Everyday Apocalypse
The bangs and whimpers of the daily news...
“The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”
~ A reminder from Chicken Little
Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina...
Everyday, we learn a little more about the End of the World...
War in the Holy Lands... the rise and rise of the machines... the imminent collapse of global stock markets... another Seth Rogan movie…
Newspapers, in their predictable, hyperventilating manner, kvetch and moan about mankind’s imminent demise... that the ‘climate crisis’ is about to boil (or freeze!) us to death... how the (latest) government shutdown is going to drive the economy into a ditch... that the country (any country!) has never been this divided...
Here’s a smattering of the latest, from the popular presses...
Dow falls 400 points, briefly enters correction territory as Trump’s Iran extension fails to soothe markets – wails CNBC
Welcome to a Multidimensional Economic Disaster - The AI boom wasn’t built for the polycrisis – cries The Atlantic
Iran war energy crisis equal to 70s twin oil shocks and fallout from Ukraine war, says IEA chief – bleats The Guardian
Whoa! We can hardly imagine what might happen when the situation escalates to a multidimensional amber alert polycrisis times 10x Ukraine plus Vietnam to the power of Climate Armageddon, LGBTQIA++…
Perusing the headlines, one could be forgiven for thinking life on planet earth had never been so fraught, we humans never so imperiled.
Go Touch Grass
To be sure, our congressional overlords are indeed working tirelessly to ensure no problem goes left un-exacerbated. Whether it’s spending too much of other people’s money, bombing vital energy infrastructure on the other side of the planet or generally throwing their toys out of the crib whenever they don’t get their own way...
And yet, despite their worst efforts, the sun still rises in the east and sets in the west... a rose by any other name still smells as sweet... and the barista who crafts our morning espresso still goes about her business with a pretty smile and a cheerful nod.
In our go-go world of incessant doomscrolling, gluttonous newsfeeding and performative alarmism, it pays every now and then to disconnect, to step back from the screen, to “go touch grass,” as the kids say.
Ah, but what about our own Notes From the End of the World, we hear you ask? Does the title itself (cheekily conceived) not portend an ominous apocalypse? A fiery armageddon? A hellish End of Days?
After all, the End of the World is not only a convenient geographic location from which to pen these riotous Notes... it also implies a long-prophesied Day of Reckoning. But this, too, can be interpreted in many ways.
Looking back over history, we are delighted to discover that there’s nothing new about the End of the World. In fact, doomsday cults are as old as the days are long. Herewith, a little perspective, heading into the weekend...
The Beginnings of the Ends
From the Essene order of Jewish ascetics, who saw their rising up against the Romans in 66-70 AD as a prelude to the coming of the Messiah...
…to Hilary of Poitiers, the French bishop who predicted the end of the world in 365 AD...
…to the trembling triumvirate of Hippolytus of Rome, Sextus Julius Africanus and Irenaeus, who foretold the second coming of Christ (based on the dimensions of Noah’s Ark) in 500 AD...
…history is full of end time predictions.
(Sextus later reset his cataclysm clock from 500 to 800 AD, presumably due to a cubit rounding error made while measuring the Ark’s upper deck.)
Over the centuries, brigades of bed-wetting panic artists came forth to wail and gnash their teeth over this or that Date of Decimation (DoD). Popes and priests, astrologers and kabbalists, false prophets, TV evangelists, Malthusians, pyramidologists and hucksters of every stripe stepped up, each with their own crackpot explanation and, usually, a collection plate in hand.
Even allegedly sane individuals fell prey to what Freud called “the death wish.” Mathematician John Napier, artist Sandro Botticelli, navigator Christopher Columbus and gadfly reformer Martin Luther all predicted fire and brimstone of varying descriptions.
And yet... here we are, still among what the British author Virginia Woolf called the “army of the upright.” And ready to chart a new journey in our history...
A Precipice, of Sorts
Of course, mankind’s tendency to fear the worst is understandable. In a very real sense, we are always standing at the “End of the World”... carried by the tide of time to the farthest reaches of human achievement and knowledge (such as it is). We exist at the bleeding edge of all that has come before us, dwelling on the precipice of all human experience, standing on the shoulders of giants.
We peruse the pages of history, until and including this morning’s newspaper, then we look out ahead... into an unlived abyss, fraught with all manner of possibilities, tantalizing and terrifying alike.
Any wonder we occasionally get a case of the wobbles!
Happily, those dusty tomes, when carefully studied, reveal great and continuous cycles. The rise and fall of empires, of cultures and currencies, and of grand political movements, the likes of which may be just beginning again.
Down here at our little End of the World, for instance, things are looking up. From the Ministro de Economía:
The Economy Grew 0.4% Monthly in January and Reached a New Historic High
In January, the Monthly Economic Activity Estimate (EMAE) reached a new historical high, both in the seasonally adjusted series and in the trend-cycle indicator
The EMAE recorded a 0.4% monthly growth without seasonality in January 2026.
In year-over-year terms, the indicator recorded an expansion of 1.9% and stood 8.3% above the level of January 2024.
Excluding Public Administration and Defense, 10 of the 14 remaining EMAE sectors recorded growth in the year-over-year comparison. Among them, Fishing (+50.8%), Agriculture, Livestock, Hunting and Forestry (+25.1%), and Mining and Quarrying (+9.6%) stood out.
Two-and-a-bit years ago, this place was not only hopelessly politically divided, but also economically bankrupt and on the very brink of hyperinflation. Today, against the dire warnings of PhDs and the sour lamentations of public intellectuals, it stands at the edge of a brand new dawn, apocalypse be damned!
The way is not always easy... or even apparent... but as the great Roman statesman, Marcus Tullius Cicero once wrote:
“The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.”
Now kindly excuse us, dear reader, while we go touch some grass.
Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
P.S. As always, a show of gratitude for our generous Notes members, whose dues keep our lights on, our laptop charged and our espresso cup half full... oh, and these Notes flowing to your inbox!
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When I was nine years old my parents, hoping to feed my insatiable curiosity, bought me a subscription to Time Magazine, the issues of which I devoured from cover to cover every week. Ten years later I was still hungry for reliable news, but I had learned the hard lesson that snappy headlines do not necessarily denote reliable content, and facts, far from being immutable truths, are as pliable as the commentator wishes them to be. I am now 77, and have seen no reason to change my beliefs at any time along the way. There should be a statue of Chicken Little in every classroom and newsroom, along with a reminder of these key takeaways from the traditional fable: 1) don’t draw conclusions from insufficient data; 2) don’t promote panic without factual information that justifies it, and 3) people who make extraordinary claims should always be doubted in the absence of extraordinary supportive evidence.
It's a good thing we don't trust the Post-hole Diggers (PhD's) to make predictions about things that might matter.