The Apocalypse is Always Near
How stories of the end reveal our search for shared meaning in a fractured world
Originally written in May of 2020, this essay has been lightly revised as part of an ongoing effort to revisit and refine my thinking.
Is it the end of the world as we know it? Every year seems to bring a new meme about the end, feeding omens of crisis to the feeds that permeate our screens, replacing the skies our ancient ancestors once looked to for the same purpose.
From Noah's Ark to yearly summer blockbusters, the idea of the apocalypse has been a cornerstone of human culture for untold generations. Why are we so fascinated by these stories that bring death and destruction? Some stories explore the aftermath of these world-ending events; others show heroes fighting to prevent it. Regardless of the details, the overarching context remains the same: the mass extinction of life, the death of deaths, the loss of life on an unimaginable scale.
In his novel, The Stranger, Albert Camus gloomily writes: "Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter." And yet, the apocalypse presumes to answer the when and how of everyone's deaths, which may be why so many storytellers romanticize this idea. Death is life's greatest mystery, for once we reach it and know its true nature, we are no longer around to understand it. Death is deeply personal, and yet we all must end with it. The apocalypse brings us together in death; it means that we cross that boundary into the unknown together, we don't leave anyone behind. Maybe we find an unusual comfort in the idea of everything ending together, that nobody will miss out on what's to come. This can be seen in eschatology across different religions. Yet, these grand narratives of sacred apocalypses differ from secular ones in a crucial way: they promise meaning in destruction, a divine transformation to come.
We so desperately want to find meaning in the face of death. Individual psychology then offers another window into our apocalyptic fascination. In Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death, he writes about how death is the unifying terror that defines human life.
"...the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity—activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man."
The Denial of Death, p. xvii
As we battle our wits to live a life in the face of this terror, we embark on "causa sui," or immortality projects, things that will extend meaning into our lives by ensuring our survival past biological death. Love and art. A book we write that is passed down through the generations. A family who will pass down our good deeds. Becker writes about how these projects are mainly symbolic, which is the cause of our condition.
"Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever."
The Denial of Death, p. 26
Joseph Campbell, whose work on the Hero’s Journey has inspired thousands of fictional works, from Star Wars to Harry Potter, knew this truth as well. In The Power of Myth, Bill Moyers quotes Campbell:
"The secret cause of all suffering," he said, "is mortality itself, which is the prime condition of life. It cannot be denied if life is to be affirmed."
The Power of Myth, p. 68
Campbell's work on mythology is similar to Becker's on death. We use stories to survive. In the book, Moyer brings up the similarities of mythological stories across cultures, to which Campbell replies:
"The images of myth are reflections of the spiritual potentialities of every one of us. Through contemplating these we evoke their powers in our own lives."
The Power of Myth, p. 273
For any group to thrive, it needs shared myths, from nation-states to sports teams, and yet, as the Existentialists claim, we are prisoners of freedom, the freedom to create our own meaning in a universe that ends in definitive apocalypse, the horizon against which we must measure our choices and values. The solipsistic view that "only my experience matters" becomes untenable in the face of collective extinction. We must either acknowledge our shared destiny or perish in isolated bubbles of manufactured reality. And yet, with the maturation of social media and the internet — through the cascade of misinformation, deepfakes, echo chambers, and algorithmic propaganda —our stories now spin forth at unprecedented rates. We cannot agree on who the heroes and villains are, or what the moral of the story should be. This failure of shared understanding may be the apocalypse we should fear, not one caused by a force of nature.
I sometimes joke that I can’t accept an apocalypse if it's human-caused. An alien attack on Earth would at least bring clarity on our place in the universe, but a nuclear armageddon would be a death caused by human stupidity and ego. Apocalyptic storytelling is a warning, a way to digest a possible future that condenses the human condition into an unfathomable event by some measures, but one that also feels disturbingly plausible, given the paradoxical nature of our species. As Campbell said:
"We need myths that will identify the individual not with his local group but with the planet."
The Power of Myth, p. 30
Campbell's call feels prophetic now, as we face challenges that transcend borders: climate catastrophe, AI ethics, bioweapons, and the acceleration of post-truth ecosystems. We need new myths powerful enough to pull us together, perhaps the immortality projects Becker described — our art, literature, and stories — can serve a greater purpose than merely denying our individual deaths. They might become shared symbols through which we reconstruct common ground. The films, books, and yes, even memes, that imagine our collective end could become the foundation for our collective future — not as prophecies of doom, but as reference points that remind us of our common vulnerability and potential. Hopefully, we can make positive changes and bring clarity to the noise. But if the apocalypse occurred today, we can at least be thankful that the memes will make us laugh until the lights turn off for good.1
I wanted to find a place for this in the essay, but alas it seems a footnote works best. In addition to memes, mathematics offers its own existential warning. As described in an essay by Jim Holt in his book, When Einstein Walked With Gödel, some use probability to show that our end is imminent. “The Doomsday Argument” says that if humanity is destined to flourish in the future, it is inconceivable that we exist in this present moment, and thus, the apocalypse is soon to arrive. As Holt explains:
"Suppose humanity were to have a happier fate, surviving thousands or millions of years into the future. And why not? The sun still has half its ten-billion-year life span to go. The earth's population might stabilize at fifteen billion or so, and our successors could even colonize other parts of the galaxy, allowing a far greater increase in their numbers.
But think what that means: nearly every human who will ever exist will live in the distant future. This would make us unusual in the extreme. Assume, quite conservatively, that a billion new people will be born every decade until the sun burns out. That makes a total of 500 quadrillion people. At most, 50 billion people have either lived in the past or are living now. Thus we would be among the first 0.00001 percent of all members of the human species to exist. Are we really so special?
But suppose, contrariwise, that humanity will be wiped out imminently, that some sort of apocalypse is around the corner. Then it is quite reasonable, statistically speaking, that our moment is the present. After all, more than seven billion of the fifty billion humans who have ever lived are alive today, and with no future epochs to live in, this is far and away the most likely time to exist. Conclusion: doom soon."
When Einstein Walked With Gödel, p. 259 - 260