This is my first post here, so here goes.
The belief in the "end of the world" is one of humanity’s oldest shared stories. From the Norse Ragnarök(reference in Thor Ragnarok) to the Christian Book of Revelation and the Islam cycles, every culture has looked at the horizon and wondered if the sun was about to set for the final time. But whether we are actually close to the end, or if things just feel worse because of the screens in our pockets, is the great debate of 2026, of course that is if you believe in that kind of thing If you feel like the world is uniquely "shitty" right now, it’s worth remembering I feel that our ancestor might have felt the exact same way. In the year 1000, people across Europe panicked, convinced the new millennium would bring the apocalypse. During the Black Death or bubonic plague in the 1300s, when a third of the population vanished, people didn't just think the world was ending, for them, it effectively had. In the 1960s, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, children had "duck and cover" drills because the literal vaporization of their cities felt like a Tuesday afternoon possibility.
Human history is essentially a long list of "The End is Nigh" signs that people eventually walked past. I believe, speaking objectively is that What has changed is not necessarily the amount of "shittiness," but the amplification of it all, by the interconnectedness of the world. For instanve. We are the first generation in history to carry a 24/7 ticker(clock/phones) of every tragedy on Earth in our pockets. In the 19th or 20th century I dare say, if there was a famine on the other side of the world, you might hear about it three months later in a brief newspaper paragraph. In 2026, you see high-definition video of it in real-time, followed by ten angry comments and a meme.Also Algorithms in the media are built to keep you engaged, and human psychology is hardwired to pay more attention to threats than to good news. Social media exploits this by pushing "outrage" and "catastrophe" to the top of your feed because those are the posts that get the most clicks.
But after all is said and done Are we actually close to the end? If we look at it from an angle the "world is shitty" narrative hits a snag. Globally, child mortality is at an all-time low, literacy is at an all-time high, and extreme poverty has plummeted over the last fifty years.However, there are new challenges like , Climate Instability, Nuclear Proliferation(Humanity has never until now to the best of my knowledge created a weapon as destructive as this) and lastly Artificial Intelligence( We are creating a new form of "mind" that we don't fully understand). My Take, The world isn't necessarily "shittier" than it was during the World Wars or the Plague, it’s just noisier. We are living through a period of "information overload" where our primitive brains are trying to process global-scale trauma that they weren't designed to handle, BUT as a religious person .................. yeah, the world is coming to an end and again lastly scientifically speaking too everything that has a beginning will surely have an end, so why would we think that humanity will not end?