It is (Always) the End of the World as We Know It, and We Do Not Feel Fine (With Apologies to R.E.M.)

Yesterday, I was on a three-person text thread with another Jewish nihilist friend of mine and one Gentile (this sounds like the start of a walk-into-a-bar joke, but it's not), and somehow--shockingly-- us two Jews veered off into the end of the world: when it's coming, how it's coming, and all the things people have been fearing since we evolved the ability for abstract thought. 

This conversation came on the heels of being placed in Twitter jail for 12 hours for insulting an egregious cyber-bully (SAD! VERY UNFAIR!), and a pile-on of progressives in my timeline sending snarky Gifs, because I called out anti-Semitism and anti-scientific thinking on the left, thereby failing to achieve the standards of perfection demanded by subscribers to what I have described repeatedly as my own unmitigated bullshit.

Honestly, it made me want to burn all of my social media to the ground. This is something I fantasize about routinely, and am considering doing after my case against the governor is completely over. On the one hand, I don't want to lose a good tool for activism (specifically pushing back against authoritarianism) at a time when that particular type of activism is needed. On the other, the tool itself is at least part of why we need such pushback more than ever. But I tend toward all-or-nothing thinking and impulsivity about certain things, and am bad at boundaries and willpower. Therefore, I rarely see many options between "torch it all" and "can't stop/won't stop"), and am an eternal pessimist to boot. 

Which is why it surprised me that I came out on the sunny side of this text dialogue. I'm re-printing it here, lightly edited for clarity. Obviously, I make no representations as to the accuracy of anything I say here. Once again: the bullshit disclaimer couldn't be louder or more clear.

ME: Everyone who writes about autocracy says the same thing: you have to push back--it's the only answer.

FRIEND: It feels too late--people are just not waking up to the gravity of the situation. 

ME: Well, it's been way worse before. The 1800's were absolutely atrocious from beginning to end. Like the entire century was a complete mess on every level. So I think we're lacking some perspective. Each of us only gets one century at most.

FRIEND: People are screaming, "the house is on fire," and like half the population is literally shouting back, "that's not fire, it's ice," and another forty percent are like "oh getting a little warm but, oh well! Situation normal all fucked up!" This is not normal! I don't know. I know people say it's been worse and there was a Civil War, but there are some new and different forces at work.

ME: There are always new and different forces though. They are all sort of variations on a theme. Climate change is definitely a problem of new scope, obviously.

FRIEND: I know this is bleak and unhelpful, but I don't believe our democracy will survive.

ME: But in terms of democracy, governments, racism, misogyny, etc., it's really just the same old same old, and in fact has been way worse in the past. Like governments and administrations in the 19th century--some of them were absolutely atrocious. Granted, we might become like Turkey or Hungary for awhile in terms of democracy.

FRIEND: We've lost majority rule.

ME: Yeah, but even white supremacist minority rule doesn't last forever: look at South African Apartheid. I'm a little more optimistic because of my obsessive reading about history over the past two years. It's been really great for perspective.

FRIEND: Which has led to an extremist Supreme Court and no checks and balances. But worse is the internet--social media is like a drug that has sickened too big a portion of the population with intractable beliefs.

ME: The Supreme Court has been a nightmare before. Two words: Roger Taney. It's true that social media presents a new challenge for misinformation and propaganda. But eventually that's going to be reigned in, I think. 

FRIEND: I know. I don't buy it. Neither does Ezra Klein, who argues much more articulately and with much better historical grounding that we have not seen this kind of threat before, and that the current problems represent an existential threat to democracy.

ME: I'm not convinced of that at all. Mass psychosis doesn't last forever. Everyone who has ever lived thinks they're the first generation to deal with huge, seemingly intractable problems. It's narcissism to believe otherwise.

FRIEND: I hope you're right, but this situation is uniquely bad.

ME: And Ezra Klein is an admitted and self-described neurotic, as am I.

FRIEND: True Jew crew! I don't think I'm neurotic, but I'm far more pessimistic than you, apparently.

ME: Every situation has been uniquely bad! That's my point!

FRIEND, to GENTILE: Sorry! Look what you started!

ME: Everything seems uniquely cataclysmic because it is at the time. I'm not saying it's not going to be bad. It might be really bad until we die, and we might not live to see it get better. But that doesn't mean it won't get better. I'm just saying that each of us only has 100 years at most to see any one snapshot in time.

FRIEND: Well empires do die, and I believe we're seeing the demise of the American empire. Also, species die.

ME: Well, yes. I mean look at the British Empire. But it's not like Great Britain is completely in the toilet or anything. It's just not running or invading the world anymore, which is actually a really good thing. And yes, eventually humans will go extinct, but that's a long ways off under almost any scenario.

FRIEND: I think about extinction a lot. Some were fast and some were slow.

ME: There will likely be a massive contraction of the population due to climate change and disease, but complete extinction is many thousands of years away.

FRIEND: The first animals breathed out oxygen and breathed in CO2 and they poisoned themselves.

ME: Hang on, I'm going to ask my friend who is a paleontologist and primatologist about this. [ME, STARTS NEW TEXT THREAD WITH PALEONTOLOGIST/PRIMATOLOGIST FRIEND WHO IS CURRENTLY IN THE GALAPAGOS WITHOUT CELL SERVICE BUT HAS PROMISED TO SETTLE THIS DEBATE ONCE AND FOR ALL, AND FOR ALL MANKIND, WHEN SHE RETURNS].

FRIEND: Well, OK. I don't agree but I'm done arguing [NARRATOR: THEY WERE NOT DONE ARGUING]. No one knows, it's hubris to claim otherwise.

ME: Some of us have more informed opinions than others, however.

FRIEND: I have a shelf of these books. I used to be slightly obsessed. Granted my reading is almost 30 years old, but that's telling in itself. One of the big takeaways of my reading is that each generation of primatologists upended the previous generation's theories.

ME: But isn't that always what happens in science?

FRIEND: Yes, but I came to be cynical about it all. It's all so tainted with unconscious bias. That's why I left science.

ME: Wait. Don't be like those people who get mad at scientists for saying one thing about COVID-19 in February 2020 and another thing this month. There are obviously good studies and bad studies. Science is not sacrosanct or static. Or devoid of bias at all, obviously.

FRIEND: Exactly. I'm with you. What the fuck do I know? I just got my ass handed to me in Settlers of Catan after getting ambushed by a strategy I never saw coming.

ME: God, I hate that fucking game. My point is, making sweeping apocalyptic conclusions has been happening since the beginning of civilization, and not without reason, but it's always been a variation on the same themes.

FRIEND: One of these days those sweeping apocalyptic predictions will be right!

ME: Well, everyone is right under that logic.

FRIEND: It works until it doesn't.

ME: Right, but on a macro scale, societies morph and evolve. Each individual dying is inevitable so we will always be right about that at least.

FRIEND: Well some die in their twenties of stupidity rather than of cancer in their nineties.

ME: Societies die too, of course, but they also reform in different ways. And again, all we get (for now) is that 100-year window. I've read that we might be the last generation to die of natural causes, and they're going to solve aging and make people able to live until 200 or something, which honestly sounds horrendous.

FRIEND: Awful. Our bodies fall apart before our engine dies because we are not really meant to live past 40.

ME: Yes, that's why every day past 40 is like borrowed time, and that's how we have to look at it. We're already supposed to be dead, so every day past 40 that we're alive is just bonus time. This is the combination positive nihilism that I'm looking for as my life's lodestar!

FRIEND: Not bad.

ME: It's also why we're bored and miserable. Like the natural human lifespan of 40 is not enough time to get super miserable or super bored, but after that, when we're supposed to be dead, it's all just a lot of work. However, it's also lucky in that we get a little bit or even a lot of extra time.

GENTILE, WHO HAS THUS FAR BEEN SILENT: Oh my God. This is the best thing to wake up to  [SENDS SCHOLARLY ARTICLE INDICATING THAT THE AVERAGE LIFE SPAN OF EMPIRES IS 250 YEARS].

ME: I think we are both validated now!

EXEUNT.