The End of History

Once upon a time in a land far far away (America), a political scientist named Francis Fukuyama suggested that we’d reached the end of history.

He didn’t mean that things would stop happening, but that we’d reached the end of the longstanding human struggle to manifest the best form of human society.

As a species, we’ve tested a diverse range of social models. We’ve fiddled with our economies and experimented with politics. We’ve played with being ruled by gods, royalty and the rule of law. We’ve tried and failed and tried again… And it was Francis’ belief that with no viable alternative, the Western model of liberal democracy (along with our capitalist economic system) was perhaps our final creation. In his opinion, this was not only the best we could do right now, but the best we might ever do in human history — and therefore, the end.

I remember reading his paper years ago and hating the thought that we might all be doomed to live like this forever.

In his essay he mentions that there is a, “broad unhappiness with the impersonality and spiritual vacuity of liberal consumerist societies. Yet while the emptiness at the core of liberalism is most certainly a defect in ideology — indeed, a flaw that one does not need the perspective of religion to recognize — it is not at all clear that it is remediable through politics.” (The End of…