The Fatalist Trap: Why Believing in Determinism Doesn’t Mean You’re Powerless

Photo by Cemrecan Yurtman on Unsplash

By a Philosophy Student Who’s Seen Too Much

There’s a certain comfort in thinking it’s all rigged.

That your failures, your petty triumphs, your bad tattoos—they’re all part of some giant cosmic script.

You didn’t bomb that job interview because you’re unprepared; it was fate, or genetics, or that smudge of bad karma you picked up in 1998.

It’s a hell of a lot easier than staring in the mirror and admitting you’re the architect of your mess.

I’ve spent more nights than I’d like to admit wrestling with this idea. Determinism, they call it—the theory that everything, from your birth to your eventual faceplant into the grave, is the result of unbroken chains of cause and effect.

You’re not steering the ship, pal. You’re just another cog in the machine, grinding along toward an inevitable destination.

But the twist is this: believing in determinism doesn’t mean you’re powerless.

The real trap, the real soul-crushing pit, is thinking you are.

Let me drag you through this swamp with me. Maybe we’ll find a way out—or at least a good laugh at the absurdity of it all.

The Domino Game: Explaining Determinism to a Kid With ADHD

“Okay, kid,” I say, leaning back in my creaky chair. “You know those dominos your mom gave you? Imagine you line them up in a big chain.”

“Yeah?”

“You knock over the first one, and what happens?”

“They all fall,” the kid says, looking unimpressed.

“Exactly. That’s determinism. Every choice you make, every breath you take, is just another domino falling because some other domino tipped it. You didn’t pick your parents. You didn’t pick the era you were born into. Hell, you didn’t even pick that cereal you had this morning—your brain decided milliseconds before you realized you were out of Pop-Tarts.”

The kid frowns. “So… I don’t have free will?”

“Not so fast,” I say, lighting a cigarette I swore I’d quit. “The dominos are there, sure. But sometimes, you get to nudge them. You don’t get to choose the starting line, but you sure as hell get to decide how hard you push.”

A Sobering Truth

When I first stumbled into determinism, it felt like finding a cheat code for life. Like some dirty secret in the back of a philosophy book—a magical explanation that makes everything make sense.

“Oh, it’s all scripted?” I thought. “Great. None of this is my fault.” It was like winning a free pass to skip the tough parts of life.

The constant struggle to measure up, to be somebody, to justify the sheer weight of existence—it all felt a little easier with the knowledge that I wasn’t really making the calls.

It was liberating—for about a week. Then the hangover kicked in. And trust me, this wasn’t the kind of hangover you get after a bottle of cheap bourbon. This was a slow, sinking realization that it’s all well and good to blame the universe for your messes, but in the end, you’re still left with the wreckage.

You’re still the one trying to pick up the pieces. The neat little narrative you tell yourself doesn’t make the world feel any less cold, any less indifferent.

It doesn’t make the pain of your bad decisions go away. It doesn’t make the emptiness feel more palatable. It just lets you off the hook long enough to pretend you’re free of responsibility.

The thing about determinism is that it’s seductive. It’s like falling in love with the idea that you never had a chance to screw up in the first place—that everything was preordained from the moment you took your first breath.

And hell, you can even pull out the big guns—the Nietzsche quotes, the bleak poetry of fate—and wear them like armor. “God is dead,” Nietzsche said, and hell, maybe he was onto something.

The universe doesn’t care about you, so why should you give a damn?

The weight of the world is not yours to carry. And in a way, that’s a beautiful sentiment. No one’s coming to save you, and no one’s judging you, either. It’s a free-for-all. How sweet it is to be free of guilt.

But here’s the dirty secret: you still have to live with yourself.

The existential hangover always catches up.

The thing about blaming the universe, about passing the buck to fate or genetics or whatever cosmic force you believe is in charge, is that it doesn’t change anything.

It doesn’t erase the bad decisions you’ve made, the relationships you’ve wrecked, or the years you’ve wasted. It doesn’t clean up the mess you’ve made of your life.

Blaming the universe doesn’t make the shame go away. You can dress it up in Nietzsche quotes, drown it in whiskey, bury it under a pile of half-finished dreams, but at the end of the day, you’re still stuck with you.

And that, my friend, is the real kicker. The universe doesn’t care. It won’t blink an eye when you hit rock bottom. You could’ve been born into a better life, you could’ve been dealt a better hand, but none of that erases the fact that you’ve still got to get up and keep going.

You can’t sit on your ass forever, blaming fate for every miserable choice, or waiting for a divine intervention to save you. Life doesn’t pause for your excuses.

As Albert Camus once wrote, “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

The fire’s still burning, and you can either stand there complaining about it, or you can learn to dance through it.

And make no mistake, the fire’s hot. It burns with the intensity of a thousand failures, a thousand wrong turns, a thousand broken promises.

It doesn’t ask for your permission, and it doesn’t care about your excuses. You don’t get to hide behind the comfort of determinism forever. In fact, you don’t get to hide behind anything.

Life doesn’t allow for that kind of luxury. You’ve got to make choices.

Hard ones. Even if they suck. Even if you’re not sure what the hell you’re doing. Especially then.

There’s a perverse kind of freedom in that, though. You can sit there and argue with the universe, complain that it’s unfair, that it’s all out of your hands.

But the truth is, you’re the one who has to walk through it.

You’re the one who has to keep going, even when you’re not sure where you’re headed. As Hunter S. Thompson once said, “Buy the ticket, take the ride.”

You don’t get to choose the road you’re on, but you do get to decide how much you’re going to fight it.

You can stay stuck in the mud, blaming fate for every miserable choice, or you can drag yourself out of the muck and keep moving forward, even when you know it’s all just one big, chaotic, unpredictable mess.

The universe doesn’t care if you want to quit. But you still have to care. You still have to decide whether or not to get back in the ring after the first punch knocks you out.

And that’s the part no one tells you when you’re getting cozy with determinism.


I’m not proud of it, but I’ve used determinism as a crutch. When my first relationship imploded, I blamed it on “compatibility” instead of my inability to communicate.

When I got passed over for promotions, I told myself it was office politics. The truth? I was lazy and scared.

But there was a moment—a low, bitter night—when I realized I couldn’t keep hiding behind the idea that life was just happening to me.

Determinism might explain how I got here, but it didn’t justify staying in the gutter. That realization felt like clawing my way out of quicksand, but it was worth it.

The Science Behind It: The Neural Maze

Let’s talk neurons for a second.

That mess of gray matter in your skull that supposedly makes you you—all those electrical signals zipping around like some out-of-control drunk at a New Year’s Eve party.

Neuroscience says your brain makes decisions before “you” consciously know it. Pretty jarring, huh?

Imagine thinking you’re in charge of everything, only to find out your brain’s been pulling the strings like a puppet master behind the scenes, laughing its ass off at your attempts to make choices.

Free will? More like free-ish will.

You’re piloting a ship that’s already halfway out of the harbor, and the damn steering wheel’s got no power steering.

Now, this is where it gets messy, and not in the way you might expect.

You see, the science behind this is coming from some heavy hitters—guys like Sam Harris, who love to remind us that our conscious decisions aren’t as “free” as we’d like to believe.

Harris has made it his life’s mission to explain that you aren’t the one making the decisions, your brain is.

And it’s been doing this for far longer than you’ve been aware of it. You feel like you’re making a choice, but in reality, the decision is already in the works before you even open your mouth.

But wait, there’s more. Neuroscientists like to throw out these fancy terms like “neural determinism” to describe what’s going on.

It’s this idea that the electrical signals in your brain fire up in ways you don’t even realize.

Your brain is already mapping out the next move based on a long history of past patterns—memories, habits, fears, and everything else that’s wired into you over a lifetime of experiences.

Your so-called free will is like the afterthought, the post-production credits after the main event is already over.

You might think you’re making a choice, but what you’re really doing is playing catch-up with what your brain’s already decided for you.

But here’s the essential twist.

There’s a little bit of hope in this bleak mess of neurons and misfiring synapses.

Neuroplasticity. Ever heard of it? Sounds like something from a sci-fi novel, right? But it’s real.

Your brain has this weird ability to adapt and rewire itself. It’s not just some cold, unfeeling machine that’s doomed to follow the same old script.

No, no. Your brain can change. It can adjust. It can learn. And while that may not sound like much, it’s everything.

Sam Harris himself might tell you that you’re a victim of your biology, but even he admits that we can reshape our minds, our patterns, and our impulses.

We’re not hopeless automatons—there’s a backdoor in this neural maze. It’s like you’ve been stuck in a tiny room, but you’ve got the tools to break down the walls and find your way out.

Sure, you might have to start from scratch, but that’s the beauty of it. You’re not trapped in some eternal loop of bad decisions.

You can make changes. You can find new routes in that jumbled mess of electrical impulses.

Take it from the scientists—guys like Norman Doidge, who’s made a career out of studying neuroplasticity. He talks about how the brain’s ability to change is nothing short of miraculous.

It’s not just some New Age mumbo-jumbo or feel-good fluff. This is science.

The brain’s ability to rewrite its own script is like a software update for your mind. And the kicker? It’s not just for people with some miraculous “gift.” It’s for everyone.

You can rewire your brain the same way you can break a bad habit, learn a new skill, or even change the way you think about the world.

It’s a fight against the neural programming that got you stuck in your own personal hell, but it’s a fight you can win if you know where to look.

Look, your biology hands you the script, but you can still edit the damn thing.

It’s not easy. It’s like trying to rewrite your life in the middle of a thunderstorm. But just because you’re stuck with some genetic lottery ticket doesn’t mean you can’t mess with the system.

You can’t control all the moves your brain’s already made before you even knew it, but you can steer it in a new direction. Think of it like this: the script’s already been written, but you’ve got the power to change the ending.

You might not have been dealt the best hand—hell, life’s probably been kicking you around for years. But if there’s one thing that’s been drilled into my skull by science and whiskey alike, it’s that you’re not totally powerless.

You can still fight. You can still make things right, or at least give it one hell of a shot.

So don’t just sit there like some passive bystander watching your fate unfold. The ship’s still floating. You’ve still got the wheel in your hand, even if it’s a bit rickety.

And if you play your cards right, you just might steer that bastard into smoother waters.

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