We are living in a world similar to that of Babylon 5, Season 5. Does this sound weird? You don’t know what Babylon 5 is? What does this have to do with politics and society? Let me explain, and I hope this will make sense.
I.
Babylon 5 is a science fiction show that set out to tell a coherent story from its beginning to its end. The story is that of humankind “growing up” within a community of similarly advanced alien species, fighting for its survival, fighting against its own demons and against other alien species much more advanced than itself. Some say, it is Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings in space, but as science fiction, not fantasy.
Long story short, the network got nervous and asked the producers of the show to cut short their originally planned 5-season arc to 4 seasons. Two years of content had to be crammed into the fourth year, but it worked. Ancient enemies defeated, galaxy freed from those who would deny us all freedom of development, and Earth freed from a brutal dictator. Everything is great. We also get a future-looking final episode in which humankind is so advanced that they, too, leave the galaxy as some kind of ascended beings.
Then the network said, we want season 5 after all. And, predictably, audiences were less than pleased. But there is more truth to season 5 than we would all like.
What happens is the following: In spite of the grand victory achieved over ancient all-too-powerful forces (the Shadows as the forces of chaos, and the Vorlons as the forces of order), things are backsliding. The former allies of the Shadows start to wreak havoc. Heroes get corrupted. Domestic issues are annoyingly coming to the foreground. Once optimistic leaders get co-opted into devious schemes.
In the greatest act of symbolism, one main character who had risen to a position of power, intent on doing good, is implanted by the sore losers by a being called a “Keeper” which manipulates all his actions. He tells a friend the age-old truth about leadership:
“When we first met, I had no power and all the choices I could ever want. Now I have all the power I could ever want, and no choices at all. No choice at all.”
(Babylon 5, 5.18 “The Fall Of Centauri Prime”)
The galaxy is sliding into chaos, but there is no great narrative, no great heroic tale, no voyage of discovery. Everything is just … meh. Weird. Uncomfortable. Paranoid. Disorienting. Frustrating. Annoying. Dangerous. Cruel. Deadly.
On top of that, the new follow-up show, Crusade, told the story of a great plague befalling Earth as revenge for the victory over the Shadows. The show was cancelled before even given a chance. Network executives, it seemed, had had enough.
II.
Does this sounds familiar somehow? How does this fictional story describe our current time? And how do we tie this in somehow to political theory?
I typically argue that Fukuyama has been misunderstood in his observations in The End of History and the Last Man. Basically, he argued that the fall of Communism reinvigorated the argument made by Hegel and Kojève that democracy is the only legitimate system. Hegel understands “history” as the process of discovery that leads human beings to finding the ideal political system, and that the victory of Napoleon – as the sword of the French Revolution – over both Prussia and Habsburg Austria in 1806 proved the vitality and legitimacy of the democratic-republican system and the principle of popular sovereignty. No longer would any monarch be able to claim to be ordained by God, or to be self-sufficient in their legitimacy as Louis XIV so famously did when saying that he was the state (l’état, c’est moi.) Hegel, of course, has some “woo” components to his thinking – when invoking the “spirit of history” etc. Another problematic component of Hegelian thinking (and its materialist Marxist version) is the assumption that history is inevitably heading in a certain direction, and we have to help it along (a kind of thinking criticized by Popper as “historicism”).
So, you could indeed say that “strong” Fukuyama-ism (a belief that we don’t need to argue over democracy anymore and that everything from now on is hunky-dory) is wrong, but that is not quite what he is claiming – and he has tried to explain this for years. But the “weak” Fukuyama-ism is still somehow true, ironically proven by every dictator on the planet: Even the worst tyrannies in the world claim to be democratic because they know that they would lose discursive and eventually real power if the did not at least in theory honor the principle that only “we the people” can determine politics.
What Babylon 5 shows is the absurdity of “strong” Fukuyama-ism, or the belief that with the fall of Communism, things would be great, and we’d only have small problems to solve.
Things are not great. Since 9/11/2001, we’ve basically been living in the world of Babylon 5. Communism (or, as it called itself, Socialism) is not gone. New powers have arisen with dubious political aims. Democracy is being undermined. The global order is being undermined. Wars of conquest have been normalized by Putin (Chechnya, Transnistria, Georgia, Syria, Ukraine). The West has faltered by trying to create democracies through eliminating dictators violently (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya). Extremist and populist leaders are displacing middle-of-the-road pragmatists. Established political parties are no more. Drugs are destabilizing entire continents. Civil Wars like in Congo, Sudan/South Sudan, Yemen seem to be lasting forever. Brexit. Hamas against Israel. The global Covid-19 pandemic, which is still not quite over, no matter how we want to deny it – and the disturbances of the world economy. And now, UFO revelations? Weird. Uncomfortable. Paranoid. Disorienting. Frustrating. Annoying. Dangerous. Cruel. Deadly.
III.
And now? How do we make sense of all of that? How do we retain hope? Is there a path for us to find some hope again, some way to focus on the greater good, on creating a better future for all, a better world for all? Or at least, survival?
Babylon 5 eventually showed that out of the deepest chaos, there can come hope and light again. Given that it was so close in predicting the kind of nauseating and brutal world we are living in today, maybe its final message of hope can be a guiding light as well. J. Michal Straczynski – the creator of Babylon 5 – was right before.
I’ll end with his words, spoken through his troubled prophet G’Kar when reading out the preamble of the constitution of the Interstellar Alliance:
“The universe speaks in many languages, but only one voice.
It speaks in the language of hope
It speaks in the language of trust
It speaks in the language of strength and the language of compassion
It is the language of the heart and the language of the soul.
But always it is the same voice
It is the voice of our ancestors, speaking through us,
And the voice of our inheritors, waiting to be born
It is the small, still voice that says
We are one
No matter the blood
No matter the skin
No matter the world
We are one
No matter the pain
No matter the darkness
No matter the loss
No matter the fear
We are oneHere, gathered together in common cause, we agree to recognize this
singular truth and this singular rule:
That we must be kind to one another
Because each voice enriches us and ennobles us and each voice lost
diminishes us.We are the voice of the Universe, the soul of creation, the fire
(Babylon 5, 5.03 “The Paragon of Animals,” Declaration of Principles of the Interstellar Alliance)
that will light the way to a better future.
We are one.”
Kindness. Maybe we should try it sometime.
Erratic Attempts 