History Is Not A Game

Attesting to the quip that “historians are like deaf people that go on answering questions that no one has asked them,” David Motadel ends his cruise through various “inflection points” in history with, “history is a long game.”

That conclusion manages to be both redundant and wrongheaded at the same time. A game indicates an eventual outcome, and there is no final outcome to human history, unless we drive our species into extinction, as Homo sapiens is driving half the animals on the Earth with the Sixth Extinction.

There is an inverse relationship between the upward spiral of science and technology and the downward spiral of human civilisation and consciousness. Is history just a quickening repetition on the same themes of human ignorance?

Motadel writes about how “the talk of ‘inflection points’ has been echoed across the global political arena, “ and that “the phenomenon of inflection or turning points is not new.” He says, “throughout history, the world has been rocked by major crises – political turmoil, wars and the downfall of great powers – which appeared earth-shattering at the time.”

That’s a false contextualising and minimising of the present crisis. This appears to be the first time in history that the collapse of an old order is global, rather than regional. For example, however far the ripples of the Enlightenment and French Revolution eventually spread, they were not initially global in nature and scope.

Second, the “polycrisis” is unprecedented. Despite its seemingly separate elements, something much deeper than a horizontal shifting of historical structural processes is going on with the present “inflection point.”

Third, this is the first time, to my knowledge, that historians are using past exaggerations of “turning points” to avoid an intensifying, multi-faceted crisis in the present. As the human crisis deepens, the need to place it in a historical context increases, blinding historians and those who purport to take the long view to its unprecedented nature.

Setting up the straw man of historical events vs. “the deeper material and mental structures below the surface of events,” Motadel reveals his basic premise: “The major transformations and changes, the tectonic shifts, in history are always processes which evolve over decades and then become visible through certain events, or turning points.”

Is human civilisation “evolving,” in the sense of progressing over time, at all? What does it mean for the present and future of humanity when the past has taken up so much space within and between people that the world can watch the genocide in Gaza on cellphones in real time without collective outrage and response?

Many highly educated people are desperately trying to keep our understanding of the world within comfortable studies and conventional verities. But they’re just not cutting it.

The most generous interpretation of the conclusion that “history is a long game” is Martin Luther King’s poetic consolation, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” As much as I would like to believe that’s true, the present age has proven it false.

Human civilisational progress is an illusion, and no amount of time will change the fact that evolution (as time and gradual improvement) simply does not apply to us psychologically and socially.

Indeed, time is the enemy, because it allows us to avoid facing and remaining with what is. The moment we negate the idea and movement of time as a means of change however, we begin to truly change.

All political, social and economic revolutions in human history have been reactions, “a modified continuation of that which has been.” In great part that’s because the challenges and crises transmitted from the past have invariably been seen as external.

They still are, whether it’s the climate/ecological crisis, or the collapsing international order.

It may be reassuring for historians to maintain that “environmental transformations and changes in social, economic and political structures must be studied over long periods, across generations, centuries, even millennia, [whereas] events can be studied within frameworks of days, weeks or years.” But for the rest of us, the world has gone mad. And the human crisis is internal as much as external -- a crisis of consciousness itself.

It’s disturbingly ironic that Motadel cites “the natural environment – geographical and geological conditions – which barely change over time,” as the first level of consideration, when the Earth in the Anthropocene Age is changing rapidly and disastrously.

The unprecedented nature of the global ecological crisis makes the focus on the political, economic, social structures as much of a surface enterprise as focusing on current events and past inflection points.

“To overcome this inflection point, Motadel insists, “We need to tackle the underlying structural problems, which inevitably will be a slow process.” When you factor AI into the mix, that’s a prescription for delay and destruction.

We don’t “overcome” an inflection point; we meet the moment. More to the Humankind is quickly running out of time and space to indulge in “the slow process of studying social, economic and political structures over long periods.” A lack of urgency in face of an emergency is the height of foolishness.

It’s true, “sudden historical breaks are almost impossible.” But the key word is “almost.” When everything else has been tried, and a viable planet for the present and future of humanity is on the line, the impossible becomes essential.

And the most impossible, and yet attainable thing is a revolution of the human heart, which begins within each one of us.

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/27/turning-point-world-history

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