Responding to TEOTWAWKI
The sense of doom-and-gloom has a long history and likely never goes away entirely. Culturally it occurs in waves and right now the wave seems to be swelling significantly. Like watching an ocean wave in the distance, it seems small and unchanging for quite a while but as it gets closer to shore it can grow very quickly.
When the current “doom wave” first appeared isn’t entirely clear. Since the atomic bomb there has been a permanent level of anxiety which rises and falls with each international political crisis. In the 1970s, two new elements were added: awareness of a global environmental crisis and of growing economic uncertainty. At the same time, there was a revival of Christianity’s ancient apocalyptic fixation, beginning with the bestselling book, The Late, Great Planet Earth, by fundamentalist minster, Hal Lindsey. Since then, there have been the 9/11 attacks (2001), the Global Financial Crisis (2008), and the COVID pandemic (2020).
But to pick a date for its broad cultural awareness, let’s go with 1987 when the rock band R.E.M. released “It’s the End of the World as We Know It.” Regardless of the merits of the song, the sentence-long title entered the public consciousness (often abbreviated as TEOTWAWKI). It began to be used in survivalist literature and has appeared in the increasing number of apocalyptic TV shows, movies, novels, and other media.
Today, the concern, and often belief, that our world is on the verge of some kind of life-threatening, if not life-ending, catastrophe is everywhere. Yet it somehow still manages to fly below the radar. Perhaps it’s just too awful to contemplate.
But I suspect there is also an unwritten policy that beyond the entertainment industry (now there’s irony for you), and fringe survivalist groups, this is not a topic to be seriously discussed. If it were, then the people in charge (aka TPTB, “the powers that be”) might be challenged to do something about it. Imagine if our presidential candidates were asked, “What do you believe should be done to prevent the end of humanity?”
Such a question may not be asked this time around, but it may well be in the not-too-distant future. And that’s because what has been an “elephant in the room” topic, is now being talked about openly by teens and young adults. I’ve seen it pop up increasingly in social media. But what got my attention most recently was an op-ed piece in last weekend’s New York Times. It was by author and Pulitzer-winning journalist Jake Halpern, titled “My Teenage Son Thinks the World Is Falling Apart. I’ve Changed How I Talk to Him About It.”
Halpern begins by acknowledging a basic split in how he and his wife view the world. While he is of the “glass is half-full” perspective, his wife takes the “glass half-empty” viewpoint. She grew up in Warsaw during the dark days of Communism’s impending collapse. Halpern, on the hand, had a comparatively idyllic middle American upbringing. As a result, he writes, their children get two very different pictures of life and the world.
I’m the upbeat dad from America; she’s the no-nonsense mom from Poland. We’ve created two different schools of child-rearing; it’s pretty much Disney versus the Iron Curtain….
When our boys were toddlers, and they asked us about death, I hemmed and hawed, while [my wife] Kasia explained: “I will die, your father will die, and someday you will die.” As you can guess, tears were shed, but death was thus accurately explained.
But their children’s concerns have moved on from basic life questions to current events.
My youngest son, Lucian, who is now 15, has a fatalistic streak. He recently observed to me, “The world is coming apart, isn’t it, Dad?” His proof, which was ample, included climate change, power outages, Ukraine, Gaza and the protests on the college campus near us. And he didn’t seem convinced that any of the world’s “supreme leaders,” as he called them, were doing an especially good job.
“How much faith, in general, do you have in adults?” I asked him recently. “Not much,” he replied. “Have you always felt this way?” I asked. “No, the world was better 10 years ago,” he said wistfully. “But I never really thought about that kind of stuff when I was 5. Back then I just thought about what I was going to have for lunch.” Fair enough.
Halperin now says his “look on the bright side” approach to their kids’ concerns was dishonest and unfair.
The truth is, Lucian is right. The world is coming apart. I see it from his perspective now…. My instinct to minimize all of this was wrong. On some level, I just didn’t want to admit to my kids — or to myself — that I was powerless to protect them….
So I’ve embraced the Iron Curtain response: “Yes the world is broken, which is why you need to fix it.” Lucian’s response to this, of course, is: “We didn’t break it. You did.” Touché. He also reminds us: “If you can’t fix things, what makes you think I can?” And I can only reply: “Maybe you can’t, but you still have to try.”
I appreciate Halperin’s “conversion” to being honest with his children but I have lots of problems with this concluding paragraph. The notion that “you” (the adults) broke the world and now “you” (young people) need to fix it is wrong even as metaphor. The chain of events that has led to our world today is immensely complicated, with no clear beginning. Nor is it at all clear that things could have turned out differently.
For example, the invention of the steam engine, combined with the desire to increase human productivity of all kinds, meant pollution and global warming were baked into the modern industrial cake. Already in the 19th century scientists were forecasting the negative effects of pumping carbon into the atmosphere.
The 18th century invention of bureaucracy (from the French, literally “desk power”) resulted in previously unknown abilities to organize both people and material goods. The modern world would have been impossible without it. Yet it also allowed Napoleon to move soldiers and supplies across Europe in ways never seen before, and every military force since has followed his example.
The modern world has certainly seen dramatic improvements in the overall quality of human life, in both material and social terms. The seemingly endless struggle with hunger and disease has been much reduced. Material living standards and education levels have risen nearly everywhere. Racial and ethnic discrimination and gender inequities have been curtailed significantly. Yet all this has occurred in parallel with humanity’s increasing ability to wreak untold havoc on itself and the planet.
So just as there is no one who “broke” the world, there is no one who will fix it. That’s not how things work. Such a naïve view is an unfortunate result of the modern perspective of seeing everything like a machine. Whenever something is out of whack, we just need to call a service tech and they’ll make it right again.
Living to fix the world can only lead to frustration, anger, and depression. The times in which we live don’t change our calling, which is simply to live in the here and now. Our concern is with what’s right in front of us: in our family, community, workplace, or in the random occurrences of daily living. This understanding is found in the famous “lilies of the field” passage from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear…. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ … Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”
Jesus was no Pollyanna. He is not promising that everything will turn out just fine. Rather, he is pulling us out of our fevered mind, with all its fears and fantasies, to live in the present moment. “Today’s trouble is enough for today.” “Your plate is full now!” Jesus is saying. Why look to tomorrow or next month or next year for more things to pile on it? And the key thing about those future worries is that they are all mental abstractions. Wild guesses our minds make about what may fall into our laps, or fall on our heads.
This does not in any way diminish the world’s problems or its potentially perilous future. Rather, it reminds us that we do not live “in the world” but only here, in this place, and not in the future but only now, in this moment. Within our context, are there things we can do ameliorate suffering and lessen the world’s problems? Of course, and we should act as we are moved and as opportunities present themselves. In doing so, however, we are not trying to “fix a broken world” but responding with compassion to needs that are in front of us. As Jesus says, facing those choices and challenges will be more than enough for us.
Is it TEOTWAWKI? Yes, it always is. Everything is impermanent, as the Buddha and the book of Ecclesiastes taught. The world and our lives are in constant change. Some of that we like, but others not so much. Life is responding to those changes, whether for good or ill. But life is also discovering that our true essence is a center of unchanging peace, unaffected by any storm, and united to the One from which everything comes and goes.
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The news today, whatever its source or format, provides endless sources of distress. Local events, national politics, international conflict, natural disasters, and predictions of future catastrophes all contribute to our sense of dis-ease: feelings of fear, anxiety, anger, hatred, frustration, guilt, depression, sadness, helplessness, and hopelessness.
The last “Reflections” post that I wrote for my congregation in Florida was about the death of our dog, Emma, a week before Christmas. 
What follows was my last “Reflections” post for my congregation in Florida, so you may have read the earlier. It deals with the death of our dog, Emma, a week before Christmas. I am reprinting it here as a lead-in to the post that follows and which continues this theme.