Is there such thing as inevitability?

Death aside, it is inevitable that human beings will try to assert their individual autonomy.
All attempts to force human beings into a production collective have failed.
They always will.
Sometimes it takes centuries, but human beings eventually dispose of those who attempt to make them cogs in a great machine.
Historically, they shoot them, cut their heads off or burn them up.
In modern times, they may exile them, or they might vote against them.
But they eventually get rid of them.
It is inevitable.

Of course… not.

Very few things are inevitable, I think. Oh, there are some (and they’ll probably chime in sooner or later on this thread—whoops, one already has) who believe in determinism, which leads to inevitable outcomes. That is, they believe that because of the spin of the void at the instant of the Big Bang the stardust that was created spun out in such a way that the rest of history was only waiting to follow the script and happen and be written ‘just so’. In other words, it was inevitable that things would happen as they did, and you and I are only the agents dreaming of ‘free will’ who were fated to do and say the things we have done and said, exactly as we have done and said them. In other words, it was inevitable that you should ask and that I should answer, “No.” (And according to them I’m wrong.)

But I don’t believe that.

Take your list of ‘truths’: somebody has to suffer; somebody has to be on the bottom; we can’t live without society, and the rest of them. All you have to do is come up with a single idea in counterpoint to any of them for them to be falsified.

Who says that somebody has to suffer? Suffering is a state of mind, and while it may be that we all DO suffer, I don’t believe that we have to. (I certainly don’t believe that it’s permanent—or fated.) Who says that somebody has to be on the bottom? Do you know that in the Southern Hemisphere they make maps and globes showing that the Northern Hemisphere is “the bottom of the world”? I saw one produced in Argentina once. Imagine a map of “the world as you know it” turned upside down… and printed so that that is rightside-up. It’s a mind-bender if you haven’t done it before. So apparently “bottom” is a state of mind, also. As for living without society, it’s easier than you think. You only have to do it to prove the falsity of the assertion.

Just because certain things “always happen” doesn’t mean that “they always have to happen”. For thousands of years mankind fought wars where cities were sacked and all of the men and boys—and most of the women—who survived the initial attack were put to death. It was considered ‘inevitable’ for a long, long time. Times change, and sometimes we do, too. It’s not inevitable, but it can happen.

Only in terms of actual cause and effect, such as getting burned when you touch something hot.

GA @CyanoticWasp, GA.

Study quantum mechanics. Nothing is inevitable. Choices matter. If you’ll look carefully, you’ll find that people only say that something was inevitable after the fact.

Well, people do say it before the fact, but that’s just trying to sell something. No one can know before hand if something is truly inevitable, and afterwards… well, of course it was inevitable because that’s what happened.

There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is the willingness to think.
who said that.. :-/

Increasing entropy based on what we know today.

@josie “All attempts to force human beings into a production collective have failed.”
I believe Capitalism and almost all governments have succeeded.

“Sometimes it takes centuries, but human beings eventually dispose of those who attempt to make them cogs in a great machine.”
Only to be lost in another.

Although everyone may moan about it, only a few people physically stand up against the/a machine and most died for it.

@DancingMind Benjamin Franklin sums up this question with ” ...nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.”
Although I would throw a far more optimistic addition to the list with “Life!”

I think we don’t have a choice in the matter when it comes to living and existing. We have always existed and will always it is inevitable.