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historical determinism

concept · in 44 videos (2009–2026)

The question of whether history is inevitable, or as John puts it, whether people make history or history makes people. Hank adds that some things, like eclipses, are inevitable, while others exist only because of human choices.

Videos by year: 2009: 2 · 2015: 4 · 2016: 1 · 2017: 3 · 2018: 4 · 2019: 1 · 2021: 3 · 2022: 5 · 2023: 9 · 2024: 3 · 2025: 5 · 2026: 4

Also known as: history is inevitable, the forces of history, it was bound to happen

Also named in the threads: John: give Hank some thoughts from Davos in next week's video (January 2016)

Questions

Often together

What comes up in the same parts of the videos; the number is how many parts.

progress (8) · economic inequality (2) · climate change (2)

What the videos say

The most important statements of each year; all statements.

2009

  • 2009-01-04 · Israel. Gaza. PUPPY! — John: The roots of every war go back thousands of years, but an old argument is not necessarily intractable; the brothers' 20-year Chuck E. Cheese band argument never made John want to kill Hank. — 00:00:32
  • 2009-01-11 · SOMALI PIRATES! France Penetrates Chad! — John: The wars can't be explained as age-old tribalism: there is tribalism in Chad, but also in America, as any Alabama-Auburn football game shows. — 00:00:32

2015

  • 2015-05-15 · Happy Graduation, Future Dead People — Hank says it may feel we are destined for a cutthroat world of ever-increasing inequality, but not if we choose compassion: we decide our world by being it. — 00:02:42
  • 2015-06-08 · Monday Bonus Video! — John thinks wealth inequality is one of the biggest US issues and the wage-productivity decoupling very worrying, but we are mid-history and can collectively decide whether declining mobility is permanent. (hedged) — 00:03:18
  • 2015-11-03 · Monkey Hangers — John's second lesson: we are always in the middle of history; the hanged monkey couldn't know its weird future, just as none of us can know ours. — 00:02:58
  • 2015-11-16 · On Our Way to the Dance (Pizzamas Day 6) — John says the war seems inevitable to us, but the farmers' faces show it wasn't: history is choices we collectively make about how to see and respond to the world. — 00:01:27
    • The farmers walking in the German Westerwald 101 years ago remind John that he too is in the middle of history and that how he imagines the world and its people really matters. — 00:01:40

2016

  • 2016-01-26 · Billionaires and Radical Hope: Thoughts from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland — John felt an unprecedented intensity: business, politics and activism smashing together, with everyone feeling they could change history by increasing prosperity, achieving gender parity and educating the world. — 00:00:47
    • John says that again and again at Davos he ran up against the ancient question of whether people make history or history makes people, and how power and poverty shape the answers. — 00:02:47
    • Acknowledging it is easier to say from a privileged position, John believes human progress is possible though not inevitable, and is convinced of and moved by the radical hope behind millennia of human effort. — 00:02:56

2017

  • 2017-01-17 · How Young Is History? — John: These conditions result from our collective choices: every day we choose what to value, worship and paint, and future humans will know us by the choices we make together now. — 00:03:25
  • 2017-12-12 · 2017 is the Best? — John says these changes are neither natural nor inevitable: they come from our investments as a species in research, health care systems, and training and paying health workers. — 00:02:23
  • 2017-12-19 · History Is Happening — John: His mental illness often makes John feel a passenger in his own consciousness; scrolling the social internet makes him feel a passenger in history, as if it happens to us. (hedged) — 00:00:33
    • John says that powerlessness is a lie, as he was reminded when thousands of people worldwide came together for the 11th annual Project for Awesome. — 00:01:15
    • John says we are not just able to change the world: each of us changes it every day through our choices; the world is made of our actions, passions and beliefs. — 00:02:10
    • Though big forces act on and within us, John says we are not mere passengers in history: the human story is something we are part of, not scrolling through. — 00:02:57

2018

  • 2018-02-06 · Sawdust Bread — John says feeling that progress is inevitable also makes him complacent, as if he could sit back while grain yields feed the world, Elon Musk fixes climate change and disease cures itself. (playful) — 00:02:36
    • Reading history gives John the uncomfortable but productive feeling that better human lives are possible but not guaranteed. — 00:02:47
  • 2018-07-10 · The General Crisis — John: The early 17th century is a reminder that progress is never simple, universal or guaranteed. — 00:03:40
  • 2018-07-13 · Why Do So Few Countries Have Nukes? — Hank: What Hank wants to remember is that the stable world was not inevitable; he thanks everyone who worked to create it and hopes we can maintain it. — video description
    • Reason seven: we got very, very lucky; there is no guarantee that a rerun of the experiment would end as well. — 00:05:08
  • 2018-12-07 · BABIES! The 2018 Project for Awesome is here… — John says this did not happen by accident or because progress is natural, but because we as a species decided to prioritize children. — 00:01:33

2019

  • 2019-12-27 · Why I'm Worried about 2020 — Hank says we can feel powerless against people who want other things and have more resources, but we are not: whom we donate to and vote for, our conversations and how we imagine the world build the world. — 00:03:16

2021

  • 2021-02-02 · I Predicted the Pandemic (over and over and over again) — John: Sidelining illness once made sense because history was seen as human choices and disease didn't feel like one; now we have much choice around it: we chose to eliminate smallpox. — 00:02:55
  • 2021-08-31 · The Woman Who Invented Stuffed Animals — John: We must also make space for individual choices: Steiff saw the potential of ready-made soft toys, made excellent ones and carefully hired extremely talented people. — 00:05:21
  • 2021-09-28 · 11 Great Books You Probably Haven't Read — John: Frank Snowden's Epidemics and Society helped John see that infectious disease has always been among history's most important forces: we think of Alexander the Great and Cleopatra, but it's mostly microbes. — 00:00:58

2022

  • 2022-03-01 (said on 2022-02-27, implied) · Hard Week — John: What breaks John's heart and leads him toward despair is also where he finds hope: there is nothing inevitable about it. — 00:02:26
  • 2022-08-02 · Liberty Leading the People: How Revolutions Turn — John says the painting now looks like a celebration of liberty and democracy's inevitable victory, but there was nothing inevitable about it then or for decades afterward, and there still isn't. — 00:03:24
  • 2022-10-11 · Most People Have Never Been 20 — John says we can't change historical rates of premature death, but we can choose a world where fewer people die early, and he knows because we have made that choice before. — 00:03:24
  • 2022-10-25 · Instantly Debateable — John says nothing was inevitable about that progress: it happened because activists, healthcare workers, governments and charities worked together in messy, hard work. — 00:03:24
  • 2022-11-15 · 3 Years In: What Happened, Why, and What's Next — John says progress is never inevitable: this is happening because of the extraordinary commitment of Sierra Leone's health workers and because of supporters. — 00:02:55

2023

  • 2023-03-14 · The Seduction of Despair — John says that change was neither natural nor inevitable: many people collaborated across time and space, in anger, frustration and disgust, but not in hopelessness. — 00:02:30
  • 2023-03-31 · The Coming AI Invasion — Hank says AI can be done in better or worse ways, but right now many people seem to think it is inevitable so it might as well be them. — 00:03:17
  • 2023-05-09 · on hope — John cites Margaret Atwood's line that very little in history is inevitable, and says he believes it. — 00:02:28
  • 2023-05-16 · Did TB Cause World War I? — John says what fascinates him about history is that so much might happen, and then only one set of things does. — 00:04:23
  • 2023-08-08 · TAKE IT UP A NOTCH — John says imagining more control over our fate than we have can be a helpful delusion: feeling powerless as on a plane he could not function, and he does have a little agency; his choices matter. — 00:01:27
  • 2023-08-22 · The Panera Phenomenon — John says we act as if everything is stable and always has been, but that is a lie; so much is new, which encourages him, because it means we can change it. — 00:01:35
  • 2023-09-27 · John Goes ... to the UNITED NATIONS? — John says we have chosen today's world, in which 1.6 million people die of tuberculosis, and we can choose a better one. — 00:04:02
  • 2023-09-28 · What the Heck is the UN? — Hank says we can make different choices because we already have, showing charts of world deaths by age since 1950, polio burden since 1980 and TB death rates since 1990. — 00:07:13
  • 2023-12-12 · POTATO! — John says we don't have to accept the world that we are choosing right now. — 00:02:32

2024

  • 2024-04-12 · Feeling Like a Failure (During an Eclipse) — Hank says it is important to notice that some things, like eclipses, are inevitable, while others exist only because of human choices. — 00:03:44
  • 2024-08-27 · How The Internet Is Rigged — John says we feel we must accept the world as it is, but the world will change, each of us has a little say in how, culturally and structurally, and the future is not inevitable. — 00:06:49
  • 2024-09-10 · The world will change. — John repeats that the world not only can but will change, and together we have some say in how it changes. — 00:00:29

2025

  • 2025-01-28 · This Is Not Normal — John says this fall in child mortality was not natural, normal or inevitable, and represents the greatest success in human history. — 00:00:29
    • John says that in the US and globally none of this happened naturally: it is not natural for the world to become less hungry or less sick. — 00:01:27
    • John concludes that continued progress for human health is not natural: it will result, or fail to result, from human choices. — 00:05:21
  • 2025-06-13 · Moving to Hope from Hopelessness (3 ways) — Hank doesn't think there is one natural path we will all land on: what we do matters, and even with a fixed destination it would matter because suffering now matters now. — 00:03:51
  • 2025-07-25 · The Molecule that Changed Everything — Hank says we decide whether trees cause a second mass extinction or are part of the Garden of Earth; he thinks we can choose the latter, and letting trees kill everything again would be shameful. — 00:06:50
  • 2025-10-01 · Real Reasons for Hope — John is not saying progress is inevitable or that the world will get better, only that these two examples show the world can get better. — 00:04:23
  • 2025-10-17 · We Never Know What Anything Means — Hank's point: the future does not grow out of our intentions, fears, hopes or stories; it just grows in unexpected ways, as the telegraph's makers never foresaw the problems their solution created. — 00:04:51

2026