The End of History, again

Writing soon after the rapid collapse of soviet governments in Russia and Eastern Europe in 1989, Francis Fukuyama wrote an essay ‘The End of History’ for The National Interest journal. He argued that the collapsed communist governments removed the existence of an alternative to ‘western’ liberal democracy and ended the ‘point, counterpoint’ inter-state pattern. Twenty-five years later the debate about the conflict between communism and liberal democracy, with emphasis upon property ownership, economic management, government and military structures does ‘feel’ very tired: even Marx’s analysis seems empty.

If readers agree to an extent, this writer suggests the reason for ennui with traditional History is the failure of traditional History to acknowledge and incorporate the massive intrusion of the cultural aspect into the dynamic of history. In this circumstance History as political narrative is seen as hugely incomplete almost to the place of irrelevance as sociologist as well as cultural historians gain prominence. Yes, the old (arguably easier) History is dead. Cultural History has a far more complicated anatomy than Rankean-style national or local histories centred on state or local administrative documents.

Any movement, such as the Islamic State, will have ‘free riders’, those who seek to join an (ideological-based) power train but the vigour of the Islamic expression should challenge the prudent liberal democrat to ponder the deficiencies or incompleteness of their ideology. A part response but not the full answer may reflect the contradictions of liberalism that were identified in the 1890s. One response to the contradictions gained expression in political ideologies in the 1920s and 1930s. Reasons for other deficiencies will be presented in later posts from our office and may contribute to comprehension.

Contributor Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning Office

Déjà vu x2 – well, more or less

Repeating History? After the Scottish referendum in 2014 we noted the increased electoral supprt for the SNP and our minds in the Sempringahm office turned to British and Irish history. Between 1874 and 1910, the electoral era of the Second and the Third Reform Acts, in the 7 elections of those years, the Irish Nationalists had between 59 and 86 MPs and held the balance of power between the two main parties at that time, the Conservatives and the Liberals. In the 2010-15 Parliament there are 40 Scottish constituency Labour MPs. If these constituencies do not return Labour MPs the UK Labour Party has less chance having sufficient MPs to form a government outright. Polling suggests that many and possibly most constituencies who have a Labour MP will return a SNP candidate on 7 May. Thereby a situation not unlike the parliaments of 1874-1910 will be created with the Scottish Nationalist Party in a similar position to the Irish Nationalists 140-105 years ago.

Image and the man. Russia’s new ‘tsar’ Vladimir Putin, not so terrible as Ivan IV, but seen by the UK security services as creating a new cold war threat, presents himself in publicity photos as an ‘alpha male’, bare chested in traditional Russian male pursuits but he was beaten to that pose by some 90 years by Benito Mussolini, leader of the Fasci di Combattimento. Readers of this item in the September issue of new perspective, Vol 21, No 1 (page 22) will have the benefit of evidential photos to illustrate the comment.

Contributor Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning Office

The western world and the non western world

The United States, in particular, and the western world in general have ‘peddled’ worldwide for many decades the virtues of liberal democracy and the associated universal suffrage. As the Arab Spring [Dec 2010 to mid 2012] illustrated the energy of nurtured popular aspirations, mobilised and in part co-ordinated by contemporary communications, that is by the mobile phone, made political ambitions more achievable. The unleashed ambitions brought the mass movements into conflict with either entrenched elites [the Army in Egypt] or sectional tribal interests [Libya] or awakened sectional religious and social groupings [Syria and Iraq]. The ensuring conflicts have put back the achievement of liberal democratic western ideals.

Contributor Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning Office

What's not to like about ‘like’!

In the office we heard an older teenager, well endowed with courage and an appetite for adventure, talk about her application to volunteer for the one-way Mars trip. The one-way journey is scheduled to take off in about 10 years’ time. The young woman's expression was littered with the word like, added incongruously at the end of phrases were an older speaker would add a coma. Kant proposed that people communicate their thoughts successfully because the categories, the underlying concepts, are shared throughout society and that we learn these categories by inference from day-to-day speech ‘on our mother’s knee’. The spread of the contemporary use of ‘like’ that spread rapidly through teenage talk possibly because teenagers lack the protection of cultivated articulation, points to the teenage years are a key conduit and locomotive for cultural change. Without the protection of established expression ‘like’ spread as rapidly as ebola in West Africa. We will point up the growing emphasis of culture in History by further posts over the next sixty days. (See, for example, post dated 5 March 2015)

Contributor Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning Office

The Islamic resurgence

Opinion in the relatively stable and prosperous western Liberal democracies is understandably concerned by the ferocity and energy of the Islamic resurgence and troubled by the attractiveness of jihad and the Islamic State to a segment of our citizens. This writer suggests that rather than  a ‘shoot from the hip’ approach and increase in state power through limitation of liberties, increase in state surveillance and so on a more creative and positive response is to evaluate why participation in the Islamic resurgence is so attractive to citizens who otherwise seem content with liberal democratic society and culture. For  helpful definition of Islamic resurgence see: http://press.anu.edu.au/islamic/quest/mobile_devices/ch01s03.html

Contributor Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning Office

Displacement of populations in the Middle East

We know that the structure of contemporary media has an appetite for news stories but the implied moral horror in western news stories behind reports of the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Kurds from northern Iraq and Syria and the mistreatment of those unable to escape Islamic State forces has created some surprise in our office. Those who remember the graphic depictions of barbarities by both sides during the Second World War in central Europe documented in the Laurence Rees BBC series The Nazis: A Warning from History, 1997, know that similar inhumanities were committed in Europe as recently as the 1940s. Is there no limit to the hubris of the western world?

In the West we may be appalled by the depth of hatred (and bloodshed) between Sunni and Shia denominations of Islam but this conflict is not dissimilar to the conflict between Catholics and Protestants during the Thirty Years War, 1618-48 when large armies roamed Europe and brought untold misery. In the Christian Bible (New Testament) there is a comment on who should 'throw the first stone'.

Contributor Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning Office

History is beyond retrospective creation

A person over the age of 35 will have a sense of the speed of change, change in medical science, change in digital control and change in the possibilities of communication. As an example of rapid change, consequent to the technology of fracking, the US has changed from a country with a large energy deficit and major importer of oil to the state with the world’s greatest oil and gas reserves that now outstrips Saudi Arabia. We hear about the vigour of the ‘bric’ states, Brazil, Russia, India and China and there are other countries, such as Indonesia, where the economy will soon ‘take off’. Evidence of economic growth is irrefutable and growth can be engineered and engendered. What can’t be engineered and engendered is a country’s History and in the instance of Britain the political culture has an irreplaceable foundation on, for example, Magna Carta, the Peasants’ Revolt, the seventeenth-century regicide, the development of party in Hanoverian Britain and the extension of franchise and party over many decades. No proclamation of Human Rights adopted and/or imposed on a country can replace or be a substitute for a foundation laid by centuries of political evolution. This comment are connected with the blog entry of 28 August 2012 ‘Why Danny Boyle should be Chancellor/FRHistS’.

Geoff Williams. Sempringham eLearning Office