"Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are"
About this Quote
Fatalism gets kneecapped in a single sentence. Brecht takes the most anesthetizing thought in politics and daily life - that the present is “just how things are” - and flips it into a theory of motion. The line runs on a simple paradox: the conditions that make an order feel permanent are the same forces that guarantee its instability. If exploitation, war, or inequality are built into the system, they don’t merely persist; they accumulate pressure, generate contradictions, and eventually provoke change. “Because” is doing heavy lifting here: history isn’t driven by vibes or destiny, but by material causes.
That’s classic Brecht, the Marxist dramatist who wanted audiences to stop merging emotionally with characters and start diagnosing society. The subtext isn’t comforting progress talk; it’s a warning disguised as hope. If you benefit from the status quo, don’t mistake your comfort for permanence. If you’re crushed by it, don’t mistake its weight for inevitability. The phrase “the way they are” is deliberately vague, letting the listener fill in their own regime, workplace, or family structure - a portable indictment.
Context matters: Brecht wrote under the shadow of fascism, exile, and the propaganda machine that sells domination as common sense. Read against that backdrop, the quote becomes a compact piece of anti-authoritarian strategy. It punctures the myth of natural order and replaces it with contingency: what has been made can be unmade. The real bite is that change isn’t optional. It’s already embedded in the “because.”
That’s classic Brecht, the Marxist dramatist who wanted audiences to stop merging emotionally with characters and start diagnosing society. The subtext isn’t comforting progress talk; it’s a warning disguised as hope. If you benefit from the status quo, don’t mistake your comfort for permanence. If you’re crushed by it, don’t mistake its weight for inevitability. The phrase “the way they are” is deliberately vague, letting the listener fill in their own regime, workplace, or family structure - a portable indictment.
Context matters: Brecht wrote under the shadow of fascism, exile, and the propaganda machine that sells domination as common sense. Read against that backdrop, the quote becomes a compact piece of anti-authoritarian strategy. It punctures the myth of natural order and replaces it with contingency: what has been made can be unmade. The real bite is that change isn’t optional. It’s already embedded in the “because.”
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