When can I finish my Korean homework? When will the Fall semester end? When will this bachelor’s end? With a developed melancholic mind, I am constantly riddled with thoughts about the “ends”. Quite opposite to a true ISTJ, my imagination fathoms the deepest depths of the future. These, coupled with most KAISTian conversations around international news, future endeavors, or how long we have to wait till the 25th of each month, make my day even more depressing, I concede. In this bleak cycle of days and nights, it seems to me I wake up just so that I have another tomorrow to wake up anew. As the world changes day by day, my loop continues. Circling an infinite regression, I thought to myself: “Is history linearly progressing? Or are we doomed to repeat history, never to escape?” A political scientist and a fellow Francis himself, Francis Fukuyama, disagrees with the latter.
Renowned for his 1982 work, The End of History and the Last Man, Fukuyama advanced the notion that all government institutions across the world would eventually adopt a liberal democracy as their form of government. Though only a gross answer, Fukuyama notes that once every nation settles, the “end of history” is achieved, contrary to the popular misinterpretation that human progress and history will cease to exist. While the word gave a sense of assurance that future generations would be fostered better without suffering any massive civilian or national dispute, the immediate idea that a monochromatic world would replace the one we live in due to the absence of conflict is a horrifying thing as well.
Believing Fukuyama’s promising words was a mistake on my part since, as I age a year older, I observe harrowing events endlessly transpiring without any counterbalance. Ukrainian civilians accustomed to everyday funerals, leveraging social media as a platform for disinformation, and coerced child marriage happening in different parts of the world are just not even enough to cover the entirety of the evils the world has seen. And, as we continue to peruse past centuries of factual histories and live its present, it seems as if we have learned nothing and are back to square one. One need not go outside KAIST to notice this fact. The very institution that devoted itself to spreading its influence overseas is the same entity that segregates its members in social cliques and impedes just opportunities for internationals.
Expanding to a more global sense, the number of nations experiencing a decline in the quality of their democracy are increasing through the years, some of which once more face an issue resolved decades before — the Philippines regained democratic dependence in 1986 only to elect the then-ousted president’s son in 2022, for instance. As these events unfold, we realize Fukuyama’s suggestion falls incredibly short of his contentions made four decades ago. What then can we do to prevent the cyclical, halting progress of humankind? Given that there are many unpredictable factors changing our own social climate, where should we start?
During this age of an information boom, it is much easier to be complacent than critical. Consequently, it is imperative that we scrutinize our well-adjusted lifestyles, distorted perspectives, and misunderstandings. If something contradicts us, may it be an emotion or thought, let us start by holding on to those and ponder why we feel or think that way. Thinking along these lines, leaders of each nation must put their citizens’ needs first over their own personal interests; at the same time, citizens should ensure accountability to their elected people sitting in the seats of power.
From an evaluative perspective, we can utilize this timely definition of good governance and citizenship in undoing our predecessor’s mistakes, adapting to the present, and predicting the future. We, as dutiful natives of our respective countries, also have the power as a collective to address issues that always help advance our nations further than before. Otherwise, we risk our successors suffering a heavier burden passed from us that had accumulated over centuries. In such cases we fail, at that time, should there exist an individual able enough to escape society’s omnipotent control over them, these incidents create a familiar loop again. Rebellion, change, decline, perception. Rinse, repeat.
Fukuyama’s assertion may sound fanciful enough for us to partially reject his claims, but in tandem with critical literary works that have left an impression on our ideological evolution, we have a conscious choice to learn from them. And, somewhere down the line, the effects of global interconnectedness present a significant part we each certainly play, ultimately deciding these works’ foreshadowed oblivion or prosperity of all humankind. With the rate of the future's unpredictability on the rise, the continuous polarization of power, and the state of growing social unrest these days, there is no better of a time than now to be optimistic and yearn for an answer to one of life’s million-dollar questions: what do we owe to ourselves and each other? While you think about that, let me first get back to my Korean homework.