Politicians, mostly on the Left, love to misappropriate Martin Luther King Jr.’s promise that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Among the many problems with a flippant deployment of this line is that it gives the sense that social change happens through some disembodied force akin to evolution.

There are philosophical foundations to this worldview. If you read enough Hegel or absorb the teachings of Marx, who tried to channel Hegel, you will find a sense of almost predestination. It’s not predestination exactly, but it does portray societal change as something largely independent of the people involved.