Generation Apocalypse

Cue the music: Right Before My Eyes by Cage the Elephant. Figures 1.1 through 1.whatever-the-fuck show the evolution from a bright-eyed bushy-tailed me at the beginning of 2020, freshly minted doctor of “wait, what is your degree in?” (it’s Comparative Literature btw), ready to start a professional career at a dapper young 40, into…well, I’m going to make a lot of short stories long before you know exactly what I mean by this, but a doomer. In fact, much of whatever this is [*gestures dismissively at text*] will be devoted to explaining what I mean and what I definitely do not mean when I use this term. It’s an extremely vague term but also descriptive when applied to all types of contexts, so for my purposes I do not care in the least about any other uses. Don’t know, don’t care. 

Okay, but before I start with all that, some context. If you stick with me you will hear me say (see me write? whatever, same difference) over and over that context matters. Not only that, but it is literally the most important thing in every context. [see what I did there? not a joke though, it’s always true.] Anyway, this little what-have-you serves two main purposes for me: as a lamentation and as a call to pack. First as a lamentation because chronologically that’s how it started, and then very soon after it began to take shape in my mind the call to pack began to take precedence. Though it’s all still lamentation – that’s the tone all these words should be taken in, don’t think for a moment that I ain’t lamentatin’ throughout. Because I am – but not just.

This call to pack, my call to pack, is a lamentation because I need to find the others who lament the loss of world in the same way as me – and so I am not addressing this “guide” at literally anyone except the people who it actually applies to, and who those are will become more apparent as we move along. So, if anything in here rubs you the wrong way even to the point of chapping your hide: sorry, but I’m probably not talking to you anyway. And that’s okay honestly – I hear people say things that don’t have anything to do with me all the time and as an adult who is not also an overgrown toddler I simply stay the fuck out of those conversations. It’s a wonderful arrangement, truth be told, staying out of other people’s business. Highly recommend.

2020, or Year 1 of the Collapse

Okay, so that little bit of context should be enough to get us started – so, back to the beginning:

Cue the music: Right Before My Eyes starts up with the scenes from those moments that marked the before and after of the twenty-first century that we as a species still pretend didn’t really happen: January through March 2020. Let me draw your attention to the goofy lil bastard in the corner, all ready to find his little corner of the world and bury in like a cicada (and much like a cicada, when I do finally emerge, I’m making it everyone’s problem). Travel along the panels and everything should be fairly familiar – the events that historians are already calling a “rolling dumpster fire” and a “pastiche shitshow extraordinaire”. And like many others, during the initial shitshowing I watched attentively, and like all the others who became afflicted with doomerism, I saw the future paths mushroom out in an explosion of possibilities followed almost immediately by an unnamed superpower destroying all other paths except those that lead directly and inevitably to apocalypse (don’t worry, more on this later, I’m sure) – but not only that, no! the precise path chosen by the unnamed superpower can best be described as “the stupidest apocalypse ever.” And from an insider’s perspective, let me tell you: it isn’t awesome.

As the panels move along, you’ll notice that bright-eyed fellow becoming more and more aghast until the words flowing over the screen reach the chorus:

Right before my eyes

I saw the whole world lose control

The whole world lost control

Before my eyes, oh-oh

I fell through the floor

I couldn’t take it anymore

I can’t take this anymore

It breaks my mind, oh-oh

At this point, you’ll be able to notice from the expression on the poor lil fella’s face that yes, in-fucking-deed that mf’s mind got fucking broke. Non-metaphorically even. Seriously, it’s taken a few years to put myself back together again, and truth be told, it hasn’t been a super fun ride. That’s actually where this lament fits in – it is one hundred percent an answer to the question, “wtf went wrong?”

*many readers at this point*: “Oh, that’s easy – it’s Trump or Biden or covid or lockdowns or some other Very-Serious-Answer™. Doomer? more like dumber lmao.”

*me, head down, holding the bridge of my nose, eyes shut, spleen in a twist*: “oh my God. holy fucking shit.” [BIG sigh] “oh my fucking God.”

Okay, this is the first stop on the doomer train: if this is how you took the question, then you are most likely not a doomer. And if your impulse is to answer a question like that with a single person or event as the cause then you most definitely are not a doomer. If you really want an answer to the question of what went wrong with the world then just find an actual doomer and ask – we can all give you answers in such great length and at such great detail that you will definitely regret bringing it up in the first place. Honestly, that question is such second nature to the doomer-type that it would be borderline offensive to ask it of each other. So I didn’t.

What then could I possibly mean? Me. I meant me. What the fuck went wrong with me? Fairly early on in this process I recognized my need for therapy but didn’t even bother to look because the one thing I did not need (and still don’t for that matter) was someone to tell me that “it’s gonna be okay.” No the fuck it is not. Sorry, but it ain’t. And while I may not be great at much, I am fully confident that my ability to explain the beyond-fuckedness of our present situation far exceeds anyone else’s ability to paper over death wounds with platitudes. 

You know what? F it! Before we go any further, how about a bit more context, huh? [btw if you’re getting annoyed at the way I keep jumping around or digressing and interjecting – have you considered that maybe doomerism isn’t right for you? Just a thought…] I spent the majority of the 2000s and 2010s being a caregiver to kids and getting myself a formal education (‘02 to ‘12 for my undergrad, and yeah, it felt like a long time, too, and from 2012 to December of 2019 in grad school), and during that time I trained my brain to see the world in a very specific way – one that I will go through at length don’t worry, but for now it’s enough to say that it’s all big picture stuff – or Big Picture stuff, if that helps. And the term I would use to describe who I was at the most fundamental level was a “sober optimist” [not sobriety in the sense of no drugs or alcohol – there are of course sober doomers, but that just ain’t the part of the clubhouse where I plant my kiester], meaning that despite that fact that I know the world is fucked and why, I firmly believed that it could get better – that the right (ie the left) side of history could ultimately come out on top – unlikely? yes of course, but still entirely possible.

[sorry, but this digression is about to do a bit of digressin of its own: I’m using words like “know” and “believe” but they aren’t really what I mean. I don’t know that the world is fucked as a set of propositions that could be proved or disproved, but like “knowing” it’s raining or not when you’re outside – you base this on a whole crapload of perceptions and experiences so that it’s just a basic observation at this point in your existence, nothing more or less. Could I be wrong? Sure, theoretically. But I’m not. This is reality and not theory [again, more on this later, you’re just gonna have to accept my framing for now. Or not – I’m a doomer, not a cop]. And again, I didn’t “believe” that the good fight being actually winnable was something that was either true or false, but as a way of being, a way of orienting my life and personality and of organizing my actions. It was the horizon that I kept my eyes upon as I walked down the road of life. Deep personal identity shit, basically. Again, I’ll go more into this later, don’t worry, it’s kinda what this whole thing is about. But first, context. Always more context.]

It All Frays Apart

So, my mind broke. Or more specifically, this orientation I had towards Life, my personal little monkey way of being in this world was not just proven “wrong” during CF 2020s – that wouldn’t’ve been so bad, I’ve been wrong lots of times. Hell, it’s pretty much a prerequisite for getting anything important in life right at all. No, not wrong. Obliterated. Destroyed. Chewed up, shat out, and put on a platter and molded into the head of John the Baptist. It wasn’t awesome. If you’re curious, I can actually pinpoint the exact moment/event where my mind broke. I’d guess this is true of most doomers, but keep in mind that this is almost inevitably different for everyone. This is not a proposition whose validity comes from its truth value, but more like the line in a drawing that causes your perception to flip a switch and see the picture as a whole in a new light (or having no fucking light anywhere on the horizon anywhere at all, in my case). 

Anyway, for me it was during the height of the push to “return to normalcy” [if you can consider Weekend and Bernie’s-ing an entire society “normal” in any sense of the word] when in the United States there was a concerted effort to allow/force children to not wear masks during an earlier phase of this century’s first runaway pandemic. This effort ended very shortly, though, and not because it was rejected by every rational human being as being the most dystopian, anti-life, and aggressively stupid thing imaginable. lmao. lol even. No, no… the effort to unmask children during a very fucking airborn toxic event ended because these assholes actually fucking won. Quickly and decisively. This shocked me more than anything else in my life up to that point and even after. And I’m not fucking naive – and by the way if this event wasn’t a shock to you then I’m sorry but you either do not understand literally anything about Life or what makes a society an actual fucking society or not, or your brain is just broken in this very unfortunate way. [quick aside: I take it as a basic fact that everyone alive today is broken (specifically their brains/minds), in differing degrees and in all types of different ways. This entire what-have-you is just me diagnosing and describing the particular brain affliction that I suffer from. And I know that there are many others out there suffering from this same affliction and I really and truly fucking care about them, which is why I’m writing this to and for them. Honestly, if you don’t think your brain is broken then please stop reading this and self-reflect for apparently the first time in your life jfc.]

Anyway, once an entire society goes deathcult they don’t go back. And when a deathcult has both the ability and the inclination to take everyone else with them? Well, that’s everyone’s problem, now isn’t it? Personally, as part of everyone I wasn’t (and still ain’t, for that matter) super cheesed up about this at all. So, that was fall of 2021 iirc [honestly, when you’re unemployed and in the midst of ego death timelines tend to fuzz, so if I’m off a bit here just consider that I don’t actually care about the exact date and actually prefer not to revisit that particular moment in time just to get a few details right, so…]. You also might be quick on the uptake and have noticed that there was a bit of time between then and now. Well, downward spirals do take time. As does clawing your way back up to some kind of level ground where you can assess the damage and begin to reassemble the shattered pieces of who you were and what you might’ve been into a whole new person – not to mention the time it takes to then try and get that new personality to a place where it might actually be somewhat capable of navigating (ie bumbling through) a completely new landscape. Sure, almost every element of the entire picture is exactly the same – but those few new lines, those few new stones in the mosaic of Life [more on why tf I keep capitalizing Life shortly, I promise, only a few more digressions until the main course], just those few changes were enough to change the entire picture in some very world-upside-downing ways.

[*musical notes*: bum bum bum!] Enter the Doomer’s Guide To Getting Right With The Apocalypse. It was some time around fall of 2023 when this project started to take shape as an answer to the question, “What the fuck went so fucking wrong?” With me, remember. How the hell did I break so fucking thoroughly? (and believe me – it was pretty fuckin thorough. Not actually a fan of the thoroughness, honestly – the analytical part of my mind can be kind of a dick about that sort of thing, as I’m sure the more perceptive of you are beginning to surmise.) The Doomer’s Guide was also an attempt to answer the question, “can I do it? Can I make a new me out of what was left over from what was and what could’ve been? One that could at least function? [notice that it took like two whole fucking years of ego death until I was even in a place to begin asking these questions. And for the record, these are not in any way, shape, or form easy questions to answer. I mean, I started this process in September/October-ish of 2023 and finally had both enough of an answer and enough functionality to begin writing a first draft of this in January 2024. It took three or four months or very intense and very fucking thorough self-reflection – looking at every choice, every phase of life, every important conversation I could recall in the middle of the night and obsess over, and looking at them from every conceivable perspective. Then it still took me quite a while to get this to where it wasn’t pure rant, but a sober (again, trying to look at reality with clarity and tbqh sometimes it does take a little pharmaceutical intervention to reach that level of existential sobriety, at least for me *shrug emoji*) look at myself and my world and how those two things fit together, these days. Processes take time, what can I say.

PrePox to MidPox

I guess I should answer the question: Who was I before the fraying (both the Big (societal) Fraying sparked off in March, 2020 and my smaller personal fraying sparked off in fall 2021)? This is a hard freakin question to answer because I thought I knew perfectly well in January 2020, and self-critique (not self-criticism, mind you – big fucking difference) has always been a passion of mine, so I was pretty confident in my assessment. I was a sober optimist who enjoyed helping youths to see their world through different lenses so they could better navigate it and have a bit more agency in the process. That was the idea, anyway. I was ready to wade into the already fucked up waters of academia and start doing my small but personally satisfying part to make this world a wee bit less bad.

And the thing is, I was right about those things at the time. I still feel that prior to the Fraying that being an optimist despite the improbability of success was the correct and healthy attitude. In spite of everything, I still staunchly believe (that’s right – I’m for real staunch on this point) that I was right. But…

But I was also so, so terribly wrong. Somehow I made a huge mistake, or as the French say: j’oopse! Yeah seriously, I j’oopsed real fuckin beaucoup at some point in my analysis – and putting together a new story to tell myself about myself is a might bit arduous. Arduous, but worth it – I think. Honestly, I think this process saved my life. Living in a constant state of doom is fucking exhausting. But it’s also stressful as shit – my back is so tight these days that I can’t sit in a chair for longer than half an hour without some pretty intense pain. And this is so much better than it was just a few months ago. It’s the lamentatin that did it. (not completely, of course, but without it I’m one hundred percent sure I’d still be miserable-plus or even have had “an event” by now. In case there was any confusion up to this: doom = bad.) I was like if you took a rubber band ball and shrunk each individual band of it in a clothes dryer but left the ball the same size so that each and every band was stretched to the point of snapping, only instead of being made of rubber my mind-bands were made out of frustration and rage and disgust. It was not optimal.

The Many Uses of Lamentation

But lamenting who I was before my own personal fracturing (and honestly, I liked who I was. He was a swell guy, a real mensche type. It was honestly kind of a bummer watching him go) allowed me to see all the different parts of me in a thousand different lights that I never would’ve looked for before. There’s actually something quite liberating about it, but…but the price is very, very, very fucking high, and as far as I can tell the price is pretty non-negotiable. Worth it? No idea because I have no fuckin clue what my other options were. High fuckin price though, either way. Not a fan.

So, a lament. Lamentation as therapy – sure, but so, so much more. Lamentation as a way to sing a new story about myself. At least that is what I’ve found. Or am beginning to find, anyway – rebuilding your entire sense of self takes some time, and a process in which you can only really see how far you’ve come and not how far you still have to go. One very important thing I learned about myself along this path is that I am most certainly not alone, I am just one token of a type – and a type that is very susceptible to a certain type of affliction. An affliction that I am calling doomerism. And the others out there who share this susceptibility matter to me. They are my pack and many of them are out there wounded and alone – and that is just not funking okay with me. At all.

So, lament as a call to pack. That’s why I said before that if this doesn’t apply to you, then I’m just not talking to you. No offense meant for real – I know there are tons of other afflictions out there, these days. I want everyone to heal, believe me. But the ones I’m calling to, those afflicted with the condition that I swear I’m about to start to actually describe (I promise this time), those are my pack: the people who look out at the world and see what I see. No translation needed (languages of course still need translating, doomerism isn’t an anglophone thing at all; it’s a twenty-first century human thing, and there are a lot of those so even a microscopic percentage of the population is still quite a lot of individuals.). That is, the perspective needs no translation, No need to explain what you’re talking about or why it matters – no more need to explain why anyone should actually freakin care about any of it.

I’m singing my lament as loud as I can so that those who need to hear it – those who already know the tune even if they didn’t realize it until now – can lift their voices to it, too, and we can each of us finally hear those other calls that tell you that you are not a lone wolf, which as we all know is an irreparably broken wolf. A dead or dying wolf. 

So, a lamentation and a call to pack. Not much of a guide to be honest. Truthfully, I liked the sound of the title, I don’t think it was ever even aspirational. More of a sick joke played by one of the more dickish aspects of my personality (even though I’m usually such a sweetheart lol). Whatever the accuracy of the title ends up being isn’t super important to me, though, but what is important is to find my pack. So I’m putting out the call. [Me go gently into that good night? GTFOH!]

Doomer is as Doomer does

“Alright then, canary, time to start singin.” Fair enough. Okay, I said before that doomerism is an affliction that affects a certain type of person – the problem here is, well, my problem is that I can’t think of a good name for this type of person, so I’m gonna refer to all of us as doomers even though I’m certain that not all of us have been suchly afflicted. But then, what’s a little unnecessary confusion amongst friends, eh? Anyway, I consider doomers to have only three basic traits. Simple enough, you either got all three or you don’t. And it’s ok if you don’t. I don’t actually think being a doomer is awesome or even really slightly good at all (the afflicted sort of course). So if you think you’re being left out of some secret exclusive club because I don’t consider you a true doomer – get over yourself. Seriously, who gets jealous that they don’t feel hopeless enough? If what I’m saying here doesn’t jive with you, then it just ain’t for you. No big deal. You are more than welcome to still feel as doomed as you’d like, you’re just not this exact flavor of doomer. And that’s ok.

 The first aspect of doomerness is that you can’t help but see the Big Picture (quick aside: there are tons and tons of “big pictures”, economic, political, social, biological, ecological, etc, etc, etc. What I’m getting at here is like a meta-Big Picture that combines all of these, but so, so much more. What I mean should hopefully become a bit clearer as you read on.) – how the pieces fit together and how interconnected our world is at every level. This is not a question of knowledge or understanding, mind you – these things are actually pretty easy to get intellectually. But the different parts of our world are not interconnected intellectually but in reality; in the day-to-day activities and movements of people, things, animals, talking points, and pollen on the wind. It’s not a matter of knowing but perceiving, of seeing the blockages and failing links that are increasing in number and intensity far faster than most people are willing to accept. So they don’t see them, even if they know they’re there – there is nothing easier in the world than ignoring something that you know on an intellectual level. It doesn’t make you stupid or naïve, it just makes you human. There’s a lot of fucking world out there, you need filters and “knows it on an intellectual level” is a pretty dang easy filter for your brain to leave on auto. Doomers, however, are incapable of using that defense mechanism (which it certainly is in this here brave new world). And for the record, I am not poo-pooing this form of cognitive dissonance; if anything I am lamenting that I don’t have it. I have spent most of my mental energy during the 2020s trying not to see all types of things and stuff. And let me tell you: I am not good at it. Like, at all.

The other two doomer traits go together, and might even be two aspects of the same trait, but I think they’re different enough for the distinction to be significant. They are – (a) caring about people and (b) caring about the world. Now, a lot of people care about these things, casually at least. But like everything else that has to do with people, “caring about stuff” exists on a scale; and like everything that people believe about themselves: actions speak louder than words. When I say doomers care about people I mean that they’re the type of person who can’t walk past our homeless brothers and sisters without sharing whatever they have on hand – even if it’s just a greeting and a kind word. The other side of this is that if you don’t “see” the people around you who are forced onto the street, then you might be the sweetest, kindest person in the world to whomever enters your normal orbit, but you just don’t care about people in the way that I mean. (Likewise for how you treat people in the service and retail industries. Seriously, how someone treats the people who “serve” them is the simplest and surest way to tell how someone actually feels about humanity in general. Everyone who has ever worked these types of jobs already knows this quite well.)

           Big same for the wider world of which humanity is such a small (although disproportionately destructive) part. I think most people want a healthy environment and aren’t exactly cheesed about a mass extinction event happening in their or their children’s lifetimes – even if these things aren’t political priorities for them. The kind of caring I am talking about, though, is bone deep and can’t be turned off – it’s the kind of caring borne from a person who sees consciousness itself as a gift from nature that allows people to truly and fully appreciate the miraculous beauty of Life – plant, animal, fungus, bacteria, and whatever else pops up on the scene. And that humanity’s accidental but still pretty fuckin awesome role in the universe is to nurture and tend to the Life we find ourselves nested in. The reward for which is that you get to live in fucking paradise. (Seriously though, I cannot emphasize enough that if you think people need additional incentives to tend to and nurture the world then (a) you aren’t a doomer, so don’t worry about what I’m saying because I ain’t talking to you and you probably think it’s all bullshit anyway, and (b) your brain has been broken by capitalism in a very unflattering way and you should do your best to look for some healing in this area sooner rather than later.)

Battle of the Century^TM: The Doomers VS the Deathcultists Edition

So, what of those people who are still pretty good at seeing the Big Picture, but don’t really care about anything but themselves and their own status and/or comfort? Bizarro-doomers maybe. Assholes and opportunists, if you ask me. Anyway, these are the people who accept that we are thoroughly fucked but think there is nothing we can do about it, so we might as well not even try. In other words, they just want to continue the status quo – unmitigated oil extraction and consumption and unbridled and unrelenting capitalism, a system built on the assumption that environmental costs of “doing business” are external costs that can be shunted off until… well, we’re all paying those costs now, aren’t we? Some more than others of course, but ain’t that the point? I’m not sure why this needs to be said, but being doomed is bad. It is not something you throw your hands up over and then don’t do anything about if you have any other options. Certainly not until you’ve at least tried one measly option (which at least in the United States we have not. At all. Even once. Not even close. Like, at all.).

           Point of clarification: when I say that I am a “doomer” it is not a point of pride or even something I am remotely okay with. I am writing this because I am desperately trying to figure out a way to get right with the apocalypse, not because I already am. I am not a doomer because I don’t think we have the ability to deal with climate change or any of the other (many, many) major problems contributing  to our apocalypse – it’s that we won’t do anything. This is a matter of choice, not capability – hence the deep and profound sadness, frustration, and rage.

           Anyway, these false doomers aren’t doomers at all, they are in fact death cultists who apparently aren’t content with anything less than full planet death (gaiacide). Don’t ask me why – there is no amount of analysis or looking at something from someone else’s point-of-view that will cough up an acceptable reason to be in favor of gaiacide, let alone cheerlead for it. Honestly, thinking about these people makes me feel a little blessed that the way the apocalypse broke my brain is with an indelible hopelessness and its accompanying sadness beyond sadness. Not gonna lie, being in any death cult sounds awful as shit, but being in the gaiacide death cult makes having boundless melancholy seem like winning the lottery.

           Here you might be saying, “Now, Nat, it seems kind of obvious that the majority of the US population – at least as reflected by the policy positions of every governmental agency and institution from local and state all the way to federal – have gone full death cultist. Is everyone there a bizarro-doomer then?” No, of course not. The nature of the way propaganda spreads almost organically means that all you need is a few well placed mouthpieces and message-amplifiers to spread enough poo-brained talking points around any issue at lightening speed so as to make any sort of useful public conversation impossible.  (btw the things that make that “almost” instead of “completely” organic are so frickin important. If you are a doomer then you are definitely aware of many of these ways. If you are somehow unaware how actual real propaganda spreads in the actual real society in which you live your entire actual life, then all I could really say to you at this point is: oh, honey…) In fact, I think one of the things that makes death cults so attractive, these days, is that most people cannot see the big picture and aren’t really interested in changing that ever. I would imagine only a very few think tankers even bother to try, and they are paid very well not to care about anything but themselves.

Battle of the Century^TM: Seeing VS Believing Edition

Of course, you don’t really need to “see the big picture” to know how fucked we are. Everyone knows it and no one is handling it well. But I’m not talking about the kind of knowledge that can be filed away to become cognitive dissonance fuel. I am talking about a way of perceiving the world that cannot be turned off or even ignored – hence the big sads all the time.

[I gotta pause here and say that I think the youths have this same problem (of not being able to turn off the perceptions of doom), but for a slightly different reason. Whereas I am saying that doomers are this way because of skills and techniques they have developed over time, the youths don’t need a lot of these techniques because they haven’t formed as many of the (idk cynical?) filters and strategic blindspots that people (especially empathic and otherwise sensitive folks) need to develop in order to function in a society based in large part on a variety of structural cruelties. Btw if this little fact ain’t becoming more and more obvious to you on a daily basis then you need to stop reading this and ask yourself seriously if maybe you aren’t part of the problem after all. seriously.] This is one of the problems with people telling us that it’ll be okay or that we don’t actually know the end is nigh; if you have a tapestry the size of the world then having a firm grasp on a few threads, or even a few thousand threads, doesn’t give you the slightest hint about what the picture is. But if you have gotten yourself to a vantage point where you can see the picture (even just in part, but still clearly and more than enough it), what does a few strands really mean? What if you were slightly off about a few of their specific shades of grey? Would that make you question the picture you saw? It wouldn’t me. Not even for half a fucking second.

And of course, not everyone who sees the Big Picture sees it the same. It’s a big fuckin picture with lots of interconnected parts that can be approached from an endless number of angles. It is not about how many pieces or which ones you are familiar with. Again: it is a way of perceiving where every time you come across a new piece of the puzzle you can’t help but spontaneously place it in the Big Picture – to see what each thing means. Context is everything, and the more context we have the more of the everything we have access to. So you can see how this might be an issue: every break in a supply chain; every unseasonable storm or dry spell; every oversized truck or suv; every viral video of people acting like complete shit heels to each other sends your brain into an unstoppable cascade of associations that all lead to the cliff – full speed with no breaks and the parachutes are all made of tissue paper. Unpleasant business for real.

Why So Many People Want To Take A Big Poo On The Big Picture

So, I’m thinking that some further explanation about seeing The Big Picture could be helpful at this point. Either way, you’re gettin it lol.. First off, seeing The Big Picture (in my sense here) is not something that people naturally do. I did not wake up one day and spontaneously had the ability to see The Big Picture. I had to train myself for years (at least it took years for me, I suppose you could boot camp it, but I highly doubt the effectiveness). And it is you yourself largely; you have to train yourself, at least part of the way. I’m gonna let you in on a little secret – most people do not care for The Big Picture. It is a profoundly uncomfortable place to be, even for people who pride themselves on seeing the big picture (not capitalized). There is a point at which most people absolutely and firmly do NOT want to zoom out any more and often become a wee bit hostile to the very idea, if I’m being totally honest.

Here’s the problem: the world is big. No duh, but stay with me for a moment. The world is really fuckin big – from stratosphere to core, from pole to equator, from mountain range to amoeba – the world is really fuckin big and you, a single human being, are really, really, really fuckin small. But it’s a bit more complicated than that – it turns out the world, our world, is really fuckin tiny. Like, not even a pixel’s worth in the picture of the universe. And for some strange reason, I have found that most people do not like coming face to face with the depth of their own insignificance. Add to that that it’s actually pretty easy to avoid (unless some asshole comes along and shoves it in your face *nonchalant whistle emoji*) – all you’ve gotta do is stay pretty close to a human perspective. It so happens that humans are exactly the right size to be perceived by other humans; not too small to be noticed like an ant or too big to be taken in all at once like a mountain range. And as long as you don’t zoom out too far, the big picture that you see will still have a basically human dimension to it – even if it’s just the names of “great” individuals attached to the deeds of thousands. If you can still make out a few individuals then the individual keeps its significance. Therefore, You can still have significance. The problem with The Big Picture isn’t whether you’re significant or not, it’s that it’s not even an option, and that’s a real bummer if you care about that sort of thing. And at least in my experience most people do, in case you were curious.

           Doomers, however, do not. (care about that sort of thing) It just so happens that what I do care about and quite frankly love is Life. I don’t even mean my own life – even though I do happen to be pretty fond of that one in particular – super attached and I truly do want what’s best for it. No, here I mean Life with a capital L. The creative part of the universe. The music of the fucking spheres. That type of whatnots and whathaveyous. I said before how caring about humanity and the wider world are both kinda two aspects of the same thing, well, that thing is Life. Life is beautiful and amazing, and full of all kinds of joys and pleasures, and Life is cruel and uncaring, and full of all kinds of pains and woes. And it so happens that we are tall enough to ride the fuckin ride, so what the hell else could anyone really want?

           Significance, my dude, significance. It turns out most people want to feel significant. I can totally jive with that – I want to be significant, too. Just not to the universe. To me it’s kind of a weird thing to want, honestly – I’m perfectly content with the universe staying the heck out of my business. Indifference is one of the things I love about it, truth be told.

Anyway, I’ve found that most people do not share my attitude about this at all. Like even mildly. Shit, not even trepidatiously. And what this all amounts to is that the general reaction to you trying to zoom out too much is some variety of either “why would you want to do that?” or “what the hell is wrong with you?” (One of these two is always in the facial expression if not in the words, but usually in the words, too.) Meaning that you’re gonna have to learn to put a lot of the pieces together under your own guidance. Of course there are others who have traveled their own paths as well who give you some mentorships and pointers here and there. But nothing really organized or systematic, at least in my experience.

A Quick Metaphor About Metaphors

*many readers at this point*: “Hey, Nat, why tf do you mix so many metaphors? Idk seems kinda sloppy.”

*me*: why do you like dry ass bougie English? Huh? Seriously though, I like metaphors – they’re part of the beauty of language and the beauty of life. Learn to enjoy things ffs. But besides not being satisfied living the mayo life there is also a functional reason: when you’re talking about something that people don’t usually talk about then it becomes really difficult to talk about directly without getting bogged down in jargon, or simply just making it so boring that anyone but the nerdiest nerds lose interest – and them probably too at some point. And metaphors are wicked useful, which I think can best be illuminated thusly (if you seriously thought I wasn’t gonna pull out a metaphor to explain my (perhaps overly enthusiastic) use of metaphors, then you’re just being silly at this point. Honestly the only deliberation is whether or not to mix them purely on principle or not. I don’t know, we’ll see.):

           Imagine each metaphor is a flashlight – like the one you likely carry in your pocket, i.e. not super powerful but good enough to light up what’s right in front of you. Now imagine the concepts/things/aspects-of-the-world/or whathaveyou are huge statues that we come across in the pitch dark. Each beam of light tells us something different about its size, shape, contours, texture, etc. No amount of flashlights are ever going to tell us what the statue looks like in the full light of the sun by the way. But that’s okay because when we combine different light sources (facts, data, theories, technologies, and yes even metaphors!, and all the other little things that make up “human knowledge”) we do get better and better pictures of what we’re trying to see. There is such an exceedingly far distance between ignorance and “full understanding” (whatever the hell that would even look like; like nothing human that’s for sure) – and humanity is so much closer to complete ignorance than full understanding in literally every single aspect of the universe that any pretentions concerning our knowledge is laughable. Which is just intellectual humility btw – understanding the limits of our potential, both future and present. All this is just the backdrop against which everything else unfolds. But holy shit we have come a long way down many roads, even if the knowledge odometer has barely clicked over a couple few times. 

           Human beings, by nature, are masters of “good enough”. We were practically bio-engineered for it – or if we had been I doubt the basic design would be much different. We are “good enough” machines and what we are especially good at is learning from our good enoughs. Why they worked, why they weren’t better, etc. And then we make our next good enough just a bit better through trial and error. Then we use that next, better good enough as the next starting point. Wash, rinse, repeat. String enough chains of good enough together you can do some pretty freakin amazing shit, like putting a few humans on the moon or maybe someday making a lactose-free cheese that has the taste and texture of normal cheese (finger-cross emoji ad infinitum).

Human progress is never linear in any area whatsoever, ever; precisely because everything human beings have now (materially, socially, technologically, etc) is the result of some group of people saying “good enough” at some point. (In fact, it’s helpful to think of ideological differences as based on different definitions of “good enough” in some key areas – its certainly a good way to see what you actually believe and who your allies actually are at the very least.) There are rhythms to human progress, even if we don’t take into account all the dead ends, of which there are more than you could possibly imagine – which is the way it should be when you have a whole universe to explore without any maps that you haven’t made yourselves. Dead ends are not failures but are just part of the thing we’re doing (live laugh love -ing, obviously). Thinking of normal and expected processes as failures is such a weird mentality to me, honestly. Another part of our culture that I think is subtly but aggressively stupid af.

Anyway, metaphors. Metaphors are hand holds on the flow of the various rhythms of human understanding and they are usually good enough (hey, how bout that…) to talk about pretty much anything for the purposes of most discussions. In fact, I would be so bold to say that the ability to create, share, understand, and use metaphors is the single most important technology that humans have ever produced. (wow, so bold)

Let Them Cook

Before we hop back in, let’s continue the q&a portion for just a sec longer. I bet some of you not-quite doomers might be thinking: “Eh, this shit is no big deal, anyone can look at different parts of the world and see how they fit together. This asshole is just full of himself.” Be that as it may, you’re still seeing it as an intellectual exercise. I cannot emphasize enough how learning to see The Big Picture is not natural but something you have to put a ton of effort into learning. For me it was the result of an obsession with Life. I want to learn about all the metabolic processes of the world, of society, of the ocean, of the galaxy, of spoken language, etc, etc, etc because I want to see Life better and more clearly because I love it so fucking much and anything that is adversarial to Life I think is bad and any analysis that stops short of Life just ain’t interesting until it finds its place in The Big Picture – The Portrait of Life. If you don’t know what I am talking about then you’re not a doomer and that’s okay, most people aren’t. And there’s no judgment – like I said earlier, I’m not actually a big fan of feeling totally and utterly hopeless. It’s not ideal imho. So, no judgment.

Another way to illustrate the difference between seeing the big picture and seeing The Big Picture that I think drives the point home fairly well is this: I’m a pretty good cook. I am fully confident that most of the food I make is pretty good and occasionally I make something that is pretty freakin awesome if I do say so myself; and sometimes on those occasions one of my kids will say something to the effect that I could win on Top Chef with this meal. Whenever this happens I take the opportunity for a little Life Lesson™. I know it’s hard to believe that there are people who wouldn’t soak up my wisdoms the first time they heard them, but I’ve had to lay this one out a few times (and probably will again, but what can ya do?).

           Anyway, when I get told that the food I make could make a run on Top Chef, I firmly and unequivocally tell them absofuckinglutely not. Not even close. Like I said, I’m a pretty good cook and I am confident that I could make a meal that any of the Top Chef judges would thoroughly enjoy. Then if I asked them if it could win a challenge on the show they would laugh at me until I cried. And rightfully so.

           Seriously, let’s step back here a moment and see what’s going on: on the one hand you have me. I have some talent for cooking that I developed as a line cook in my youth and improved upon over the next couple of decades as the primary meal prepper for a single family. Cool, alright. On the other hand you have someone who also has some talent for cooking that they developed as a line cook in their youth. And at some point fell in love with food and made it the focal point of their life. They found a way to be mentored – through formal training or through experience, or a combination of both. They took vacations centered around food, went on messageboards, read magazines and books, talked shop with other people who shared their passion, et cetera, et cetera, et fucking cetera. Now, if those two life paths lead to comparable culinary outcomes then that is the bleakest shit I have ever heard and there really is no point in doing literally anything so why bother? Seriously think about it. If the outcome is even close then that is still too fuckin bleak to comprehend. Like I said, I’m a pretty good cook, I make some pretty good food. These people make experiences and push the bounds of human creativity. It’s not that we’re not in the same league, it’s that we aren’t even playing the same game.

           I also explain to my kids that this is actually a really good thing. I love that there are people who are better than me at stuff I like. Getting the benefits of an expert’s expertise is one of the top perks of being a social animal, and honestly it’s been kind of a major bummer living in a society that worships authority and denigrates expertise on the whole. I love expertise and I love that there are so many different kinds of it accumulated by so many people in so many ways. Authority on the other hand? Lol. Anyway, the moral of the story is that being good at something is all great and cool, but it doesn’t really compare to when being good at something is the starting point for pouring your entire self into learning about that thing to the point where you center your entire freakin life around it so that you can master it to the best of your potential. Nobody should want these two things to be the same – this would be the biggest proof for the meaninglessness of life that I could imagine. Shudder the thought. Nihilism sucks donkey butt.

Some General Outlines Of The Big Picture (Spoiler Alert: It Ain’t Lookin Good For Ya, Pal)

Anyway, shall we apply this distinction to “seeing the big picture”? Let’s. A lot of people are good at seeing the big picture of their everyday world – the political, social, economic landscapes that have been the part of a basically consistent system for their entire lives. This is good; you’re creating pretty good meals and occasionally pretty freakin awesome ones. But that system is just a bubble in time and place – a pretty fuckin permeable bubble, as it turns out. If you don’t see that this bubble is about to be permeated right the fuck up then I’m sorry but you definitely and unequivocally do not see The Big Picture. If you can leave your house or scroll the internet without seeing hundreds of cracks in the bubble with each shift of your gaze then you don’t see The Big Picture. It’s not something you can unsee (believe me, I’ve been trying for a couple years now). Living in a cracking bubble that you are powerless to flee or even spackle over is the most exhausting thing I have ever done. Heralding doom is way less fun and rewarding than dudes wearing sandwich boards ringing bells make it seem, believe me.

 Finally we come to the heart of the problem – if you care – deeply and unwaveringly care about humanity and/or the wider world then The Big Picture ain’t bringing you any solace any time soon. This is important, like on a scale of one to ten, this is my most important point. Doomers were, until quite recently, optimists. Pure fucking opitimists; despite the destruction of the world and the debasement of humanity perpetrated by the assholes who’ve been in the driver’s seat the past century or few. We understood that the river of history is long and you never can tell what a bend will reveal until after it is past. “Yes, we’re losing now,” we’d say, “but that could change at literally any time, and while it might suck for us now we can fight the good fight in the hopes that at some point in the future (obviously the sooner the better) humanity would finally reach the shores of the Good Society so long as we keep the raft named Hope patched up enough to stay above water just a little bit longer.” A lot of words to say hope is very fucking comforting. And motivating. Once hope is gone – irrevocably and undeniably gone – it starts getting real hard to find either comfort or motivation anywhere. Trust me on this one, I’ve got some recent experience. 

To extend the river of history metaphor past one more bridge – the problem isn’t that there’s choppy water ahead full of sharp rocks and opportunistic predators for the foreseeable future. That’s what I saw in 2019 and I was optimistic af (for the long term at least; short term, not so much). No, the problem isn’t that the river gets dangerous (it’s always been dangerous), it’s that it’s gone and the land that the river flowed through isn’t just damaged, it is destroyed. I’m not talking about lost causes, mind you, doomers are no strangers to lost causes. That’s our shit right there. I love lost causes, because sometimes, occasionally, rarely…but sometimes, they don’t lose: the cause fucking prevails and then history gets wobbly and we get close to changing the course of the river towards Good and you just never know when and if it’s gonna happen. The cause is lost only until it isn’t, or so went the reasoning. And it was good reasoning if you were paying attention to The Big Picture. Yeah, we’re probably gonna lose, but we might not. Almost definitely, but still…maybe not. This is exactly how I felt New Year’s Day 2020 – the world may be a shit oyster working on a fecal pearl but the folks fightin the good fight, those on the side of Life and Justice, could still win out…someday, maybe, hopefully.

           Fast forward a couple years to New Year’s Day 2022, and I found only error pages where the lost causes should’ve been. Likewise for the shitheel side that’s been dominating history for the past century or few. No more winning or losing – the game was over and everyone lost. It’s just that no one wants to admit it – and as long as everyone keeps playing the same old game (which is over. It ended. It’s in the past. Finished.) the more lost everyone gets. And it’s so fucking obvious if you can see The Big Picture. And you can’t unsee it. But what then? How the sugar snap peas do we navigate a world with absolutely no hope?

           I don’t know, sadly. Hope is gone but Life remains, and it’s about to take a pretty freakin big beating, and it ain’t gonna look the same when it comes out the other side. And this isn’t the version of “it’s all gonna be ok” that goes something like, “everything changes, so don’t worry about it…” Everything changing is kinda Life’s thing, but not everything gets thrown into a wood chipper and then doused in gasoline and lit on fire before being tossed off the cliff. Some changes just plain suck, end of discussion.

           This is where calling this a “guide” becomes a fairly sick joke. I have not been handling the apocalypse well. But I want people to understand, it’s not from fear of the future. I’ve never had any illusions about how this all ends for me personally. I mean, I would’ve rather liked having the second half of my brief sojourn to be filled with pleasure and joy, but alas! you know what the Stones say? Anyway, not fear but hopelessness, and the frustration and rage at the people who tamed and then murdered Hope. (this isn’t macho blustering btw. I got no problem being afraid of stuff – Life gave us that ability for a pretty fuckin good reason if you ask me – it’s just that “vaguely defined really bad stuff that’ll happen someday to you or your kids or your kids’ hypothetical kids” just isn’t something that flicks that switch in me.) And let’s be honest, if self-medicating and listening to the same few songs over and over again haven’t brought the hoped for catharsis by now, then it probably never will. It doesn’t matter how many times Ellie Roswell asks me how she can make it okay, the answer will only ever be *sad half-chuckle*. This is the doomer’s starting point, but it needs to head towards something else and not just wallow in the ending point of the optimist that you were a long half-decade ago. This place sucks.

           So what then? What can be a substitute for hope? Is that even possible? I don’t know, man, we’re living through the beginning of the stupidest apocalypse ever. I mean, besides all the awful stuff that an apocalypse is gonna have (it’s in the description after all), ours has such a massive amount of stupid, too. It’s a new level when the cruelty isn’t enough but they have to make it so aggressively stupid as well. Since reality has no problem being incredibly stupid on a daily basis, why not throw a bit of the absurdity to land in our favor a few times, eh? Sorry, but hope can’t be faked or snuck back in the back door. There is no light substitute that is gonna make the dark go away. That’s why we need to reorient ourselves – can’t use hope to guide us anymore. If you trained yourself up to see The Big Picture anyway, you can’t. Or if you can I haven’t found it yet.

“Global Warming”… “Climate Change”… Planet Death

I think before we try to reorient ourselves, it behooves us to get a better grip on the actual real landscape of the twenty-first century that we all have to navigate. And in fact here we need to recognize the limits of metaphors and recognize when linguistic precision is so dang necessary. As we approach the end of this little what-have-you, I’ve prepared a couple of digressions special for you. (Sorry, but at least I think I’m funny though) But seriously just a couple more thoughts to put out there – and just to reiterate the whole theme here, I’ll make it one lament and one call to pack. And as the riff demands, first the lament:

 So, it’s pretty clear by now that the term “climate change” has met the same fate as “global warming” – where, yeah, it does describe one of the major processes that we are at just the very beginning of, but it does so in a way that leaves a lot to the imagination. Literally and too damn much honestly. Because just like it became easy for enough people to imagine global warming to mean “just like now but warmer… and hey wouldn’t that actually be great come winter lol?” Likewise we’re now at the point where “yeah but climates are always in a process of change, this is just a bit faster but we’ll just build more solar panels and more a/c units or whatever technofix comes along. This is how the death cultists win btw. Are winning. Did win gdi.

           Even if your big takeaway from your time with me is that I’m just some dumb asshole with a comically inflated sense of his own analytic capabilities, which is fine (hurts a little, but fine nonetheless), at least take to heart this one thing, which I cannot emphasize even close to enough: humans are not supposed to experience geologic time. This is bad. Experiencing a few millennia’s worth of change over just a few decades or even centuries is so catastrophically bad that the primary concern of every living human being should be how to make sure it doesn’t happen. This really is the mildest possible way to put it. This is what the Big Picture is telling us in huge, bright, easy to understand, completely unmistakable letters:

UNFUCK THE PLANET YESTERDAY!

It’s not even that subtle tbqh.

           So, the need for a term that properly conveys our level of fuctitude. Like “global warming” and “climate change” it should be both simple and accurate, but obviously needs to be far more unambiguous about the true nature of the processes that are very much underway. I propose “planet death”. It’s as straightforward as you can get imho.

*Mr. Yeahbut*: “Yeah but the planet isn’t gonna die. Even if people all die off, life will go on.”

*me*: “wow, what a fuckin consolation. Jfc.”

           Seriously though: before this kind of thinking takes root in you I want you to consider a little scenario: there’s this fine fellow that you know well enough that you could tell him fairly easily from an imposter. Let’s call him McNat. McNat loved to go hiking and one day this fine fellow never came back from an excursion in the wilderness. A wee bit later you were out hiking and came across his corpse. You notice that it is teeming with life: microbial, fungal, plants, insects, worms, etc, etc, etc. My dude is a regular ecosystem in himself. Anyway, would you consider all that life that is slowly replacing his flesh with theirs as McNat himself? Would you mistake this assemblage of Life for our luckless fellow? No. And why not? One simple reason – it’s a stupid fucking question. No one would take it seriously even for a second.

           See what I’m sayin, yeah? Sure, Life will go on, but the world as we know it? All the parts of Life that you love personally? Do you see the urgency? Do you see how accurate, simple, and straightforward the term “planet death” is? (and for those who are thinking along the lines of “planet death sounds bad ass, or metal as fuck, or some such” – no. no it fucking does not. Wolves are fucking badass. Snow Leopards are metal as all fuck. These guys dying off so that some rich assholes don’t have to give up their gigantic yachts and private jets? Not badass. Not metal. Fucking depressing beyond the human limits of depression. So, no, not fucking metal at all.) 

One Last Call To Pack, Then I’m Good…

There. That’s my last lament, now time for one final call to pack. And don’t worry, it’s still chock full of lament. As if. Overall, I feel that I did an A for Adequate job on answering the question “wtf went so terribly wrong (with me)?”, and I hope that my lament/analysis made its way to some people who needed to hear it, so they know they aren’t alone. Not alone, just lonely – and that’s bad enough. Hence the call to pack. So “wtf went wrong” answered good enoughly, and if I’m reading the room correctly you’re all like “wtf, doomer guy, you ramble enough for a dozen tambles and you ain’t got nothin to say about what the hell we’re supposed to do about it? Bullshit.”

Okay, bullshit called. Fair enough. I do have something, but it ain’t much. But at least it’s something, and it’s not too far off from where your heart truly lies, anyway. I’m talking about lost causes, of course. “Hey, but Nat, earlier you said you can’t believe in lost causes anymore. Wtf – don’t play with our emotions, Smokey.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m talking about a very specific kind of lost cause with a slightly different orientation to it. And since my big problem at least is the loss of that horizon by which I completely and totally oriented my entire personality. Orientation is what we need. Something to move towards. Direction in a sense.

“Orientation, sure, direction, yeah, ok, who couldn’t use some of that, these days? But that ‘horizon’ that was so freakin important for you? for us? That was Hope, my dude, capital H and everything. And you yourself said that there is no substitute for Hope. So what gives, buster?”

Sorry, not the best solace to give, but my answer is to borrow some hope from someone else and orient yourselves towards it. Work at diverting your eyes back to it whenever you start cascading toward the Big Picture’s GAME OVER screen. Pascal’s wager for basic sanity. Basically just fake it til you make it, but instead of making it you just try not think about the fact that faking it is all you got left. Just enough anyway so that you are able to live out the rest of your life without the constant fraying. Hopefully anyway, lol.

Anyway, my suggestion is that we all start betting on losing dogs. Where we do already know (if in nowhere else then at least deep down in that secret asshole part of our minds that would rather drink the hemlock than be exiled from the truth) that they are in fact losing. That all the time they have left will be filled with pity-cringes from the crowd and final countdowns. Accept that they’ve already lost and that nothing you can or will do can change that outcome in any way. Fuck it, seriously, we’ve all paid for our place by their sides a hundred times over – so fuck yeah, go lose by their sides. And do it with such grace and fury that the angel of history finally gets to have a smile crack their face, even if it’s only in the moment of their final crashing. Lose gloriously with beautiful people doing amazing things to better the world that they love as well. It’s not the worst way to go out, honestly, it’s just a bummer that there really is no deus ex machina this time – we could’ve used it for real. Well, losing dogs then – there’s enough of them out there, these days, that finding some deserving of your time and attention shouldn’t be too difficult.

That’s it. That’s all I got. I hope to hell that it’s good enough. At least to start. I hope that if all this applies to you and if you’ve been hurtin, then maybe all you needed was to hear someone else say some of it – to start the call. I hope that hearing your lament in someone else’s words is enough to get you to answer the call to pack in your own way and add your voice to mine. And if this all doesn’t apply to you, but you’re still hurtin in your own ways, then I hope this helped you in some ways as well. I truly do.