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Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

(www.theguardian.com)
523 points mhga | 2 comments | 08 Jul 25 02:18 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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hliyan ◴[08 Jul 25 03:07 UTC] No.44496589[source]▶
I'm starting to realize, very belatedly in life, that we suffer from an end-of-history illusion in politics and political economy. I used to think we live in a golden age because a hundred years ago, democracy broadly replaced monarchies, market economies replaced feudalism and other coercive systems, and with it went many of the old, indirect mechanisms of subjugating large populations (e.g. moral imperatives through the Church, legitimization of rule through concepts such as the divine right of kings, control of education etc).

But it seems we've only replaced those mechanisms with more refined versions (manufacturing consent through mass media, surveillance and indirect indentured servitude through student debt, rent and health insurance).

We probably have another century of socioeconomic and political evolution to go before we reach a decent end state.

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rixed ◴[08 Jul 25 03:50 UTC] No.44496891[source]▶
What is this "end of history illusion", if not the belief that there is a "decent end state"?

There will always be reasons to oppose any current equilibrium for improvements, and that's ok.

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1. hliyan ◴[08 Jul 25 06:53 UTC] No.44497713[source]▶
The "end of history illusion" is not the belief that there is a decent end state, but the belief of each generation that that state has been reached, and that they were to first to reach it.
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2. rixed ◴[08 Jul 25 10:06 UTC] No.44498616[source]▶
Actually, this expression "end of history" has been coined, and the ideology(*) behind it promoted, in the 1990s after the collapse of the eastern block. Before that, for what I can tell, the prevaling idea seems to have been that of an "ustoppable march of progress". Long before that, I would guess that the most common ideology was that of a persistant, immuable order.

(*) That's the proper term to denote a concept that justify the will of a group, regardless of its veracity.

Considering history, I see no signs of converging to some end state. I guess technical progress and knowledge accumulate somehow, but even this is not linear and history shows plenty of exemples of drastic step backs. But even assuming an ever increasing technical progress, in a world with infinite resources (that's a very big assumption), what would be the end state? I guess, given we are on HN, a state were humans program conscious machines which then do all the hard work? In other words, the ideology of bigtech?