The world keeps ending, over and over again. In fact, it’s all becoming a little ho-hum. Nuclear Armageddon, a direct strike by a rogue asteroid, an alien invasion, a never-ending drought, the zombie apocalypse – whatever the cataclysm, the story is the same: the survivors are fighting the same fights as before, between rich and poor, between different races, between insiders and outsiders. The end of the world, at least on screen and on the page, is just another stage – more dramatic to be sure, but fundamentally familiar – on which humanity acts out its endless, internecine conflicts.
Is there any way out of this predicament? And what does it say about our times that we collectively struggle to imagine that things might be different?
For one thing, it suggests that – an end goal, towards which we are slowly, meanderingly headed. In this largely secular, postmodern age, such faith is hard to come by.
