All is not OK...

Change always begins with an ending.

I will be the first person to suggest that we should not spend too much time wallowing in self-pity or dwelling too long on everything that is miserable in the world. For a start, there’s a lot of misery so whether you’re trying to hit each of them once or just getting hung up on one in particular, that’s a LOT of wasted mental energy. I do genuinely believe that we should force our brains from their primitive mindset and fight the negativity bias. Our brains are wired to hone in on the torment and anguish and analyse the crap out of it to make sure it’s not going take us out of the game early. If we let them, our brains would hyper-fixate on every possible outcome of every potential danger, like Dr Strange in Avengers: Infinity War, except for us, it won’t happen in a matter of seconds, it will consume our lives.

That being said, I also think there is very little to gain from disassociating from the difficulties or practicing ‘toxic positivity’ which, from my point of view, is incredibly invalidating and borders on delusion. There comes a point where we do need to sit down, reflect on circumstances and acknowledge when they downright suck; like now, for instance.

Objectively speaking, the world seems pretty grim. Countries being invaded, people being used as bargaining chips, the powers that be quite comfortable with them becoming collateral damage. The justice system perverted and biased, and administrative arms of government as merchants of savagery and death, delivering legalised brutality and public executions with little to no pause. It’s so bleak that we simultaneously want to know everything about it, and run screaming away from it, like a frightened child watching their first horror movie.

So where does that leave us, you ask?

Well, it leaves us strapping in, placing our seats and trays in an upright position and allowing someone else to fly the plane. Granted, it may also leave us feeling like we are in the crash position á la Flying High (or ‘Airplane’ for my North American friends), but we are not ‘Striker’, and we are not in control. Honestly, at this point (and I promise I’ll end the metaphor here), we’re more akin to Lloyd Bridges’ character, just drinking, smoking and sniffing our way from one moment to the next.

There’s been a lot of hyperbole thrown around about the apocalypse lately. I, however, have been singing this particular tune for over a year. Even before the unfortunate geopolitical events of November 2024, I had already cast DT in the role of the character on the pale horse. I don’t know why I held my beliefs with such certainty, but I knew he would become the herald of the apocalypse, … and all jokes aside, I don’t think I was wrong.

5 November 2024, my father’s 82nd birthday and a day which will forever change the world as we know it. I’m not going to delve into the devolution of society subsequent to this date, but I think we can all agree that DT brought all his horseman buddies along for the ride. The Bible did say that Hell would follow the horseman, and, much as I am absolutely not a theologian, I do believe it was right.

First came pestilence - granted, this was DT version 1.0, but his mismanagement of the COVID outbreak in the USA along with his suggestion that people should be injected with antiseptic, is laughable. Sorry, DT, but hospital-grade Dettol (or Lysol) is not the answer here. While this did not occur during DT’s current presidency, it certainly can be counted in this category, also known as ‘conquest’, because arguably, the beginning of the end started in 2016.

Then came war - Venezuela, Greenland (threatened), Iran… and those are just the big-ticket items. Mr ‘Board of Peace’ seems pretty bloody far away from being a pacifist and has attacked several other countries in various forms as well as providing support to his ‘not-so-friendly’ allies like Israel and Russia.

Then came famine - cuts to government funding both domestically and internationally, literally took the food out from people’s mouths. In some cases, food was being destroyed instead of being distributed.

All of this adds up to death, in various forms, iterations and from various causes… but it all adds up to a lot of people being wiped off the board.

So, we are here. We are on the brink of the apocalypse. Are there angels and demons fighting for supremacy over the earth? … not so much. Or maybe those celestial beings are just a metaphor for the age-old fight of good vs evil, and when it all boils down, that’s what this is. The good guys, the morally fortified vs the bad guys, the morally corrupt.

Are we all going to descend into a dystopian, fuel-starved Mad Max existence? Will there be any power in the near future? Will food distribution halt? Should we again start to hoard toilet-paper? Will it become the currency of the future like cigarettes in a prison exercise yard?

Will all the mod-cons we have become used to immediately cease to function, throwing us back into a disconnected darkness? I genuinely don’t know. I don’t think anyone does - but one thing is for sure, something has got to give.

When we think of the apocalypse, we immediately conjure images of the end of days, cataclysm, extinction-level events. But the word ‘apocalypse’ comes from the Greek word apokálypsis meaning ‘revelation’, and quite frankly, I prefer this meaning to the alternative. A revelation, …something we did not previously know will become apparent to us.

I choose to view the apocalypse as a necessary disruption to reach a new stasis. Just like the narrative flow of every horror movie ever made, we start at a certain place, the horrors and chaos befall us, we fight tooth and nail to survive, and we emerge out the other side, forever changed by our experience and with a new equilibrium. I believe that what this ‘apocalypse’ will bring, at a fundamental level, is change.

To that end, I have co-opted a name I learned from someone older and wiser than me - I choose to be an ‘Apocaloptimist’. A quick Google search tells me that this name was apparently coined by Daniel Roher in the context of his documentary about AI, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that my source has never heard of this man or his documentary. This term, is just the kind of free-spirited, left of centre, Buddhism-embracing, open-minded thinking I have come to expect from my source. One thing I can say for sure is that AI does not form any part of my own personal Apocaloptimism – in fact, AI is a massive part of the problem…. but I digress, and I shall not ascend that particular soapbox.

Albert Einstein said, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” This quote points to the impetus for change being the never-ending arms race. It indicates a cessation of the pursuit of the next ‘bigger or better’ weapon. In my mind, I see Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck fighting with increasingly lethal force until ultimately, instead of destroying each other, they destroy the world. As far as I can tell, this is where we are heading. The hubris of man will become our own undoing. While I do not for a moment find the prospect of nuclear warfare appealing, I do find a return to simpler times increasingly tempting.

We have reached a point where we are so apathetic to thought and effort, that we are content to let abstract, non-sentient bots do the thinking for us. We are being blinded by our indifference and lethargy and are creating a massive rod for our own backs. We are not too far away from becoming the people in the ‘floaty chairs’ in Wall-E… allowing ourselves to be passively led from task to task so long as we don’t have to move, either literally or figuratively. Look, I’m a big fan of sitting down and existing in my own little bubble, allowing the world to pass by around me, so long as I don’t have to interact with it – but I also see the limits of this … and I can see us travelling down a dangerous path. So yeah, maybe once whatever will be is over, maybe we will see the value in actively participating in life again, instead of being held hostage by our devices and our reluctance to embrace agency.

People say that life is short, but I believe a more accurate description is it is finite and uncertain. We never know which day will be our last - the eternal question of our existence is entirely unanswerable. Given the ambiguity with which we are faced, we have little choice but to accept there are only tiny slivers of our existence which are within our control. So, lean into the things you can control, whether that is your behaviour, your attitude or your choices in general. Focus in on those things and try not to let everything else drag you down as we stumble our way through this epic quest.

Change is necessary and constant. It is one of the only things we can rely on as a fixed component of our existence along with death and taxes. As someone with a generalised anxiety disorder, I am quite apprehensive towards change, it makes me uncomfortable – I like predictability and certainty. However, despite this, I know this is one thing I just have to accept, and, for the most part, roll with the punches.

This next change is going to be a doozy; I have no doubt about that. Nostradamus made certain predictions about the year 2026 and there’s one of them that I am definitely projecting my own (hopefully ✨manifested✨) meaning onto. But whatever is coming, we can’t stop it, … and it is part of a much bigger plan. The angels are talking again; they’re throwing some old favourites at me and this time I am listening. As I said, we are not flying this ship… and quite frankly, I wouldn’t want to be.