So last week’s rude awakening of a post-war (World and Russia-Ukraine) Europe without the protective cloak of US militarism marked a new period in global geo-politics. But did it also mark the End of History as Francis Fukuyama suggested in his 1992 book at the end of the Cold War?
Well, one thing is for sure: the Trumpian disavowal of history (the fascist horrors of World War Two and the European dependency on American security) has marked an end to history that virtually every European or British citizen anticipated in the Thatcher-Reagan era. Except, it isn’t quite the end of history that we imagined (thank goodness). It hasn’t yet meant the destruction of life on earth bought by nuclear holocaust as we thought might happen post-Falklands/Malvinas. But that’s still on the table as two mighty powers (and leaders) jostle for their position as King of the World.
If Trump’s deliberative ignorance of European history and the subtleties of world diplomacy come as a surprise it is, perhaps, evidence of our own ignorance of how history works: not in linearity but in cyclical and interstitial and multiple ways. History not repeating itself, but still in the making.
Whilst many on the Centre Left and Right were distracted by seemingly common ground in the economic potentialities of climate change (and concomitant Green New Deals), another hyperobject revealed itself on the horizon: civilisational discontent with migration, economic stagnation and health inequality. It’s manifestation comes in the form of populist nationalism – a distrust of the ‘other’; of career politicians who always promised action but—to date—fail to deliver; and to precarity.
Capitalist extractivism has sucked the energy and wealth out of all of us, with the resultant formation of the 1% wealthy and the richest man in the world: an odious man whose white South African exceptionalism has now permeated every Western democracy left (partially) standing.
We’re constantly distracted by the wrong thing. It isn’t Trump or Putin or any other European leader. It isn’t even climate change per se but post-war capitalism. Thatcher’s legacy of no such thing as society has finally come to fruition. There will indeed be no society left unless we imagine something else quite different. It is the end of history’s relevance (at least for some). Our present is dark. Our future? Who knows.
History used to be able to teach us things. But now history has been thrown into the bonfire of egoist insanity. Mere citizens like ourselves now face one foundational question: how will we survive? Forget thrive. This is deep shit baby.
My tip? Run for the hills.
If running for the hills isn’t your thing then can I at least suggest what you don’t do? Don’t stream another Netflix series. Don’t satiate your desires with another Amazon purchase. Don’t doom-scroll your life through social media. Just don’t. Instead, start building new information infrastructures that will allow you to build new compassionate communities. Create new relationships of understanding by talking to those who would even contain the idea of a Faragian future to dissuade them from doing so. Imagine another world—the world you hoped for when you dreamt (as a child) what you might become. Work with others to build a future that does everything in its power to avoid this shit happening again. Make that commitment. And start history all over again.
Go and Design.
