Siren Song of Doom // Variant Perception #5

What do you get from believing the world sits on the brink of chaos?

I’m fascinated by humanity’s (or, more specifically, certain peoples’) obsession with doom. Certain people seem to carry a deep compulsion to believe the end of civilization hides around the next corner. The breakdown of society cometh.

More so now after Covid, the Ukraine war, and inflation do I see people dust off their copy of “The Fourth Turning” to justify the coming collapse. And, I notice there’s an appeal to believing it. It has that siren song that can lure people in. 

So, my question is what benefit (conscious or subconscious) do these people get out of this belief? What significance do they derive from believing this? 

It must be a painful belief to carry. There is a train speeding towards a cliff's edge, and all but you are blissfully unaware. You’re screaming into everyone’s ears about the looming cliff’s edge but nobody can hear. Sounds like a bad dream. 

Of course, we always carry some probability of self-destruction.

But, what drives the certainty?

Does this belief create a feeling of significance, of singular importance? Or, is there something else at play? 

These questions came to mind after coming across an email from Mike Dillard (two friends forwarded me this separately). If you’re not familiar, Mike Dillard is a successful entrepreneur based out of Austin, Texas.

Here’s the headline of the email he sent. 

He shares a long email, full of certainty and alarmist language on how the world is on the edge of societal collapse. Financial markets will crash, famine will spread, and you must prepare now or else. 

Now, I’ve worked in financial media and publishing for almost a decade. It’s not new to predict the end of the world. But, usually someone uses the “crisis” to sell you something (and usually in exchange for dollars which they tell you are worthless in your pocket yet clearly valuable in theirs!). 

What’s interesting to me is why do some people exhibit a propensity for this kind of outlook? 

One, I am convinced that Mike believes he’s trying to help people. He does believe chaos is coming. 

However, there’s a clear element of fantasy in his thinking. It’s logic disguised as emotion. 

But, why is this idea, the idea that our world is not as safe as we all believe, the world is on the verge of collapse, everything is going to change, so seductive? 

Maybe it’s a way to rationalize the uncaring, ever-changing reality of life. Life is chaotic. Existence is chaos.

Our awareness of this chaos (most of it beneath our conscious awareness) causes us to grasp and to cling to security, pleading for life to stay the same.

It’s the equivalent of trying to yell at a waterfall to stop it from flowing. 

From a Buddhist perspective, Pema Chodron calls this the “essence of samsara - the cycle of suffering that comes from continuing to seek happiness in all the wrong places,” from her book “Comfortable with Uncertainty.”  

Our minds seek predictable safety. Yet, as I said above, life is chaos.

Our “zones of safety”, as Pema shares, crumble and re-form in an infinite cycle (hopefully not too fast and not too slow). Our attachment to our zones, and then their inevitable destruction, leads to a mad dash to remake them.

We grasp at the illusion of safety our minds created. According to Buddhists, this is one perspective on the root of suffering. 

We seek happiness in a temporary illusion of safety. Then, when the illusion fades we scramble to recreate it again. It’s an infinite cycle, The Wheel of Samsara. 

It may be that some people use these predictions of doom and gloom to reclaim their zones of safety. They get prepared. They buy food, water, guns, and bullets. They make plans. They create a fortress of security from a threat that they create in their mind. 

And while there’s real value to being a prepared, self-sovereign individual, this line of thinking is not that. It’s a lot of confirmation bias and an overabundance of cherry-picked information. 

People look to the past to find answers, but they only pay attention to past events that confirm their bias of collapse. They look at the Great Depression of 1929 to show how financial shocks create lasting damage. 

What they don’t do is examine the other financial shocks that did not lead to the same outcome.

They’ll extrapolate the micro out of the macro. Life has gotten worse in America on the micro time horizon (life expectancy down, affordability down, crime up) but significantly better on the macro. A three year decline does not, by itself, derail a three hundred year trend. 

A saying I resonate with (but can’t seem to find a singular source) describes technological progress as a “relentless march”. Our economy, our world, everything we do does not stop because the Federal Reserve hikes interest rates. 

Our creativity does not disappear, our ingenuity does not stop, and our desire to create, consume, trade, and build does not end. 

All our momentum is pointed forward. I say this to remind you, dear reader, that the world is not made up of numbers on a spreadsheet and stock charts on your screen.

The world is made up of human creativity, ingenuity, fidelity, and passion. 

This doesn’t mean the world is not in a more precarious position than maybe any other time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. We are. Economic turmoil raises the probability of war and social unrest. Probabilities, however, do not mean certainties. 

So, beware the siren song of anyone who declares this is the end of good times as we know it. They’re likely motivated by their own internal fears and insecurities more than sound reasoning based on deep expertise. 

There’s a saying I enjoy, “May you live in interesting times.” It’s meant to be sarcastic. As interesting times, the times that make it into our history books, are almost always some of the worst periods of history to live through.

So, may you live in tranquil and boring times. 

-Jared 

P.S. I recently read a fascinating book on this topic “The Precipice” by Toby Ord. He looks over data and research attempting to assign probabilities to extinction events for human civilization, from nuclear war to asteroids to pandemics. He shares a grounded approach and thought process that I found helpful for creating understanding without pressing on my emotional buttons.