The End of History Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

The End of floor - Essay ExampleWhat we may be witnessing in not just the culmination of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the shutdown of history as such that is, the end point of mankinds ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of humanity g everywherenment.In the contr everywheresial 1989 essay titled The End of History, Francis Fukuyama attempted to give Western capitalisms victory everywhere communism a Hegelian interpretation. He argued that the end of history has eliminated all but one gifted option for the future evolution of the planet. Liberal Democracy and the American way of life were hailed as the only rational legitimate system of values and practices everything else that happened in the past was only leading up to this new Enligh 10ment and be on cloud nine of reason, in a teleological sense of inevitability.In a way, neither is the advent of man the end of evoluti on, nor is the widespread prevalence of liberal democracy that we witness in our day the end of history. Yet they portray effective points of resolution. If we were to assert that man is the stature of natural evolution, it would be eventually very incorrect as man modern man evolved barely 100-120 railway yard years ago, and evolution takes place in a geological time scale spanning zillions of years. Though it may be difficult for us to conceive each life form beyond human beings, evolution is simply a naturally phenomenon that cannot be stop and has not stopped with humans. Humans may only be re donationing a transitional life form, or dolphins may evolve to be more intelligent that humans ever were, in a million years or so. We also would like to think American-type liberal democracy as being the pinnacle of evolution of political organisation of society, but we could be wrong. In the course of evolution, there occurred a conclusive encounter between Homo sapiens neanderth alensis and Homo sapiens sapiens for over ten gigabyte years, in which Homo sapiens sapiens finally emerged as the survivor to assert supremacy over the planet, about 28,000 years ago. Eerily echoing this epic evolutionary clash between the two vie human species, there raged a monumental battle in the twentieth century between communism and democracy during the years of the Cold War, in which the forces of democracy finally emerged victorious and asserted supremacy over the planet. However, there is nothing intrinsically final about both these phenomena. Man has of course no tint on the planet now, and liberal democracy too, even with all its defects and shortcomings, appears the sole viable alternative for the present and the future of human society. However, if we were to claim that man is the culmination and the end of natural evolution, we could be accused of bald anthropocentrism. Similarly, if we were to claim that democracy is the culmination, and more than that, the end itself, of ideological evolution, we could perhaps be accused of American-centrism. Yet the point remains that, considered on a rational basis, emergence of man represents an evolution of consciousness that offers a able resolution to the six hundred million years of natural evolution, despite his war-like nature and other selfish, inhumane tendencies. In this sense, enlightened liberal democracy too, notwithstanding its myriad inadequacies, offers a satisfactory resolution to the ten thousand years of evolution of human society.If Neanderthals took over the Cro-Magnon man (that is, us), of if Hitler won the Second World War, or if the Soviet Union somehow succeeded in annihilating the United States in the Cold War, would we have been at the end of history too Certainly, Neanderthals were very robust, they had already been flourishing for about two hundred thousand years when the Cro-Magnon man arrived on the ice age European scene and made his presence felt. in that location we re also many times in the Second World War, where the German forces were on the ascendency, and in fact Hitler