Raymond Aron's The Opium of the Intellectuals is a must-read for anyone with a background in the liberal arts. I also recommend this book to people in physics, engineering, mathematics, and the general STEM fields. The book was published in the 1950s, a time when the US was promoting free-market capitalism and the East promoted state-centralized communism, while Europe, particularly France, remained undecided about its own destiny. I found it poignant, as I see the global theater today performing in a similar lockstep pattern with US and China narratives.

At the center of all this, Aron does not touch on the issuance of money (credit and debt). Fiat currencies across the globe are heightened with unaffordability due to inflation. Bitcoin is not an investment; it is simply an alternative form of currency. However, I am confident that if nation-states, businesses, and individuals adopt this innovation in money, many of the odd and comical consequences of fiat currency inflation can be resolved.

For the left, this is challenging to stomach because of the abundance of storytellers in the world today; to criticize them (CEOs, statesmen, older generations, i.e., parental figures) can cause schisms in their worldview.

For the right, it is too difficult because of Bitcoin's neutrality. Proof-of-Work does not care about your creed or ethnic background. If one was raised with the conditioning that a certain omnipotence destines one over another, and that perception doesn't fit with today's reality, then intolerance and technicalities are not the path to one's search for creating value, felicity, and love.