Now that things are good

How many times have you been the person saying “It’s 2018, things are better now”, or even “It’s 1970, nobody is racist any more”. Or if you haven’t, how many times have you been arguing against the person telling you “It’s 294, Diocletian has implemented the tetrarchy and now everything’s fine. Rome’s going to be fine forever.”

Well not literally that, but you get the gist, right?

Francis Fukuyama argued in The End of History and the Last Man that human ideology had been evolving up to now, but that we find ourselves now at the “end of history”. According to Fukuyama, the “western liberal democracy” is the ultimate and final form of human government. This is what you’d call a teleological perspective (telos = end, logos = explanation) looking back at history and saying that everything that happened before led up to now.

This is an important piece of terminology that doesn’t often get used outside academic circles. Talking about things with a teleological perspective is a pretty common hole to fall into for people discussing history, and the evolution of ideas.

I think everything I have to say about this idea that “western liberal democracy” is the ultimate form of government is already in this video but for what it’s worth: No Francis, “western liberal democracy” isn’t the ultimate form of government. It isn’t even really a good starting point for what I’d call a good government. The basic things we should expect are to make sure everyone has housing healthcare and food.

I think I’ve been having a lot of trouble starting to write this particular video for two reasons. The first is that things aren’t good. That’s just the situation, right? We can all see, things aren’t good. We can see that things not only aren’t good, they’ve gotten worse. It seems much too obvious to say that things don’t just always get better.

The second reason is that I’m confident we will overcome this shitty time, things will get better, it will improve. The reason that makes this hard to write is that I think we’re going to overcome this bad time and then a lot of us are going to forget that we have to keep fighting. If we don’t, then our children will. During times when things are good it’s really easy for the powers that be to tell everyone not to fight, not to try to improve things. It’s really easy for turnips like Fukuyama to claim history is over.

But hey, I’ve got to write this video, because I want you all to be able to argue against that person who says “It’s [current year] there’s no [problem] any more”. We need to get to those people and tell them to shut the fuck up. On some level too, the second reason I’ve been having trouble writing this is also the reason it needs writing. We need to keep pushing forward all the time, and appreciate that the rights we all have are constantly fought for, otherwise they disappear.

Vanilla has increased in price by about ten times over the past few years. It's now about $600 for a kilo of vanilla, which is more than a kilo of SILVER. This is because we're undergoing a vanilla shortage. We're undergoing a vanilla shortage now because in the past we tried to cultivate an unsustainable amount of vanilla. We tried to grow too much of it because it has been treated as a neutral, uninteresting, boring, bland - even though it's a rich, complex and beautiful flavour.

In the immortal words of Nickelback:

"Look at this photograph. Everytime I do it makes me laugh."

These are two freshly opened tubs of ice cream (please don’t judge how much ice cream I eat I like to drink rum milkshakes and make a pillow fort when I play new games). The chocolate ice cream was full all the way, but the vanilla was over a third less.

Supermarkets have been swallowing losses for vanilla ice cream which has become ten times more expensive because they know NOBODY is going to tolerate a sharp rise in the price of vanilla ice cream, because NOBODY appreciates vanilla. because of that, they're now apparently just putting less ice cream in a tub for the same price. Same shop, same brand, same price, but there's about 40% less vanilla ice cream, because we didn't appreciate it when it was here, and now it's going away.

Vonnegut wrote that his uncle told him to always say “If this isn’t nice, what is?” when feeling good, so that you remember the good times. 

A poem by my friend, called There Is A Link On The Front Page Of Wikipedia Called 'Printable Version' Which Shows The Front Page In A More Easily Printable Format Which Is Slightly Disappointing Because For Years I Thought I Had The Option To Print The Entirety Of Wikipedia At The Touch Of A Button:

did you know

if everyone who read the message that wikipedia just engulfed my screen with donated $3

their fundraiser could be over in an hour?

i do, because i have read wikipedia's fundraisers

so. many. times.

i remember a small banner on top of the screen at first, so small i almost missed it.

i suppose a lot of people did, because it got bigger.

half an inch of header as a beggar that we pretended we couldn't see.

it started reaching an inch and we conveniently had to check our phones until we'd walked past them.

when it asked for spare change, we always had our headphones in.

as it was ignored, necessity demanded

a bigger deal be made, bigger banners put up.

the larger they got, the more it gave off desperation and the transition between small enough for disinterest to large enough for disdain was seamless.

suddenly my whole screen was taken over

by a call to arms to move to wallets.

they don't want me to scroll away anymore, and i can understand that.

i imagine over time, it will come down to two choices:

one; the demands get greater.

the entire page is now a popup. we need money if you're going to use us.

you click "return to wikipedia" and are greeted with the same message, but slightly bolder.

close that and your whole monitor is filled with only the word PLEASE.

you try and go to a different website but the wikipedia logo is weeping and the only thing you can click is the form to put your credit card details in.

the founder of wikipedia is staring at you through the window,

unrelenting eye contact,

undeterred by the fact your room is on the third floor.

he hasn't blinked in forty five minutes

and the only noise he makes is the sound of coins rattling as he shakes a donation bucket.

you come home one day and all of wikipedia’s updates are written on your walls in blood

with the message

"IF EVERYONE LIVING THIS NIGHTMARE DONATED JUST $3

THE CURSE WOULD BE BROKEN IN UNDER AN HOUR" jimmy wales is screaming at you as you try to log on to your laptop. he has been here for days.

you are broken.

you give him your pin number.

or, option two;

after attempting to ask for your relationship to be mutually beneficial,

as opposed to you using until you are done, then leaving, wikipedia has given too much and received nothing in return.

you log in one morning and are no longer greeted with a list of interesting things that happened on that day. today’s featured article is ERROR 404, as it will be tomorrow, and forever more.

you'll keep typing the dead link out of habit before you remember,

and you'll always wonder whether your donation could have helped.

The point is, appreciate the state of things, and appreciate that the status quo was fought for and continues to be fought for. And if that doesn’t do it for you, here’s some wank by a french philosopher:

Section deux: some wank by a french philosopher

Michel Foucault wrote in Archaeology of Knowledge about taking a perspective on history called a discursive perspective - a perspective based on discourse, based on the fact we just fucking love to argue all the time. A discursive perspective on history shows us that people have different ideas at different times constantly, that there will always be conversations and differing points of view no matter what the dominant ideas are.

Put simply, people argue and people change their minds. The ideas that are dominant have not been replaced in a straight line of improvements. Supposing you think that, say, being a huge racist is a terrible perspective on the world, that Big Racism™ is a set of shitty ideas, then according to a teleological perspective those ideas should have been defeated by better, shinier ideas, here at the end of history.

Is it fair to say that people’s ideas evolve? No. Is it fair to say they change? Yes. People change their minds all the time. For example look at this guy asking for more socialism in the world, even though he didn’t think it was the right answer before. This guy called Francis Fukuyama.

Oh.

Fukuyama wants more socialism now. Ladies and gentlemen: We got hi-- no this joke is getting old now. It’s kind of played out, and it’s time to move on to newer, better memes. Actually you know what, no. This was a good, appropriate meme for the time, and just because we will move on doesn’t mean it’s bad. If it’s just only got a bit more time left before we move on, let’s just appreciate it now.

Ladies and Gentlemen: We got him.