Havens Thinking, or (Your) Life in a World That’s Imploding

I’m Umair Haque, and this is The Issue: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported publication. Our job is to give you the freshest, deepest, no-holds-barred insight about the issues that matter most.

New here? Get the Issue in your inbox daily.

Hi! How’s everyone? Welcome back old friends, a warm welcome to new ones, and here’s little Snowy giving you a big puppy hug.

Today we’re going to discuss Havens Thinking. It’s the point of the little paradigm I’ve been sketching for you, and I want to spend a few moments just reflecting on it.

Havens Thinking. When I talk about renegotiating your relationship with the world, in particular this one, which is collapsing, the point is that now every facet of it should be structured around Havens.

Sessions are starting soon, by the way, I’m aiming for just after Christmas. If you’d like to book some time with me, just email me at umairhaque at gmail. If I haven’t replied to you yet, apologies, forgive me, and be a little patient, there’s just one of me. Many thanks to everyone who has so far!

Let me illuminate that.

Your Life—All of It—Should Now Be Structured Around Havens

Your life should now be structured around Havens.

Now, I mean that in a certain way, which is that it probably isn’t.

Very, very few of us have built or found our Havens.

And of course Havens are many things, from careers to places to communities to relationships to ideas and much more. Institutions, organizations, affiliations, networks, societies—many, many things.

So when I say that your life should be structured around Havens now, I mean it, first of all, in a constructive and expansive way. That is, you need to start finding, building, discovering, creating yours, in all the respects above. I’ll come back to that part.

And you need to start right now.

That is because when we employ Havens Thinking, we are beginning to live in today. We let go of many of the assumptions we might still have about how the world is or will be or what have you.

—The world is not going back to what it was.

—The world is not capable of going back to what it was.

—The world is not interested in going back to what it was. 

We are seeing now a certain wave. It’s a wave of self-destruction. The key word there isn’t the destruction, it’s the “self.”

Natural disasters come along, and you don’t necessarily need to find Havens, except temporarily. But when things self-destruct, then the picture is very different. Then you must find Havens, or Sink With the Ship.

Now. I emphasize this because unless you really grasp it, feel it, see it, you will never really be able to create or find your Havens. There just won’t be a sense of urgency or immediacy or even necessity. You’ll be trapped in the panic-despair-bewilderment spiral we’ve discussed, perpetually surprise, and perpetually paralyzed.

So the first step is understanding that the imperative of Havens Thinking is real. And it’s real in the sense that the world is never going back to what it once used to be. 

Convulsion, or Where the World Goes From Here

An era of history is now coming to an end, and as they do, they’re accompanied, usually, by convulsions. 

You’re an intelligent person, and you’ve read enough history, more than enough, to know many examples. What happens when empires collapse? Societies? World orders? Political forms? Anything then is on the table, from war to financial crisis. Things crescendo, and they convulse.

You do not want to be part of the convulsions.

Over the last few years, I’ve been pointing out that things are collapsing.

Convulsion is the stage after collapse.

It is where we’re heading.

The other day, I said, this is the point at which history starts to get scary. And that’s how people feel now. They are beginning to experience real fear now, not just anger or annoyance or dismay. But the real thing, which is cold, paralyzing, and bewildering.

This is the point at which history gets scary.

Your gut is trying to tell you something with all that fear. Don’t ignore it. It’s wiser than your mind.

It is telling you that the convulsive stage comes next.

For many, collapse hasn’t been pleasant, but it’s been livable. If you have enough money, if you’re still relatively affluent, have savings, a nice home, etcetera, if you’re among the last lucky few who are living the dream, and can sort of wall yourself off—then sure, the last few years haven’t been great, but they’ve been doable. You haven’t been happy, it hasn’t been particularly pleasant or nice, but it’s been…OK. 

The convulsive stage is not like that.

This is what your gut is telling you.

When societies, when organizations, when worlds convulse, then just walling yourself off with such weak mechanisms doesn’t really work anymore. Sure, if things are sort of going backwards, slowly, creeping in the wrong direction, etcetera, but you’re still in your nice house with your nice cars, as David Byrne might have said—what’s the Big Deal? 

Convulsion isn’t like that.

Your gut knows it, but your mind will waste time “debating” it. The debate is in quotes because your mind is reacting.

Even your mind knows what happens in convulsive stages. What happened in 1935 in Germany? What began in 1930 in America? How was it to live through the time of a really decadent Roman Emperor, go ahead and chuckle? 

Convulsive stages are when stuff gets real. When it gets really scary, because now anything can happen.

Your mind keeps telling you to ignore your get because it’s trying to contain your fear. So it argues, with these weak points, which don’t stand up to the merest scrutiny, basically saying, “but what could possibly go wrong?”

Right now, the wise person does not let their mind contain their fear, at the price of ignorance and inaction. They listen to their fear, what it says about history, what it suggests will happen next, all the elements it synthesizes, and they become wiser that way.

Your gut is telling you, over and over again:

We do not want to be part of the convulsion. In convulsion, anything can happen, and all can be lost, just like that. 

Did you hear what it said next?

And that’s not the worst part. After the convulsive stage, it’s that much harder to act. Nearly impossible. After convulsion, you’re trapped.

Your gut is already incredibly wise. It knows all that. It is telling you all that because it has been true for millennia now. Before convulsion is the time you can still do something.

But after the convulsive phase begins, accelerates, intensifies? Then you are stuck.

Why You Need to Find Havens Before the Point of Convulsion

So what is my point here? To scare you, frighten you, depress you?

No, it’s to teach you.

Havens are that much harder to find, create, discover, after a convulsive phase is intensifying. 

Before one does, they’re easier. 

Things are still doable. Basic things. Money, travel, meetings, appointments, friendships, whatever, just basic things.

What does that mean? Let’s take a simple example, which is from an era I won’t name, so you’ll have to guess, but I’m sure it’ll be easy. When a convulsive phase began, certain kinds of people lost everything they had, and it was that much harder for them to…exactly.

So. 

There is a BC and AC. Before Convulsion and After Convulsion.

Where are we now?

That depends on where you are, and where you are in life, but mostly, we’re right at the edge.

Let me give you an example of a society in a post-convulsive phase, which is obviously Britain. It entered a convulsive phase, twisted itself apart in a kind of madness of spite and lunacy. And now it has lost out badly. Its people lost their healthcare system, their money, their savings, their possibilities, their futures, and perhaps most relevant to this particular point, the ability to create lives for themselves elsewhere, like in Europe, which they could easily do before the convulsive phase.

It will never have a future again, at least not like the one it did once.

This is BC and AC. 

Take that incredibly seriously, because right now, most places in the world are still Before Convulsion. Even if it’s fast approaching.

That is the point at which you must develop Havens Thinking, fast, and do it well. 

After Convulsion? It’s still possible, but it’s exponentially harder by the day.

So this is the point at which you do or die. You choose, one way or the other. 

And that is the part most don’t really understand, time and again. They imagine that they will have forever to somehow employ Havens Thinking, even if things keep getting worse. They don’t grasp, and this is true throughout history, that once there is a Point of Convulsion, then all bets are off.

Maybe after that, you can’t escape. You can’t flee. You don’t have the rights, resources, money, whatever. The chances are over. The game is up.

This is the choice you have to make now. I’m not simply saying that “you have to escape or flee,” wherever you are, LOL, like this is a horror movie, but I am saying that your life needs to be structured around Havens, if you want to live a decent one, that is.

I want to underscore the urgency of that, because the point is to develop, create, find, discover them before it’s too late. And there very much is a too late, in ages like this, where eras of history end. The Point of Convulsion.

This choice is the primary way in which you renegotiate your relationship with an imploding world. It is the fundamental task before all of us now. Some of us don’t know it, and some even imagine they’ll enjoy what’s ahead. Trust me, none of us will. Except those who are already mad in certain regards.

How to Begin Restructuring Your Life Around Havens

So what am I saying? Just lecturing you? Hectoring you?

No, I’m teaching you. I don’t want you to intellectualize this. Any of this. As I always say, this isn’t some kind of dumb academic game, it’s your life.

So when I say you have to make this choice every day, I mean it in a number of very pragmatic ways.

I would begin every day by asking myself: how am I structuring my life around Havens? 

How am I reorienting every last aspect of my life so that it is structured, all of it, around Havens?

Let me simplify that, to make it clearer.

—How am I structuring my money around Financial Havens?

—How am I structuring my professional life around Institutional Havens?

—How am I structuring my personal life around people who get Havens, and aren’t sort of wasting my time and energy on pretending everything’s going to be fine?

—How am I structuring my mental life around Havens Thinking, learning, developing, understanding, whether it’s history, economics, society, etcetera?

—How am I structuring my emotional life around Emotional Havens? Am I just doomscrolling it all away?

—How am I structuring my creative life around Creative Havens? Am I just sort of glued to YouTube or whatnot, which saps my ability to really create anything, like the life I want?

That’s a lot of examples, but I give you those to make a point or two. About how flexible Havens Thinking is. How you can and should use it in every arena of life, and there are plenty I didn’t list there. How ruthlessly simple it is, and that’s why it’s effective, because it cuts to the chase, and lets you get things done, lets you act, in fact sort of impels you to.

That’s sort of a little Intro Part Two to Havens Thinking. I wish we didn’t need it. I wish every place and every aspect of life and every community and every institution was a Haven.

That is the world we should have had.

But that is not the one we do.

In this one, which is collapsing, you must now structure your life around Havens, every aspect of it, every element of it. That is what will give you the best chances in the times ahead. They will not be difficult or even troubled times. Those are understatements and stark underestimates. They will be convulsive ones. And as we reach that threshold, those who haven’t found Havens yet will find that it has become too late.

This is what will happen to many people, far too many. And it is what I don’t want to happen to you and your loved ones. 

Tough read. Sorry about that.

Here’s a big hug and lots of love from me and Snowy!

❤️ Don't forget...

📣 Share The Issue on your Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

💵 If you like our newsletter, drop some love in our tip jar.

📫 Forward this to a friend and tell them all all about it.

👂 Anything else? Send us feedback or say hello!