How to stop the apocalypse
Humans are obsessed with the idea of the End Times, the apocalypse, the concept that we are teetering on the edge of a catastrophe. Most major world religions describe some kind of "end time" or debased age, and I'd argue that this has seeped through into modern Western culture; though the specifics change (these days politics, climate change or nuclear weapons herald the end of the world as we know it rather than, say, comets), each generation is always perverting the work of the last and the world as we know it is always definitely on the verge of ending. At the moment, we have two separate Apocalypses of the Month: the US presidential election and the EU referendum. In the US, the two frontrunners are a corrupt neoliberal and a creepy orange fascist. In the EU, the perpetually sulky and disruptive UK is calling a referendum as to whether to stay in an admittedly corrupt and labyrinthine institution with many a failing but lots of positives for education, research and...
