The 5th of November a fascinating discussion with professor Patrick Vaughan took place in the Massolit Books & Cafe.

In the closing days of the Cold War the American scholar Francis Fukuyama wrote a widely discussed academic article called “The End of History.” The premise held that the demise of totalitarian dictatorships would produce a more tranquil era where liberal democracies would spread and prosper throughout a more peaceful world. Professor Patrick Vaughan will discuss what, if anything, has gone wrong with this optimistic scenario, as well as more recent suggestions that the German philosopher Oswald Spengler might have been more accurate in his gloomier prediction outlined in “The Decline of the West.” The discussion will explore how an overabundance of freedom and information has produced a generation of uncertainty and a political system suffering from a manufactured state of mass anxiety; and whether the increasingly globalized culture might be moving not toward Fukuyama’s optimistic vision, but the violent and moronic culture lampooned in the comedy/dystopian science-fiction film “Idiocracy.” On the brighter side, it can be argued that most people today are living far more comfortably than their immediate ancestors-even if it doesn’t seem like it. We welcome you to what we hope will be a lively discussion.

PATRICK VAUGHAN is a professor at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. He teaches a variety of classes including the History of the Cold War, The Modern Struggle for Eurasia, Science Fiction as Political and Social Metaphor, Russian and Polish Literature, World Politics since 1990, and the History of the 1960s. In 2011 his strategic biography of Brzezinski was nominated for the Kazimierz Moczarki Award as the best work on Polish history. In 2013 he was a contributor to Professor Charles Gati’s anthology “Zbig”--along with President Jimmy Carter, Francis Fukuyama, David Ignatius, and James Mann.