The end of History

When I saw the title, The end of history, the first thought that came to my mind was “Is this possible”? Of course I have encountered the phrase, “History never repeats itself” many times, but I have never thought about history being nonexistent at some point. The end is such a permanent thing that it’s hard for me to believe that it could happen to history. Then again, I had no idea what Fukuyama was referring to with this title until I started reading his essay. That is when I realized that indeed there could be an end to history. Fukuyama was using history in terms of ideologies of the past that is slowly disappearing in our society today. The essay discussed Marx and Hegel’s theories on communism. I sensed that Fukuyama was promoting democracy and hinted that authoritarian and dictatorship states will not last long. However, I do not necessarily agree that democracy will win out and there will be an ultimate end to these other ideologies. I believe that some governmental systems cannot be altered because they are so deeply ingrained in a nation’s culture. For example, although the people in Great Britain share similar freedoms and quality of living as Americans, their government is set up differently. They still have their traditional monarchy system with the royal family still holding power of the country. This set up is most likely not going to change in time in the near future. Likewise, although the fall of the Berlin wall represented the fall of communism, it only did so for the Soviet Union. Communism is still very dominant in China and Vietnam. Perhaps the philosophies of Marx and Hegel have somewhat “ended” because communism today is not exactly like the communism several decades ago. It is like what Shawn had described about the statue of Mao Zedong in China. There were advertisements postings all around his statue. Of course this was not the communistic China that Mao had pictured. Certainly, governments and ideologies will evolve to ensure survival, but to have an end them seems to unrealistic.