About three and a half years ago, in a period of now it seemed to be an earlier period of historical age, I began to be obsessed with the end of the world.
The prospects of climate disaster are getting closer, and the global political order structure has begun to fall apart. In my opinion, some unreamed darkness is gathering on the future of the future.
When sitting on the sofa on the sofa to see the cartoon film of friendly anthropomorphic animals, I occasionally see a news report in my Twitter information flow, or about how another species goes to extinction, or about a piece is equivalent to one piece.Bing in the size of Xiacheng in Manhattan has just fallen off from the polar ice cover, or the terrible diffusion of diseases with antibiotics with antibiotics.Promote such a world deeply guilty.
Even in the best days, I am also a talented and full -scale catastrophe theoretical, I can make the most clever and terrible predictions in any situation.Mild disgusting?Stomach cancer fourth phase.A little bump at a high altitude of 25,000 feet?Shortly after taking off, these words with unmanned lives appeared in my mind.
Therefore, with my nature, I can't imagine a future that is not dark enough to be unbearable, nor is it that I want my son to live in the world.
However, one of the benefits of a writer is that you can always transfer emotions to your work, forcibly collect your anxiety and fear, and make them serve creative purposes.
As far as I know, Freud defines this as sublimation.I think that for me, sublimation is that I have always been obsessed with the end of the world, and finally wrote this book for this.
I love to watch the video of YouTube upper and Doomsses. I spent a lot of time watching these doomsday preparators mdash; mdash; most of them are burly American men. They always seem to be Kyle or Brent (Brent) mdash; mdash; talk about how to spend disasters through tactical survival skills, such as water filtering, wisely accumulating food, protecting the homeland from being attacked by predators, and so on.
I am obsessed with diving on a special forum on the prospects of the collapse of civilization.I consider the following possibilities of mdash; MDASH; ecological disaster, nuclear war, meteor impact, terrorist hackers destroying power grids and raging global epidemic diseases.
I realize that this discussion does highlight some dramatic irony.Listening, I like other people like a little dramatic irony.But the fact is that my book is published this month, and this time is really coincidental.You dare not write this situation into a novel, because that's that, even the most tolerant readers will laugh at you to be self -contained.
Three weeks ago, the courier came to my door wearing a mask and handed me a box. Inside it was the 30th Intica (Notes From An APOCALYPSE) sent by my American publisher.Plastic gloves opened the box.Each writer wants his book to be published in time, but I think that as long as there is a certain time, such as the bookstore is still open.
Looking back at the past, at a certain level, my obsession with the end of the world is very conducive to a rational analysis of my mind soberly.In terms of reason, I understand that the period of turbulent and uncertainty will attract people's widespread attention to the end of the world.
But at the other level, the obsession seems to be completely irrational: the scene of these disasters seems to be a reflection deep in my heart, and it is also an uncertain and chaotic historical moment.
I look at the content of the doomsday preparators, but my attitude towards them is very complicated.The vast majority of them represent the point of view of the right and free will, so the way they respond to the collapse of civilization are to protect themselves and their families and property.
For them, although the direct danger may come from the outbreak or nuclear blow of the virus, the real threat seems to always be the others and society itself.
Their view of the world is that society is a vulnerable structure composed of behavioral specifications. When the pressure accumulates to a certain degree, it will inevitably collapse, and the true meaning of human beings is in the final analysis.
However, I couldn't help agree with their fragile views on human beings in the face of disaster, and identified their desire to protect in an uncertain and turbulent world.Their anxiety embarked on a different path, guided by ideology, but its root is the same uneasy as me.
Finally, in order to promote my doubtful sublimation plan, I decided to let go of the laptop, walk to the outside world, and find the performance of the end of the end of the day.
I went to the prairie in South Dakota.There, a real estate entrepreneur specializing in luxury landburies is trying to create the world's largest survival community.I went to New Zealand. This country was regarded as a shelter when Silicon Valley technology billionaires such as Peter Thiel were regarded as a civilization collapse.
I participated in the two -day tour of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, and wanted to see what the world of disaster and human endlessness would look like.I attended a conference on Mars colonial in Los Angeles. People expressed their beliefs at the meeting: humans needed a reserve planet.
I am immersed in the fantasy history of the end of the world and the cultural portrayal of the end of the world. I often reach the point where I feel about to be drowned.(I can't tell you how many times I watched this time during this time (The Children of Men), but I can tell you, I clearly remember that my wife was standing at the door of the living room and asked me doubt and concern: you are watching humans again.Son?)
There was an internal conflict during this time, and this conflict may eventually be unable to recover me crazy.As a writer, my inquiry method of the theme is to let myself feel the goal, even if that goal is my anxiety.
But as a father and a person, I feel that the pessimism of the end of the world may not be a good idea.
This is strange and tangled: thinking about the end of the world all day, reading the words about the end of the world, and talking to those who believe in the end of the world, and then I try to move forward in life, as if the end of the world does not exist.
But somehow, the writing process of this book plays a kind of exposure therapy.When I finished writing this book, I no longer always think about the distant future, but I am more willing to live in the present.
I still feel worried about MDash; mdash; although I am anxious about the future, during the time I wrote this book, my wife and I had a second child, a daughter mdash;mdash; but I cherish the time where they live with them.
Write this book except my enthusiasm for the end of the world.Even if it is not eradicated, it will definitely drive a large part.
Of course, there is another irony.That is, all I write mdash; mdash; doomsday preparators, luxurious land castles, and civilized scene mdash; mdash; now they have a very different color. In this strange new era, everything is a game.Domestic virus popularity.
I have to admit that in the past few weeks, I have removed some doomsday preparation books I bought from the bookshelf and read them again, but this time my mental state is completely different from the last reading.The distance between me and my theme has been shortened.
However, this is not the end of the world.This is not the kind of disaster for Doomsday preparators and luxury land castrators.
In recent weeks that are unfamiliar and uneasy, all I see is not people who are not plundered to protect themselves and property.The damage of the septic is actively prepared without being affected by a social impact of chaos and violence.
What I see is that people have let go of their own life safety for a collective cause, for the society, not just for personal purposes.
In the form of social alienation, I found that the community is still so important. How closely linked between people is not only the medium of spreading the virus, but also constitutes the same powerful social bond.If this is a big disaster, it gives me hope for the future.Maybe I am not as pessimistic as I imagined.
The author of this article is a doomsday enlightenment: a personal journey of the world (Notes from An Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back), and this book was published by Granta Press
Translator/偲
