We are living in the end of the world.
The end of the world. What does that even really mean? The slow death of the literal world, planet Earth, by climate change? Its growing inability to support the survival of its species anymore?
Or does it mean our world? How we understand the function of our governments, our economic systems, our social contracts of human decency and general public safety?
Whether you want to pick one or none of these as your definition, they’re all struggling for to stay afloat right now. (Because of the rising water… pun was not intended but now that it’s here, I’m keeping it!)
I find myself thinking, “We are living in the end of the world,” a lot more than I would like to. Reading a news article (or the headline of a news article on my Twitter feed), or being hit with a gust of sideways rain in August, or talking with friends about having kids someday, or reading another Twitter headline (the article would be too depressing to read in full, I’m sure), and then the next thing I’m thinking is, “the world is ending.” The thing is, people around me don’t even think I’m being that paranoid or pessimistic, like they did when I expressed worry about the Mayan Calendar coming to an end in the last few months of 2012. Now, a lot of the people I talk about the impending ending agree. I know this because I have the tendency to talk about this existential judgement, especially after I’ve been drinking. No, I’m not that fun at parties. But yes, I have found a whole lot of people who don’t think I’m crazy. Well, they don’t think I’m crazy because of this specific statement. I can’t speak for their greater opinion of me.
We hear about technological advancements, and it seems like they will ultimately supporting the ending process. Have you ever seen a good robot, besides the one from the Jetsons? Haven’t you seen Black Mirror? There are only 3 episodes with arguably happy endings. Truth be told, my understanding of a lot of this tech that concerns me so much is even less-developed than the fake inventions on Black Mirror. That’s often how it’s reported in mainstream news. The Face App, that shows you what you might look like with wrinkles, is apparently owned by a Russian company. But what does that really entail? And when it’s explained, can I trust the explainer? Are they being too pessimistic or too optimistic? Is it even possible to just be realistic anymore? And now, I’m panicked and confused. So, I tend to cut off my research right there.
And seriously, the climate change thing! Or more so, all the countless climate change things. The Amazon forest is on fire, glaciers in Greenland are melting, and after just Google-ing “what’s up with the bees” I can assure you, the world’s bees are still dying. The United Nations estimate by 2050, there won’t be enough food to feed the global population. I can estimate our governing powers won’t be able to partition dwindling resources fairly, or provide sufficient energetic replacements. Haven’t you seen Years and Years? (Maybe not, because a lot more people have Netflix access than HBO access. I guess a lot of people do have BBC access, but I’m writing this in America so I wasn’t really thinking about them.)
In some ways, my fear of the end of the world reveals just how deeply American and “first-world” I am. There’s been political unrest and domestic terrorism and drastic wealth inequality around the globe long before it caught my attention because it showed up in my country.
But it’s dangerously easy to catch my attention. Through the course of writing this essay, I’ve checked my Twitter and Instagram and iMessages and even my dreaded, anxiety-provoking e-mail more times than I can count because I can’t focus for long enough to count! Whatever you may call it – the internet, social media, smartphones, etc. – you’re familiar with the Fatal Distraction cycle. It’s like acetaminophen for our minds. Any slight pain or discomfort can be numbed (I first typed hat as dumbed, which feels like a Freudian Typo) with something else. It doesn’t even have to be “new and shiny” information. It can be, and often is, absolutely terrible. A politician’s sexual abuse of women who work for him is revealed. We’re running out of clean water in the next 20 years. It’s been 5 years since tiny purses became an ironic trend, let’s commemorate it. A young black man is shot by a police officer who is claiming self-defense. Netflix is canceling — or worse, rebooting — your favorite TV show or movie. The President is racist, or is it sexist, or is it homophobic, or is it classist, or – oh, he’s now hosting a rally and showing off how he can be them all in just one speech! Oh, now Taylor Swift was on the Ellen Show, and I don’t know what it is but, just can’t stand her. Oh, it turns out Taylor Swift got a lot of death threats. I feel kinda bad about it. I still just can’t stand her though.
Why did I pick up my phone? Wait, what was the issue again? There are so many problems requiring our effort to even make a dent in a solution, and there are even more things begging for our attention instead. We’re asked to pick one path to follow down striving to make a teeny-tiny impact in a seemingly overwhelming, massive threat to the world. Or, we can have endless, half-baked opinions and illusions of some kind of superior taste-level. It’s such an easy choice, it barely even feels like one.
Until it involves us directly.
I don’t mean to brag or anything, but I was thinking about the world ending before it was popular. Before the 2016 election, which is when I would say visions of a dystopian future became mainstream. Not because I’m Jewish, but because I’m anxious. Because I’m a generally scared and hesitant person. Because, despite the mistakes and slip-ups I make all too often, I am constantly assessing risks too.
A couple weeks before the 2016 election, I experienced what I hope will be the most traumatic night of my life. And despite making you immediately want the gossip on it, I won’t go into it because what happened isn’t the point. The point is how it made me feel, especially after a few weeks passed and Trump did win the presidency. I felt like the world was ending.
And then more weeks went by. And then months. And I realized something — the world was ending. And staying in bed, letting everything pass me by was becoming the biggest risk of all.
We focus so much on the second half of “We are living in the end of the world” that we lose sign of the most important parts of it – the noun and the verb.
We are living.
So even though, yes, you probably don’t need any more arguing on my part about the world ending, I do want to encourage this.
We should live!
Or everything ends a whole lot sooner, and everything feels a whole lot worse. Doing nothing only makes it harder when you suddenly realize how much you could have moved while idle. Saying nothing only makes it harder when you can’t help but speak up again and realize how much you could have said when you were muting your own voice.
It might be the end times, and it might suck, and it might eventually kill us! … But there’s always an and. Let life be a ramble. And add on to the story when it seems like it’s hopelessly over. And feel what it feels like to be awake, and present, and here, in the end of the world, and alive. And keep living.
the and times 