History is messy. We try to pretend it’s a neat line of progress, a series of intentional steps taken by wise leaders toward a brighter future, but usually, it's just just one damned thing after another. That phrase isn't just a cynical quip. It’s a philosophy. It captures the chaotic, unpredictable, and often frustrating reality of how life actually unfolds, whether you’re looking at the fall of Rome or why your Tuesday morning went completely off the rails.
Most people attribute this sentiment to Elbert Hubbard or perhaps Mark Twain, but it was likely Arnold Toynbee or even the writer Edna St. Vincent Millay who helped cement it in the public consciousness. Whoever said it first, they were right. Life doesn't follow a script. It’s a pile-up of events.
The Myth of the Grand Narrative
We love stories. Our brains are hardwired to find patterns in the noise. When we look back at the 20th century, we talk about the "Great Depression" followed by "World War II," as if these were distinct chapters in a textbook. But for the person living through 1939, it didn't feel like a chapter. It felt like a Tuesday where the radio news was terrifying, the milk was sour, and the rent was due. It was chaos.
Historians often fall into the trap of "teleological" thinking. That's a fancy way of saying they look at the end result and assume everything that happened before it was a necessary step to get there. It wasn't. If a certain messenger hadn't been delayed by a rainstorm in 1815, the Battle of Waterloo might have ended differently. The "grand narrative" is usually a polite fiction we invent after the fact to make ourselves feel like we're in control of a world that is essentially just one damned thing after another.
Why We Struggle with Randomness
Humans hate uncertainty. It’s physically uncomfortable for us. We’d rather have a bad explanation for a disaster than no explanation at all. This is why conspiracy theories are so popular; they suggest that someone is in charge, even if that person is evil. The alternative—that the world is a series of uncoordinated, random accidents—is much scarier.
Consider the "Butterfly Effect" in chaos theory. It's the idea that a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. Basically, a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil and causes a tornado in Texas. While that’s a bit of an exaggeration, the core truth remains: small, seemingly insignificant events stack up. They collide. They create a mess.
How the Just One Damned Thing After Another Philosophy Changes Your Perspective
If you accept that life is a series of loosely connected events rather than a pre-ordained destiny, your stress levels actually go down. Why? Because you stop blaming yourself for not being able to predict the unpredictable.
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You can't "life-hack" your way out of entropy. You can have the best morning routine in the world, drink your green juice, meditate for twenty minutes, and still get a flat tire on the way to work. That’s not a failure of your "system." It’s just life doing what life does.
- Acceptance of the mess: You stop expecting things to go perfectly.
- Agility over planning: You focus more on how you react to the "damned things" rather than trying to prevent them from happening.
- Focus on the present: If there’s no grand destination, the current moment (even the messy ones) matters more.
The Case Study of 1914: The Ultimate Pile-Up
Look at the start of World War I. If you want to see just one damned thing after another in action, look at the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. It was a comedy of errors that turned into a global tragedy. The first assassins failed. One threw a bomb that bounced off the car. The Archduke should have gone home. Instead, he decided to visit the hospital to see the people injured by the bomb.
His driver took a wrong turn. He stopped the car to reverse right in front of a deli where one of the assassins, Gavrilo Princip, just happened to be standing after giving up on the plot. Princip didn't have a master plan at that moment; he just saw an opportunity and took it. That one wrong turn changed the entire 20th century. There was no "destiny" there. Just a stalled engine and a confused driver.
The Psychology of "One Thing After Another"
Psychologists sometimes talk about "Locus of Control." People with an internal locus believe they make things happen. People with an external locus believe things happen to them. The "one damned thing" philosophy is a healthy middle ground. It acknowledges that while you control your actions, you don't control the environment.
When you hit a streak of bad luck, it’s easy to feel cursed. But statistics tell us that "clustering" is a real phenomenon. Random events aren't evenly distributed. You will have weeks where nothing goes right. That’s not the universe hating you; it’s just how randomness works. It's the "Law of Truly Large Numbers." With billions of people on Earth, someone is going to have a really, really bad Thursday.
Navigating the Chaos in a Digital Age
Today, the feeling of just one damned thing after another is amplified by the 24-hour news cycle. In 1920, you might hear about a local fire and a national election. Today, your phone pings you about a coup in a country you can't find on a map, a new virus variant, a celebrity divorce, and a stock market dip—all before you’ve finished your coffee.
This "context collapse" makes it feel like the world is ending every single day. It’s not necessarily that more things are happening; it’s that we are aware of all of them simultaneously. We are experiencing the "damned things" of eight billion people at once.
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Information Overload and Mental Fatigue
The constant barrage of events leads to "compassion fatigue." We only have so much emotional bandwidth. When everything is presented as a crisis, nothing feels like a crisis anymore. We become numb.
To survive this, you have to curate your "damned things." You have to decide which events deserve your attention and which are just noise. This isn't about being ignorant; it's about being selective so you don't burn out.
Actionable Insights: How to Handle the "Damned Things"
Since we know the world isn't going to stop being chaotic, the only thing we can change is our approach to the pile-up.
Build "Slack" Into Your Life
Efficiency is the enemy of resilience. If your schedule is packed to the minute, one "damned thing" (like a long line at the post office) ruins your whole day. Leave gaps. Expect delays. Build a financial and emotional buffer so that when the unexpected happens, it’s an inconvenience, not a catastrophe.
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Focus on "Process" Not "Outcome"
You can control the quality of your work, but you can't control how your boss feels the day they read it. You can control how you treat your partner, but you can't control their mood. If you judge your success solely by outcomes, you’ll always be at the mercy of luck. Judge yourself by the process. Did you do the right thing? Then the "damned things" that follow aren't your burden to carry.
Practice Radical Realism
Stop asking "Why is this happening to me?" and start saying "Of course this is happening." It’s a subtle shift. The first question implies that life owes you a smooth ride. The second acknowledges that life is naturally bumpy. When you stop being surprised by chaos, it loses its power to upset you.
Maintain a Long-Term Perspective
Zoom out. Most of the things that feel like a "damned thing" today won't matter in five years. This doesn't mean they don't suck right now—they do—but it puts them in context. History shows that humanity is remarkably good at muddled-through survival. We've been dealing with just one damned thing after another for thousands of years, and we're still here.
Do the Next Right Thing
When you’re overwhelmed by a cascade of problems, don't try to solve the whole mess. Just find the one small thing you can control right now. Wash one dish. Send one email. Fix one small error. The "damned things" pile up, but you can dismantle them one brick at a time.
The reality of our existence isn't a grand symphony; it's a garage band rehearsal where everyone is slightly out of tune and the drummer just dropped a stick. And honestly? That's okay. There’s a weird kind of freedom in realizing that nobody has it all figured out and that we’re all just reacting to the next thing coming down the pike. Embrace the chaos. It's the only way to get through it.