I can’t explain it fully but since couple of years I have this constant feeling that something big is about to happen that is going to change everything.
It’s a bit like being a WW1 soldier waiting in the trenches for an inevitable attack that doesn’t come.
I have adhd so I know the ‘waiting mode’ and this is sort of similar. Honestly I just want it to happen already so we can get this over with no matter what it is.
There is this atmosphere that no matter what you plan for or what you intend to do will ultimately not matter because of some future big changes.
It’s really annoying and only fully cured temporarily by brain muddying amount of weed or to a lesser extent various absorbing hobbies. Or making many hasty and bold decisions in spirit of “now or never”.
Maddening stuff to be honest. I hope whatever must happen will get on with itself already and rather sooner than later.
Feeling of impending doom is a common symptom of anxiety. It could be caused by anything from hormones being off to an actual impending doom.
Not to mention, the political rhetoric for at least 10 years has been very much “things are falling apart!” I mean, fear has been the greatest motivator for voters for a long time. It’s a weapon used against you to keep you obedient and scared.
Now, does that mean things aren’t going wrong? Of course not. But that feeling is very much fostered by the people with money because it’s useful to them. Add to that, the growing number of non-money people sounding the alarm over things like climate change and late stage capitalism.
But if it helps, think of it this way: the money people don’t actually want things turned upside down. Because that disrupts their money. And the timeline for events like climate change are longer than “any day now.” So, something to think about.
I don’t think it depends on any of my internal physiology so to speak. This is some external factor that has been ruffling up my inner harmony increasingly as the time goes on. I don’t think I could even precisely pinpoint the start of it but it was like 2016-2020. Very faint back then compared to the pronounced and easily identifiable noise today.
Judging by the speed of change whatever lies in front should happen in about 3 years at maximum.
This is still how you would feel if your anxiety was caused by things like vitamin D deficiency or thyroid having a bad day. If someone with „irrational” anxiety could think about the reason of their anxiety rationally they wouldn’t have anxiety in the first place. This is not to say that there are no reasons to feel anxious about the state of things in general but this is still worth keeping in mind.
ADHD here. Also tons of formal education in international relations and foreign policy. I have felt this for years now, too. It’s not depression or anxiety either. I closely work with multiple doctors and I have a psychiatrist for my ADHD. This feeling is directly due to knowing that this will break some way, some how.
ADHD/AuADHDers have been statistically and scientifically found by doctors to accurately see big picture trends well before the general population. I keep track of my predictions informally and my gut is pretty much never wrong about foreign affairs.
For reference, I bought masks Jan 2020 because I follow international news and saw China locking down. I knew COVID would be big. Also hit the grocery stores a week before official lockdown and leaned on my chef background to shore up basic supplies. I remember two days before lockdown started officially, telling a normie friend that we might lose up to 1.2 million in COVID if we handle it poorly. Which proved right—unfortunately. My area’s supply chain was fucked for over a year and we were fighting over single bags of flour and rotten vegetables. Hospitals overrun. Ravaged our small county.
I don’t have any advice except that you’re not alone. My other stable well educated ADHDers agree (we are also all lawyers). We can’t do anything except wait, focus on our families, and build a solid community in the meantime.
I could have written almost the same comment. Another neurodivergent here, I also seem to be susceptible to the subtle currents and patterns of the world and society. Sad to say that I’ve been feeling that kind of pressure for most of my life - like the Yeats poem says, the centre cannot hold. The society we inherited has often not made sense to me, and I have a need to understand cause and effect.
FYI another neurodivergent who is this way is Katherine May. She writes about the experience in her book ‘the electricity of all living things’.
Sames about covid too. I’m not an epidemiologist but was telling people to wear masks from the beginning, long before we were advised to wear them, actually when we were told categorically not to wear them. I can’t tell you exactly how I knew, but I was researching covid (hyperfocus) from when I first heard of it - long before it was in the news here in the UK. I believe my brain collates information and sorts it into hierarchies, which i often can ‘see’ but there are also flashes of insight. Anyway, it’s nice to meet you. Solidarity.
I was working for a grocery chain and in late December of 2019 management was quietly suggesting that employees stock up on paper products as this disease in China was supposed to be bad. We knew the supply of paper products was already tight due to the fire at a local paper plant that made a lot of toilet paper for NY/New Jersey and Connecticut. That forewarning saved my family so much stress.
This is really interesting, but hoe can you be sure your “gut” isn’t deeply influenced by whatever media you consume?
Oh it absolutely is. I’m not immune to propaganda or missing information. But that’s always part of the calculation. Sorry for the novel in advance.
I don’t make hard conclusions like a doomsday prophet. It’s about constantly consuming data from all places and keeping everything “on the table” mentally. I try to expand my ability to consume quality sources of information as best I can—to the point of learning additional languages to be able to read primary sources.
What’s the worst case scenario if my hunch is *right* about COVID being big in Jan 2020? 1.2 milllion people die. Hospitals over run so basic services won’t be available if you have other emergencies. Supply chain falters and food scarcity climbs.
What happens if I was *wrong* about COVID in Jan 2020? The worst case is I had some masks I needed anyway and a few bags of flour and some cans of food I’d use up over the year.
Being grounded in the reality and likelihood of being wrong is key to choosing an optimized response. There—what I needed to do was pretty reasonable and didn’t cost much versus the alternative (possibly death—which many of my relatives and friends died or were hospitalized).
I also read bad sources of information purposefully. This is mostly to keep tabs on political narrative and drawing rough timelines of when news hits and spin drops. I have a degree in political science and international relations and I do this constantly and habitually. I watch this across the political spectrum, across countries, from as much varied media that I can manage.
Hard data is becoming more difficult to source in America. Which is why I started learning German to read primary sources from Germans. I have a background in science and statistics as well. So, I try to use everything I have to my advantage. I basically never stop reading history, science, politics, foreign affairs, philosophy—everything.
My desire for knowledge and to flip the world and human systems inside out is absolutely insatiable. I will never be finished or done understanding and knowing. I will never stop asking questions. Why? It’s partly why I’ve had so many careers. I just want to know how everything in our universe *works*.
The other trick is knowing what you know and what you don’t know. Always stay flexible so you can pivot. Always know that your current understanding could be wrong and that you’ll never have complete information. Constantly looking for data or information to flip or go against your current understanding. Scientific process as a way of life in every facet.
For an example: I knew that the housing pricing spike from 2021 to 2023-ish was not a normal real estate trend. I was watching and fielding real estate data on the markets across the US (something I have done casually for about 25 years). I could tell the spike as being driven by *something* large and consistent across America.
Why is everyone buying and scrambling all of the sudden and all at once? I knew I was missing information.
At first I questioned whether or not it was being driven by people taking out a second loan/mortgage on their primary house to take advantage of the low interest rates. I could see that happening in some places. But I knew that it couldn’t be the primary driver for every house purchase. So then I knew: I was absolutely missing something. Something big. But knew I didn’t have the ability to collect or find that missing information either. Because I did go looking for it. So, I did all I could do. I waited.
In hindsight, the answer is now easy. I was right about knowing I was missing something. I was missing the influx of PPP cash. And an additional cool billion in PPP loan fraud. Not all the houses were bought with fraudulent money, but *a lot* were. And the rest were bought with legitimate PPP money—enough to cause a feeding frenzy and rock the market. That was the missing driver.
After figuring that out, I followed and watched the charges roll in for the PPP fraudsters. I read all the published reports on that data. And so on.
Basically, I’m an attractive/normal looking human who is also a neurodivergent weirdo. My drive and ability is not something I chose; it’s just my congenital disability. I have a min max build that’s backed up by over 100 pages of psychiatric tests and almost three decades testing and retesting by specialized doctors.
There are trade offs. I have almost no sense of time minute by minute. I mean that literally. I have very little ability to create habits. Most people are able to do the same thing every morning—I can’t. One benefit (in my case) for being divergent (with the immense benefits of having a plush start in life, raw intelligence, and an Ivy-equivalent European education): I am hyper focused on big picture and my strongest skill is strategic planning. This is what I do *for fun*.
Not all of us neurodivergents are as lucky as I am. I am admittedly also very lucky.
If you’re not geared this way, it’s totally fine. But if not, I’m sure you can appreciate that just as it’s probably hard for you to imagine how some people can see big picture, it’s just as hard for me to imagine how you manage to brush your teeth at the same time every morning. Or know how long you’ve been doing something. We all have abilities that come more naturally to us. This happens to be mine.
Very insightful read, thanks! I’m not (as per my self diagnosis) neurodivergent but I’m also very curious about a lot of things, although I tend to get bored rather easily. I also probably lack life experience as I’m in my mid twenties so some trends might pass me by.
Another curiosity: do you have a curated list of sources for reading or read whatever comes at hand? Are you automatizing any of your flow for consuming and interpreting data?
How is your stock market portfolio?
I’m neurodiverse and take things literally so I’m helpless with politics cos I can’t read it at all. Any tips ?
Also if you started a community to share these insights and read the fuck out of it.
I’d love a community where all text from links was pasted into the posts (by the love of all things holy dont make me click on anything). Also pls allow the bullying of Russian propagandists.
It’s a bit like being a WW1 soldier waiting in the trenches for an inevitable attack that doesn’t come.
It probably came within a week whether they were the attacking or defending side.
The feeling now should more closely be before WW1 started. Some shit is going to happen, and WW1 casus belli (an archduke assassination???) is something that requires a tinder box to spark and explode. We’ve got the tinderbox part.
It’s clear that the deranged criminal scum now running the US have big plans, yes. And it won’t be good for the vast majority of people.
Given everything that has been going on here in the US, and how quickly and boldly it is happening, I think your feeling is justified. And I don’t think it’s far-fetched to think that something is going to happen within the next 3 years. And it’s going to, in some way, be global. Like someone said before me, now is the time to build community and network and be as prepared as we can be for whatever it is.
Yep. People make fun of peppers but in the current climate it’s no bad thing. As long as it doesn’t consume your life and finances, it’s not something you’ll regret.
I’ve always got loads of canned goods and some water. I have a plan for sheltering in place and bought this affordable wind up radio. It’s not gonna hurt
Great thread, thanks for posting.
For the last long while I’ve considered the feelings people are having as similar to a dog that barks before an earthquake or when cows lay down before it rains. There may not be an understanding of the origins of our prophetic rumblings but their validity should not be discounted.
As for what form our future will take I find it sad watching all of you struggle with the evidentiary overload. It is not nearly as important to worry about what will happen as it is to decide what common outcomes there will be and how you want to prepare for them. Food and energy supply, gone. Government control and protection, gone. Reliability of these networks people talk of building, gone. What do you want to do in these circumstances? Starve? Kill? Die?
None of this is worth worrying about. Don’t let anxiety paralyze you. If you choose to do something then look at the broader picture. Do things that lead you to where you think you’ll be content. Learn to kill. Learn to die. Learn to survive. Many are taking that approach.
One last point. There is much of humanity that holds such promise. There is also much that proves our animal origins. My personal take is that we should absolutely be exterminated, though I’ve chosen to try to survive. Had we overcome our notion that our goodness as a species was beyond our taking the necessary steps to avoid this outcome, perhaps we would have conducted the necessary genetic engineering and population control that could have saved us. To be fair, very few would have thought this was even possible 50 or 100 years ago, but any such thoughts were very carefully controlled by people who knew better or were intentionally blinded by greed. It is these people I will be taking out my frustration on.
Sorry, I know this is not a positive message. It’s never popular to say the quiet parts out loud. The main point is I want to say don’t be discouraged. Good luck.
The animal analogy is right. We all know something terrible is coming we just don’t know exactly what. It’s scary times.
deleted by creator
I’m too exhausted to feel the impending doom after living in it for 3 years now. I just get mildly annoyed at drones exploding over my city at 3 AM because it distracts me from my Overwatch game.
My GF feels this way. She thinks that because she is brown that it will not be good for her. I understand as best as I can. I know she feels that because I am white that I don’t fully comprehend how it will turn out for her or any other brow person. I do. I am panicking inside all the time. I try to remain calm for her but it does not seem to be working. Her newest idea is to dell all her stuff and get an RV stay on the road. I have tried to explain to her how unsafe that is from a strategic safety point of view. That her cell phone is being tracked at all times just by pinging the towers. She is in deep panic mode and I can’t help her. But you are right. Something is going to happen and I don’t know what it is or how to prepare for what is coming.
The last part is a bit alarming and her plans don’t fit the current situation whether she’s a minority or not. Unless she’s actively in jeopardy of being targeted by ICE, then she probably isn’t immediately at risk.
I think we are all bound on path for war. But preparation for that still needs to be realistic. It’s always good to ask ourselves what are we preparing for in the immediacy. Right now is a time for building friendships and strong community networks. Maybe planning for food shortage (but not famine) if in a food desert. It’s reasonable to consider locking down owned and disconnecting from techbro corporate run entities (hey, we are already on the fediverse).
But roaming in an RV is well beyond the current climate unless you guys are actually crossing with Homeland Security regularly or something. She’s right to worry and her fears are not unfounded but the solutions are disconnected. There might be a little more at play there.
Either way, I wish you both peace and safety. We all deserve personal security and refuge even in the worst of times.
Any tips for forging community networks? And who do you reckon we’ll war with?
Yes. It’s been going for over a decade now. I think it has to do with pattern recognition for me. Also an ADHDer. It’s that same feeling from when I was a kid and I knew the answer but didn’t know why I knew.
I’ve had that feeling for a couple decades now. It almost went away and I felt foolish but welp, here we are.
I was told as a child that if you are not angry or wary then you are not paying attention. I didn’t know what this meant until years later.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss–Howe_generational_theory
This is by far my favorite “conspiracy theory”. Smells like bs, and yet… it hangs together in my gut a bit, you know? I don’t exactly buy it, but I don’t exactly not buy it either.
Thanks for sharing, I have felt the “Personalities” of different generations and can see the shifts.
However I don’t think we can see far enough in time to assign archetypes to them. Or if there even would be.
It’s worth noting that people rarely think the big events are going to happen in someone else’s lifetime. All kinds of “the end is nigh!” Stuff works on that psychology. Humans often think they’re special in that kind of way. How many “savior/rapture/great Satan is coming imminently!” Have there been, all to be wrong.
They also tend to think the Big Event™ will be in their geographical area and will think it’s based on their cultural concerns.
I agree with all of this 100%. Though, to be fair, given the impact that the US President is having globally, I don’t think believing or worrying about something big happening soon is out of the question. What that will look like is debatable.
And it’s the blinkered devotion people have for him, its frightening. Perfectly average, sane people said things about jan 6th like “I can’t blame them”
I think you’re missing the point. An American will see the “impact” of the “US President” “globally” while someone in Nigeria will have completely different concerns for what the Big Thing™ will be, and it will be Nigerian-centric, while someone having this same “itch” in Finland will have something Finnish-centric (say, Russia invading again) as their version and so on and so forth.
And yet, historically, when a Big Thing™ strikes it strikes from an unexpected direction from an unexpected place with unexpected outcomes for the overwhelming majority of humanity.
That’s what I mean. Whatever “big thing” is coming is debatable. And it’s definitely subjective. But in this moment, the us president is impacting things at a global scale. The elimination of USAID for example put a stop to vaccination efforts in villages in Africa. That’s devastating for them, but for an average person in, say, Australia, that may be frustrating but not impactful in the same way. Seeing a bunch of smaller things happening all at the same time justifies someone’s concern that something bigger is going to or could happen.
Yes, then I started reducing my online time significantly and it went almost away.
I read a lot of news and watch videos, and im on here from time to time, so the feeling didn’t go away completely.
But maybe ive just started accepting that it’s ineviteble, so I can handle it better by now.
I mean, it’s obvious that only some very lucky circumstances can prevent us from really dark times, and even in the best circumstances where fascism is prevented and defeated, and common people will get out on top over billionaires, everything will get worse for us for a long time before it gets better.
The thing is I don’t think it is all doom and gloom. I am not scared or afraid of the future whether I should be or not.
It’s like some kind of tension that is progressively stretching the reality until it restructures. It’s not yet red hot but it is easily felt.
It’s like some kind of tension that is progressively stretching the reality until it restructures.
Sometimes I wake up and feel like I must’ve shifted into a parrarel universes that night. It’s nothing I could point out, but things feel different for some reason.
I don’t even believe in the concept of parrarel universes.
Tensions are high every where on the world, not just on the battlefield or between governments, but between workmates, neighbours and family.
It takes a toll on us, and were living in a time where we consume endless Information and the least of it is positive, and some of it not even true. We havent had a summer hole for quite some time now.
I think our brains fail to make sense of it all and to turn it into a compelling story, so we’re feeling weird and confused and change our Outlook as a result.
Also, it’s taxing to get hopes destroyed year after year and have to reassamble into a functioning Person once again.
It’s a lot of things that lead to it, but Im sure a lot of people feel similar.
Yes, but I’ve felt this way for quite a while. It’s not recent. I think it has to do not only with personal family stuff, but also national and world systems, and most especially climate change. All stuff that has been going off the rails or threatening to. Also ADHD here.
By the way, this movie may be of interest to some of you, as it deals with this kind of feeling (a little more dramatized and specific for the story, but it portrays the feeling of impending doom fairly well, I think): Take Shelter (2011)
What if the big thing that happens turns out to be great?
