A persistent cognitive bias is limiting our politics, our potential and our progress, all because we mistake the present for the end of history, writes Heath Hasemer.
IN 1989, as the Cold War drew to a close, political scientist Francis Fukuyama published a now-infamous essay, titled The End of History? In it, he argued that humankind had reached the final stage of political evolution. After millennia of human civilisation, liberal democracy had emerged victorious as the ‘final form of human government’.
Fukuyama’s idea has been widely challenged since. History, as it turned out, didn’t end in 1989. But Fukuyama is hardly the only person to fall into the trap of believing we have reached the end of history. In fact, almost all of us do.
The end of history illusion
Fundamentally, the end of history illusion is a cognitive bias that leads us to underestimate how significantly things will change in the future. Instinctively, we feel that the world in which we have grown up is normal and natural, and we assume the future will remain similarly normal and natural. But our present is neither normal nor natural. Our political and economic systems, our social and cultural norms and our personal values and beliefs are transient and ever-changing.
Imagine travelling 100 years back in time. The year is now 1925. In Italy, people are cheering the proclamation of Benito Mussolini as Il Duce. In Germany, Adolf Hitler is publishing Mein Kampf. In England, children are working 12 hours a day in mines. In the U.S., doctors are recommending smoking for various ailments. The world is a very different place. Much of what we see as normal and natural in today’s world doesn’t exist.
Now imagine that someone from 1925 travels back to 1825, or someone from 1825 returns to 1725 — what would they see? Again, many of the predominant political orders, ideas and values would feel absolutely foreign. Over every century, much has changed. So why would this change stop now? It wouldn’t. In fact, the rate of change in human society is accelerating. A time traveller from 2125 would find today’s world as foreign and strange as we would find 1925 — if not more so.
The key to overcoming the end of history illusion is to recognise that the world around us exists as a transient moment in history, rather than a natural endpoint of development. The only constant of history is change.
Constraining political vision
When leaders suffer from the end of history illusion, it constrains the potential for visionary policies and ideas. Leaders often feel that the political order is built on social and political norms that are deeply entrenched. They often feel that moving beyond these norms will be punished by voters and damaging to their parties and personal careers.
This means that leaders are less likely to propose and advocate for policies that are new, different and visionary. There is certainly a risk in going too far and leaders are right to be pragmatic. But when we take a step back and look at the past century, we can see how significantly our established conventions have changed.
To illustrate the point, let us consider the current prevailing norms around our tax system. In Australia, the highest marginal income tax rate is currently set at 45%, while in the U.S. it’s 37%. Changes in the tax system can spark media havoc and political crises. In other words, there seems to be a strong social and political consensus that is unwilling to accept significant tax increases.
It’s easy for politicians to constrain their vision around tax reform. But when we take a step back, we can see that the prevailing norms around the tax system are much more flexible than at first glance. In 1951, the highest marginal tax rate in Australia was 75%. And this was under Liberal Prime Minister Robert Menzies. In the U.S., the highest marginal tax rate reached 91% in the 1950s under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower.
Can you imagine the uproar that would be caused if the president of the United States tried to raise the highest marginal tax rate to over 90%? It is completely inconceivable. Yet, less than a lifetime ago, this was the norm.
This historical case study illustrates the potential for significant generational changes in our social and political consensus around key policy issues, often driven by effective leaders seeking to solve their country’s most urgent problems. In an era where many countries face complex, interconnected problems like climate change and housing, leaders have an opportunity to put forward visionary policy, reshape the social and political consensus and build a better future for their people.
Calcifying our moral code
When a society comes to believe it has reached the endpoint of historical progress and moral evolution, it can risk developing a rigid, inflexible moral code. Just like our political systems and technologies, our values have continued to evolve over time.
We now exist at a point in time where the equality of all human beings is recognised in many countries of the world (at least in theory). Less than a century ago, this would have been simply incomprehensible to almost all citizens of the world. As morality and culture wars become an increasingly bitter fulcrum of political division, it is important to recognise how rapidly our moral code and values continue to develop. Humility and empathy in our moral judgements and assertions may help us navigate these continual changes.
This argument is brought to life by Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace, his magnum opus on Russian aristocracy during the Napoleonic Wars. Writing in the 1860s, Tolstoy examines the convoluted and contradictory judgments of historians assessing the actions and decisions of Russian Tsar Alexander I.
Tolstoy writes:
But even if we assume that fifty years ago Alexander I was mistaken in his view of what was good for the people, we must inevitably assume that the historian who judges Alexander will also after the lapse of some time turn out to be mistaken in his view of what is good for humanity. This assumption is all the more natural and inevitable because, watching the movement of history, we see that every year and with each new writer, opinion as to what is good for mankind changes.
Limiting personal potential
We also underestimate how significantly we, as individuals, are likely to change in the future. In 2013, a group of psychologists published a study in Science that involved 19,000 participants aged 18 to 68. Participants were asked to assess how much they had changed over the past decade and to predict how much they expected to change in the next decade. Across all age groups, people believed they had changed considerably in the past but would change relatively little in the future.
Because we underestimate how significantly we will change in the future, we may prioritise current preferences at the expense of our future selves. We may also take a less active role in our personal growth, clouded by the belief that we are unlikely to change much, anyway. By recognising our potential to change, we can play a much more active role in our own development.
Conclusion
The world will keep changing — and so will we. When we recognise this, we put ourselves in a position to be active participants in this change. We give ourselves the opportunity to shape a better future for ourselves and the world around us.
Heath Hasemer is a climate and energy policy consultant, working with state and federal governments on policies to reduce emissions and deploy net zero technologies.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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