The whole "better angels of our nature" optimism thing kind of seems like sticking your head in the sand to me.
Any state that wants to stick around had better be good at defending itself and its interests. If you're so "enlightened" that you've forgotten how to resolve conflicts in a non-ritualized/systematized way, then someone is going to come along and
We can't really rely anymore on the "End of History" theory that the arrow of time inevitably points toward peaceful liberal democracy
Was that ever a theory, or was it really just something that people wanted to believe because it sounds hopeful and nice? For most people, it's the latter. It actually has an economic basis to it, however. The more you distribute wealth and power, the wider a constituency must be protected by the current regime.
it has definitely been much worse-- but that all the incentives are aligned toward making it worse
Exactly how much worse? There's nothing fundamentally wrong with a local maxima, so long as the overall trend is up. The backslide can't be too excessive without destabilization, however. (We're seeing that!)
I'm reading your comment and having trouble figuring out exactly where we disagree.
> Any state that wants to stick around had better be good at defending itself and its interests.
I agree? I'm not sure where in my comment you got the opposite impression, nor why it seems relevant to my argument.
> Was that ever a theory, or was it really just something that people wanted to believe because it sounds hopeful and nice?
"The End of History and the Last Man" was hugely influential in political science circles in the 90's and early 2000's, on both the left and the right. People definitely bought its premise of the inevitability of liberal democracy as eventually taking over the world through market forces and social movements alone.
I would argue it even had a cultural impact outside academia and policy wonks. Even now, when people say they're not worried about current problems because "it'll work itself out somehow", they are implicitly citing Fukuyama even if they don't realize it.
> The backslide can't be too excessive without destabilization, however. (We're seeing that!)
Which is why I'm talking about forces and incentives. I wouldn't be so worried if I could see anything on the horizon that might push things back upward. But the trends that alarm me (breakdown in social trust, loss of trust in democracy) are mostly positive feedback loops that only get stronger with time.
Heh, I guess I just inferred that from the tone of your comment, but maybe you were irked by the same implications I was and was responding testily to them, not me. Or maybe I just misread you entirely. Mea culpa :)
Any state that wants to stick around had better be good at defending itself and its interests. If you're so "enlightened" that you've forgotten how to resolve conflicts in a non-ritualized/systematized way, then someone is going to come along and
We can't really rely anymore on the "End of History" theory that the arrow of time inevitably points toward peaceful liberal democracy
Was that ever a theory, or was it really just something that people wanted to believe because it sounds hopeful and nice? For most people, it's the latter. It actually has an economic basis to it, however. The more you distribute wealth and power, the wider a constituency must be protected by the current regime.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
it has definitely been much worse-- but that all the incentives are aligned toward making it worse
Exactly how much worse? There's nothing fundamentally wrong with a local maxima, so long as the overall trend is up. The backslide can't be too excessive without destabilization, however. (We're seeing that!)