Living in the End Times is Strange




Obviously we do not want to believe that the apocalypse is upon us, but our current era is ticking a lot of boxes. A massive extinction event is underway globally; natural landscapes including rainforest are increasingly torn apart to make way for crop monocultures and anthropocentric land management; the climate is shifting into human-induced instability. For humans there are impending crises of overpopulation, fertile land availability, and water purity. Yet, we are trundling on.
            Yes, certain concerns get thrust into the public eye, like the endangerment of charming mammals or marine plastic pollution, but the whole, the entirety, should be much more concerning than it is treated. I feel this is partly because the kind of apocalypse that our literature, art, film and religion prepares us for is dramatic, sudden, definite, universal, and possibly glamorous.
            You only have to think about your daily routine to realise that, if this is the end times, they are far from that definition. They are boring, they are humdrum. Timothy Morton writes frequently about this era as our end times, and how it is this long, drawn-out process that is more boring and frustrating than terrifying and sudden. Slavoj Žižek also writes about our approach to the ecological apocalypse, citing that given a climatic event, we are simply looking at how we can continue around the corner; prospective eyes see an unfrozen arctic as a clear gateway for shipping routes, and a soon-to-be revealed Antarctic land mass as a new territory with unknown fertility. To me, this kind of approach to apocalyptic news shows a framed and limp societal imagination.
            It feels as though governments and lump society lack the imagination to drop the tackle, the unnecessary baggage that has been created in and of themselves, and get to grips with the true, physical and immediate task of repairing our ecological networks and cultures so that these aren’t the end times. Of course there are individuals and organisations who are making great leaps for the true cause; consider those developing eco-friendly plastic alternatives. But the implementation of these alternatives is impeded by the constraints of economic and cultural imagination; fast action is needed, but instead we get grinding negotiation and PR missives. Real changes can’t happen because money and political support from dangerously precidented businesses such as fossil fuel interests, Monsanto, and big brands such as Nestle and Coca Cola are needed.
            Obviously you can sound like a bit of dickhead telling someone that the things they value, the things that they think are important, are not, that they represent an infantile imagination in the face of the gargantuan, but I still can’t help feeling that a society getting hungrier, thirstier, with ecological webs degrading and the rich diversity of lives on Earth dwindling, requires a proactive imagination that isn’t hinged on shiny cars or next seasons wardrobe.

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