The Point of Your Life Right Now is to Change It, or Human Possibility in the 2020s

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Hi! How’s everyone? Welcome back old friends, welcome new ones, and here’s little Snowy saying hi with a funny puppy grin.

Today we’re going to continue our discussions about…

How to live in a world going haywire.

I’ve been talking you through a number of concepts that I think will help you renegotiate your relationship with the world. So that you don’t Sink With the Ship. Havens, Transformational Intelligence, Liberation Thinking, and quite a few more.

I hope these are helping you guys. Work with them, sit with them, just let them change how you think and feel. 

Today I’m going to share with you a question that begins to unify all these big-picture concepts. 

It’s a very simple one, but it’s going to cut deep, and after I tell you just what this question is, I’m going to first discuss why it matters so very much, right now, and then we’re going to discuss “answering” it, which is more exploring, discovering, and revealing it. 

That’s all going to make more sense in just a moment. First, the question.

What really matters to you?

Like I said, a simple question. But answering it well is the only way, let me repeat, the only way, that you’re not going to Sink With the Ship.

Why?

Approaching the Extinction Level of Human Possibility

You see, the world is now beginning to change dramatically. Not for the better. In five years, it’s going to be unrecognizable.

We are now experiencing a number of Extinction Level Events. I don’t mean this in a paleontological way, no, I’m not saying we’re living in a Hollywood disaster blockbuster. I mean it at an institutional level, at a system level, and it’s no less true, and in many ways, even more real, for the very reason that it’s more mundane. 

We’re already beginning to experience a number of Extinction Level Events, and they’re going to continue, sadly. Many, many people are going to Sink With the Ship, this is the principle of Most Won’t Make It. They’ll be financially, emotionally, socially, and professional shattered, broken, ruined, destroyed.

By what?

—By the ongoing extinction of democracy

—By the sudden extinction of white-collar jobs

—By the accelerating extinction of the traditional “career”

—By the extinction of upward mobility, which becomes that of mobility, period

—By the extinction of the global economy, which make no mistake, currently has no sources of growth stretching into the future

—By the extinction of what all this implies, which is social norms and values going mega-regressive

—By the extinction of the many things that we regard as civilized or livable societies, as systems and institutions turn hostile and ultra predatory

Many Won’t Make It. Along this path? Don’t kid yourself. If you think for a second I exaggerate, I urge you to remember how all my predictions came true, even over the last few months. While the usual suspects were, as they always are, wrong. That’s not point scoring, I’m trying to underscore the severity of what is about to hit your life. So let me try that again.

Many Won’t Make It along this dark, twisted path of stupidity, of folly, of ruin. Who makes it, as economies slide into oligarchy? The point of oligarchy is to take what few remaining things you have. It goes beyond merely shrinking incomes, to seizing assets, in whatever ways the law can be twisted. Who makes it, as nations slink into autocracy? Certainly not professionals, but those who can fit into predatory power structures. Who makes it, as global economies crater into depression, even if that’s not what it’s “called,” because of course economics doesn’t have a word for “five guys got rich enough to buy the planet, but young people can’t afford a place to live?

Maybe you see my point, and in fact I’m making several, the first of which is that you had better snap out of it. It’s fine to read the NYT or the Atlantic or watch CNN or whatever for entertainment, we all do it. But if you plan your life around this form of entertainment? You will be absolutely crushed.

We’re now approaching what I call the Extinction Level of Human Possibility, and if you think I’m kidding, ask yourself what positive possibilities most people these days feel their lives hold anymore. Many? Any? 

So…these days…don’t you wish you’d listened to me five years? Ten? How much better, stabler, nicer, saner would your life be right now? Again, that’s not a plea, it’s sort of said with a chuckle. Fools are going to perish very shortly, and that doesn’t mean die at the point of a gun, but it does mean losing more or less everything that they care about.

Bang. Bang. Bang. These dire transformations, collapses, involutions, are all bullets aimed squarely at you. And you had better learn to outrun them, or to avoid them, and that takes a certain kind of magic, wisdom, knowing, practice.

Which I’m trying to teach you. But the first thing you have to understand now, and I hammer away at this because it matters so intensely, is how real the stakes are. Right now. Once this window closes, where you can still change your life, future, choices? That’s it, game over.

We’ve already made that mistake civilizationally in certain ways. We’ve decided to do nothing about climate change, so we are going to get dramatically poorer. We’ve decided that post-Roman levels of inequality are OK, so today’s young generations will never really have a chance. We’ve decided democracy is for the birds, and so here we are, our futures being shredded, and we’re helpless to stop it.

What you can still change is your life.

But only for a brief period. The next five years, maybe less, depending on where you are, and how much you have, really, not to mince words. After that? Everything is done. Things are locked into place. If you’ve been foolish enough to stay, for example, in a place with a dying economy and polity, then you are going to be there for the rest of your life. Remember how hard it was to escape the Soviet Union? That’s the kind of world we’re going to be living not so far from now, and I understand that some people will react to that with a scoff, but their track records at predicting the future are probably less than zero.

In the world that’s coming, your agency is going to shrink to zero, because that is the point of all these dramatic changes. And you had better outrun and escape that while there’s still time.

Now. All that sounds dramatic, and make no mistake, it is.

But the answer isn’t to panic. It’s not not to panic, either, as we’ve discussed. It’s to listen to your panic, shock, and grief. What are they telling you? To change what you can, as fast as you can, right now.

How do you do that? You can employ the many concepts I’ve given you, and of course here, we’re not talking at the level of self-help anymore, which might make you feel better about living through a Great Depression in a New Soviet Union, yay, I guess, but that isn’t going to change it. 

The Point of Your Life Right Now is to Change It

The point of your life right now is to change it.

Understand that. Sit with it. Reflect on it. Let it enter you in a deep and abiding way. I know so, so many people right now, who are sitting around, wondering glumly: what’s the point of my life anymore?

So many. There are my unemployed friends. There are my underemployed friends. There are my friends who’ve devoted themselves to noble ideas and ideals. There are the tons of young people I meet at the cafe, desperate for a chance.

The world is full of people right now wondering: what is even the point of my life anymore? I understand those stresses, those pressures, the ones contained in that question. So let’s go back to Extinction Level Events now, so that you can understand those stresses and pressures, instead of repeating this question, over and over again, and pretending to be happy, normal, and fine.

What is even the point of my life anymore? I can’t get a job, my career destabilized, I can’t rise up the ladder, upward mobility’s dead, I’ll never have a life remotely as good as my parents, I can’t get my foot in the door, what do I do with what I’ve managed to save, how do I orient myself anymore in a world where nothing real or meaningful seems to matter?

What is even the point of my life anymore?

The point of your life right now is to change it.

This is true for everyone over the next five years. Only some people don’t know it, because they don’t have a teacher, to help them understand it. This is the point of everyone’s life now, over this time period. Our challenge, all of us, even if we don’t agree with it, remains just this, to change our lives. Because of course those who think all this is going to end well are going to be the very first to Sink With the Ship.

So the point of everyone’s life right now is to change it. Everyone, and I really mean everyone. Every single person on this planet, because like we’ve been discussing, after the next five years, you won’t have much agency, and then you’ll be stuck, and you really don’t want to be stuck in an extinct career, a dead economy, a collapsed society, etcetera. 

So I want you to grasp this teaching. Really understand it. The truth of it and the power of it. Again, we’re not talking at a self-help level. I’m not trying to make you feel better about a shit life in a shit age in a troubled world. I’m trying to give you the confidence, knowledge, wisdom, and tools not to have one.

And that begins by making this your mantra, if you need one, or at least something you tell yourself until it sinks in.

I don’t know a single person for whom this isn’t true, and I don’t care how successful they think they are. Plenty of powerful people come to me, they’re my friends, blah blah, whatever. This applies to everyone, even them, especially them. Because in many ways, they are even more vulnerable and exposed to collapse and decline and implosion. So if you think you’re above this? That’s a measure of your own self-deceit, and I strongly encourage you to think again.

Now let’s come back to the question that’s going to help you do this.

What Do You Really Care About?

You see, this isn’t a complex question.

But it’s a hard one.

Let me give you my own example. I care about my little family, my investments, you guys, and creativity, which for me means music and writing.

And that’s it.

Some things are things I used to care about. But now? I have to let them go. I can’t care about democracy anymore. It’s over. I can’t waste my life on it. Not one second of time, not one ounce of energy. I did what I could, famously, they didn’t listen, and then they got super fucked. Now? I chuckle.

I’m not saying you have to make the same choice I did. But I am saying you have to make such choices.

So what do you really care about?

Right now, you have to let everything else go. I’ve told you how I basically stopped talking to people who just drain my energy and time with nonsense “debates” once they know I’m sort of famous or what have you. Hey, is your life a game, dummy? Mine isn’t. 

Do you really care…really care…about Netflix? TikTok? Amazon Prime? Come on now. But you’re beginning to see what I mean a little bit. How about escapist fantasies, or consumerist stuff, or wishful thinking? Or do you really care about music, art, fashion, science, literature, the real things? How about friends, family, money, and career? But where are you investing the most, in and of what you do have, which is time, attention, energy, ideas, focus?

So first you have to answer this question, and I mean really answer it in a mature and adult way. Not in a childish one. Nope. You can’t care about everything, or even that many things, not in any serious way. You have to choose. And if you try not to choose, or don’t want to, if you’re careless about what you really care about, you’re going to end up with a lack of focus, discipline, determination, or worse, end up in the panic-bewilderment-despair spiral that typifies now. You’ll be paralyzed, and be left unable to change.

So your answer is going to have to be short. In this life? As fragile, limited human beings? We can care about a very, very small number of things. Three to five, I’d say, at a time, and that’s it.

Let’s do a few combos to make it clear. Family, career, money, friends. Career, stuff, accomplishments, accolades. Knowledge, learning, family, research. Creativity, family, breakthroughs, accomplishments. 

Make a little more sense?

You have to be ruthless now about the fact that you are human. And that means that if you attempt to care about too much, in an age like this, you’ll fall at caring for any of it very well. You’ll break, burn out, be irresponsible, inattentive, negligent. Just can’t be done, as stressful as life already is right now. 

That also means that if you care about the wrong things, you will suffer mightily for it, too. Care about a quick buck over safe investments? You are going to get absolutely shattered as the transition to oligarchy proper happens. Care about disposable stuff over friends, family, and relationships? Good luck, you’re going to need it. Care intensely about a society that can’t be saved, or institutions that don’t give a damn about you? I extend my hat to you, good sir and or madam. In fact, take it, because you’re going to be underwater soon.

So you have to answer this question, and answer it well.

You have to think through your answer, and ask yourself, over and over again: is it a good one?

And as you think through it, you have to understand that we all have an answer to this question. That we’re already living. It’s revealed in our actions and choices. Think you care about your family and friends over stuff, but in fact barely spend any time with them? Guess what, what you really care about isn’t them at all.

So you have to ruthless in understanding your true answer to this question, and how it’s revealed by your choices and actions and habits. 

Then you can begin to change all those. Just say to yourself: how can I invest more in what does matter, and less in what doesn’t?

And as you do that, I promise you, even tiny, tiny changes will make dramatic, often transformational differences.

But if you lie to yourself along this process, and say, hey, my answer is great, doesn’t need any work, everything’s fine, or worse, lie to yourself about what you think your answer is, when in fact your behavior’s very different, then of course, it won’t work.

And you will likely end up Sinking With the Ship.

Because caring too much about the wrong stuff these days is a recipe for being far, far too vulnerable to collapse, implosion, and decline. “The wrong stuff.” Am I being judgmental? Sure I am. We all make mistakes, and of course, the world has changed very, very fast.

The Price of Bad Investments is Going Up, or, Sinking With the Ship

Ten years ago? Nobody’d blame you for caring about your career, but today, it might well be going extinct. Nobody’s fault you for thinking expensive stuff showed off how accomplished you were, except maybe hardcore leftists, but today? LOL, hello, welcome back to Rome. Nobody’d blame you for saying, I can put my family and friends last for a while, while I try to make something of myself. But now?

You see my point a little. Now, your answers have to be very different than they were before, in an age that was stable, in which we could get away with more mistakes, frivolity, bad investments of time, attention, and energy, whether in people, institutions, or financial assets. 

Who can afford any of that today? But that pattern will continue to hold true. Bad investments will become absolutely ruinous over the next few years, because a more volatile world means exactly that—their price will be higher. Think of all those who’ve placed their trust in, invested their lives in, demagogues and crackpots. How do you think it’s going to turn out for them a few years from now? Exactly—the price of bad investments is going up.

So you have to grapple with this question. 

What really matters to you. It doesn’t matter what the answers are, as long as they’re good ones, and there’s a long, long list of those. There’s a long list of bad ones, too, and the distinction between them is pretty obvious. But you will only unearth it and have this moment of oh-shit-I-need-to-change-this-right-now if you engage with the question.

If you don’’t, you’ll sleepwalk right into oblivion, as the world’s doing.

The price of bad investments is going up, but those who Sink With the Ship are going to find out too late. Once they’re already ruined. By bad investments in people, institutions, systems, figures, leaders, financial assets, doesn’t matter—the principle remains the same, and that’s what I want to teach you.

That’s a lot! Chew on it. Just let it sink in unconsciously. The rational mind loves to try to deny, minimize, argue it all away. But this is our reality, and in it, this is your life.

Be confident. Be tough. Be strong. Be kind to yourself. Don’t panic. I’m here to teach you.

The point of your life right now is to change it.

That’s true for everyone.

And the way you do that is by asking yourself: what really matters to me? How can I live in such a way that I invest more in it, and less in what doesn’t? Because in a troubled, destabilized world, the price of bad investments, whether in people, institutions, leaders, or even yourself, is going up, exponentially, and that is how we Sink With the Ship.

Lots of love,

Umair (and Snowy!)

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