Thinking about the END OF HISTORY.

[size=150]Thinking about the END OF HISTORY.[/size]

[size=120]The first one who declared the end of history by implying it was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He thought that the movement of the „Enlightenment“ („Aufklärung“) had done its work, had accomplished the history, thus had been the last age of history.[/size]

[size=114]Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was the first one who came to that conclusion, which became a „starting signal“ for many people, e.g.:[/size]
[size=150]•[/size] Karl Marx with his concept of the paradise after the dictatorship of the proletariat - a Left-Hegelian ideology,thus a reference to Hegel;
[size=150]•[/size] Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche with his concept of the „last men“;
[size=150]•[/size] Oswald A. G. Spengler with his reference to Goethe and Nietzsche, especially with his concept of the decline of culture and the assumption that with
the utmost probability there will be no more culture after the decline of the occidental culture;
[size=150]•[/size] Martin Heidegger with his reference to Hegel and Nietzsche;
[size=150]•[/size] Ernst Jünger with his reference to Spengler (Nietzsche, Goethe);
[size=150]•[/size] Alexandre Kojève (Alexandr Koschewnikov) with his his reference to Hegel;
[size=150]•[/size] Ernst Nolte with his reference to Heidegger (Hegel and Nietzsche);
[size=150]•[/size] Peter Sloterdijk with his reference to Hegel and Nietzsche;
[size=150]•[/size] Francis Fukuyama with his reference to Hegel and Nietzsche.

There have been many more, and I think that they all have been either Hegelians or Nietzscheans (incl. Spenglerians and Heideggerians).

My questions:

[size=120]1.)[/size] [size=114]Is the „end of history“ merely an idea of an idealistic philosopher, so that this idea will never be realised?[/size]
[size=120]2.)[/size] [size=114]Is the „end of history“ not merely an idea of an idealistic philosopher, so that this idea has or will have been realised?[/size]
[size=110]2.1)[/size] [size=104]Has the „end of history“ been realised since the last third of the 18th century, when the „Enlightenment“ („Aufklärung“) ended?[/size]
[size=110]2.2)[/size] [size=104]Has the „end of history“ been realised since 1989/'90, when the „Cold War“ ended?[/size]
[size=110]2.3)[/size] [size=104]Will the „end of history“ have been realised in the end of the 21st, in the 22nd, or in the 23nd century?[/size]

What do you think?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_history

The end of humanity’s evolution and change comes when everyone is dead.

The subject of “The end of history” is a bit confusing to me because I have a hard time grasping exactly what is being meant by the term. The Christian’s Heaven or Hell scenario was their version of an “End of development” that would cast humanity into either an eternal hellish state or an eternal heavenly state. Their problem was that they couldn’t figure out what Heaven actually looked like, so couldn’t aim their efforts precisely. Prior to that, Moses foresaw an end to the world as they knew it and didn’t speculate as to what would follow it. The Jewish tradition became the Christian’s view plus an “Abyss” of being simply totally forgotten.

It is often attempted, with moderate success, to erase all knowledge of prior history so as to establish a new age founded on new premises (usually rewriting history so as to hide the old). Does that count as an “end of history”?

The world is definitely a stage with us as the players and though there are many exciting and mundane episodes with notable climaxes, the story is never ending.

What do you do when “it is all figured out”?

You just pretend that it isn’t and use what you know to inspire others to keep trying to figure it out while you use their efforts to further your own interests; higher technology, more power to dictate more inspiration to get more - unwise, but certainly human. Nothing is really new, merely more of it, rearranged a bit, new paint, new people, but same ole same ole theme.

Humanity is being reshaped like a statue being crushed up so as to form new clay to be used to form the new bigger statue… of the same old thing.

So what does “End of History” really mean? My guess is that it means that old ways of doing things have reached their climax and it is merely time to realize new ways of doing the same ole things (rather than the much wiser way of realizing that the old things were never right to begin with).

I don’t consider Hegal and Marx to have been wise, merely clever; “Fallen Fellows” sticking their fingers in the pie of Man just like a medical doctor who has decided what medicines to distribute throughout the world to cure all diseases, without truly verifying it. Man is cursed with God-wannabes, the lust to be a Goddictator (Nietzsche’s Ubermensch).

I, a bit like Hegal, can tell you where it ends up and why, but not when or how it gets there… or even what kind of species remains. Who is to be in the real Heaven? It is looking very suspiciously like it isn’t going to be human (as we were discussing on the other thread). Would that constitute an “End of History”, the end of humanity?

There is a difference between the “end-point of humanity’s sociocultural evolution” and the “end of humanity’s evolution”. The diffrence is namely the culture!

Maybe as a pre-stage of (the idea of) the “end of history”, but not really.

The “end of history” means the end of all great narratives, of all great stories, of all “historical existence” (Ernst Nolte), of all culture, of all great wars, and so on.

Some people may say that the time after the end of history is “haeven on earth”, some other people may say that the time after the end of history is “hell on earth”. There is no real historical develoment, nothing to do that really counts, boredom, happiness, perhaps it is the (last) age with machines, before the machines will completely replace all human beings (you remember!) - this all depends upon the people’s evaluation.

Well, I can tell you that it is a “Heaven” scenario, not a “Hell”.
And the reason is simply that a part of the activity going on involves inspiring the joy of attending to things that are of actual need. By that means, not only does the person (or whatever) maintain eternal existence, but also enjoys doing so; ie. “Heaven”. The only problem in the past was understanding what really is of actual need. But that isn’t an issue anymore.

So the Eternal Hell scenario is out.
The other option is the Abyss, wherein everything gets totally lost, as in perhaps that “Black-hole” scenario.

The culture will change as long as humans change. Humans change as long as they are alive.

You can see change happening very clearly as each new generation rejects the current culture and creates its own. You could say that when humans become immortal, there will be no more children who would be rejuvenating the culture. That might be the end of history.

That has not being prooved, not being disprooved, not being falsified. We just don’t know certainly. Therefore the questions of my OP.

This is what you don’t know, if you understand “change” as historical or cultural change.

If the history really ends, there is no change in sense of historical change because that is just the definition of the “end of history” - that is logical, even tautological.

If the history does not end, there is change in sense of historical change because that is just the definition of the “history” - that is logical, even tautological.

Please don’t confuse the “end of history” with the “end of evolution” - both are different. The “end of history” doesn’t also not mean the “end of human beings”, at least not necessarily. It can be, but it does not have to be that “history”, “human evolution”, and “evolution” simultaneously end.

Any of the questions of my OP includes the term “end of history”, not the term “end of human beings”, and not the term "end of evolution"not. The questions of the “end of human beings” and the “end of evolution” are very interesting too, but here in this thread they are not the primary or even the secondary questions, except in the case of a simultaneous endings because then they immediately belong to the primary and secondary questions.

Are you not afraid of the „Last Men“ (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche), or of scenarios which are similar to some written stories, for example by Herbert George Wells, Aldous Huxley, or George Orwell?

I consider those to be the hell on Earth that preceded the final anentropic stage. It is similar to now, but worse, wherein lives are just wasted needlessly because some idiot on top arranged it to be that way and idiots beneath him thought it was necessary to arrange a holy city surrounded by a human trash bin (separating heaven and Earth). The final era is completely different, with or without humans.

The Eloi and the Morlocks are a temporary stage.

Did you see the film “Time Machine” in the 1959 version?

Sure, and also the more recent version.
They are actually telling of the present, very slightly exaggerated.
The Morlocks are the social engineers.
The Eloi are pretty much everyone else.

It is actually pretty similar to The Matrix wherein the Eloi are those trapped in the machine dream world. The Architect and the “programs” are the Morlock. On the Zionist side in the film, they also have their version of Eloi and Morlock (their own programmers) but don’t show that part much.

And probably the author of the „Time Machine“ (1895), H. G. Wells, belonged to them, at least he was initiated into that „program“.

Do you know, whether Wells knew Nietzsche very much? I ask because Wells’ Eloi are similar to Nietzsche’s „Last Men“, and when Wells published his „Time Machine“ (1895), Nietzsche was insane and unable to write, but all his books had already been known for a relative long time.

It seems to me that everyone during that era was thinking along the same lines, or at least what is shown of the history indicates that they were. The end of God and the world was being promoted so as to inspire a reason for the new empire, the “New World Odor”. All of Europe was apparently caught up in it. They dragged America into it eventually so as to spring the trap. All just a game. Isaac Asimov’s The Foundation relates much of the story.

It seems that Hegal, being a social historian, saw specific trends that societies go through. And from those trends, he could predict the future state of society in the same way as any scientist might. And then Marx came along as said, “Well, since we KNOW what the future state is going to be, we can speed it up merely by inspiring the flow that Hegal predicted.”

Of course, there is a serious problem with that.

Hegal had merely noted the historical trend, void of any concept of future significant changes in thought or behavior, such as technology and the Internet. So his prediction was based on the ASSUMPTION that people were just going to be as they had always been. But then Marx comes along and makes the same assumption but adds something new to the game. Marx, by intentionally inspiring the prediction, forces it into reality regardless of what was really going to happen. We typically call it “Fatalism” or “Self-fulfilling prophecy”.

So what is happening is that all new hope gets undermined by a strong ongoing influence based upon old assumptions. It doesn’t matter if anyone figures out a brand new way that solves all of the problems because the mechanism has been put into place to ensure that things go as predicted, regardless of anything that gets in the way. And a part of the mechanism is certain people getting extremely rich, so they aren’t even about to change their plans - “No miracles allowed”.

One can cynically say that the „Enlightenment“ („Aufklärung“) was a „process of murder“ ( :wink: :slight_smile: [-o< :-k ) because this process disenchanted the „Western World“, and when the „Western World“ was finally disenchanted, which means that finally in the „Western world“ „God was dead“, the next process started: „Bringing the Dead God to the Rest of the World“.

We have to wait on the re-enchantment. But maybe this re-enchantment will never come, but merely the last human age: the age without history - an as boring as cruel „age“, which is again like the „age“ of the nomadic humans, homonids, and prehominids.

Some or many „modern“ people have been appreciating this „age“. What do you think about that?

I think the end of history is an individual thing right now. More and more people behave as though we are living after the end of history, and thus they make themselves unimportant in history. I don’t think the number will ever reach 100%- history will continue for those who have power, but we are essentially living in a post-historical culture already.

That is at least the first impression. But people are overestimated when it comes to power. Not the people, but their rulers (with their „social-engineers“) are those who made, make, and will make people unimportant in history (and b.t.w.: probably in evoilution too). The impression is often that people themselves cause their behaviour, but often the behaviour of the people is caused by their rulers, and that should be always the first impression.

And why are you so sure?

History began about 6000 years ago and will perhaps end in the end of the 21st, or in the 22nd, or in the 23rd century - so accordingI to the end of history I refer to one of my questions in my OP: => [size=110]2.3)[/size]. But remember that all “historical existencials” (“historische Existenziale”), how Ernst Nolte called them, have to be eliminated, before one can say that the end of history is really reached. The process which leads to the end of history has to have the same dimension as the so called „neolithic revolution“ had. And Nolte said that all “historical existencials” have changed very much, but have not been elimanted yet. (Cp. Ernst Nolte, Historische Existenz, 1998, p. 682). I think, the post-historical age will be the very last age with machines, before the machines will completely replace all human beings (=> #), so in the end of the 21st, or in the 22nd, or in the 23rd century history as we have been knowing it for about 6000 years will have reached its end because all “historical existencials” will probably be eliminated then.

If history will really end, then one will have to speak about history as an episode of about 6000 years.

What would be the list of “historical essentials” to be eliminated?

That’s a good question, and I have expected that question. But would you mind answering before I answer in a more detailed way?

Oh geeez… I’m not sure you want me doing that.

As with all things, there is the actual and the mental model (including physics). Some refer to actual history, which can never be exactly known and some refer to “history” as being merely whatever is currently documented (and often erased and rewritten). The mind identifies or objectizes (forms a mental picture or as a mental object) situations or events and records them as historical events based on relevance.

Those who record history for sake of humanity, identify some things as relevant and others as irrelevant and document the relevant ones. New ages bring people who then erase or alter documents so as to further their chosen cause.

So the idea of no one ever documenting anything seen as relevant means that the age that has been entered regards no changes as relevant and thus either doesn’t document them or merely documents them as an ambiguous repeated cycle. Or perhaps, as suggested, we simply stop calling it “our history” because there are no more humans to consider anything relevant.

As long as some living entity exists, there will always be a personal history relevant to that individual, at least. And it is hard for me to imagine even the possibility of life continuing in any form without any recording of social events marked as significant moments of change as far as those lives are concerned. Every small town and family has its historical events.

So the only thing that I could safely call the “historical essentials” that are being referred to would be the globally public announcements concerning globally significant events standing out above the average enough to be note worthy.

The greater issue is of course, the contrived historical announcing, a purely imaginary history for sake of an artificially propagated society being told of events so as to inspire them in certain ways even though those events never really occurred (The Matrix scenario). The more people believe what they are told via a news mediator, the more invention of history occurs and the less anyone knows of it being completely fake.

So to a public, history could never actually end because either the level of relevance will shift so as to make formerly irrelevant things noteworthy or invented historical scenarios will be told to them regardless of perhaps nothing actually relevant changing.

:wink:

According to Ernst Nolte there are especially the following „historical existentials“, which are translated by me ( [-o< or =D>):

• Religion (God/Gods, a.s.o);
• Rule (leadership, a.s.o.);
• Nobleness (nobility, a.s.o.);
• Classes;
• State;
• Great War;
• City and country as contrast;
• Education, especially in schools and universities;
• Science;
• Order of sexulality / demographics, economics;
• Historiography / awareness of history!

Ernst Nolte wrote (ibid, p. 10):

„Es wird also für möglich gehalten, daß bestimmte grundlegende Kennzeichen - oder Kategorien oder »Existenzialien« - der historischen Existenz tatsächlich nur für das sechstausendjährige »Zwischenspiel« der »eigentlichen Geschichte« bestimmend waren und heute als solche verschwinden oder bereits verschwunden sind, während andere weiterhin in Geltung bleiben, obwohl auch sie einer tiefgreifenden Wandlung unterliegen. Die Analyse solcher Existenzialien im Rahmen eines »Schemas der historischen Existenz« ist das Hauptziel dieses Buches.“
My translation:
„Thus, it is thought to be possible that certain fundamental characteristic - or categories or »existentials« - of the historical existence have been decisively only for the six thousand years lasting »interlude« of the »actual history« and now are disappearing as such or have already disappeared, while others continued to remain in validity, although they are also subjected to a profound transformation. The analysis of such existentials within the framework of a »scheme of historical existence«is the main goal of this book.

Ernst Nolte wrote (ibid, p. 672):

„Befinden wir Menschen … uns bereits in der »Nachgeschichte«, wie wir den Zustand in Ermangelung eines besseren Terminus nennen wollen, oder doch mindestens im Übergang dazu?“
My translation:
„Are we people … already in the »post-history« as we like to call the state for lack of a better term, or at least in the transition to that?“

Ernst Nolte wrote (ibid, p. 682):

„Alle historischen Existenzialien … haben … grundlegende Änderungen erfahren, und einige, wie der Adel und der »große Krieg«, sind nicht mehr wahrzunehmen. Aber selbst diese haben sich eher verwandelt, als daß sie ganz verschwunden wären: Der große Krieg bleibt als dunkle Drohung bestehen, und der Adel überlebt in gewisser Weise als Pluralität der Eliten.“
My translation:
„All historical existentialia … have … been changed fundamentally, and some, like the nobleness and the »Great War«, are no longer perceivable. But even these have been transformed rather than that they were all gone: the great war remains as a dark threat, and the nobility survived in some ways as pluralism of elites.“

That are some sentences Nolte wrote in his bulky book, which was published in 1998: „Historische Existenz“ („Historical Existence“).