Oneness and Zeroness, or Rescuing Your Life From an Age of Collapse

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.

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Hi! How’s everyone? Welcome back old friends, welcome new ones, and a very merry Christmas to all.

How was your Christmas, anyways? Maybe a little more fraught than usual. Certainly, at ours, we had a few tense moments. With friends. With family. With people who seem to have developed some pretty outlandish beliefs and stances lately. Obnoxious ones. Ugly ones.

Count yourself lucky, I suppose, if you escaped. 

This is the cleavage of the world into what I’ll call Ones and Zeros. Today we’re going to talk about…life…in an age like this. How do you navigate an implosive world, particularly, the human end of it? We’ve been discussing many principles, about Not Sinking With the Ship.

But how do you do it? How do you rescue your…maybe even…weary, battered, bruised…soul…from all this?

By the way, sessions will begin in the new year, if you’d like to book one, just email me at umairhaque at gmail. Many thanks for the overwhelming response, I think we’ll have to explore avenues that sort of expand my availability since there’s only one of me.

So. Not Sinking With the Ship. The part of it that’s what I’ve come to think of as human relations in an age of collapse.

Let me explain.

Ones, Zeros, You, and Your Life

The people that we had tense, weird, awkward moments with where what I’ve come to call Zeros.

Zeros isn’t an insult, it’s not pejorative. It means: a zero sum mindset.

Versus: a positive sum mindset. 

This is now the fundamental distinction in our world. It’s not about politics, certainly not about “left or right” in the old sense, but about mindsets and orientations.

Zeros believe in zero-sum thinking, attitudes, that’s their mindset. That terms comes from economics, from game theory, where a “zero-sum game” is one in which you have to lose for me to win. 

Now think about the world. Can you immediately see what I mean? How certain leaders, and their flocks and tribes, have adopted this mindset? They believe they can only win if others lose.

Hence, we see the rise of plenty of trends that are throwing the world into severe chaos and turmoil. The rise of protectionism, of extreme nationalism, the surging of conflict, the dwindling of cooperation. In the rise of demagoguery itself, which is about making people precisely that they are the suppressed winners, who just haven’t made others lose hard enough.

You can feel it too, in values, which we’ll come back to, because of course if you believe that others have to lose for you to win, then you’re not exactly going to be a very nice person, but a domineering, aggressive, and maybe even hateful and ugly one.

These are some of the traits of Zeros.

Ones, in contrast, don’t believe that others have to lose for me to win. They believe in win/win/win thinking. That might sound a little idealistic, even naive, in an age like this, but we’re just talking about orientations.

So Ones tend to believe in things like cooperation, equality, peace, justice, and truth. They aren’t interested in aggression, domination, rage, hate, etcetera.

Those are some of the traits of Ones. But maybe it’s better to describe this difference in a more concrete way.

Because the truth goes like this, and you must take a moment to really appreciate and recognize it, and then to plan around it, as you contemplate all the principles we’ve been discussing—about Not Sinking With the Ship.

You are a One in an age where Zeroness now defines more and more of the world around you.

Zeroness and Oneness

Just pause and really take that in. Here, let me help you. I say that because this is going to be one of the keys to creating a life that Doesn’t Sink With the Ship. It has to be, no? You are going to have to navigate this ugly, troubled world, and renegotiate your relationship with it.

But how do you do that? You have to begin with the most basic truth, which is that you’re a One in a world that’s becoming Zero.

What do I mean by that?

There are a lot of things that I know about you, just by us being old friends, or your finding your way here. 

You are not a terrible person. You’re a thoughtful, intelligent, and kind one. You want to learn and know—you’re curious. You value truth and beauty and goodness. 

Probably, like most of us here, you’re creative, empathic, giving. You’ve centered your life around helping in some way. Helping people, institutions, organizations, doesn’t matter how. The point is that your life has been built around expressing this central logic that others don’t have to lose for you to win.

So: you are a One in a world that’s becoming Zero.

And you have to recognize that.

You can’t dance or tiptoe around this issue anymore, which is the way that we’re taught to deal with it. To see these two orientations as “sides” which are somehow “equal” or what have you, to sort of ignore these stark differences, or brush them aside, and just try to “be friends” or some such thing, as if that’s really possible, given differences this big.

Let me say it again, now that you’re beginning to see how crucial it is. 

You Are a One In a World That’s Becoming Zero

We just discussed the first half of that sentence. Let’s now discuss the second. 

The world is becoming more Zero by the second.

Every single second, zero-sum thinking radicalizes, captures, converts, another poor soul. That is because our world is now composed of new shadow institutions, which are making people more foolish, to put it bluntly. For example, YouTube and TikTok and whatnot have replaced education and books, and of course, they algorithmically promote Zeroness.

Like I often joke, all I ever want to see on YouTube are videos about classic synthesizers, and lo, there it is, recommending to me something about how much I should hate women. Nice algorithm you’ve got there. But you can see what I mean in that tiny example.

Every second, Zeroness spreads in our world. Like a plague, frankly. More and more people believe these silly and foolish myths that they have to create losers in order to be winners. So young men buy myths from crackpots who tell them to be angry, domineering, maybe even rapey. Young women compete to show off the perfect face, life, etc. Demagogues teach the masses that the way out of their problems is nationalism, protectionism, tariffs, hate, rage…

Violence. 

What does Zeroness culminate in? Why do I describe in such stark terms, deride it as “stupid” and “foolish”? Is that “just my opinion”? Of course not. 

We know what it does, and how it ends.

It ends in war. World War. Along the way, it spreads conflict of every kind. The path there is made of Depression, capital-D. You can see now how those cheering on tariffs are suddenly baffled they’re going to have to pay the price.

Zeroness Doesn’t Work as an Anything

LOL. Idiots Sink With the Ship.

Don’t be one.

There’s an example there already, right? Which is that Zeroness doesn’t work.

It doesn’t work as an anything.

It doesn’t work, already, for the very people who are terrified of the inflation to be caused by the very tariffs they foolishly backed. Go ahead and chuckle, you deserve that much.

But that tells us, too, that it doesn’t work, for example, as an economy. Want another Great Depression? Cool, this is exactly how to start one, hello, has anyone ever read a book around here? 

Zeroness doesn’t work as an anything.

We know what it does.

Let me say it again. It just reproduces the worst periods in human history, like the 1930s. 

It doesn’t work as any of the following:

—A life philosophy

—A national strategy

—a set of values for an organization

—A vision for an economy, country, or corporation

It is a form of folly, in that sense, and folly is made of self-deceit. We know how the story of Zeroness ends, after all.

So why am I telling you all this? To help guide you in your approach to human relations, remember.

Not just to sort of theorize.

So now let’s come back to what Zeroness does to people.

People get seduced by Zeroness. They want to believe it, though they know better, yes, we’ve all heard of Hitler and World War Two, after all—because it helps soothe the pain in their lives, and right now, life is painful for all of us, except maybe trillionaires.

And as they get seduced by Zeroness, people change. Because Zeroness changes people.

It turns them into Zeros.

They tend to become hateful, ugly, maybe even say obscene things out loud, about how much they regard others as loser, parasites, nobodies, subhumans even. 

Their values change. They begin to value aggression, domination, and spite.

They express all that with increasing rage, and anger is their preferred mode of self-expression.

But I’m not just saying these are sort of angry, bitter people. It goes deeper than that.

If you believe that others have to lose for you to win, then of course, you begin devoting your life to making that happen. 

So you find ways to hurt, exploit, wound, damage people. People you consider beneath you in some way, because of course, you’re the “real” winner, and they’re the “real” losers, and your primary job in life is to redress that moral imbalance.

Have you noticed this sort of sequence or pattern in people you know over the last few years? Most of us would be kidding if we said we couldn’t think of at least one or two people we knew who went down this path. Many of us will know plenty more.

So what do we do about this?

If this is what the world is becoming, where does that leave us Ones?

Human Relations in an Age of Collapse, or Rescuing Your Life From Zeroness

Too often, us Ones have the wrong approach in a world of Zeros. 

We are the givers, healers, teachers. We’re the lovers, in a philosophical sense. And so we…keep on giving. We try to teach. We attempt to heal. We listen, and search for some chink of light or reason. We think maybe love is the answer, in some way.

And we get taken advantage of.

Zeros betray us, wound us, hurt us, maybe even cheat us, cheat on us, neglect us, humiliate us. Doesn’t matter.

This is the pattern you must now avoid. 

And if that part hasn’t happened yet? Count yourself lucky, because it will. A Zero can no more sort of avoid trying to hurt or exploit you in some way than a jackal won’t be a jackal, to employ the old proverb. A mindset, an orientation—leads to human action and defines human relations.

So now we Ones must employ a very different strategy when it comes to human relations in an age like this one.

We must do five things, in order

—Learn to recognize Zeroness.

—In people and in institutions.

—We must learn to discern Zeroness and Oneness, and use it to see the world anew.

—We must value and recognize ourselves as Ones, not Zeros.

—And we must go to great lengths now to separate ourselves from Zeros and Zeroness.

Zeros, in your life, are going to be the emotional vampires, the colleagues who don’t have your back, the bosses who betray you, the CEOs who destroy the company, the politicians who drive the nation into depression, and so on.

You must now learn to see Zeroness, distinguish who is a Zero, and sort of…separate yourself from them. I mean that in terms of both people and institutions.

This year? Personally? I did something sort of radical, for me, anyways. I ruthlessly cut Zeros out of my life. Bang, gone. One day, I just stopped. They were baffled. Even people in my neighborhood who’d known me for years—I just sort of stopped talking to them. They don’t understand why, and maybe they never will.

But the reason was simple. They’d ask me, over and over again, like everyone does, what’s going to happen next, what should I do, what about my life, etcetera. And I’d reply to them, amiably, like I do, with a joke, and a seed of truth. And they’d…never listen. They’d just sort of argue, or maybe stare blankly at me, or worse, smile at me, and I could see them thinking how much they hated so-and-so, or wished the worst on maybe this whole world of ours, just so they could have a rush of superiority for a moment.

And I thought to myself one day: you know what? I don’t have time for this. I’m the vampire, the sunlight can kill me, but this is a form of vampirism.

My life is infinitely better without Zeroness or Zeros in it. I don’t read dumbass newspaper articles, as another example, “debating” whether or not repeating the 1930s is a Great! Idea! Lol. So much better without this nonsense in it.

And as I think back over the year about the people who betrayed and hurt me, and this year, there were a lot, and many of them surprised me…they turned out, I realized, to all be Zeros.

So I cut Zeroness out of my life. Just surgically excised it. And my life is dramatically better.

It’s clearer. I have more room to think. Feel. Create. Do.

But more than that, I have more possibility now. Because I’m not wasting my time on people who don’t believe in it in the first place.

Now. I’m not saying you have to be as sort of ruthless as me. You can choose for yourself the limits you want to set, but that’s the point.

Now you must—must—create boundaries and limits. Points of limited contact. Between yourself and Zeros, yourself and Zeroness. To reclaim your agency in a world going haywire. To limit your risk in a world that’s imploding. To give yourself possibility again, and create a life worth living, while plenty of the kinds of people and institutions above Sink With the Ship.

Let me now distill all that.

You will never find your Havens if too much of your life is spent in, with, for, by, around, Zeros and Zeroness. 

When I put it that way, doesn’t it suddenly snap into perfect focus?

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