APOCALYPSE
What startled me about the response to disaster was not the virtue, since virtue is often the result of diligence and dutifulness, but the passionate joy that shined out from accounts by people who had barely survived. These people who had lost everything, who were living in rubble or ruins, had found agency, meaning, community, immediacy in their
... See moreRebecca Solnit • Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
With the current preparedness levels of Oregon, we can anticipate being without services and assistance for at least two weeks, if not longer, when the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake occurs. While this will be difficult to overcome, individuals, businesses, schools, government and communities can take steps to prepare. Take action now by... See more
Oregon Department of Emergency Management : Cascadia Subduction Zone : Hazards and Preparedness : State of Oregon
In her 2021 novel Fake Accounts, Lauren Oyler pokes fun at what she sees as a propensity to wallow in self-loathing and impotence: “the popular turn to fatalism could be attributed to self-aggrandizement and an ignorance of history, history being characterized by the population’s quickness to declare apocalypse finally imminent despite its... See more
Dorian Lynskey • ‘End of the World Vibes’: Why Culture Can’t Stop Thinking About Apocalypse
Rebecca Solnit explores the connection in “A Paradise Built in Hell,” articulating how amidst the destruction that disasters enact, more considerate and caring communities often arise. It’s a dynamic that can spark deep joy for those who experience it, Solnit writes — a joy that “reveals an ordinarily unmet yearning for community, purposefulness... See more
Johanna Hoffman • Futures From Ruins
“And isn’t death just the apocalypse in the first person?”
A quote from Beautiful World, Where Are You
There’s a lot of alienation; a lot of disaster porn. We need grieving rituals so we can go through our despair together, so we can face the losses we know are coming.
Andrew Boyd • I Want a Better Catastrophe: Navigating the Climate Crisis with Grief, Hope, and Gallows Humor
Despair, too, because of how accessible escape is becoming in a world that requires more rigorous close looking, every day. And, of course, escapism is a supply-and-demand business. As the world requires more of the people in it, it also offers more opportunities to turn away.
Hanif Abdurraqib • Lessons for the End of the World
People are not incorrect about Octavia Butler predicting the future, but they’re not always clear about what kind of future she was envisioning. It’s not the fires or drug use or tumbling literacy rates that she invented—all of those problems were simply there for her to see. What “Sower” imagines, rather, is a future in which surviving the... See more
Hanif Abdurraqib • Lessons for the End of the World
Solnit suggests that the real disaster is everyday life, which alienates us from each other and from the protective impulse that we harbor.