 Welcome everyone to another episode of Lunchtime with Luke. I want to talk about the concept of inevitability, specifically sociopolitical inevitability, and how it's fake. So you'll often hear people talking about the natural course of history They'll talk about some kind of political event as being inevitable They'll talk about a social change as being inevitable or they'll talk about the right side of history or this kind of this kind of Malarkey. It's all a spook and I want to explain not just why but why it always seems like there is a trend to history So I'm thinking about this today because today is 420, April the 20th, which is not just 420 day It's also the birthday of Adolf Hitler. I don't know if you've heard of this guy But you know it doesn't matter if you've never heard of him So I was thinking about the Third Reich and you may know that one of the most popular books during the Third Reich was Hitler's Mein Kampf, but I'm not going to talk about that one of the other most Popular books which people don't often know about is a book called The Myth of the 20th century by Alfred Rosenberg and It arguably it was number one if not it was number two behind Mein Kampf But it was one of the most popular books. You've probably never heard of it, but you know So what the book was about it was really Rosenberg's I guess esoteric construal of the Third Reich or as history as being a conflict between Judaic religion and Indo-European religion and all this kind of stuff. It was a reinterpreted reinterpretation of history on those lines, but I'm not so much interested in the content, but in the introduction at least Rosenberg writes it as he is Like he's as giddy as a schoolgirl because Rosenberg was a proponent of German National Socialism and at the period he was writing there during the Third Reich and He was extremely happy to see the intellectual and cultural developments that Caused the Third Reich to you know, basically the the National Socialist Party to win out over You know why by Mar Germany and all the other parties and stuff like that And he presented that as a natural course of history. He has his reasoning But he presented that as this all that's coming We should be very happy that we are living in this time that history is finally coming to its summit and The future only holds more greatness. We're gonna continue in this way. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. So of course, that's a little funny for us because we know that things didn't work out how Rosenberg intended, you know, Germany lost the war and you know what happened to Europe. So In fact even worse than that, you know, when the Allies took over Rosenberg himself actually was basically convicted in a show trial and was hanged for you know Coordination with Nazi Germany basically just for writing a book, but you know, you can look it up yourself So Rosenberg was within 10 or so years. He would be dead and Nazi Germany would be dead and everything he had hoped for and had argued was inevitable was go Was basically dead. Okay, or dead in the way that he understood it now The thing about that is we look at that and we just see oh, he's deluded or whatever But we have the same kind of mythology and we've dealt with like there are every every ideology Convinces itself that it's inevitable. So one example Marxist socialism No one nowadays still well unless you're like autistic. No one nowadays is a Marxist Okay, no one believes in that. Yeah, I mean there will be like post Marxist People who have like Marxist influenced views But no one believes in scientific socialism as a rationalization for a view of history, right? The accumulation of capital all this kind of stuff So I mean if you don't know like Marx what distinguished his socialism from the socialism of other people is that he wanted to Basically convince people that it was an inevitable. It was a materialistic inevitability. It was going to happen. It is science It's science to say that socialism is eventually gonna win. No one believes that anymore People believe that even you know, 30 years ago or well, I guess 40 years ago whenever the Soviet Union was still not just alive But kicking but over over time just people have sort of realized, okay That's not really gonna work and they move on to other theories of history, but we have the same delusions, right? So in in the post-war era, of course, there's a famous book There are really many famous books like this, but there's the famous book by Francis Fukuyama the end of history where he argues rationally argues in the same way that Rosenberg or Marx argued that Liberal democracy is the summit of all civilization. It's the end of history. There's nothing that comes after it It's just going to be more liberal democracy because we have perfected it There's nothing it can't get any better than it is now, okay? Now people believe that even 10 even five years ago, but I think I think even Fukuyama himself has realized Okay, that that's not true. I mean you see you see of course Reactions against liberal democracy happening all over the world. I mean well even you know, not just nationalist movements in American Europe, but economically liberal but culturally nationalist movements in Japan and India and stuff like this No one believes that anymore So why do why do people keep falling for this kind of delusion and of course there are still there's this mythology is basically in every Ideology all have people asking me about singularity. It's the same kind of stuff. All right People always have they take trends of history and they will take them to funny conclusions And then just assume that that is a law of history. So Let's put it this way. So, you know in any society the ruling class However, you want to think of that the opinion molding class Got where it's going to be through Basically happenstance victories, you know, they win some they lose some but they won enough to get where they are and They want to present them ruling as a kind of Inevitability so Alfred Rosenberg He wanted to prevent present the fact that Nazi Germany ruled Germany as just inevitable. Okay? National socialism was inevitable it seems sensible to him in the same way that Marxists wanted to present Socialism as an inevitability in the same way that Francis Fukuyama and other neo conservatives Or neo conservative neo liberals, whatever you want to call them those nameless people that everyone hates So he wanted to present that worldview as an inevitability Because it would be hard for any of those people to believe that they Rule by anything else other than inevitability or by just being right, okay? So history has always presented you to you by the people the opinion molding class in a way that makes it seem like their rulership is inevitable Now additionally, I'm not just saying it's kind of a conspiracy Additionally people don't want to believe in anything besides inevitability besides fate Because you know, let's say You know, let's say Let's say World War two was a mistake. Okay, let's say the bad guys one. No one wants really wants to believe I mean, I know some people say that but No one really wants to believe that the bad guys win in history We want to believe that you know, we're living in the best possible world We don't want to think that oh, you know, actually things would be better if you know the Nationalists one in China and the communists lost or something like that No one wants to believe that history makes mistakes Because that definitely gives you the feeling of us, you know, something being incredibly wrong now And additionally, you know, especially nowadays we have this wig theory This wig theory of history everywhere where we are basically told lies about the past like your perception of You know pre-industrial society is that everyone was sick. Everyone had a miserable time It was just miserable. Look at all these Economic indicators that basically filter the world through these this viewpoint that makes everything look miserable Therefore, you're better. Therefore the things that have happened to bring us to this point must be good. Okay so it all sort of conspires to create a view of history where The world we're living in is now inevitable and not just that But whatever direction we're moving into we want to convince ourselves that that's good If technology is taking a social media is taking over the universe and that seems like it's inevitable We sure as heck want to convince ourselves that that is a good thing it'd be scary if it would be something different and Most people who convinced themselves that something is inevitable usually end up just embracing it There are some exceptions, you know, we've talked about on the channel, right? So there's Joseph Schumpeter who basically argued that socialism was inevitable But he also was antisocialist, but he is an exception to most people most people want to Believe that good things are gonna happen and good things are gonna inevitably happen So the thing I want you to take away from this I mean, there's more that can be said but I want you to keep this in mind whenever someone says that something is inevitable some kind of social change that they are Endorsing is inevitable some kind of political change is inevitable because you know any matter of things could be different It wasn't inevitable that we survived the Cold War without a nuclear war It was not inevitable that the communists and the Anglo-Americans won World War two It was not in no no war is inevitable, you know, even even if it's a No battle is inevitable. So I think for people to think that there was some kind of underlying trend Even when it's something abstract like, you know, technological singularity Once you run into a bump in that road everything falls apart and History, you know, if you go back to the 400s AD people the the inevitable strand of history back then was Rome is collapsing Attila is invading this means that Jesus is gonna come back in the year 500. That's what people that was the the Francis Fukuyama equivalent back then, okay So and that sounds to us like total totally stupid because it was totally stupid and our views nowadays are totally stupid You don't have the world figured out. There's no inevitable strand of history And if there is it's not gonna last forever. Maybe it'll last for five years So I don't know that's not this sounds maybe like a pessimistic video, but it's like hey, man You you can make the world how you want it to be you you have a say dude That sounds really lame, but anyway, so that's just the point I wanted to make and I will see you guys in the next video