We are all doomed, or are we?

November is a dark month in the Northern Hemisphere. The nights draw in, we enjoy less daylight, and even daylight has a sombre quality. Some days it barely seems to get light at all. It is the season of the "bonfire," when in ancient societies the bones of animals were burned to ward off evil spirits, seeking protection for the long winter. In the premodern world, it was always uncertain whether you would survive the winter. The dark might well mark the end of the world, or at least the end of the world as we know it. No wonder in this season the thoughts of early Christians turned to  the coming judgment, to the world's end. "See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the G*d of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch." So says the Jewish prophet Malachi. Serious stuff. Doom, gloom and not much to look forward to.

If you follow British or American politics, watch the climate debate, worry about the Ukraine war, tune in to the religious zealots of every stripe, or read the daily news, the prophet Malachi just about got it right: we're doomed, there is no hope. Might as well light the bonfire and hope the worst doesn't happen.

In the human struggle with Eros and Thanatos, life and death, creativity and destruction, Thanatos plays better in religion and news cycles. Good news doesn't sell. Congregations of the faithful enjoy the catharsis of judgmental sermons, op-eds revel in predictions of downturns and recessions.

I'm going to be unfashionable and go with hope. The human species has made so much progress—evolutionary, social, spiritual, intellectual—and we persist. Our complex systems and institutions on the whole work for the good. We continue to find ways to fix things that are broken. We learn from our mistakes. Our empathy is growing, not just for our own species but for others too.

Jane and I have been teaching our course on nonviolence and childcare for foster carers and caseworkers. In the course is to look at the development of empathy using the work of Jermey Rifkin, Frans de Waal and others. We show a short video from the Royal Society of Arts. It's well worth a watch.



Rifkin's thesis is an antidote to doom and gloom. Long term, we're doing OK. Human ingenuity (without the hubris and with the grace of G*d) will likely find ways around our seemingly intractable problems.

Are we doomed? My money's on not.

Enjoy November's growing darkness!

+Ab. Andy