HIGHLIGHTS: Johan Norberg

0:00Hi everybody, tune in to this short version of the podcast which we do every Friday. For the long version, tune in on Wednesdays. Hi everyone, I'm Nikolaj Tengen, the CEO of the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund. And today we are exploring one of history's most pressing questions, the rise and fall of great civilizations. Because there are so many things that we can learn from the past. And today I'm here with Johan Norberg, author of the newly released book, which I just loved, called Peak Human. What we can learn from the rise and fall of golden ages. Now, Johan, you have studied Golden Ages throughout history, from ancient Athens to the modern Anglosphere, and that's what we're going to zoom in on today.

0:45So, Johan, warm welcome. Thank you very much. Let's start with the beginning. What is a Golden Age? Yeah, I'm glad you asked. A Golden Age is something that's often defined in retrospect afterwards, which is a little bit sad. So, it's often subsequent generations who look back at the past and say, wow, they really had something impressive going. Can you never see it when you're in it? Sometimes you do, but it's easier afterwards because it's about a combination of cultural creativity, scientific discovery, technological innovation and economic growth. And so it's really a large number of innovations and new discoveries in many different fields of human experience at the same time.

1:32So the really cool thing here is that we're going to compare what we're seeing today with what we've seen in the past. Generally speaking, how do golden ages end? They end when we shift mentality. Obviously, you can see lots of dangerous horsemen of the apocalypse here and there, of famine, climate change, the plague, war, and so on. But that happens a lot throughout history, and it doesn't really mean the end of civilizations. Because you can rebuild cities, you don't lose knowledge like that, but oftentimes those disasters led to a change of mentality. So instead of this, what the Greek historian Thucydides talked about as an Athenian mindset of going out into the world and explore and learn something new and acquire new things, you shift to a more Spartan mentality where you stay at home to try to protect what you've got.

2:26This is often how golden ages end. And you lose that cultural self-confidence. You try to protect yourself and what you've got. And then you lose that because you have to regenerate it with new innovations and new knowledge. Are we at the end of our golden age now? Or are we seeing signs? Well, I'm worried. That's one of the reasons why I wrote this book. I can see many troubling signs ahead. I think we've shifted to that Spartan mentality in the past two decades or so, partly as a result of many global worrying things we've experienced. Such as? So briefly you mentioned some of them and we'll unpick them.

3:06Well, you know, the global financial crisis of 2007 and 8, I think, shifted minds. I think the pandemic made us worried about the world. Endless wars in the East and then Putin's invasion of Ukraine, terrorist attacks, migration crisis, all these things combined with a sense, especially in the West, that other parts of the world are now more innovative and empowered than we are. All of this combines to make us a little bit more worried. And then we stay at home more often than we should. Political instability. Now, Now, you write about how increased polarization contributes to a collapse of the Golden Age.

3:55First of all, why do we get polarization and why does it contribute to the collapse? Well, you know, we can be polarized in different ways. Some polarization might not be that bad if it means that we look at things from different vantage points. In a way, our confrontational systems in the legal sphere and in the media and in politics means that we see more things because we all have confirmation biases. And the best way of acquiring more knowledge is to actually listen to your opponent a little bit more ideas on the table. However, polarization can become so radical that you don't listen. You're just confrontational.

4:39And we're seeing that many places in the world, right? I think we do. I think we've stopped listening because we think we have the one true way. And why is that so bad for our society? Because it might mean that we just stick to the script without being open to others. And again, this is not something we do to be kind and nice. It's strategic tolerance. It's something we do in order to be better and to improve ourselves. if your ideas are based on reality. And they should be if you want to build everything from a better intellectual understanding of the world to better business models to greater technology.

5:24It has to be reality-based. And in that case, you have to listen to your opponents because if what they say is a little bit painful because it seems like they've got a point, they help you out. They teach you how to become a better, smarter person, a better, smarter business. So if we stop listening to our opponents, we shoot ourselves in the foot. Why is it important for people to be open? I'm sorry, these are kind of naive questions, but I'd love to hear how you phrase it. No, it's a great question because it's hard work to be open. Very. Because we're all very comfortable where we are and where the places we're going.

6:05Totally. The problem is that we restrict ourselves then to those things. You might be the smartest people in the room, but the room is always very small. And most of the new ideas, most of the new technologies are being developed elsewhere. So if you want to continue to thrive as a business or as a society or even as an individual, you have to go outside of your comfort zone. Let's start with the individual. So I heard you say somewhere that you love every time you change your mind because it means that you have been open to new ideas. That's how I try to tell myself. And I thought about it myself.

6:47And actually, it's pretty nice to change your mind if the facts are backing up and out of you, right? It's right. How often do you change your mind? Too seldom. them, I'm sure, because we're also loyal to our ideas and our conclusions. And that's a good thing not to give it up. But we should always realize that we suffer from confirmation bias. We're so comfortable when we find new bits and pieces of information that fits with what we already thought. But that tells us that we should be worried. That's why we have to teach ourselves this intellectually. It's a good thing when we find things that don't fit in, because it means that we've seen more parts of the world than what we saw already.

7:39So I'm telling myself intellectually it's a good thing to change my mind. And that's one reason why I listen to my opponents. I read books that I don't agree with, and I write it down every time I learn something that I don't like, because I think that's strategic tolerance. I'm being an ancient Roman. I make myself stronger when I do that. Let's say now you see a lot of these signs stacking up, right? How long time does it take before it has really impact on the economy, on the society, on the way we live? How long is this sunset period? it might unravel very rapidly for great cultures historically.

8:28Once it doesn't have to, because often those signs, troubling signs, are there for a very long time and you might be able to muddle through and carry on. But sometimes if the world loses confidence in you, loses confidence in the investment climate in a leading place, in the reserve currency, in the independence of institutions like the legal system or the central bank, things might unravel very quickly. In that case, capital abandons you quickly. And people, businesses, investors start to look for alternatives. And even nations start to look for alternatives. When you look at it historically, have nations in decline?

9:15And did they have a lot of fun? Why it declined? What I mean is that, you know, there is a great party in Venice after it started to go down, right? Huge hedonistic lifestyles and so on. That's a good point. If you acquired a lot of wealth and great culture, you might enjoy it for a long time. And I think, you know, Edward Gibbon, when he wrote about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, he wrote about the Byzantian Empire, how they declined basically for 1 ,000 years, but they still managed to have some fun. The problem is that it has to rely then on you being able to use some of the new ideas and innovations that others come up with.

10:06One reason why the Byzantian empire could prosper was that they at least learned from the Abbasid Caliphate, their neighbor and often enemy in war, from their science, from their technology, from their books and they could pick it up. So this might make this era different because we might decline relatively for a long time but if we're open to new good services, technologies and great TV series from other places, we might be able to build a nice museum in declining places. But it's not as fun as being at the forefront and constantly discovering and creating something new.