Is the West prepared to coexist with ideological and civilizational alternatives that do not necessarily aspire to Western liberalism? — Astorre

Sure - provided they’re not imposed, but chosen by democratic means. The big parade in China today starred Xi Jin Pin, Modi, Putin and Kim Jong Un - only one of whom is a democratically-elected leader. Russia and China are both authoritarian dictatorships, as is North Korea. I don’t see them as any kind of alternative.

Of course it is also true, and tragic, that America of all nations is now hurtling towards totalitarianism, but that is not the fault of Western Liberalism except insofar as it has thus far been able to prevent it.

It seems quite possible to me that China will eclipse the USA as the dominant world hegemon in the near future but that gives me no joy.

I once witnessed a girl who was a guest asking a local girl why she wore a hijab, explaining that it infringed on her rights, her freedom to express herself. To which the second girl replied that this was her way of expressing herself. What if the dictatorships of the global south are what the inhabitants of the global south want?

‘Wanting a dictatorship’ is surely the abdication of freedom. And even if I agreed that sexual and identity politics has been taken too far in western culture, abandoning democracy is not a solution. It would be a case of the cure being worse than the disease.

Over the past decade, I've observed a notable shift in global sentiment—especially from my vantage point in the East. Not long ago—perhaps 10 to 15 years back—there was a widespread admiration for the West in my country. The U.S. dollar was seen as unshakable. Western democracy was often cited as the highest political ideal. Western consumer goods were considered objectively superior. And the broader cultural narrative—academic, technological, even moral—was clearly West-centric. — Astorre

Interesting. I’ve noticed a self-criticism within the West that has become more rancid over time. It used to be just a leftist posture but now seems to be broad-based. Liberalism has always celebrated pluralism and voices of criticism and dissent. They now seem to be the loudest voices. My perception is that this has been the case for about 20 years, with the signs already prominent 40 years ago.

I think powerful interest groups benefit from the idea that politics is a sham and that all institutions are corrupt or dysfunctional. This means they can be dismantled with little resistance. Possibly the best way to dispatch democracy is not to take it on directly but to undermine its relevance and prestige.

:100: MAGA plays that card very well.

I am not promoting these views, nor rejecting them. I’m merely describing what I increasingly see and hear—what I believe many people outside the West are beginning to think and feel. — Astorre

I do not see anything like this in Vietnam. My experience in SE Asia has been more like the opposite. Western ideals are placed on a pedestal. There have been more nationalistic tendencies pushed by certain regimes here and there though (thinking of Philippines in particular), but overall I would say the eyes are still very much drawn to 'The West'.

Is the West prepared to coexist with ideological and civilizational alternatives that do not necessarily aspire to Western liberalism? — Astorre

It has to or it is not really framing the 'Western' ideal (which is not wholly 'Western' anyway). I think out of all the areas on Earth where nationalism has held sway over political dynamics, and caused all kinds of problems, Europe has seen the true damage of fast advancement; abuse inflicted on others and self; and managed to still keep in place a large enough slice of liberalism to keep its head above water.

Freedom is always under threat. Nothing new there. I do not see power shifts effecting this because I believe true power comes through the adoption of liberal ideas not the rejection of them. If India or China rises they will only maintain influence if a good slice of their thinking involves liberal ideals.

Are we truly entering an era of multipolarity? If so, what are the philosophical consequences of a world without a dominant cultural “center”? — Astorre

I would paint a picture of three related themes. There is the death of the humanist dream of a single planetary civilisation. There is the emergence of a superorganism level relation between capital flows and entropy production. And there is an environmental omni-crisis that is crashing down on the whole civilisational adventure.

So the dream of a world order followed the two world wars. An international government would be set up - the UN, World Bank, IMF, and all the other globalist institutions. Free trade would foster peace and development. So on, and so forth.

Actually a rather inspiring project but always fragile with the Cold War and US dollar imperialism. As the institutions of globalism have been dismantled, the next best prospect was a step back to three general regions of economic integration. Europe, Asia and North America. Each would have enough in common to want to form stabilising relations. There could be still a global trade system but one more balanced both culturally and regionally.

Social media is obviously one driver of world identity and cultural polarisation. But imagine the change if each region runs its own platforms in its own ways. You could get back to a more localised feel to popular culture and morality.

Next is the superorganism story. We kind of expect humans to be in charge of their own destiny in terms the kind of political and economic choices I just describe. But international capital has become its own thing. And it plugs in rather directly to anything that accelerates the entropification of the planet. Anything that consumes energy and resources.

Just look at AI. Another Big Capital play whose main product is data centres so resource hungry that it wants to buy up any nuclear reactors or hydrodams left spare. The world’s money has been turned into a profit hunting flow. And that allows it to mainline on the world’s natural resources. In the US, the tech bros thought they were the green solution but have been sucked into being the entropification accelerationists. Vance is their stooge waiting in the wings to strip away the last restrictions that civilised society would wish to impose on the mindless amplification of consumption that capital demands.

So we have the global civilisation project being scaled back, and a renewed localism could make a lot of sense. Yet world capital has become its own thing and its interests aren’t aligned with human civilisation in any way we would want to recognise. It is now likely to run roughshod over anything us ordinary humans might like to have happen in our little neighbourhoods.

Then the number three dynamic is global warming and ecological collapse. The failure of the world governance project means that was one chance to put on the brakes that was let slip. The emergence of the capital-entropification superorganism has led to a pretty mindless creature that can’t even respond to this threat. So things will likely run their course and civilisation, such as it survives, could be reset to any time point all the way back to the stone ages.

Within all this, humanism, modernism, multiculturalism, inclusivity, become shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. A fast fading dream of more hopeful times.

There are a lot of moving parts so what actually happens could be very different for different parts of the world.

Green Tech is a thing and North America has all the geographic advantages to come out of this as a functioning modern economy and the prevailing civilisational power.

Europe could be truly stuffed when the Gulf Stream packs up and everything contracts right back to basics. France has a defensible geography at least.

Africa could be decimated by famine but is also only a generation or so from the memory of subsistence living. It has a culture to revert to with a diminished population.

And so it goes on. The general theme there is that everyone’s politics, economics and civilisational values will wind back to the structures that worked for what ever scale of society still exists in their area.

Is the West prepared to coexist with ideological and civilizational alternatives that do not necessarily aspire to Western liberalism? — Astorre

At the moment, this is a reasonable question. But Western liberalism - which was a highly rational project - itself could be said to have been too rapidly successful. It created aspirations larger than the planet could absorb at such a break neck pace.

The genie escaped the bottle even as we were building the planetary level of order that theoretically could have kept the plug in place.

So we could say right plan, rushed implementation. And one of the oversights was not paying enough attention to all the natural local differences that the planet’s geography makes. It breeds different mindsets and agendas for reasons obvious to historians. Liberal ideology overplayed the degree to which we could all become so easily aligned under the one humanist banner.

I suggest you look at the situation from a slightly different angle. Not because I want to convince you of the correctness of something, but because, in my opinion, something is better understood in its entirety under the condition of a comprehensive analysis and various approaches.

As an example, I would like to cite the North Korean ideology of Chu-Chhe. This is an illiberal ideology, Chu-Chhe literally translates as "subjectivity" or "originality", was developed by the founder of the DPRK Kim Il Sung.

Formally, this ideology grew out of Marxism-Leninism, it significantly modified its key provisions, adapting them to Korean realities and traditions. The main philosophical difference is the shift in emphasis from objective economic laws (as in classical Marxism) to the subjective factor - the consciousness and will of the masses, led by the leader. The central element of the ideology is the postulate "Man is the master of everything and decides everything." However, this "man" is not an individual, but a collective "mass of the people". At the same time, according to Juche, the masses cannot act spontaneously; to realize their historical mission, they need a wise leader — the Leader. The main postulate of the idea is the desire for complete independence and autonomy.

Unlike liberalism, where each individual must independently search for the meaning of life, which can lead to confusion and anxiety, Juche offers a ready-made and understandable goal. The meaning of life is serving the nation, the leader and the collective. This relieves a person of the burden of individual choice and gives him a clear understanding of his place and purpose in a large, common cause.

I admit that this is undemocratic and illiberal. Citizens are brought up in isolation. They are forced to choose from 5-7 approved hairstyles and what their power gives them. But, they are who they are. They are forced to survive in isolation and somehow cope with it. In the end, these are just people who want to eat and have their place in the sun. Can the West just accept them as they are? What if we assume that they themselves simply like being who they are? Or do you see this as some kind of threat to liberalism?

What if we assume that they themselves simply like being who they are? — Astorre

Why would we assume that? They are given no choice at all in the matter. It’s a complete totalitarian dictatorship with an appalling human rights record under the thumb of a dangerous megalomaniac who has nuclear weapons. I see nothing good about it whatever.

The general theme there is that everyone’s politics, economics and civilisational values will wind back to the structures that worked for what ever scale of society still exists in their area. — apokrisis

I have seen this for myself. Moreover, I am sure that you cannot simply come to someone and call them a democrat or a liberal. As Le Bon asserts, there is a certain soul of the nation that cannot be reoriented to other values ​​at the snap of a finger. In addition, this or that regime has gone through several thousand years of trial and error before appearing before our eyes. It did not arise out of nowhere, but was always connected with the climate and the geographical and natural realities of the area where it was formed.

That's what I'm asking: why did we decide that they need this choice? They built a society where choice is not needed, they were moving towards it. Who are we to decide what they need?

They have nuclear weapons. This means that they have some power to reckon with. Many other states have nuclear weapons too. From the point of view of illiberal regimes, the possession of nuclear weapons by liberal states can also be seen as dangerous.

The idea of ​​what I say is not to make a statement, but to try to do what philosophy does: to ask the ultimate question "why should something necessarily be this way and not another?"

According to many reliable sources, life in the Hermit Kingdom is a dystopian nightmare where you can be sent to a prison camp for expressing dissent. It has poor living standards. frequent shortages of food and no freedom of travel. I think it can be assumed that very few. other than the privileged elite, would want to live under such a regime.

only one of whom is a democratically-elected leader. Russia and China are both authoritarian dictatorships — Wayfarer

I mean, if you can't honestly say you'd trust your young kid alone with one person picked at random from your society, how can you really say you trust in people to govern their own affairs. You can't.

Not to make it seem ordinary humans should be allowed monarchy, they absolutely should not. Bad genetics that lead to corruption. But that said, you should value an apple for all it is and not just because it looks or smells good, that is to say, defend it with substance and not just "oh at least it's not this or that."

I have zero idea what you’re talking about.

But I did google ‘’life in North Korea’ from which:

Forced Labor:
Many North Koreans, including children, are forced to work on farms, in factories, and in political prison camps.
Food Insecurity:
Millions suffer from malnutrition and lack of adequate food, with prisoners sometimes eating insects and rats to survive.
Infrastructure:
Basic infrastructure, such as electricity and clean water, is underdeveloped, making daily tasks like washing and hygiene challenging.
Limited Information:
Access to the internet is restricted, and state-controlled TV channels are the only source of media.

According to many reliable sources, life in the Hermit Kingdom is a dystopian nightmare where you can be sent to a prison camp for expressing dissent. It has poor living standards. frequent shortages of food and no freedom of travel. I think it can be assumed that very few. other than the privileged elite, would want to live under such a regime. — Wayfarer

I do not dispute this statement, but I go further: Why is it necessary to think differently at all and the ability to do so is a good thing?

Regarding hunger and cold. Recently I read a note about studies of cortisol in the teeth of fossilized individuals (for example, "Desperately seeking stress: A pilot study of cortisol in archaeological tooth structures" 2020). According to this study, it was found that ancient individuals, despite hunger, cold and shortage, experienced less stress than you and me.

From this I formulated a philosophical question: What if progress does not necessarily lead to human happiness?

But I did google ‘’life in North Korea’ from which:

Forced Labor:
Many North Koreans, including children, are forced to work on farms, in factories, and in political prison camps.
Food Insecurity:
Millions suffer from malnutrition and lack of adequate food, with prisoners sometimes eating insects and rats to survive.
Infrastructure:
Basic infrastructure, such as electricity and clean water, is underdeveloped, making daily tasks like washing and hygiene challenging.
Limited Information:
Access to the internet is restricted, and state-controlled TV channels are the only source of media. — Wayfarer

I do not dispute everything you found about the DPRK. Moreover, according to my data, many people are dying there due to mass starvation. But for the domestic consumer, the authorities explain this as a consequence of the West isolating their country. In this regard, I have the following question: Is it humane to isolate and impose sanctions? Is this a manifestation of liberalism or an ordinary will to power?

By the way, Saudi Arabia is not famous for its developed democratic or liberal institutions either, but that doesn't stop it from being considered a friend. Coincidentally, they have a lot of oil.

I have zero idea what you’re talking about. — Wayfarer

The average person needs to be governed.

If people did a good job in doing so on their own without "authority", people would trust their most valuable possession (which for most is one's child) with any random member of said society. Yet few people (basically nobody) in any democracy does. That's what I'm talking about.

I feel you're being more ideological or sentimental than logical in your reply, considering you seem to be a fair amount more intelligent than I, which is fine. But for anybody else, the logical observation stands unopposed.

As I said, people are naturally flawed and so should not be allowed to unilaterally act as something they're not, that something being lords or forms of monarchy. That said, surely democracy has intrinsic value other than "well at least these horrible things happening over there aren't happening over here". I dunno. Just thought you'd address that first and foremost is all. No big deal.

While I'm not absolutely certain of every person in every situation, I'm fairly certain most citizens in places like Russia or China live there by choice. That is to say, provided they are not poor and have average means, can leave anytime to go anywhere. If I'm mistaken about that, I apologize. But in relation to the topic, well, to put it simply "different strokes for different folks." So again, a true supporter and believer of democracy ought be able to defend something they believe superior with something other than "well at least it's not like X, Y, or Z" without much effort, is all.

But that said, you should value an apple for all it is and not just because it looks or smells good, that is to say, defend it with substance and not just "oh at least it's not this or that." — Outlander

In my opinion, man is valuable in himself.

Your argument is close to the conservative critique of democracy (for example Edmund Burke or even Plato in the Republic), where the masses can be incompetent and the elites corrupt.

So you support the idea that liberalism does not equal good?

While I'm not absolutely certain of every person in every situation, I'm fairly certain most citizens in places like Russia or China live there by choice. — Outlander

I can assure you from my own experience of almost daily communication with citizens of both of these countries that this is exactly the case. They are free to move, free to invest or create a business. There are problems there, they complain about some things, but in general I have not heard from the residents of these countries that they do not like them.

I discern two main theses in the OP. First, there is an anti-Fukuyama argument. He famously claimed that with rise of liberal democracy around the world, we had reached the end of history, a Hegelian-like pinnacle of political and philosophical organization. But the recent global trends away from liberalism and toward various forms of autocracy and totalitarianism would seem to argue against the idea that history has been moving in the one direction Fukuyama described. The second argument seems to be a relativistic one. Not only are an increasing number of countries rejecting liberal democracy, but we have no ethical grounds for judging such choices to be incorrect, and to proclaim liberal democracy to be divinely sanctioned. There is no such thing as being on the ‘wrong side of history’, because the unique histories of different cultures around the world produce a diversity of political systems tailored to the particular values and needs of those communities.

As to the first argument, my response to the claim that there has been a massive worldwide flight from liberal democracy is that we must be careful to separate political trends from changes in philosophy. Let me use the rise of MAGA in the U.S. as an example. What do we make of the supporters of Trump who applaud his authoritarian tendencies, many of whom once were loyal members of the Democratic party with its liberal agenda? Have they changed philosophies? Did they used to be liberal concerning issues like climate, covid science, gender, authoritarianism, multiculturalism and immigration and suddenly decided to change their minds and “reject” their former liberal views?

I suggest they always held traditionalistic, conservative beliefs about these issues, but maintained their allegiance to liberal parties only as long as those parties benefited them economically. I believe there has been a significant overestimation of the percentage of the population in the U.S. and Europe who ever supported liberal democracy for philosophical rather than just reasons of economic self-interest, because the ranks of liberal political parties were for a long time inflated with voters who were in fact philosophically anti-liberal, and who have now organized right-wing populist parties like MAGA that more purely reflect their anti-liberalism. Rural people in countries around the world have followed a pattern similar to MAGA , reorganizing their political parties in a rightward direction politically to reflect the traditionalism and conservatism they have always believed in.

If anything, I would argue that the actual parentage of the worldwide population that supports liberal democratic philosophies has grown steadily over the past 100 years. But this fact is being obscured by the reshuffling of the political parties.

As to the second argument of the OP, should we maintain a relativistic stance toward the type of social and political
organization a culture adopts? To a certain extent, yes. I think in many places it is both true that authoritarian regimes maintain a ruthless hold over their populations, and that those populations historically gravitate toward strong leadership. For instance, El Salvadorian dictator Bukele is one of the most popular leaders in Latin America.

But I do think that liberal democracy has advantages over more authoritarian political systems that can be described in pragmatic rather than in abstract ethical terms. If one thinks of political organization as a complex dynamical system, we may say that such systems tend toward their own evolution. As they become more complex they become more stable. The enlightened self-interest of individuals will steer them towards modes of social
organization which foster communication, commerce and creativity rather than stifle it. This parallels and expresses a philosophical evolution which increasingly favors experimentation, innovation and symbiosis over static stability. So while I think we can find many who now still prefer some degree of authoritarianism over liberalism, the longer term trends favor the evolution of more complex forms of social organization, which may even at some point shift from liberal democracy to some kind of loosely organized anarchy. With its economic liberalization into a Capitalist-technocracy, China is likely halfway to a more full-fledged political liberalization that may take another 50 years or more.

Are we truly entering an era of multipolarity? If so, what are the philosophical consequences of a world without a dominant cultural “center”? — Astorre

The US is declining, China is rising. It would be fair to say we're headed toward multipolarity. On the one hand, two superpowers make the world safer than one. On the other, it's unfortunate that that safety comes at the price of wasted energy (undermining one another) when the species now has an opportunity to take control of its energy needs to avoid climate change.

On the other hand, war, even cold war, has a tendency to drive innovation. I believe there were Romans who claimed it was a mistake to destroy Carthage because without an enemy, Rome would become weak. I think this is true. Existence becomes pointless for a superpower.

I guess the philosophical issues I see are:

1. That conflict makes us more innovative.
2. Conflict creates meaning and identity.

Could this shift lead to a new "Iron Curtain"—a bifurcation of global norms, technologies, and values? — Astorre

I don't see a big rift in terms of values. It will be more a competition for influence. Is there really a big difference in the values of the US and China? I mean fundamentally? Russia is a different animal. It's kind of inexplicable, but hasn't it always been?

I suggest they always held traditionalistic, conservative beliefs about these issues, but maintained their allegiance to liberal parties only as long as those parties benefited them economically. — Joshs

Also it could be that liberalism as a philosophy gets a little messy when we apply it both as a social theory and an economic theory. The two should go together, but also they can grow apart and be in competition.

What even is liberalism? Obviously it is something about liberating the individual from the constraints of the old existing hierarchical order. Maximising personal freedoms. Creating unconstrained choice. But inevitably, the individual must begin rebuilding some social hierarchy from that new point of departure. A social order has to be recreated. And the desire is that it be in every way better.

The Enlightenment tried to imagine the ideal citizen who could be set free and would then interact with other free citizens to construct some such rational utopia. A planet organised by open rational markets and open rational government, all based on citizens living rationally ordered lives.

But the Enlightenment brought its own Romantic backlash. If humans ought to be rational, the reality was they were emotional as well. If tradition was to be consigned to the scrap heap of history, then that was a brave new direction to be challenged by the past now having its own focused claim to an increasingly contested “reality”.

And also the Enlightenment was handmaiden to the Industrial Revolution. It was the unleashing of capital to harness the limitless cheap energy of buried fossil fuel. An algorithmic economics that was the birth of a new planetary super-organism. Quite quickly, human scale notions of a well-lived civilised and libertarian life were swept up in “someone else’s” agenda. The Romantic reaction spoke to that new unstoppable force too.

So jump forward to the current moment. Liberalism as philosophy - an attempt to impose self-consciously rational structure on life - has failed to deliver what it looked to promise. It certainly delivered a lot in terms of human health and prosperity, creative freedom and progressive attitudes. But now it is faltering at the point where the economic sphere is putting itself outside of any human control, and where politics can only regulate the cultural sphere which is rejecting rationality in favour of Romantic emotionalism.

Might becomes right when the tolerance that rational democracy demands is being left behind. Woke and MAGA are both authoritarian political responses. One just harnesses the power of the cancel culture mob while the other rallies behind an elected dictator. Both sides rely on their alternative facts so that the “real facts” produced by rationality don’t interrupt the direct path to their pre-chosen conclusions.

So liberalism was always itself a partial story. It did not really incorporate the degree to which humanity is a social construction, rationality was ultimately an embodied practice, and society as a whole is an entropic super-organism. Like all life, it’s imperative is to blindly grow until it fills its Petrie dish, and suffer the consequences thereof.

If politics had kept pace, we would have had liberal democracy, social democracy and then a planetary Noosphere. Perhaps the kind of enlightened technocratic authoritarianism of Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore, First the liberation from traditional constraint on the individual, then some kind of economic engineering to fix the economic distortions that had already developed, and then some level of planetary rationality sufficient to put the brakes on runaway capitalism and its consumption of the planet.

So liberalism was never a complete model of the human condition. Its view of rationality was transcendentally ideal rather than pragmatically embodied. As a philosophy it was flawed. But then also, as a practice it was largely pragmatically implemented. It became the best thing going around for a long time.

Now it is being torn in different directions by its own success in terms of rampant economic growth and rampant self-actualisation aspirations. Both could only be a good thing when they were tied into each other as the freedom we could afford to claim. The liberal ideal continuing to be pragmatically embodied in a way that could self-consciously see into its own future as well as know of the true value in jettisoning the various constraints of its various tradition-bound pasts

Also it could be that liberalism as a philosophy gets a little messy when we apply it both as a social theory and an economic theory. The two should go together, but also they can grow apart and be in competition. — apokrisis

This is a very important binary opposition that is often overlooked. Many theorists have a certain conviction that first an ideology (a set of ideals) is invented, which is then integrated into society and we all live happily ever after. In a descriptive sense, the idea of ​​Marx and Engels, expressed by them in "The German Ideology", that it is not consciousness that determines being, but being that determines consciousness, looks very interesting.

In the Marxist perspective, society is divided into a base (production relations, means of production) and a superstructure (ideology, politics, culture). The base is primary: changes in the economy (for example, the transition from feudalism to capitalism) give rise to new ideologies that justify or disguise these relations.

It follows from this that it is impossible to "invent" an ideology and impose it as the "pinnacle of evolution" - it will collide with the reality of the base.

The most interesting thing is that their own brainchild, communism, has proven exactly this in practice: in the USSR, Lenin's Marxism-Leninism was an adaptation to industrialization (the basis: the transition from an agrarian economy to a planned one), but when the economy stagnated in the 1980s (due to isolation and inefficiency), the ideology began to "slow down reality", leading to perestroika and collapse. Similarly, attempts to export communism to countries without an industrial base (like Pol Pot's Kampuchea) failed catastrophically. On the other hand, we have China, which was able to adapt Marxism and today shows good results.

This approach has its descriptive power, but I would supplement it with Le Bon's ideas, expressed in his book "Psychology of Peoples and Masses". As a result of such dialectics, the approach of Marx and Engels can be clarified: the basis is not only economic relations but also historical, cultural, geographical features that form the so-called (according to Le Bon) "Soul of the Nation"

I consider liberalism not as a set of ideals, striving for which we will certainly build paradise, but as a system for searching for a certain point of compromise of aspirations. From the moment of the formulation of the ideas of liberalism until today, it has coped well with challenges in the long term. And, it must be said, this is not some great invention of mankind, but a tracing of the structure of nature: It is not the strongest/dexterous/fastest that survives, but the most adaptable. Authoritarianism is bad (not to mention totalitarianism) not because it violates human rights, but because it is less flexible than liberalism in the long term. As a temporary solution, authoritarianism is very good and much more effective than liberalism (provided that it is sovereign authoritarianism)

At the same time, if we constitute an ideal, instead of constantly searching for points of compromise and adaptability, we will get a great brake that will lead to decline.

This is where, in my opinion, today's problem arises: Liberalism has ceased to moderately seek this compromise, has ceased to adapt sensitively, its strengths have taken on some extreme form, and the ideas themselves have become dogmatized, instead of working dynamically.

Speaking about today's China (and as I see many who have spoken here agree with this), this state has first of all managed to create an economic miracle, which was facilitated by many reasons, including ideology is not in the first place. Today, speaking about the power of China, we first of all mean its economic potential, and not its ideological one.

Is there really a big difference in the values of the US and China? I mean fundamentally? Russia is a different animal. It's kind of inexplicable, but hasn't it always been? — frank

Since it so happened that I am connected (by personal and family ties) with China and the countries of the former USSR and the USA, I can say for myself with a high degree of confidence that the former USSR and the USA were not so different states in the mentality of their citizens (which may sound like wildness now), which I cannot say about the closeness of the Chinese and American mentalities. It is difficult to prove theoretically, but if you have been to these places, you will immediately understand what I am talking about.

Are we truly entering an era of multipolarity? If so, what are the philosophical consequences of a world without a dominant cultural “center”?

Yes, we are, but I would point to the driving force being climate change and to a lesser extent, competition for rapidly depleted resources.

Big corporations and oligarchs have realised that the climate change will have a big impact and soon. So they are scrambling to get in the limited number of lifeboats (metaphorically speaking) before it gets too bad. This was triggered by the financial crisis of 2008. When the cracks began to show in the capitalist order. I expect that in 50 years from now there will be three power bases, in no particular order, the U.S. ( including Canada, possibly Mexico), Europe (including Ukraine, Belarus etc) and China (including Japan Korea etc, possibly even India). The rest of the world will have to fend for itself, although, I think Australasia will be able to hold together in some form.

Is the West prepared to coexist with ideological and civilizational alternatives that do not necessarily aspire to Western liberalism?

They will have no choice.

Does multipolarity inevitably increase the risk of global conflict, or could it usher in a more balanced, mutualist order?

It will definitely reduce the risk, as easy power block will be struggling to survive and feed it’s population.

, I can say for myself with a high degree of confidence that the former USSR and the USA were not so different states in the mentality of their citizens (which may sound like wildness now), — Astorre

They're similar in that they're both given to apocalypticism. They're both looking for signs of the end of the world. Over-simplified, the Cold War was two cultures seeing each other as the anti-Christ. Is that what you mean?

the former USSR and the USA were not so different states in the mentality of their citizens (which may sound like wildness now), which I cannot say about the closeness of the Chinese and American mentalities. — Astorre

Former USSR and the USA folks are both more liberal thinking (even individualistic) than average Chinese folk, in wildly broad terms.

He famously claimed that with rise of liberal democracy around the world, we had reached the end of history, a Hegelian-like pinnacle of political and philosophical organization. But the recent trends away from liberalism and toward various forms of autocracy and totalitarianism around the world would seem to argue against the idea that history has been moving in the one direction Fukuyama described.

Well, the core of Fukuyama's thesis isn't that every country will soon become a liberal democracy, nor that no liberal democracies will cease to be so, but that no ideological challenge to liberal democracy will emerge to rival liberalism for legitimacy (the way communism, fascism, and reactionary monarchism once did). So far, I would say he has been proven right on this over three and a half decades.

The liberal backsliding since 2008 isn't actually out of line with his core thesis, although it does run against the general optimism of the 1989 article and 1992 book. Illiberal leaders in previously liberal countries do not justify their authoritarianism or interventions in opposition to liberalism. In general, they position themselves as saviors of liberalism. On both the right and the left, the need for norm breaking interventions is justified in terms of the need to secure liberalism against opposing "illiberal forces." That is certainly how Trump positions himself for instance. He is saving liberal democracy from illiberal "woke mobs" and "elites" and his economic interventions aren't positioned against free enterprise and capitalism per se, but against bad state actors who are "ripping us off" by not abiding by true free market principles. He sells his policies in liberal terms.

Likewise, dictators across the world still feel the need to have rump legislatures, to hold votes on reforms, etc. They still feel the need to hold sham elections. Even Assad did this during the civil war. They still go by "president" or "prime minister" instead of "king," "emperor," "emyr" or "shah." When they attack the West, they normally do so while tacitly accepting the values of liberalism. They deride the West as not being truly democratic, as having become an oligarchy, or just as often, as having fallen into a sort of technocratic socialism. Such criticisms accept liberal values however. When they attack "Western values" such a LGBT issues, they do so using the same language used by conservative liberals within the West, speaking to "freedom to differ" and "freedom of religion" or "freedom for traditions."

Yet they decidedly do not recommend some sort of alternative ideology the way the Soviet Union did. China occasionally positions itself as a sort of alternative position, but not in any coherent way. They aren't evangelical about their form of state-capitalism, trying to force it on their allies, or trying to boost it internationally as a popular movement.

The one standout counter-example is Islamism. Obviously, the Iranian supreme leader does have an alternative title (although many of the trappings of liberalism are still embraced). The caliphs of the Islamic State are a more obvious counterexample. Yet this isn't really a good counterexample because such a movement can never have global appeal (and seems potentially in decline).

I think this is worth pointing this out because, to 's question, it makes it incredibly hard to predict what will come next. There is no coherent replacement ideology to rival neoliberalism, just neoliberalism destroying itself due to its own internal contradictions. When states fall away from liberalism, it isn't towards some new ideology, but merely towards a sort of degraded, more oligarchic liberalism. I don't think this trend will reverse though because the issues that drive it are endemic to liberalism itself and the solution for liberalism's problems proposed within the West are almost always "more liberalism!" (just of conservative or progressive varieties). Maybe China represents an alternative model with ideological appeal. It is not clear to me that Russia does. Russia seems more like the far end of degraded liberalism, a liberal constitution with an oligarchic dictatorship in practice.

I am also a bit skeptical of any real multi-polar reversal any time soon. Iran and it's "Axis of Resistance's" military embarrassment and Russia's performance in Ukraine suggest that no real military rebalance has taken place. It would be foolish to assume that China's military reforms and technological efforts would prove quite as inept and ineffective, but it also wouldn't be very surprising if they were (e.g. scandals like their missiles being filled with water instead of fuel, etc.). Unless China can get into the export game with comparable hardware and promises of assistance, there won't be a security rebalance.

I consider liberalism not as a set of ideals, striving for which we will certainly build paradise, but as a system for searching for a certain point of compromise of aspirations. — Astorre

Yep. As a pragmatic ideal – as opposed to a transcendent belief in "human goodness" – it does see life as a balance. A trade off.

It recognised the actual structure of society, which is the balancing of the forces of competition and cooperation. Local individual freedoms and global collective constraints.

All societies have to balance this dynamic. But until Greek philosophy and then the Enlightenment, it wasn't expressed as something that could be formally debated.

So that is certainly what liberalism ought to be. The public conversation that recognises competition and cooperation must exist as a cleverly nurtured balance. Individual freedom doesn't even mean anything unless it is shaped within some global context of collective restraint. And likewise, the global structure of a society's constraints have to be all about producing the right kind of citizens to ensure the flourishing of that larger established social order.

The theory is simple enough. Society arises out of this reciprocal logic. But the implementation gets tricky.

How much should we rip up the past, which always at least must have been its own success in terms of creating a balanced dynamic – a way of life that suited the more local circumstances of the time.

And as the move to a self-conscious pragmatism is made, the question becomes how fast can it be allowed to grow and spread? And are all its parts synchronised to some general idea of this optimal growth rate?

Mistakes are always going to get made in implementing the theory. Or rather, growth itself always produces the unexpected in Nature. Reach a certain point and the system wants to rearrange. It wants to go through a phase transition or some topological shift in structure.

Do we fight these things or discover how to flow with them? What should be our philosophy as we encounter the unpredicted consequences of our own previously effective habits?

They deride the West as not being truly democratic, as having become an oligarchy, or just as often, as having fallen into a sort of technocratic socialism. Such criticisms accept liberal values however. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would say that democracy isn't inherently liberal, and liberalism isn't coherent,* and we are seeing these two facts work themselves out. For example, what is happening in many places is that liberalism is being checked by democracy and because of this those in power are becoming increasingly anti-democratic. The West has lost authority because it is beginning to cannibalize itself.

* If liberalism were coherent then I think it would be more significant that opponents both appeal to it.

Western foreign policy is increasingly criticized as hypocritical — Astorre

Hypocrisy is a universal trait (even if it is undesirable) among all humans and all human institutions. It's just easier to see in other people, other nations.

The U.S. dollar was seen as unshakable. Western democracy was often cited as the highest political ideal. Western consumer goods were considered objectively superior. And the broader cultural narrative—academic, technological, even moral—was clearly West-centric. — Astorre

a) Is an 'unshakable dollar' a measure of the western ideal?
b) Why wouldn't 'western democracy' remain the highest IDEAL, even if, in reality, it is less than ideal?
c) Are objectively superior consumer goods, nice as they are, a measure of western ideals?
d) The 'broader cultural narrative' isn't accepted by all western academics.

Many Americans (liberals in the best meaning of liberal) find unsatisfactory a good deal of what is going on in the US, the west in general, and the east in general. So, it's not surprising that people elsewhere -- seeing anti-liberal trends in US political behavior -- would have doubts. However, IF liberal values were good 10 or 15 years ago, they ought to still be good.

Are we truly entering an era of multipolarity? If so, what are the philosophical consequences of a world without a dominant cultural “center”? — Astorre

Within the last 125 years, various regimes have arisen whose focus was decidedly unliberal and unwestern. One of them, the PRC, remains. It's been a going concern since October 1, 1949. It has not been without some really major difficulties (famine, cultural revolutions, glorious rich-getting, etc.) There is a large batch of smaller illiberal and/or un-western regimes which have come to the fore locally. Just to name a few, Saudi Arabia; Iran; Spain; South Africa; Serbia; Cuba; Argentina; Chile; and quite a few others. Some of these regimes, like Fascist Spain, have reformed. Argentina and Chile eventually got rid of their generals.

The US has had better and worse period of western democratic performance, and is currently in one of its worst-performing periods, with Trump at the helm. The big question for me is how long this dispiriting episode will last.

I consider liberalism not as a set of ideals, striving for which we will certainly build paradise, but as a system for searching for a certain point of compromise of aspirations. From the moment of the formulation of the ideas of liberalism until today, it has coped well with challenges in the long term. And, it must be said, this is not some great invention of mankind, but a tracing of the structure of nature: It is not the strongest/dexterous/fastest that survives, but the most adaptable. Authoritarianism is bad (not to mention totalitarianism) not because it violates human rights, but because it is less flexible than liberalism in the long term. As a temporary solution, authoritarianism is very good and much more effective than liberalism (provided that it is sovereign authoritarianism)

At the same time, if we constitute an ideal, instead of constantly searching for points of compromise and adaptability, we will get a great brake that will lead to decline.

This is where, in my opinion, today's problem arises: Liberalism has ceased to moderately seek this compromise, has ceased to adapt sensitively, its strengths have taken on some extreme form, and the ideas themselves have become dogmatized, instead of working dynamically. — Astorre

Well, liberalism has had its evangelical moments. Revolutionary France initially began by setting up "sister republics" everywhere it could. In the early to mid-20th century Superman could, with no sense of irony, be a hero fighting for "truth, justice, and the American way." Even the early phase of neo-liberalism often framed its aims in fairly utopian terms, with the whole of humanity being lifted out of want and oppression to participate in a techno-optimist vision where things would be "getting better all the time."

I'd agree though that a key theoretical component of liberalism has involved eschewing any strong interpretation of the human good or human purpose, and privatizing all appeals to transcendent ends (booting the relevant religious and philosophical ideas from politics). It also tends to dissolve most traditional forms of identity (the capitalist component does a lot of the work here). I am just saying that the theory on this front often wasn't put into practice. Also, when most of the population was Christian there was a strong cultural pull towards a particular conception of ultimate ends and value that helped align the public, but that is no longer the case.

I'd argue that what we're seeing now though is that liberalism, without these deviations, isn't actually "adaptive." Civilizations require the pursuit of arduous goods. They require heroism and self-sacrifice, and a capacity to resist serious temptations (since liberalism is always prone to slipping towards oligarchy or dictatorship). Sans any strong ordering ends, any vision of what we are defending liberalism to "adapt towards" why don't self-interested utility maximizers (which is what liberalism tells us we are) with power take advantage of their ability to direct the system towards their own ends?

Fukuyama, a champion of liberalism, allows that its anthropology is too thin. It focuses almost wholly on the goods of epithumia—bodily pleasure, safety (and so wealth), etc. He tries to reintroduce some notion of thymos, of the desire for recognition, honor, etc., something people used to get from community membership and religion (things liberalism tends to erode). People have tended to focus on his "End of History" thesis, but it's the "Last Man" thesis that has proven most prescient. This is the idea that people will rebel against being reduced to bovine worker/consumers, at becoming Nietzsche's Last Men, and so seek to destroy the very system they live under in a quest for recognition. This phenomena is certainly hard at work on the far right.

For some reason Fukuyama never gets around to logos, the desire for truth, and to do what one thinks is "truly best" (morally, etc.). The thread in liberalism you outline seems to actively undermine these desires, or at least their consistent ordering, but they are arguably the most powerful, being the desires that lead monks to renounce all wealth and sex, or which lead athiest Marxist revolutionaries to nonetheless embrace painful, anonymous deaths in pursuit of what is "truly best." When these appetites (thymos and logos) have no direction, and no positive education, they don't cease to exist. Often, they end up turning against liberalism. The sort of procedural, safety focused politics of Rawls, etc. might appeal to the sort of people who become academics, but they probably should be tested at martial arts gyms and churches, where I would imagine they might not do as well.

While "Why Nations Fail" is a flawed book, it does also do a good job laying out why it is in elite's self-interest (economically construed) to subvert liberalism, even at the cost of lowering their own national military and economic power. Given this incentive structure, a society with no bias towards any particular final end, which only justifies liberalism in terms of its ability to allow "the most people to reach whatever ends they happen to find attractive" would seem to be inherently unstable because liberalism simply doesn't make sense for those who have the power to subvert and take control of it.

(Just one data point on thymos might be the very low percentage of people in the wealthiest liberal states who say they would be willing to defend their country if it was attacked when compared to the rest of the world.)

The West has lost authority because it is beginning to cannibalize itself. — Leontiskos

Nope. What has changed is that liberal democracy has given up on its commitment to pragmatic realism. Citizens have been empowered to invent their own alternative facts. The essential institutions of fact checking have been undermined to the point that widespread illusion takes hold.

Trump is possible because US society believes it is living in a reality show. And Trump spent 14 years mastering reality shows on the Apprentice, not to mention his connection to wrestling. He is a narcissist rather than an authoritarian. To the degree he has become an authoritarian, it is of the reality show kind and not the real world kind.

So the West allowed the general demise of its ability to reality-check. Its citizen's became players in ever more unreal social media psychodramas.

Democracy hasn't been voting for dictators. It has been voting for influencers.

Liberalism could still be the social structure that works best in the real world. But democracy has become detached from the real world and absorbed into its own reality show version of life.

In Trump, this might have resulted in an autocratic figure, but one that is quite fake and incompetent in comparison to the real autocrats like Putin, Xi, etc.

So the proper connection between democracy and liberalism is that it speaks to society as a dynamic community of institutions. People are free to collectivise around any common interest that appears to have a useful end. This was always the case for societies. But liberalism puts it on the democratic basis where the resulting institutions can all contest for their fair share of the total social pie. Funding becomes a global capital flow that can be piped into any social function according to political will.

The design is commonsense. Let everyone organise on any scale. But the total of the activity has to produce the surplus that gets parcelled out accordingly. And realism is about being able to tie the two sides of the social bargain together in an empirically determined way.

This realism about what the actual facts are – what people really want and the scale of the surplus that exists to be shared – is basic to liberal democracy working as a coherent system. And it is the realism that has fallen apart in a big way. Voters are now entrained to the various brands of cultural make-believe.