Response to the Polity Collection

Abstract

On the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of The End of History and the Last Man, I very much appreciate the effort of Polity to collect a series of commentaries reflecting the variety of critiques that have been made of the book. Over these years, I think that I have heard virtually every possible point of view expressed about my work; Polity has done an admirable job selecting authors who have actually read the book and take its arguments seriously enough to engage with them at a high level. It is in that spirit that I will attempt to respond. I want to begin with the comments of Professors Dyson and Myers first on The End of History as science fiction and of the threat of the end of the Anthropocene, since they actually deal with similar subjects. Professor Dyson is correct that I have had a long-standing if not widely known interest in science fiction, and in particular with dystopian science fiction. The latter is an excellent genre for looking at presentday politics, extrapolating current trends, and anticipating the ways in which changes in technology will affect future societies. Aldous Huxley’s Brave NewWorld foresaw CRISPR-Cas9 and today’s genetic engineering capabilities that I discussed inOur Posthuman Future, while GeorgeOrwell’s 1984 envisioned pervasive surveillance through the “telescreen” that has now become a reality thanks to the internet andmodern AI technologies. Neal Stephenson’s 1991 novel Snowcrash, by contrast, saw the United States fall apart into self-regarding “burbclaves” and the federal government retreat into nonexistence as the fulfillment of libertarian fantasies—something that is also not too distant from present American realities. The elephant in the room is of course the one raised by Professor Myers, the threat of human-induced climate change that will have enormous social and political consequences.