Has The World Already Ended? Or Just History?

There’s a reason they quote Baudrillard in The Matrix.

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Things are… tense…. It’s tough to deny that right now, the world can feel a bit like a standoffish middle school dance… with nukes. Foreign policy, geopolitics, international defense, and even long standing institutions like the European Union and, depending upon who you ask, democracy itself… have uncertain futures. Rather than indulging in our inner chicken little, it may be useful to know this isn’t, of course, the first time some people have felt like the end is nigh. As a matter of fact, depending upon who you ask–and we will… ask–it’s possible that either the world… OR HISTORY… has already ended; though at the end… of both of those things, and this episode, maybe we can find a beginning. Let’s talk some Francis Fukuyama and Jean Baudrillard.

--Crash Course Mythology--

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None this week

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--FURTHER READING & SOURCES--

--ASSET LINKS--
00:19 HIGH SCHOOL DANCE BATTLE - GEEKS VS COOL

00:23 This Is Fine Cartoon

02:45 The Berlin Wall Falls 1989 NBC Coverage Pt1

04:17 New Nokia 3310 Vs Original Nokia 3310

04:54 Waiting for the Bus - Cyanide & Happiness Shorts

05:13 STS-129 HD Launch

06:04 25 Stunning Timelapse GIFs

08:21 The Sixth Extinction

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[besmart]

brb, ordering new business cards with "Mr. Dr. Joe Hanson" on them 🙃

[DustinRodriguez_]

I don't think most viewers of this channel understand what the words "Liberal" and "Conservative" mean in the sense used by political scientists and historians and the like. Those words are used too often in common discourse as meaning very different things, so you probably should have explained them a bit. Liberal, in the way it is used by Baudrillard and similar, means any system that sees the rights of the individual as more important than those of an over-arching 'state' or larger collective organization. Conservative, in that arena, refers to things like monarchies where the concerns of individuals are seen as properly subjugated to the concerns of the 'state'. For instance if you wanted to round up and eliminate a large number of people in order to reduce the demand for food, a Liberal society would find that unthinkable because the destruction of individuals is seen as unacceptable even if it helps the state, whereas a Conservative would see it as the proper duty of those individuals to be destroyed in order to better serve the state. The concerns of what helps the 'state' (its not always actually a nation, it can be a church or a race or similar, any group which is seen as more important than its constituent members and separate from them) are what truly matter to a Conservative in that way the word is used. It is very, very different from how 'conservative' is used in common speaking and because history has ended and liberalism has won, many people aren't even aware such ideas used to be how the entire world worked.

[ireallyhatemakingupnamesfo]

God, it’s been 3 years and “things are... tense” hits like a freight train

[gabe]

"History" is not the right word to describe this idea. You're really talking about "Progress".

[phishfullofasha]

It seems telling to me that Fukuyama would focus in on the Berlin Wall as the end point of history, an event that occurred during his lifetime. I think that mixed in with the collective juvenoia we experience as a culture there is often a real sense that the generations ahead of us would like history to be over.

People who believe the world is ending have a similar stance: in a sense they have seen that bus on the horizon and the end is nigh.

This is a compelling view of the world because it places our individual lives at the climax of history rather than forcing us to confront the absolute truth that history is going to keep happening for a long time and none of us alive today are likely to see the end.

[Arcus]

Every time you say "the world" with all that emphasis I keep expecting a Dio GIF.

[NeilSonOfNorbert]

speaking as a historian(which is something i can actually officially describe myself as now), history is a matter of the recording and analyzing of the past which is why we do say there is a time before history because we didn't used to keep permanent records of what has happened. what you are talking about in this video is particular narratives viewed in history and claiming those narratives have come to an end which means history has ended(like saying Idea Channel ended in 2012 because mike's mustache came to an end), and yet events continue to happen and be recorded and analyzed. history can end, but only at such a time as we no longer record what has happened, or have records of what has happened, or care to study it.

[Dabbo]

As a History student, I despise Fukuyama. In saying that the end of history was the end of the Cold War and end of the fight between capitalism and communism, he ignores the role the rest of the world plays in world history. He has put all of their civilisations into a footnote of the ideological battle between two essentially western ideologies. I know his idea of history is more of one of progress, but that's only a western perception of it, and this also ignores the wide cultural knowledge history can enrich us with. Imagine if somebody said to the west that an event in Africa between two different ideologies ended all of world history.

[newmansan]

I must say, this episode is much more entertaining if you imagine Mike as DIO shouting [ZA WARUDO] every time it is mentioned.

[zachcz]

Once every artifact, memory, and historical record of a time period or culture is lost, that world has ended. If the planet without people is just "earth, " then people are what make it the "world."

[PBradleyRobb]

Using Horse E-Books to sum up Baudrillard. I...I think that was peak internet.

[anfanta]

This is may be your best video yet! Thank you

[flisboac]

Summary: The concept of the "end of the world" is up to interpretation, because we live in an age of humans, and as such, the end or the beginning is a matter of perspective -- at least until Earth itself, or our environment, promotes an event so important that forces our age to terminate and some other age to begin.

[mheermance]

Every time I see a question mark in a title Betteridge's law of headlines jumps into my mind. It states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

[lcineo]

I DO believe that the history of a country a person or a planet for that matter, has ended the moment they no longer want to change the way things are and create new ones around them. Like now, when the vast majority of human beings are just existing, consuming, accepting, following... instead of creating, questioning, challenging or trying to make things better. Climate change, Racism, Inequality, corruption are just examples of thing we have stop caring about and that are so simple to end... If only more people cared.

[avery-quinnmaddox]

To call the collapse of the Berlin Wall the "last great historic event" is not only to ignore all other candidates from within Europe (Brexxit), but also to ignore all of those from outside of Europe. I know western philosophers and historians are Eurocentric as hell, but damn... this really takes the cake.

[plasticbutler]

When the video started, I thought Mike was wearing a neck brace and thought "OMG, is he ok?"
Then I realized that bright white thing on his neck was just his neck.

[TheTikox]

History ended when pucci restarded the universe in part 6

[aarons]

4:39 when you don't have enough patience to argue if 2000 actually happened so you just use a music album as prof, lol

[chaoswebz]

I think history is over because we've stopped recording most of it on paper, stone, etc, and instead is mostly in electronic formats and therefore is less permanent on a long term scale.