Okay, so I've been reading this book called The 100. It's basically a book that lays out
the 100 most influential people in human history, like the people that have swayed the tides
of human achievement, history, advancement, all of the above. So people like Jesus Christ,
Adolf Hitler, Stalin, Isaac Newton, all these people have radically transformed history and
human nature as well. Not human nature, but human lives. And so I just started reading
it because I'm really interested in how people, I just want to learn kind of like about their
lives and like more than half the people on the list I've never even heard of. And the
other half I don't even know like why necessarily I have vague ideas of why they might be on
the list but I don't actually know why. And it's basically like 600 pages long so it's
going to take me a long time to read and it's not my main book that I'm reading right now.
So I'm basically only reading two chapters a day at the moment and I started yesterday.
I read the first two people. Number one was surprising. Most people would put Jesus Christ
at number one but Jesus Christ wasn't actually until number three. So I want to go through
over the next couple weeks and actually talk about what I've learned about each person.
Now the chapters are really short. They're like six page summaries of their life, what
they did and why they belong at this rank on the list. So it's very vague and if I'm
interested in a specific person I'm definitely going to read their biographies but without
further ado the first person on the list was Muhammad, the person who created Islam. And
he is someone that I was kind of curious about for a little bit now and it actually really
surprised me because he was a literate when he was a kid. Like he was a literate. He could
not read. And then he went on his life completely normal person, nothing remarkable. Like he
didn't have any remarkable skills or anything that I could tell from the book. He basically
no one really thought anything of him until he was 40. So the first 40 years of his life
not really much happened. And then he got this message in his mind and then he started
to realize oh, like people around me are studying or worshiping many gods but this message in
his mind brought him aware of the fact that there is like brought him aware of that there
is one God. So he basically now believes that there is one all encompassing omnipotent God
and not just like hundreds of gods. So he basically starts preaching. He's in the city
of Mecca I think and he starts preaching to just a few people. He builds like a small
following but most people are actually annoyed by him because think about this. He is basically
preaching to a bunch of people who believe in many gods that there is only one. So put
yourself in their shoes you'd be a little annoyed. Imagine if, okay let's say you're
a Christian imagine if someone starts preaching to you that there are many gods. That's kind
of how they felt and the city was actually like their religion kind of was, I've only
read like six pages of this so I could be getting some of the facts wrong but and this
goes for all of the future people that I talk about over the next couple weeks and by the
way the episodes are not going to be happening daily because I practice five times a day
so they're going to be spread out. So it might be over the next couple months for you guys
but that's only if you're listening on the podcast on the YouTube channel you can go
and look at them as they're being posted. So going back to the story he starts preaching
to a small crowd and the government starts to be like oh this guy's a little dangerous
let's try and like get rid of him. So Muhammad fearing for his life flees north 200 miles
to a different city where they actually like what he's saying and he has a lot more say
and influence and they actually give him a highly influential position in the government.
This is when he's like 40, 50, I don't know. So they give him this really good position
in the government and he starts preaching like he's built a very large following and
in the geography of the location there is this kind of little group of warriors and
then they're surrounded by a bunch of countries that are against them that alone on any ordinary
day these warriors would be extinct if they started a war. But Muhammad he basically created
this whole religion he was a religious leader and a secular leader so that's important because
he created this religion and he's leading in like actual politics and government so
he is extremely powerful and he sets forth this huge movement and he writes a book called
the Quran and later after he dies which is soon after this people organize the Quran
and put it into a written text which is the religious textbook like the actual it's kind
of like the Bible for Islam. So this people start studying the Quran they start living
they start converting and then this group of warriors are actually like inspired and
now they actually start conquering everyone. So eventually the followers kept rolling the
momentum built by Muhammad and started conquering all of the neighboring countries and created
a, they conquered a massive empire the largest empire to date ever since that moment the
largest empire to date and they were all converted to Islam. So imagine that literally
an entire continent are now in this new religion this guy is extremely influential and that's
not even the story. There still are millions tens of millions of followers of Islam today
and it's there's a huge like group of countries that are still all like mainly Islamic. So
this guy Muhammad he is the number one most influential speaker or not speaker but influential
person in history and I actually start I'm actually starting to agree because let's talk
about Jesus. Jesus was just a religious leader he was not a secular leader and Jesus I actually
never knew this but Jesus was actually not responsible for the widespread movement of
Christianity. He was responsible for the morals and values of it but it was Saint Paul I believe
I Saint Paul is number six on the list which I'm very excited to learn about him because
I'm pretty sure he was a murderer I don't know yet but Saint Paul was one who wrote
like the new a lot of the New Testament and was really responsible for the widespread
of Christianity. So it was Jesus and Saint Paul now Muhammad did it all and he caused
massive amounts of countries to be conquered created an entire empire because of his influence.
So that's Muhammad and the fact that he started like he didn't actually begin to do something
until he was like 40 years old is extremely like inspiring eye opening and it makes me
realize that you can achieve immense results in a like you can actually achieve immense
results in this world it's actually crazy.