The End of History

[jimmy olsen]

Chavezism is the real threat! 

http://time.com/3156299/venezuelan-president-announces-mandatory-fingerprinting-at-grocery-stores/

Venezuelan President Announces Mandatory Fingerprinting at Grocery Stores

Eliana Dockterman @edockterman

The measure is meant to end food shortages

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced Wednesday that the country will introduce a mandatory fingerprinting system in supermarkets. He asserted that the plan will keep people from buying too much of any single item. The president did not say when the measure would go into effect, the Associated Press reports.

The Socialist Venezuelan government has struggled with food shortages for over a year. Basic cooking items like oil and flour are scarce. The administration says that the shortages are a result of companies speculating and people smuggling food out of the country.

Critics argue that the new system—which was tried on a voluntary basis in government-run grocery stores this spring—is equivalent to rationing food.

[Siege]

The end of history will be the technological singularity, when humans merge with technology.
It is not about creating strong AIs, but about enhancing humanity.

Post singularity humans will have their memories in the cloud, process information so fast the physical world will seem frozen, and more importantly, all the human individualities will not matter anymore, because they will all look and behave however they really wanted too. If we don't kill ourselves with nano-scale technologies, the future is great.

[Martinus]

The end of history will be the technological singularity, when humans merge with technology.
It is not about creating strong AIs, but about enhancing humanity.

Post singularity humans will have their memories in the cloud, process information so fast the physical world will seem frozen, and more importantly, all the human individualities will not matter anymore, because they will all look and behave however they really wanted too. If we don't kill ourselves with nano-scale technologies, the future is great.

You should play Civilization: Beyond Earth. Unfortunately, it does not have Jews in space.

[Siege]

Have anybody ever got a full valyrian steel plate armor?
I bet it would completely impervious to castle-forged steel.

[Viking]

Putinism anf Jihadism may be "failures", but they are increasing in influence.

Why should the "end of history", in Fukuyama terms, date to 25 years ago? Facism and Communism were never viable alternatives to liberal democracy, any more than Putinism or Jihadism are now.

The thing is that Fascism and Commnuisms were thought to be viable alternatives. They were not mere reactions to something else. Islamism claims to be a viable alternative - obviously it isn't. Putinism doesn't claim to be a viable alternative, it really claims to be the same thing. The ideology of putinism, if there is such a thing, is "you are doing this too".

Fukuyama is still correct. We have reached the end of history in the hegelian sense. History has no direction to progress in.

[Siege]

A Valyrian dragon lord probably flew around in full plate valyrian steel armor, eh?

[Malthus]

Putinism anf Jihadism may be "failures", but they are increasing in influence.

Why should the "end of history", in Fukuyama terms, date to 25 years ago? Facism and Communism were never viable alternatives to liberal democracy, any more than Putinism or Jihadism are now.

The thing is that Fascism and Commnuisms were thought to be viable alternatives. They were not mere reactions to something else. Islamism claims to be a viable alternative - obviously it isn't. Putinism doesn't claim to be a viable alternative, it really claims to be the same thing. The ideology of putinism, if there is such a thing, is "you are doing this too".

Fukuyama is still correct. We have reached the end of history in the hegelian sense. History has no direction to progress in.

I would say "fascism and communism claimed to be viable alternatives - obviously, they weren't". How does that differ from Islamicism or that mix that we could convenietly label Putinism? That some academics, bizzarely, took those claims seriously then, but few do now!

The only "change" here is on the inside of academic heads. Also, in the weakness, in absolute terms, of the present-day challengers at the moment. The West could, if motivated to all out war, crush Putin and the Islamicists like flies, which wasn't true of the fascists and communists in their heyday.   

[The Minsky Moment]

There is only one prevailing and consistent social order throughout History: the 'Have' rule - the 'Have Not' are being ruled.  What changes are the modalities which enable one to be a member of the former group rather than to be confined to the latter one.  Everything else is merely window dressing - no matter what ideologues may prattle about it at any given time.

OK so Stalin and Roosevelt, Hitler and Churchill - all the same, the differences are just "window dressing" to prattle about?

[Viking]

Putinism anf Jihadism may be "failures", but they are increasing in influence.

Why should the "end of history", in Fukuyama terms, date to 25 years ago? Facism and Communism were never viable alternatives to liberal democracy, any more than Putinism or Jihadism are now.

The thing is that Fascism and Commnuisms were thought to be viable alternatives. They were not mere reactions to something else. Islamism claims to be a viable alternative - obviously it isn't. Putinism doesn't claim to be a viable alternative, it really claims to be the same thing. The ideology of putinism, if there is such a thing, is "you are doing this too".

Fukuyama is still correct. We have reached the end of history in the hegelian sense. History has no direction to progress in.

I would say "fascism and communism claimed to be viable alternatives - obviously, they weren't". How does that differ from Islamicism or that mix that we could convenietly label Putinism? That some academics, bizzarely, took those claims seriously then, but few do now!

The only "change" here is on the inside of academic heads. Also, in the weakness, in absolute terms, of the present-day challengers at the moment. The West could, if motivated to all out war, crush Putin and the Islamicists like flies, which wasn't true of the fascists and communists in their heyday.

Well the thing is nobody out there is suggesting that "we" should be like putin's russia, while there are lots of people are suggesting "we" should be like the caliphate.

[Malthus]

Well the thing is nobody out there is suggesting that "we" should be like putin's russia, while there are lots of people are suggesting "we" should be like the caliphate.

Not true. There are some - ultra-conservatives who think the West is on the road to degeneration. They admire Putin's Russia.

What there aren't, are academics who admire Putin's Russia (or at least, I haven't heard of any). That seems to be the major difference as to why the one set of horrible ruling theories/philosophies was a "serious challenge" and the other set is not.

[Grallon]

OK so Stalin and Roosevelt, Hitler and Churchill - all the same, the differences are just "window dressing" to prattle about?

Those regimes were variations of the same thing - a hierarchical society.  You should read Pierre Clastres' "Society against the State".  He contends that only primitive tribal societies, "structured by a complex set of customs [can] avert, ward off and refuse the rise of despotic power".

Is there a fundamental difference between ranting about the herrenvolk, droning on about the dictatorship of the proletariat or speeches about democracy & capitalism?  In the methods you might say but tell me, weren't all these regimes based on extensive legal structures distributing power and establishing the parameters for the use of legitimate coercion?

It's not because the iron first is (more or less) gloved in velvet in our democracies that it isn't there - see what's happening in Ferguson at the moment.

But perhaps you're after a moral hierarchy?  Now *that* is definitely window dressing.




G.

[PDH]

OK so Stalin and Roosevelt, Hitler and Churchill - all the same, the differences are just "window dressing" to prattle about?

Those regimes were variations of the same thing - a hierarchical society.  You should read Pierre Clastres' "Society against the State".  He contends that only primitive tribal societies, "structured by a complex set of customs [can] avert, ward off and refuse the rise of despotic power".

Is there a fundamental difference between ranting about the herrenvolk, droning on about the dictatorship of the proletariat or speeches about democracy & capitalism?  In the methods you might say but tell me, weren't all these regimes based on extensive legal structures distributing power and establishing the parameters for the use of legitimate coercion?

It's not because the iron first is (more or less) gloved in velvet in our democracies that it isn't there - see what's happening in Ferguson at the moment.

But perhaps you're after a moral hierarchy?  Now *that* is definitely window dressing.




G.

The problem with Clastres is that he assumed as much as he criticized in his notions of stateless and states.  For him, the state was not evolutionary (or perhaps better would be he criticized notions of evolution as progress) but instead the state was a failure.  Both are assumptions, both are slanted and in my opinion incorrect views.

Small scale societies do indeed run as classless and hierarchy-free social units, however this is only true on the smallest scales.  Increases in population and methods of food gathering require institutions and organization that needs leaders and systems of work roles.  While on the (still) small scales these roles are often task-based with little actual authority outside of the situation needed, they do show a movement toward hierarchies in society as the population size increases and social complexity likewise increases.

The reason frameworks like the Sahlins-Service theory still work is that it manages to explain that varying levels of population and social complexity go hand in hand with hierarchies and concentrations of power.  Human social systems of increasing social stratification and concentrations of power seem not to be "failures" of society, but rather methods of change over time to changing demographic and caloric production needs.

In short, to lump all of the 1930s leaders into one camp work only if you are talking on the meta-level - they all were leaders of hierarchical states at that time, however this is facile and really only works as a t-shirt slogan or as a rallying cry to teenagers who do not wish to delve into the complexity of the situation.

[Jacob]

So is that what "the end of history" means?

That Western nation states think they have the best system, and that they feel there are no competing models that they are willing to consider. That there are no credible ideological competition from our point of view?

That may be true - at least at the moment - but it seems a bit overwrought to call it the end of history. History also happens in places that are not Western nations, and it happens in the interactions between Western nations and non-Western ones. And the ascendance of liberal democracy globally seems far from certain to me at this point.

[Valmy]

I had no idea Grallon was such an anarchist.

[Jacob]

I had no idea Grallon was such an anarchist.

He's more of a nihilist, it seems.