"[11:17 (677s)] welcome everyone to another episode of lunch time with Luke I
want to talk about the concept of inevitability specifically socio-political
inevitability and how it's fake so you 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 4/20 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 gonna 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 in it arguably it was number
one if not it was number two behind mine cough but it was one of the most
popular books you've probably never heard of it but you know um so what the
book was about it was really Rosenberg's I guess esoteric control 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 reinterpret
reinterpretation of history on those lines but are 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 marjoram 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 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 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 you can look it up yourself so Rosenberg was within ten 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 convicts it 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
liked 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 istic inevitability it was going to
happen it is science its science to say that socialism is eventually gonna win
no one believes that any more people believe that even you know thirty years
ago or well I guess forty years ago whenever the Soviet Union was still not
just the live butt-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'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 ten even five years ago but i think i think
even Fukuyama himself has realized okay that that's not true I mean 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 so 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 I'll 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 it's going to be through basically happenstance
victories you know they win some they lose some but they're 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
seemed 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
neoconservatives or neoconservative 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 moulding 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 won 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 the Nationalists won 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 if 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 convince 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 a Joseph Schumpeter who
basically argued that socialism was inevitable but he also was anti socialist
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 manner of
things could be different it wasn't inevitable that we survived into 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 and now 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 is 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 pessimist the video but it's like hey man you can make
the word 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"
