<
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/23/end-of-the-world-vibes-why-culture-cant-stop-thinking-about-apocalypse>
"It is a sunny afternoon in Taormina, Sicily, and two wealthy couples on
holiday are drinking Aperol spritz on a balcony overlooking the sea. Harper,
who runs on anxiety and guilt, says she has trouble sleeping because of
“everything that’s going on in the world”. Daphne, who runs on pleasure and
denial, asks what she means. “Oh, I don’t know,” says Harper. “Just, like, the
end of the world.” Daphne laughs. “Oh no, Harper! The world’s not ending, it’s
not that bad.” She doesn’t follow the news any more. “And even if it was as bad
as they say it is, I mean what can you really do, you know?” Harper and Daphne
are sitting on the same beautiful hotel balcony, drinking the same expensive
drinks, but only one of them is tormented by the sense that we are all doomed.
“It’s like we’re all entertaining each other while the world burns,” says
Harper.
This is a scene from season two of the HBO series
The White Lotus, starring
Aubrey Plaza as Harper and Meghann Fahy as Daphne. The show leaves open the
question of whether Harper’s position is a morally responsible reaction to vast
and dangerous problems or a yelp of impotent despair. “Such convictions in the
mouths of safe, comfortable people playing at crisis, alienation, apocalypse
and desperation, make me sick,” complains the protagonist of Saul Bellow’s 1964
novel
Herzog. “We must get it out of our heads that this is a doomed time,
that we are waiting for the end, and the rest of it … Things are grim enough
without these shivery games … We love apocalypses too much.”
What would Herzog say now? Conservatives and progressives offer competing
narratives of decline and doom. Many climate activists speak of irreparable
breakdown and even human extinction. There are new terms such as doomer,
polycrisis and Generation Dread. A peer-reviewed 2021 survey of people aged
between 16 and 25 around the world found that 56% agreed with the statement
“Humanity is doomed”. In a 2020 YouGov poll, nearly one in three Americans said
they expected an apocalyptic event in their lifetimes, with the Christian
Judgment Day relegated to fourth place by a pandemic, climate change and
nuclear war; zombies and aliens brought up the rear. While promoting his
doomsday satire Don’t Look Up in 2021, director Adam McKay awkwardly tried to
define this era: “the Great Awfulization … or the Gilded Rage … You can just
really call it collapse culture … There’s such a list of things to keep your
eye on.”"
Via
What Could Go Right?: Senegal’s U-Turn
https://theprogressnetwork.org/senegal-election-2024/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
