NP - A clash between positivism and negativity

[Otto]

"Will Postwar be nothing but "events," newly created one moment to the next?
No links? Is it the end of history?" (GR 56)

"In 1989, The National Interest published ``The End of History?'' by
Fukuyama, then a senior official at the State Department. In that
comparatively short but extremely controversial article, Fukuyama speculated
that liberal democracy may constitute the ``end point of mankind's
ideological evolution'' and hence the ``final form of human government.''
(...) At the end, the author leaves tantalizingly open the matter of whether
mankind's historical journey is approaching a close or another beginning; he
even alludes to the likelihood that time travelers may well strike out in
directions yet undreamt. An important work that affords significant returns
on the investments of time and attention required to get the most from its
elegantly structured theme. -- "
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/0380720027/review
s/qid=1004430133/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_11_1/102-1201069-4165714

My point is: the end of history was already marked by the Cold War
preventing any real politics to happen. Any real confrontation between the
two superpowers US and USSR would have annihilated mankind. Therefor only
substitute wars were possible. The end of the Cold War has re-opened the
future again and it's absolutely possible that we fall back into the
barbarism of the first decades of the 20th century. Huntingdon's fantasy
could come true if we don't manage to solve the actual crisis.
I wonder if the Saudi princes and Pervez Musharraf, the military leader of
Pakistan, would subscribe to Fukuyama's view that liberal democracy and
capitalism are mankind's conclusion. No question that the Saudis believe in
capitalism, but the necessity of elections, the freedom of speech & press,
equal rights to men and women will be opposed by them.
The trouble is that for the Islamic Fundamentalists the Clash of
Civilisations already has begun and one problem is to avoid taking up their
rhetoric.
I ask myself if our lifestyle is able to end poverty in the world (which
*must* be the consequence of Fukuyama) or if it's the other way round as
anti-globalists are claiming, that it's the cause of all Third World
poverty? I would prefer to believe the first possibility.

Otto

David Morris:
>
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/302/oped/A_clash_between_positivism_and_ne
gativity+.shtml
>
> A clash between positivism and negativity
>
> By H.D.S. Greenway, 10/29/2001
>
> TWO COMPETING world views of the post-Cold War era can be found in the
> writings of Harvard's Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama of Johns
> Hopkins.
>
> In Fukuyama's ''The End of History,'' he argues that after the Cold War,
the
> evolutionary process of mankind toward modernity, ''characterized by
> institutions like liberal democracy and capitalism,'' had reached its
> conclusion. ''If we looked beyond liberal democracy and markets, there was
> nothing else toward which we could expect to evolve: hence the end of
> history,'' he wrote in explanation of his theory. ''While there might be
> retrograde areas that revisited that process, it was hard to find a viable
> alternative type of civilization that people actually wanted to live in
> after the discrediting of socialism, monarchy, fascism, and other types of
> authoritarian rule.''
>
> Huntington, on the other hand, in hs book: ''The Clash of Civilizations,
> and the Remaking of World Order,'' predicted that the future would
> bring conflict along the old fault lines of differing cultures.
>