-  An apocalyptic conversation about how to deal with the end of the world (as we know it)  - 

“The world is not ending, it’s just getting shittier.” - (Natalie Wynn 2018)

The Apocalypse has always been an essential part of human collective imagination - with its conceptualizations dating all the way back to bible writings and being continued throughout centuries in countless fictional stories, video games and movies (Hartog 2014; Wilson 2017). There is undoubtedly a fascination surrounding envisions of the world ending, the all-encompassing annihilation, the reset to factory settings of the whole planet.

But how do we deal with this threat of impending doom? How do we make sense of the apocalypse through the ways in which we anticipate it? And, in what ways do we continue living our lives and striving towards our goals regardless or maybe even because of the end being nigh?

Apocalypse is a dynamic concept, forged and filled with life by us humans ourselves.  Therefore, in order to better understand how social actors make sense of and deal with impending doom, it is crucial to foster conversations about how we imagine and manage to navigate the potentiality of the apocalypse. Apocalyptic thinking can be perceived as absolute and universal while at the same time tackling deeply intimate ideas and emotions, which is why I decided to have an apocalyptic conversation together with a group of people that knows each other well and is already really close, in order to investigate how we deal with the gloomy perseverance of envisioning the end of the world.

So, one night me and my closest friends decided to meet up (on zoom, in line with the signs of the times we are currently living in) and philosophize about how to deal with the apocalypse.

Making Sense of the Apocalypse

“I can give you a million examples of apocalyptic sceneries – death, destruction, rubble and debris – you see those pictures all the time. They’re apocalyptic, but no one would say: ‘That’s the apocalypse.’”

Is the end nigh? According to the people I talked to, the answer to this question would be a resounding “No.” The apocalypse for them is the conceptualization of something far away, even designated to the world of fiction, to which they would include the biblical telling of the end of the world as well. Understandings of the apocalypse are shaped by media portrayals of undead humanoids roaming an empty and destroyed world, atomic clouds and divine powers making judgements over each of our moralities. None of these scenarios come close to resembling the every-day experiences articulated in neither group interview – as my friend Tale described it: “Apocalypse is coined by the media – the images I have of the apocalypse, I didn’t just imagine or encounter them one day, I saw them somewhere on screen.”

The apocalypse seems to be imagined as all-encompassing, not leaving even the slightest space for hope or remembrance. And at the same time apocalyptic thinking appears to be too abstract, too far from reality, to actually connect it to our lived realities. After all, an actual, all-ending apocalypse could not ever be subject to our human knowledge. We might experience what we perceive of as apocalyptic events but, as one of us explained: “if the apocalypse is the end of all, including myself - that doesn’t work, because…I won’t be able to see that, to experience that. And then I do not care. If I die, I die.” Is this the stand-out characteristic of apocalypse – the end of all caring caused by the inevitability of our knowledge about it? In the end, the end of the world is a dynamic and subjective concept, something none of us can really grasp. One idea voiced during the conversation was that “maybe we already are in the process of apocalypse and don’t know it yet. The planet has existed for so long, and we don’t know how long this apocalypse-process goes on. Maybe it has already begun.”

We cannot conclusively know what the apocalypse will entail - our imagination of it does not even arrive at a unanimous placement of it in either the future, present or past. Maybe it is exactly this uncertainty that leads to the myriad ways we humans try to strategize and cope with the end of all times, the doom none of us can really envision or confidently predict.

Coping Strategy (1): Conspiracy Ideology

“It can be hard to accept that you don’t know what’s to come – there’s this feeling that there must be something bigger behind all of this. And conspiracy theories can help fill that lack of knowledge, this search for enlightenment.”

Conspiracy theories are defined by Douglas et al. (2019, 4) as “attempts to explain the ultimate causes of significant social and political events and circumstances with claims of secret plots by two or more powerful actors.” Conspiracy ideology creates notions of the apocalypse as end-of-the-world-scenarios that facilitate a form of making sense of anticipated doom via scapegoating certain groups and ‘uncovering’ alleged plots as a means of regaining control over apocalyptic narratives (Bruder et al. 2013). Falling into the conspiracy trap of apocalyptic thinking was heavily connected to notions of existential fear and anxiety during our apocalyptic conversation and viewed as ‘easy way out’ of personal short-fallings via the shifting of blame onto others. “Conspiracy theories create unsolvable problems out of solvable problems”, my friend Nina summarized.

The abstract and nebulous nature of apocalyptic thinking pointed out several times during the interviews fits in perfectly with the thought patterns of conspiracy theories, which “create beliefs that teeter on the edges of a real world and a fictitious one” (Liyanage 2020). Similar to how concepts of apocalypse are fuelled by imagination and head-cannons that help us make sense of what we cannot make sense of, falling into conspiracy thinking may lead to “the difference between the real world and an imaginary one no longer be[ing] recognised (due to the shadowy forces that are said to be at work) - it’s no longer a normal state of affairs; reality has become alien” (Liyanage 2020).

Through this merging of the real and the imagined world, the uncertain anticipation of impending doom gets mixed up with promises of certainty, of knowledge – and innocence. Several times, my friends pointed towards the dangers of falling into this mode of apocalyptic thinking: “Conspiracists always shift blame for whatever is going wrong onto someone else – if we all would do that, nothing would ever get better, because nobody would feel like they had to start. Maybe that’s how the apocalypse will come about in the end: everyone is blaming each other, and nobody does the work to prevent it.”

When it comes to the question of who uses conspiracy theories as a means of coping with the apocalypse, the consensus seemed to have been on “alt-right Trump-supporters and old white men who feel threatened by the perceived loss of power they experienced in the past decade”.  While not being without political biases, these observations seem to match with Wilson’s (2017, 414) observations of conspiracists as “politically paranoid groups [that] are most likely to perceive the immanence of ‘their’ apocalypse, and so are likely to be most rigorous in determining the boundaries of their identity” through a sharp Us-versus-Them dichotomy oftentimes grounded in conspiracy ideology.

Making sense of the apocalypse via conspiracy thinking thus not only provides groups of people with the comforting promise of innocence (and salvation) it also serves as a basis for identity-formation and community building in times of uncertainty and anticipated doom.

Coping Strategy (2): Dooms-Day-Prepping

“To live in fear all your life just to prepare for the apocalypse - and then being the only one left, living in a bunker, never seeing the light of day - that’s no way to live your life, is it?”

Dooms-Day-Prepping refers to ”a pursuit undertaken by those who prepare to independently survive disasters – mass casualty events in which food and basic utilities may be unavailable, government assistance may be non-existent, and survivors might have to individually sustain their own survival” (Mills 2019, 1267) and can thus be seen as distinguished way of coping with the anticipation of apocalypse, though there appears to be an overlap between those groups prone to believing in conspiracy theory and those motivated to extensively prepare for the end of the world. This link might not be surprising as the aforementioned existential anxieties luring us into conspiracy beliefs also appear to function as “precursors to prepping” (Fetterman 2019, 515).

Regardless of this observation, many who participate in dooms-day-prepping do so, not because they are convinced of the end of the world being nigh, but rather as a free-time activity, and not a serious preparation (Mills 2019, 1276). This might be connected to the aforementioned notion of the apocalypse as a far-away, abstract concept, something that we cannot (yet) grasp, but that is still prevalent throughout all human thought - be it only as a fictional exploration of what could be.

Fictional tellings about the apocalypse and especially what comes thereafter in various media-outlets seem to be a great motivator for dooms-day-prepping adventures (Mills 2019, 1276). Specifically referencing the zombie-hype within the media over the past years, my friends expressed their interest in the practicalities and fun of dooms-day-prepping, though without giving it the same salience as those preparing for an actually anticipated disaster might do. “Nowadays we just aren’t confronted with fear of death and survival anymore”, Lars explained the interest in dooms-day-prepping, “but I think some people long for this feeling of survival and competition.”

Turning back to the seriousness at times bestowed upon dooms-day-prepping, the first thing that came up in relation to our everyday-life-experiences was the panic-buying of toilet paper occurring in several countries towards the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. When the immense uncertainty about the state of our future spread all over the world in form of a novel and deadly virus, many of us felt the tendency to prepare for the unknown and provide ourselves with the necessary supplies before they could be gone from our availability – but with certain limits. “I think it makes sense to prepare, for example, for one or two weeks of no electricity”, Lars elaborated again, “but I think prepping for the end of the world doesn’t make sense.” This sentiment might be connected to the overall consensus shared by all who participated in this apocalyptic conversation, believing that they will not experience the apocalypse, should it ever occur. And if it does, “I just don’t understand where this energy and effort comes from – also this absolute will to survive. Why would you hold on to life in times of the apocalypse? I think I would be happy if it would just end quickly.”

This is where hope comes into play. A serious attempt at dooms-day-prepping can only function, as long as there is at least a tiny spark of hope left within those who pursue it. Hope for survival, hope for the availability of a (possibly even better than before) life in the post-apocalypse, hope that - even during the end of all times - humanity will somehow persevere. And that after the all-impending doom and the end of all times, something new will emerge and novel times will commence.

Coping Strategy (3): Denial

“Sometimes you see all these terrible things happening in the world and you can’t do anything about it – so you stop looking at it.”

Conceptualizations of apocalypse entail the notion of inevitability. In times of crisis, when there appears to be no prevention or solution to disaster, a common coping-strategy for us humans is to ignore and avoid the impending threat, or even out-right deny its existence. Very prevalent examples of this behavioural response are the denial of the climate crisis (see Chait 2016; Wynn 2018) as well as of the (severity of the) COVID-19 pandemic in recent times (see Marples 2020; Edlund 2020).

Conceptualizing this apocalyptic strategy as an actual coping-strategy at first appeared to be difficult to most of us. After all, none of us really believed in or anticipated what we understood of as the apocalypse - but does that mean we all fell into the denial-trap? The most accurate answer would be “No.” It appears to be part of the conceptual nature of apocalypse to have doubts about its occurrence and what it will entail. Thus, as long as there is no conclusive definition or unanimous prediction, denial of the apocalypse as such cannot be seen as invalid. However, with some apocalyptic events, the benefit of the doubt cannot be warranted.

The most common instance of this can be found when looking at the climate crisis - arguably the biggest apocalyptic threat with a possibility to wipe out humanity, if not signifying the end of the world.  Though there is scientific consensus on the reality of climate change as well as the human impact on its development, myriad people around the world still deny the existence of this phenomenon, including powerful actors within society such as economists, political scientists and several members of the US conservative party (Chait 2016; Demelle 2021) – but why? For most of us, monetary reasons appeared to be the first answer: “As long as the economy is stable, we continue not seeing the apocalypse.” It is easy to close your eyes from what is to come in the future if the present is working in your favour.

Another facilitator of opting towards denial as the chosen coping-strategy against the impending apocalypse appears to - yet again - be fear. In psychological terms “denial is a way for people to defend themselves against anxiety” (Marples 2020).  This pattern can increasingly be observed in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic - another potentially apocalyptic event - in the sense that it brings with it an ending of time and a rupture of the world as we have known it before. Denying the severity or even existence of the pandemic is used by many “to protect themselves, their sense of security and safety” (Marples 2020). Looking the other way when being confronted with crises and what could be considered apocalyptic events does therefore appear to sometimes be the only defence mechanism we are left with. As my friend Till added “No one can think about how the world is going down 24/7.” In that sense, at times, denial of the apocalypse is what we must do, in order to not fall into apocalyptic despair.

Coping Strategy (4): Despair

“This might sound a little melodramatic…but sometimes I think that life in and of itself is an apocalypse. Just being thrown into this world, you could say…it’s a revelation that begins from birth.”

Depictions of the end of the world as we know it oftentimes entail the end of humanity and thus of every individual human soul (Heikkilä 2017). Depression and despair surrounding the anticipation of the apocalypse can be found all around, from doomsday-saying (see Hillman 2018; Wynn 2018) and climate grief (see Thorn 2019), to feelings of guilt regarding one’s own part within the impending doom (see Hanson & Green 2019) and general pessimism regarding the fate of the world (Thacker 2018). When too overwhelming, these feelings of despair can turn apocalyptic thinking into depressive episodes and self-deferral.

Apocalyptic thinking can be both triggered by as well as triggering depressive phases leading to feelings of personal doom and despair. Especially when it comes to this personal feeling of the end of the world, destruction and no hope, all of us were able to relate to apocalyptic sentiments. “Everyone has their own subjective worlds that just die down sometimes”, my friend Sarina noted. And sometimes there is no way around feeling anything but despair.

The (perceived) state of the world appears to be tightly linked to our human states of mind in this regard. In times of worldly crises, crises of mental health tend to increase, as can be observed right now with diagnoses of depression and other mental illnesses rising since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (Cullen et al. 2020). Large-scale crises oftentimes leave us with the feeling of being overwhelmed, of not being able to meaningfully change the dire situation we are finding ourselves in.

Does this apparent passivity, born out of apocalyptic despair, in turn lead to even greater worldly distress? Or is it possible to conquer this spiral and land on top?

After all, despair has the power to bring about new perspectives. Pessimism brings humility into human thought (Thacker 2018) – and from the bottom of the deepest depression we can discover a new light of hope. The apocalypse is not only about the end of all that has been, but also about the emergence of something new and unprecedented. “When I’m getting out of a depressive phase, it always kind of feels like the end of times a little - and like a new beginning.”

While despair thus on first glance appears to be the most severe form of coping with the anticipation of an apocalypse, it might actually bring about the most potential for an aversion thereof. “I think out of all strategies, this might be the most…honest one? Because you’re actually confronting yourself with the abyss of your own thoughts, instead of running from it”, my friend Colleen pondered – and maybe it is also the truest way of conceptualizing the apocalypse: the end of times, the breaking-down of all we thought to have known – followed by the rise of something completely new. In this sense, the apocalypse itself can be seen as a coping-strategy of human breakdown and cataclysm - and the subsequent rise from the ashes.

There are myriad ways of making sense of the apocalypse; alas there are countless ways of navigating its impending threat. The four coping-strategies discussed in this apocalyptic conversation thus only depict a small selection of ways to deal with apocalyptic thought.

How we conceptualize the apocalypse appears to be something deeply personal, but also connected to our positionings in a global society. Different life-worlds foster different perceptions of the apocalypse - or as Till noted “I personally am not living in the apocalypse – but others maybe do.”

Whether the end is nigh might be up for debate, but apocalyptic thinking and human understandings about the world reaching ever-worsening states of existing prevail. Navigating Apocalypticism thus might not actually be about envisioning the great void that comes after us, but rather making sense of worldly crises, the part we play in them, and how to rise up again from the ashes.

Special thanks to Colleen, Lars, Matze, Till, Silas, Nina, Sarina & Tale

"As long as I have you, I'll get through every apocalypse"

Maja 

References

- Bruder, Martin, Peter Haffke, Nick Neave, Nina Nouripanah, & Roland Imhoff. 2013. “Measuring individual differences in generic beliefs in conspiracy theories across cultures: Conspiracy Mentality Questionnaire.” Frontiers in Psychology, Volume 4: 1-14.

- Chait, Jonathan. 2016. “The Republican Climate Platform Keeps Getting Crazier Every Election.” Intelligencer, July 19, 2016. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/07/gop-climate-platform-gets-crazier-every-election.html

- Cullen, Walter, G. Gulati & B.D. Kelly. 2020. “Mental Health in the COVID-19 pandemic.” International Journal of Medicine, Volume 113 (5): 311-312. 

- Demelle, Brendan. 2019. “Top Ten Climate Deniers.” Before The Flood, last accessed May 18, 2021. https://www.beforetheflood.com/explore/the-deniers/top-10-climate-deniers/

- Douglas, Karen M, Joseph E. Uscinski, Robbie M. Sutton, Aleksandra Chichocka, Turkey Nefes, Chee Siang Ang & Farzin Deravi. 2019. “Understanding Conspiracy Theories.” Advances in Political Psychology, Volume 40 (1): 3-35.

- Edlund, Matthew J. 2020. “COVID-19 and the Pleasures of Denial.” Psychology Today, May 14, 2020. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-power-rest/202005/covid-19-and-the-pleasures-denial

- Fetterman, Adam, Bastiaan T. Rutjen, Florian Landkammer & Benjamin M. Wilkowski. 2019. “On Post-apocalyptic and Doomsday Prepping Beliefs: A New Measure, its Correlates, and the Motivation to Prep.” European Journal of Personality, Volume 33: 506-525.

- Hanson, Joe & Hank Green. 2019. “Feeling Guilty About Climate Change feat. Hank Green. Hot Mess.” YouTube, June 6, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsQp2PnhPak

- Hartog, Francois. 2014. “Apocalypticism: A philosophy of history?” Esprit, Issue 6 (June): 22-32.

- Heikkilä, Martta. 2017. “Chapter 12: The Ends of the World in Lars von Trier's Melancholia.” In The End of the World. Contemporary Philosophy and Art, edited by Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback and Susanna Linberg, 173-184. London: Rowman and Littlefield International.

- Hillman, Mayer. 2018. “'We're doomed': Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will dare mention.” Interview by Patrick Barkham. The Guardian, April 26, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/26/were-doomed-mayer-hillman-on-the-climate-reality-no-one-else-will-dare-mention

- Liyanage, Chamila. 2020. “Apocalypse now: the conspiracy theories of the radical right.” openDemocracy, April 7, 2020. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/countering-radical-right/apocalypse-now-conspiracy-theories-radical-right/

- Marples, Megan. 2020. “Pandemic denial: Why some people can't accept Covid-19's realities.” CNN, August 16, 2020. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/16/health/pandemic-covid-19-denial-mental-health-wellness/index.html

- Mills, Michael F. 2019. “Preparing for the unknown… unknowns: ‘doomsday’ prepping and disaster risk anxiety in the United States.” Journal of Risk Research, Volume 22 (10): 1267-1279.

- Pearl, Mike. 2019. “'Climate Despair' Is Making People Give Up on Life.” Vice, July 11, 2019. https://www.vice.com/en/article/j5w374/climate-despair-is-making-people-give-up-on-life

- Thacker, Eugene. 2018. “Infinite Resignation.” In On Pessimism, 3-14. London: Repeater Books, 2018.

- Thorn, Abigail. 2019. “Climate Grief. Philosophy Tube.” YouTube, August 22, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqCx9xU_-Fwn

- Wilson, Andrew Fergus. 2017. “The bitter end: apocalypse and conspiracy in white nationalist responses to the Islamic State attacks in Paris.” Patterns of Prejudice, Volume 51 (5): 412-431.

- Wynn, Natalie. 2018. “The Apocalypse. ContraPoints.” YouTube, December 1, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6GodWn4XMM&t=1112s

Artwork by João Parente 

The Apocalypse has always been an essential part of human collective imagination - with its conceptualizations dating all the way back to bible writings and being continued throughout centuries in countless fictional stories, video games and movies (Hartog 2014; Wilson 2017). There is undoubtedly a fascination surrounding envisions of the world ending, the all-encompassing annihilation, the reset to factory settings of the whole planet.

But how do we deal with this threat of impending doom? How do we make sense of the apocalypse through the ways in which we anticipate it? And, in what ways do we continue living our lives and striving towards our goals regardless or maybe even because of the end being nigh?

Apocalypse is a dynamic concept, forged and filled with life by us humans ourselves.  Therefore, in order to better understand how social actors make sense of and deal with impending doom, it is crucial to foster conversations about how we imagine and manage to navigate the potentiality of the apocalypse. Apocalyptic thinking can be perceived as absolute and universal while at the same time tackling deeply intimate ideas and emotions, which is why I decided to have an apocalyptic conversation together with a group of people that knows each other well and is already really close, in order to investigate how we deal with the gloomy perseverance of envisioning the end of the world.

So, one night me and my closest friends decided to meet up (on zoom, in line with the signs of the times we are currently living in) and philosophize about how to deal with the apocalypse.

Making Sense of the Apocalypse

“I can give you a million examples of apocalyptic sceneries – death, destruction, rubble and debris – you see those pictures all the time. They’re apocalyptic, but no one would say: ‘That’s the apocalypse.’”

Is the end nigh? According to the people I talked to, the answer to this question would be a resounding “No.” The apocalypse for them is the conceptualization of something far away, even designated to the world of fiction, to which they would include the biblical telling of the end of the world as well. Understandings of the apocalypse are shaped by media portrayals of undead humanoids roaming an empty and destroyed world, atomic clouds and divine powers making judgements over each of our moralities. None of these scenarios come close to resembling the every-day experiences articulated in neither group interview – as my friend Tale described it: “Apocalypse is coined by the media – the images I have of the apocalypse, I didn’t just imagine or encounter them one day, I saw them somewhere on screen.”

The apocalypse seems to be imagined as all-encompassing, not leaving even the slightest space for hope or remembrance. And at the same time apocalyptic thinking appears to be too abstract, too far from reality, to actually connect it to our lived realities. After all, an actual, all-ending apocalypse could not ever be subject to our human knowledge. We might experience what we perceive of as apocalyptic events but, as one of us explained: “if the apocalypse is the end of all, including myself - that doesn’t work, because…I won’t be able to see that, to experience that. And then I do not care. If I die, I die.” Is this the stand-out characteristic of apocalypse – the end of all caring caused by the inevitability of our knowledge about it? In the end, the end of the world is a dynamic and subjective concept, something none of us can really grasp. One idea voiced during the conversation was that “maybe we already are in the process of apocalypse and don’t know it yet. The planet has existed for so long, and we don’t know how long this apocalypse-process goes on. Maybe it has already begun.”

We cannot conclusively know what the apocalypse will entail - our imagination of it does not even arrive at a unanimous placement of it in either the future, present or past. Maybe it is exactly this uncertainty that leads to the myriad ways we humans try to strategize and cope with the end of all times, the doom none of us can really envision or confidently predict.

Coping Strategy (1): Conspiracy Ideology

“It can be hard to accept that you don’t know what’s to come – there’s this feeling that there must be something bigger behind all of this. And conspiracy theories can help fill that lack of knowledge, this search for enlightenment.”

Conspiracy theories are defined by Douglas et al. (2019, 4) as “attempts to explain the ultimate causes of significant social and political events and circumstances with claims of secret plots by two or more powerful actors.” Conspiracy ideology creates notions of the apocalypse as end-of-the-world-scenarios that facilitate a form of making sense of anticipated doom via scapegoating certain groups and ‘uncovering’ alleged plots as a means of regaining control over apocalyptic narratives (Bruder et al. 2013). Falling into the conspiracy trap of apocalyptic thinking was heavily connected to notions of existential fear and anxiety during our apocalyptic conversation and viewed as ‘easy way out’ of personal short-fallings via the shifting of blame onto others. “Conspiracy theories create unsolvable problems out of solvable problems”, my friend Nina summarized.

The abstract and nebulous nature of apocalyptic thinking pointed out several times during the interviews fits in perfectly with the thought patterns of conspiracy theories, which “create beliefs that teeter on the edges of a real world and a fictitious one” (Liyanage 2020). Similar to how concepts of apocalypse are fuelled by imagination and head-cannons that help us make sense of what we cannot make sense of, falling into conspiracy thinking may lead to “the difference between the real world and an imaginary one no longer be[ing] recognised (due to the shadowy forces that are said to be at work) - it’s no longer a normal state of affairs; reality has become alien” (Liyanage 2020).

Through this merging of the real and the imagined world, the uncertain anticipation of impending doom gets mixed up with promises of certainty, of knowledge – and innocence. Several times, my friends pointed towards the dangers of falling into this mode of apocalyptic thinking: “Conspiracists always shift blame for whatever is going wrong onto someone else – if we all would do that, nothing would ever get better, because nobody would feel like they had to start. Maybe that’s how the apocalypse will come about in the end: everyone is blaming each other, and nobody does the work to prevent it.”

When it comes to the question of who uses conspiracy theories as a means of coping with the apocalypse, the consensus seemed to have been on “alt-right Trump-supporters and old white men who feel threatened by the perceived loss of power they experienced in the past decade”.  While not being without political biases, these observations seem to match with Wilson’s (2017, 414) observations of conspiracists as “politically paranoid groups [that] are most likely to perceive the immanence of ‘their’ apocalypse, and so are likely to be most rigorous in determining the boundaries of their identity” through a sharp Us-versus-Them dichotomy oftentimes grounded in conspiracy ideology.

Making sense of the apocalypse via conspiracy thinking thus not only provides groups of people with the comforting promise of innocence (and salvation) it also serves as a basis for identity-formation and community building in times of uncertainty and anticipated doom.

Coping Strategy (2): Dooms-Day-Prepping

“To live in fear all your life just to prepare for the apocalypse - and then being the only one left, living in a bunker, never seeing the light of day - that’s no way to live your life, is it?”

Dooms-Day-Prepping refers to ”a pursuit undertaken by those who prepare to independently survive disasters – mass casualty events in which food and basic utilities may be unavailable, government assistance may be non-existent, and survivors might have to individually sustain their own survival” (Mills 2019, 1267) and can thus be seen as distinguished way of coping with the anticipation of apocalypse, though there appears to be an overlap between those groups prone to believing in conspiracy theory and those motivated to extensively prepare for the end of the world. This link might not be surprising as the aforementioned existential anxieties luring us into conspiracy beliefs also appear to function as “precursors to prepping” (Fetterman 2019, 515).

Regardless of this observation, many who participate in dooms-day-prepping do so, not because they are convinced of the end of the world being nigh, but rather as a free-time activity, and not a serious preparation (Mills 2019, 1276). This might be connected to the aforementioned notion of the apocalypse as a far-away, abstract concept, something that we cannot (yet) grasp, but that is still prevalent throughout all human thought - be it only as a fictional exploration of what could be.

Fictional tellings about the apocalypse and especially what comes thereafter in various media-outlets seem to be a great motivator for dooms-day-prepping adventures (Mills 2019, 1276). Specifically referencing the zombie-hype within the media over the past years, my friends expressed their interest in the practicalities and fun of dooms-day-prepping, though without giving it the same salience as those preparing for an actually anticipated disaster might do. “Nowadays we just aren’t confronted with fear of death and survival anymore”, Lars explained the interest in dooms-day-prepping, “but I think some people long for this feeling of survival and competition.”

Turning back to the seriousness at times bestowed upon dooms-day-prepping, the first thing that came up in relation to our everyday-life-experiences was the panic-buying of toilet paper occurring in several countries towards the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. When the immense uncertainty about the state of our future spread all over the world in form of a novel and deadly virus, many of us felt the tendency to prepare for the unknown and provide ourselves with the necessary supplies before they could be gone from our availability – but with certain limits. “I think it makes sense to prepare, for example, for one or two weeks of no electricity”, Lars elaborated again, “but I think prepping for the end of the world doesn’t make sense.” This sentiment might be connected to the overall consensus shared by all who participated in this apocalyptic conversation, believing that they will not experience the apocalypse, should it ever occur. And if it does, “I just don’t understand where this energy and effort comes from – also this absolute will to survive. Why would you hold on to life in times of the apocalypse? I think I would be happy if it would just end quickly.”

This is where hope comes into play. A serious attempt at dooms-day-prepping can only function, as long as there is at least a tiny spark of hope left within those who pursue it. Hope for survival, hope for the availability of a (possibly even better than before) life in the post-apocalypse, hope that - even during the end of all times - humanity will somehow persevere. And that after the all-impending doom and the end of all times, something new will emerge and novel times will commence.

Coping Strategy (3): Denial

“Sometimes you see all these terrible things happening in the world and you can’t do anything about it – so you stop looking at it.”

Conceptualizations of apocalypse entail the notion of inevitability. In times of crisis, when there appears to be no prevention or solution to disaster, a common coping-strategy for us humans is to ignore and avoid the impending threat, or even out-right deny its existence. Very prevalent examples of this behavioural response are the denial of the climate crisis (see Chait 2016; Wynn 2018) as well as of the (severity of the) COVID-19 pandemic in recent times (see Marples 2020; Edlund 2020).

Conceptualizing this apocalyptic strategy as an actual coping-strategy at first appeared to be difficult to most of us. After all, none of us really believed in or anticipated what we understood of as the apocalypse - but does that mean we all fell into the denial-trap? The most accurate answer would be “No.” It appears to be part of the conceptual nature of apocalypse to have doubts about its occurrence and what it will entail. Thus, as long as there is no conclusive definition or unanimous prediction, denial of the apocalypse as such cannot be seen as invalid. However, with some apocalyptic events, the benefit of the doubt cannot be warranted.

The most common instance of this can be found when looking at the climate crisis - arguably the biggest apocalyptic threat with a possibility to wipe out humanity, if not signifying the end of the world.  Though there is scientific consensus on the reality of climate change as well as the human impact on its development, myriad people around the world still deny the existence of this phenomenon, including powerful actors within society such as economists, political scientists and several members of the US conservative party (Chait 2016; Demelle 2021) – but why? For most of us, monetary reasons appeared to be the first answer: “As long as the economy is stable, we continue not seeing the apocalypse.” It is easy to close your eyes from what is to come in the future if the present is working in your favour.

Another facilitator of opting towards denial as the chosen coping-strategy against the impending apocalypse appears to - yet again - be fear. In psychological terms “denial is a way for people to defend themselves against anxiety” (Marples 2020).  This pattern can increasingly be observed in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic - another potentially apocalyptic event - in the sense that it brings with it an ending of time and a rupture of the world as we have known it before. Denying the severity or even existence of the pandemic is used by many “to protect themselves, their sense of security and safety” (Marples 2020). Looking the other way when being confronted with crises and what could be considered apocalyptic events does therefore appear to sometimes be the only defence mechanism we are left with. As my friend Till added “No one can think about how the world is going down 24/7.” In that sense, at times, denial of the apocalypse is what we must do, in order to not fall into apocalyptic despair.

Coping Strategy (4): Despair

“This might sound a little melodramatic…but sometimes I think that life in and of itself is an apocalypse. Just being thrown into this world, you could say…it’s a revelation that begins from birth.”

Depictions of the end of the world as we know it oftentimes entail the end of humanity and thus of every individual human soul (Heikkilä 2017). Depression and despair surrounding the anticipation of the apocalypse can be found all around, from doomsday-saying (see Hillman 2018; Wynn 2018) and climate grief (see Thorn 2019), to feelings of guilt regarding one’s own part within the impending doom (see Hanson & Green 2019) and general pessimism regarding the fate of the world (Thacker 2018). When too overwhelming, these feelings of despair can turn apocalyptic thinking into depressive episodes and self-deferral.

Apocalyptic thinking can be both triggered by as well as triggering depressive phases leading to feelings of personal doom and despair. Especially when it comes to this personal feeling of the end of the world, destruction and no hope, all of us were able to relate to apocalyptic sentiments. “Everyone has their own subjective worlds that just die down sometimes”, my friend Sarina noted. And sometimes there is no way around feeling anything but despair.

The (perceived) state of the world appears to be tightly linked to our human states of mind in this regard. In times of worldly crises, crises of mental health tend to increase, as can be observed right now with diagnoses of depression and other mental illnesses rising since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (Cullen et al. 2020). Large-scale crises oftentimes leave us with the feeling of being overwhelmed, of not being able to meaningfully change the dire situation we are finding ourselves in.

Does this apparent passivity, born out of apocalyptic despair, in turn lead to even greater worldly distress? Or is it possible to conquer this spiral and land on top?

After all, despair has the power to bring about new perspectives. Pessimism brings humility into human thought (Thacker 2018) – and from the bottom of the deepest depression we can discover a new light of hope. The apocalypse is not only about the end of all that has been, but also about the emergence of something new and unprecedented. “When I’m getting out of a depressive phase, it always kind of feels like the end of times a little - and like a new beginning.”

While despair thus on first glance appears to be the most severe form of coping with the anticipation of an apocalypse, it might actually bring about the most potential for an aversion thereof. “I think out of all strategies, this might be the most…honest one? Because you’re actually confronting yourself with the abyss of your own thoughts, instead of running from it”, my friend Colleen pondered – and maybe it is also the truest way of conceptualizing the apocalypse: the end of times, the breaking-down of all we thought to have known – followed by the rise of something completely new. In this sense, the apocalypse itself can be seen as a coping-strategy of human breakdown and cataclysm - and the subsequent rise from the ashes.

There are myriad ways of making sense of the apocalypse; alas there are countless ways of navigating its impending threat. The four coping-strategies discussed in this apocalyptic conversation thus only depict a small selection of ways to deal with apocalyptic thought.

How we conceptualize the apocalypse appears to be something deeply personal, but also connected to our positionings in a global society. Different life-worlds foster different perceptions of the apocalypse - or as Till noted “I personally am not living in the apocalypse – but others maybe do.”

Whether the end is nigh might be up for debate, but apocalyptic thinking and human understandings about the world reaching ever-worsening states of existing prevail. Navigating Apocalypticism thus might not actually be about envisioning the great void that comes after us, but rather making sense of worldly crises, the part we play in them, and how to rise up again from the ashes.

Special thanks to Colleen, Lars, Matze, Till, Silas, Nina, Sarina & Tale

"As long as I have you, I'll get through every apocalypse"

Maja 

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