Thread by @wesyang

The thesis of the End of History is simply that there's not going to be a next stage that resolves all contradictions. The liberal democratic state is the terminus. You can revert from it but you cannot progress beyond it.

We abolished serfdom, slavery, aristocracy, and monarchy but will not abolish wage labor. Nor will we abolish differences in ability between individuals or the propensity of culture to generate differential outcomes.

The attempt to do the latter without doing the former is the task of what I call "the successor ideology."

There is a singular pathos to those who committed themselves to Marxism AFTER 1989

But what recent trends reveal is that Marx's original intuition -- that the new society would emerge from out of the post-industrial one is being borne out not by Marxist but by a non-economic redistribution of status and recognition that is core to the ideological succession

Automation, AI, and re-engineering humanity through genetic manipulation all present speculative scenarios for the transcendence of the species-being culminating in liberal democracy. But they remain highly speculative.

And even in a world transformed by these marvelous appurtenances, I suspect we will continue to be governed by the drives endemic to our creaturely natures: to our desire for food and sex and the esteem of other human creatures

The WEIRD personality profile shows how far a society can progress through systematized idealism (via Christianity and its successors) to eschew those underlying determinants of human conduct -- not very much