011 - At History's End (Part I): Prelude

In this episode, I briefly introduce Francis Fukuyama, the concept of the end of history he popularized, and the immediate historical context which motivated his writing, as a first step towards understanding the modern American psyche and disposition.

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Foreword

I was very tempted to make this episode about things that frustrate me but are ultimately beyond my control.

I wanted to complain about how the diminishing manufacturing quality of laptops impeded my audio production series. I wanted to complain about how shortsighted decisions by self-interested people in the corporate world have adverse effects on peripheral companies and the lives of their colleagues. I wanted to complain about how deficiencies in complex systems design and testing cripples the processes of multibillion dollar corporations, and the rippling consequences this has for the customers who have come to trust their brands.

I wanted to weave this all into a coherent thesis, to pinpoint a somewhat recent cause for all of this, and to paint a bigger picture of holistic societal decline. Broad spectrum shrinkflation, I wanted to call this episode.

But instead, I’m scrapping all of that. The subjects I actually want to explore in depth going forward are far too delicate for such selfish and simple-minded contextualization, the scope too broad to attribute issues to a single culprit and potentially encumbered by hyperfixation on specific issues, the counterpoints existing within such a deep timeframe that it potentially renders the thesis moot. And above all else, it would be potentially unfair and insulting to the people involved in the stories I hope to tell.

So as I proceed with my investigation in this new subseries, I will try to approach the material respectfully, and on its own terms.

What I will say is that my audio production series is indeed on hold, due to issues with the relatively recently purchased hardware I migrated my audio production setup to, as well as the demands of my current career trajectory, and quite frankly my general inclination to procrastinate on music projects for obscenely long periods of time.

If there is a takeaway from this, it’s that podcasting with production that is not contingent on a particular setup offers me far greater flexibility and throughput potential.

But anyway, let’s proceed, shall we?

Intro

Good evening. You’re listening to the Reflections in Beige Podcast, hosted by Michael LeSane. The date is Friday, August 2nd, 2024.

Prelude

I want to tell a story.

I want to tell the story of the world I was born into, and the world my father thrived in.

I also want to tell the story of the world I must navigate, and the world my father struggles to comprehend.

I want to tell a tale of two cities, of two countries, of two worlds, and of two eras.

I’m honestly not sure if I’m even capable of telling this story satisfactorily, but perhaps I should say that I want to explore a subject. That subject is history. More specifically, how history ended, the years that followed and the lives of those that have lived in such times, and how history perhaps began once again.

It’s all so very broad, vague, open-ended. But please, bear with me as I struggle to feel my way around the conceptual dark matter that underlies contemporary America in an attempt to shed light on where we’ve been, where we are, and perhaps – just perhaps – where we might be going.

The End of History

This exploration may jump backwards or forwards in time as we proceed, but as it pertains to this specific episode, our story begins during the summer of 1989 in Chicago, Illinois.

Political scientist and philosopher Dr. Francis Fukuyama, then working on policy planning for the State Department under the Reagan and Bush administrations, as well as a former analyst at the RAND Corporation, delivered a lecture at the University of Chicago, which he expounded upon in an essay published in the international relations magazine, The National Interest.

The essay was titled, The End of History?

Observing developments signaling the conclusion of the Cold War, such as Gorbachev’s political and market reforms in the Soviet Union, and Deng’s economic liberalization of the Chinese economy, as well as the global proliferation of consumer culture and the increasing distance from catastrophic ideologically-motivated conflicts like the first and second World Wars, Fukuyama posited that Western economic and political liberalism had triumphed.

“The triumph of the West, of the Western idea,” he wrote, “is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism.”

Quote:


End quote.

For the kids in the back, what this means is that amidst the geopolitical backdrop of major Communist states in Eurasia trending toward more capitalistic modes of production and embracing openness to transparency and criticism in political discourse during the 1980s, Fukuyama speculated that with respect to the evolution of human societies, humanity was perhaps converging upon capitalist democracy as embodied by Western countries as the rational and ideal form of human organization.

The essay, which I’d like to go into greater depth about later in this subseries and the 1992 book building on its thesis, The End of History and the Last Man, would catapult Fukuyama into prominence as an enduring public intellectual as well as a leading thinker of the neoconservative movement until he began to distance himself from it in the 2000s. The publications themselves and the ideas conveyed therein would too be the subject of enduring discussion, and criticism.

Though he would strongly dispute it, his thesis would come to be interpreted by some as the suggestion that the model of the United States, the world’s sole superpower following the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later, epitomized the ideal liberal society – politically, economically, and even culturally. The mentality of American exceptionalism this reinforced would, to say the least, have broad and unexpected rippling consequences both for the world at large and American society itself.

Ultimately, The End of History will not exactly be the focus of this subseries, but rather what I believe to be a starting focal point for understanding the American political psyche in the years which followed the Cold War, as well as the modern American cultural psyche which lie downstream.

In the next installment, I’d like to either further explore the essay, or alternately to go on a bit of a tangent in order to identify other literature that may help to further illustrate this psyche and to add additional context with respect to this exploratory journey.

That will be all for tonight.

Thank you for listening and sharing, and have a good night.