The Subtle Art of Chillapse
Finding calm at the end of the world.
There’s this thing humans do:
They get so scared about something bad that’s about to happen to them, they start to get nervous just thinking about it. Pretty soon, they’re so paralyzed by their own fear, they can’t do anything but revel in despair or denial, depending on how their brain is wired. It’s called anticipatory anxiety.
For example, night owls like me hate waking up early. So when we run into a situation with no alternative, what do we do? Do we go to bed early and rest up? Of course not. We stay awake all night, dreading the morning appointment. Our actions make it all far worse than it would’ve been.
Now imagine something a thousand times worse than a morning appointment. You know, something like the collapse of industrial civilization, and possibly the end of all life as we know it. That brings on a wicked case of anticipatory anxiety, and the internet has given it all kinds of names to shame us for feeling something that’s completely natural to the human experience.