THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT.
As one socio-economic era ends, another begins.
In 1992, Francis Fukuyama published a now infamous book called “The End of History and the Last Man” in which he expanded upon a previous argument that we, as a society, had reached a political finality:
“What we are witnessing is (…) the end of history as such … That is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”
As laughable as it may seem now, it is understandable why someone at the time would hold such a viewpoint — Communism was in retreat, Global Liberalism was on the rise, and the World Wide Web was still in its infancy. This was the Year of the Woman, it was the year NAFTA was signed, the year the European Union was created. The world had come together to watch both the Winter and Summer Olympics (the Dream Team won Gold,), the U.N. Earth Summit was held in Brazil (the U.S. refused to sign), the New Democrat Bill Clinton had just won the presidency (“It’s the economy, stupid”)… and, as the year ended, the world’s first ever text message was sent with a cheerful note of “Merry Christmas.”
There was hope, there was optimism, there was real political progress, and some of its noisiest authorities insisted on it being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only…
Curiously enough though, 1992 was also the year when Home Alone 2: Lost in New York came out, with an unforgettable six-second cameo of a man who would go on to delineate the underpinnings of a new ideological retrogression— turning liberal Western democracy on its proverbial head:
Now, almost 26 years later, in the midst of data scandals, growing geopolitical tensions, economic uncertainty, and rising populism, we (generationally) find ourselves at an impasse. Devoid of optimism, hope, and everything that was once considered decent, we begrudgingly approach one of the greatest paradigm shifts not only of our lifetimes, but of recorded human history…
This is a Change of Existential Proportions.
It seems that we are at the beginning of a very real historic End. To be sure, this claim isn’t particularly extraordinary nor is it exaggerated for any sensationalist purposes, especially once you take all of the variables — both the known and the immeasurable — into account. Like the Eurasia Group said this year in their Top Risks Report, “2018 doesn’t feel good.”
Indeed, the Global Order of the so-called Pax Americana is unraveling—China is embracing the vacuum left by a middling U.S. State Department, Russia is enjoying the E.U.’s sustained shock at “unpresidented” Trumpian actions (tariffs and all NATO things considered), meanwhile institutional erosion is notably rampant in an ever-growing number of countries (e.g. Spain, Turkey, Brazil) while risks of structural instability arise, populist pressure abounds, and Fake News gleefully disseminate around the globe….
The era seems to be rife with chaos—is it really then so surprising that our current generational Zeitgeist reaction is to take everything in with a sort of cheery, almost upbeat nihilism?
First, let us consider the smaller events:
AI, Privacy Issues, Misuse/Abuse of Data, Uncontrollable Social Media, Growing Tech Conglomerates, Monopolization of Information, Industrial Automation, Job Loss, Increasing Inequality, Wage Stagnation, Inflation, Insurmountable Global Debt, Economic Fragility, Political Polarization and Stagnation, Immigration and Refugee Crises, Growing Authoritarianism, Intensifying Geopolitical Disputes,Trade Wars —
And then, of course, there are the bigger ones:
Rising Ocean Levels, Increasing Pollution, Sea Acidity, Melting Ice Caps, New Disease Outbreaks, Shifting Seasonal Patterns, Diminishing Agricultural Yields, More Powerful Storms, More Floods, More Hurricanes, More Droughts, More Wildfires, More Heat Waves, Deforestation, Global Mass Extinction, Everything Else Associated with Climate Change*(because, yes it exists, and it’s occurring whether you choose to believe in it or not)—
Oh, and Nuclear War.
In fact, things have gotten so grim that in 2018 the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, citing the existential threats of Nuclear War and unchecked Climate Change, moved their Doomsday Clock to 2 Minutes to Midnight:
“The failure of world leaders to address the largest threats to humanity’s future is lamentable” —the group stated, imploring an apathetic citizenry to react and organize around a consensus—“They can seize the opportunity to make a safer and saner world.”
Alas, if only…
Because even if we do, like Mayer Hillman, a prominent social scientist said in a recent Guardian interview on the Climate Reality no else will dare mention:
“We’re doomed.”
Or as another concerned citizen pointed out:
The world is changing. Our way of life is ending—quite literally.
Of course, let us try to not presuppose causality here—any action that is subsequently taken cannot be devised or speculated upon without a definite correlation between events—and like many stats students will tell you, “Correlation does not imply causation.”
So, to avoid falling into any post-hoc fallacies (that Y followed X and therefore Y was caused by X), and to avoid any criticism from “the haters and losers, (of which, sadly, there are many)” we must then be entirely confident in our view that yes, the first events (Human Actions) are in fact partly responsible for the second (Climate Change), and that yes, the second is partly dependent upon the first, and thusly, there is more cause for concern than many will readily accept.
On that account, it can only follow that the myriad of problems we are currently facing may be attributed to general political and economic mismanagement, and will, (consequently) only grow in their complexity and size as we continue down this Thanatos-fueled route of denial and disassociation.
Plenty of sensible organizations, from Greenpeace to the U.N., all the way to the less sensible ones (like the US Navy) have all raised cause for concern. Surprisingly, even the Pope met with fossil fuel industry leaders to discuss the measures we were taking to face our Climate Reality — “Is it enough?” he asked them, almost evoking Biblical images of Apocalyptic annihilation.
No, as Mayer Hillman said—
“Standing in the way is capitalism.”
We would have to leave more than 80% of Fossil Fuel reserves underground to barely meet the Paris Agreement targets. Could we really convince the oil executives of the world to let their untapped money go to waste? Could we actually protect entire areas from those “Special Interest” groups, cut them off from industry Deforestation practices and the monetary potential that entails?
The Struggle is Real.
Solutions go beyond appealing to the humanity of a few rich oligarchs. Meat-consumption and its associated agribusinesses account for nearly a quarter of total green house gases emitted. We cannot convince the entire population to go vegan or force everyone to recycle, despite our best arguments. And what about energy consumption and overpopulation? Could we ever get people to halve their consumption habits or to altogether stop having children? To stop using their cars or fly around the world?
Why? Well, “It’s the Economy, Stupid.”
Old habits die hard. We cannot disregard the growth of our multi-trillion dollar industries. To boot, the petro-based modern capitalistic system whose institutions have given us marvels such as the Home Computer, the Internet, and the Smartphone—and whose Global Free Trade notions have supposedly helped lift millions out of poverty—have also produced an apparatus that increasingly relies on overconsumption and massive deficits in order to stay afloat—“We know what works: Freedom works.”— George Bush Sr. had said in his 1989 inaugural address, “free markets, free speech, free elections, and the exercise of free will unhampered by the state.”
This same attitude would go on to echo that of the next administration’s, whose policies would focus on expanding Globalization and enacting those very same Free Market freedoms:
Effectively so, the Post-Cold War 90s model of Capitalism reduced the number of people living below the Global Poverty Line of $1.25 a day, it witnessed countries such as China and India see substantial growth and eventually develop a new middle class, and while deregulation stimulated significant stock market growth that made billions of dollars in the process, it would also inadvertently cause the Great Recession of 2008.
This unrestrained Neoliberal attitude towards the economy was precisely that which would leave the New World, as Bill Clinton so aptly put it in his 1993 inaugural speech, “more free but less stable.”
However, we must remember this was a world that had yet to experience the true disruptive powers of Big Data and Social Media. The Internet of the 1990s (Web 1.0) was a just set of static websites without any interactive content—it was slow, had little social engagement, and lacked complete regulation.
Hello, Big Brother.
Around the early 2000s, post 9/11— this all changed. Web 2.0 emerged, with a widespread mobile use growing alongside those social media websites that increasingly depended upon user-generated content and their associated Privacy Policies. Observation had given way to active participation, and the over-sharing of private information began—“Move Fast and Break Things” was now the motto of the time.
Since then, we have seen surveillance laws such as the USA Patriot Act (2001) and UK’s Dripa (2014) accepted, challenged, and implemented—laws that made it remarkably easy for increasingly authoritarian governments to spy on ordinary citizens and allowed private companies to track and profit from all types of online activity.
Still reeling from the 2008 Crash, we decidedly then encouraged these very companies’ substantial market growth, enabling tech equities to close at all-time highs, while at the same time allowing Global Debt to reach record levels, putting our entire financial systems at risk (again.)
And while we signed away all of our Privacy Rights, allowing tech giants such as Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Alphabet Inc (Google) to gather, sell, and profitably weaponize our data, slowly, (but ever so surely) we subsidized the creation of an AI-powered dystopia—one that sequentially learns and records information as it classifies people through ads, products, and subscriptions—essentially imprisoning us in a digital panopticon of our own personal data.
Our privacy was then taken away through the fine print of a User Agreement and in the name of National Security—a process that was so subtly done, it would have amazed even Orwell himself. Such has been our societal progress, completed not with a bang, but with a simple “I agree.” (Terms & Conditions need not apply.)
Even those self-proclaimed progressives, like former-presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, were slow to catch on— “I like live audiences, with real people” she said in a 2009 interview “— virtual reality is no substitute.”
Finally, a Brave New End
So now, as we enter our post-Trump, post-Brexit world—possibly soon to be a post-NATO world (a global scenario nothing short of political chaos) we arrive at a New End of History. Having been obsessed with short-term economic growth, (for its own sake and not for ours) and keeping up with the latest trends, we became distracted enough to forget the collateral damages that came with our collective choices:
the Devastation of our Environment,
the Erosion of our Political Rights and Institutions,
and the Dismantling of our Very Social Fabric.
However…. economic progress cannot simply grind to a halt simply because we are heading towards a cliff — let’s not be too silly, shall we?
Ah, what can we do?
Do a complete remodel. We have to reboot, reset all of our basic systems. And we have to be willing to risk everything in order to do it, to make sacrifices, to give up certain powers—to decentralize, (some would even say)—in order to change the entire architecture of our already built-in power structures. We are already developing the necessary tools to organize our current entanglements (and fix that ever-present Collective Action Problem)... but it will be difficult (very difficult) as those in control will not easily relinquish what they already hold so dear…
As We Stare Into the Abyss…
It is partly due to this mindset why there has been so much fear of the new cryptocurrency systems that have been emerging ever since 2008. A reaction to the failing banks, Bitcoin (BTC) became the first, of course, and Satoshi Nakamoto’s invention of the blockchain system has already completely transformed the way we think about consensus mechanisms and organized group actions: peer-to-peer transactions forming an immutable ledger, with no middle-man, no ultimate centralized authority, ruled by logic and code.
Blockchain technology represents a fundamental transformation of money, the beginning of a revolution. To many, it provides an ability to replace those aforesaid toxic capitalistic industries whose predatory and profit-based decisions have brought us all here to this critical existential point.
Ultimately, this will become an decisive struggle between the old centralized systems of power, and the new decentralized ones—the beginning (some would say) of a political and economic upheaval. Others even venture to believe that this may be civilization’s only chance at survival, to structurally change our economy, to completely alter the course of our history…
In the “End,” whatever finality we choose, we’ll nonetheless have to go through a very painful process of elimination in order to reach it. Until then, we’ll have to keep asking ourselves the only teleological question that remains:
What do we want to become?
This is the first article in a series—read the next one here soon:
