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. Well, not if you trained yourself up to see The Big Picture, anyway, or if you can I haven’t found it yet.