Francis Fukuyama, clumping and progress

[ionelv]

Francis Fukuyama is infamous for his post-1990 predictions. He recently opined on Putin's war and had to employ some clunky phrasing to explain away his past follies:

The horrific Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24 has been seen as a critical turning point in world history. Many have said that it definitively marks the end of the post-cold war era, a rollback of the “Europe whole and free” that we thought emerged after 1991, or indeed, the end of The End of History.

Global GBP per capita growth during recessions

Vostok ice core record

(3/22) A more recently updated graph shows 2004 records well beyond the above (e.g. CO2=377ppm, CH4=1755ppb), although in 2020 CO2 reached 412ppm and CH4 reached 1875ppb:

On a different topic, I noticed and wondered:

1. History generally clump into long periods of relative stability and narrow chaotic periods. For example, two seemingly unrelated areas exhibit this: climate change and the global economy. On this topic, one of the commenters on Fukuyama's FT op-ed observed:

Existence is a series of random events (Brownian Motion as an analogy) and FF has selected sound bites from the last fifty years and tried to weave them into a cohesive narrative. He has done that in the context of his prejudice that liberal is good and illiberal is bad. FF has conflated history and opinion and done a disservice to both. Before putting pen to paper he should think about what he wants to achieve in his message. Then set his thoughts out in a brief paragraph that would serve as an introduction or conclusion. Then fill out with with more detail. All I take from it is a helpful definition of liberalism and a suggestion we stop being nasty and start being nice.

More insightful comments:

I agree. The essay just reads like a string of mostly uncontroversial statements with no clear theme or conclusion. I guess Francis Fukuyama's attention grabbing "end of history" made him famous but typecast, so now that present events are making that idea risible, he is now trying to excuse or confuse it, or something, but does not really have a clear story to offer. A conclusion that I am sadly beginning to draw from the experience of recent decades is that instinctive ideas like nationalism or ethnicity, barely rational beliefs like religion, and even just personality, are more powerful and robust than intellectual ideas like ideology, economics or even science. The ideological differences, that I presume were the basis for Francis Fukuyama's thinking that the demise of communism was a key event, were in reality just riding stronger currents of nationalism or tribalism for a while.

‘The End of History’ is as meaningless as ‘The End of the Circle’ - you see time is circular it only appears linear because circles are an infinite number of straight lines joined by infinitely obtuse angles of almost 180 degrees.

It only appears straight to puny tiny humans who can’t see its circularity and because each circuit looks slightly different.

Phew - philosophy, history and geometry - that will recover my lost polymath points.

2. Are humanity's progress/regress cycles generally driven by a few geniuses (e.g. Archimedes, Newton, Einstein) and mad men (e.g. Ἀλέξανδρος, Napoleon, Hitler, Владимир Ленин, იოსებ სტალინი, ប៉ុល ពត, Владимир Путин)? Does this require some sort of modulation or more controls to prevent the worst in the future? Do some big thinkers require heavy translation/reinterpretation to prevent corruption of their poorly explained big ideas (e.g.  משה, ישו, ਗੌਤਮ ਬੁੱਧ, مُحَمَّد, Nietzsche)?