I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules
brb, verifying with archduke ferdinand that the World is actually only causally effected by “systems,” and that individual actions or contingencies never change the trajectory of path-dependent developments, or have massive world-historical import.
moron.
that’s kind of chicken or egg situation, was it the assassination or the intricate web of alliances and political posturing? A bit of both I would say.
Bad take imo. He wasn’t so important that Europe descended into a world war because of him, it was just the spark that ignited the powder keg that was all the crisscrossing alliances that almost guarenteed a world war if any conflict broke out.
This is a bad take that lacks an understanding of historical materialism. Do you actually think Ferdinand is more responsible for world was 1 than the geopolitical systems and material forces that created such a powder keg in the first place? It just so happened he was the spark, but it was always going to blow. If it wasn’t him it would have been something else. Not to mention individuals themselves, and their actions, are themselves molded by the systems they are apart of. Nothing happens in a void. Everything is connected. Its systems all the way down.
you can quibble with the example, but it strains credulity to imagine that the every possible version of the world will be so constrained in its development that there is only, in the main, one vector by which everything unfolds. more plausible is recognizing that chance or contingency will produce positive enforcing loops, shaping outcomes in a way that will be materially different from counterfactual worlds wherein that event did not occur. ya;ll know the language of “capitalist realism” – but imagine the kind of thinking, not that there aren’t at present any possible deviations from the current state of affairs, but even that historically, there was no other possibility of anything different.
i’m sure there are some thoughtful metaphysicians that take this view, but it’s deeply unintuitive, necessarily unverifiable, and its blase assertion/implication in the OP is worth ridicule.
maybe in the “long term” there are deep structural factors that would have been suggestive of some teleology or something (not that you could ever know this), but the route by which this unfolds certainly matters to those who travel by it. if WWI (or a similar conflict between imperial powers) was longer in duration, or shorter, it would certainly affect the lives of the people who would live and die through it; many things would “change” for better or worse, contra the OP. these people would care if the duke was assassinated or not.
likewise, Trump’s death, insofar as he could be the vessel for a right-populist cult of personality, after the election, is material-- the same systems will govern the world, but with or without a figure who commands an incredible amount of power, and could instantiate a world of more cruelty. i suppose people who are merely constructed from texts and systems and culture do not worry about such things, but as someone who thinks the world could be more than just one way, and who thinks there should be less cruelty in the world than more of it, i think the question of trump succumbing to covid the next days is a deeply significant and material one, and truly hope he dies.
