try the best food the city had to offer. Inside the Sasebo train station in a dumpy corner is a Michelin Star restaurant called Nagasaki Champon Koran. You know this place is legit as all the locals will wait an hour in line to eat here while the restaurant located ten feet across the way which has the same menu sits empty. I am personally not a fan of Chinese noodle dishes. But damn it, if I ever found myself living inside this city, I don’t think I could eat anything else. This was without a doubt the greatest noodle dish I have ever eaten in my life. If anyone finds themselves in this southeastern part of Japan, I recommend going out of your way to experience this food. Plus, when accounting for the price converted into US dollars, you can eat a bowl for 8-9 bucks. BONITO SUSHI: I am a massive fan of sushi. The big fishes like tuna and the swordfish family often have the best tasting meat that can be cooked in multiple ways. Bonito is a member of the tuna family often nicknamed “Little Tuna” by food aficionados. In Kochi on the island of Shikoku (Our only day on this island), they specialize in seared bonito sushi (Katsuo No Tataki). They cook the sushi over a raw flame often using straw as the ignition and chop it into pieces to allow the burned exterior to blend with the rare interior. Not only was this the best tuna sushi experience of my life, but this was also the best SUSHI experience ever. Inside the Hirome Market, there are various vendors that specialize in serving this type of sushi. After we spent a couple of hours at the beautiful Katsurahama Beach being unable to swim in the pleasantly calm water, we taxied over to the market to enjoy their specialty. I spent a total of three hours there eating what is the equivalent of three lunches. I tried two different types of Katsuo No Tataki and had sushi from another vendor that specialized in eel. Both restaurants that served seared bonito sushi did an incredible job. Of all the amazing things I did in Japan, I keep returning to this experience. Because when my body finally gives out and my life starts to end, I have no doubt my mind will return to this day and the experience of eating this fish. So, you may be asking yourself after reading this, how is Asian food worse than European food? Here is your answer. Inside Tokyo specifically, there are lots of vendors that will lie to you and sell imitation or cheaper versions of food and pass it off as legitimate. You also need to be careful with cheaper restaurants. There is a significant difference between a good restaurant with slightly higher prices and cheaper ones. The difference in food quality is quite noticeable. One night in Tokyo, we decided to eat at a Yoshinoya Beef Bowl (An American company) to save some money. It was the only food on the trip that made me feel sick for an entire evening. Because of this dichotomy and range of food quality, Europe remains the champion of the two continents due to its consistency. AMAZING EXPERIENCE PART 2: THE MUSEUMS I have always loved museums and historical monuments, especially involving countries in which their history is mostly unknown to me. On this vacation, we experienced quite a few of both. In order, we went to Mokgwana and Gwandeokjeong which is a preserved and rebuilt administrative center from 14th Century South Korea in the city of Jeju that explains in detail how Korean culture operated hundreds of years ago. In Hiroshima, we went to the rebuilt Hiroshima Castle (Obliterated by the Atomic Bomb) and experienced one of the most haunting experiences of my life, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. For those who think it was alright to drop an atomic bomb on a civilian population, spend three hours in that museum and come back to me. Plus, getting to see this building below in person from all the historical photos was quite a sobering experience. In Kyoto, we got to see one of the most famous Shinto temples, Fushimi Inari, and passed through its hundreds of torii gates into the spirit world with a tour guide who gave us an interesting history lesson on the temple and the religion that the Japanese practice called Shintoism. In Nagoya, I abandoned my family that had other interests and went to the headquarters of Toyota and experienced its amazing Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology which is fantastic especially if you are interested in the process of industrialization of the past 100 years. A quick history lesson about Japan for any ill-informed Americans. If you watch a Kurosawa samurai movie, you would think that Japan had that samurai culture for the entirety of its existence. And this opinion is not incorrect. Up until the mid-1800s during a period called the Meiji Restoration when the Emperor Meiji merged the country into a united whole and dispensed of the historical locally run shogunates, the country was still medieval in many ways. This restoration created the Meiji era when the country rapidly industrialized from 1868 to 1912 and became the Japanese Empire, a period that the Japanese reminisce about fondly. This event was brought about by the landing of Commodore Perry from the British Navy in 1853. The British challenged the existing Tokugawa Shogunate which led to the Japanese embracing technology and evolving into an industrialized nation under Emperor Meiji. There will be more of this history inside the Tokyo blog. AMAZING EXPERIENCE PART 3: TRANSPORTATION I want to give a specific example of this. Of all the cities we went to, Beppu was the most unique. A city basically built on steam generated from the volcanoes that it sits upon, the city has a tourist experience (Which happened to be the most overwhelming based on the amount of people) unlike any other. Like so many others on this day, we bought the “Seven Hells of Beppu” experience which allowed us to see seven of the most famous hot springs (Onsen) in the city. Due to their location, we were only able to experience five of these “hells” (Two of them were a few miles east and require an Uber ride to reach). From the moment we left our ship, we were able to flag an Uber almost immediately for the ride up the mountain to the top “hell.” To see the remaining four, you walk down the mountain to each location. Each one has a very specific experience whether allowing you to rest your feet in the hot springs, to seeing local alligators that thrive in the climate, to experiencing an aquarium with the local fish inside tanks. Each “hell” is different. After this, we walked to a local public ONSEN where you can publicly bathe (Naked) in the hot springs with various types of water and spa experiences. Upon completing this, we ate seafood and crab cooked in steam from the area (While good, this was not the best steamed food experience. The taste of sulfur did incorporate itself into the meat.). After we were done, an Uber showed up in minutes and took us down to our ship with twenty minutes to spare. Japan has the best transportation system of any country I have been in. Whether Uber, the subway/elevated trains or how the country is built for walking, it is never difficult to get anywhere fast. Uber drivers are professional and quick. During our twelve days in Japan, every member of my family walked at least fifty miles. No wonder almost the entire population of Japan is skinny. I will discuss more about transportation in the next blog about Tokyo. AMAZING EXPERIENCE PART 4: CLEANLINESS When I went to Europe and Canada in 2024, I never thought there would be a place on Earth cleaner and more organized than those two locations. Then, I went to Japan and South Korea. If you find trash on the ground, it usually gets there by accident, whether flying out of a trash bag or a gust of wind blowing it out of someone’s hands. Despite the incredibly few trash cans scattered around the cities, there is no trash on the ground. Homelessness is practically non-existent (I only saw two people that were either homeless or mentally disturbed which includes one individual in the park that houses the Hiroshima Peace Museum.). Graffiti was in only one location under a train track near Akihabara. Three days later, I saw a Japanese worker painting it over. The Japanese have incredible pride in their country, their cities, and their people. While Incheon, South Korea looked almost too perfect like it was modeled after a video game city, Jeju looked dirtier and grimier. But despite this, there was still no trash to be found anywhere. Even in the chaos of the miles long underground market on Jeju Island, there was an order to the vendor shops with all the products scattered in an organized way along the path. The Japanese open-air markets are even more clean and organized than their Korean brethren. As an American, I admired this sense of civic duty which got my wife and I to carry our trash around all day inside our backpack till we could toss it out on the ship. More amazing experiences coming next week when we incorporate Tokyo into this discussion including the incredible value of Japanese shopping related to their weakened yen, the experience of enjoying the largest city by population on this planet and its massive scale, the amazing transportation system of the big cities, the incredibly quiet communities where most of the Tokyo residents live, and the lack of any crime and the goodwill of the people as well as some more history, food and culture. Stay tuned.  Recently, my family went on the final trip of our lifetime as a unit. Our oldest daughter, who is now 27, has relocated to Kirkland, Washington to begin her life. In 2023, we took our kids to the Caribbean on our first trip out of the United States as a family. Earlier in 2025, we did our second family trip to Mexico. Before our daughter moved out, we fulfilled a promise we made to her as a teenager that she would see Japan in her lifetime. From September 3rd to the 15th, our family did exactly that.
Not counting the vacation last October and November to six nations in Southern Europe with my wife which is the best vacation of my lifetime, this Japan/South Korea excursion is our best international family trip. If I add domestic travel, this is our 3rd best family vacation (Our Southern trip from Austin to Orlando and our trip to Yellowstone National Park remains at the top of the ladder). This trip to Asia opened our mind to how other cultures thrive while bringing about an appreciation for their deep and complex history. And no one in the family will forget the experience of eating Katsuo (Bonito) in Kochi, Japan, fire grilled over straw and placed on top of rice. Part 2 (And possibly 3) will explain all the things that are unforgettable about Japan and South Korea. For those who want to have a completely different cultural experience, going to Asia will scratch that itch. But spending two weeks on a different continent without noticing some of the negatives would do my readers disservice. The reason why my European trip was scores better than this Asian one is because of cultural factors. Growing up in the United States inside of an Anglo-Saxon dominant culture with the amazing Constitution that we have inherited, I am a big proponent of the “leave everyone alone” mindset. I am not a fan of too many regulations and laws. Administration, especially when done by governments, is often ineffective and slow acting. Plus, when it comes to a nation like Japan, I have no problem respecting their history, culture, and the civilization they have built over thousands of years. But that does not mean that I must like every aspect of it. There were things about Japan and South Korea that were terrible and frustrating. Below is my list of things that caused my family some duress during our two-week adventure. PROBLEM 1: Trash Cans Just typing the word “trash can” above makes me want to firebomb my neighbor’s house. During our tour of a famous Shinto temple in Kyoto, our tour director informed us about the Japanese tradition of personal responsibility and respect for cleanliness. This is true. Japan is the cleanest damn country I have ever been to. Tokyo has nearly 40 million people and is incredibly clean and well organized. But the country has no public trash cans anywhere. Get ready to hold onto food wrappers, aluminum cans, containers or other food waste FOR THE ENTIRE DAY until you can get back to your hotel room or get lucky enough to find one of their ubiquitous vending machines along the street that allows you to dump trash. One time in Akihabara (More on this part of Tokyo later), I asked a business owner if I could use their trash as our backpack was loaded with it. He told me NO in his best broken English. Once while doing laundry at a nearby “washateria” next to our hotel, I spilled a little bit of soap on the ground. Trying to be respectful of their cleanliness culture, I could not find anything to pick it up. I asked two restaurant owners that denied me usage of their paper towels. So, I had to dive into a nearby trash bag (As it was trash day and all the trash in the city was out on the curb) to find a piece of paper to wipe the floor inside the laundromat. I also got a dirty look from a passerby when some of my Coke Zero spilled out on the ground due to a pothole in the road. For a culture that is proud of its cleanliness, they make it very hard to clean your spills or dispose of your waste when something goes wrong. PROBLEM 2: Arbitrary and Ridiculous Rules Involving Almost Everything in the Country Got three great examples of this. In Beppu sitting in a restaurant next to one of the “Seven Hells”, I ordered a drink. After ordering it, I got a lecture not to drink the rice concoction in the seating section. That area is for food only (Per a very bizarre sign that was difficult to understand). The only area that was acceptable was outside the restaurant or standing next to the trash can. My favorite example of these idiotic rules occurred in the Tokyo section of Akasaka. I bought the “World’s Best Apple Pie” from a street vendor inside one of their incredibly long malls (It was an incredibly good pie but still not as good as a Julian Apple Pie). After purchasing the pie, I got a piece of paper with three rules on it about consumption. Number One: Do not eat the pie while walking Number Two: Do not eat the pie in front of any store Number Three: Respect all signs So, after buying this pie, I quickly realized there was nowhere to eat it. In the few spaces where stores were not located, they had “DO NOT EAT” signs (A symbol of a man putting food in his mouth with a big red slash diagonal through the image). So, I had to get creative. I went to a traffic intersection (Not walking, not directly in front of stores, no DO NOT EAT signs) and munched the exceptionally good apple pie down. Why did I follow the rules? Because I did see Japanese store owners yelling at tourists for not following them while looking for a place to eat their food. Rules like this are posted EVERYWHERE in Japan. It is best to follow them no matter how ridiculous they may seem. On Kochi (One of my favorite stops), they have this beautiful beach on a peninsula called Katsura Beach. A Shinto Temple overlooks the ocean on the rocks. The water is clean. The waves are non-existent. And according to local authorities, the water is off limits for swimming due to “hazards”. I have seen more dangerous beaches at hotel pools. No matter how you feel about these signs and rules, this is the way Japan is. You have to accept it even if nothing makes logical sense. PROBLEM 3: Customs The United States is one of the worst nations in the world to travel to from a foreign land. I despise the TSA and find almost all their procedures pointless. But if you want to know the future of where international travel is going, go to Japan and South Korea. South Korea was not as bad as Japan. South Korea had an image on the wall of all the food that was not allowed to be brought into South Korea. We were aware of this list before our trip. Once you get to customs, you must fill out a form declaring whether you have one of their banned products going into or on the way out of the country, and whether you bought a product that requires additional taxes. To Korea’s credit, they tell you the limits of what you can buy tax free. Tax free shops EXIST EVERYWHERE in Japan and South Korea (When a certain amount of goods at a specific price have been purchased) for tourists due to the very reasonable and cheap prices on almost all retail goods. The form must be filled out when entering and leaving the country. South Korean officials will check your passport and take a photo of your face upon passing through which made the process smoother than their brethren to the east, the Japanese. Japan’s customs were incredibly irritating. Since we were on a cruise ship seeing the country from the water, we had to re-enter Japan on ten different occasions. Every city was different. Beppu and Kochi just checked our passport. The first stop in Sasebo was the worst. Besides filling out the customs declaration form, you must also fill out a form on where you are going to be in Japan during your vacation. This form must have the place where you are staying and what you intend to do during your trip. One of the fun parts of filling this tourist declaration out is trying to figure out the address of your hotel room in English to give to the customs officials. But if you think this first step is irritating, it is just the first of three. The next booth takes your fingerprints and profile picture. Finally, they look at your passport before freeing you into their country. We did not have this complication again until Tokyo where getting off that ship caused us a delay due to knives that the wife bought in Nagoya that needed to be inspected by Japanese customs. Leaving the country to come back into the United States was the same experience with the addition of also having to go through Canadian and United States customs in addition to Japan’s. The struggle is worth it as Japan is a beautiful country worth seeing. But this whole process will make you angry (I guarantee it). PROBLEM 4: The Feeling of Dehumanization This last problem is something you only notice once you have been in the country for a week. While the subway system is amazing (More on this later), everything inside this country and I mean EVERYTHING has guidance posters, billboards, and forms telling you how to behave in a way that feels like a mother nagging you for having an untucked shirt in church. Arrows are on the ground to show you the proper way to walk down a sidewalk. (Japanese drive on the opposite side of the road as Americans but this does not mean the sidewalks work in the same way). Signs telling you the appropriate place to take pictures. You can even find signs on the toilets about the proper way to use them (Please put your butt on the toilet). Everything has an instruction manual. It feels like the Japanese not only do not trust their own people to engage in proper behavior but give child-like guidance to tourists also. It is funny when you notice how programmed people are into accepting this lifestyle. But after a while, I found myself getting irritated with all these rules. It really feels like these rules are in place to just get all the sheep moving in one direction to their next location. This programming gives their society a very robotic feeling where individualism just doesn’t exist, especially when observing it from above. You do all of this without question for the betterment of Japan. Again, this is their culture and as an outsider, I will respect it which I did during my vacation. But if I had to live in Japan, all this “administration” is something that would eventually irritate me. You can argue that these rules control the chaos of a city filled with close to 40 million people. But walking around Tokyo and Kyoto, no matter how many rules may exist to increase efficiency, chaos still reigns everywhere due to the sheer size of the population. PROBLEM 5: Especially in South Korea, many cities feel dystopian and lack character We flew into Incheon which is about twenty minutes southwest of Seoul on the ocean. Driving from the airport to this city was the most dystopian experience of my life. The city is littered with hundreds of high rises and almost all of them look the same (See image above). The city felt dead with very few Koreans out on the street. With all the buildings, it felt like life was hidden away underground. The streets and roads were almost completely empty. This was a major city and yet, it did not feel alive. It felt artificial like I was an NPC exploring an open world video game. Coming off a plane and seeing this image as the first thing you experience on the Asian continent is something I will never forget. NEXT WEEK: PART 2 AND POSSIBLY 3 ON WHAT MAKES THESE ASIAN COUNTRIES GREAT Sorry for the delayed blog. Last week, I returned from a two-week vacation to the Far East spending a couple of days in South Korea and the island of Jeju and ended the vacation with twelve days in Japan starting in Sasebo and finishing north in Tokyo stopping at many cities and tourist locations on the way. Over the next month, I will post about this trip in either a two or three-part blog especially related to the contrasts between Asian and European cultures based off continual reflections from my Southern European trip last October in comparison to this recent vacation.
But before this, I was recently introduced to the idea of “Preference Falsification” through a historian on Substack, David Roman. So much of what is wrong with our present-day society can be blamed on this theoretical concept. If you analyze history, this idea goes back centuries to probably around the time that human beings first scurried out of their caves. Per the definition found on Wikipedia, Preference falsification is the act of misrepresenting a preference under perceived public pressure. It involves the selection of a publicly expressed preference that differs from the underlying privately held preference (or simply, a public preference at odds with one’s own private preference). This concept is based on a famous article written by Turkish American Ivy League professor Timur Kiran in 1987 that evolved into his 1995 book, Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification. Thinking about this psychological concept on a basic level, it really explains so much about our American society. For those who believe that our culture is artificial, preference falsification proves that it is. The idea of someone being “two-faced” where publicly, they smile and act “proper and appropriate” while if you engaged with the person privately, it is likely you would see the individual’s true personality. You can also make a theoretical argument that the artificiality of our culture IS THE TRUTH of our civilization. Humans choose to live the lie due to our mental craving to be creatures that socialize amongst themselves. Acceptance among your peers is a powerful psychological tool. Preference falsification is a form of lying. Per Kiran’s 1987 article, “Preference falsification aims specifically at molding the perceptions others hold about one’s motivations.” Preference falsification has a twin brother called knowledge falsification. The concept is the same. Knowledge falsification is the deliberate misrepresentation of what one knows under perceived social pressures. While preference falsification is based more on social behavior, knowledge falsification is the more dangerous theory. Because corporations use knowledge falsification willingly to propagandize or brainwash people into purchasing their product. This can also result in media manipulation or the creation of “fake knowledge passed on as the truth” to control the debate about a political or controversial product like the COVID-19 vaccines. The problem with knowledge falsification is the negative impact it has on the whole of society. It distorts, corrupts, and manipulates public information leading to many people believing the lie. For people who embrace the lie, when confronted with the truth, they will engage in self-deception to protect their own ego and self-interest. From a nation that practices the idea of “democracy”, it is very easy to understand how these dual concepts can lead to false perceptions of candidates and the political truths that they promote. Kiran believed that these dual concepts led to three major problems with our society. The first is the distortion of social decisions. Have you ever asked yourself how people can continue to vote against their own personal interests? This is preference falsification in its worst form. As Orwell famously said in his classic novel 1984 coining the term “doublethink” to explain this process. “Doublethink is the ability to simultaneously hold two contradictory beliefs and accept both as true.” With preference falsification, this means holding one belief in public (The approved narrative amongst your fellow citizens and the government) while secretly believing in private that this truth is questionable and likely false. But your need to be socially accepted allows you to accept the deception as an underlying truth in your mind. As explained above, the second is the falsification of public knowledge where falsifications can be intentionally created and used to manipulate a society for an entity or individual’s personal interests. Finally, this falsification can generate societal surprise. Basically, when we vote in private, the truth of what people believe is revealed. This can lead to surprise elections (Like Trump in 2016) where the decisions of private individuals went against the government narrative that was created inside the media of Hillary Clinton’s dominance. There have been many examples in history where public opinion often strays from the actual truth. And sometimes when trust in the public opinion is frayed, it can lead to a snowballing effect where the private opinion based on the truth becomes the public opinion. These moments can often be violent and lead to devastating wars. Back next week with my first blog on the Far East. I hope you enjoyed this. Sometimes, reality hits you in the face like a 95 MPH fastball off the hand of Dylan Cease (And based off the way he has been pitching, inside pitches leading to walks have been a common occurrence this year). Recently, I had the privilege of diving into the wonderful Netflix documentary on the New Wave, indescribable band known as DEVO on Netflix. As many do not know, the band name is a shortened version of the word Devolution. Based on the usage of that word among the band members, they meant devolution in a cynical way. They perceived a society that ignored history and was getting dumber and stupider which led to freedom slowly being taken away by the government, a population more susceptible to propaganda, and a society more willing to accept an entity controlling their lives. The United States was truly moving to a culture that believed in FREEDOM FROM CHOICE. The 2020 COVID lockdowns proved this when many Americans accepted an untested, controversial “vaccine” without questioning the motivations of the vaccine promoters nor whether the “science” that was quoted ad nauseum on the evening news and social media websites had factual legitimacy. Most Americans went along with what their leaders wanted them to do often caving to centuries old fear tactics when the propaganda and tools of persuasion failed.
Since the ridiculous COVID era is over, I have taken comfort in the pushback that many honest and open-minded Americans made against these genetic compounds. The decline of the boosters into having low uptake is one of the great victories of populism over authoritarianism. But victory is fleeting and the individuals that put billions into trying to control our society continue to build and legislate the digital control grid meant to turn every person on this planet into a slave. As I contemplated all these political issues above, it began to dawn on me to begin asking questions. What is democracy and is it really the best political system available to us right now? Where did the idea of these now almost universal monstrous-sized governments come from? Why is the world filled with quasi-corporate states? Were Hitler and Mussolini right about the future being fascism? While I was raised in Los Angeles County as a child in the late 70s to early 90s, I was always fascinated with our archenemy at the time, the USSR (United Soviet Socialist Republic). The Russian Revolution initially appeared as a revolt of the people against a monarch in a declining and violent society that was dragged into World War I against the people’s will. But as historians learned, the Soviet uprising was never going to be anything other than an authoritarian system. Since Karl Marx wrote his manual in 1848, Communism’s only idea was replacing monarchs and the moneyed elite with the workers who would replace them as the new overlords. The old ideas of understanding how the nature of government corrupts and the quest for power by every human on the planet that was so eloquently reflected in the United States Constitution in the late 18th Century were over. The problem was not the government. The problem was with the people in control of it. As World War I and then World War II followed shortly after, the governments of the world began to grow. The progressive era in the United States under Woodrow Wilson created a private Central Bank and income taxes. The battle of ideas in World War II was not about the defenders of democracy (The Allies) versus the dictators (The Axis). It was about which political system was going to win. To defeat the evil “fascist” forces of Germany, Italy and Japan, the United States allowed its government to grow into a gargantuan entity that was much more like the Communist Soviet State than we wanted to believe. The government shrank its military presence overseas after the war and replaced it with a global empire that required an increasingly large domestic government and a permanent military industrial complex that slowly took over our political system. As World War II ended, defenders of large government took joy in the demonization and eventual declaration of Russia and Communism as the “enemy” which allowed it to continue growing into many other aspects of our lives. For over 40 years, the battle over which large government system was going to win, Democratic Capitalism or Communism, was waged. At the end of 1991, the democratic state-run capitalist system came out ahead. Despite defeating the Soviets in the war of political ideas, the sacrifices needed to ruin the Communist system allowed the United States to grow the government to the largest in human history while violating multiple Constitutional rights along the way. We may have defeated the Soviets, but the threat of authoritarianism from our democratic system became a reality. Keeping this idea in mind, it is possible that Hitler and Mussolini are laughing at us from beyond the grave. Mussolini saw the idea of fascism as: “The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State – a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values – interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people. Fascism is a religious conception in which man is seen in his immanent relationship with a superior law and with an objective Will that transcends the particular individual and raises him to conscious membership of a spiritual society. Whoever has seen in the religious politics of the Fascist regime nothing, but mere opportunism has not understood that Fascism besides being a system of government is also, and above all, a system of thought. “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” Can we really argue that eliminating the outright racism and bigotry of the Nazi and Japanese states at the time, do we not live in a world filled with fascist (Corporatist) states inside a civilization that has been attacking individuality with reckless abandon over the past decade, doing everything in its power to undermine the family, and creating a system of subservience where every human behavior like travelling domestically or internationally requires permission from the authorities?The more I think about the present-day civilization I live in, the more I think Hitler and Mussolini won World War II. Finally, one of the defining aspects of the Russian Revolution was the loss of identity of Russians with their history and culture. There is a wonderful book that discusses this. The takeover of Russia by the Soviets led to over 100 years of Russians trying to regain their identity from the Godless Communists whose impact still fractures their society to this day. When you think about this regarding the present-day United States, look at the small little things that our businesses and government do to destroy our identity. Bud Light and Dylan Mulvaney The Woke version of history that turns our national pride into a symbol of disgrace Using a controversial vaccine to create a class of discriminated individuals Now, it is changing the Cracker Barrel logo. A work of art that a five-year-old could design on Adobe. The logo will probably revert to its perfect form created decades ago. But don’t think the assault on this logo was accidental. This was an attack on our culture and history. Another subtle move to destroy our identity which the Soviets did last Century to the Russian people. Bring on our future authoritarianism. Winston Churchill may have said it best regarding democracy and its inevitable failure: “Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” |
AuthorEXPERT OF SOME Archives
February 2026
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