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A few years ago, my son and Iwere watching world news on tele-vision. An item began about the hu-manitarian tragedy in Darfur, Sudan(which is still with us). Can we turnthis off, Dad? my son said. I askedwhy. Its depressing, he replied. Idont need reminding what a hor-rible place the world is.

The images we hold of the worldaffect how we think, feel, and act,and they are increasingly shaped byglobal or distant threat and disas-ter: earthquakes, hurricanes, floods,droughts, bushfires, disease pan-demics, war, terrorist attacks, andfamine. While these hazards are,for the most part, not new, previousfears were never so sustained andvaried, nor so powerfully reinforcedby the frequency, immediacy, andvividness of todays media images.This effect seems certain to intensifyas climate change and other threats

begin to impact more deeply on ourlives. The boundaries between thepersonal and the global are breakingdown.

Most attempts to address thesethreats focus on economics and tech-nology, but how we react psycholog-ically to apocalyptic fears will be justas important. This response involvessubtle and complex interactions be-tween the external world and thatexisting in our minds. These haveimplications for both personal well-

Widespread fears of an apocalyptic future

elicit equally dangerous responses: nihilisticthoughts and decadent lifestyles that

accelerate environmental destruction, or

fundamentalist intolerance that exacerbates

social-political conflict. The only safe

approach to suspicions of the apocalypse is

adaptation through activism.

Nihilism, Fundamentalism,or Activism:

By Richard Eckersley

Three Responsesto Fears of theApocalypse

PHOTO COLLAGE BY LISA MATHIAS WITH IMAGES COURTESY OF DANE WIRTZFELD,

RICH AND MICHELLE LEGG, DALE ROBINS, AND JON HORTON / ISTOCKPHOTO.COM

2007 World Future Society 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda MD 20814, U.S.A. All rights reserved.

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fine social issues, and even put to-gether shattered lives.

Lets look more closely at eachapocalyptic response.

Nihilism: Decadence Rules

Nihilism is the abandonment of be-lief in a social or moral order. At theextreme are todays youthful killers.As Theo Padnos, a young prison lit-erature teacher, told American writerRon Powers: In a world stripped ofmeaning and self-identity, adoles-cents can understand violence itselfas a morally grounded gesture, akind of purifying attempt to inter-vene against the nothingness.

What united his pupils were nottheir backgrounds, Padnos said, buttheir apocalyptic suspicions. They

think and act as though its an ex-tremely late hour in the day, andnothing much matters anymore.The adolescents were drawn to themythic violence of movies and tele-vision, to stories of post-apocalyptic

what we now know we need to docontinues to widen.

This construct gives dramatic ex-pression to what are, in reality, fuzzyresponse categories, thus drawing at-tention to their differences. Think ofthe responses (nihilism, fundamen-talism, or activism) as tendenciesor deviations from the norm, withsubtle to extreme manifestations,and which can overlap, coexist, andchange over time in individuals andgroups.

It acknowledges the mythicaspect of our situation, and the im-portance of stories to how we un-derstand and respond to it. Futuristshave noted both the human suscepti-bility to apocalyptic ideas, especiallyat times of rapid change, and ourmythic need for utopian ideals, both

of which are embodied in stories.Narrative studies have demonstratedthe power of stories to transportideas across time and space, con-struct meaning and identity, shapecommunities, enrich social life, de-

being and social cohesion and action.Psychological research suggests

that adaptability, being able to setgoals and make progress towardthem, having goals that do notconflict, and viewing the world ascomprehensible, manageable, andmeaningful are all associated withwell-being. Biomedical research hasshown that people become morestressed and more vulnerable tostress-related illness if they feel theyhave little control over the causesof stress, dont know how long thesource of stress will last or how in-tense it will be, interpret the stressas evidence that circumstances areworsening, and lack social supportfor the duress that stress causes.

Negative expectations of the fu-ture of the world are likely to impact

on several of these states, most ob-viously by encouraging perceptionsthat the world is hostile and danger-ous and that circumstances are de-teriorating. These psychological im-pacts will, in turn, shape our socialresponses.

We are being drawn in at leastthree directions by suspicions of animpending apocalypse (in either aliteral, religious sense or figurativelyspeaking). The business as usualdenial that has been the dominantresponse until recently is giving wayto nihilism, fundamentalism, and ac-tivism. There are several reasons forframing our responses in this way:

The possibility of global calami-ties is mainstream thinking amongscientists and futurists. For example,the 2005 health synthesis report ofthe United Nations Millennium Eco-system Assessment project warnsthat the growing and unsustainableexploitation of ecosystems is increas-ing the risk of nonlinear changes inecosystems, including accelerating,

abrupt, and potentially irreversiblechanges, which could have a cata-strophic effect on human health.

People, individually and collec-tively, can respond very differentlyto the same perceptions of threat andhazard. There is no guarantee theright response will prevail, althougheach has its psychological attraction.Despite the recent political action onglobal warming, for example, theresponse remains inadequate; thegap between what we are doing and

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Nihilism: Abandoning order

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evil were crucial to helping Ameri-cans rally after the attacks. It helpedpeople cut through all the confu-sion, uncertainty, and complexityand come to terms with what hadhappened. But fundamentalismalso breeds intolerance and gener-ates simplistic solutions to complexproblems.

Activism: Hope Rules

The activist approach to the apoca-lypse involves the transformation ofbelief. In this approach, hope rules.

Activism reflects the desire to cre-ate a new conceptual framework orworldview (stories, values, beliefs)that will make a sustainable, equi-table future possible. The counter-trend that this activism represents isevident in surveys across the West-ern world showing that many peopleare making a comprehensive shift intheir worldview, values, and way oflife. Rejecting contemporary lifestyles

to the use of biochemical or nuclearweapons.

The growth in fundamentalistthought extends beyond religion.Neoliberal economics, which under-pins current political strategies, alsorepresents a form of fundamentalismin its rigid adherence to an economicdoctrine in the face of the grow-ing evidence of its failure to deliverpromised benefits. Some recent sci-entific attacks on religion smack ofanother secular fundamentalism inthe form of a rejection of any but ascientific view of the world.

Like nihilism, fundamentalism hasits appeal. It produces a comfort-ing certainty about life and a call tounited action against threats, bothmoral and physical. Research showsthat people on religious and politi-cal extremes are happier, presum-ably because of the conviction theyare right. One political commentatorhas noted that Bushs description ofthe September 11 terrorist attacks asevil and his framing of Americasresponse as a war between good and

heroes just like they want to bevio-lent, suicidal, the sort of people whoare preparing themselves for whathappens after everything ends.

Others respond in less dramaticways to this sense of helplessnessand futility. They become even moredetermined to succeed, to be a win-ner at all costs, or lose themselvesin the quest for pleasure or excite-ment. These lifestyles have their ownhazards, including various forms ofaddiction. Nihilistic inclinations areevident at a more mundane level ina growing political disengagement: afocus on home and hearth, on tend-ing our own patch.

This strategy has its appeal. Thehappiest participants in his studies,Australian social researcher HughMackay has said, were those whose

horizons were most limited, andwhose concerns were unremittinglylocal, immediate, and personal.There is a cost, however. The senseof the world as threatening and hos-tile, and that ultimately we are all onour own, produces a fraying of citi-zenship and democracy, as well as avulnerability to the politics of self-interest and fear.

Fundamentalism: Dogma Rules

Fundamentalism refers to the re-treat to the certainty of dogmatic be-liefs, whether secular or religious. Inan extreme form, this is end timethinkingrife among fundamental-ist Christians in the United Statesin which global war and warmingare embraced as harbingers of theRapture and Christs return to Earth.Other fundamentalists may reject en-vironmental concerns as a liberal orsocialist plot.

Commentators are unsure howinfluential end time philosophy is

within the Bush administration. Inhis book The President of Good & Evil,philosopher Peter Singer says thatGeorge W. Bushs religious outlookis best represented by the Manicheanidea of a force of evil in the world,with an apocalyptic Second Comingimminent. America is viewed as thenation divinely appointed to destroythe forces of Satan. This response,like that of Islamic fundamentalistgroups, could intensify as calamitydeepens, possibly including a resort continued on page 39

Fundamentalism:Taking control with

rigid certainty

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closely associated with the drive forsustainability [see sidebar, Actionsto Avert Apocalypse, page 38].

There is a real and increasing pos-sibility that global warming, resourcedepletion, increasing world popula-tion, disease pandemics, technologi-cal anarchy, and the geopolitical ten-sions, economic instability, and socialupheaval they generate will createa nightmare future for humanity inthis century.

Avoiding this fate will dependcritically on the stories we create tomake sense of what is happeningand to frame our response. A keytask is to ensure that these stories re-flect neither the decadence and de-generacy of nihilism nor the dogmaand rigidity of fundamentalism, butthe hope and creative energy of ac-tivism.

About the AuthorRichard Eckersley is a re-

searcher on progress and

well-being and the author of

Well & Good(Text Publish-

ing, 2004). He is a found-

ing director of Australia 21

(www.australia21.org.au),

a nonprofit, public-interest research com-

pany, and a visiting fellow at the National

Centre for Epidemiology and Population

Health at the Australian National University,

Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia. E-mail

richard.eckersley@anu.edu.au.

nous movements: research institutes,community development agencies,village- and citizen-based organiza-tions, corporations, networks, faith-based groups, trusts, and founda-tions.

It arises spontaneously from dif-ferent economic sectors, cultures,regions, and cohorts, resulting in aglobal, classless, diverse, and embed-ded movement, spreading world-wide, Hawken writes. In a worldgrown too complex for constrictiveideologies, the very word move-ment may be too small, for it is thelargest coming together of citizens inhistory.

Avoiding the Apocalypse

All three apocalyptic responsesare growing in social intensity in ahead-to-head contest that, sooneror later, will shatter the status quo.

Nihilism and fundamentalism rep-resent maladaptive responses tothreat, whatever their short-term orpersonal appeal. Because they do notaddress the root causes of the prob-lem (i.e., the perception of a comingapocalypse), they risk amplifying thecosts to human well-being. As JaredDiamond argues in Collapse (Viking,2005), such strategies have led inthe past to the collapse of societiesconfronting environmental strains.Activism is an adaptive response,

and priorities, they place more em-phasis in their lives on relationships,communities, spirituality, nature andthe environment, and ecological sus-tainability.

Activisms appeal lies in its senseof empowerment and possibilityand in the collective identity, unity,and mutual support it provides. Idiscussed some of its social aspects,notably the research on culturalcreatives and downshifters, in anearlier article (A New World ViewStruggles to Emerge, THE FUTUR-IST, September-October 2004). Ac-tivisms political cutting edge is theglobal development of what Ameri-can social activist and entrepreneurPaul Hawken describes in a newbook, Blessed Unrest, as the largestsocial movement in history.

The movement is not hierarchi-

cal; there is no manifesto or doctrine.It is not so much trying to save theworld as trying to remake it. Meta-phorically speaking, it is human-itys immune response to politicalcorruption, economic disease, andecological degradation. The move-ment is not merely a network; it isa complex and self-organizing sys-tem, Hawken says, noting that it ismade up of more than a million or-ganizations with roots in the envi-ronmental, social justice, and indige-

continued from page 37

Activism:Adapting andtransforming

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