I think we all know that the end is approaching

It’s a feeling deep in the gut, beyond faith or theory, like when you’re alone in the woods and the birds suddenly stop singing.

When I was a teenage christian soldier, we were told we were in the “last generation,” by a preacher’s son, while he cried & shivered on stage from god’s mighty touch.

I believed.

In college, my friend told me that the world was ending for altogether different reasons. That the collective exhaust of every tycoon’s coal-rolling wealth accumulation scheme is very bad for glaciers, and by an unclear chain of events, us.

I denied it.

On the web I read that Marx predicted the end back in the 1850s. That Capitalism would eventually eat itself, and everyone will spontaneously pull their heads out of their asses and form a just society.

I was skeptical.

As someone who devours wikipedia articles as a pastime, reading about the Weimar Republic feels a lot like one of my other obsessions: stories about cave diving disasters. They’re beautiful in that macabre way, you know it’s going to go terribly wrong at some point, and when it does, it’s like watching a fish catch a hook.

I was anxious.

Does anyone else find the game of musical chairs existentially terrifying? Every round, you walk in a circle, following the leader, and every round you attempt to take a seat when the music stops. Around and around. Until you suddenly realize that you have nowhere to sit.

I am scared.

However, the knowledge that nature itself will strike us down if we don’t submit to Her is a little bit comforting to me…

Maybe it’s my sense of justice, that the incalculable damage we’ve done to the natural world will be paid back in full.

Maybe it’s my desire for certainty that the machines of destruction, annihilation & murder will inevitably cease.

Maybe it’s a seed of hope that once the machines stop, we can live in harmony with nature again, like we did before we colonized Her womb.

I want to believe.