Apocaloptimism - A Biosphere Project Blog
- filipvk
- 3 hours ago
- 9 min read
Dear friends,
I wasn’t planning to write any blog posts during my vacation, but current events in Europe (and elsewhere in the world, though as usual we hear less about those) have made me feel that I must—and want to—pick up my pen again.
But just as in my previous post about the recent heat waves in Europe (“Warm Enough?”), I want to start by saying that, as always, there is both bad news ánd good news. That remains important, because once the full scale of the catastrophe we’re facing begins to sink in (since the current heat waves and wildfires in Europe and elsewhere are only the very beginning), we can easily slip into fatalism: there’s nothing left we can do, we’re doomed, game over, nous sommes foutus. I once wrote a Musing about this contemporary bipolarity between denial and despair, which is actually becoming increasingly relevant: “Everything Is Going to Be All Right.”
So if I start off again with the bad news (there’s plenty of it this summer), keep in mind that good news will follow, though perhaps not of the kind that’s usually reported. Because I’m still convinced that there are many paths through this convergence of ecological crises. I’m also convinced that, if we do everything—or as much as possible—right, a much brighter future might well await us. But we have to relearn how to imagine other possible futures and relearn how to long for them. We’re not very good at that anymore, and I’ll come back to that later.
The first draft of this post was already starting to get very long and was beginning to resemble an essay; after all, there’s a lot to say about all this. But I’ll perhaps finish that essay another time, and for now, I’ll stick with this shorter version.
As you’ve no doubt already realized, the title of this post, ‘apocaloptimism,’ is a combination of the words ‘apocalypse’ and ‘optimism.’ And so I’d like to go ahead and out myself as an apocaloptimist right now.
You might object: How can those two concepts go together? ‘Apocalypse’ is generally understood to mean the end of the world, and ‘optimism’ doesn’t seem to fit with that at all at first glance.
But the word apocalypse originally had a different meaning: it comes from Greek (apokalupsis) and literally means unveiling or revelation (the removal of a covering). The meaning of “global catastrophe” or “the end of time” came later, because the biblical book of ‘Revelation’ describes intense visions of the battle between good and evil, plagues, and the downfall of the world.
And I’d like to shed some light on the word ‘apocalypse’ in its original sense of unveiling or revelation, because I find that to be a very… revealing meaning in this context.
In this sense of the word, we can view this typically terrifying term as the coming to light of something that was previously hidden, or as a sudden insight.
So, apocaloptimism is NOT: glossing over the crisis and pretending everything is fine. Nor is it that naïve and unfounded modern belief in progress that fails to recognize there is no techno-fix for what we are about to experience. Apocaloptimism has more to do with that other meaning of ‘insight’!
In descriptions of this summer’s wildfires in Europe, the intense word ‘apocalyptic’ is used regularly, and it doesn’t seem like an exaggeration. The images from Spain and France are truly breathtaking, and I’m surely not the only one who gets a sinking feeling in the stomach, an ominous gut feeling, something along the lines of: this is going to end badly. Fires are raging in other European countries as well, even in northern regions like Scotland and Norway—countries we don’t immediately associate with heat waves, drought, and wildfires. But the images from France and Spain do seem to most closely resemble a kind of Armageddon (or Apocalypse, if you will), with mesmerizing seas of flames tens of meters high that are also threatening major cities and creating their own weather systems, with the word “pyrocumulonimbus” as the latest addition to our vocabulary. Fortunately, the death toll has remained limited so far, but the damage to forests and ecosystems is incalculable, not to mention the human suffering and economic damage. But above all, the scale of these fires is so overwhelming that the extraordinary threat of the climate crisis is truly beginning to sink in—not as a distant hypothetical possibility, but as something that is now, right here, beginning to unfold in an extremely destructive way. In France, the government itself has already stated that this is the country’s greatest crisis since World War II, and that’s saying something. And these droughts, heat waves, and wildfires are just the tip of the iceberg (in this case, perhaps an unfortunate metaphor): the ecological crisis goes much further and deeper than the 'fever', which is currently its most palpable aspect. (See my essay “Let Us Not Talk About the Climate Crisis Any Longer,” Part One and Part Two).
We’re used to the end of the world lasting about two and a half hours in Hollywood, and now we seem to be staring at an end of the world spread out over several decades. Which, of course, is lightning-fast relative to the time humans have existed, and merely a flash on geological or cosmic timescales.
But all of the above refers to the word ‘apocalypse’ in its most often used meaning: that of “the end of the world.”
Now, what we’re seeing happen today isn’t necessarily the end of the world, but it is the end of the world as we’ve known it so far.
That end can no longer be prevented: the world as we know it is going to change drastically, in any case. The entire social discourse still mostly revolves around the question: how can we preserve what we have, how can we keep the current system running? Whether it’s about “adaptation” or “mitigation”—suddenly new buzzwords—the goal is the same: to preserve as much as possible of what we have now. The system must keep running, at all costs.
But what if this ‘apocalypse,’ this meta-crisis, is actually also—or even more so—a revelation, offering the possibility of a ‘sudden insight’? A revelation of something that was previously hidden or invisible? What if we’re facing a kind of insight that, if it truly sinks in, might just lead to exactly the kind of transformation we need—and that the planet needs? What if we truly allow that insight to take hold rather than stubbornly avoiding or suppressing it? Couldn’t the word ‘apocalypse’ then take on a different connotation—that of a much-needed insight?
And what kind of insight might that be? I’m not talking here about a religious epiphany or mystical insight, although for some, that might well be the result. I’m talking about something that is, first and foremost, simple: the realization that the way things are now is, in any case, not good for us and, in any case, must change—and very drastically, and urgently. The realization that clinging to what we have now is no longer an option—and that’s probably for the better.
I think most of us have actually known this for a long time, whether consciously or unconsciously. Things can’t go on like this—the way we’re abusing the planet, the way we’re abusing ourselves. But for most of us, it remains difficult to truly accept that reality. Until recently, it was still possible to believe “maybe it won’t be that bad.” And even though the warning signs have become increasingly clear in recent years, it remained easier to keep that information at a distance, on the periphery of our awareness.
It’s also very easy to become discouraged: how on earth can we still change the course of this ship, and how can we, mere mortals, possibly make a meaningful contribution to that? And isn’t it already far too late? Better just to quietly carry on with my own life and hope that everything will turn out all right.
And what if that ‘apocalypse’ that’s staring us in the face more and more could actually be the “sudden insight” or the “revelation”: it really is happening, it’s really all about to become real, and there’s really no escaping it. But also: let us then really get our butt in gear, and really start doing what we can.
But whát should we do? And how? If we truly realize that we’ve painted ourselves into a corner, what options do we have left?
If we wait for the government, it will be too late; if we each do something individually, it will be too little. But if we do all kinds of things together, and let that spread from the bottom up like a mycorrhizal network, then maybe it can actually make a difference.
But that brings us to the next important question: where do we want to go?
We know we don’t want the kind of future we’re seeing unfold right now (climate crisis, ecosystem collapse, the sixth mass extinction, exploitation and inequality, international chaos and wars, etc.), but what kind of future do we actually want?
We’re actually not very good anymore at imagining the future we want. We’re great at coming up with dystopias: just flip through Netflix and you’ll see the world coming to an end in a hundred and one different ways. But beautiful, holistic, gentle, and hopeful visions of the future? You’d have to look long and hard to find them. It doesn’t even have to be a utopia: just a beautiful, livable future where life is good—we can’t really picture what that would be like. And I think we’re also no longer very practiced in trusting and believing that Everything Is Going to Be All Right. Because that really does take some practice, just like physical fitness does. How can we once again imagine a future that we actually want, and believe that it’s truly achievable? And how can we truly long for such a future, because I believe we don’t even dare to do that anymore: surviving is good enough; a truly wonderful future isn’t in the cards—that, after all, is the unconscious belief of many on this point.
In the next blog post, I’ll share a wonderful interview on this topic with someone who has dedicated his entire life to it: Rob Hopkins. He is the author of (among other works) the book “How to Fall In Love With the Future,” and that is indeed what we need: to fall in love with the future we actually want.
And he has a great deal to say on the subject, with boundless enthusiasm, intelligence, humor, wisdom, and confidence. Throughout his career, he has been devising ways to help people think, feel, perceive, and imagine differently about the future we actually want. And with wonderful and fascinating results. The climate crisis is actually a crisis of the imagination, he argues, and he couldn’t be more right.
Enough with dystopian imagination: we need to start imagining what we do want, and go for it, together. And he’s devised brilliant “exercises” to help us do just that, such as his ‘time-travel project,’ in which people are asked to imagine traveling to the future and finding the world they actually want there (and “what does it smell like there in the future?” is one of Rob’s questions).
You could say he’s a true “apocaloptimist”: his version of optimism isn’t a naïve belief in progress through quick techno-fixes and economic growth, or some kind of head-in-the-sand approach that simply ignores the bad news: rather, it’s about looking that bad (“apocalyptic”) news in the eye and still daring to imagine, dream, and act—and tapping into our wildest creative abilities to dare to think and feel far “outside the box,” with humor as well.
And that’s what I mean by ‘apocaloptimism’: the clear awareness of all the calamities we’re already in the midst of, but also the realization that we can ultimately see this crisis as the final “wake-up call” to truly begin creating the world we actually want.
And to start by really trying to imagine what that world would look like (and smell like!).
And no, don’t start by saying that’s impossible. First, listen to Rob Hopkins (among others).
As I already said in “Warm Enough?”: everything that needs to be done to save the world is already happening somewhere, just not yet on the scale that’s needed.
And each of us can do our part, perhaps in a way you can’t (or don’t dare to) imagine right now.
To be continued! Nevertheless, I wish you all a wonderful, cool rest of the summer, hopefully spared from heat waves and wildfires.
Thanks for reading, and see you in the next episode—featuring Rob Hopkins’ time travels!
Take care,
Filip
