As a historian can I say to such thinking…
I’m not a fan of teleology in general, but THIS kind really irritates me. I know that people find “what ifs” fun as an intellectual exercise, but the whole idea of a grand narrative, that we are all on a particular track with a particular end point, has just been incredibly dangerous. It’s probably one of my biggest beefs with Marx (though I like lots of what he has to say about history), as his stages of history are pretty teleological. There are no stages in history, there is just what was, why it was, and other possibilities of what could have been (contingency).
But there is no “meant to be” there. It’s just what actually happened! That is, honestly, one of the hardest concepts to get across to students - this idea that what happened in the past happened, not because it was “meant” to happen, but because of choices (lots of) people made at particular points in time. It’s true they could have made other choices, but they didn’t. They made the ones they made, and those are what we are studying in history… I mean, we didn’t even have to choose to try and leave the planet. Lots of us decided that that was a good idea to try (many who were influenced by sci-fi) and then after a lot of hard work by thousands of people… And then “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” It didn’t happen because it was “supposed to” happen… it happened because some people wanted it to happen and undertook the work to…
If you can wrap your head around that idea, then you can see how history can be a powerful tool for positive social change. Because if other ordinary people shaped history in one way or another (honestly, I don’t even know if I like the term “change the course of history” anymore, because it plays into the idea of “destiny” a bit too much), then so can we!
TLDR… teleology is bad and hinders a proper understanding of history and how we can all make great, wonderful, positive things happen if we work together!
