Is there an End to History?

[Bodakane]

Yes, its a second a go.

[Deleted]

The world is hundreds of years old you know.

What's already pretty impressive.

[Berri]

'History' won't end until the human race ceases to exist.

Certainly the 'end of History' which Francis Fukayama envisioned after the Cold War will never come to pass. Humans will continue to rail against each others' views / kill each other to settle differences / exist in a state of individual and societal anarchy for as long as they exist.

[Airlick]

Very pretty, but in actuality it doesn't work like that, sadly.

Ignorant people choose to keep beeing ignorant and breed like bunnies. The future seen in Idiocracy the movie is the most likely one. Because smart people don't irresponsibly breed. As such their numbers will decline comparetively.

How come humanity has come out of caves, then? Just because 99% of the population is comprised of idiots (though it's not even true, most of the population are perfectly average - though in Europe that average person might have finished high school, whereas in Africa an average person might know a few letters of the alphabet), doesn't mean there will not always be that 1% carrying our culture forward. If anything, humans are getting smarter than previous generations simply due to the benefit of having the whole cultural output of our civilization on a small device. Kids learn several languages from the youngest age, whereas before all they were learning was herding goats, etc.

End of history as a point where we develop a perfect society is a silly concept, as there will always be outside factors that we will not be able to predict and will take time to adapt to - clashes with aliens, if nothing else. I personally believe our history is cyclical, and it will take a lot of time before we develop enough to break that circle, it might not even be possible without outside help - and well, maybe the point where we break the cycle actually might be the end of history.

[ParanoiD84]

As long as people are being born we will have "history"

It's only boring history from now on though, no exploration or new discovery to be had unless we find something interesting in space, battles where alot more epic in ancient and medieval times to read about (imo) and so on. Same with empires being formed and conquests all over the world that made what we have now, there will never be country's conquering half the planet anymore and if we had it would probably destroy the planet to with all the nukes so stuff like that is much more interesting to read about then some wars against terrorism.

Now if we find alien life that may change but untill then I can only see boring history being made nowdays.

Captain obvious i know but old school is where it's at.

[Slant]

The world is hundreds of years old you know.

What's already pretty impressive.

Hundreds? Dayum, that's an old world if ever I've heard of one. Like how many, 2-3 hundred? I wonder who made up all those funky shit stories about the romans... :P

[breadisfunny]

That summarizes most of philosophy. I say this as someone who majored in philosophy before switching to finance.

History doesn't end when we become perfectly rational and free, which by the way will never happen as human beings are inherently both rational and irrational. I don't see the logic in claiming that history would end when we become perfectly enlightened beings that have achieved Freedom™. There is no evidence that we have become more rational over time, we have replaced religion in the United States with sports teams and the Kardashians. Which is somehow even more devoid of inherent rationality and meaning, an impressive feat.

This thread is an exercise in intellectual masturbation and it's not a very good or interesting exercise at that, it's the philosophical equivalent of watching free, 240p videos on Pornhub.

celista what have you been watching? sassy draenei.

[Shadowferal]

History is a matter of perspective.
So when I die, it ends.

[breadisfunny]

History is a matter of perspective.
So when I die, it ends.

no it doesn't.

[Afrospinach]

It's only boring history from now on though, no exploration or new discovery to be had unless we find something interesting in space, battles where alot more epic in ancient and medieval times to read about (imo) and so on. Same with empires being formed and conquests all over the world that made what we have now, there will never be country's conquering half the planet anymore and if we had it would probably destroy the planet to with all the nukes so stuff like that is much more interesting to read about then some wars against terrorism.

Now if we find alien life that may change but untill then I can only see boring history being made nowdays.

Captain obvious i know but old school is where it's at.

I agree as far as our planet is concerned that golden age of exploration is over, however in the future we may face challenges regarding our resources like water etc that I am sure will make for great reading.

The point of my statement though is this idea that we will reach a level of rationality that is a superlative as a society is either highly authoritarian or eugenic. That our youth are going to been even perfectly keeled persons who just accept our state of society is just depressing.

[Shadowferal]

no it doesn't.

As far as I will know it will for me.

[IntellectuallyChallenged]

Yes. It's called the extinction of humanity. Then the world can fix itself and wait for the next dominant species. I'm sure the dinosaurs thought they were going to live forever as well.

The world is hundreds of years old you know.

What's already pretty impressive.

Hundreds of years? Maybe hundreds of millions of years. Heck, humanity itself has been around for tens of thousands of years.

[unbound]

"There are no happy endings because nothing ends." - Schmendrick, The Last Unicorn

[Fencers]

Yes, but it depends on what you mean by 'history'.

[Kraenen]

That summarizes most of philosophy. I say this as someone who majored in philosophy before switching to finance.

This thread is an exercise in intellectual masturbation and it's not a very good or interesting exercise at that, it's the philosophical equivalent of watching free, 240p videos on Pornhub.

I have a feeling you switched because you didn't get it. You took an intro course and said "these guys can't make up their minds!" and went into finance of all things.

[Moralgy]

After the inevitable heat death of the universe, but even then, things still technically exist, just nothing should be alive.

[Theodarzna]

The obvious thing to consider when faced with a teleological model like Hegel's is a cyclical model such as that of the Big Bang and many natural processes, but also human experiences. So a possible answer to your question is "a circle has no beginning". I would further say that the two patterns, circularity and teleology, are fundamental to the human condition, so the issue of coping with the ultimate unknown, namely death. In that they are complementary and their imposition upon the past, the familiar, which is what we use to assess the future, the unknown, allows for control. Finally I would say that Hegel with his Christian upbringing and theological interests overemphasized the Aristotelian solution (teleology) and neglected the Platonic (circularity).

I fall into the circularity camp, or at the very least History is devoid of real trends, or the trends are illusions.

[Forogil]

The obvious thing to consider when faced with a teleological model like Hegel's is a cyclical model such as that of the Big Bang and many natural processes, but also human experiences.

Big Bang is not cyclical.

There are some that want cyclic models and try to fit big bang into that - at first with the idea of "big crunch" and then rebounding, but evidence contradicted that. There are some remaining ideas - but as a fringe idea, not the consensus.

There are some that argue that argue that there are multiple big bangs - which is a more interesting idea; and maybe based on the human experience.
Similarly the human experience is widely seen as linear (birth, growing up, and then eventual death) - not cyclical.

[Celista]

I have a feeling you switched because you didn't get it. You took an intro course and said "these guys can't make up their minds!" and went into finance of all things.

No, I got it. I was way into it at the time. But much of it is nonsense.

[Kraenen]

No, I got it. I was way into it at the time. But much of it is nonsense.

You just sound like you never really got philosophy.