It seems that for the past few years, all anyone can talk about is how the world is ending. The ice caps are melting, wars are raging, and people are dying. Ever since high school, everyone speaks about disasters and destruction and how they are so terrified for the end of the world. Every "woke" article I've read and every social justice warrior will tell you the same. "Turn on the news; the apocalypse is here."
And while the tragedies we are being bombarded with in the news seem never-ending, one can't help but turn to our regularly scheduled forms of entertainment. Every show being produced and every movie in the theaters tends to have a hint of the apocalypse. Zombies moan across our screens, designated survivors are turned into presidents, superheroes battle an all-powerful villain, women in red cloaks are forced to bear children. The end of the world is everywhere. And we want it to be. We as humans are obsessed with the apocalypse.
Or rather, we are obsessed with the aftermath. Sure, the end of the world is a terrifying thought, but not terrifying enough that we change the channel. We are obsessed with watching alternate realities come to an end and see how they move on. I mean, we watch these shows so religiously it's almost as if we're taking notes, studying for a test. And that test will be filled with questions like "How do you create a new government?" "How do you build better international relationships?" and "How do we make sure this never happens again?"
We have begun to treat our fiction like documentaries from another time, another world. Take, for example, "The Handmaid's Tale." Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel describes the replacement of American democracy with a religious extremist group calling themselves the Republic of Gilead. The book is narrated by the titular handmaid, Offred, as she intertwines her story with that of the new world around her. And while screen adaptations have been made before, it only makes sense that the new television series blows up now. "The Handmaid's Tale" is another dystopian story morphed into a documentary in a sea of dystopian stories warped by scared viewers.
Humans are so obsessed with this idea of an apocalypse that we start to see it everywhere. Wherever we go, the looming idea of the apocalypse follows us; it's in our every day, our schools, our government. At times, it's hard to tell if we see the end of the world because we are scared of it or because we want it. I am reminded of the compelling speech given by Hugh Laurie's character in the 2015 film "Tomorrowland." "[Humans] didn't fear their demise, they repackaged it. It can be enjoyed as video games, as TV shows, books, movies. The entire world wholeheartedly embraced the apocalypse, and sprinted towards it with gleeful abandon." Laurie's character, Governor Nix, goes on to say that humanity would rather accept its doom as a reality because it involves no work. To change that reality would be to change everything now, and according to Nix, humanity simply gave up.
And how realistic does this sound today? Why put in so much effort to change things when we have already accepted our fate? Perhaps that's why we watch the shows and movies we do, because the end of the world is happening on our screens and we get to take notes on what happens next. Maybe we are studying, but not for taking a test. We are waiting behind a television screen, waiting for the world to end. We are obsessed with the apocalypse, but not because we're scared of the future, but because we are scared of the present. At the end of every TV series, superhero film, and disaster movie, the good guys always win. A cure is found, the snap is reversed, and the American flag waves proudly amidst the chaos. Humanity has convinced itself that we can only grow after the world as we know it comes to an end.
Poetically, that sounds like a good excuse. It's romantic, patriotic, hopeful even. But that's really all it is. An excuse. Our obsession with the apocalypse is an excuse for sitting back and doing nothing as things go from bad to worse, a form of procrastination towards fixing things and "making the world a better place." If all of our forms of entertainment have taught us anything, it is that we have hope for the future. But hope isn't magic, hope is work. Hope alone won't fix the world.
So it's time to stop using the apocalypse as an excuse for sitting back and start using it as a reason to change things. Contrary to what our TV screens say, we don't need the Republic of Gilead or a Thanos snap to motivate us to change the world. We just need to be willing to work for it.