It's The End Of The World As We Know It—And I Feel Fine
*SPOILERS for the Netflix movie Don’t Look Up and life because I’m super deep*
The allegory of Don’t Look Up is spot on—it’s about climate change. It’s cringe, funny and frustrating. It’s over the top and yet somehow on the nose. However, I don’t think the slow-building existential dread that culminates into the movie’s symbolic finale only has to apply to climate change.
To rewind a bit, let me briefly recap Don’t Look Up. A professor and his student discover a mountain-sized comet is headed to Earth. There is a near 100-percent chance it will impact the planet in six months and destroy all life. After sounding the alarm to NASA, they are brought to the Oval Office to brief the President. The deep satire of the movie slaps you across the face here. It’s not subtle. It’s unnerving, frustrating and again, hits right on the nose given our political mess and incompetence. World-ending hijinks ensue.
The big final reveal—we’re all going to die—isn’t news. But… this eventuality isn’t exactly something we often confront in life, is it? I suppose I can only speak for myself, but I proactively avoid thinking about death, especially my own. To be dead forever, infinitely. Here now, gone tomorrow. It’s fucking weird to think about, isn’t it? Of course, I missed the first 13 billion years of the universe; what’s another missed 13 billion? The finality and totality of it, though. It’s just too much. Just typing these words makes my heart skip a beat.
But when you consider we all have an unknown expiration date, it’s difficult to also reflect on how much time we waste on bullshit. This is all magnified within the scope of the big picture, the big problems, the tragedies—and comedy—of life, like climate change.
Yet, even if we solve climate change, which is already proving to be an insurmountable Herculean task in and of itself, we all meet the same fate that comes at the end of the movie. So the movie, to me, is not just a prism to talk about climate change; it’s also about life and death. Climate change likely will not result in an all-at-once, shared, global catastrophic event like a comet impact, but we all meet our end. Life or metaphorically speaking, the movie ends for us and the credits roll, but Life: The Movie continues for everyone else. When we die, we don’t see how the plot ends up. We get up out of our seats in the theater, and we walk away, whether we want to see the rest of the movie or not. We walk out into that great big unknown parking lot in the sky.
We don’t get to see the next Marvel movie; we don’t get to try that new Korean place down the street; we don’t get to see who wins the next election or Super Bowl or the next season of Great British Bake-Off.
And although, in death, everything is no longer our problem—the isolating, dehumanizing and cold realities of our world still exist for the billions alive. The larger allegory of Don’t Look Up could be boiled down to a need to stop distracting ourselves—to take our collective problems more seriously because one day, whenever it may come, we will die and no longer be afforded the opportunity to affect change.
Inaction and distraction. The profit motives of various industries distort what should be important to us. Like Tyler Durden said, “Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.”
We are distracted. We are conquered and divided. Our priorities are backward. We are selfish. OK, maybe I’m being a little dramatic. Human generosity does exist. I would also argue there’s never been a better time in human history to be alive.
But I’d also argue that, unfortunately, it’s much easier, and I would argue more within our nature to be myopic—to neurotically worry about one’s self, narrowly walking through a maze of our own trivialities—rather than to empathize and devote time to the uncomfortable, difficult and ever-present cascade of the world’s problems.
The rugged American individualism we prop up allows people to say what they want, do what they want and think what they want—almost unfettered. Regrettably, it’s proven to be a race to the bottom. It’s all a cesspool of click here to skip ads, trash TV, fake news, two-day free shipping and memes. Romance is reduced to a swipe to the left or right. Governance degraded to a game of political football. Celebrity worship. Contactless food delivery. Scrolling through Netflix for 30 minutes just to end up watching something you’ve already seen before.
I don’t know how we take ourselves or our problems more seriously. Climate change is just the tip of the iceberg, no pun intended. How about social injustice, civil rights, healthcare, Citizens United, the designated hitter, the Kardashians, the Island Boys… If it’s not one thing, it’s another. The to-do list seems only to grow. And that sense of impending doom begins to feel a bit inevitable.
I feel all of this—every single problem out there—doesn’t get the attention it deserves because of the human condition. Meaning, we want to feel complete, loved, appreciated. We want to avoid sadness, be happier, be better, do more, spend less, save more, etc. Since we always want a little more for ourselves and because we are also conditioned to be dissatisfied... There’s always more, more money to make, more work to do, more more more.
That adage goes something like, “How can you love someone else if you can’t love yourself?”
Well, how can you devote time to others when you are so focused inward? When life throws so much at us, making all the ends meet becomes impossible.
When so much time is spent in the small corners of your mind—preoccupied with yourself—how much of your finite time can realistically be spent worrying about the polar bears? The human condition doesn’t allow us to feel safe, centered or satisfied. We are treading in deep waters. In American society, there’s always something to do, a bill to pay, a chore needing to be done, an errand to run, a tummy to tuck. Money is tight, kids are acting up, the dog stinks, one missed call, five unread emails, and ding—another phone notification.
Being comfortable with yourself, your situation, your spouse, your family—all at once—isn’t possible. We aren’t wired that way. It’s a pipe dream—an illusion. Just because we can imagine it, doesn't make it real. So solving all the world’s problems is an illusion too, but we can mitigate them. Improve. Just like ourselves.
So if your mind is fixed only within your orbit, it’s awfully difficult to spend much time worrying about the whales, Mitch McConnell, or the abyss Nietzsche spoke of that gazes back.
I, too, am distracted. I, too, am imperfect. There are things I need to work on with myself, like everyone else. But like everyone else, we would all do better to care more about just about anything else. I sometimes try to peek my head out to see the forest for the trees, but I know it would be easier for myself and everyone to do more for others if they were more comfortable in life. Comfortable with their salary. Comfortable with their receding hairline and saggy tits. Comfortable with their bratty kid and nosey neighbor. Their home life, their health.
We must first learn to accept the infinite inward before tackling the infinite outward. Accept that life is painful. To embrace our permanent imperfection, our fragility. Self-acceptance goes a long way, but so would providing people the means to do so. It’s the ultimate macro example of “a rising tide lifts all boats.”
The privileged—like Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Adam McKay, Jonah Hill, my boy Timothee Chalamet—have the means to seldom worry about most things the rest of us have to worry about. They have agents, lawyers, managers, assistants, PR, hair and makeup people, etc. This isn’t to say they don’t have problems or drama or insecurities or faults or dirty draws and so on. But if I had a staff managing my BS, many things would be a lot easier—that’s all I’m saying.
Climate change is a mere symptom of what humans are doing to the world. While it is a big fucking deal, scary AF, and it is coming for all of us whether we like it or not, the aforementioned human condition predates coal plants, car exhaust, pollution, et al.
Until we allow people to exist in their own skin comfortably. Until we allow people not to feel like this is all a big rat race where we need to compete, to survive and thrive.
On a global scale, we will never be able to reliably and consistently take collective action on our collective problems. The pursuits of the individual trump, again no pun intended, the group’s well-being. That’s in our culture, and it’s slow-cooked into our bones. A self-contained boiling sous vide, trapped in a vacuum-sealed bubble of our bullshit design.
