Thinking about the END OF HISTORY.

Perhaps - because it is difficult to justify that the “liberal democracy … is … the West’s penultimate representative form”. It is not so difficult to justify that the liberal democracy could be the West’s last representative form. But is it also right? I don’t think so (see my last three posts of this thread).

Please tell me which “institutions” you exactly mean.

It refers mainly to this statement:

That is not only and not mostly the questin because (1.) history is a kind of development, (2.) history will perhaps end and then there will merely be cosmic development and evolution but no history, and (3.) the term “our role” can also be a bit unclear.

I mean educational institutions, particularly on the elementary and secondary levels. I feel that the structure and content of universities is a step up, particularly in some universities, but still does not fulfill what I feel is a potential for humanity to be able to create their own way of being. My major issues (with elementary and secondary schools) are with both the content, which is severly deficient in regards to teaching the young how society’s institutions function, about the development of history, and preparing them socially in such a way that they can teach themselves as well as opening the institutions in such a way that they become a resource for students to create their own way of life.

I find most of the institutions of society unfulfilling, so I will limit my examples and their descriptions. I also find corporate institutions unfulfilling as lived experienced, for reasons that I hope would seem obvious, but foremost because workers are removed from the product of their labour. (I do not currently work at or for a corporation.)

I find entertainment institutions unfulfilling, mainly because they train us to become spectators of life, and there is a dearth of potential for participation and creation.

I find institutions in general to be unfulfilling because of conventional norms which have to be fulfilled, which includes things like ritualistic behaviour and uniforms.

I am not concerned with seeing that these institutions be demolished, I have no such aspirations, but to initiate a way of life which supercedes them I would find rewarding. Introducing a novel form of a commons would be a step in that direction. I do not think it should be obligatory (nor restricted) to engage in capital accumulation. I also believe that it is possible for people to be conscious of their habits and relationship with the planet so as to enrich the environment we live in.

Excuse me if I seem to be slow here. Perhaps I will end up getting more from the conversation than you, but if you would take the time to clarify some of this I would appreciate it. I understood your previous post where you said that history would in essence end if a global culture was acheived in which no other culture could arise which was not global.

What I don’t understand here is what you mean when you say history is a kind of development. What kind of development are you talking about?

It seems that you imply that the role we play as historical beings is unimportant, and I’m not sure why. To clarify what I mean when I say “our role”, I mean that the choices that we make and our actions contribute towards the development of society, either because we enter institutional roles and act as instruments to fulfill the institution’s purpose (or not fulfill it, I suppose, depending on the quality of the work we do), “our role” is also important in regards to our interactions with others, the ideas we express to them, what we make them think and feel, the influence we come to have in their life, and so perhaps the influence over their actions which in turn contribute to developing society… Does that clarify what I mean by role a little? My teachers ( to take an example) played a role by standing before the class, exhibiting a certain demeanor, extolling the curriculum (or taking the consequences of failing to do so), and so forth, this influenced in turn things that I thought and felt and learned, what I thought was possible.

I don’t think that idea of a role is by any means a simple thought, and I am sure I haven’t done it justice in the above, but I hope I’ve at least gotten across what I mean when I am asserting that individuals play a role in the development of history. Probably the most significant thing I’ve left out is any consideration of free will. Connected with considerations of free will and determinism, but in a broader sense with human nature, would be what our natural inclinations would lead us to accept. Admittedly these last considerations aren’t something I’ve worked out. I tend to incline towards thinking that the universe is mainly determined, and that human nature, as well as natural necessity is out of step with my own desires or “vision”, yet I do not think I will abandon them for that reason. I suppose that’s why I reacted against Fukuyama’s “crackpot” and Lampert’s “ridicule”, not because I feel I am undeserving, but for the opposite reason entirely, that I feel I’ve embarked on an utterly Quixotic endeavour that I can’t seem to bring myself to let go of.

Yes, you are right.

Back to the commons? Or to “communal particles”?

Not “if a global culture was achieved” (that’s another issue), but (1.) if the global phase of a culture has reached ist end, and (2.) there will be no other culture, especially a young culture (and currently there isn’t any). A “global culture”, that you mean, is the Western culture, especially its modern times, but the Western culture has not yet reached its end. I think we have to wait, so the times will become even worse, and I don’t know when the time for better forms will come because anything and everything on this planet Earth (and in addition already other parts of our solar system) depend on this global culture, the Western culture. That doesn’t mean that every Westerner is somehow “guilty”, but the upper class is guilty, and this upper class is everywhere, not only in Western countries. There is no real resistance, and there will not be any real resistance because of the lack of a young culture. Nearly all human beings have been becoming Westerners, tributaries of the Western globalists (note: in this case of the globalists “Western” doesn’t always mean that they are original Westerners, but they are Westerners because of the fact that they are globalists, and globalists are a product of the Western culture).

Probably you haven’t read the whole thread, so I quote myself:

Development > Evolution > history.

No, it is not unimportant, but it is less important than many people think.

The term “development of history” is tautogical because history is always a development. History is a kind of development, the “roof” of the “house of development” (see above). And I didn’t say that the most people play no role when it comes to history. But the role is not as much important as many people think.

Do you know how powerful the rulers of this globe already are?

Excuse me, but there is no “free will”, but merely a relative free will.

Since you probably read the remaining sentences of my post, I’m not sure why you needed to phrase this comment as such, but anyway that is unimportant.

I’ve read through what you’ve written as well as the other post about communal particles. I was recommending a form of a commons, but that is not necessarily important. There was a lot of information here so I will have to take time to process it to give it the consideration it deserves.

I would just like to ask some questions, if you are willing to answer them. Are your personal actions in conformance with the goals set out in society (so mainly in the structure of its institutions)? If not, are you in any way attempting to create a way of life that differs from the currently established institutions? If so, do you believe in them?

Before I answer that questions we should clarify something, I think. Would you please tell me what you mean when you are speaking of “personal actions”. Do you want to know whether I am a criminal? Or do you want to know whether I am a dropout who lives in a desert, or deep forest, or elsewhere, without any contact to the civilisation?

In any case we must expect much, because the future will not be easy.

Maybe, if history will end, the humans will have to start where our ancestors once stopped (about 6000 years ago, when history started).

Or maybe, if history ends, the humans will feel happy in the dictatorship of the machines.
Or maybe, if history ends, the human evolution will also end.

I don’t see that one. Why would all technology (for example) be forgotten just because things stopped changing?

Technology does not necessarily mean an eternal progressive development because technology can be reduced, for example by humans (politics etc.) or by nature itself (catastrophes etc.).

 Because, technology, as history will be severely abbreviated, and shortcutted.  The structural dynamics will need more and more abbreviated nomenclature, education will consists of programs of rote abbreviations to coincide with function and utility.  The abbreviations in time, as with all experience in general, will quantify unqualified data, or unusable data.  That will be a remainder, which will transcribe into the aesthetic of filling in between the specifically left out.

History will turn mythic, when these fillers overcome, the actually derivable, and memory will lapse or turn outward, of an exclusion of formerly inclusive elements.

This outward-orientated-ness will cause reliance on the machines which can utilize what is left, specifically, between wider and wider scopes of inference. Thought will rely more and more on technic, rather than science, and in order to prevent this from happening, self creating machines with built in safe fail systems, will take over.

But is this the end? No, even with a total program meltdown, a total reversion into the primitive, will not mean the end. Only the end as we know it. A new beginning from the very basic village, will signal a new recurrence, albeit, with the remains of the ‘old mythology’. The scientific age will become merely a short period of retro-devaluation, and mythology will help support the previous suspension. The 300-400 years of post enlightenment era will in retrospect, be nothing but an abbreviated and misaligned formalism. Whether this be of natural causes of the degrading of mass intelligence, or of catastrophic causes of either natural or, man made havoc brought upon the earth, again may turn out to be an unnecessary distinction.

But it is not the end, it will mark the beginning of something new, based on a recurrent pattern.

Why the certainty? Because the aesthetic nature of forces, and forces of nature, are certain to bring creation back into a desired alignment. It is not for want of this, that the entropy of qualification is increasingly , and relentlessly transforming the hyperbola of experience into a functionally increasing (dx) curve, in an ever increasing, almost hysterically severe(d)tangent. The certainty is reached at the critical point of discrimination , where points of reference have been completely ameliorated, and thus become an opaque anomaly, from which no further reflection is possible.

It will be a very long time, from now, that Icarus will fall into the sun, and maybe never, for if ever that time could be foreseen, men will be morphed into birds, more efficient, and un needing of any fuel, probably long exhausted by then.

It is normal, typical for humans and their cultures to forget their technologies. For example: the technologies of the Mesopotamian culture, of the Egyptian culture, of the Apollinic (Greek/Roman) culture, and of the American (Maya/Inca) culture were forgotten after the “death” of this cultures. So I predict that the technologies of the Occidental culture will be forgotten after the “death” of the Occidental culture. Relating to the forgetfulness, it makes only a little difference that the Occidental culture is the only one which has conquered and captured the whole globe and parts of the universe.

On average it is posible that it takes merely three or four generations, until cultural affairs are forgotten, if nothing is done against that forgetful development. You don’t believe that? Remember the Roman history. When the Germans conquered Rome and the Roman territory the Romans had alraedy forgotten many of their own technologies. Or remember the Aztecan history. When the Spanish conquered the Aztecan territory the Atztecs had already forgotten how to build their pyramids.

Sorry for my hideously long absence. I had retreated to my hovel to sulk.

When I asked that question, I was wondering if the work you do (the expendeture of your effort) supports the current power structures, mainly. But also, do you feel like you are working towards creating avenues for new kinds of actions that are not structured and dictated by the current system?

I am not expecting a simple answer to those questions. I think certain people could be considered to be supporting the current system to much larger degrees than others, for example people who work in a bureaucracy, or even elementary school teachers that stick closely to the curriculum. I even had some teachers who got offended when children asked why we were learning certain subjects and topics. Although it seems fairly obvious, when you are very little, you don’t always put it together that you are being put through the rungs, progress through school, find a job, generally either in some government institution or corporation or other capital accumulating company.

I don’t think the only options to work against the current system are becoming a criminal or isolating yourself. I do think that it is pretty near impossible to live without supporting the structures in some way (even necessities we pay for end up as part of the funding, as well as tax.)

Like I said, I’m not looking for a simple answer to this question, and it is only if you feel up to answering. It just seems to me that you readily accept the end of history as a given, and I am wondering how much of that is a result of you perhaps liking the system as it is and wishing to perpetuate it. I think there is an incentive to shoot down ideas that conflict with the way things are if we wish to maintain that system (which is not to say that every divergent idea is a good one)…

It strikes me that the reason there was more passion in the past, more desire for political revolution (for example, which I am not personally for, in any common sense of the term, ie. armed or violent revolution) was not because it wasn’t believed there were risks, but because (among many reasons) there were pressures that made it more uncomfortable to maintain the status quo than to risk everything on a change for the better. In the west, for the most part (maybe not for everyone) our way of life has become fairly comfortable, and we are less liable to take risks with what we have for fear of losing it at all, and that means even small risks. Most people want to stick with the system because they believe (correctly or incorrectly) that if they study hard at school and get a “good” job, they will have a comfortable home and shiny baubles to play with.

Do you think that is a fair assessment?

Not there yet, probably never will be.

I do not accept the end of history as a given. But I say that history will perhaps end in the near future. Not more.

Can assesments be “fair”, although they have to be right or worng?

Why “not there yet”? Why “probably never will be”?

Okay, I stand corrected. It seemed like your last responses were trying to convince me that the end of history was approaching. So I was asking you whether you are working to bring it about or to bring something else about. I’m not really convinced that as individuals we have no effect on the way the future progresses, and in any case, despite what little control we often have over our selves and our own lives, it is the only thing we can have something near to direct control over (even if freedom is relative or merely perceived), our relation to everything else is mediated through ourselves.

One definition in the Oxford dictionary of fair is:

I think that coincides pretty closely with asking if the the assessment is right or wrong. It’s a figure of speech.

We have an effect on the way of the future progresses, but who is “we”? The main effect comes frome about 1% of all humans, the effect of about 19-20% of all humans is still considerable, but the effect of about 79-80% of all humans is quite inconsiderable. The latter do what the former want them to do. Basical is the effect of the 1% of all humans, regardless wether the form of government is monarchy/tyrannis, aristocracy/oligarchy, or democracy/ochlocracy. Who decided, decide, and will decide wether or not there is war, for example? 1% of all humans! The other humans (99%) can not change very much. And if there will be no war, no historical existentials, no history anymore, then that will probably be the time of the “last men” (Friedrich W. Nietzsche).

Sure, I can understand and accept that, but what I don’t really understand is what you feel should be the result of that realization. Are you saying that because only a small percent of individuals effect history on a grand scale, that “we”, and for the sake of this conversation we can say that “we” is me, you, anyone else reading, and others we come into contact with who we would have an influence upon, should stop even trying to make changes is the world? I’m not saying that is what you are implying for certain, but it’s a little unclear and it seems to me that might be the implication.

I am not looking for easy answers (like some joyous burst of inspiration “we should all join together and change the world!”). I am often quite a pessimist but I don’t really see any point in accepting a deeply fatalistic interpretation and living by it without making an attempt.

Would you care to elaborate on what you feel should be done (even if you do not wish to project those kinds of categories on others, I don’t know what you desire)? I’m sure some such understanding must guide your own actions.

Also to clarify, when I asked you before about where you place your effort, it was not in some attempt to prove you haven’t lived up to some expectation I had (if you even thought that), it is just that I wonder sometimes how interrelated the stances we take are with our outlook and how that connects with how we act. I honestly don’t believe that I’ve accomplished some great thing. I have been ruled by fear for much of my life, it’s not something I’m proud of. History for me is integrally connected to my own positioning as a subjective being, it was that that interested me in this thread and in the ‘End of History’ debate in general. For me philosophy is integrally related to how individuals can understand the world and act.

I’m not saying that last thought is something new, it’s been integral to philosophy and prerhaps contemplation prior to the written text, but I do think a lot of philosophical contemplation has moved away from that concern. It is not really important how we act (we here being the philosophers in question and their audience). Many philosophers live their lives through institutions with very structured repetitive behaviours, maybe they always have because there has always been deep structures to social life. (Roles and Institutions, pre-prescribed paths of development)

One of the reasons I had difficulty getting into the understanding of the way history is theorized in this thread is because I had always learned about history prior as being embodied in the written text. Human life before writing (or our possession of the writing of the time) being categorized as pre-history.

I am just wondering, do you think it would be significant or insignificant if a group of people (however large) created narrative texts (with real events, ideas and what have you) and passed them down among others that came to form the group throughout various generations. Would this be beyond the scope of history? Are we defining history as only what is recognized globally? To put it another way, does it only become history because it is recognized globally? If the same transmissions (texts, maybe other artifacts) were later “discovered” or otherwise brought forth to attention, does that make them part of history in a global understanding?

What should the historian do? If the historian wanted to change something according to his feelings (for example), this historian would not be a real historian. Historians have to know and fix the hoistorical facts without any feelings and disturbance which comes from outside their bodies.

I almost hate myself to coming to the realization, that unfortunately, Arminius, the percentages we have been pre-occupied with all along this forum have ALWAYS been as such, there seem to have always to have been such breakdown. Aristocracy was a long standing political stance, and perhaps that is the way society breaks down in almost predictable ways, based on inherent powers? This, incidentally is very Kantian, and categorical, so again, we come to the threshold between the pseudo idealism of Leibniz and the ethical ‘practicality’ of Kant. And the more i think of it, the more it seems that the ‘should’ of Kant has reserved a sustenance of a continuation between himself and Leibniz. So in a sense, he foresaw the either/or problem in a historical continuum of consciousness. That his logic is flawed, is another matter. But for his time, it was passable.

How did the historian come into this? I was talking about we as individuals acting. The main parts of my previous comment that referrenced historians (I think) was about whether history must be globally recognized and on the other hand small groups passing down history. I didn’t make any implication of historians changing facts that I’m aware of, only individuals acting to influence history.

Why do you call Leibniz’ idealism a “pseudo idealism”, Obe?