ANALYTIC NOTE

«The End of History», «The Clash of Civilizations»

& actual prospects of mankind

In 1989 an American political scientist Francis Fukuyama (born in 1952) published an article «The End of History?» and in 1992 a book «The End of History and the Last Man». Another American political scientist Samuel Huntington (1927-2008) objected F.Fukuyama in the article «The Clash of Civilizations?» published in Foreign Affairs magazine in 1993. Later on that article was expanded to book length and published in 1996 as «The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order». Despite the fact that the majority of those who think on a tide of both strategies did not even happen to read the works of those authors the terms «end of history» and «clash of civilizations» have been ever since included into the international political vocabulary.

However if we look through the texts, we will easily find out that there are no essential differences between both strategies, simply each of the authors tries to draw attention to one of two different aspects of the same global historical process. In the real politics both terms turned into slogans affecting the state of mind of politicians from different countries and merging their activities into an autonomous psychic entity termed egregore. The latter works both for promoting "the end of history” (in the sense of triumph of Western liberalism) and “the clash of civilizations” which could result in a quite real end of history of the contemporary global civilization. This makes us wonder what tendency is likely to outweigh:

·      whether "the end of history”, in the sense of global triumph of Western liberalism will occur, or

·      Western stupid persistence on gaining this ground will result in a clash of civilizations and in an eventual end of history of the contemporary global civilization, or

·      any other third tendency would emerge to put the previous ones out.     

However both authors could not detect a third eventuality and consequently left it unexplored.

According to Fukuyama and Huntington, the highest organizational form of human society can be implemented solely on the basis of liberal ideals. So Huntington quotes Fukuyama: "We may be witnessing," Fukuyama argued, "...the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." To be sure, he said, some conflicts may happen in places in the Third World, but the global conflict is over, and not just in Europe. "It is precisely in the non-European world" that the big changes have occurred, particularly in China and the Soviet Union. The war of ideas is at an end. Believers in Marxist-Leninism may still exist "in places like Managua, Pyongyang, and Cambridge, Massachusetts," but overall liberal democracy has triumphed. The future will be devoted not to great exhilarating struggles over ideas but rather to resolving mundane economic and technical problems. And, he concluded rather sadly, it will all be rather boring.”

This is worthy of being noted that Fukuyama is not talking here about something that actually happened but is claiming that Western liberalism had already won the field of ideas since "fascism" and "Marxism" have proven their inconsistency expressed in the defeat of Nazi Germany, Italy and imperialistic Japan in 1945, and 40 years later - in the social reforms initiated in the USSR and in China, in the course of which principles of Western liberalism have reached both life and economy organization of those countries.

Consequently, according to Fukuyama, as long as, due to the lack of other competing ideas, the mass of the people of illiberal states remains directed to the consumption in a Western manner, it will be only a matter of time before all the states become universally liberal in a Western manner with no more reasons to come into international conflicts. However, Fukuyama has not considered any scenario of further global liberalization.

Huntington does not anywhere contest the statement of Fukuyama about the predominance of Western liberal democracy over other ways of life in historically known societies, but specifies that:

«The essence of the western civilization is the Magna Carta[1], but not the Magna MacDonald's. That fact that inhabitants can't bite a hamburger doesn't mean that they will accept the first».

On account of accepting the "hamburger" (Western symbol of consumer abundance) and rejecting Western liberalism (which according to Fukuyama and Huntington produces consumer abundance in developed countries) by other regions of the planet, further expansion of the latter can lead not to a global scales triumph but to a true world war, which according to Huntington, could provoke even in its non-nuclear version a many decades recession of economic and cultural development of humanity.

At that, Huntington points out that starting from the XXth-century power of the West has been progressively decreasing with respect to power of other regional civilizations and this contributes only to fuel the potential for such a conflict of civilizations. He believes therefore that the immediate period of history should not be devoted to further liberalization of regional societies in a Western manner but to an attempt to avoid the conflict of civilizations in order to preserve the West and in the meanwhile make it aware of the internal crisis to overcome it. Huntington does not go further into the essence of the crisis, though, he implies it and puts forward recommendations concerning the immediate future:

“To preserve Western civilization in the face of declining Western power, it is in the interest of the United States and European countries:

·      to achieve greater political, economic, and military integration and to coordinate their policies so as to preclude states from other civilizations exploiting differences among them;

·      to incorporate into the European Union and NATO the Western states of Central Europe that is, the Visegrad countries, the Baltic republics, Slovenia, and Croatia;

·      to encourage the "Westernization" of Latin America and, as far as possible, the close alignment of Latin American countries with the West;

·      to restrain the development of the conventional and unconventional military power of Islamic and Sinic[2] countries;

·      to slow the drift of Japan away from the West and toward accommodation with China;

·      to accept Russia as the core state of Orthodoxy and a major regional power, with legitimate interests in the security of its southern borders;

·      to maintain Western technological and military superiority over other civilizations and, most important, to recognize that Western intervention in the affairs of other civilizations is probably the single most dangerous source of instability and potential global conflict in a multicivilizational world.”

The fact that differences in ideals and traditions of regional civilizations is an objective historic reality, and that the majority of those who think in terms of "the end of history» and «the clash of civilizations» have not read Huntington’s recommendations, the way of thinking with such categories and the political practice resulting from it, contribute to self-implementation of the global politic scenario which makes subject of Huntington attempt of warning, first, western politicians and other readers as well.

Fukuyama considers West culture as a culture of ingenious consumption and sees in the consumer well-being a basis for liberalism and reason of humankind’s life:

“But while man's very perception of the material world is shaped by his historical consciousness of it, the material world can clearly affect in return the viability of a particular state of consciousness. In particular, the spectacular abundance of advanced liberal economies and the infinitely diverse consumer culture made possible by them seem to both foster and preserve liberalism in the political sphere. I want to avoid the materialist determinism that says that liberal economics inevitably produces liberal politics, because I believe that both economics and politics presuppose an autonomous prior state of consciousness that makes them possible. But that state of consciousness that permits the growth of liberalism seems to stabilize in the way one would expect at the end of history if it is underwritten by the abundance of a modern free market economy. We might summarize the content of the universal homogenous state as liberal democracy in the political sphere combined with easy access to VCRs and stereos in the economic.”

And in the last paragraph of the article he pictures:

“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 caretaking of the museum of human history.”

Huntington, like others Western authors writing on the globalization issues, and like politicians putting into practice the expansion of liberalism, do not object Fukuyama. This orientation of the civilization toward promiscuous consumption as being a norm of life means that liberalists can understand neither human essence nor essence of religion.

This was brightly expressed in Huntington’s definition of civilization as specifically human phenomenon:

“A civilization is thus the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans from other species. It is defined both by common objective elements, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the subjective self-identification of people.”

This comparison of humans with other species is important. It is possible to gather from the above that if wild animals consume nothing but what they can find, the civilization provides humans both with raw materials, and with everything that people are up to make from the raw materials.

Nonetheless, all that, according to Huntington, makes humans different from other species, does not in fact express the human essence but only results from others deep and real differences between humans and species. According to researches done by western zoologists, the culture is peculiar not only to humans but also to other evolved animal species[3]. In other words, presence of a culture and/or civilization bearing a culture is not characteristic feature of humans at all.

Unlike other species of the Earth biosphere man is always noted for his psyche. The information-algorithmic structure of the psyche is not genetically programmed in an irrevocable way but results from the individual evolution that progresses under both external circumstances and one’s own consciousness and awareness.    

The generally known course of school biology and a look into one’s psyche, let assert that the information-algorithmic basis of «Homo Sapiens» behaviour includes: 1) an inborn component consisting of instincts and unconditioned reflexes (both at endocellular, cellular and tissues level as well as at the level of systems and organism on the whole) together with their aspects developed in the culture; 2) cultural traditions that constrain instincts; 3) a reason ability limited by feelings and memory; 4) “intuition in general” that "emerges" involuntarily from unconscious to conscious level of human psyche, comes from collective psyche, or is generated from outside delusions and obsession in the inquisitorial meaning of the word. At the moment of their manifestation the individual is unable to give any reasonable explanation as product of cause-and-effect relations; 5) the “God`s guidance” on a tide of Providence, fulfilled on the basis of the above to the exclusion of delusions and obsession intruding into the individual psyche against aware will of its owner.

There is a possible or real place for all that in the psyche of any individual. According to the allocation priority within the individual psyche any adult becomes bearer of one in four types of “mental tunes” which we will term hereinafter as state of mind:

• the “animal” state of mind makes so that the individual’s behaviour and all his capacities together with the creative potential are submitted solely to instincts;

• the “zombie” (“robot”) state of mind makes so that instincts are submitted to behaviour programmes that society embedded into the individual’s psyche while he was growing up, and which the latter cannot get rid of by himself for different reasons;     

• the “demonic” state of mind makes so that person lives from the principle «I don't give a damn about what I do» and rejects either consciously or unconsciously the God`s guidance;

• the “human” state of mind means freedom; original meaning “decree, judgment”. In a different way, the “human” state of mind means autocracy of conscience based on believing God (not in God).

The demonic and human states of mind are impossible without the will understood as an ability to submit oneself and throughout events to the aware expediency.

An adult’s state of mind that remains unchanged in changing life circumstances is a product of education. If an individual cannot achieve the human state of mind by the beginning of his youth, it means that he had been a subject either to an interruption or a perversion in development during the earlier period of his life. Cultures where a statistically insignificant minority of population can reach the human state of mind by old age are defective ones. That what in fact are the cultures of all the regional civilizations: Western, Russian, Muslim, Vedic and others.

The problem of the West consists on the fact that, according to our definition of freedom, liberalism means neither personal freedom nor society of free people; it means therefore culture of legalized permissiveness and dishonesty[4], because the West is a slaves civilization that was artificially brought to life just as the product of biblical project with the purpose to enslave mankind on behalf of God. That is why supporters of ideals from all other regional civilizations of the planet have rejected Western liberalism. The populace of the West do not understand that and Huntington is reminding them:

“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas (it is the sole issue that divides Huntington and Fukuyama) or values or religion (in fact few people from other civilizations changed their religious faith), but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.”

Regardless of vices being inherent in other civilizations, Western liberalism will endure through more and more acute crisis until it clearly understands that freedom is the autocracy of conscience based on believing God outside churches and holy books[5]; because God is not indifferent to what happens on Earth.

If human history is understood as a multinational history of individuals having the human state of mind, the human history has not began yet. Hence, we are witnessing the end of human prehistory when children of different people are groping ways to the humanity, to the global civilization of human humans, to the multinational culture where everyone (except for some minor exceptions) will be able to reach humanity by the beginning of youth and where it will be ashamed to not to be the human in the above specified sense.

Internal Predictor of the USSR

July 7, 2010

[1] Magna Carta is an English charter, originally issued in the year 1215. Magna Carta was the first document forced onto an English King by a group of his subjects (the barons) in an attempt to limit his powers by law.

[2] China and other countries with similar culture. 

[3] See Carel Van Sheik works on the orang-utans culture. 

[4] You are allowed to do whatever the law does not prohibit. Then where does the law come from? What does the law mean: rectitude or demonism? Have Western populace and intellectuals ever thought about it? This might be very interesting issue!    

[5] That in effect differs from the inscription in the bill “In God we trust”.