•
Rating: Days as slow as the large snowflakes falling from the sky like sheets. And me, shoveling. It's not like I have much to do since I'm on temporary layoff waiting to be fired, but, you know, the lazy just get lazier as the years go by. Anyway, these days I'm doing the Olympics and there aren't many who can compete with me because the way I swim in sloth, there's no Phelps from 2008 or Spitz from 1972 who can keep up. I take hours and turn them into sheets of paper, then roll them up and play basketball. After an almost endless series of TV shows of a vomit-inducing level, any reference to FlixeNnette is intentional, I decide to revisit lost records and then move on to books. I find a nice big one that I didn't even remember buying and have never opened. As an ex-radical chic, I used to buy bound sheets just to show them off.
But to tell the truth, many people cite this book, but they’ve never actually read it. You look at the title and think: what the hell were you smoking, Francis? When you wrote that article in '89, had you just finished watching Rocky Balboa break Ivan Drago in two? Did you really, really think that a small wall coming down would suddenly create a 'happily ever after' world? The end. End of the story? Last man?
Okay, nearly 30 years later, we can say the world hasn't exactly taken the turn Francis hypothesized, but isn't there some important reflection to be made? Well, dear users, there are many, but to find them you have to make a titanic effort. Imagine that I, with "The Dude" as my inspiration model, had to take a ladder to bring down that tome, a good half a kilo, and BAM! Open it.
Pay attention now, as the semi-serious phase of this thing I'm jotting down on impulse begins, so pay attention. 15/20 lines; maybe you’re in shape today and you might even make it.
First, let's start from the bottom. The last man is me, it's us. A narcissistic and selfish society without "thymos" (my personal translation would be balls, though I don't think Francis would agree), aiming for mere survival and trying to avoid conflict in every way to have a peaceful life and the illusion of freedom and equal opportunities to emerge. The question Fukuyama poses, quoting Nietzsche, is whether this existence is satisfying and especially if it will be in the future. In short, pride, the need for recognition has been progressively channeled peacefully in the economic, sports, cultural, and worldly fields, in the so-called developed world since the post-war increase in liberal democracies. Will it be so in the future? Or will the archaic thymos re-emerge again in all its destructive force?
Secondly, Fukuyama knew perfectly well that the end of the Cold War would not magically create a peaceful world overnight. The author tries to explain the present by analyzing the thoughts of others like Hegel, Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Locke, Tocqueville, and whoever-else. According to him, with the fall of the Soviet bloc, a long road had been embarked upon that would lead within two or three generations to greater development of liberal democracies worldwide, starting from the "center" and eventually reaching the peripheries. Not because democracy was the most efficient form of governance, but because it was the most acceptable for the degree of freedom/lifestyle it could offer. But in this book, there are also many predictions that were spot-on. With a light shot like that of K.D. or Steph Curry, he predicted the vehement rise of China with its hyper-efficient model at the cost of freedom. Just to mention some of the themes unraveled in the book, Fukuyama foresaw a possible dangerous return of nationalism and considered migration and the environment as the issues of the 21st century. There are also a few boring predictions like the development of the EEC and UN.
Brutally summarizing, I'm tired, the post-World War II situation is a game of balances. Democracy seems the best possible compromise, also because an ancient war with modern weapons would be lethal. End of the story.
Loading comments slowly
