Emotional Responses to Apocalypse
““What does it matter that we make change if the world is going to end soon anyways?””
Working in the climate justice movement, this is a sentiment I hear frequently; I think most of us (myself included) have some anxiety around the “apocalypse,” particularly the fiery, devastating societal collapse that’s portrayed in popular media. So how do we move forward with the knowledge that our world is going to “end in flames?”
Balm of Apocalypse
When you think of "apocalypse," what comes to mind? My brain goes immediately to the firey, total desolation that we often see in popular "apocalyptic" media and discussed in general culture, images that can be representative of society's prevailing views around "apocalypse": devastating, violent, and finite. Additionally, built into this perspective is an implicit understanding of "apocalypse" as a distinct event that will occur sometime in the future, if not within our future, as a function of our linear understanding of time.
When this image provides the reference point for our social justice work (i.e., "If we don't fix the problem, the apocalypse is the result."), it can trap us within an impossible binary: either we solve the problem entirely and create "paradise on Earth," or we don't solve the problem entirely and allow for the apocalypse. This binary is also fed by the dependence on a linear understanding of time as we interpret our actions as building towards one of these outcomes. All of this leads to an impossible "choice" because we can never wholly meet the conditions of a "complete" solution, nor can we create effective change if we're convinced the apocalypse is coming anyways!
But what if we were to consider a different interpretation of the word "apocalypse?" Catherine Keller, a theologian and feminist scholar, conceives of "the apocalypse" as "the end" as a "collective encounter at the edge of space and time...[a] threat to a particular world."
This perspective helps us shift our thinking around the apocalypse in several ways. First, it invites us to think of "apocalypse" as a type of "event" rather than a distinct "event" itself, instances where a community or environment has undergone enough radical changes to have created "a new world." With such a broad definition, we can see how many global events (particularly in the social justice sphere) could be understood as "apocalyptic." This thinking also helps us shift our understanding of what happens after "the apocalypse;" if we focus on the function of an "apocalyptic event" as ending a particular world, we open space to imagine what could replace that world and allow ourselves to leave behind the certainty of a firey, devastating "ending."
Second, this perspective invites us into an increasingly circular understanding of time, particularly regarding "creating" the apocalypse. Keller expands on her idea of apocalypse as a "collective encounter," adding that apocalypse is "a process of mutual engagement quietly unfurling to include all time and space in its celebration." This framework considers all of time as relevant to the condition of "apocalypse," and invites us to consider both our present and future and our past as factors in our social justice engagement. Additionally, as a "process of mutual engagement," this framework also allows us to see ourselves as vital participants in the continually-growing relationship between our social justice work and "apocalypse;" we can understand this framework of "apocalypse," then, as an invitation to lean into the possibilities created by the ending of this world.
So the next time you feel blocked by the idea that "the world is going to end," ask yourself - which world? What opportunities does this present to create a better world?
Balm of Beings
When I have a hard time motivating myself to do something, I often find it helpful to think about how doing that thing would benefit someone else; this helps to free me from the procrastination/self-shame spiral and find new motivation to complete the task. I use this strategy often in my personal life, and as I've developed the "Languishing" framework, I realized it could apply to social justice work as well!
Within social justice movements, we first have to consider the "stakeholders" in the social justice work: who is the "we" that is stuck? Who is the "someone else" that we can turn our focus towards? Ivone Gebara's framework of "relatedness" helps us to understand our relative roles within this "us/other" relationship; she centers the dimension of relatedness at the core of the experience of being on our planet, writing that "relatedness is the primary reality...It is constitutive of all beings." This perspective helps us complicate the "us/other" binary, understanding agency as a function of those relationships and our systems and allowing for a spectrum between "us" and "other."
But how does this framework help us understand our social justice work? It might help to give an example:
My social justice work centers on climate and environmental justice and includes non-human beings within that understanding of "justice." Applying Gebara's framework to the Earth justice movement might help me understand human beings as the "us" struggling to make change and non-human beings as the "other" with less agency to address the problem. This perspective also leads me to affirm that there is an intrinsic discrepancy in agency between human and non-human beings; even as we uphold the interrelated dimension of all things, we must acknowledge that the systems of power created by humans actively take from the agency of all other beings. Building on this affirmation, we also must be clear that this discrepancy in agency makes non-human beings more vulnerable to the effects of climate change - especially climate "apocalypse!"
By shifting my perspective and focusing on the concerns of the "other," I now find new motivation to make real change in environmental justice; I can find a new drive in engaging climate justice work for the sake of others, the non-human beings who have less agency to fight against the human-made climate disaster we may experience.
So the next time you feel stuck around the idea of the "apocalypse," particularly if you're feeling unmotivated or stagnant in your work, ask yourself - who is the "other" that would be affected if I don't act?