THE END OF MATERIALISM

Will it also mean the end of liberalism? 

A book should be written, I believe, about the rule of finance and economics that pervades the policies particularly of Western nations. We all see it at work. It is going just one direction, at ever greater scale.

We have become mere consumers. All of us. And we carry grave burdens to continue enjoying this. In the course of the post-WWII era this seeming world of material comfort has turned into a condition of mass slavery, supported by the global system of fierce capitalism. The majority of the people in our world are reduced to just names and figures in the accounts of our creditors.

Those who manage the world’s financial resources money have a steadily increasing power compared to those who have almost none of it. We experience a gradually increasing divide between the people who can readily enjoy the richness of our planet’s resources and those who can’t. 

Fukuyama prophesied the end of history and the ultimate predominance of economic liberalism and democracy. “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government”.  After his publication a growing number of question marks and arguments have been raised in disagreement. At the turn of the millennium the world was confronted with new conflicts and attacks at the heart western liberalism.

Dissatisfaction with the world order of markets and global finance is becoming increasingly violent, massive and destructive. Let us truly understand the driving factor of today’s so-called terrorism. Out of what despair and misery was it born? Don’t think it has anything to do with religion. It is the same everywhere in all times. Religion is the most common disguise of ignorance and dissatisfaction in history. 

How do we best respond to it? Dot we defend our fortress of wealth and accomplishments with similar (or rather: even greater) military force, simply to crush it? And let us broaden the scope: sooner or later, violent aggression will arise out of our societies too. An increasing mass of dissatisfied people, disgruntled slaves and further victims world wide of – essentially – western exploitation of the earth’s resources.

But even without the force of aggression, can we come to the notion ourselves, that our world cannot persist the way it is? What do we defend, and what actually is the best way to do it? We don’t need the cries and misdeeds of the disgruntled to see the dead end road we have been riding for quite a while.

In 2014 Fukuyama commented that humanity's control of its own evolution will have a great and possibly terrible effect on the liberal democracy. Well, this is the question: it is either our common sense or indeed, it is the dictatorship of the few that will determine our future, with whatever force it requires. And either way, the foundations of true liberalism and democracy are already shaken by the very state we are in at present, when figures and statistics command the world.