As I switch on my computer for the
morning, there is no shortage of domestic and international problems vying for
my attention. A constant stream of angry tweets or well written articles fill
my feed, demanding attention and biding for my time. As a busy young
professional with a perhaps unhealthy news addiction, I wake to the guilt that
I can't possibly be this angry all the time. I attempt to absolve this guilt by
diving into the issues closest, and seek penance for my participation
in the ignorant world by trying to continue the
almost clichéd conversation asked for by each marginalised minority.
If this does not work, I disconnect. I turn off the screen and bury myself in
busy work and try to forget about how fucked some parts of this world truly
are. I hide in stories, in television, in whiskey.
There is danger in the disconnect. I am
not speaking of the much needed downtime that is essential for good mental
health. It is the danger in the growing gap between the issues and their
factual basis. Between ideals and activity. The power has been taken away
from minority groups by a self-alienating process brought about by the push to
be bigger, to be better. Idealism meant that we shot for the stars, but the
technological leap allowed us to get there faster than we thought possible. The
speed at which we grew meant that we now have a youth who is looking to be
politically engaged, but does not have the road map of how we came to be at
this place. There is electric potential brimming in every cafe, in every bar,
in the libraries and the street corners. Yet this electric youth feels
powerless, because there is a missing link that is preventing the circuit from
being complete. Some say that there is a lack of communication, of
conversation. I suggest that we have the words, but we have forgotten where
they came from. By turning issues into easily digestible, consumable,
sharable chunks, we have removed their history.
So I ask, without knowing where we come
from, how can we expect to know where we are headed? Has the capitalist
marketing model been too readily applied to ideas, making reach, growth and
brand name recognition the goal instead of action? Have we lost some of the
meaning in the pursuit of change?
International relations scholar Francis
Fukuyama argued controversially (first in an essay in 1989 and then in his book
of 1992) that the fall of communism and triumph of liberal democracies and
capitalism was the 'end of history'. Although the title of his thesis became
the synonymous tagline to his life's work, it's simplicity does not aptly
describe his theory. He suggests, that with the fall of the Soviet Union not
that there would no longer be any non-liberal states, but instead that as a
state theoretical model, none would now surpass the perfect liberal democracy.
Communism would fall into obscurity, the west had won. The rest would be worked
out in the details.
And so it went, for a while.
Enter the Afghanistan and Iraq
war fiascoes. These, combined with the most recent uprisings and
complications of democracy implementation in Egypt, Libya, Syria and across the
Arab spring states have led to Fukuyama's theory falling from International
academic grace. Yet if we explore liberal democracy's right hand man, free
market capitalism, and the warm reception given to it by now-economic
powerhouses such as non-liberal China, we see that Fukuyama may not have
completely closed the debate. He and the neoconservative right have heralded
and ensured that the new century will be one ruled by capital, growth and
consumerism.
BUT WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ME?
WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME ABOUT AN AMERICAN-JAPANESE ACADEMIC WHO IS NO LONGER
EVEN THAT POPULAR?
Because Fukuyama was both wrong and
right. The end of history is the apocalyptic scenario that the simplistic title
suggests. It is just that it looks nothing like the zombie/alien/disaster movie
that we have all envisioned.
Let me talk to you about ideals.
It was not just the economists who
sought salvation in the markets. The great belief in the freedom of the market
system pervaded across to how interest groups sought to gain foothold for
ideas, ideals and how they pursued the holy grail of power and influence. If an
idea was good enough, it would run the Darwinian gauntlet to success. If one
worked hard enough and used every opportunity, then luck would be on your side.
The optimism of the internet, the growth in start-ups and the shining examples
of the Steve Jobs and Richard Bransons' of the world taught us to use what we
had to get ahead. To further out ideas and our individuality. Smaller interest
groups gained international foothold thanks to transnational activist networks
and tools borrowed from the corporate world.
The explosion of identity politics in
the 1990s aimed to give voice to minorities who had been forgotten. It was
the decade that brought us third-wave feminism, a growth out of the second wave
of hard-line feminists who fought for work rights and right to choice in the
1960s and 1970s. It was individialisation of feminism, an array of
sub-sects of the movement and a focus on a wider reaching movement that
included all races and shades of gender. A generation that was not satisfied
with the white, middle class definition of feminism sought to open it up to
all. This brought us Riot grrl, eco-feminists, discussion of race and queer
issues. A vision of a broader movement. This growth of the number of
feminists due to the opening up of the definition was to introduce greater
equality, a more inclusive identity. Did it seek success but succumb to the
dilution of its activist ideals?
Not initially, and yet here we stand,
two decades on, a generation who has no problem in identifying what issues it
should embrace but with a fatal disconnect to the history and politics of
protest, activism and the intellectual underpinning of where we place our
feet. Third wave feminism has brought with it accessibility and commercial
viablity, yet it has created a rift between the individual and the cause.
Inclusive values and hard fought battles to bring counter-culture ideals to a
wider audience have been successful, but these awareness campaigns have been
torn from the historical, the factual and the intellectual.
I only take feminism as one example,
but our ideals are being divorced from history across the board. The left is
split into its past and the progressive, and ends up stagnant, disorganised and
intellectually vapid. The right wears its badge of conservatism proudly, but
gone are the principles of conserve the good and improve the bad. Instead we
are left with a political wing that is playing to its most radial outliers. The
very fact the the names of our parties no longer accurately describe
their position is evidence in itself.
Are the days of party lines well and
truly gone, and if so, what does this mean for us? Is this the new frontier of
the independent, of the individual? Certainly in the liberated west, it seems
that progress has separated us from the reason why we stood up in the
first place. Is this then, as Fukuyama suggests, the end? Or, can we view this
as the end of a cycle. As a new beginning? Our scholar takes a rather attuned
and gloomy view of the end of history at the end of his original 1989 essay:
"The end of history will be a
very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide
ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands. In the post historical period there will be neither art nor
philosophy, just the perpetual care taking of the museum of human history. I
can feel in myself, and see in others around me, a powerful nostalgia for the time when history existed.
Such nostalgia, in fact, will continue to fuel competition and
conflict even in the post historical world for some time to come. Even though I recognize its inevitability, I have the most ambivalent feelings for the civilization that
has been created in Europe since 1945, with its north Atlantic and Asian offshoots. Perhaps this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again."
This is the point where I step away.
This is the point where we stand up.
I do not believe that the pursuit of
abstract goals will become an obsolete past time, but I do believe we stand at
a dangerous, disconnected and apathetic time. In the face of climate change,
refugee policy, media ownership, LGBTQ rights, feminist and government
surveillance and privacy issues, there has never been a more important time for
a greater connection with the historical conversation. These debates did not
just begin when Tony Abbott spoke of them. They did not just appear when
Snowden leaked the papers. Thousands of people before you and after you have
and will push for change. It is in this continuum that the power of the
individual is most apparent.
Identity and individualism can be
empowering and liberating, but only if they are coupled with a tie to history
and a with a view of where we want them to take us. Feminism, activism,
protest: these things need to find their context again, and there they will
find power. For if we can take the opportunities that transnational avenues,
technology and greater access to knowledge can give, the fourth wave will be
formidable indeed.
