Dec 12, 2024 11 min read

What it Takes to Master a Collapsing World

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, many thanks to all, and here’s a big Monday hug from little Snowy.

We’ve been discussing principles to orient ourselves in an age of collapse. How not to Sink With the Ship, transcending the reaction-bewilderment-panic spiral so many are trapped in, that Many Won’t Make It, and forging a new relationship between you and the world. Where you are not a passive victim anymore of this age of ruin, like so many people and institutions. One where you reclaim the agency to make the most of your life, business, relationships, more.

Apologies to be a little slow. I had to spend a few days with a very sick friend at the hospital. That’s delaying responses to you about booking sessions with me. Not to worry, everyone will receive a reply. It’ll take me a bit, there’s only one of me! Many thanks for the overwhelming interest, you can email me at umairhaque at gmail. I think we might do group sessions or meetings too, let me know if you’d be interested.

We’ve talked a little about three pragmatic principles, practices. Kinesis, Poesis, and Synthesis.

Today we’re going to discuss the more mysterious of these three, Synthesis, and tomorrow, we’ll dig into Poesis.

Now. What do I mean by “Synthesis”? What does it have to do with you not Sinking With the Ship?

Who Are You in a Collapsing World?

I want you to repeat after me.

I am not defined by my panic, fear, or despair.

I am not defined by it.

Many things define me. But not these. These are fleeting, evanescent, reactions. The things, qualities, elements, which define me are what give me agency.

That is the beginning of Synthesis.

Now. When I say Synthesis, I mean that you are going to have to now synthesize the many parts of you in a new way, to forge a confident, assured, poised, wise, constructive relationship with a collapsing world. If you don’t do that, then you will go on being a victim of it. You may be a passive victim of it, trapped in the reaction-bewilderment-panic spiral. Or worse, I think, you may be an active victim of it, destroying your very own future through foolish choices.

Either of these attitudes are Disintegrative. By that, I mean, they don’t synthesize the parts of a person in a constructive, confident, and powerful way. In one form, they make passive victims of people, in the other, they make active victims of people. Both are paths to self-deceit and self-destruction.

Many Won’’t Make It, remember?

And remember, too, that we’re not just talking about people. But also institutions. And I give you institutional examples because they make the stakes and scope before us much, much clearer.

Take a look at how many corporations are trapped in the panic-bewilderment-reaction spiral. It’s a long and growing list. They don’t know what to do. They flail and fumble. Some of the world’s most powerful brands, many of them, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Intel, are on this list now.

So too are the Dems. They are failing to Synthesize a new relationship with the world. They did fail to do it, and that’s why they lost the election. They failed at that because they were passive victims, or made to be passive victims, listening to the kinds of podcasters and bloggers and whatnot who don’t actually know much about the world or history, but are confident in their ignorance nonetheless. The results were catastrophic, to say the least.

This is the challenge—and necessity—of Synthesis.

Synthesizing a Life in an Age of Collapse, or Not Sinking With the Ship

Now. I know that still sounds mysterious, so let me now make it much, much more concrete for you.

Because none of this is an intellectual game. Always remember that. We are talking about your life. It is the most valuable thing in the world. Do not play games with it. You will end being made a fool of, like those on the list above, and many more to come.

So. Let’s go back to my little…saying. I won’t say “mantra” because I don’t think it is one, it’s just a way to think. About yourself.

My fear, panic, and despair do not define me. They are reactions. What defines me is what gives me agency.

So. What is it that “defines” you?

Let me backtrack. There is nobody in the world today who is not feeling some level of panic, fear, or despair. No, not even the ultra rich and so on. This is a universal wave. We are all feeling these emotions. Not only do the statistics show it, so does a cursory glance at reality. War grows, CEOs are gunned down in the streets, and people celebrate, millions worry that they have lost their futures, and lash out it in despair, wreaking chaos, democracy implodes.

This is where we are now.

Do not play games of self-deceit. You can’t grow if you are busy lying to yourself, just so you put on a happy face for others. You don’t have to lie to me. And anybody you have to lie to? They should not be part of your life anymore.

Remember how we talked about Containment, setting boundaries, so that you can be an agent, not a passive victim? If you’re busy lying to people, putting on a happy face, or a pretty one, or a prosperous one, guess what, they are taking away your agency. You can and should think twice about how much time and energy you will spend on them, because every second you do leaves you less capable of…

Not Sinking With The. You know.

Synthesizing a New Self-Definition, or Not Being a Passive Victim of a Collapsing World Anymore

So what does define you?

If you’ve made your way here, I know a few things about you. You are smart. You are tough. You are brave. You’re intelligent, and you’ve read a lot. You’ve studied history. You are a good person, too, in a modern sense, and you believe in ideals like freedom and justice and truth and peace.

I know these things about you because let’s face it, if you weren’t any of these things, you never would have found me, much less be reading an of this.

These are some things that define you.

When I talk about Synthesis as the art of self-definition in a collapsing world, I mean it in this way. Now you must take your resources and competencies. And synthesize them in a new way. That maximizes your agency, and minimizes your risk.

What forms of risk have we talked about? One big one is OPS, Other People’s Stupidity. If you’re busy trying to “debate” people who believe in their own destruction and ruin, how are you ever going to maximize your own agency? Don’t lie to yourself. Don’t waste your time. Your gut is saying you don’t have much, and it is right. Always right, or at least righter than your mind, in times like these.

So. Your resources and competencies. What I’ve sketched out for you above are some that you already have.

You are already all these things.

Smart. Intelligent. Thought. Thoughtful. Caring. Wise. Kind. Determined.

You are these things. I know that, and I see it, and now you must know it, and recognize it, more and more, in order to give yourself a renewed sense of confidence, purpose, and power.

Why Your Old Sense of Self Doesn’t Work Anymore

You already are these things. So why doesn’t it feel like it? Like they’re sort of buried or weak or enfeebled somehow? Our institutions, culture, and societies now are designed to rob us of these things. We often say “the game is rigged” or what have you and in many senses, it’s true. No matter how determined or intelligent or tough you are, get denied healthcare when a loved one has a serious illness, and you feel crushed. This is why people celebrated the death of said CEO, and I’m not saying that’s right, I’m just observing.

Now. The worse the world gets, the worse you feel. I know that, because it happens to me, too.

What is the solution to this mess? The solution can’t be: well, everything’s failing, and the world is getting worse, and systems already designed to cheat me of agency, power, and purpose are doubling down by the day, so, guess what, I’m just going to feel worse and worse.

The answer must be to recognize the things you already are. More and more so, every day. Because that is how you regain your sense of selfhood in an age of ruin.

To do that, you must reconstruct your sense of self.

This is how deep the challenge goes. It isn’t a minor one, it’s a major one. It isn’t easy, it’s hard. But it is so, so necessary, because if you don’t do it, you will be one of the many who Don’t Make It. And that applies to institutions as much as people. Do you think a company like Starbucks is going to be around in a decade if it doesn’t reconstruct its sense of self? Maybe, but in a much diminished form. The same is true for you.

That means beginning with the exercise I’ve sketched out for you above. But not just repeating my words. Really feeling them, understanding them, grasping them. Letting them Synthesize a new self for you, and that part is up to you.

I am not defined by my fear, panic, or despair. They are reactions. What defines me is what gives me agency.

The world is wracked by fear, panic, and despair, and it is causing the world to lose its mind, its purpose, its agency, everything that mattered to it once, from peace to democracy to truth. I will not go down that road with it.

I will make a better choice.

What defines me is…

And then you think. Think long and hard. Don’t just sort of answer the question glibly. You must really recognize in yourself these qualities you already posses, whether intelligence, wisdom, determination, toughness—doesn’t matter. I know you have them, but you must know now, and every day, you must know that self more and more, until it is the only self there is.

That doesn’t mean you bury or deny or diminish the small, scared parts of you. We all have those. But it does mean that they now exist in a different relationship to the rest of you and the world. It means they don’t call the shots. It means you recognize them as what they are: ghosts and demons, little withered things, terrified and beaten, who are always telling you, no, you mustn’t, what if we get hurt, what if we are even more scared? But you are already hurt and scared.

Now the adult parts of you must take control. Take charge. To do that, you must recognize and value them in ways that most of us don’t. Because the world is a mess, and we’re told to stay trapped in our reactive, infantile, juvenile selves. Isn’t that what TikTok is—go ahead and chuckle. But isn’t it also what Netflix is, what doomscrolling is, what endless online shopping is? I’m not saying those things are wrong. I’m saying that your relationship with the world must now mature and grow.

That is what a new self-definition is.

(How to Begin) Constructing Your Life in an Age of Collapse

And to do that, you must genuinely value, celebrate, recognize, these undervalued and under-recognized and underestimated parts of you. They are already in you.

But because our culture is what it is, and our world is what it is, they are under-ed, underestimated, undervalued, etcetera. We don’t recognize these parts of ourselves nearly enough—I am smart, determined, wise, courageous.

I can make hard decisions and act. That’s Kinesis.

I can create new choices. That’s Poesis.

I can understand the world around me, not panic, not react, and not engage in self-deceit. That’s Noesis, and it’s one we’ll discuss later.

This is a confident relationship with the world. Whether in terms of money, relationships, careers, finances, doesn’t matter. The point is the nature of the relationship. It’s a powerful one, rich in purpose, that has far greater chances of making it, of forging a life that goes somewhere instead of down, down, down.

I want you to see the links. Only when you begin to forge a self-definition in which your underestimated and underwanted and underrecognized parts are given more control and power and responsibility and freedom will you begin to have agency again.

Otherwise, you will be either a passive victim of a collapsing world, or an active victim of one.

Underwanted. What do I mean by that? These days, if you say to someone, hey, man, I can’t take this anymore, in fact, I won’t live like this anymore. I am going to do this, this, and this. I know I’m smart enough, tough enough, wise enough to make this happen. What will they say?

Most people will try to talk you out of it.

That is because their own fears are now being used to constrain you. Hey, what if they succeed, this other person thinks? What does that make me?

Meanwhile, our failing institutions tell us that being powerful, responsible, tough, wise, intelligent, determined—these aren’t things to want to be. We should just be fools, basically, consuming ourselves to amusement while the world goes on imploding around us. We are just to be passive spectators of an age of ruin. But that way lies your life, over, faster than you know.

So in all these ways, these parts of us, the mature, adult ones, the very ones we need the most right now—they end up underestimated, underwanted, and underrecognized. And that is how most of us end up in trapped in the reactive cycle of panic-bewiilderment-shock, usually followed by either passivity, or worse, self-destructive decisions, like wanting lower prices but LOL, backing sky-high tariffs, as a simple example.

That is why I’ve designed this exercise for you. It’s not a game. It’s not hypothetical, it’s not a mantra, it’s not designed to divert or amuse you. It’s designed to help you create the self you need to be right now to survive a collapsing world, and go on maybe even having a pretty good life. A self which can make wise decisions about money, relationships, careers, finances, where to live and what to do—and not be dragged down by fools, by those who choose self-destruction, by those who want to stay trapped by the Lowest Common Denominator.

Getting Serious About Change (Without the BS and Drama and Mystery)

Your challenge is Not Sinking With the Ship. Maybe a few months ago, even, when I said that, you chuckled. How many are still laughing now? You can see how serious things are, your gut knows, it’s crying out to you every single day: change, change, change.

This is how you begin to change. Change, in this sense, is often portrayed as a mysterious process. Go meditate! Go contemplate! For years! Hey, read this ancient book a hundred times. Nope. Those help, sure. But it’s much more pragmatic than that. Here, I’ve given you a little key. Use it. Make it a habit.

If you use it three times, it will be exponentially less powerful than if you use it ten times. If you use it every day for a month, I can all but guarantee that you will begin to change. Not in some soft sense, but in a hard one. You will develop a sense of power and purpose you have rarely felt before, but that everyone needs now.

OK? I’m not trying to be a motivational speaker, LOL. But I am trying to teach you. Whether or not you want to learn is up to you. The world is now going to absolutely wreck those who can’t negotiate a new relationships with it—isn’t it already? Get started now. Change.

This is the message in your panic, but it’s not the message of your panic. The message of your panic is that you can be the self who transcends this chaos, because it’s already in you, but you must free it now. Those who don’t? You can see what’s already happening to them, again, both people and institutions, and it isn’t pretty.

That’s a little intro to Synthesis. Link it with Kinesis—action. Poesis—creation. Read all this carefully, and use it. We’re way past the point of intellectual games now. Does this look like a New York Times opinion column? This is about your life. And whether or not you make it.