The more I think about it, the more I feel like people seem to have some level of desire to see “THE END”. Call it morbid curiosity. Call it nihilism. Call it death anxiety. Whatever. It seems like with all the effort people give to thinking about “the downfall”, there must be some fascination with it.
There’s so many forms of it. Doomsday preppers. Prophetic apocalypses. Global warfare. Climate disasters. The rise of fascism. People see “THE END” in so many different ways. And with the world not becoming any less precarious any time soon, we can only expect these mass-anxities to continue. (And the rich guys certainly have a vested interest in the end of everything. They get to keep their High Score.)
Or maybe not. Maybe human civilization (in at least some form) will continue for millennia more. Maybe we’re far off from the end. But one thing is certain: for each and every one of us walking this earth, the end is at most a century away, give or take a few decades.
“How grand would it be to witness the end of everything!” cries the mortal pretender. For it is not just his death, but the death of all that he knows – and he gets to bear witness.
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I just want to see the end of things getting worse; sure, there have been good developments, but for every good thing at least ten other things get worse. Be it people with seemingly unlimited funds and power fucking everything up because they felt like it or climate change (I don’t even know which is the bigger threat any more).
I just want things to improve, but that’s more or less a pipe dream.
I do think it has to do with dissatisfaction
I have fantasised alot about scenarios I as a disabled person would not survive or remotely thrive in but also can’t help but think of the scenario where I can live without the bullshit of the political world
Things get worse and keep getting worse till some threshold forces radical total change.
At least this is what i understand from history.
I fully intend and hope to see “THE END” of this world because it means i and the generations after me have a chance of something better.
Wait, you AND the generations after? So you expect to survive it in some way, perhaps spiritually? I just wanna understand fully
The planet will survive no matter what we do, i hope so will humanity.
To me being a witness to the actual end of the old world is simultaneously with being witness of the new world that begins after.
I do understand that i may not have much to live after because i may be to broken and sick. But seeing my children finding a new hope after the collapse of the society we were born into would be plenty to call my own life a success.
I don’t want to speak for them but I interpret it as end of Society/Civilization when they say world.
I think it’s tempting to imagine a definitive end, especially one that’s over with quickly, as opposed to a slow crawl where things gradually get worse for the people who don’t deserve it.
Look at climate change, for example. People have started dying from extreme weather, but it’s not the people causing it, it’s the little guys just trying to live their lives. It’s safe to assume that an extinction event would play out the same way, with the people on the bottom going out first, and painfully, because they aren’t protected.
And people don’t want to imagine that, but they can’t muster the optimism for anything better than going out with a bang.
Have you been to The Restaurant at the End of the Universe?
I wanted to but I’ve lost my towel on the way
Ah man, I wonder how this will look like. Puts me in a dreamy optimistic utopian mindset. Why don’t we have FTL travel already ಠ_ಠ
Well I don’t want to see the end. Other than the climate issues that are already to far gone to have anything remotely like the lives we have right now. All the other stuff we can fight and get through. I do grieve for humanitys lost potential as a species. I live like someone that is terminal and charish everyday and make a bucket list for things I want to do before I can’t do them anymore.
I can’t tell you how much I want to be wrong but reading the ipcc reports. You can’t help but count your days. It’s gone from if we just stop doing what we are doing 30 years ago we will be okay. To if we stop everything right now and have a miracle tech that can pull carbon out of the air. It won’t be as bad and we are not even doing the stopping part. We have to beat fascism before we can even start step 1.
I will happeily eat crow the day I’m wrong with a big smile on my face.
There was this scene in the movie “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” that always sticks with me. They are laying in the bed staring at each other when the meteor makes earth fall. I live that scene in slow motion when it comes to the climate every heat dome or winter vortex or wildfire. Is another aftershock they flinch at as they stare at each other waiting for the screen to go black.
Do some people? Sure. There’s more than a few sects of evangelicals that are all in on the end of the world.
But, frankly, outside of certain religious sects and/or cults, I strongly doubt it’s all that widespread.
Even the preppers I know don’t want it to collapse, they’re just aware that society is fragile and is more likely than not going to collapse - knowing something is likely to happen and preparing for it is very very different than hoping for it.
I’m terminally doomer, but even I don’t really think that the “world is ending” is a likely outcome, even if the worst of everything possible happens.
The question, for me, has always not been ‘will humans die out’ so much as ‘can we stop squabbling over stupid shit long enough we don’t all die’.
Even the preppers I know don’t want it to collapse, they’re just aware that society is fragile and is more likely than not going to collapse - knowing something is likely to happen and preparing for it is very very different than hoping for it.
well that’s just it! I think their preoccupation with the world ending does hint at some sort of desire for it. this grows even more true with however much more unlikely the end actually is
Welll - suppose I’m all right w/o the unspeakable horrors. But!
I’d wanna see all kinds of cool scenarios instead, parts of peaceful/bountiful trajectories :)
I think it’s ego personally, we have to think we’re here for a reason, and want to think we’re seeing something important. Even with the disasters, it’s important to remember this planet will keep on spinning for milennia to come. No matter what we do, life will continue and we will be a very tiny irrelevant blip. Even if all life ceases to exist - it’ll only be temporarily.
And before people jump down my throat, it’s just part of the human condition. Look at the Christians, they’ve been saying it’s the end times for hundreds of years now. We want to believe we’re lucky enough to be a part of something big, to be there.
I’m not saying we won’t go through hard times, we probably will, in fact it’s looking probable. But life is going to be fine. The earth will be fine. Humanity will probably (in the scheme of thousands of years) be fine. Even if we aren’t life in general will be.
For some reason that gives me comfort too. Even if everything goes wrong, their anger and hate is such a tiny insignificant thing in comparison to actual time. It will all be forgotten. It’s all just dust and echoes.
We want to believe we’re lucky enough to be a part of something big, to be there.
yep this is precisely the thought that gave birth to this post. and i think i share the broad worldview that you couched this in: that “we”, or at least something resembling “us”, will be fine in The End. but it’s almost more exciting for us to think that we get to see it all! it’s like getting to see the ending of a movie that everyone else so far has had to walk out on. it’s that ego
I don’t know if it’s wanting to see “The End” as you put it, but at least in my case I’m just tired of all the “We’re this close to doomsday!” stuff and think to myself “Holy crap, just get it over with already” - the idea being that after everything turns to absolute crap, the only direction left is back up.
Like either the world is going to end soon, or we’re going to figure out how to get along as a collective, global society. But while we’re stuck in between the two, it’s annoying.
i feel you. i recently learned about the “Doomsday Clock” that has apparently been ticking up and down since 1947, and was apparently just moved from 90 seconds to 89 seconds. seems like such a ridiculous, unhelpful way to conceptualize challenges to society. learning about it did nothing to impact my sense of power in affecting it, and really just increased my sense of despair as time marches on without concern
Sometimes you just reach a point where you don’t care one way or another anymore.
i wonder if ambivalence towards The End is tantamount to desire for it
