The Intrinsic Perspective

If there is any true originator of the idea of an “End of History” it is not Francis Fukuyama, famed economist and author of The End of History and the Last Man, but rather Gene Roddenberry, the inventor of Star Trek. As far as I can espy, Fukuyama is not openly a “Trekkie.” But it’s notable his famous essay “ The End of History” came out in 1989, predicting that all world governments would become versions of western liberalism. Star Trek: The Next Generation, which takes place at a literal end of political human history, had already been running for two years.

Certainly, the influence was at minimum one-way. The term “End of History” shows up in a speech by Captain Kirk in the 1991 Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, a retelling of the end of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War. Yet now the Cold War is resurgent; as I write this, Russia just invaded Ukraine, shattering the world order by bringing war to Europe once again.

How distant 1989 suddenly seems, both politically but also culturally. For thirty years ago in the late 80s, and all through the 90s during the run of Star Trek: the Next Generation, it did indeed seem like history could end. I find it totally unsurprising that the show began airing right before Fukayama published his article that so captured the intellectual zeitgeist and catapulted him to fame. Political thought is downstream of culture, and Star Trek looms large—sometimes I suspect that when people speak of “the West” now, often with handwaving ambiguity, what they are referring to, somewhere deep in their semiotic subconscious, is basically Star Trek. And Star Trek: The Next Generation ( TNG) is the apotheosis of the genre, showing the best future “the West” has to offer; it remains, in both the clarity of its vision and its execution, the superior series of them all.

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