Pill Pod 152 - End of History II: Triumphal Liberalism (Exclusive)
Added 2024-01-13 20:51:16 +0000 UTCAdjusted for inflation, Francis Fukuyama received $1,311,814.68 to write The End of History and the Last Man (https://amzn.to/3tPo5Bt); we want to see what $1,311,814.68 is worth.
Comments
where Mike Davis writes about those ‘fledgling’ attempts to contest celebration of corporatism in LA… ( California pomo), he very insightfully notes those attempts “ haven’t fully disengaged themselves from the dream machinery.” I guess that’s what i’d call the prob of utopianism for ‘progressives’. Utopianism is so caught up in the dreams of the west. So i guess we must continue to so-called deconstruct the dream machinery wherever and however it insists. The point being that we humans do have, it seems, almost a faculty for Believing…. maybe bc we do dream. Bc of the blur on some ontological level between dreaming and wakefulness, the ideological interpellating grip of Power takes hold. I don’t know if we can or should try to eliminate belief… but disengaging from the dream machinery seems imperative for any future possibility of some lived difference from that machine. But… that’s a lot. Probably somewhere between hope and cynicism.
Zachary Manenti
2024-02-10 15:54:14 +0000 UTCmike davis city of quartz good place to think about utopia…
Zachary Manenti
2024-02-09 21:54:36 +0000 UTC"But For ppl wanting ‘revolutionary’ difference or change, the end of utopia, i.e, that there is no such future plan (or country/nation/ place), is a problem. Even if, paradoxically, utopia means ‘no where’ , no place. " Just because you want an alternative set of socioeconomic relations doesn't mean that you want a utopia tho. If a radically different set of social relations is seen as utopian, that's an ideological position.
anacidcommie
2024-02-01 19:39:57 +0000 UTCYea there was not very much by way of foreign intervention in Korea after the war ended. South Korea actually went on a bit of a central planning spree and made choices that a lot of capitalist/liberal foreign powers (us uk imf etc) did not endorse like creating their steel industry. They were very protectionist economically speaking for quite some time. And then they gradually freed up their market once they were able to compete. But yea also on the other hand they picked up a bunch of labor for foreign capitalist countries that there was a lot of demand for, so in that way there was some pressure but I think it was more of a practical response on koreas part. I dunno. Fascinating and unique country arc.
Alex Petty
2024-01-30 03:25:40 +0000 UTCMillenia post-collapse of the Lib Empire, the climate was settling and agrarian communities began to form. What seemed to be a tomb was unearthed. Hidden within the depths of the concrete labyrinth a limp body lay suspended in coolant, terminally frost-broken cells. The traditional resting condition of the old-world's "Billionaires". Near the pool stood a sealed container: a complex yet solitary symbol etched upon its carapace (I'd later recognise it as signifying "total progress/history"). Its presence eminated a subliminal foreboding, as if constraining an infinite curse or an evil genie. Instinct urged me to grind it into dust yet I knew it offered the power to enrich me...
Alex B
2024-01-25 06:35:12 +0000 UTCI was reading Gravity Rainbow and it reminded me of pills: “What if Mexico's whole generation have turned out like this? Will Postwar be nothing but "events," newly created one moment to the next? No links? Is it the end of history?”
Giancarlo Bonizzio
2024-01-19 21:00:00 +0000 UTCi don’t think it’s true that the french was only a xtractivist but i’m not the most familiar but knowing french myself i know they went pretty deep trying to impose their culture
Atelier Minceur
2024-01-15 22:23:56 +0000 UTCI think it's also pretty interesting to hear the thoughts / ideas non-historians have about History especially because, as is pointed out by it's comparisons to ideology, "History" permeates human activity on both large and small scales. So someone might not be a historian but I definitely believe they have a sort of "historical sense" where they tangentially reason from a perspective of how things are or aren't connected through time (and, more rarely, space). I work as a historian and I'm always surprised at the ways that people use history or historical thinking on a minute level.
kyri
2024-01-15 22:00:34 +0000 UTCMaybe an easier way to explain what people are talking about when they talk about H (with the big H) is what historians would call histography or the history of History, how it's written, talked about, used, etc. I think there can be pretty pragmatically based discussions about how history can be used, interpreted, that sort of thing, in a broad, generalizing kind of way that sometimes gets lost in more specified histories of "x" or "y".
kyri
2024-01-15 21:57:15 +0000 UTCAlso, it is proven that the spanish empire was of the generative type, trying to replicate it’s society and structure in every territory it had. Whereas the english, french, portuguese and dutch empires were purely extractivist empires that had no interest in developing their territories’ societies’ structures. Of course, the dutch model for instance was great for its capitalists objectives, whiles the dutch just got rich the spanish tried to built a civilization. Moreover, many in the spanish world argue (and this is argued for instance even by santiago armesilla, a marxist philosopher) that capitalism and liberalism are and were in direct conflict with the catholic worldview and way of life. That it is catholicism at the root of hispanic societies which is in direct conflict with liberalism and capitalism and that’s why “they’re not so good at doing capitalism”.
Guillermo Garrido-Lestache Vidal
2024-01-15 09:04:10 +0000 UTC“Spanish imperial clientelism” is a completely made up term by fukushityama that has no bearing on historical reality. It’s part of the tipical lopsided skewed anglo-american perspective on the spanish empire. That perspective is deeply rooted in the anglo-american fear that it’s greatest civilizational rival was the spanish world and not china or the urss. At least 1850-1920 it was an absolute priority for both the uk and the usa to do everything possible to systematically damage the countries which had gained independence from spain so that none of them would become an actual competitor to the us or uk in the global market. That’s where america’s famous “monroe doctrine” comes from, which basically states: all of the americas (from alaska to chile) belong to the americans (the citizens of the usa). That’s why the former terrotories of the spanish empire are now poor and unstable. Not some bulsshit liberal fairytale about clientelism. So fuck you francis fukushityama
Guillermo Garrido-Lestache Vidal
2024-01-15 08:57:29 +0000 UTCthere is a reason they call it NEO liberalism. Liberalism was much more leftist in the 1930s than even the 50s…and much much more than the 90s bc of the utopianism of communism and its hopeful international revolutions. Agree Pils ur point about the end of an (alternative) futurity, i.e. utopia, in the defeat of the soviet project, which in no way was a neutral collapse, that is, due only to the internal failure of its viability in terms of an idea and model of equality and justice, but a result of many factors but predominantly a WAR, cold or hot, in which the U.S. won in large part by rigging the fight, is essential to the critique of the ideological nonsense of this book. The continuing state of Cuba is a critical missing voice and history (and present) in this discussion, though it is v difficult for a westerner lib to access its actual ‘struggle.’ Your point there for me explains somewhat the political ‘malaise’ of the 21st C in the western world. It sounds like Fukyama is saying the ‘end of history’ is the ‘end of utopia’. It was utopia that was defeated and utopia was the more leftist aspect of liberalism. I think that is how Fukyama is being ‘triumphant.’ Utopia was an idea, true, but it was defeated by effects of or in material realities. For him the end of utopia is not a problem. Bc neo lib democracy will just be working itself out infinitely. Like achilles and the tortoise. But For ppl wanting ‘revolutionary’ difference or change, the end of utopia, i.e, that there is no such future plan (or country/nation/ place), is a problem. Even if, paradoxically, utopia means ‘no where’ , no place.
Zachary Manenti
2024-01-14 23:39:26 +0000 UTCWhile the thoughts are fresh out of the thought oven: 14:00 The analogy of end of history as reboot, new revs, patches, seems to really be about "the new," i.e. novel, previously thought impossible, etc. being able to occur, on behalf of *human* agency. So an end of history would mean the end of "new" in the sense of say new concepts? 15:00 victor difficulty with determining the most interesting thought goggles for "end of history." Here I can see the end of history in the selection of let's say "top tier" concepts or problems vs a network or multiplicity of concepts and problems, particularly when that selection is perhaps more dispersed than ever? So I pick up the concept of Ideology and that becomes my fundamental focus. The sentiment that end of history is marked by having made a selection (willing) or being thrown into (unwilling) of say an ideal or the unavoidable, and then simply managing or optimizing that situation. So to ramble back, adherence to an Ideological world view could denote the end of history, just as adherence to a liberal democracy world view denotes the end of history. It is settling upon an established, overarching world view and seeking to optimize or attenuate it? Does the end of history, in this sense, depend on whether these adherences are at the limit of sameness or difference?
ageOfBumFires
2024-01-14 15:09:26 +0000 UTCClaudine Gay got in trouble for summarising/paraphrasing authors and dropping in language used by such authors without quotation marks and individual citation. She gave the authors full credit for their ideas but didn't technically comply with academic attribution standards. I'm pretty sure I've done this from time to time, and I think those standards are insane.
Fiachra O Raghallaigh
2024-01-14 13:49:08 +0000 UTC1.3 million! That's bulshit!
l. mark harris
2024-01-13 21:05:58 +0000 UTC
