Thinking about the END OF HISTORY.

Well, we are in the postmodern era, though it has many other eras within it vying for attention. I know a lot of people who relate to both Corporations and representatives in government as if they were lords. Even those who detest feudalism find that it is often the only way to get justice or survive. And this is Feudalism without the commons. Imagine that. It is going to be feudalism where every damn thing is owned by the local Baron.

The post-modern era is merely a late-modern era. The postmodern era will come later, maybe even in this centrury or later. Why am I saying this? I think that the postmodern era will be very much similar to the era after the end of history, perhaps it’s a prestage or even the same stage, and this era (postmodern and/or era after the end of history) will, if it really will come, be an “eternal era” of the “Last Men”.

That would also fit into that era. The late-modern era leads to the postmodern era, and in the late-modern era you can already notice the increasing of e.g. gang systems (cp. late-modern) which lead to feudal systems (postmodern).

Postmodernism has no Engine, not sure what would happen if everyone was a postmodernist, not that this will happen. I mean, modernists are in a minority. A hysterically powerful minority. Postmodernism is where the educated and consumers go to not accomplish anything in what seems to them like a profound way.

Sociopathism is the guiding pattern of those with power these Days.

That would also fit into that era.
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It’s already that era, but most people haven’t noticed.

I don’t think that it is already that era, but we can already notice (and unfortunately many people don’t or can’t do it) many of the “messengers” of that postmodern era. Why am I saying that? The postmodern era will not be that what artists, art historians, performers, some philosophers and others have been saying for so long. It will be a little bit different, compared with the current era (late-modern era). The postmodern era will be more “entropic” than the current late-modern era.

Do you know which “messengers” I mean?

I don’t know what you mean by it.

I see the pure consumers around me a tacit postmodernists. They sure couldn’t articulate it, but there they go mixing high and low Culture, rarely thinking about morals unless someone Cuts them off in traffic.

The neo cons are postmodernist, though they use rhetoric from religion, modernism, whatever, to push for their goals.

Science technology industry - postmodern and rapidly terraforming and humanoforming.

In this text, you posted, you have already mentioned some of those “messengers” because you mentioned: “low culture”, “rarely thinking about morals”, “terraforming”, “humanforming”. In almost the same manner you could have said: “subculture”, “gangs”, “global destruction”, “human destruction”. In the future “crime” will be no crime anymore because it will be normality.

I guess I think that’s been the case for a while. What point in US history did not have what should be called crimed considered noble or righteous?

Consistant disorder, to where it is impossible to plan your day…that would be something new.

What do you mean eaxctly?

“Good” will be “evil”, and “evil” will be “good”. “Truth” will be “lie”, and “lie” will be “truth”. “War” will be “peace”, and “peace” will be “war” … And so on.

Partly it has alraedy been realised, and it will be completely realised. That’s not new, and it appears again and again.

Crimes have alwasy been normal in US history. Manifest Destiny was a series of crimes. Relations with Latin America. Indentured servants, slaves. The robber barons. How WW1 was sold to americans by ‘americans’ and how it was sold. Whatever. Crimes have Always been tucked in plain sight in norms.

  1. The "end of history is not merely an idea of an idealistic philosopher; the idea may be realised.

As Leo Strauss wrote;

[size=95]“Regardless of whether or not Nietzsche knew of Marx’ writings, he questioned the communist vision more radically than anyone else. He identified the man of the communist world society as the last man, as man in his utmost degradation: without ‘specialization,’ without the harshness of limitation, human nobility and greatness are impossible. In accordance with this he denied that the future of the human race is predetermined. The alternative to the last man is the over-man, a type of man surpassing and overcoming all previous human types in greatness and nobility; the over-men of the future will be ruled invisibly by the philosophers of the future.” (Strauss, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy”, paragraph 7.)[/size]

Strauss suggests here that the over-man is the man who is ruled invisibly by the philosopher. But if being ruled invisibly by the philosopher is what makes man an over-man, then the invisibly ruling philosopher may also be called the over-man: he is then the quintessence of the over-man or the quintessential over-man. It is in this sense that I used the term in my “Note on the First Chapter of Leo Strauss’s Final Work”, http://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?p=2427749#p2427749

[size=95]“The philosopher, as distinguished from the scholar or scientist, is the complementary man in whom not only man but the rest of existence is justified (cf. aph. 207); he is the peak which does not permit and still less demand to be overcome. This characterization applies, however, strictly speaking only to the philosophers of the future compared with whom men of the rank of Kant and Hegel are only philosophic laborers, for the philosopher in the precise sense creates values. Nietzsche raised the question whether there ever were such philosophers (aph. 211 end). He seems to have answered that question in the affirmative by what he had said near the beginning of the sixth chapter on Heraclitus, Plato and Empedocles. Or does it remain true that we must overcome also the Greeks (The Gay Science aph. 125, 340)? The philosopher as philosopher belongs to the future and was therefore at all times in contradiction to his Today; the philosophers were always the bad conscience of their time.” (Strauss, “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil”, paragraph 30. Cf. Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, pp. 91-92.)[/size]

It seems like your evidence in favor of the realisation is that N and/or one of his interpreters Thinks it is possible.

Interesting, you add a third point, but I didn’t say that the “end of history” is merely an idea of an idealistic philosopher, but this idealistic philosopher - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - was the founder of this idea. And the idea may be realised.

I agree.

The “Last Men” represent the people after the end of history, and the “Overman” represents the philosopher who is able, and only able, to prevent the end of history.

But does that prevention really “work”? And, if so, who will be such an “Overman” in the face of the development which seems more to prevent him than he to prevent the end of history?

 There can not possibly  be an after the end of history because, after the end there is no after. When history ends, the after will me unrecorded, meaning unrecorded consciously.  That is the only interpretation which can be pegged unto this concept.  There may be recorded anecdotes, memos, but no consciousness of connected movements in general historical contexts. The overman if he existed today, would have to have absolute power to prevent this drift, and he could, and if computer system will develop to override the catastrophe of an entropic consciousness, then the computer system would need to be programmed with equivalent ethical absoluteness, with no possible override. That begs the question of whether such a machine could sustain itself without being tempted by fear.  

The theme is dated, i saw a French film of the late new wave era, “Alphaville” starring Godard’s wife Anna Karina, in a very convincing scenario, where all safe fail systems break down.

After the end can not be an after - that’s right -, but I said: “after the end of history”, and after the end of history there can be an after, namely an after without history. We are talking about history, especially about the end of history, and, if there will be an end of history, about the time after the end of history.

So, an “after the end of history” means an “after without history”, thus: a time without history.

The time of history in the evolution of the human beings is very tiny; it is the exception of the rule: human beings without history. And why should there not be a time without history in the future evolution of the human beings? The question is, whether there will be such a time or not.

But Arminus, history is recorded time. So if history ends, recorded time ends. So how can we really know anything after, if there is no recording of it? I sense i know what You mean by ‘after’but after what? What singular event can ever signal in the very end? I think time like space stretches at that point, so that Parmenides’ turtle will never reach an absolute signification. What event other then total annihilation can signal the absolute end to recording? If it’s a relative concept, as You seem to indicate, then how is the relative importance of the signifying moment of the end in time absolutely? Maybe even a survivable WW3 can not claim pre eminence, since there are precedent world wars? As an idea in a world of approximate-able limits, such situation would make absolute sense, however in the relative sense, it may become an impossible uncertain and unqualified scenario.

That’s absolutely right, Obe.

We don’t need that recording in order to know something about the time after the end of history. We know something about the human beings before the human history started. So we can also know something about the human beings after the human history will have ended.

We don’t know, whether the human beings in the future will know something about themselves, but we know that - preconditioned the history will end - they will know nothing about history because the history will have ended then; but: we are able to know it now.

In the 19th century, Manifest Destiny was the widely held belief in the United States that American settlers were destined to expand throughout the continent. Historians have for the most part agreed that there are three basic themes to Manifest Destiny:

  • The special virtues of the US people and their institutions;
  • The mission of the US to redeem and remake the west in the image of agrarian US;
  • An irresistible destiny to accomplish this essential duty.

Therefore my other thread: Will machines completely replace all human beings?

Being a hard determinist, I think the end of history will either happen or not. My “may be” is the expression of my knowledge of my ignorance in this regard. All I know is that it has not (yet) come about. I know this because I know I myself and others don’t want it to come about, and as long as there is dissent it has not come about. I also know what philosophers are capable of. I understand why the end of history is theoretically possible–namely, due to the fact that nature has become a problem–, and I know the mechanism by which the problem is to be solved. In fact, my current signature quote is all about this.