Poetry at the End of the World
I first learned about Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis in an undergraduate international relations class in 1999 or 2000. We also learned about Samuel Huntington’s counter, “the clash of civilizations.” While Fukuyama theorized (hoped?) that history, in the sense of ideological struggle, had ended with the Cold War and the triumph of liberal democracy, Huntington said that future wars would be between cultures and belief systems (civilizations, if you like) rather than nation-states as such. Huntington seems to have been right: September 11, the War on Terror, the rise of ISIS and many other events of the past two decades fit his thesis. Meanwhile, Russia and much of the old Eastern bloc never developed robust, liberal democracies. China figured out capitalism with a statist, Maoist veneer, and took Hong Kong back in the process.
What I don’t recall is if Huntington predicted that civilization clashes would happen within liberal democracies themselves, but that’s certainly happening, too. What we used to quaintly call Culture Wars (well, there you go) have become…something else. Or maybe they’ve just come to their logical end. We could say much more about the economic factors, the opioid crisis, the way leaders in both major parties have failed the working class. Those are important pieces that have been discussed at length. Interesting, isn’t it, that one of our most incendiary fault lines is good old class struggle? I talked last time about the fact that we’ve made no progress ( really, have gone backwards) when it comes to food security. It’s not hard to imagine characters from “My Hometown” or “The River” having voted for Donald Trump.
Then there’s Europe, where far-right, nativist nationalism always seems one or two elections away from claiming the continent. Then, of course, there’s Russia. Putin loves talking about Russia as a great, holy, liberating civilization. The third Rome and all of that.
Sometimes I wonder what the hell any of us are doing. Every other day I’m fairly convinced that if we’re not in World War III already, it’s just a matter of time and semantics. I’m not a pessimist, but I *have* been doom-scrolling. I don’t believe global catastrophe is inevitable, but I also know that most people around the world live in catastrophic settings all the time. Sometimes it feels very odd to be going on and on about literature and poetry and art and books at what feels like the end of the world. But I think we need to.
If you have previously published poems or short stories you’d like me to link to or share via this humble newsletter, let me know. Especially pieces that go even a little way toward making peace or lifting up human truths and aspirations we share across our differences.
I Was a Kid in the 80s
This is not really an example of what I have in mind, but I remembered the Fukuyama line. It’s a short, rough free-write from around 2012 (with some context from 2019). No, I don’t think Richard Branson (or Elon Musk) will save us. Yes, I’m still up for a jetpack. But I’d rather have clean water, no hunger, and world peace.