Your Relationship With a Collapsing World (and how to Change It)

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, welcome new ones, and many thanks to all, with a magic puppy hug from little Snowy.

We’ve been discussing a new set of principles for life, strategy, business, understanding, thinking, living, growing. We stopped last time at this: renegotiating your relationship with a world going haywire.

We’re going to keep talking about that today, because…

How’s your relationship with the world, anyways? Not good. Most of us right now are in a toxic relationship with it, a profoundly damaging, unhealthy, and unrealistic one. It feels bad to just exist right now, for most of us. Our relationship with a collapsing world can be summed up as: broken.

Our panic and shock are trying to teach us something: now it must change.

How do you find your Havens? How do you not Sink With the Ship? Many Won’t Make It, people, institutions, paradigms. These are some of the ideas we’ve been touching on. Now let’s continue making it more real.

Thank you also for all your many, many emails. Replies are beginning to go out this week to those who want to do sessions with me – thanks for the patience while I roll this out. You can email me at umairhaque at gmail if you want to be added to the list.

I’m going to discuss with you three new arts. Kinesis, Poeisis, and Synthesis. Kinesis we’ve touched on, and we’re now going to begin with the others. There are a few more, but these will get us started. 

Why We Have to Change Our Relationships With the World Now

When I say now you must renegotiate your (toxic) relationship with the world, that can feel opaque, daunting, and confusing. So I’m going to give you an example that will help. It’s not about a person, it’s about an institution. Two, in fact. And because it is, I think, it’ll help release some of those cobwebs in your mind, and make it much easier, maybe even make you laugh along the way.

Have you seen how much trouble Starbucks is in? It’s sort of funny, in a way. Because of course, Starbucks has one job, and it’s not a very difficult one. Make coffee, sell coffee. That’s it. This isn’t making airplanes or even cars or microchips. It’s just coffee.

And yet there it is, facing woes. Of its own making. We’ve all been to Starbucks lately, and we’ve all had the same experience, which goes like this. The coffee isn’t very good, and hasn’t been for a long time. The stores are hit and miss, a few are still nice, but many are sort of lifeless and decrepit. The people who work there aren’t often very happy, and can you blame them? 

This is obvious to millions upon millions of people, who are sort of turning away from Starbucks. But the funny thing is that those millions don’t apparently include the execs running Starbucks. They’re the only people on the planet who don’t know any of the above, that the coffee sucks, the stores don’t feel right, that it isn’t a happy and inviting vibe. The only ones! LOL.

Now. What’s the lesson here? What am I trying to teach you? 

We all have to renegotiate our relationships with the world now. It’s not just you. 

And yet most of us aren’t.

If something as huge and powerful as Starbucks does, that should put in perspective your challenge, too, which is now universal.

Now think of Starbucks again. 

What’s going to happen over the next ten years? We all know. Remember the principle I taught you called The Knowing? You know everything you need to know, only you ignore it, and we’ll come back to that, and ignoring it makes you end up in a cycle of reaction-bewilderment-panic.

Just like Starbucks.

So. Ten years. Climate change is going to skyrocket coffee prices to astronomical levels. You know that, I know that, we all know that, they know that. Meanwhile, the world is going to get much, much poorer, fast, as trade wars and conflicts emerge and boil over. Put those two together and what do you have?

Good luck selling $20 sucky coffee in a world going haywire to people getting poorer by the second. Not going to work out, is it? Luckily, Starbucks has a new CEO who sort of gets some of the above, if not all of it. And that’s the point.

We don’t know if Starbucks is going to go all the way. If it gets the challenge.

Which is renegotiating its relationship with the world. Will it go half way? That’s not going to work. You can’t half-measure this. You must go all the way. Think of that as another principle, which we’ll discuss more in the coming days: No More Half Measures.

We all know, too, what Starbucks should do. Just simplify the menu, make good coffee again, and give the stores a nice vibe, which means treating the people who work there a lot better, among other things. Not exactly rocket science. 

That’s a new relationship with the world. Not the sort of morose, depressing, and sad one it has now. Who really looks forward to going there? Maybe some do, but most don’t. This is about a warm, inviting, and uplifting relationship, and I mean that in a subtle sense, not just a naive one, think about the world then, again, in a deeper way.

Good basics are going to be in intense demand. Just a really good cup of coffee? In a pleasant place? the world we’re heading towards, that’s going to be something rare, that if you can provide people well, you’re going to do incredibly well.

Now you start to see what I’m trying to teach you a little bit. Renegotiating your relationship with the world.

Kinesis, Poesis, and Synthesis

That’s context. So how do we do it? Kinesis, Poeisis, and Synthesis. Let me now summarize them, and we’ll do another example to make them clearer.

—Kinesis: the art of acting decisively and confidently, as a habit, breaking the cycle of panic-bewilderment-despair

—Poesis: this is an old Greek word for creativity. I mean this in a deep way, and we’re about to discuss it.

—Synthesis: joining up resources and capabilities in new ways, to create breakthroughs you don’t think you’re capable of.

If you can do these three things? You Won’t Sink With the Ship. But if you can’t? It’s hard to imagine how you can do anything but. Remember the mental map. We’re on a ship. It’s heading for an iceberg, not just one, but a series of them. Atop the icebergs are people cheering on the ship sinking. Those on the ship, meanwhile, are bickering and squabbling, and maybe even picking fights with the lunatics on the bergs, instead of getting busy getting the hell off.

Don’t let that be you.

Where Power Comes From in an Age of Collapse

Now we’re going to discuss Poesis. 

Creativity, in the deep sense, and I don’t mean design, art, or film or books. I mean creating…your life…institutions…habits…practices…paradigms. I know that’s a little hard to grasp, so let’s do another example. 

It was my lovely wife who snapped me awake. Look, she said, have you seen this…awful thing? It’s the new Coke Christmas ad. It’s…all..AI. You’ve probably seen it by now, and it’s received just tons of blowback.

What a foolish mistake.

Small example, but big lessons. What would it’ve cost Coke to make a real Christmas ad? Pennies. Nothing. It saved a couple of million bucks, which to it, is literally less than the lint in your pocket. And right now? Imagine. We’re all in dire, desperate need of some Christmas cheer. The world is going haywire around us. People are shocked and panicked.

And there’s Coke, instead of seizing this opportunity, not even just blowing it, but making people sort of gawp in disgust at it. Amazing, no? 

Who thought this was a good idea?

The answer to that question goes like this. Coke’s consultants and ad agency sold it snake oil. Coke was foolish enough to listen to the wrong guys. They said, hey, people love AI. You know what everyone really wants for Christmas this year? No, not a puppy, a weird, creepy AI ad, to reinforce just how dystopian the world is these days. Always Coca-Cola, but with fake reindeer and sleighs and even an AI Santa. People are gonna love that.

See the mistake here?

No Poesis.

This is a small example, or is it? You know, for a company like Coke? A Christmas ad is a big deal. It is how you make a brand, and a brand is the most valuable asset a company has, period, ever. So for a tiny, tiny investment, Coke could have built its. Instead, it did huge amounts of damage—doesn’t it actually make you want to drink Coke less? Don’t you remember it, but not in the right way?

This was an opportunity for creativity. Here, in the small sense: how do we make a little thing that reaches people in this moment of despair, panic, confusion? How do we say to them, hey, we’re an institution that respects you and wants the best for you? Instead, it gave up on the challenge of creativity, and…

Embraced the Lowest-Common-Denominator.

Now. That’s often a theme in life, especially with Big Corporations, but there’s a Huge Mistake in there in times like these.

Can you see it yet?

In times like these, the Lowest Common Denominator is sinking. Plummeting. Right past the bottom. Every single day.

And so if that’s all you’re going to sort of aim for, aspire to, accept, be willing to achieve, then, my friend…

You are going to Sink With the Ship.

That’s even true for Coke. It can get away with one ad like this. But just one. Even one has damaged its brand incredibly badly. Ten? It’s stock will crater. It’s CEO will be fired. 

Bang, now you’re Sinking With the Ship.

Don’t let this happen to you.

Now you must keep this spectrum in your mind at all times.

On one end, there’s Poesis. The real thing. Deep creativity. On the other, there’s the Lowest Common Denominator. And it’s falling further and faster every day. For Coke, it meant AI ads. In politics, we alll know what it means by now. In your life, it could mean a lot of things, from poor relationships, to a lack of commitment, to not enough focus, to being timid and passive as the world collapses around us.

You must renegotiate your relationship with the world. You do that through Poesis. Remember Coke’s lesson here: embracing the Lowest Common Denominator doesn’t reinvent your relationship with the world in an age like this. It just makes you a passive victim—it makes a fool of you.

You must be creative now, in deep ways, to reinvent your relationship with the world. You shouldn’t have the one you do now—none of us should. Despair, panic, bewilderment. Our relationship with the world should be one of confidence, poise, grace, empowerment, and impact. 

We must reclaim our agency. We must take steps to regain powers, or an imploding world will overpower us, financially, economically, socially, morally, politically, environmentally.

Coke gave up its agency. Starbucks made that mistake, too.

Do you see the links in these lessons yet, and how they apply to you?

Poesis, creativity, impact, confidence. Kinesis, action, habit, empowerment. Synthesis—we’ll handle that one in upcoming essays, but you have a hint of it already, joining up what you have in new ways, to achieve breakthroughs, instead of focusing on what you don’t have or “can’t” do.

The Fundamental Choice You Must Make, and The One Mistake You Can’t

Now let me focus on the crucial mistake you cannot make, that’s in the examples above. I highlight these examples because Coke and Starbucks are two of the world’s most powerful institutions, and yet they made the simplest mistake of all.

They ceded their agency.

Coke gave away its agency to—and this is almost laughable—AI. Imagine. When I put it that way, it makes you shake your head. LOL—why would you do that? 

Starbucks, like many institutions, gave away its agency to all kinds of consultants or who have you, that told it things were awesome, fine, great, and no, people didn’t think its coffee sucked and its stores had lost their souls. 

It’s easy to give your agency away. And it’s never been more seductive. This is what the root of the appeal of all the demagogues is about, no? Please, fix it for me. Make my decisions for me. Take my agency.

But like we’ve discussed, it’s true on every “side,” because it’s a universal in times like these. The Democrats gave away their agency to amateur-hour consultants and “marketers” who’d never advertised so much as a soda or coffee even, and we all know how that ended up.

Why does giving your agency away end so badly?

For a very simple reason, but I want you to really take a moment to recognize it. To appreciate it. To let it resound in you.

If the Ship is Sinking, and you give your agency away, where do you think you’re going to end up?

When I put it that way, doesn’t it become a lot more obvious? Almost funny?

You Can’t Change the Ship or the Iceberg. But You Can Change Your Relationship To Them

You must have a realistic relationship with the world now, and we’ll talk about that more. Not an idealized one, not a fantasy one. The world, our world, is now not capable of what it once used to be, because people are making self-destructive choices, whether to Sink with the Ship, or cheering it all on from the very icebergs they’ve towed into its path. 

A realistic relationship means understanding all this, in this way: if the Ship is Sinking, and you cede your agency, as they have all done, where will you end up? Right alongside them, because both those on the bergs and on the ship are going to end up at the bottom. 

You can’t change that now. Nobody can.

But you can change your relationship to it.

A Paradigm for Reinvention in an Age of Collapse

So you must understand the links between these principles now, which should begin to form a paradigm in your mind. If the Ship is Sinking, and I am a smart, intelligent, thoughtful person, I’ve read enough history to know how times like these end, what they culminate in—if that’s happening, but I cede my agency,  where will I inevitably end up?

Recognize all the power and strength you already have. See yourself as the person you truly are. Intelligent, determined, thoughtful, courageous, knowledgeable. You made it here, didn’t you? The panic and shock and despair of now is not what defines you, and it is not what will determine your future, unless you let it.

This is a choice, too, even though for many, it doesn’t feel like one. Giving away your agency is in many ways the only remaining point of our institutions and leaders. They all want the same thing from us, really, in a way, which is not to be authors of our own possibilities, but to live shrunken, reduced lives, in which they make our choices for us, and those choices usually involve exploiting, hurting, or betraying us.

The Ship is Sinking, but hey, some of the captains are getting really rich by telling the passengers it’s going to be OK, day after day, hour by hour. Go ahead and laugh, because that’s just as foolish as it sounds. They’re going down with it, too.

This is a choice. 

Now, you must make it. Either you give your agency away, or you take it back, and expand it.

Giving your agency is letting yourself be made a fool of. And that can happen in almost invisible ways—like accepting the Lowest Common Denominator. If Coke did it, then of course so can the average person. It can happen in gradual and creeping ways, like Starbucks execs being the only people on the planet who Could’t Have Seen This Coming. 

You mustn’t let it happen to you.

We’re going to delve much deeper into Kinesis, Poesis, and Synthesis, and develop roadmaps and frameworks, so you can begin employing these lessons, and finding, creating, discovering your Havens. So you don’t Sink With the Ship.

But right now, you must start with the basic choices, which now confront all of us. Many Won’t Make It, remember. Some will be unfortunate, trapped in the galleys and lower decks. But many will have the power to choose, and choose unwisely. You must begin from a place of strength, wisdom, confidence, and courage. Breathe and let the panic, despair, and shock go now.

The future, your future, now begins with the choice. And you must make it actively, over and over, every day, until it isn’t a choice anymore, but a way.

❤️ 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!