#89 | Apocalyptic fever
“The world is a goddamned evil place, the strong prey on the weak, the rich on the poor; I’ve given up hope that there is a God that will save us all. How am I supposed to believe that there’s a heaven and a hell when all I see now is hell.” ― Aaron B. Powell
“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.” — Barbara Kingsolver
On July 1st alone, 2.5 million passengers flew in the US: Flights in America are back to pre-pandemic levels. That was quick?!
The world shifted at the start of 2020. Since then, there has been immense human and economic suffering. And yet, walking around Berlin and most cities (outside China), there's scarcely an indication that the world was locked down. There are masks, but we're back in action! While our economies are debt-laden, the bounce is striking evidence of humanity's resilience. While complex systems (like us) are prone to acting in the most bizarre ways, it's comforting that humanity can survive the most pressing events as complicated and messy as we are.
What about humanity, at its core, is so resilient and durable? It's not the individual, as we're fallible and pass-away. It's not companies: they fail. Similarly, it's not the county or country. Borders get re-drawn, governments topple, democracies flourish then stagnate; political systems decline. Through this tumbling of arising and passing away, there is a consistency that survives this transience. It's a consistency that's hard to point at while paradoxically being ever-present.
We're only 84 generations from the fall of the Roman Empire and 400 generations since the invention of agriculture (can you believe it's so few!?! — that's only 400 people). Fortunes and stardom have since been secured and pawned off for petty cash. And at each time, in each generation, there have been doom-sayers expressing apocalyptic fever. And while apocalypse seems just around the corner, it's never actually arrived. Quite the opposite: The world has become wealthier in the long run, and life expectancies have, until very recently, continued to rise.
Our apocalyptic fever is not unfounded, and apocalypticism is not new. The concept of the apocalypse, while at its core secular, can not be disentangled from religious artefacts. Abrahamic religions introduced linear time to our world; before them, an apocalypse was not final but just a cleansing — an opportunity for rebirth in Buddhism, for example. An existential collapse gave the eternal cycle of rebirth, death, and renewal a start and an end by Judaeo-Christian values. Time became one-way: "Thus, for the first time, the prophets placed a value on history, succeeded in transcending the traditional vision of the cycle (the conception that ensures all things will be repeated forever), and discovered a one-way time".
Someone first used the word in 1894: "a disaster resulting in drastic, irreversible damage to human society or the environment, esp. on a global scale; a cataclysm." And, we can each appreciate that the world will end someday. It might not be this minute, but in one billion years, the sun will experience its passing away, vaporising our pale blue due. But that's then. Today, our challenges are not of the same scale.
Events, especially emphasised in the news, do seem apocalyptic. But how much is this to grab our attention and keep us glued to the screen? The YouTube algorithm steers people to more extreme content, and Netflix has to publish even more outrageous documentaries investigating the worst of ourselves. And, if you've ever seen Nightcrawler (an underrated film), you'll know how the news hoovers up tragedy for mass consumption. The trend toward the extraordinary story leads us to believe we're on a path to the End. But is this illusion? Or are we more resilient, moderate, progressive, peace-loving and durable than the entertainment industry dares to admit? I suspect so.
So as we return to taking our flights and sitting in bars with no masks, shaking hands and kissing, and coughing on the tube without shame, we might remember that, even though the apocalypse is coming, it always has been. Yet for us, our parents, and the previous 399 generations, life has been getting better and better, and there's a long time until the sea evaporates.
My week in books
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison. A book of sick and horrifying short stories that left me with nightmares. A quote:
“I am a great soft jelly thing. Smoothly rounded, with no mouth, with pulsing white holes filled by fog where my eyes used to be. Rubbery appendages that were once my arms; bulks rounding down into legless humps of soft slippery matter. I leave a moist trail when I move. Blotches of diseased, evil gray come and go on my surface, as though light is being beamed from within. Outwardly: dumbly, I shamble about, a thing that could never have been known as human, a thing whose shape is so alien a travesty that humanity becomes more obscene for the vague resemblance. Inwardly: alone. Here. Living under the land, under the sea, in the belly of AM, whom we created because our time was badly spent and we must have known unconsciously that he could do it better. At least the four of them are safe at last. AM will be all the madder for that. It makes me a little happier. And yet ... AM has won, simply ... he has taken his revenge ...”
Live well,
Hector