Several decades ago, and not long after I’d started out in my new career, as a fresh-faced copper with North Yorkshire Police, Bob Marley released the song “So Much Trouble in the World” on his 1979 Survival album.
The way earthly things are going, Anything can happen. You see men sailing on their ego trip, Blast off on their spaceship, Million miles from reality, No care for you, no care for me … So much trouble in the world. (Bob Marley)
The song lyrics spoke to the troubles of its age: poverty, inequality, war, environmental damage, and humanity’s enduring gift for creating chaos while calling it progress. I often wonder what Marley would make of today’s world. I suspect he would not be short of inspiration. Decades have passed, technology has raced ahead, and yet we seem to have upgraded little more than the picture quality of the chaos. Abject stupidity and wilful ignorance are hardly in short supply, and far too many people appear cheerfully indifferent to the welfare of anyone else sharing this tired little globe.
I am not, of course, planning to put on a sandwich board proclaiming “The END is Nigh!” and trudge solemnly up and down the local High Street, weeping and wailing,. Although my wife may say I have already mastered the art of trudging, without investing in the signage. Apparently, I have now reached the esteemed rank of “grumpy old man”, a title bestowed without warning, ceremony, consultation, or any obvious route of appeal. Thank you, I’m strangely proud to wear such a badge of honour.
Looking at the many ills of today, and glancing back at my younger years, I’m oddly surprised I’m not more terrified about the future or my own inevitable exit, stage left. As a child, I had a recurring, sometimes almost paralysing fear of death, which seems rather dramatic for someone whose main responsibilities were probably school, sweets, and staying out of trouble. I’m still not sure where it came from. Death was not something I had really had to face before 1979, apart from my grandmother’s passing a couple of years earlier at the magnificent age of 99. If anything, she should have been my reassuring advert for longevity: proof that, with a bit of luck and sensible footwear, I had plenty of years left before needing to worry about my own appointment with the great unknown.
“It isn’t the events themselves that disturb people, but only their judgements about them” (Epictetus)
One reason I have never worried too much about “Armageddon” is that it is usually presented in theological terms: apocalyptic punishment, biblical judgement, and dire consequences for anyone straying from the approved path of their faith. Since I was never really on that path to begin with – my personal “faith” was humanity – I always rather assumed that I might be exempt. Although it’s starting to look like I might need to change my faith, despite that theological loophole, if not officially endorsed, did sound pleasantly reassuring. That comfort lasted until Armageddon began to look less like divine intervention and more like a human project, apparently developed, marketed, and enthusiastically stress-tested by ourselves. This was rather different from the traditional version most people see in their minds eye: a furious bearded figure in white robes, brow furrowed, eyes blazing, hurling thunderbolts from on high after a particularly bad celestial committee meeting.
I’m still not a big worrier about death; I’ve seen and been involved in so much of it over the years, I know it will come when it’s ready, but hopefully later rather than sooner. I can’t change that and importantly, my life resilience comes from my Stoic tendencies, and perhaps the fact I have been somewhat hardened to the finality of death. Why worry about what I have absolutely no control over, that’s pointless. Better to try and live life to the full whilst that option is still available. As the Ancient Greek Philosopher Epictetus pointed out; we benefit when we “…make the best of what is in our power and take the rest as it occurs.”
When I do think about my own mortality, it is not really the if or when that troubles me, but the how. Like most people, I would prefer to slip away quietly in my sleep, blissfully unaware that I have already seen my final sunrise, rather than endure a long illness, bouts of unbearable pain, or a sudden catastrophic accident. I have seen the effects of all three: on those who died and on those left behind to make sense of the wreckage. None of it is pleasant, and frankly, being posted into my box after a drawn-out production is not an ending I am especially keen to book in advance.
One question I have not really touched on is why. It is often the first word on the lips of the bereaved when someone dies unexpectedly. Yet that why is not always about the cause or circumstances of death; it can quickly become, why me? Why do I have to suffer from his/her death? Actually you don’t but it may take some time before you feel that way. However, my own why feels increasingly rooted in a bleak sense of inevitability, wrapped once again in the familiar shroud of stupidity and wilful ignorance I mentioned earlier.
Will I be fortunate enough to drift off peacefully from natural causes in ten to twenty years’ time, or will some fresh outbreak of human stupidity bring the curtain down much sooner: war, an AI-assisted cyberattack, or a baseball bat swung by an ignorant black-shirted thug in a balaclava as I walk home one night? At present, the less comforting options feel rather more likely than the peaceful one, which is not exactly the retirement forecast one hopes to find dropping through the letterbox. Who knows, I might be lucky, they tell me that recorded violent crime is falling.
I increasingly despair for humanity, because our eventual Armageddon seems less likely to arrive through biblical prophecy than through our own ingenuity. If the end does come, I doubt divine intervention will be required; we will have proudly designed, funded, tested, and launched it ourselves. I do not see this as the result of some grand master plan, despite what conspiracy theorists often prefer to believe when reality proves inconveniently complicated. As with so much in life and death, it is easier to blame someone else than to examine our own choices, or those inherited from the generations before us.
Anyone willing to look beneath society’s polished surface can see all the warning signs gathering. Armageddon may not have arrived yet, but the dress rehearsal seems to be going worryingly well. The apocalypse is not merely staring us in the face now; it is thumping us around the head at regular intervals. Each time we are knocked down, we get back up and invite another blow, apparently unaware that the final knockout may already be written in the stars.
Over recent years, we have seen the troubling effects of rising far-right populism, while remaining wilfully blind to its historical echoes and likely authoritarian consequences. This is not merely pub gloom after a difficult news bulletin: research in the Journal of Democracy has argued that Europe’s authoritarian potential is concentrated on the far-right flank, while wider scholarship describes democratic backsliding and authoritarian drift as defining pressures of the twenty-first century. Meanwhile, after a lifetime of being entertained by science fiction and preparing, with almost touching optimism, for a zombie apocalypse, we are now applauding largely unregulated automation. Some AI researchers and policy analysts warn that advanced systems could produce catastrophic or even existential risks if human control, governance, and alignment fail; in 2026, reports noted claims by AI insiders of a greater than 10% chance of AI causing human extinction within a decade. Comforting stuff, obviously. Nothing says “relax” quite like outsourcing the future to automation and machines that we only partly understand.
Is it too late to change course and reduce the damage? I do not think so, and for once this is not merely my inner optimist waving a damp tea towel in the ruins. The IPCC says there are multiple, feasible and effective options available now to cut emissions and adapt to climate change, while also warning that current action remains far too slow. Research on democracy is equally cheerful, in the way a smoke alarm is cheerful: a PNAS study found that economic inequality is one of the strongest predictors of democratic erosion, even in wealthy, longstanding democracies. That rather supports my suspicion that a society stacked around wealth, greed, and concentrated power is less a pyramid of opportunity than a professionally landscaped dung heap. The harder question is what ordinary people, usually lodged near the bottom of the heap with the finest view of everyone else’s arses, can do. Yet the evidence is not hopeless there either. Work on collective action and social movements shows that organised citizens can reshape norms, influence policy, and create the conditions for change. So yes, ordinary people can matter; the trick, apparently, is persuading enough of us to stop tutting at the telly and start doing something useful.
For now, the far right seems to have mastered the art of mobilisation rather better than the rest of us. Its momentum is often fuelled by anger, grievance, and tidy little narratives that followers may not fully understand but can chant with admirable confidence. Those of us who like to think ourselves progressive, humane, and mildly house-trained might borrow a few pages from that organisational manual, once the unpleasant illustrations have been removed. The time for sitting in disgust before the television or scrolling grimly through social media while fortified by Earl Grey tea, has passed.
What we need now is much more evidence-based, sustained protest from informed people with empathy and a genuine concern for “our” society and humanity as a whole. Not next week. Not next month. Now! Because without that combined effort, our impending Armageddon could actually be much, much closer than we would like it to be.
Dave's Bankside Babble 