Our Obsession with the Apocalypse

Airports and train stations resembled a modern-day movie-like dystopian apocalypse, we were all controlled without knowing whom by or why, and yet we complied without giving it a second thought.

We wash our hands obsessively, follow the rules by the book and we believe that we are saving the world because this is what we are told by MEDIA. We obey laws so readily like we have never heard of the REBELLION act, we are ready and nearly happy to be taken anywhere, locked up anywhere.

Did we ever stop driving to work before because of road accidents, did we ever stop going on flights, we even went skydiving. Why are we scared NOW?

Finally we are living in a movie and we are obsessed with it. Some of the most popular films in the recent years included the dystopianThe Hunger Games: Catching Fie, while most watched show in cable history is another post-apocalyptic favorite,The Walking Dead. It seems that we love to see our world destroyed. However, in most movies the end never actually comes. Millions (billions, even) die, as is required in any apocalyptic tale, but some live. The difficulty of life after catastrophe is portrayed in all its trials and horrors, but humanity goes on. The virus spreads, but the immune person is found and the anti-virus is developed in time (World War Z, Contagion). A new planet is found (Battlestar Galactica), and a new hope arises.

The world keeps spinning, and people, however few, are still in it. The question is: are we that hoepful that we think we’ll be one of the few survivors, or are we that hopeless that we actually believe the world will end for all. That brings me to part TWO of this phenomenon: do we hate our lives? Are we bored? Are we craving attention, destruction, euphoria?

Georges Bernanos’s village priest provides us with a fine description of the imperceptibly destructive nature of boredom in The Diary of a Country Priest: “So I said to myself that people are consumed by bore- dom. Naturally, one has to ponder for a while to realise this — one does not see it immediately. It is a like some sort of dust. One comes and goes without seeing it, one breathes it in, one eats it, one drinks it, and it is so fine that it doesn’t even scrunch between one’s teeth. But if one stops up for a moment, it settles like a blanket over the face and hands. One has to constantly shake this ash-rain off one. That is why people are so restless.”

Have we been living under blankets for years and now that Covid-19 has given us the opportunity to call out for PANIC we have blindly taken it?