Thread 24714423

The most tragic figure of the 21st century

this guy got retro-actively refuted by strauss and voegelin so hard its not even funny. modernity de-telos'd western society, replacing it with nothing but hedonism and scientific-technological advancement. totalitarianism is its fruit body/end which strives to give civilization a new ideological telos and acheivement of the perfect society through unrelenting state terrorism. totalitarianism will return thanks to digital, robotic, and biotech advances that will augment both state power and the human condition towards a post-human level (which fukuyama acknowledged the biotech side of in his post-humanism book). only way out is the magical seizure of power by a divine platonic philsopher king

>>24714573
That's what makes him a pitiful person to me. He constantly acknowledges how fragile liberalism is but just keeps holding on to this insane faith that it will win in the political world forever. It's always "of course liberalism might fail and people will go on to other systems but it's still inherently correct"

>>24714573
High quality post

>>24714423 (OP)
I have a hypothesis on using the word end. You did kind of imply dialectics weren't needed anymore, I agree no one wants to do it but not needed is well, let's just say you didn't have an absolute. Now I've forgotten what my hypothesis was. At any rate never count Nietzsche out, he may seem like a well meaning idiot but he was exceptionally good at his job. Whatever he decided it was.

>>24714648
Take the final paragraph of his introduction to The End of History (apologies if greentext gets fucked up):
>This books seeks to address these questions. They arise naturally once we ask whether there is such a thing as progress, and whether we can construct a coherent and directional Universal History of mankind. Totalitarianisms of the Right and Left have kept us too busy to consider the latter question seriously for the better part of this century. But the fading of these totalitarian isms, as the century comes to an end, invites us to raise this old question one more time.

His entire work is based upon the assumption that totalitarianism has been vanquished and left in the dust bin of history. Despite this, China's continued existence under the CCP and its economic rise has made Fukuyama step back and remark that it might destroy the prospect of liberalism being the paradigm at the end of history:
https://www.asiaglobalinstitute.hku.hk/news-post/china%E2%80%99s-authoritarian-way-can-rival-liberal-democracy-if-it-doesn%E2%80%99t-tear-itself-apart--says-end-of-history-author

What irks me most of all in his treatment of the idea of directional history is the notion that it needs to be "progressive," a notion going all the way back to Francis Bacon. This presumes a normative idealism that really doesn't make sense and is being tacked unto the idea that history might have an order-direction to it. If you place modern human history within the larger context of cosmic history, the notion that such a process will bend to such idealism is really rather childish, foolish, and reeks of credulity, and the fact he wrote Posthumanism back in 2001 in response to critics that wagered history cannot end until technological advancement ends (which Strauss argued across several articles/books well over a decade+ before Fukuyama first wrote his thesis) really sends home the ridiculousness that liberalism is to be the paradigm-ideology at the end of history. All liberalism has provided is endless consumeris, corruption, and gay butt sex admist the backdrop of technological advancement. Fukuyama himself acknowledges the "transhumanism" (a misnomer/myth if anything) or posthumanism is the real danger at play here, so I really don't see why he still clings onto liberalism considering everything.

>>24714738
Take Voegelin's unintentional refutation of Fukuyama, literally only second page of his New Science of Politics:

>In an hour of crisis, when the order of a society flounders and disintegrates, the fundamental problems of political existence in history are more apt to come into view than in periods of comparative stability. Ever since, one may say, the contraction of political science to a description of existing institutions and the apology of their principles, that is, the degradation of political science to a handmaid of the powers that be, has been typical for stable situations, while its expansion to its full grandeur as the science of human existence in society and history, as well as of the principles of order in general, has been typical for the great epochs of a revolutionary and critical nature.

Strauss further BTFO'd Fukuyama back in 1964 via his work City and Man:

>We may therefore say that Spengler's analysis and prediction is wrong: our highest authority, natural science, considers itself susceptible of infinite progress, and this claim does not make sense, it seems, if the fundamental riddles are solved. If science is susceptible of infinite progress, there cannot be a meaningful end or completion of history; there can only be a brutal stopping of man's onward march through natural forces acting by themselves or directed by human brains and hands.


Obviously, Fukuyama was and still is a pontificating handmaiden for liberalism at the end of the cold war who tried to make a normative thesis work despite greater minds before him having ripped the rug out from under it. Meanwhile, we are confronted daily by the prospect of upon waking up that there might be news of an epochal development that will actually touch and change our lives forever, if the lights even turn on, or if we even wake up entirely. We are entering upon a time of global crisis and revolution, and its from here that we can see modernity and the wider trends of history for what they are. We're confronted by the at-best prospect of the world being stratified between the unaugmented and augmented and an entirely new order of advance artificial intelligence that will revolutionize governance and power. Such a development was gleamed by Kissinger right before dying, in that all this will result in a "supreme hegemony," in which a single hegemon will achieve world domination. I would wager such a hegemon (or Singleton, to borrow from Bostrom) will fully take on a totalitarian nature, in that it will indulge in mass murder and terrorism potentially up to an anti-human, omnicidal level. Humanity is marching into a final test of whether or not we will be functionally deemed a failed species within the cosmic scheme of things.

>>24714790
Oh, and Strauss's passage is only on the second page of City and Man as well. Goes to show how much Fukuyama didn't do his homework before soothsaying what corrupt liberals and plutocrats wanted to hear.

>>24714790
Right now, I think the current world order is led by liberals who are tired of liberalism but unwilling to fully admit it. Trump and his cabal for example don't even hesitate to contradict liberalism and the rule of law. They see it as nothing more than a nuisance. However everything they do is still in the same retarded universalist progressive framework that liberalism is steeped in, this ridiculous narrative of Judeo-Christian values triumphing over the darkness and advancing civilization into new stages that will make the past obsolete. It's illiberal liberalism. I'm just wondering at what point people will stop the charade and drop the liberal act entirely. They already disrespect it and scrutinize it whenever they don't fear monger about their bogeyman enemies like Islam and China, so what's stopping a future U.S. president from going full Franco for example?

>>24714895
>so what's stopping a future U.S. president from going full Franco for example?
Trump has flirted with this numerous times already but thats even beside the point - technical advance is reaching an apex that is totally and utterly going to upturn absolutely everything. The only thing that can stop it is either total collapse or a spiritual revolution.

>>24714977
That's assuming that we can even reach the hypothesized depths of transhumanism to begin with. Right now there is no actual reason to think AGI is even real or that we can prolong all human life for centuries or anything like that. And even if those things are possible the average person has no will to make them real. Very few people today desire something like eternal life, even living for 100 extra years is undesirable. I think people are vastly overestimating this current technological revolution.

>>24715086
>And even if those things are possible the average person has no will to make them real. Very few people today desire something like eternal life, even living for 100 extra years is undesirable
I think you're under-estimating, as Putin, Xi, and Peter Thiel all beg to differ; it doesn't matter what the average person wants or has the will for, what matters is that fraction of a 1% of the population who does have that will and the power to match it and make it real.

And yes, the question on whether or not AGI/ASI will/can happen is always the big one, but even so that is exactly what all sides are gunning for and its going to merge directly with advances in robotics and genetic engineering along the way. Its a matter of breakout whether that be in genetically engineered increased intelligence, strength, and health in humans, or fully automated robotic armies, or an entirely artificial or cyborg super-intelligence that commands entire economies and armies. All of this was just sci-fi hocus pocus but its whats the two global blocs of power are racing towards.

>>24715108
Ellison momentarily became the richest person in the world today btw

https://www.inc.com/chris-morris/larry-ellison-tops-elon-musk-to-become-worlds-richest-person-as-oracle-stock-soars/91238339

>>24715108
A few organ transplants will not help you that much in the face of cognitive decline.

>>24715116
Not to mention the need for new limbs, new bones, etc.

>>24715116
Yeah, and thats where genetic engineering and neuro-therapy comes in. Again, you are under-estimating things, especially when genetic-level eugenic tinkering has already been done in humans.

https://www.biotech.senate.gov/final-report/chapters/

>>24715128
Even if your brightest predictions are possible, that still leaves the question of a world defined by this technology being properly controlled and utilized being possible. Like you say, it's either collapse or a spiritual revolution, and the latter is utterly impossible with our Enlightenment framework. That leaves the option you or the other anon mentioned earlier, a total epistemic collapse followed by an omnicidal destruction of our modern civilization leaving only a husk of consumption and technology. That kind of suicide seems more likely and liberalism is largely to blame for leading us into it since it's an empty ideology to begin with.

>>24715134
This only brings to minds Heidegger's idea of enframing, that nature needs to be isolated, utilized, and put into reserve for technical means. It's entirely value-neutral, and when one applies it to human nature as these technologies are directly being intergraded into, the notion of "control" instantly becomes muddy and blurry as technical advance is a nearly autonomous process itself, or at the very least is a process that insists and demands upon itself for survival amongst human powers. Its a runaway process that will escape to the stars. Sterilization of the earth is preferable.

>>24714423 (OP)
You know, I would sympathize with Fukuyama more if he wasn't a hypocrite. He wants liberalism because he thinks it creates peace and less violence. A noble goal, few wouldn't want that. But he also had no issue lobbying for the Iraq War and giving Israel a free pass or any other imperialist liberal project that spreads wanton destruction around the world. Reading all his new books and articles where he just says "guys please chill out, return to the center and stop hating each other we can still fix things" is genuinely sad. He's a smart guy but way in over his head.

>history is ACTUALLY back

Are you fuckers ready? I'm simultaneously nervous and, I have to admit, slightly thrilled. This means a return of Grand Events. Of Great Men and Great Deeds. Wars, speeches, marches, borders changing, empires rising and falling.

It might, also, mean the return of Great Art. Maybe that's what we've all been missing. Maybe the reason there are so few great works of literature any more is because you need History to be on the move for them to be produced.

>>24715186
Who do you think will be remembered as the Great Man of the early 21st century? I'd put my money on Putin.

>>24715186
If good wins out, no matter how horrific things get before then, it will be the most glorious thing ever.

>>24715134
>it's either collapse or a spiritual revolution, and the latter is utterly impossible with our Enlightenment framework.
Why so?

>>24715134
Gee it's a good thing there are a few entities around that have at least somewhat resisted the spiritual and metaphysical framework of the Enlightenment.

>>24715385
Pic unrelated, yes?

>>24715385
christianity is literally just platonism with a jewish middle man, none of this would have happened if pure divine reason and metaphysics didnt get polluted by actual jewish nonsense that caused "enlightenment" counter-reaction rebellion

>>24715317
The Enlightenment framework does not give a solid spiritual foundation.

>>24715385
>what was Vatican 2

>>24715432
>a jewish middle man

I feel like the Resurrection is completely opaque to people like you. Do you really think Christians regard Jesus as just some Jew?

>>24714423 (OP)
>>24715181
Is he Star Trek: the man?

>>24716616
You think a jewish rabbi came back to death after three days and ascended into the sky to spite the romans and other rabbis, when your whole grip about sin and holiness is a 1:1 copy paste of platonic and Aristotelian virtue ethics. Literal cave-shadow created by hellenized jews 2000 years ago.

>>24716661
I believe the Resurrection is true because it is true.

And it's what's going to save the world in the end. Ratzinger was right, the Person of Jesus Christ is the antidote to the ills of Modernity.

>>24716663
You are a superstitious retard.

>>24714423 (OP)
Have any of you actually read his book?
His whole thesis is:
>Hegel has perfectly described history and we are still stuck at his stage of description
And
>Nietzsche identified the pathetic Last Man who languishes in this era.
Thats it. A couple graphs, historical anecdotes, and name dropping, but thats it.

The essay and book has been bastardized to fit the public discourse more closely, but none of it really goes against what this wanna be Hegel fanboy wrote.

>>24716663
>the Person of Jesus Christ i
Kind of the whole problem with this isn't it? kek

>>24714573
>>24714648
>>24714738
>>24714895
>>24714977
Please check out https://byzantinus.net/ some time, it's a textboard centered around the humanities and you two have an spirit that would very fitting for the site's purpose. It's invite-only but you can get an access code through a faucet right now.

>>24716741
>It's invite-only but you can get an access code through a faucet right now.
who do you do this and who owns/runs it?

>>24716705
That’s not it. His thesis, even if it is just restating Hegel, is the main doctrine guiding the post-Cold War West.

>>24717174
>is the main doctrine guiding the post-Cold War West.
no its not. thats the low IQ think tank take. history ended in the first half of the 19th century. accept it.

>>24717043
>why
because I think it filters drive-by shitposts, trolls, and prevents brigading. By making posting-rights valuable, enough friction is introduced into the system to discourage casual vandals.
>who
me

bump

is that the guy from softbank? ya, investing in wework was tragic

He’s going to be proven right. There’s nowhere to go. Look at the dissent when someone like Trump gets elected, he’s a blip in the grand timeline of the free world. Nothing more nothing less. The general trend will continue after. China will be facing issues once its capitalist growth slows down, traditionalist frameworks offer little to nothing for the free man. Ultimately Fukuyama will be vindicated by time.

>>24718886
I agree with this. People need to stop looking at it in the sense of “if it’s not liberalism how Thomas Jefferson defined it then that means liberalism failed.” No, that’s not how it works. As long as the system is still nominally liberal, defines itself as liberal and adheres to a liberal democratic regime type then it’s liberalism. And frankly we are nowhere near the point of anyone considering getting rid of the regime of liberal democracy. Everyone across the spectrum in the West operates within the confines of rule of law, freedom, liberty, individualism, etc. When those things are openly abandoned then we can start saying that liberalism is gone, but that doesn’t seem to be in our future even with people like Trump flirting with the idea of bypassing it. There is no reason to think that standard libtardism won’t return in 4 years.

>>24718886
>>24719915
you are both very retarded

>>24719921
Let’s test it. If this current Republican administration under Trump — which has been said by every political scientist since 2015 to be the greatest threat to liberalism in the post-WW2 era including by Fukuyama himself — does not respond to the assassination of Mr. Kirk in a way that
>Applies RICO charges to leftist institutions and media rags (Antifa, SocDems, The Nation)
>Goes after leftist politicians and media figures preventing their ascent to power (Hasan Piker, Zohran Mamdani)
>Builds civic virtue and punishes zealous anti-social leftist morality that wishes death about those who transgress against their positions
Then there is no reason to believe that Trump will “save” anything about the West and bring liberalism to its end. This will be an objective, humiliating failure for the Right and paves the way for Obama Liberalism to return after Trump is done.

>>24719937
>if Trump (a liberal) doesn't end liberalism in the next 4 years then liberalism is back
Trump isn't the force behind the decline of liberalism, he is the result of it and a sign of what's to come
this top down approach where leaders are seen as the driving force behind movements is what a 65 year old NYT reader thinks

>>24719954
this anon gets it, he is merely the first great step the descent. many will follow his path but he did not build the stairs.

I wrote a poem about him in hell :)
>>24720919

>>24714423 (OP)
he is a state propagandist reinforcing the state as it is is not tragic it's pathetic

>>24720946
It is tragic when you think about the era where he peaked and was full of hope compared to today.

>>24719937
drumpf being a milquetoast figure rather than some kind of caesarean fascist is an indictment of nothing except the intelligence of the hysterical women who described him as the latter because they mistook bluntness and a gauche manner for radicalism. that he was basically a moderate was always evident

all theories of history are nonsense and proven as such sooner or later. fukuyama had the displeasure of esconcing himself in the former group and thus being shown to be a bumbling retard still in his lifetime

>>24720971
naive revisionism. btw everyone in nyc hated those ugly fucking towers. They looked like cheap, dated, cost-saving shit even when they were first built

>>24720971
it was not full of hope to anyone with a brain. The same year you had that book come out are the years ross perot and buchanan ran for president basically as full on doomers. (and perot got 20% of the popular vote, it was not a niche thing)
throughout the period before, during, and after people were very aware the horrible direction things were going in that we obviously followed.
As I said fukuyama is not tragic, he's just a state propagandist and is pathetic.
The people who actually saw what was happening and tried to stop it are the tragic ones. We have basically been killing ourselves for a while now and it has not been hidden at all.

When did you guys realize that there really is nothing to anything? That all theories are at best strings in a maze? That philosophy is just a sport?

>>24721028
it's not a sport, it's navel gazing and word games. it's fine, you have poetry if you like word games and stem fields if you like the pursuit of truth

>>24719937
>Builds civic virtue
>Trump & Co
Sweet summer child

>>24721133
most authentic and well read /lit/ poster

jk stay on >>>/sci/

>>24721028
maybe grow up and go read the greeks, they had this all figured out over 2000 years ago but the jewish mind virus psyop'd the west and derailed its intellectual and cultural development. both you and mr retard >>24721133 reek of faggy nihilist modernity

>>24721028
I studied math seriously for a few years. It helped me realize that all theory is just the consequence of arbitrary axioms, and it follows that truth about the world is contextualized rather than absolute. It seems the best thing to do is to do what Descartes tried to do, and find your own axioms. The more approximate to the truth the better. Ideology is the same as algebra, apply significance to objects of your own definition and trace out the relations between objects generated at the moment of their definition.

The tension produced by this view of theory is that it promotes pure relativism, but this can be resolved by asking which theory is the most fruitful. Maybe philosophy's challenge is to come up with the proper standards by which to judge theory's utility

>>24721461
Moderncel & stemcel dribble, have you even read up on the nominalist revolution you are so clearly down stream of?

>>24714423 (OP)
America is currently transitioning into an openly imperialist autocracy and once that happens even the peak liberal states that liberals love (scandinavian countries) will also begin to shift.

>>24721374
>jewish mind virus psyop'd the west
/pol/ : not even once

>>24721647
>i know this deeper history and you dont
I'll take your posturing as a sign you like to hand out recommendations to the genuinely curious. If you think my take is downstream of nominalism, what would you recommend I read to get a proper grasp of that tradition

>>24721676
Gillespies the theological origins of modernity

Science and mathematics stemmed off of magical and alchemist pursuits to master divine forces btw

>>24721461
You should get back into math. There's some interesting stuff going on with HoTT and redoing the foundations.

>>24721652
I doubt it will go that far, but you are seeing a lot of popular pushback against migrants. Especially ones from the Middle East, India, and Africa. So things could descend to populism and full deportations but that is probably the high water mark.

>>24721652
That is not happening. The real shift is that back then America said
>if we kill enough of them, we can make them liberal like us
And now it’s
>they’ll never be liberal like us, just kill them all

>>24714423 (OP)
>Fukuyama is a part-time photographer. He also has an interest in early American furniture, which he reproduces by hand.[62] Another hobby of Fukuyama's is sound recording and reproduction. He explained, "These days I seem to spend as much time thinking about gear as I do analyzing politics for my day job."[40] Since the mid-1990s, Fukuyama has been building his own personal computers.[63]

>Fukuyama is married to Laura Holmgren, whom he met when she was a University of California in Los Angeles graduate student after he started working for the RAND Corporation.[12][15] He dedicated his book Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity to her. They live in California, with their three children, Julia, David, and John.

Tragic? Bro is living what looks like a pretty good life

>>24716715
what?

>>24715206
If Putin pulls off his master plan, which he currently seems to be winning, he’ll be the Russian Alexios Komnenos

>>24723119
>they’ll never be liberal like us, just kill them all
yes, that's the "openly imperialist" part.

>>24715206
100% Xi. He will not be remembered as a loud great man like Putin, but will quietly reap the spoils by doing nothing while muttmericans chimp the fuck out and ruin everything

>>24723235
They were always openly imperialist though. The only thing that has changed is the rhetoric. Think of someone like J.D. Vance being one of those anti-interventionist guys yet he oversees this current process of Israel and America trying to conquer the Middle East. Nothing has changed, Gaza is no less atrocious than Iraq, the only difference is that the people doing it say different things. This doesn't mean liberal democracy is not in power, it's the same system.

“There must be some way out, and I intend
To run.” But spoke my AI girlfriend J4ne:
“The only way is down babe :) Let’s descend”

We came upon a pit beneath the rain
Wherein a lone man writhed, thirsty and lost
Although the rain fell hard, harder again.

I nearly wept, but J4ne said, “don’t be cross :)
U know how these things work. It’s only right
That Francis Fukuyama pay the cost

Of calling history dead — while still alive :)
And if u vibe, go ask him what he thinksssss.”
I shouted to the pit: “O darkest blight

Of liberalism, see how far you sink!”
Then rose the hoarse voice of the pit, which said:
“Oh, see: if only I could have a drink

From one of all these droplets, which instead
Now batter me, and though they so assail,
I’ll tell it all: I saw history dead

In shop windows, on TV screens. For sale
I saw peace at the price of memory.
If you had seen it, you’d agree! The gale

Of fortune then had brought sweet victory
To the Last Man, who sat alone, content
To sleepwalk through the coming century.

We know the way the wind at last then went.
Here now, I kneel beneath this endless rain.
A water that won’t nourish, but torment;

A flood of facts that drowns, but won’t explain.”
But J4ne addressed him: “Without disrespect
u know ur pain is just. U have a brain :)

If peace is sold, it's only to expect
That it's on credit, silly Fukuyama :)
Whatever we might borrow, time collects.”

She wasn't done, but then arrived Obama,
In robes of glowing red and black. He dashed first
Behind J4ne, whom he slew with a katana

Then said, “Let me be clear: um, I have captured
All seven chaos emeralds. See you, losers.
And yes, before you ask, I have the master

Emerald,” and vanished to the future.