How to Survive a Failing Society

Eight Principles for Staying a Beautiful, Wise, and Loving Person in a Time of Crisis and Collapse

umair haque
Eudaimonia and Co
Published in
8 min readMay 9, 2021

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Image Credit: Stephanie Johnson

When I look at our societies, there seems to be a kind of anguish rippling through them. Broken dreams, shattered expectations, lost possibilities. Is a happy life — much less a fulfilled one — even possible in times like these?

It’s a profound understatement to say: it’s not easy living through times like these. It’s truer to say: we live in abusive societies. The abuse of power, of values like decency and truth and purpose, of each other, and of ourselves has become dismal, gruesome normality. We have to begin protecting ourselves from all that, to become mature, healthy people, to can retain our sanity and our humanity, instead of being consumed by despair and fatalism and anger.

So here are a few tips.

It’s not your fault. That life is so tough. That things didn’t work out according to plan. That reality didn’t live up to your expectations. The problem is not your plans, expectations, dreams, or aspirations. They are noble things and you must retain them — we’ll come back to that. The point is that it’s not your fault. You have been let down, in ways you never should have been. You have been neglected, in ways that genuinely hurt and endure. Your possibilities shrank not because of something you did, or didn’t do — but for a much, much bigger reason. It was beyond your control, and therefore, the fault is not yours whatsoever.

You didn’t fail. Society failed you. The most common sentiment I hear these days is a feeling that one has failed. I failed at my career, my relationships, my job. Listen. You didn’t fail. Society failed you. These are two very different things. You might have put your heart into it — or maybe you felt defeated long before that. It doesn’t matter. Society is the actor at fault here. Just like a neglectful parent, or a harmful one, it failed to nourish and nurture you in ways that it should have. You are just like a child who has been abused by a parent — yes, really. Only in this case, the figure who should have supported you is an abusive society.

Don’t internalize what a failed society is. Don’t bear the burden of social collapse. By that, I mean…

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