Coming of Age in an Age of Worry
I can’t speak for my generation, or, in fact, anyone but myself, but lately it seems like my whole life is driven by the things that scare me. Finishing university is terrifying and so is deciding what I’m doing afterwards, which is only a delayed form of deciding what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. I’m realising that all important decisions are scary and I have so many to make. If I were to think even bigger, beyond what I’m going to eat for dinner, I start to think about my life and the world around me. And how little of it I understand. Considering that I worry about getting on a bus, I try not to think about the bigger picture. For instance – oh, I don’t know – the fact that the global climate is collapsing in on itself, the UK government seems to prioritise re-election over pretty much anything else, and scientists estimate an average extinction rate of one species every hour.
In a classic “at least it’s not as bad as that!” move, I looked at some films about the world ending and, after a while, noticed a pattern. Hands down, the more recent ones left me reeling and the older ones were easier to overlook (and it wasn’t the quality of the CGI – in most cases). I concluded that apocalypse films reflect the greatest fears of the generation they were made for, so the more recent ones were bound to bother me more. I have friends who mess about with AI all the time and it hasn’t tried to take over the world… yet.
Jurassic Park (1993) didn’t bring out any existential worries mostly because, like it or not, genetic modification and questionable scientific practices are part of society. Dr Strangelove’s (1964) looming threat of a nuclear apocalypse seemed far-fetched in an age of bigger and badder weaponry. In The Walking Dead, the humans were more frightening than the zombies. If two of the world’s most powerful leaders decided to use their big red buttons to send Earth to an early grave, I would think the plot was a little flat, and the character motivations unreasonable. And that politicians would never be so infantile. Surely there are better stories than that? Besides, there’s nothing I can do to prevent it, so why worry? No, the stories that really frightened me were the ones that felt real.
For those of you unfamiliar with Don’t Look Up (2021) it can be neatly summarised: a planet-killing meteor is hurtling toward earth, and we only have six months to redirect it. Writing it out, that seems like loads of time. Unfortunately, the scientists who discovered the threat (played by Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio) are ignored and blamed for fear mongering, so no one really does anything, not even the White House. Sounds crazy, right? Our governments would never jeopardise the safety of the planet for financial gain! Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. A lot of the film was just too real for comfort.
Camille Griffin’s Silent Night (2021), the only Christmas film less festive than Die Hard, takes place on the last ever Christmas Eve. An upper-class family (Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Lily-Rose Depp) gather to count their blessings the day before a toxic cloud wipes out humanity. More accurately, the adults and their children prepare to take the government-issued ‘escape route’ pills to avoid choking to death on the clouds of pollution sweeping across the globe. Roman Griffin-Davis (JoJo Rabbit) plays Art, a young son of the family, who voices some harsh truths, primarily how his parents are at fault for the end of his life. The inaction of their generation and all those before them, has brought about the extinction of the human race. The worst part about both Silent Night and Don’t Look Up, is that they know it’s coming. In these doomed versions of Earth, humanity could have saved itself, but didn’t. And it wasn’t in the hands of ordinary people to do it either, but the people they’d elected to protect them,: the people chosen to serve their country, who abandoned it to save themselves.
And I think that strikes the core of my worries: the future, and how little I can control it. There is no way to know when the bus will arrive, or what will happen tomorrow, or in a hundred years. The full title of Stanley Kubrick’s Strangelove is Dr Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. So, there is our solution (albeit in a rather satirical form). All we have to do is stop worrying and love the bomb, the pandemic, or the world-ending meteor flying toward us. The terrifying truth at the centre of ‘what happens next?’ is that I don’t get to choose and, unless I’m incredibly lucky, the people who do probably won’t choose the option I’d prefer.
I don’t remember the first time I was frightened. Perhaps, if I thought about it longer, I might vaguely recollect a childhood memory of the dark or an unfamiliar face. But there’s still no way of knowing if that was the first. After all, worry is built into the human body; it protects us in stressful situations, drives our bodies to move faster away from danger. Like the alarm bell pain that goes off when you touch a hot stove, fear is there to protect us.
But unlike touching a hot stove, I can’t learn to avoid the future. I can’t move my hand away from it, I can’t even look away. I know I spend too much time worrying about the future, and writing this article hasn’t helped. Still, to steal a classic character growth moment, I am in control of myself. So, I control whether or not I fear the future.
Statistically, the chance of me kicking the bucket tomorrow morning is low, and the same goes for most days. As long as I stay out of the way of incoming traffic, I shouldn’t have much to fear. What I mean to say is there’s no point in fearing what hasn’t happened yet. Apocalypse movies can be funny, or far too accurate for comfort, and sometimes they trivialise things that we should probably treat more seriously. After all, films like these profit from deep-rooted concerns we have about threats to life on earth – that’s partly why there were so many end-of-the-world movies in 2012, when the ‘world cycle’ of the 5000 year long Mayan calendar was supposed to end. So, yes, a giant reptile might arise from the bottom of the sea and destroy Tokyo. Yes, killer robots might take over the planet. And yes, aliens might invade. But hey, I’m seeing my grandma this weekend and I just started a really good book. Why worry about the world ending when the sun is still shining? If I can spend the rest of my life doing anything, why would I spend it being scared?