The End of History

There is often good stuff on the History channel. Flipping through the channels about a week ago, I came across a program about the emperor Constantine, the foundation of Constantinople, and his successors. Now it just so happened that I was re-reading Volume One of Gibbon's Decline and Fall, and I was at that very chapter. It was a brutal period. No matter that Constantine is revered by the Christian church, he was responsible for various atrocities including the murder of his son and step-son. Apparently it goes with the territory, if you want to maintain your authority. His mother Helen, was complicit in these killings. She was canonized by the church. St. Helen. It went on to describe the ferocious reign of Theodosius. Then there was Basil II. Early in his reign he had been defeated by the Bulgarians. It rankled, so he eventually raised an army and marched into Bulgaria. He inflicted an enormous defeat on the enemy, took 15,000 prisoners and had their eyes put out except for every hundredth one, who was left with one eye, the idea being that these lucky ones could lead their companions back home. The care of this blind horde would be a burden on the state and serve to prevent any further aggression. An economist would appreciate that. That reminded me of the adventures of a previous emperor, I forget which, who defeated the army of a king who was troubling the Empire. Following the victory, he generously made a present to the defeated king of 5,000 eunuchs. When the king came out to inspect his gift, he recognized his own soldiers, recently castrated. There's a downside to everything. Then I started thinking of other histories I've read. Mexico, for instance, has had a colourful history. Mostly red. Atrocities are common. As an example, during one revolution, a group of captive women were tied to trees or posts or anything handy, left all day in the blazing sun and then as evening came on, had various body parts lopped off with machetes as a punishment, presumably, for their men. It would not be the first time women suffered for their men. One of the later Byzantine emperors, overturned in a palace coup, witnessed his beautiful wife having her lips and nose cut off as a punishment to him.
I can now understand women's lib. The more I thought about these things, the more I became disgusted with history.

The title of this piece is from Francis Fukuyama's book, The End of History and the Last Man where he argues that Marx had it all wrong. Marx foresaw a world where classes would be eliminated, all would be equal, share everything, no more capitalists, etc. He called it communism. No need for wars, no more history. Some dream! As Fukuyama wrote his book after the fall of the Soviet Union, he could easily contradict Marx. But he says that his own version of the end of history will come when all the nations of the earth become liberal democracies. In 1900 there was not one democracy with universal suffrage, but now 60% of countries claim to be democratic. The process will continue and maybe in a few hundred years it will be achieved, with a few setbacks along the way. Another nice dream, be patient. I was curious about the phrase "and the last man". Here he gets into Hegel/Nietzsche gobbledygook with which I have little patience, but as I understand it, once the dream is achieved the "last man" will be a wuss only interested in earning a living and staying warm. This is Fukuyama's pessimistic view of his own utopia??? I have read neither Marx nor Fukuyama nor do I intend to. The introduction is enough.

At the end of viewing the program mentioned above, I picked up my copy of Gibbon's history and put it back on the shelf. It's going to stay there. That's the end of history for me.