Dreams Come True, History's End, and Other Illusions

 Francis Fukuyama famously declared in the early '90s that we had reached the end of history. The end of Soviet communism and the triumph of liberal democracy was humankind's last great struggle, and it was a done deal. Watching the horrifying events of 6 January, 2021 unfold, I reflected on the prematurity of Fukuyama's conclusion. Liberal democracy's triumph is far from assured, humankind still have plenty of struggles left, and there's still a whole lot more history to be made. It can be tempting to think of history as a great sweeping arc of change and development that existed for the sole purpose of bringing us to this one static moment when nothing much else happens, but it's an illusion.

If you view a small enough section of a curved line or surface, the curvature goes away. This is why the surface of the earth appears flat to an observer near the ground. It's not just a limitation of perception; it is a practicality within defined cases. A Formula One car constructor references parts of the car to the ground plane. Over the eight or so square meters of track beneath the car, the curvature of the earth is so tiny that the surface can be abstracted into a plane without any impact on the car's performance. Imperfections in the tarmac surface will actually present a greater deviation from this abstracted ideal.

The illusion can work in the other direction too. In his 2007 book Are We Rome?, author Cullen Murphy describes The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as the work of a grouchy historian with a chip on his shoulder. Murphy argues that the time from when Rome was at the height of its power until when the Roman Empire as a distinct political entity was no longer a thing was on the scale of centuries. No Roman living at any point during that time span would have thought of Rome as something that was declining or falling. The diminution of Rome's influence during any one person's lifetime would have been imperceptible.

The other day I happened across a film on YouTube that I recall having seen when it originally aired on CBS in 1982. The film was produced by CBS News. Charles Kuralt narrates and gets partial writing credit. It tells the story of the then new Oak Park Mall in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park, but the story is far more ambitious than that. In an hour, Kuralt and the filmmaker capture the zeitgeist of the early '80s: the final realization of this country's postwar suburbanization, the angst of youth (author's note: I was 14 in 1982, the same age as a girl whom the film prominently features), a good bit of hand-wringing about the inevitable loss of connectedness that results when people no longer make their purchases on Main Street, the dialectical tension between security and the need to not be bored silly. To that last point, the mall becomes more of a prop than the film's central focus: a metaphor for the ease with which we choose the safety and convenience of a banal existence.

There are some cringeworthy moments in the film. There's the soundtrack that for reasons we'll never know has just a little too much Foreigner in it. There's an inarticulate teenager vacuously trying to convince us that her parents just don't understand her. It's uncomfortable because the editor stays with the shot way too long while a still-developing mind struggles to find expression. It's uncomfortable because what she's trying to express—parental neglect, the toxic phoniness of her elders' public personae—probably isn't entirely divorced from reality. Then there's the mall cop, whom we meet early in the film. While boasting about how much safer the mall is than downtown Kansas City, he points out with a chuckle that much of the mall's clientele "go to malls to keep away from certain racial backgrounds."

Perhaps the most unintentionally cringeworthy thing about the film, though, is its title. The film is presented as CBS Reports: After the Dream Comes True. Kuralt never comes right out and tells us what the dream was supposed to be, although we can guess. Though I have no evidence, I like to think Kuralt opposed this particular choice of title. I really like to think he stormed out of the production meeting at which that title was approved. The title carries with it an ironic cynicism that was all too common in the late '70s and early '80s. The dream has come true, but we meet a lot of people who seem bored and unhappy in what often resembles a Logan's Run hellscape of empty smiles and purposeless hedonism. (It's hardly a coincidence that much of the location shooting for Logan's Run took place in a Dallas mall.) Worse, there's a finality to it that's deeply troubling. We have our tree-lined streets. We have our picket fences. We have a mall with a J C Penney, Florsheim Shoes, Chess King, and a Dairy Queen. Looks like that pretty much wraps it up. Happy Fucking New Year; we've reached the end of history. 

Of course, that didn't pretty much wrap it up. Today it's the malls that are declining and falling. Retail purchases are increasingly taking place online—a future that we giddily anticipated in the middle of the last century—or in box stores, all to the tune of the same hand-wringing that we went through four decades ago. Downtown areas, meanwhile, are hip again. You won't find the shoe stores and appliance stores there—that's all online now—but you will find some delightful bars, restaurants, and niche retailers (did someone say vinyl records?). Of course, this description is pre- and hopefully post-quarantine.

The present is not static, any more than the past or future. History didn't end in 1982 or 1992, and it's not going to end in 2022. Our kids are building a world that their kids' kids will one day read about in their history books. That world will be cool and scary and profoundly challenging and wonderful. And it won't be boring.