Does the Apocalypse make you too anxious to work?: Howard Chua-Eoan

A recent survey reveals that 46% of Gen Z and 38% of Millennials are often frustrated by news that they might be working at work. These worries, compounded by global disasters, affect all generations. From nuclear threats to environmental disasters, fears of the coming apocalypse are on the rise. While humor and history provide some comfort, today’s world is a constant reminder that uncertainty and tragedy are never far from our minds.

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Written by Howard Chua-Eoan

Is the end of the world getting in the way of your career? A survey of workers in seven countries at the end of last year had a remarkable result: 46% of Gen Z and 38% of Millennials agreed with the statement “I am always so confused about what is happening in the news that I cannot work. at work.” .” Those anxiety levels must be high right now. Edelman, a communications consultant, conducted the survey in September 2023, during the war in Ukraine but shortly before the Middle East erupted in carnage, bombings, death and destruction, sparking fears of military escalation. , including, as in Europe. nuclear war.

The percentage of older workers who were desperate was low but, as I am now too late, I can attest that we did not protect ourselves. When Russia attacked Ukraine in January 2022, I immediately ordered potassium iodide tablets, although at my age, tablets – which can protect the thyroid gland from radiation – are probably not safe for a sexagenarian to than the young ones. I usually keep a bottle close to me, in an office drawer or in my suitcase. I’m happy to share.

We have many ways of coping, including macabre humor. Between hurricanes Helene and Milton in the southern US, my friend Rene Alegria wrote a letter saying that he has started watching “porn of the apocalypse” – especially many episodes. How the World Ends a series of articles that have been spreading since 2017. He recently passed through Helene, which blew up in Georgia where he lives, destroying a large part of the neighboring state of North Carolina. He told me: “It really raised my imagination. Watching this series was like “fast-forwarding one’s life to the end, just to save time and heartache. for a long time.” Then he added “LOL.”

Anxiety is no laughing matter, of course. Things don’t go well – and the prospects alone can be downright terrifying. We are hanging on to worry. Millennials are almost entirely named after the history of Millennarians. And they have the Y2K scare of 1999 – when the zeros of the coming year 2000 would throw the world’s computers back to 1900 and cause cybernetic chaos – as a sign of the group’s age. we see.

We want to see the apocalypse coming – if only for survival tips. Movies and books, magazines and television have done just that. In fact, there have been writers and theologians who have been reading when the world will end (and the best way) since the Book of Revelation (aka The Apocalypse of St. John) is became part of the Christian canon.

I will not touch Omen and 666 (or the astrological predictions of Nostradamus and the zombie apocalypse for that matter). There are enough frightening examples of the banal nature of people without calling for the intervention of God or Satan. In the early years of the Cold War, we had it in the sea, starring Hollywood legends Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Fred Astaire. It depicted a post-nuclear world where all human life seems to have been extinguished, except for a short time in Australia. In 1964, director Stanley Kubrick gave us Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. It remains the quintessential epitome of nuclear-age paranoia as a high-ranking military officer gives unguarded testimony of Armageddon, in a triple-crazy performance by the late, great Peter Sellers. The stage adaptation, starring British actor Steve Coogan, opened in London’s West End this week.

In 1983 – during Ronald Reagan’s confrontation with what he called the “evil empire” – the US television network ABC broadcast. The Day Afterwhich follows characters living near missile silos in the Midwest after the US and the USSR engage in the absurd. More than 100 million people listened. The following year, the UK came up with: Stringslocated near the damaged NATO base in Sheffield, England; it was broadcast for only the fourth time on British television last week.

Movies can be amazing. During the Covid pandemic, viewers also got a glimpse of the pandemic predicted in the 2011 film. Infection. It has become more and more knowledge China Syndrome, indicating the collapse of a nuclear power plant. Twelve days after the film’s release in March 1979, the actual collapse of the Three Mile Island power plant occurred near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Seven years later, the world experienced a complete disaster with Chernobyl. HBO’s five-part drama about the crisis won over a new generation of viewers in 2019, chronicling the war at nuclear plants in Ukraine amid Russia’s ongoing attack, including and the decommissioned remains of the now-burning toxic reactor Chernobyl.

Fast-forwarding through Hollywood offers psychological benefits, as my friend from Georgia notes. But we can also find comfort in history, by looking back at what we have survived. ACT UP’s commitment helped prevent and completely defeat the apocalypse for the gay community – and everyone – when the Reagan administration tried to laugh off the AIDS epidemic.

As Time magazine’s news director for a 13-year period that included 9/11, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the tsunamis in the Indian Ocean and Japan, I had to worry about many world-shaking events. in width. as well as the reporters I sent to deliver them. So many, I’ve lost track. Last weekend, Facebook “Memories” reminded me of a letter I wrote on Oct. 6, 2008: “Just as I get my life together, the world ends.” I forgot why I wrote that and I Googled the date. It was Monday that the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 30% as global financial markets collapsed.

That was a bad time – to pack up and leave for the way of life we ​​were going to get used to. But we are still there, maybe even feeling more confident. Just as we can rebuild well after earthquakes and other disasters, we have learned to trust central banks – especially the US Federal Reserve – to moderate financial crises. Indeed, the Covid epidemic has strengthened the role of central banks in supporting large government funds in the country’s main economy, to use our way out of the crisis. It has contributed to the development of modern technologies in many sectors: “We have data so we can prepare for any situation.”

Is that true? We may have defined the apocalypse down so it no longer means the end of the world. But we still expect disasters to be sudden and very destructive, symbolically if not tsunamis and earthquakes; what if instead they were rebellious, slow and treacherous? Sometimes trying to change a doomsday prophecy can lead to more disaster. In the late 18th and 19th centuries, nightmares due to Malthusian predictions of overpopulation and resource depletion may have encouraged colonialism and the kind of industrial development that brought us at the end of the climate crisis.

The best established practices of mice and men can be broken. For example, the Fed’s bond buying programs may have contributed to the dramatic increase in inflation that now appears to be under control. It has made central bankers wary, wondering how effective their best weapons are. “They can’t cut rates just because stocks are going down. They won’t cut rates just because the bank is reeling,” Jared Gross of JP Morgan Asset Management told Bloomberg’s. What comes from above podcast last year.

I know this will not calm those who are too overwhelmed by the news to focus on work. Office jobs are far from paradise, but being at work gives you a chance to talk to people who may be feeling the same way. A friend told me one of his new employees chose not to join his colleagues at the club after work, saying “I’m not into that hard work relationship- difficult.” News: We are connected together, like it or not. As one of my favorite old t-shirts proclaimed: “Jesus is coming. Look he’s busy.”

Oh, by the way, I just checked my potassium iodide. Expires this month. I’m going to reschedule while there’s still time.

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