Why do we obsess about the end of the world as we know it? The answer may seem obvious: it’s happening. Covid-19 has killed millions of us, and is still spreading. Month by month, the climate emergency accelerates at terrifying speed. Wars and political instability on every continent threaten our fragile civilisation. Even the greatest technological advances of our time come with built-in existential dread. The unleashing of ever more powerful artificial intelligence, we’re told, runs a non-negligible risk of producing some kind of extinction-level catastrophe – the machines might run amok. No wonder young people are depressed about the state of the planet. Most of the time it can seem like we’re all just helpless bystanders, doomscrolling our way to oblivion.
Yet, as Dorian Lynskey argues in his clever and voluminous new book, there’s more to it than that. Yes, we live in perilous times. But the world has always been in a terrible state. What’s different is that we keep increasing our exposure to far-flung horrors. Both the sheer amount of (mainly bad) news that now washes daily over us and the incredible frequency with which we consume it are unprecedented. Every time you refresh your phone, it’s there.
