Nov 12, 2024 8 min read

The Rupture

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? Stressed, upset, and worried, I’d bet.

Today, we have the difficult task of discussing what lies ahead. (Thank you for the great questions – I'll be addressing them in the next few articles.)

This is necessary. Right now, there’s a lack of clarity of thought. But there has rarely been greater urgency.

Don’t read this if it’s going to upset you. I’m not going to mince words. You deserve better than that.

We are about to enter a period of history I’ve come to call The Rupture.

(I know, The Rapture’s taken, so go ahead and chuckle with me.)

The Rupture will be an explosive, violent, and sudden undoing. It will last from five to ten years.

It will culminate, most likely, in implosion, atrocity, and world war.

I know how this sounds. I don’t want to write sentences like the above. They’re ugly and obscene. But I owe it to you, especially long-time friends, to help you think clearly. If you want to doubt me, by all means do so, but I wonder: how’s that working out lately?

The Rupture

First I want to explain what is going to rupture.

All of the following things, and more besides.

World trade and trading blocs
Economies
Stability (what’s left of it)
Societies and bonds
Norms and values
Generations
Institutions (what’s left of them, right down to banks, insurance, companies, not just governments)
Peace
A lot of people’s lives

These are now going to come undone with lightning speed. The ferocity and intensity with which they will rupture is going to take many by surprise. If you’re one of the people who “doesn’t believe me,” let me try to caution you. This isn’t my message. I don’t have a message. This is history’s message.

These ruptures will not obey the mental models that we’ve come to believe in. Linearity, incrementalism, normalcy in both the statistical and the social sense. They will be true discontinuities. The lines will break and shatter, suddenly, just like that, explosively, and incredibly violently.

Together, these ruptures will feed on one another.

Now. Why do I say this?

I want you to think about history’s message for us.

What is it?

What happens in times like these? What is the natural, almost inevitable consequence of the trends now dominant in our world?

We have never had a period in history, macro or micro, meaning global history, or local history, in which the trends that are visibly at work now didn’t result in the sequence of atrocity-war-ruin. This is where such trends end. The last couple of times such trends became dominant, the result was World War.

There is not a single counter-example so far as I know. Perhaps a few very, very small outliers, at very small scales. But when a world goes the way ours has gone?

The Future is Now Written, and None of Us Can Change It

The future is now deterministic.

None of this is about certain leaders. Figures. Of this type or that. It has very little to do with them now. Nobody can change it now, no matter how powerful they are. This isn’t about an election here or there, it’s not about politics at all in the mundane, wearying sense. It is just about civilizations and how they endure, or how they rupture.

We have made our choices as a world, as societies, and as people.

They have not been wise ones.

And now we are past the point of no return.

In that sense, the future is now determined.

Let me ask you the question I just did again. When periods in history see trends like ours, what is the almost inevitable result?

So the future is now clockwork. It is going to happen.

There is nothing that any of us can do about it now. Not you, not me, not our leaders, whether you think they are good or bad. Even that doesn’t matter now.

Our leaders are now caught in the grip of historical forces much, much larger than them.

I’ve explained how dynamics and trends like our world’s and ages tend to play out, but let me do so again briefly. Stagnation divides nations, and provokes trade wars, retaliation, purges, cleansing. All of that becomes conflict. Conflicts escalate. Wars break out. For dominance, resources, advantage, the restoration of lost fortune and glory.

That’s just the classic pattern.

In our age, there are exacerbating factors that make it even more likely.

We are now facing mega-scale climate impacts, which will make inflation and stagnation even more severe.
A generation of young people is turning militant, in the way that happens just before wars.
The ideals and institutions of peace and justice are slowly shattering, and I don’t need to give you the obvious examples.

So. Even bad leaders who want to be good will not be able to resist what is going to happen next. Even if they want to pull back from the brink, they will likely not be able to. The pressures on them will be too great, too grave, impossible to resist. How do you solve a problem like widespread stagnation, without recourse to conflict? History tells us there is only alternative solution. The one we’ve just rejected as a world, which is to say, we cooperate and learn how to grow our harvests together.

I want to emphasize all that. This is clockwork. It is now not about complaining about this leader or that, or this policy or that. None of that really matters now.

We have made our choices, and now there’s no turning back. We have crossed the Rubicon of the point of no return.

The Magic Fairy vs Why Ruptures Don’t Go Halfway

Some will object. Surely there’s a Magic Fairy that’s going to help us!

Perhaps there is. Maybe some clever genius will invent endless clean energy, and then some beneficent billionaire will share it with the world. Maybe some great prophet of peace will emerge, and the world will fall at their feet.

What are the chances? What chances would give you the Magic Fairy scenario? I’d give it maybe 10%, and that’s being generous.

I’d estimate the likelihood of the path we’re on going all the way to the bitter end that such paths do, on the other hand, at well above 50% now, and growing by the day.

The future in this sense is now determined. If you take one thing away from this, let it be that.

Let me explain to you why another way.

What choices have we made in the world today? We’ve chosen autocracy. As such, we’ve eviscerated human agency. Now we stand on the brink of the erasure of human agency in constructive and positive ways. But of course that only leaves negative and destructive ways open to us.

The limits of human agency are shrinking now, radically and violently. This is what scares and upsets many people. It is, paradoxically, what turns them to make self-destructive choices, too. But the point remains: human agency is now a closing window. And as it closes, the future becomes more and more locked in.

This is why the path we’re discussing tends to end up where it does. I’m not making to you the naive observation that “it happened before, so it could happen again.” Rather, I’m explaining to you what greater minds, from Keynes to Fromm to Freud and beyond understood, after lifetimes of thought.

The path we’re on tends to almost inevitably reach its conclusion. It is an unalterable path. Once you’re on it, there’s no getting off. It’s not like other paths, in that sense. And that is because every step you take down this particular road limits human agency to the point that all that can be done is to keep walking, until the bitter end.

This is why history teaches us a lesson.

Ruptures don’t go halfway.

They culminate. They climax. They crescendo. Explosively, at the very end.

That is the part that you must grasp and contemplate. Now, this is the all but certain future we are in.

What You Can Still Change

So what’s my message to you? Is it just fatalism? Am I telling you the world’s going to fall apart, and tough luck?

I don’t have a message. Let me say it again. History does.

There is nothing that we can do about any of the above now. Nothing. So don’t waste your time trying. Nobody can do anything about it now, not Trump, not Xi, not Bezos, not anyone.

This is now as locked in as a future has ever been.

But you can do something about your life.

If you understand the above—and don’t waste time bickering with me, like the foolish people who like doing that, and end up getting fucked, time and again—then what you should be doing is preparing.

If you know The Rupture is going to be one of history’s most explosive events, then you should be getting your ducks in a row. Five to ten years. They will start probably a year to two years from right now. Where does that leave you? Please, read that slowly, and consider your position, because every second you have right now matters. Once it all begins? You will have little to no chance of altering much of any aspect of your life. The panic and chaos will be too much, and institutions will crumple like tin cans.

Let me give you some general advice.

As trade ruptures, economies are going to go haywire, much more so than now. Do you have enough saved up to survive two to five years of depression, war, and ruin? The answer is: probably not. So start today.

As societies rupture, certain places are going to become very unpleasant to be in. I don’t have to explain further why. You should consider carefully where you want to be during The Rupture, and take great effort to reach a place where you are at the least risk possible. Again, that’s not easy, but you should start today.

As economies rupture, jobs are going to become scarce. More than likely, we are going to enter a classic depression sequence. Do you have some form of independent income? A way of earning a living that doesn’t depend on a “job”? If not, start building one today.

Make sure that all your affairs are taken care of now. Once the events I’ve described begin, panic will set in. Things will slide very, very fast. Chaos will ensure, much more rapidly and severely than is generally imagined even now. Keep your money in a safe bank. Put it into stocks that will outlive The Rupture (and we’ll discuss what those are.) If you own real estate that’s going to be at risk, sell it now. Prioritize lowering risk over speculating in any form. Keep those you love very, very close to you.

That’s some basic advice, and we’ll discuss more.

Be Calm, and Get Busy

This isn’t a warning. I’m not speaking to you in those terms anymore.

I want you to be calm.

That is the only way you are going to make it through this mess.

In the end, the world is going to be divided, and this is an obscene thing to say, into those who survive The Rupture, and those who don’t. I don’t mean that in a childish way. Many will be glad to give themselves to the wars and conflicts ahead. Many will be unfortunate enough to have never had a chance, born into abject poverty, limited by fate and circumstance.

You still have time.

Not much.

But a little.

Be calm. Be brave. Be wise.

Keep your head on your shoulders. Think of all that you must do now. And do it.

Don’t wait. Don’t “debate” me. Has that ever turned out well? Those who like doing that end up, like I said, getting fucked. Not by me, but by themselves. They think it’s a game I’m playing. It never has been, and they’re waking up to that now, panicked, terrified, bewildered. They don’t heed the warnings. Not mine, but history’s. So this isn’t my warning. But it is one from something much, much bigger than me.

Folly. Self-destruction. Ruin. The certainty of a path made of the brutal elimination of human agency reaching its inevitable end. The vicious cycle of here, leading right back to there.

Do not make the mistakes so many have made before you. If you are lucky enough to have a chance, my friend, take it.

The Rupture

What You Can Still Change

Be Calm, and Get Busy

❤️ Don't forget...