When asked why he hung a horseshoe over his door, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr replied, \u201cI am told that they bring luck even to those who do not believe in them.\u201d<\/p>\n
I think there is an analogous position for all of us \u201cspiritual, not religious\u201d people and atheists today: We do not believe in the Christian prophecy of End Times\u200a\u2014\u200athe final, tumultuous period characterized by severe global tribulation before the resurrection of Jesus Christ\u200a\u2014\u200abut when we read daily news headlines we feel as if we\u2019ve been cast as extras in the latest blockbuster armageddon movie.<\/p>\n
We grew up believing in science, progress, democracy, and better living through data. Now our quotidian realities have algorithms devouring our attention<\/a>, monopolies syphoning our wallets, democracies wobbling like IKEA bookcases, weekly catastrophes, natural disasters, wars, and public executions, along with disinformation straight out of the dystopian novels we read in high school.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t call it Revelation; we call it \u201cthe news,\u201d but from 40,000 feet they look eerily similar: the sense that we\u2019re living in hyper-speed, that the ground beneath our feet is hemorrhaging, something catastrophic is unfolding, and that we, personally, are far too insignificant to do anything about it.<\/p>\n Last week, The Guardian diagnosed it as \u201cPolitical Depression<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Believers don\u2019t seem to fret much. They have their prophecies and reckon that God knows exactly what he\u2019s doing. The rest of us have to resort to push notifications and dubious recommendations from Andrew Huberman for self-care. We have no evacuation plan, just a surplus of podcasters spewing pseudo-scientific opinions while hawking productivity<\/a>-optimizing supplements. Productive for whom?<\/p>\n As opposed to self-righteous New Agers trying to smuggle ancient spirituality<\/a> back in new bottles, our survival kits are psychological and social. We need to generate meaning without ethereal overlords and guaranteed happy endings. We all know that the only place to get a happy ending is Disney.<\/p>\n There are two ideas in play here: 1) Civilization is disintegrating, yet 2) complete catastrophe is not 100 percent inevitable; nor is it evenly distributed.<\/p>\n Nor is it improved by our incessant frittering, distractions, or worrying.<\/p>\n